Ellis Island

In October 2012 Superstorm Sandy devastated the coasts of New York and New Jersey.  Ellis Island was right in the middle of it, with parts of the island divided between each state. Just a few feet above sea level in New York Harbor it took tons of water from the storm surge. The structures were, for the most part, not too seriously damaged, but the saltwater flooding destroyed much of the island’s infrastructure.

Ellis Island became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965 although the Main Building wasn’t restored and officially opened as an immigration museum until 1990.  It’s not typical of many national parks or monuments with wildlife, waterfalls, or any other natural wonders. In fact, twenty-four of the island’s twenty-seven acres were man-made with landfill.

My connection to Ellis Island goes back to a few months after I retired. My wife, Bridget, told me I needed “something to do.” So she made the arrangements, and I went for an orientation and training to become a volunteer tour guide at Ellis Island.

She said, “You’ll really enjoy it.”

That was some time ago and I did come to enjoy it. I’d go two or three days a week and do two daily tours. I’d answer questions at an information desk when I’m not doing tours. It’s a great way to spend a day. I’d arrive on the employee ferry from Battery Park in lower Manhattan before the visitors get there and have time for coffee on the café terrace overlooking the harbor. It’s a beautiful island, and I’m sure it affects the people working there. Everyone from the café workers to the Rangers and Park Police have a cheerful and friendly attitude.

I volunteer with a non-profit called Save Ellis Island and do tours dealing with the hospital complex on the island’s south side. This part of the island is a stabilized ruin and a “hard hat” area where only specially organized tours can go. The only one of the twenty-nine structures on the south side to be completely restored was the Ferry Building. Save Ellis Island is working with the Park Service to raise awareness and money to restore the southern part of the island. The Ferry Bldg restoration was completed in 2007. However, there are still all the other buildings on the southern part of the island: laundry, powerhouse, operating room, morgue, staff housing, kitchen, administration building, recreation hall, as well as the hospital wards. They’ve all been stabilized – roofs repaired, windows sealed, overgrown vegetation removed – and actual restoration will occur sometime in the future.  The original island where the main building is located is known as island #1. The hospital complex across the ferry slip is island #2, and the contagious disease buildings are called island #3. Until the 1920s, it was believed that disease germs couldn’t cross two hundred feet of water. When that was determined to be incorrect, the water area was filled in, and the new land was used for recreation.

The exhibits in the Ferry Building related to the hospital complex and the Public Health Service people who ran it. Because of its location, with doors opening to what was the gangplank to the ferry, the Ferry Building exhibits were destroyed by the storm, and all of the artifacts have since been salvaged and removed. The north side of the island is where the main building houses the immigration museum. The exhibits there deal with the immigrant experience and the history of Ellis Island. Unlike most museums, the structure itself is part of the history since it’s the actual building where the immigrants were processed. I feel a particularly strong link to the island because my grandparents came through Ellis Island when they arrived in America from Italy. My mother’s parents migrated in 1901, but a delay caused by a late harvest forced my grandfather to stay behind for a month. Grandma traveled alone with her baby daughter, but women weren’t permitted to enter the country without a male escort since it was felt they wouldn’t be able to support themselves. It was arranged for a male cousin who was already in New York to meet her, and that should have settled the issue. Due to some miscommunication, he arrived to greet her at Ellis Island two days late. So she spent two nights “detained” in the dormitory behind the main building. It must have been a tough time for her, not knowing what would happen and if she would have to return to Europe.

Although the island opened in 1892, building went on until the 1930s. The original main building was made of pine and burned to the ground just five years after it opened. That caused the government to insist that any future construction on Ellis Island had to be fireproof. The second main building was completed in 1900 in the Beaux Arts style, with the third story added ten years later.  The hospital buildings on the south side were built in the decade beginning in 1900. The Ferry Building opened in 1934. It was built during the Depression by the Works Progress Administration to replace the original, which had begun to deteriorate. Although built in varying architectural styles, all of the buildings on the island are made of similar color brick and stone.

Ellis Island’s history before it was an immigration center is also fascinating. It was owned by Samuel Ellis and used as a tavern by harbor fishermen and oystermen. When Mr. Ellis died, his heirs sold it to the government. It became Fort Gibson and was used to protect the harbor in the War of 1812.There never was an invasion, and the fort’s guns never fired a shot in battle.

The coastal states oversaw their own immigration processing until 1892, when the Federal government took over this function and opened the processing center on Ellis Island.  The States of New York and New Jersey had an ongoing dispute about which owned Ellis Island. In 1830, a boundary between those states was drawn down the Hudson River and across the harbor. Ellis Island, once in New York, now found itself on the New Jersey side of the boundary. Based on this, in 1998 the Supreme Court decided the area of the original island belonged to New York and the enlargement of the island created by landfill belonged to New Jersey. The irony is that the landfill was once part of New York City – excavated soil from the Manhattan and Brooklyn subways. Since Ellis Island is run by the National Park Service, the only real difference is bragging rights and who collects sales tax. The café and gift shop are located in the New York part of the island, so the sales tax collected there goes to New York State.

