Bucking

My parents offered to give Kurt and me their boat. It’s a beautiful 27-foot Sports Craft called the Cookie Too, named after my mother. Not being able to go on the boat is one of the things that Kurt misses the most about New Jersey. Occasionally he would drive all the way back there, just to go fluke fishing with my father. Eight hours one way just to go fishing when we have a lake right down the block. It’s crazy. But sailing along the Hudson, cruising around the Statue of Liberty, reeling in fluke or bluefish or even sharks, is a little bit different than standing on a bank casting a line. Plus, I know that part of it is the special relationship that he has with Dad.

So they offered us the boat when they got too sick to keep up with it. Even though they could use the money by selling it, they would have liked it if Kurt had the Cookie Too. Kurt is dying to get a boat. We’re walking distance to the lake. We could hop in it and cruise across the lake and park it, go have some lunch or go shopping. We’d catch some fish. No sharks. But maybe some of those country fish like catfish or bass. Do people even eat bass? I don’t know, but it’d be fun. Even without the Statue of Liberty.

But we had to say no thank you. The boat is too big to pull back and forth on a trailer. It needs to be docked. And it doesn’t make sense for us to rent a slip, which is very expensive, and we really can’t afford, when we can keep one right here in our own backyard and just pull it down the block when we feel like going out and not have to pay a dime. It broke our hearts to turn it down. Not only because this was a free boat, but because it was the Cookie Too. Someday we’ll save enough money to buy something smaller.

In the meantime, I’ve been riding that buckskin out there, affectionately called “the Bad Boy.” He’s not really a bad boy but he’ll buck at the blink of an eye. His mode of operandi is to buck. Even if the situation doesn’t call for it. Even if it’s overkill. For example, the other day while eating grass in the barnyard, he farted and scared himself. So he bucked. He’s very flamboyant that way.
But at the risk of jinxing myself, and to his credit, he’s never bucked with me on him. Still. I know he’s got it in him. And so I wear a helmet. I don’t normally wear a helmet. I’m going to be honest here. It’s dorky. I look like a big egg head. Yeah, yeah, I tried those helmets with the cowboy hat attached. I looked like a big egg head with a cowboy hat attached.

Maybe that’s why that chick tried to run me over the other day. Because I was really ugly in that helmet and needed to be put out of my misery.

I wear a helmet when I’m on a new horse, or training a young one, or on one I don’t completely trust. Don’t bother telling me that an accident can happen on any horse, it can be the nicest Rusty in the barn and I’m stupid as well as ugly. I know. I have no defense.

Kelly’s a different story. Kelly is not allowed to ride without a helmet and even if she was, I don’t think she’d do it because I’ve got her brainwashed about it. At least give me credit for that. She’s been wearing a helmet since she was three-years-old and she thinks she looks quite happening in her brown suede Troxel. Even if she thought she looked like an egg-head, and even though I don’t normally wear one and it might occur to her to demand that I practice what I preach or else she doesn’t want to wear one either because it’s not fair, too bad—she’s still wearing one otherwise she doesn’t get on the horse. That’s the rule. She’s lucky I don’t make her wear body armor…

Anyway, poor Bullet. I’ve given him a bad reputation by badmouthing him all over the place about how he’s a bucker and I’ve got to wear a helmet when I am riding him when everyone knows I don’t normally wear a helmet so he must be really bad. And the poor horse hasn’t done anything wrong! He hasn’t even given me a dirty look! Of course he has that gate issue. But that’s why I’m taking him to Ducky, the trainer. Kurt calls him “the Duckster.” Now he’s got other people calling him that. My girlfriend the other day, on the phone: “So, did you bring the Bad Boy over to the Duckster?” I don’t know. Maybe he’ll like that name. It’s much cooler than Ducky. It sounds fast. And barrel racers want to be fast. Ducky is one of the fastest barrel racers around here. He’s like a monkey on a horse and wears a cowboy hat with a big feather in it but no helmet. I did take Bullet to him last week and he gave Bullet a good workout. He never once called him “the Bad Boy.” In fact, he was quite impressed with him and asked who trained him. I looked at Kurt. Kurt looked behind him. When he realized no one was there, he said, “Uh, I did?”

“You did a great job,” the Duckster told him.

I saw Kurt’s chest well up. In that instant, I thought he was actually going to start riding again, being so proud and inspired. But no. He’s still bucking for a boat. No pun intended.

