Last Exit

In my mother’s last years on earth, suffering from blindness and frustration she would often exclaim “thank God I’m in the exit lane”. She was referring to her oncoming demise. Since then, a full generation of years has passed and we are all now in the same exit lane. Sadly, we have lost many of our contemporaries in recent years and the death toll continues to climb.

Recently, I was heartbroken by the news that a friend from the old school, Pat Kopke Dowd had passed away. I first met her in 1957 while attending “7J” at the Laurel Avenue Jr. High School, Northport, NY. Her future husband, Dan would also be a new acquaintance that year and the two of them would become my lifelong friends.

After high school, we drifted apart except for a brief time when they got married in 1967 and the Viet Nam war interrupted. In the years that passed I often wondered what happened to Dan & Pat. When we reconnected at the 30^th year reunion of our 1963 Northport High School graduating class, the years melted away quickly. We visited many times, thereafter, re-cementing a relationship that began in those “Happy Days”

When I had a stroke in 2007, among others from the old school, it was Dan & Pat that came to my aid when I returned home from a rehab hospital in Jacksonville. It was they who fed my dogs, stocked my pantry and cleaned my home. They offered moral support and ferried me to additional hospitals and doctor's visits. They never asked if they could be of assistance, they just did it.

Without a doubt, Pat has secured herself preferred seating in Heaven through her selfless acts on earth, not just because of what she did for me, but because of who she was. Her giving spirit has touched the lives of so many. But, alas, she has now taken that final off ramp, Exit 52 N, to Northport, the magic place that helped to mold who we are and what we have become. May her beautiful spirit live peacefully and eternally in the heavens above our little hometown village, hidden deep in the valley, beneath the pine trees, half forlorn.

 Easter

Easter of old conjures up images of early childhood development. Mom always said “eggs are the time for Easter and Easter is the time for eggs”. We just accepted that without question, after all, we always got Easter baskets with candy eggs nested in lovely faux grass. The song still rings in my head; “Here comes Peter Cottontail, hoppin’ down the bunny trail”. Oh, the time we had as kids. Easter egg hunts in the Northport Park, finding them around the bandstand, in the bushes, under the bushes and in the grass. It was a day we looked forward to every year. The Easter basket routine continued in our family well into our teens, with voluminous amounts of candy which I’m sure helped keep our local dentist, Dr. Lazarus in business.

But why are eggs connected to Easter, the religious observance considered by many to be the celebration of Jesus Christ, resurrected from the dead. It’s a question that has consumed a lifetime of contemplation; after all, if Mom & Dad sanctioned it, surely it must be valid. Or maybe not. A little research on Google leads me to understand that eggs are a symbol of fertility and therefore symbolize the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And bunnies, everyone knows are a huge symbol of fertility. I guess if you stretch your imagination far enough, you can connect anything to anything.

I’m now considering the evolution of rhetoric. When someone doesn’t want to acknowledge another’s point of view, they deflect with shielded statements of rhetoric. A popular retort is “that’s fake news”. As I remember, when my uncle no longer wanted to hear my thoughts, he said “eat your eggs, Julius”. In other words, “end of conversation”. When my father was unconvinced by my presentation he said “what’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” As a child, when my older brother goaded me, my parents said “stop egging him on”. Highly intelligent people were said to be “eggheads”. A well-respected person was a “good egg”. A pattern seems to be forming here. Consider that eggs have less to do with Easter and more to do with the fascination of eggs. That being said, I am left with the question of why. This may well be one of the great unsolved mysteries of the universe.

One of my mother’s favorite limericks goes: Willie died at the breakfast table from eating more than he was able. Up spoke his sister, Meg….may I have his other egg? Let me know when you solve this one! Happy Easter.