The Ferry Building was closed to the public except through the Save Ellis Island tours. Since my tours are specialized, I would typically get small, interested groups who ask astute and intelligent questions. The questions from the general public at the information desk aren’t always so compelling.

The most commonly asked question is, “Where is the restroom/washroom/loo/toilet?”

After that, a typical one is “Where can I get a taxi?” Visitors go by ferry from the Battery in Manhattan to Liberty Island and then stop at Ellis Island on the way back. Some of them think they’re in Manhattan. It’s very often hard to convince them they’re on an island where there are no taxis. I keep a map handy to show them they’re surrounded by water.

Then there are the audio tour visitors who ask me a question and can’t hear my answer because they forget to remove their headphones.

I also get some odd ones like, “How many dimes in a dollar?” and “Where can I get a cup of coffee? I had a rough night.”

A woman with a crisp British accent once asked, “Do you have a plaster?”

“Pardon me.”

“A plaster. I cut my finger.”

“They should be able to help you at the Ranger’s desk, but we call them band-aids.”

The info desk is an excellent place for people watching. I’ve noticed most foreigners respond to my answers with a thumbs up as well as a verbal thank you. That seems almost universal, but it hasn’t caught on with Americans. The way visitors dress certainly isn’t universal. I can often determine nationality by clothing. Germans wear socks with their sandals. Americans can be identified by sneakers and baseball caps, and French tourists wear scarves, even in July. And if school groups aren’t wearing uniforms or matching tee shirts, the difference between the nerds and the cool kids is obvious.

Sometimes classes arrive with assignments. They have a list of questions prepared by their teachers that they need to find answers to at various exhibits. Now and then, there’s a little girl who somehow senses I’m a grandfather and tries to get me to do her assignment. I generally resist but sometimes give in and answer one of the more challenging questions if they promise to do the rest on their own.

I can turn to the Park Rangers whenever I don’t know something. They’re well-trained and take pride in their thorough knowledge of the national parks where they’re assigned. I enjoy working with them, and it’s also fun spending time with their non-human counterparts, Noel the goose-chasing Border Collie and Max the bomb sniffing German Shepherd. Some geese have stopped migrating because of the easy pickings on Ellis Island, and Noel encourages them to act more naturally and fly south. Max helps with the tightened security at national monuments since 9/11.

More than a million immigrants spent time at the Ellis Island hospital. As their ships came from Europe, they were first met by a pilot boat before they entered New York’s Lower Harbor. The pilot got on board and directed the steering through the local shipping channels. When they got to the Narrows, where the Verrazano Bridge is today, their ship was boarded by immigration officials and doctors who began processing the first-class passengers as they went across the harbor to the Manhattan pier. By the time they got there, the first-class passengers were cleared, got off, and went on their way, but the third-class and steerage passengers never entered the city but instead got on a ferry to Ellis Island for processing. They went into the main building and ascended a staircase to the Registry Room on the second floor.  Doctors stood at the top of these stairs and watched them as they climbed, looking for signs of limping or breathing difficulties or anything else that might indicate a medical condition that could affect the new immigrants’ ability to work and be self-supporting in America. If no problems were seen the immigrant went on to further processing and probably left the island within a few hours. But if something needed to be examined more closely, the doctor put a coded chalk mark on the immigrant’s shoulders indicating the suspected medical condition and sent them to the south side of the island.

As disappointed as some must have been to have to go to the hospital instead of continuing on to America, they got excellent treatment, and for many, it was the first time a doctor ever examined them. It was a well-equipped, state-of-the-art hospital with eighteen wards and over seven hundred beds. This was the first hospital where the stereo stethoscopes we are familiar with today were standard issue. There were female doctors for women who had never seen a doctor before and would be uncomfortable being examined by a man.

The government was concerned with both the spread of contagious diseases and allowing anyone into the country who wouldn’t be fit enough to support himself. That’s primarily what my tour deals with, and because of the medical issues involved, I get a lot of doctors, nurses, and public health people.  Each group I take on my tours is a little different, and my focus varies depending on their interests and the questions they ask.

On occasion, at the end of a tour, I’m told by American tourists, “We loved listening to your New York accent.” Since they seldom think they have their own regional accents, they’re taken aback when I respond with, “Thanks. I really enjoyed yours too.”

The Statue of Liberty has reopened on the first Independence Day after Hurricane Sandy, but Ellis Island wasn’t scheduled to be ready for the public “until further notice.” Finally, eleven months after the storm, I received an email saying the island would be open on October 28^th, the day before the anniversary of Sandy’s landfall. I quickly rearranged my schedule so I could be there on opening day. I got on the 8:30 am ferry at its usual dock in Battery Park and there were easily more members of the media than employees on board. When we docked, they immediately began setting up cameras and sound equipment and interviewing Park Service employees. I entered the main building and was pleased to see that because it’s raised quite a bit above sea level, except for the flooded basement and mechanicals, the structure was spared any real damage from the storm. The Peopling of America exhibit was in place and as good as new. Since, because of the flooding, a climate-controlled environment couldn’t be maintained, all of the historic artifacts in the building had been removed to the National Park Service Resource Center in Maryland to prevent any moisture and mold damage. The registry room on the second floor was open to the public and as impressive as ever with its imposing Guastavino tile vaulted ceiling. This was where millions of immigrants were processed before being allowed to continue to their destinations in America.

