|
NEW YORK UNEASY
"Summer in the City"
New York City -- July 2001. The summer is two-thirds over and can best be described so far as surprisingly tranquil. Unusually cool temperatures have kept the number of ninety-plus days to a minimum, so we have been spared power brown-outs, ghastly overheated subway platforms, and nights so fierce that a quick bath at 3:00 a.m. in the morning doesn't seem eccentric but rather a good idea. A few regions have had their power down, but nothing like what has occurred in the recent past. Of course, here in our small apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, we are contrarians: people without air-conditioning who rely on old-fashioned fans, iced drinks and the seeking out of a clean wet experience to weather the summer.
In New York City, the schools stay open until the week before the Fourth of July, which seems long to a native Midwesterner, but is a godsend to the hundreds of thousands of working parents in New York. After that,  it is a scramble to get the kids in camp, day programs, anything to keep the kids in
safe custody and mildly amused. Nothing is organized; compulsive note-takers publish books on how to navigate the summer child amusement maze; and those books are immediately out of date by the
time they get to the book store. The most valuable information is passed along by word of mouth, which puts working mothers behind the eight ball inasmuch as they can't keep up with the network as well as the
part-time workers or the stay-at-home moms. A lot of kids go to summer school and are given free passes by the City to ride the subways to their schools, which are not necessarily in the neighborhood. The trains
are now safe enough that even the youngest riders can move around the City unbothered. And the trains are air-conditioned.
New York City is not a city in which to take
air-conditioning for granted. The concept of air-conditioning was developed in the 1950s. Much of what is now the infrastructure of the City had already been built. All of the wonderful old office buildings had to be
retrofitted to accommodate air-conditioning, as businessmen realized forty years ago that clerks would be less efficient when suffocating from the heat. Otherwise, schools,
churches, and many courtrooms are not air-conditioned, and if you are a lawyer back for afternoon call in one of the downtown Supreme Courts (which are New York's district
courts), the heat of the afternoon, the languorous old architecture with eight foot windows open four feet wide to the outside world and the slow pace of the courtroom
can make the poor barristers seem more than usually sleepy and addled. Stuyvestant Town, a middle-income large housing project built by Metropolitan Life with a four year
waiting list for occupancy, had coveted rent-stabilized apartments, but none could be air-conditioned until a few years ago, after the complex was completely rewired.
So air-conditioning is dicey. It is also dicey in private homes. David Koch, the gazillionaire who bought Mrs. Onassis's long-time residence after she died, reported
indignantly that Mrs. Onassis had not installed modern conveniences, and revealed that the flat did not have "central air-conditioning." The Koch family made their fortune in
Wichita, Kansas, where you're not middle-class unless you have central air-conditioning. Obviously not so here, as I am sure Mrs. Onassis could have had any
kind of cooling system she wanted. Mrs. Onassis spent a lot of her time on islands -- Newport, Manhattan, Martha's Vineyard, and notoriously, a number in Greece -- and
probably had an islander's appreciation of the ocean's ability to bring heat relief, whereas people from Kansas think of the summer very simply as three months in the oven to be made bearable by technology.
As to the heat in the City, the custom is to pile up enough dough so you can buy a "summer place" in the Hamptons (if you're rich), the Berkshires (if you're artsy and
affluent), the Hudson Valley (if you're artsy and working on it), or if you are artsy or can't cut it elsewhere, the Catskills. Then, you take the family car and the family to the
vacation place each weekend of the summer. Thus, New York City empties out. It you are left behind, the emptiness can make you feel oppressed by the heat and on the
economic dung heap when the hot weather strikes, but if the summer is cool and you're left in the City, you are on top of the world. The traffic is lighter, the lines are shorter and
you congratulate yourself over and over for not having to be caught in those horrid traffic parades of thousands getting out on Friday and coming back in on Sunday night.
Summer also brings weddings. Here's an interesting fact: I have never been to an air-conditioned summer wedding in New York City. A few years ago, a horrible heat wave gripped the City, and in the first week in July, I was standing in a non-air
conditioned church (vintage 1890) dressed in 100% silk suit, lined in silk, with a silk blouse beneath my jacket, as the matron of honor for a friend of mine. The temperature was 105 degrees. The wedding
proceeded and through sheer force of will I got through it and the non-air conditioned reception. At the very end, the temperature suddenly fell seventeen degrees, and I felt like a wash-cloth opened up after a tight
twisted squeeze. The relief was powerful. For some reason, that suit has never been worn again.