 

Room 10

It was 1957, I was eleven years old and making the transition from Ocean Avenue grade school to junior high school. Dad warned me about how life might change for me with the influx of “street savvy” kids from East Northport's Larkfield School who would become my classmates. Along with my peers from Ocean Avenue School we would now assimilate. I was accustomed to the naivety of grades K through 6 and now, I would receive an education in becoming more worldly by the streetwise kids at Laurel Avenue Junior High. Some of those kids had repeated several grades and were quite a bit older. I was 11 and had a lot to learn.

Ground zero was Room 10, at the north end of the building which doubled as a school lunchroom.  It defined our “homeroom” as class 7J. This was where we assembled each morning before our daily trek from room to room throughout the building to attend various different subjects with different teachers. Our homeroom teacher was Miss Reuben who married during our tenure and became Mrs. Rosenthal. Always carrying a facial tissue, I’m not sure if she had acute allergies or if she was just a sad person. I would guess the latter. She was also our math teacher during 7^th and 8^th grade introducing us to the practical use of numbers such as bill paying, bank interest, check book balancing, etc. One of the guys in our crowd somehow procured the teachers edition of the math book that contained all the lesson answers and for two years, we copied our math “homework” in the mornings right there in Room 10. What math prodgies we were! Amazingly, Miss Reuben never caught on.

In the early days of junior high, for a dime each, my buddy and I took the town bus to school, since the district didn’t provide bus service for everyone. Arriving about half an hour early, the bus schedule created a waiting for school to open. During the fall, we played catch on the front lawn with a “Pluto Platter” which has since evolved into the familiar “Frisbee”. As the weather turned colder, this activity lost its' luster and we soon sought access to the heated building. The north doors were always unlocked, so we just walked in and sat on the corridor floor in front of Room 10 with our backs against the lockers.

In time, that got boring and we noticed that the lock on the Room 10 door was a “skeleton lock”. We reasoned that if we had a skeleton key, we could open up the room and wait in relative comfort. I then visited Northport Hardware and purchased three skeleton keys of different configurations, one of which fit the lock. Voila! We were in. Eraser fights, a broken window and tossing blackboard erasers into the inverted cone overhead lights prompted disciplinary proceedings by the school principal, Big Ed Twining. The eraser in the light smoldered, the window was broken and "Big Ed" was displeased. The discipline?   I really can't remember as they all seemed to run together. Miss Reuben stated in the aftermath of our shenanigans, that she thought the janitor was opening the room each morning.

Room 10 had other attractions since it doubled as the lunchroom. In one corner was a chest freezer where they stored ice cream and other frozen food items. Our small group of hooligans hatched a plan to launch “the great ice cream heist”. We figured out how to defeat the lock on the freezer and decided that we would make this heist on the last day of 7^th grade, as our swansong. As June approached, school would soon let out. The temperature rose and this plan seemed impractical as all the ice cream would melt. We decided to abort our mission and it may well be the greatest caper we never made.

Those days are long gone, but the memory of who we were and what we did brings a little warm chuckle to the surface. Some of the kids from that class remain friends that I am still in contact with today, now sixty-five years later. We’ve all gone our own ways, visited every part of the globe and reunited in the new millennium. In 1957 it would have been hard to imagine the scenario of “sixty-five hears later”. But here we are, the train of life is still in motion, although when we arrive at our destination, sadly, most of us will need help to the platform and some of us will have already gotten off.   

Ode to Pete Young

 Ode to Pete Young

It's hard to believe that Pete is gone. Before I am gone myself, want to make a tribute to my old friend, Pete Young……..