I joined some other volunteers and Rangers to discuss our duties. It was decided I’d greet disembarking passengers arriving on the first public ferry and answer any of their questions about the storm and subsequent closure of the island. When it arrived, the passengers were at first afraid to descend the gangplank, seeing an army of media people with their tripods, cameras, and boom mikes. A few came through and were filmed and interviewed, and others, who got through the gauntlet, asked me questions about the storm damage and what exhibits were open. After the first boat arrived, the media left, and the rest of the day was almost as it would have been before the storm. All of the visitors seemed pleased the island was reopened, even though it still wasn’t completely back to normal. The lawns were browner than they should have been in autumn, having been flooded with salt water. Some had already been re-seeded and would be green again in spring.

I knew I wouldn’t be taking any tours to the Ferry Building for some time, but there was still enough to do. I thought back to my first few tours on Ellis Island when they included only what I was trained to talk about. Since then, I’ve done my own research and added information I was particularly interested in. It’s common for tour guides to personalize their tours. Because my family came to America through Ellis Island, I sometimes mention them and things I know about their journey. The best part of my time there is thinking about them passing through over a hundred years ago. I spend my days in the same rooms where they were processed. I walk the corridors and climb the stairways they did, and I even get off the ferry in the same place where theirs docked. I think about what their feelings might have been when they were here. Were they scared and anxious, or were they happy to have the chance to start a new life? Or maybe it was a combination of both. And in the same way that I think about them, did they ever wonder about their descendants in America and imagine that one would be back on Ellis Island over a century later?

Live Theatre

Being a Hitchcock fan, I was eager to see Patrick Barlow’s Broadway production of The Thirty-Nine Steps a few years back. It was quite a show, with only four actors playing every role. Two did the Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll parts, and two male actors interpreted all the other male and female characters. It was clever and funny and didn’t leave out any Hitchcockian nuances.

My wife Bridget and I enjoyed it so much that when we heard Barlow was doing A Christmas Carol this past December, we made it a point to get tickets. It was Off-Broadway, and the production wouldn’t be as elaborate as The Thirty-Nine Steps, but we knew it would be creative. It was at a small theatre in an old church west of Times Square. There was no curtain, and the stage was a turntable with two set pieces mounted on it: one abstractly representing a wall with a doorway and lamp post and the other, a spiral staircase, both about fifteen feet high. We soon learned that the actors would spin and reposition them to make scene changes throughout the play. We sat in front-row seats and expected an intimate experience.

The lights went up on Scrooge in his office with an offstage voice saying Dickens’ classic opening line, “Marley was dead: to begin with.” The first scene change to Scrooge’s bedroom was accomplished by a rotation of the stage and the actors turning the two sections of the set, all in view of the audience. It worked smoothly and effectively. Marley’s ghost came and went, and when it was time for the Ghost of Christmas Past’s entrance, the set was again readjusted. This time, it was more melodramatic with flashing lights and weird sounds accompanying the ghost’s entry into Scrooge’s bedroom. The stage revolved and the actors rapidly swirled the staircase and the wall to add to the eerie effects.

As all of this movement came to a halt, Bridget said to me, “Look, it broke!” A metal bracket snapped off the section of the set representing the wall, and the whole thing started tilting toward the section of the audience where we were sitting. The smallest and lightest actor on the stage held on tight, dug her heels in, and tried her best to keep it from falling on us. Before I had to decide whether I’d jump up and help her or run for safety, all the other actors on stage realized what was happening and rushed to her aid. Their efforts prevented what could have been a catastrophic final act. The same off-stage voice that began the first act calmly announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be taking a short break in the performance,” and the house lights went up.

Not having a curtain, the disembodied voice had to explain what we saw on stage.

“We will try,” it said, “to repair the set or at least make it safe, and at the same time, the actors will attempt to come up with a way of completing the production without taking the chance of moving the damaged set which might thereby cause an accident.”

He asked for our indulgence for just thirty minutes. There was a huddle at the darkened rear of the stage with the actors and stage manager. At the same time, two stagehands struggled to repair the broken bracket, and of course, the audience could see everything happening on stage.

When the actors had finished their brief discussion, they came to center stage, with one carrying an accordion who said, “In order to keep you entertained while decisions are being made, we’ll sing some Christmas carols.”

They began to sing, and Scrooge, still dressed in his nightshirt, slippers, and nightcap did a jig to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. This went on for some time, and it really was entertaining. Although some of them might not have known all the words to the carols, like many actors, versatile and ready for any part that might come their way, they knew how to sing. And Scrooge’s little improvised dance wasn’t half bad. The audience began a sing-along, and as we sang, I watched the stagehands, just a few feet away, working on the set, first with clamps and wire and then with gaffer tape. Now, gaffer tape is a remarkably useful product and can solve a great number of problems, but not this collapsing set. Eventually, and regretfully, the stage manager came downstage and announced that the play would have to be canceled rather than risk harm to the actors and audience. We applauded and shouted for one more carol.  The actors and stagehands obliged, and we walked up the aisle to Silent Night.