Early in June of this year, on a cool
lovely night, I was walking down the street and saw a beautiful bride coming home from her wedding in a taxi with her groom, her guitar case in hand. Though she was tired, I
told her how beautiful she looked and she allowed me to photograph her as she went in her door. Later in June, I attended a beautiful society wedding at the Explorer's Club in
Manhattan. The Explorer's Club was built in the Nineteenth Century when ideas of naturalism were very different from those held today. Getting invited into one of these
clubs is always an amazing experience, and I hadn't been in a private club since I had been in the Union Club some ten years ago. The wedding was held on a terrace of the
club on the second floor, with two great rooms reserved for drinks and food. The place was redolent with atmosphere that Theodore  Roosevelt would have endorsed. When I climbed up the carpeted steps to the second floor, I noticed an enormous stuffed polar bear in an attack pose.
Naturally, I said the first thing that came to my mind, which was "God, this looks like the Hibbing airport," which is the airport closest to Rachel's
place in Minnesota and features a gigantic stuffed brown bear in an attack pose. The purer-bred New Yorkers around me looked askance, murmured and moved away. Fortunately, I knew quite a few of the
other guests. Drinking was not allowed before the ceremony, and since Mayor Giuliani was officiating, there was an hour long wait in mild heat for the guests. It was easy to fill the hour up by gazing at the
spectacle. There were lovely women in real pearls and long stylish dresses; there were musicians playing gently; and there was the tension of when the Mayor would arrive.
And suddenly, there he was! He rushed up the stairs, held a brief conference with the bride and groom, and the ceremony commenced. For a man embroiled in a bitter divorce, he seemed remarkably
optimistic about marriage, and said that "marriage was the oldest institution, the oldest contract, and universally recognized as the foundation of society." He added that it was
good for two people to come together to take care of one another. And so the bride and groom were married. We, their friends, drank  their champagne and ate their canapés and stayed long into the summer evening, a night of fate that all of us will remember.
No one plans weddings in August. Instead, everyone gets serious about baseball. Here's a short explanation of what is going on in New York City
concerning baseball. OK, the Yanks are in first in the American League Eastern Division, and no, it isn't a smug, complacent dominancy. The Red Sox were ahead of the Yanks up until the All Star break, and that
was without their premier short-stop and hitting sensation, Nomar Garciaparra, who was injured. The Yanks just got hot about two weeks ago and passed the Red Sox by, but the season isn't over. Guess
what. Nomar is back playing, and the Red Sox would really like to take the lead again. We're talking Boston/New York here, which is real rivalry. My two personal favorites, Bernie Williams
and Derek Jeter, are doing just fine, thank you. All the guys' favorite Yankee, Paul O'Neill, is in his last season and is in a moment-to-moment epic battle with himself to
do the best he can possibly do. Watching O'Neill struggle with his desire to touch the heavens one more time is worth the price of admission. He is a tall string bean with the
face of an Irish worrier who is in the best physical condition possible. His smiles of triumph are fleeting, his episodes of self-laceration in inevitable defeat (since the odds
are always against the hitter) are matters of legend.
As to the Mets, last year's National League Pennant winner, theirs is a story of
almost complete woe and despair to the fans. They have essentially the same team, the same manager, but they cannot seem to win ball games, which is, of course,
necessary to advance in this line of business. Instead, the Mets' karma is so bad that they are exploring for other ways to lose ball games. This dismal situation has
lightened up recently as the Mets have a two-game winning streak going.
Derek Jeter's general desirability is frequently commented upon in this multicultural
city; but it was sweet, tough tree-trunk strong Mike Piazza who got named sexiest baseball player by a national polling organization. Unfortunately, this decision was
made right before Mike Piazza, a handsome Italian-American, decided to do a Madonna and dye his black hair blonde along with his handle-bar mustache. Mike was
unaware of the dopey contest, and did this act of blondness to change the luck of the Mets. Unfortunately, being a blonde is deeply unflattering to Piazza, and now that he
has been deemed one of the handsomest guys in baseball, people out of the City are looking at this odd-looking guy and saying "him?" That's the kind of luck the Mets have had.
