I STILL CAN'T STAND QUEENS

As I was saying...  (see previous blog post)


About a year or so I came across a couple of pages of writing on a yellow legal pad, something I must have written in the late 1970's or 1980's while I was staying at my parents' house in Queens for a longer period than the usual weekend visit.  Don't remember why.  But I was going stir-crazy for sure.  That I remember.  


Here it is.

65-19 78th Street, after an outdoor clean-up, 1952

The sky is pink at night, a lurid color, hinting at some violence happening somewhere, not so far away.  I hear police cars heading east, south, west, every direction, just not down these particular streets.  Only chance, of course.  “Don’t go out at night,” he says.  “A woman down the street, she was attacked, and they took her purse.”  No saying exactly when this was, or how, or even why.  Maybe she’s the only one.  Maybe she’s one of thousands. Maybe rapists and muggers and killers with long knives are crouching behind the few pathetic bushes that pimple the tiny five by five plots of grass that reside redundantly before each nearly identical house.  Maybe.  I don’t really know.  It’s easier just to stop going out after dark.  Except to the mailbox or to the corner.  I kind of enjoy sort of sneaking out to the mailbox, defying danger, as it were.  All those hairy dark men won’t get me.  If they’re there.  Which I doubt.

But why push it.  There’s a black world out there–not just evil people, evil things–but the raw, unbuttoned grotesqueries of life itself.  Sloppy houses, dirt, unkempt people who are all right otherwise–you never know, give them a chance, right?  Things said and done that you wouldn’t believe.  Everyday.  Things to be afraid of.  All of them.  Yes, even nature.  Scrape, scrape scrape, each morning.  Neighbors raking leaves off chipped cement sidewalks.  What a mess.  Nature itself, so filthy, so disorderly.  Just a few miles away, the sea. True, one must travel miles of too narrow streets, traffic lights, turn onto tightly compressed highways onto other highways that all look the same, all built too long ago, under-maintained, rutted, with rusted dented railings that bear the marks of accidents, years of accidents, weedy shoulders on which reside the deserted wrecks of more recent disasters vandalized now–each day another tire gone, door hanging.  And beyond that, just another couple of miles–I know it’s out there–the sea breaks on the shore carrying the rumblings of water from far away to New York City which, to the sea, is just another place.  Here, this tiny part, is a complete universe.  The smallest one I’ve been in for a long while.

Keep it away, keep it away.  It must be that there are too many risks–could that be?–letting in the sea, all that unkempt life.  Is that it?  Risk of what?  I have talked with many people this week, and yet, with one exception, the world, the rest of it, has not entered this small universe.  Women in their sixties and seventies who can’t drive, never did.  While their husbands were alive they transported these women.  The women served their husbands, served good food I’ve no doubt, agreed with them or went along. (I‘m just guessing on the evidence, the ready simple phrases, the sighs, “Well, that’s just the way it was,” which passes for thought.)  Another phrase, about the world “What can you do?” No choice, you see.  One cannot hope to change anything, much less one’s own self.  Her husband and mother to care for, for nearly fifty years.  He worked, she cared for both.  In a tiny house–another in one of those endless rows.  Finally, finally, because it was a strain, they both died, and she was now free to roam the world (and she travels mightily, even to Russia, but it doesn’t show) and move to an even tinier place.  Big sigh.  Acceptance.  But wait.  She has a friend. (I hear this all from my mother.  Is the story screened at all, I wonder?)  Her friend, frail and old now, was building a boat, a goddamned cabin cruiser, in the basement of her tiny home.  Yes, really.  He began it years ago when he was in better health, and has had to let up when he grew too weak to lay wood, beautiful wood, carefully smoothed and sanded and fitted.  But surely here is a romance, a story of yearning and hope and desire and beauty.  That’s what I think, but that’s not how it is told.  He just stopped, you see, and now they have to get rid of it.  (Will it fit through the door?  Can it get to the sea?)  Maybe he built it out of instinct.  Maybe he had nothing better to do.  Like a weaver bird knitting its delicate nest–what else could it do?