These were theatre people who were there to entertain. They ran into unexpected difficulties, making the intended performance impossible, but they performed anyway. They broke character, and they gave it their all. I couldn’t imagine anything comparable at a movie and certainly not on television. When we reached the lobby, we were given a choice of getting a rain check or a refund. We chose neither. Returning to see the same production without the added drama of the set collapse would have been anti-climactic. And we felt we didn’t deserve a refund because we had already got what we paid for: a great night of live theatre.

 

 

 

Massage Parlors

Joe the Cop walked into the Tech Room and, grumpy as usual said, “We’ve got two massage parlors to start the day.”

That brought groans and curses from the rest of the team. We felt inspecting massage parlors, aka brothels, was a boring and pointless job. The Mayor’s Office of Midtown Enforcement was tasked with responding to sensitive complaints in Manhattan from Fourteenth to Sixtieth Street, East River to the Hudson. Part of a team which included a Police Officer (Joe the Cop), a Fire Inspector and a Health Inspector, I was the Construction Inspector, handling building code and zoning issues. Each of us inspected what our respective agencies were responsible for. Joe, there for protection, also dealt with anyone who considered offering any of us a bribe.

In the 1990s, the Giuliani administration’s catch phrase was “quality of life,” so local elected officials, Community Boards, and neighborhood associations came to us when they felt theirs was being affected. There were lots of complaints related to hazardous construction, blocked fire exits, and contaminated food and we knew we were accomplishing something dealing with those. Many others were less safety related. There might be a new store opening on Fifth or Madison Avenue with tacky signage which didn’t fit with the upscale style of the district and more importantly didn’t comply with the local signage regulations. Maybe a restaurant extended its outdoor tables into a public plaza, illegally excluding the public unless they were paying customers. These were typical, but even more common were the so-called massage parlors. During that period and throughout the Midtown area, they were an embarrassment to the administration.

Two competing gangs ran the massage parlors of Giuliani era. They would open in residential and commercial buildings. The Police couldn’t do much about them because the “massage” front worked. If an undercover went in as a customer, he was naked when and if a the masseuse made a solicitation. Not a good time to make an arrest and he could only arrest the woman making the solicitation and not her colleagues and managers. Our city’s Law Department came up with a process that would work. I’d issue various Building Code violations for illegal occupancy and work without proper permits for partitions and plumbing. The clincher was a zoning violation for unlicensed massage. They didn’t really do massage, but they said they did, and that was enough for a violation. Under the nuisance abatement law and using my documentation as evidence, City attorneys would bring a civil suit, and a judge would issue a closing order – end of story. Well, not really. They would re-open again at a new location within a few weeks. Since there were two gangs running them, many of the tips came from one about the other. It kept us busy. Although part of the job, these places seemed so innocuous we felt our time would be better spent rectifying dangerous conditions.

This went on for most of the five years I worked at Midtown Enforcement. We did our inspections early in the day so there were rarely any customers. The women were usually dressed in casual street clothes, and we got to know most of them by name. Our female health inspector would speak to them about health related issues and services they might avail themselves to. They knew they wouldn’t be arrested so our official visits became a cordial hour or so. Although run by Chinese gangs, the workers were often Korean. There was usually a mama-san who looked after them, doing laundry and cooking. In addition to issuing violations, I made a rough floor plan of the establishment so when the police and lawyers went in to execute the closing order, they would have some familiarity with the lay-out.

Our method was considered so successful we were sometimes asked to do inspections outside of the Midtown area, most frequently in Chinatown. The first time we did this was at a location on the Bowery near Delancy Street at the request of the Fifth Precinct’s CO. Aside from having massage cubicles, it was a gang headquarters with a section of the location devoted to gambling. The police went in with a warrant and secured the premises before we entered. They had interrupted a high-stakes mahjong game. And I had always associated mahjong with elderly women.

As I walked in the ground floor entrance, two attractively dressed Asian woman hurried passed me, followed by a Chinese undercover cop. I watched as they ran across the Bowery and Delancy Street and almost into a traffic cop. He let the women go but grabbed the undercover who was chasing them and cuffed him. His calculated scruffy appearance worked well enough to convince the traffic cop he was a bad guy. Despite this glitch, the police considered the operation a success. It ended with me going to the precinct with a Fujianese interpreter to serve papers on the club’s owner.

A guard noticed me staring at all the black smudges on the cell walls. “We don’t give perps paper towels after we take their prints. They only flush ‘em and clog the toilets.” The black ink abstract patterns hand rubbed on an institutional-green background made an interesting décor.

When we were next called to Chinatown it was supposed to be a much simpler operation: the usual brothel operating as a massage parlor. We went with just our team and no additional police like the first time. We entered and found, besides twelve women, five men who didn’t appear to be customers. Since this was Chinatown and not Midtown, we figured they were security.