I met Pete through a group of friends that frequented Seymour’s Boat Yard, around 1961 or so. Pete’s dad, John Young was a one-time dock manager at Seymour’s and had left to open the Harbor Marine Sports Store at the corner of Bayview Ave. and Main St. He was a good friend to all of us no-counts who regularly gathered at his store for a visit. He allowed us to call him “John” and to we 15 year olds, it was validation that we were adults (even though we weren’t). The players in this group were Pete, Myself, Jimmy Ball and Jamie Quinn. At the time, we each had our own powerboats and Pete (or Yuk as we called him) was no exception. We painted them all the same color (light blue with white trim) and Pete applied his artistic hand on the sides of our boats with our club name, “The Cavitators”. Cavitation is a phenomenon in which rapid changes of pressure in a liquid lead to the formation of small vapor-filled cavities, in places where the pressure is relatively low. When subjected to higher pressure, these cavities, called "bubbles" or "voids", collapse and can generate an intense shock wave. In our case, the voids occurred around the propeller which caused the engine to rev significantly. Making your outboard engine cavitate was the marine equivalent of hot rodders “leaving rubber” on the streets. We generally tore up the water ways, much to the chagrin of Dexter Seymour, Jamie’s grandfather who owned Seymour’s Boat Yard and ironically, was the Harbormaster.

The following year, 1962 ushered in a new era of hooligan behavior when Jamie became the first in our group to be accepted by the DMV licensing division and we all took to the road in Jamie’s hot rod ‘48 Ford truck. The four of us piled into that old pickup truck like sardines and boldly careened around Northport and East Northport hurling cat calls at the fair sex on the sidewalks and generally making fools of ourselves the way young punks do. I remember one time, Jamie threw me the keys to the truck and said “hey Bruyn, take the truck for a spin”. The fact that I had no license was of little importance to me, so Pete and I got in the truck and took off on a joy ride. On return, coming down the steep hill of Lewis Road became a wild adventure when I applied the brake and my foot fell to the floor. I knew enough to downshift so I did, managing to slow down to about 30 miles per hour but as we approached the bottom of the hill, I realized this was going to be a white-knuckle turn. Somehow, we made it onto Bayview and luckily, no traffic was coming. I parked the truck at Seymour’s and gave Quinn his keys back. Jamie said “you dumb-ass, you should have pumped the fuckin’ brakes”. Like so many things in life, hindsight is 20/20.

By early in 1963, I passed my road test (after three tries) and became a legal driver. My first car would soon follow, a ‘56 Chevy with all the cool stuff which blinded me to the fact that it was a major oil burner, exactly what my dad told me to avoid when buying a car. So, at age 17, it seemed to me that performing a ring job would be an easy enough thing to do. But where? We lived in an apartment. Pete was happy to volunteer his dad’s garage for the operation. I had no mechanical experience but not to worry, Pete would be our guide! His dad, John had a different view. He didn’t mind letting me use the garage, but he told me Pete was only good at disassembling cars; in other words, he was a “junk man”. Undaunted we set out to do this over the Easter vacation of 1963 which was about two weeks and as it turned out, we needed all of it. I borrowed some specialty tools from the auto shop teacher, Mr. Phillips and we spent every minute of every day working on this car. Pete’s dad (John Young) would come home from work each day and just shake his head. I can still recall some of the music on our shop radio. Andy Williams “Can't Get Used to Losing You” and the Chiffons “He’s So Fine”. After two weeks of dawn to dusk dedication, we finally were victorious and all of Pete’s Hot Rod Magazine education paid off. I would have many hours of “happy motoring” until a larger engine caught my interest, but that is another story.

Then there was the famous (or infamous) camping trip at Colonial Sand and Gravel, a dredging site the north side of the Asharoken isthmus. In those days, camping certainly did not mean camping; it was a euphemism for a “drink-out” and we were onboard. This particular “camping trip” started downtown on Main St. where we found someone old enough who was willing to buy us beer……..a case of it. The plan was simple; just carry the beer by foot down to Colonial Sand and Gravel, a laborious trek by any measure. We chose the route as “the crow flies” which took us across Steers Sand Pit, over hill and over dale. A case of beer gets pretty heavy after awhile so we passed the load back and forth. We finally did arrive at the “camp site” on an entrance channel off of Long Island Sound and planted the beer in the water to keep it cool. As we finished putting it in nature’s cooler, we saw a large tugboat under a full head of steam, plowing up ocean sized rollers as it approached the channel. We quickly jumped in the water to surf those big rollers. Our drink-out was starting off with a whole lot of fun written all over it! But not so fast! When the rollers had dissipated and the Tugboat slowed down to make it’s landing, our thoughts turned to opening a brew but we discovered that the rollers had washed our beer into the channel and all 24 cans were gone. We launched a Search and Recovery Operation but never found even one. Now we had to deal with the thought of camping all night without any beer.