The right thing to do, of course, is to have a nice house, something well kept up, you know, always dusted, always neat, good solid food, not too spicy (spicyness allows that unwashed world to enter), nothing extreme, muted colors are safest but bright ones would be all right if the house was really nice and the car large, comfortable (no stick shifts) and clean.  And the husband in a good job (doesn’t matter what kind, that won’t be discussed) and the wife (not me!) a good housewife, nothing extreme.  No job for the housewife, but if there is one, best it have a low profile.  Of course it won’t be discussed.  Except to say, “How’s it going?  Is it all right?”  “Yes, it’s all right.”  “Good, good.”

One can get by here with very few words. “Look at that.  They never clean it up.  Even in the winter.  The snow.  They don’t shovel.  It’s a mess.”  (Fall leaves cover a brief skirt of a yard, the sidewalk, a car.)  “Oh, look, it’s really beautiful today.  I wish it wouldn’t get cold.  Look at the color on the trees.”  (Eroded shades of dark red, an occasional yellow, mostly brownish trees–pollution-resistant oaks–lining the highway.)

Those aren’t the few words, just some that come to mind when I think about the sea, such a few short miles away…

The words to get by on have to do with food.  What shall we eat today, how should we make it, where to we need to buy it.  It’s bought European style, a bit here, a bit there, and takes an enormous amount of time.  It is the main event.  It doesn’t allow for other highly theoretical main events.  What could they be?  No time to see the ocean until at least perhaps Thursday of next week, if there’s no traffic, if the weather’s nice, if, if.  Keep away a possibly frightening search for other occupations.  (What else is there to do?  In such a city?) 

If there’s rain, close the windows, keep inside.  If snow, move it away.  Sun, stay in the shade.  Tick, tick, tick.

Don’t analyze.  No need to question.  Ask why?  Why?  Avoid unpleasantness.  “You know how it is.”  “That’s the way it is.”  “Well, what can you do.”  “That’s nice.”  “It’s not the way it used to be.”  “The politicians, they’re all the same.  What difference does it make?”  “Everybody’s lazy, they don’t care.”  “They’re only out for a buck.”  “People don’t keep things up like they used to.”  “Well, I don’t know.” 

Sigh.

SKATING WITHOUT SKATES, WALKING WITHOUT SNOWSHOES, CITY WITHOUT SNOW, & SAP RUNNING EARLY

This winter the fields looked more brown than white

Sometimes there's a dusting of snow

To be honest, we have seen some beautiful snow here.  Well, not precisely here, as in right here, but nearby, in the mountains.  On the first of March, for example, while the Champlain valley was experiencing mere flurries there was a virtual blizzard up at Rikerts at Middlebury’s Breadloaf campus where we had gone with Lesley to cross-country ski.  When we skied in the open it was pure Antarctica: howling winds and pelting snow, almost a whiteout. Once in the woods the snow turned turned gentle, most of the trails untracked powder.  Downhill skiing has had its great moments too.  It’s just that there have been too few of those days.

Having no snow to shovel or plow has its advantages.  Obviously.  The fields are easy to walk about in, especially with the dogs.  No drifts to push through, no need to get all toggled up.  For those who ice skate, this has been an excellent winter.  Even though it hasn’t been steadily below freezing the ice has been amazingly thick.  We have walked on ice just offshore on Lake Champlain, have seen people ice skating there, and heard talk of prime conditions on Dead Creek where you can reportedly skate for kilometers.  (A neighbor told us about how people who routinely skate on the Lake or Dead Creek carry a rope at each end of which a block of wood is attached with a stout protruding nail–if you fall through the ice you use the nails like ice picks to pull yourself out.)  