We began our inspection and as I drew a floor plan in one of the cubicles, a young woman approached me and said, in heavily accented English, something like, “I want to go out with you.”

It wasn’t uncommon for the ‘masseuses’ to sometimes act flirty and tease us. It made our shy fire inspector uncomfortable but didn’t really bother me. This time it was different. She wasn’t smiling and seemed nervous. I asked some questions and eventually understood that she and the other women in this brothel were being held there against their will.

Joe came looking for me because I had been gone for so long. “Did I interrupt you and your girlfriend?”

“Joe, we’ve got a problem here.”

I explained, he grasped the situation quickly and was concerned.

“I’m outgunned,” he said, referring to the five man security team.

He radioed the local precinct and within minutes a lieutenant, ten uniforms and an interpreter from the DAs office arrived. There was nothing left for us to do but leave and prepare our statements.

My affidavit was enough to keep me from having to testify in court. Our office attorney filled me in on what came out at the hearing. The twelve women were from Thailand and were offered passage to America by an organization they thought legitimate. At a cost of $6000 each they made whatever size deposit they could and were told they would be able to work off the rest in the organization’s New York garment factory. Their ages ranged from fourteen to twenty-two and were working at the brothel for three weeks when we arrived to do our inspection. The gang’s defense attorney claimed they were well fed, given any medical attention they required and every Sunday chaperones took them sightseeing. They’d seen the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry and some of them went to Rockefeller Center. Nevertheless, the DA came down heavy on the gang with a long list of justifiable charges and won his case.

This episode showed us the dark side of the business. Unsuspecting women were duped then held against their will and forced into prostitution. If prostitution was decriminalized and regulated perhaps the situation, we came upon wouldn’t have happened. If sex workers could freely choose that line of work and own and operate their brothels without being under the control of pimps, maybe things would be different. Whether this is true or not, we were glad we arrived when we did and could help them. Our team never learned exactly what happened to these victims of sex trafficking. A non-profit took charge of them and helped to either return them home or, if they chose to, stay in America. I wondered if any would have decided to stay after the experience they had here.

A Cheetah Named Lily

She was sitting on an antique wing chair wearing a blue and red silk robe. Her hair was down. And I’ll be dammed, if there wasn’t a cheetah in a black suede collar sitting next to her like a house cat. She hadn’t lied to me. She said she had a pet cheetah and there it was.

“Her name is Lily. Give her a chance to get to know you, and she’ll be purring in your lap.” Because of the way Bianca smiled as she said that I didn’t know if she meant it.

“I think that’ll take some time. Lily’s looks like she’s going to start snarling.”

“It’s not that. I just lit some incense and she’s making faces to let us know she doesn’t like it. She’ll lose interest before long and get closer to you.”

Bianca was right. We moved to the sofa. I sat in the middle with Bianca on one side and Lily on the other.  She nuzzled my hand until it was under her chin, Lily that is. I’ve had lots of dogs and cats. Lily was bigger than most dogs but she was still a cat. I got the idea that Bianca was interested in seeing if I could win over her pet. I silently accepted the challenge and began to gently stroke under Lily’s chin. Then I moved my hand down to her neck. When I saw that she didn’t mind my touching her throat, I knew we had become friends. She rolled onto her back expecting a belly rub, and I went along. She started purring, and it later became clear that Bianca was very impressed.

A First Taste of Grappa

I was at an outdoor family event on a sunny afternoon. There were lots of people there I didn’t know, but they all seemed to know me. Everyone was a close relative on my mother’s side. They were warm, friendly people, and some of them still very old country. Since we were outdoors, it was probably on my great Uncle Tony’s property in Staten Island. Or it could have been upstate in Peekskill. We had relatives there too. I was too young to remember, but it doesn’t matter. I was looking at an interesting old guy. He had white hair and could have been an uncle or cousin. He saw me staring, smiled, and said, “What’s your name?” He looked all right to me, so I told him it was Robert.

“Ah!” he said, “Concetta’s little boy.”

That threw me because I knew whose little boy I was, and it wasn’t Concetta. Besides, “Ma,” my mother’s name was “Connie,” so he must have had me confused with some other kid. I decided to let it go because he seemed like a good guy.

I noticed a small, sort of child-sized glass sitting next to him on the table. It looked like it was filled with water.

He said, “Not water. That’s grappa. You want to taste it?”

He smiled, raised his eyebrows, and nodded to the glass. I picked it up. My father had once given me a sip of beer, and I was interested in trying grappa. When it got near my nose, it smelled so strange I couldn’t believe the aroma was coming from that little glass. I didn’t have words to describe it, but I think of it now as a fermented fruit sort of smell. It wasn’t bad and maybe an indication of how it would taste.

As the grappa touched my lips, it burned a little but not too much. The fruit aroma was gone, and the taste made me think of gasoline. I tried not to show surprise. I didn’t want to act like a little boy in front of this dignified old man. He got me a glass of water.

“You’re a pretty tough kid. I’m not so tough when it comes to Concetta, so don’t tell your mother who gave you your first taste of grappa.” Then he laughed, but I didn’t get the joke and never told my mother either.