Well, neither the summer nor the season are over. August still looms before us,
and will be report upon as it unfolds.
Your New York Uneasy Correspondent.
all photos and text © 2001 by Sarah Scott
MINNESOTA FOX TALES
The Tyranny of Art
Sarah wrote this note to friends recently, about our visits together to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC:
“Rachel always gets caught up in the Egyptian area, which is vast, and she likes to study the detail work on the jewelry. When you are with Rachel, you see things in a new way, but you have to realize the itinerary goes by her
rules.”
Sarah, I hate it when you portray the despotism in my character so realistically that I can't deny it. This reminds me of a story....
Art does impose a certain tyranny, which combines uncannily with my personality, sometimes to the detriment of people around me. I remember the Metropolitan
Museum, and the Egyptian exhibit to which Sarah referred, and the remarkable fact that they had about 10,000 carved scarabs on display. I felt I might learn something by
looking at each one carefully. I think this may explain Sarah's rather understated observation about my "rules." Now, I can't think why studying each scarab seemed so
important at the time, because they did look all rather alike, with subtle variations....some were a dusty green, while others were a dusty blue color, and others a dusty brown....
When Jerry and I lived in Bethel, Alaska several years ago, I'd heard stories about people finding mammoth tusks sticking out of the mud in the bends in the Kuskokwim
river. With the melting of the river ice, spring high water can erode a bank, exposing long-buried treasure.
A mammoth tusk is maybe six feet long, and probably weighs about a hundred pounds.
A tusk of that size could provide a lifetime supply of mammoth ivory. What a find that would be! And it is not endangered, since mammoths are extinct, so you can use  mammoth ivory in carving and jewelry and sell it without any federal restrictions.
With this in mind, I set out one
sunny spring day, with Mary, a quiet young woman who was a neighbor of ours, to take a boat trip up river. We never went down river, because of safety factors. The Kuskokwim is a huge river, almost a mile across,
second in size only to the Yukon. It has a very strong current, and, if the engine in your boat conked out you could easily drift downstream and be swept into the sea, 26 miles
down river. By going up river, you can hope, in case of motor failure, to drift at least in the right direction, downstream towards home. We took our 18 foot Lund aluminum
boat with a 35 horsepower motor.
I never explained to Mary that I would be searching every inch of the river bank for mammoth tusks, which necessitated moving upstream about five miles an hour, if that
fast, hugging the bank while I surveyed for any evidence of bones or tusks which might be revealed. This was somewhat tedious, as all I could see along the river bank was
an expanse of river mud topped with grass, and scrub willows growing on top. As we advanced, covering mile after mile, I was impressed by the vast sameness of it, extending apparently infinitely, upstream.
Mary sat in the bow of the boat, didn't ask any questions and seemed to be tolerating my quirkiness rather well. After an hour or two of this went by, (and no mammoth tusks!)
I grew tired of the search. I asked Mary if she'd like to take over for a while. She nodded (not a big talker) and we changed places. I moved to the bow, and Mary shifted to the stern and took the helm. I had hardly gotten seated when we took off like a shot! She turned the throttle wide open, and we were
moving like a stone skipping across the waves of the mighty Kuskokwim, bam bam bam! So, maybe she'd been a little frustrated with our pace previously....
When we got back to the marina, I
brought the boat alongside the dock, and jumped onto the deck to get the boat trailer. I asked Mary if she would drive the boat onto the trailer. she
nodded, and after I backed the trailer down into the water at the ramp, I told her to go ahead and drive the boat up onto the trailer.
Again, she opened the throttle up 100 percent, and the boat shot forward, and rammed about ten feet out of the water, up onto the hillside next to the trailer.
Later she explained that since she had come to Alaska, she had decided not to be so shy and to try things she had never done before. Apparently, driving a boat was one of those things.
I privately thought that was good that she was pushing herself, but that a little more communication would have been helpful. For her part, Mary never mentioned whether she enjoyed the close-up tour of the river bank.
Yours truly,
Dot
your faithful correspondent,
© 2001 by Rachel Scott
|