Our pond has been frozen since early winter.  The weekend of Ken’s 80^th birthday (yes, hard to believe–80!) everyone here for the celebration took off for a hike across the road through the field to Otter Creek, starting off with a little pond sliding.  There were many styles of pond sliding as no one had ice skates.

It was the first time we’d walked all the way across the field to Otter Creek from our house.  When we look west its easy to imagine the Creek flowing just beyond the distant trees.  Not so.  It may be as much as a mile away.  The texture of the field is more complex than it looks.  There’s a rocky hillock (in Africa this would be called a koppie) right in the middle, and the smooth appearing field is really waves of rising and falling ground that appear flat only from a distance.

Pastures in warm winters like this one present complications to farmers, the kind of complications that are completely foreign to anyone who lives in the city or suburb.   Or are newcomers to the country, like us.  In our local paper I read that alfalfa depends on good snow cover to prevent its fragile root system from heaving out of the ground.  There are dangers for domestic animals too.  Wildly varying temperature swings can begin a causation chain than begins with barn ventilation.  Many barns are closed tightly in winter, limiting ventilation.  But when the temperature warms rapidly animals (mostly cows, I guess) can be exposed to respiratory pathogens.   Then there’s this:  “During the cold weather in a normal winter, intestinal parasites become encysted in the animals’ (horses this time) gut walls and are inactive.  Since weather has been warmer than normal, the parasites have not encysted and horses are paying the price with an increased number of colic cases, a potentially serious condition.”  Then there are the sheep and goats and new lambs (lambing season is approaching)–all endangered by parasites.  As if this wasn’t enough, “In adult cattle the winter has brought an increase in foot rot, caused by frozen uneven ground causing stress on the skin between the claws of the foot, allowing the organism, which lives in the soil and organic material around the farm, to cause disease—a challenge to treat on organic dairy farms.”  Severe winters undoubtedly have their own costs, but this sounds like the margins are really slim for a “good” winter.

The sap has been running early.  There’s some concern on the part of big time maple syrup producers as to quality this year.  Will the lack of snowpack mean less sugar in the syrup?  Will the varying temperatures affect production?  The weekend of Ken’s birthday with many hands available, our sugaring operation was set up for Year Two Syrup.  While we were in New York City one recent weekend we received this email from Chris, our de facto maple sap wrangler:

On the sugaring front, we reached critical mass on Thursday and had to do a boil Thursday night because the temps were dropping.  I got started around 6pm and the night ended at 1:30.  The evening was still and the stars brilliant.  I missed sharing the experience with you all, although the solitude was delicious.  At 11:30 a lone coyote howled for probably 10 minutes and he/she was in the field between your house and the Gallant’s.  Moments after the coyote stopped, an owl treated me to a guttural kind of hoot in the woods just to the east.  That was my first night boil and it was altogether different.  I did not have the endurance to finish all the sap; the last hour and a half was trying.  Interestingly, our trees were flowing more that your trees, I suspect because of the solar exposure.  I am guessing that our trees will also dry up sooner.  All said, about 6 quarts of excellent syrup.  Maple sugar is starting to run in my veins.

Two inches of snow here in the valley.

We read Chris’ email in a hotel room in New York–deliciously far from the scene he described.  It’s the contrast that’s the beauty part.  What better than to be in NYC (where we saw a photography show, a musical, a drama, an art exhibit, a concert, and ate Korean, Thai, Austrian, Israeli-Druse, and walked until our legs hurt) and know that at the same time our trees are making syrup to the music of the woods.  

When I grew up in New York I never felt as if I lived in the “real” America.  To me, New York was a separate world with different points of reference.  I remember a song from childhood that began, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go,” that was for me about another place entirely, a place I’d rather be.  In Queens there were no woods, no river (I didn’t count the East River or the Hudson) and there was no grandmother’s house (grandmother and everyone else lived in apartments or attached houses, and they didn’t count either).  Now I can like New York.  The buildings.  The streets.  The people.  All of it.  Wait, let me qualify that.  I still can’t stand Queens.