Dragon Boat Dinners

“Harder.”

Boom.

“Deeper.”

Boom.

“Gimme more.”

Boom…boom…boom.

Kay Yee is the best drummer any dragon boat team has ever had. Her job is to keep the paddlers working at their maximum without wearing them out. That’s not easy.

A dragon boat is a forty-foot-long canoe propelled by twenty paddlers. The drummer is usually a lightweight woman who sits on a cigar box-sized seat at the bow with her legs wrapped around a barrel-sized Chinese drum. Through drumming and shouting commands, she regulates the speed of the boat. I stand at the rear and steer with a ten-foot paddle loosely attached to the stern. Steering, while not easy, is straightforward. I have to align the boat at the start of a race, dealing with wind and current, and keep it going as straight as possible for a five-hundred-meter sprint. The drummer, on the other hand, has to change the form and pace of paddling a number of times in those five hundred meters, from deep hard pulls to get the boat started to an all-out push at the finish. Kay Yee and I have been doing this for a long time and work well together. What the paddlers have to do is keep their heads down, stay in sync, and paddle hard. They’re the engine.

Kay Yee is one of the sweetest women I know when she’s not sitting at the drum, but when she is, some of the team call her the Tyrantess. She once shouted out to a new member of the team who was sitting toward the back of the boat, “Tell me your name. I need to know your name so I can yell at you when you do something wrong.” She can be fierce, but we have a well-disciplined, winning team.

Most of our teammates are Chinese, and the rest are a typical New York City ethnic mix. Our ages range from eighteen up to my wife Bridget, me, and some other grandparents. We practice in Flushing Bay just under the planes, taking off and landing at the end of the LaGuardia Airport runway, and we race in cities up and down the East Coast from Montreal to Miami, June to October. Each venue has its own boats, so all teams are on an equal footing and don’t have to transport their boat.

Almost every city we visit has some sort of Chinatown, and after a day of racing, we usually find a restaurant that can accommodate a large group. If the restaurant is authentic, they serve us Chinese banquet style. We’ve joked about Chinese restaurant owners only being able to count by ten. That means round tables for ten with at least ten courses served on lazy Susans in the center of the tables and a check in multiples of ten when we’re finished. Very few courses at these restaurants resemble anything you’d get in a standard Anglo-Chinese restaurant. Our polite Chinese friends won’t tell us the ingredients in what we’re eating unless we ask. Bridget used to like a particular crunchy noodle dish until she found out they weren’t noodles at all but actually julienned jellyfish. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. I was once surprised by a beautiful platter I would have sworn was made up of colorful squash and strips of beef and pork. I was only right about the squash. It was a strictly vegetarian Buddhist dish, and the “beef” and “pork” were actually tofu.

Dragon boating is an expensive sport, and teams often have corporate sponsors. Bridget used to work for a bank that wanted to start a team and invited all employees and their spouses to try out. That’s how we began sixteen years ago, and since then, a group of us formed our own team, Gotham Thunder. Instead of a sponsor, we raise money with dinners and happy hours to cover equipment, insurance, and other expenses. We invite other teams, and they reciprocate by asking us to their events. We often don’t immediately recognize one another at these off-season events, wearing suits, ties, heels, and make-up instead of tee shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. Getting together like this, over food and drinks, is fun and an excellent way to keep the team members in touch over the winter months.

The younger and more demure Chinese women are entertained and maybe taken aback by Bridget’s American forwardness and saying exactly what’s on her mind. Some of them have spoken of their well-to-do grandmothers who had their feet bound in pre-revolution China, saying with some pride that they were rich enough not to need to walk efficiently. And then there’s Mae, who starts some of her political statements with, “I’m not a communist but…” and then goes on to say what great things Chairman Mao did for the Chinese people.

Some team members are amused that with my Italian American background, I’m not unfamiliar with ingredients like chicken feet, tripe, and various other types of organ meat and sea creatures. If there are no Chinese restaurants, the second choice is often Italian. At a dinner in an Italian restaurant, some of the team didn’t know what broccoli rabe was.

I told them, “Think of it as Italian bok choy.”

We have much in common that revolves around the dinner table. My Italian traditions tie into my Chinese friend’s traditions in that our major life events are grounded by food. These events, and not just happy ones like weddings and births, center on a meal. After a Chinese or Italian funeral, close friends and family meet at a restaurant for an elaborate luncheon where the life of the deceased is celebrated. When visiting a Chinese home, I must acknowledge the hospitality offered and accept something to eat, even something as basic as a piece of fruit. This is so much like my home when I was growing up, with my mother serving something to any guest who arrived at our door because no visit could be complete without the sharing of food.

When I hear the Chinese greeting, “Ni chele fan ne meijou?” (“Have you eaten rice today?”), it makes me recall my mother saying “Mangia!” to a guest.