In Memory of 9-11

9-11 is my father’s birthday. Six years ago this morning I called him on the phone to wish him a happy birthday before he went to work. Then I looked at the TV on the kitchen counter. The news was on. There was a fire in one of the buildings at the World Trade Center and they were showing it live. The newscasters were matter-of-fact. They didn’t seem nervous about it at all but I kept thinking, what if that gets out of control? We’re talking about a skyscraper here. How are they going to put it out if it gets bigger? It’s not like the fire trucks have ladders that go up that high.

I got on the phone with my girlfriend. She was watching it too. I said, “I don’t think that’s good.” I never heard of a skyscraper burning down to the ground before but you never know. Jenise, always the calm voice of reason and not a worry-wart like me, didn’t seem concerned. Suddenly, a plane veered onto the screen and we watched it crash into the second building. Now I knew there was reason to worry.

We were only an hour or so away from New York if you weren’t traveling during rush hour. Many of our neighbors worked there. My sister’s husband fixed elevators in Manhattan. We all went up there for concerts and Christmas. One time I even read one of my short stories on stage at the Hudson Grille. We were close. We were so close we could see the smoke. Later, we could smell it.

Everyone knew someone who died in the buildings. For me, it was my real estate agent’s husband, Louis Minervino. Barbara called him Lou. I never met him, but I know of him. I can still hear Barbara’s voice talking about “Lou,” and I knew he was a caring and kind man. Barbara was a caring and kind woman and when I heard Lou Minervino died in the towers, my heart broke even further.

I have a picture of the New York skyline with the twin towers in it. It is taken from my father’s boat. It is really a picture of my new boyfriend, Kurt, who is now my husband. But New York was in the background. The funny thing is, there is a plane in the picture. It looks like it is heading straight for the towers. But it was taken many years before. It was taken at a time when we took the skyline for granted, when we always thought we’d have it, when we were young and we thought that we’d always have everyone.

This afternoon I turned on the TV in the kitchen and watched a special on Oprah about the children of 9-11. Six years later, some of them never even knew the parents they lost. Others took on the parent role and raised younger siblings because there was no one left who could do it. There were boys who went to Rolling Stones concerts because their father loved the Rolling Stones and it was a small way to keep him alive. There were boys who promised to grow up to be good men just like the dads they lost. All of them impressed me with their maturity and their determination to somehow make something good come out of such a terrible tragedy. You could tell they were all good kids who didn’t deserve to be in such a position. I sat there crying my eyes out.

Then I called my father and told him how glad I was that I could still call and wish him a happy birthday. I know how lucky I am.

Smalltown USA

I live in Smalltown USA. This is where we watched fireworks at the high school on Saturday night. I’d never seen fireworks at a high school before. Where I come from we’d usually go out on my father’s boat, the Cookie Too (named after my mother), and watch them from the bay. Dozens of boats would anchor and sit bobbing on the water, kids rushing to one side or the other, nearly tipping the boats with the lopsided weight. “Look!” they’d cry, pointing to dozens of colorful explosions in the sky. We could see them all. We could see the ones in the city. The last time I watched the fireworks on my father’s boat, we could see the Twin Towers. They were lit up red, white and blue.

Before we moved down the shore and my father got a boat, we lived in Jersey City where watched them from the flat tarred roof of the apartment building. All the Italians were up there with food. They gave us cherries and slices of cantaloupe. Joe Centonzi drove the fruit truck. We sat on vinyl kitchen chairs with chrome legs next to a giant TV antenna and a vent pipe and spit pits into the alley below.

One time we went to Shea Stadium to see the fireworks. They were playing Beatles music while the bleachers filled up. I’d never heard that group before. (We called them groups, not bands.) That was something new and different.

At the high school, there were bleachers but that was where the similarities ended. It was like a Lifetime movie. I almost expected a trombone player on a gazebo, but there was a bluegrass band on a flatbed. There were stands with ladies in straw hats selling lemonade, pies and watermelon. There was a man in overalls selling kitchen knives, two for twelve dollars and scissors, sharp enough to cut a penny. Kids bounced and tumbled in a big blow-up jumping thing the fire department rented for the occasion.

I let Kelly run around loose. As soon as we appeared, her girlfriends spotted her, squealed and off they went, arm in arm, barefooted and giggling. There weren’t that many people there, just all the locals, and I felt safe letting her go. If I craned my neck, I could see the whole football field and everyone in it.

I know child molesters are everywhere. They are teachers and priests and coaches. They are aunts, uncles and the girl next door. Some of the nicest people. I trust no one. But if I couldn’t let her go here, I might as well keep her locked up in a cage. Now and then she ran back to us and asked for money—“Can I have a dollar to get my face painted?” Or for something glow-in-the-dark. Or for streamers on a stick. I was happy she was hitting us up. It was a good way to touch base. I leaned back in my chair.