When at home in New York, we typically meet at restaurants in Chinatown in lower Manhattan or in the newer Chinatown in Flushing, Queens, and not always on special occasions. Sometimes, after a Sunday morning practice, we’ll have Dim Sum when we need to discuss team issues or just feel like hanging out together. Meals after evening practice are more elaborate. Some of us enjoy these dinners as much as the races, and Bridget teases me about my being on the team only for the group dinners. It’s interesting how she and I are treated differently when we return to these same restaurants alone. The chopsticks disappear and are replaced with forks. They serve us American-style, little saucers of duck sauce and crispy fried noodles. The food is still good, but the authenticity is missing.

From time to time, we have potluck dinners at someone’s home. The last time it was at our place, Bridget made Italian sausage with peppers and onions. I was a little disappointed when Kay Yee arrived with couscous and lamb patties, expecting her to bring some traditional Chinese home cooking. I wasn’t disappointed when I tasted it. It was better than any I’d ever had in a Middle Eastern restaurant.

Dragon boating keeps us fit and tan, but I like how it brings together such a diverse group of people, and as different as we are, we all laugh at the same jokes and feel the same emotions when we win or lose a race. We have college students and retirees, bankers and construction workers, a father and son, a mother and daughter, people with various national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, all working together as a team to win races and when we’re not racing, enjoying each other’s company over good food.

 

Sparrows and Baguettes

“Breadcrumbs. They told us what they like to eat and its breadcrumbs, especially the ones from day-old baguettes. We used to give them thistle seed and they weren’t too enthusiastic about that. I mean, really, if you’re going to feed sparrows you should at least give them what they want.”

“But do you mean that they actually told you?”

“Of course, how else would we know?”

(Overheard at a coffee shop in Central Park, NYC.)

It’s Still Art

Dan is an artist. He works in different media types, but I think of him primarily as a sculptor. His pieces vary in size, and he needs help with their on-site assembly when they’re very large. I always volunteer. There’s something about working on an art installation that’s extremely satisfying. They’re big and always in a public square or park where they can be seen by people, not necessarily looking for art.

I remember working on one of his largest and most ambitious jobs. Some of his work is representational, and some abstract. This one was kinetic. It consisted of four different lengths of square aluminum beams held together by steel cables. Like a Calder stabile, it would be fixed to the ground on pedestals but with the upper portions free to move. I saw his model, and it worked. Any place you touched it caused the whole thing to tremble. The completed piece was expected to respond in the same way. That was the hope, but his studio wasn’t large enough to completely assemble it for a dry run before its public installation.

The exhibit site was Highbridge Park at the northern end of Manhattan. The exhibit’s opening would coincide with the re-opening of the old aqueduct, which once brought water from the Croton Reservoir to the City and would now be used as a pedestrian bridge connecting the Bronx and Manhattan. When the day of the installation arrived, Dan left early to lay out the location of the pedestals. His wife Donna, and I rented a pick-up truck and an SUV to load the sections of the piece, tools, and ladders with the help of three young artists. We got the ladders and largest sections of the assembly into the pick-up and tied red flags on all of the bits of it extending beyond the truck bed. Donna drove the truck, and I followed in the SUV, watching her trim trees along the way with the uppermost section of the sculpture. It was raining when we arrived at Highbridge, but we ignored it and got to work. When we had all of our equipment and ladders spread out and got started, three boys about ten or eleven were watching us, and one asked me, “Are you making a movie?” I didn’t know where he got that idea, but I explained we were installing a work of art, and they seemed pleased that we were doing it in their park.

After securing most of the sections into position, the three artists, Niv, Kayti, and Emily, began measuring the cables and adjusting tension. Using the two ladders with one on the bed of the pick-up for extra height, the primary and largest beam at twenty-two feet was finally installed. For the highest end of this beam, Dan had created an elaborate red and gold construction that looked like a throne. Its purpose was to act as a sail and catch any mild breeze so the whole structure would be in almost continual motion. He named his work of art simply “Chair.”

Other artists arrived, completed their installations, and left, but we were still at it. Screws and bolts were tightened, and cable tensions fine-tuned. We removed our tools and debris and stood back to look at our day’s work. Dan walked up to it, pushed a beam with one finger, and the whole form quivered. We all tried it. We were wet, tired, and cold but satisfied. The weight of the beams held in tension with the cables was precisely balanced according to plan, and the installation was a success.

* * *

Two weeks after the exhibit opened, all of us who helped received a group email from Dan. He’d gotten a call from the Parks Department informing him his sculpture had been vandalized. They wanted to know how he would like to proceed. He’d been working on this for months, and now it was destroyed. We all sent our condolences and offers to help repair it. I called Dan and asked if he wanted to go and see how much damage there was. He said he couldn’t just then, maybe in a few days, when he got over the initial shock. I didn’t need time to get over it. When I hung up, I left immediately for Highbridge Park. I imagined I’d find a tangled mass of beams and cables with a fantastical red and gold chair on top of the pile. Would it be salvageable and worth the effort to repair it? As I walked up the path, I saw it in the distance through the trees. From where I stood, most of it seemed to be still standing. When I got closer, it became clear it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. The only damage was that two of the pedestals holding the beams had somehow broken, so although not as high as it should have been, it was intact. I took some photos and emailed them to Dan, hoping to cheer him up.