Then Wesley Bell, an old dairyman with an impressive operation on both sides of the highway and his wife, Mrs. Wesley Bell, unfolded their lawn chairs right behind us. I never could understand her name—sometimes the southern accent is like a foreign language to me and I have to either ask for the hundredth time, what was that you said? Or I just smile and nod, pretending like I know. In the case of stories being told, I can usually figure out what I missed. Names are a problem.

Wesley promptly leaned over and asked us where we were from. He said, “Joisey? I had to go up to Joisey once. Back in 1971. I had to pick up some cows in Princeton.”

I didn’t bother telling him that I doubt there’s a single cow left in Princeton. In fact, there might not even be any dogs left except for those little foo-foo dogs who ride in the pocketbooks of ladies who live in McMansions and who hire specialists to walk them and paint their little toenails.

“Yankee cows? Were they all unruly?” I said. He nearly busted a gut laughing and then we were in.

He talked our ear off the entire time we waited for the fireworks to start, telling us about the local history of our road. It appears one simple road can have a lot of history and everybody knows about it even though they live on other roads miles away. We found out who was buried where, why the road curves to the right and what they did with that old farmhouse that used to be down by the creek. Board by board, we found out what they did with that old house.

People are friendly to us. Of course it helps that we’re Eldon and Pearl’s neighbors. That’s always a get-out-of-jail free card. Everyone loves Eldon and Pearl. We learned right quick, that’s how they say it around here, not, we learned really fast, but right quick, to mention we lived right across the street from Eldon and Pearl.

“Oh, you live in that white house across from Eldon and Pearl? You must be good people!” and they’d put their arms around us and tell us where the best fishing spots were and what to do about those carpenter bees in the barn.

“You don’t need to go and buy any special stuff. Just spray Sevin dust in them holes and then plug ‘em up. Just plug ‘em up with some caulking and that should do it. Don’t waste your time about it. Them carpenter bees are worse than termites. Why they ate Johnny Johnson’s barn down to practically nuthin’, they did. I recommend you get some of that Sevin dust and do it right quick.”

By the time the fireworks started, Wesley introduced us to another dairyman, the lady who taught math in the middle school, the boys from Hurt, the mayor and the county supervisor. We were talking to everyone and that’s not even counting Eldon and Pearl’s kin.

I like saying, “kin.” I’m trying to get out of the habit of calling them, “relatives.” Kin is warmer and friendlier. I think I can do it. I already trained myself to say, “Holy cow,” instead of, “OhmyGod,” and the unladylike “Holy shit.”

I wasn’t expecting much in the way of a fireworks show, since the place was so small—how much money can the local fire department have to put into it? How much do they make on barbecue fundraisers and spaghetti dinners anyway? But the fireworks were so good, I kept thinking I was seeing the finale. Then they’d keep on going.

When it was over, I thought of grabbing our chairs and running. That’s what everyone would do up north to avoid getting stuck in a traffic jam. But we filed off the field in an orderly way with everyone else. There was plenty of room and more socializing happened on the way out. We stopped and got chocolate chip cookies.

When we got to the truck, my heart dropped. I realized my movie camera was gone! I must have left it where we were sitting! Kurt ran back and Kelly and I put everything into the car and then followed. Not only was it a valuable piece of equipment, but there were movies on it of Jamie’s college graduation. Irreplaceable movies! I felt sick.

We cut through the crowds coming out through the little gate as fast as we could. Excuse me, excuse me. I knew it was gone. As I ran, I looked up ahead to where we’d been. And there was Wesley Bell and Mrs. Wesley Bell, standing next to the camera, their chairs all folded up and ready to go, waiting for us.

“I sure am glad ya’ll didn’t get all the way home before you noticed you was missing somethin’,”Wesley said. “I woulda had to run it down there for you. I know where you live you know, right across the street from Eldon and Pearl. I lost a camera myself once. It was back in, oh, I think it was ’75 or ’76. It was one of them fancy Instamatics. Before they had movie cameras…” and he proceeded to tell us the story until the football field was empty, Mrs. Wesley Bell was yawning and the ladies in their straw hats were packing up their lemonade and pies for another occasion.

I couldn’t believe no one stole the camera. That’s not what would have happened up north. Up north I wouldn’t have walked to the bathroom in a football stadium without putting the strap of my pocketbook over my body and clutching it against me for safekeeping. It’s not like this in the city. This was something new and different.