I was leaving Highbridge feeling better than when I arrived. Walking down the path to exit the park, I saw Dan. We waved and smiled. He couldn’t wait to see it either.

He asked, “Well, how bad is it?”

“I had a nice surprise when I got here. I’ll let you see for yourself.”

Dan was as amazed as I had been. We spoke about what might have happened. I remembered the little boys who had watched us put it together on that rainy day two weeks before. I thought about myself at their age and how I would have seen “Chair.” It might have been a sculpture, but it was just asking to be climbed on, as inviting as monkey bars or a seesaw. I didn’t see willful destruction. What I saw was kids having fun. I envisioned the same three boys who asked if we were making a movie coming upon it late in the day with the park almost empty. How could they resist? Maybe strong enough to hold one of them, even two but three? I imagined how they must have felt when it broke down and how quickly they ran away. This was all pure speculation but, at the same time likely, Dan agreed.

With the weather being much more spring-like than the last time we were there, the park was filled with people, some crossing to and from the Bronx on the newly opened footbridge and others coming just to see the exhibit. While we were sitting on a park bench by “Chair,” speculating on how it happened and what needed to be done to repair it, we began noticing people stopping and admiring and discussing it. It seemed fine to them since they had no idea what it initially looked like.

“Maybe it doesn’t need to be repaired,” I said,

“Maybe not.” Dan replied. “Even broken, it’s still art.”

 

 

The Village of Terranova

We hired a car and driver to take us to the village where my grandmother Nicolina’s family had lived and where she was born. Simone, our driver, showed up at our hotel in a new black Mercedes and my sister Nicki (Nicolina’s namesake), my wife Bridget and I started the trip inland. We were going to Terranova in the province of Salerno and the Comune (municipality) of Scignano degli Alburni.

As we drove up into the Alburni mountains the lemon groves that were along the coast gave way to chestnut trees and it got colder and mistier as we went higher. After about an hour and a half, we reached Terranova.

We arrived to find what I had expected – a small village, population 60, and a church – Chiesa San Giovanni Battista. Simone said he’d try to find someone to unlock the church for us. A woman came and opened the side door as Simone returned with the priest who told us some of the church’s history. The poor people were interred in the crypt below the church, so we were standing over the bones of our ancestors. The church was built in 1300 and the stone baptismal fountain was at least that old although a modern cover had been made for it. Nicolina DiAntonio was born in the village in 1878 and her father Lorenzo, grandfather Luigi, great grandfather Antonio, and her great great grandfather Onofrio who was born in 1740 were all baptized there. (That’s as far back as I was able to research.)

After our visit to Terranova, we went to Sicignano degli Alburni to find someplace for lunch. A local guy recommended a trattoria in nearby Scorzo called Si Ma Quant Sit? The menu was on a board on the table listing antipasti, pasta, and prima piatto. We started with the antipasto – some local cheese, prosciutto, capicola, and soprasade. We thought that would be it, but the owner, Raffale, the owner, kept coming to our table adding things to our dishes – frittata, eggplant parmigiana, eggplant in vinegar, and on and on. He asked if I wanted some pepper for my pasta. He put a little jar of olive oil infused with dried chili on the table. It wasn’t just spicy; it had a distinct pepper taste. I asked how it was made. He gave me some to take home and got Lucia from the kitchen and she explained how she makes it. Every meal we had in Italy was excellent but that two-hour lunch at Si Ma Quant Sit? was the best. And we found it by lucky accident.

 

 

New York City Diners

 

There are some places that want to be perceived as diners and others that are intrinsically and naturally diners. The latter, which are usually family run, can be recognized by very large menus, a few traditional Greek dishes on those menus, a huge selection of Danish, muffins and elaborate cakes displayed on and behind the counter and never letting your coffee cup get less than half full. They serve breakfast twenty-four hours a day and fast service is provided by people who are professional waiters and waitresses. Their coffee-to-go is usually in a blue and white paper cup with, “It’s Our Pleasure to Serve You,” framed by two Ionic columns.

Lately, in New York City, mostly Manhattan, a new type of chain diner has been opening. They try for a 1950’s retro style featuring Doo Wop interior design with old signs and maybe some muscle car parts hanging on the walls. Their menus list items with cute names that they want us to believe mythical Eisenhower-era Americans lived on; burgers, shakes and sundaes. Was there ever a “Malt Shop” in New York City? Maybe there was in television land where the Nelson boys and Donna Reed’s kids hung out after school but no, not New York. No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” sipping coffee in any of these Disneyfied places. There’s something contrived about the “new” diners that I would hate to see catch on.

I hope tourists don’t have a BLT at one of these theatre sets and think, “Wow, I’ve eaten in a New York City diner!” because they haven’t.

Some of the old favorites are gone now; the Market, Munson and Cheyenne, but there are enough of the originals left to easily give anyone who wants it, a genuine diner experience.

A handful of them still have waitresses with teased blond hair who will ask you, “What’cha havin’, hon?”

How could anyone give that up for a second-rate copy?