We lit a campfire and began to tell campfire stories. The real scary kind like the hatchet murderer on Scudder Ave. who was never found. Vegetation in that sand environment was just dead trees with no leaves and Pete’s naturally deep-set eyes by the flickering fire light became the marquee for his horror tale. Each of us took our turn in relaying stories like the “hook man” and tales of escapees from the nut-house. We all scared the Hell out of ourselves, and nobody slept that night…..at all. There seems to be a thrill of some kind for kids of that age to dabble in the subject of horror and that night was more memorable than if our beer had not been washed away.

Pete had an artistic flare and he expressed it by making airbrush “weirdo tee shirts”. He made me several and as I remember, one of his favorite characters was that of “Hiram”. This character rode in a ‘32 Ford roadster with a ridiculously large engine from which he would cook a hot dog on the exhaust manifold as he drove. Hiram also had a hypodermic needle sticking out of his head. I understand Pete used his talent to become a commercial artist.

We remained friends for some time, well into 1963 but the natural effect of new interests became reality. For me, it was the young ladies. It always seemed to be a deal breaker for old friends. My interest in one particular young lady could be construed as tunnel vision and I saw her to the exclusion of just about everyone. In time, Pete went one way and I another, normal attrition to be expected with growing up. I did talk to him on the phone in year 2000 and he was tentatively making plans to come to a reunion in St. Augustine, but he had to beg off due to family constraints. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see him, but I’m sure glad I got to talk to him. To Pete, I dedicate this little slice of life from the early 60’s. Sail on, old friend!

                            I Like Ike

For years, we had Basset hounds stating with Katie, then Homer, Beethoven and finally, Sir George. At one point we had all four at the same time. Bassets are lovable little creatures but stubborn and not especially bright. In time, they would all pass and the last was Sir George whom I nick-named “Pucky”, a nod to his huge paws that mimicked hockey pucks. After my stroke of 2007, when I first returned home from the hospital, I was unable to walk but with rehab work, I was soon able to take them on short jaunts by leash. By 2009, sadly, they had passed on and we were “dogless” for the first time in seventeen years. We would remain so until 2011 when Ike would make his debut.

To discourage becoming sedentary, we decided it would be a good idea for my health to get another dog that would require regular walking, one that would force me off the couch and onto the pavement. We visited S.A.F.E (an acronym for Save Animals from Euthanization) with the thought of a lightweight dog that would be of manageable size. They presented “Ike” a mixed breed at 70 lbs., three years old, and housebroken, about 50 lbs. heavier than we had been considering. We promptly took him home.

He adapted well with us, but that was not necessarily the case with other people. He taught us that he had a strong disliking for kids on skateboards, UPS, Fed Ex, USPS, garbage men, fat people, black people, brown people, sloppy people, rednecks, Amazon delivery men vans of all types and my brother. We’re really not sure, but we think he may have a questionable history with some or most of the above.

Now, Ike at fourteen years takes daily two-mile walks at “The Canopy”, a paved walking trail through the woods where he meets all of his new-found friends who fawn over him and call him “Old Grampa”.  He has also become a celebrity here at Grand Ravine, where we live. Ike has done a wonderful job in filling a void for us physically and emotionally. While it is true that we have provided for him a “forever home”, he has earned his place in our family. It’s as true today as it was in 1956, I Like Ike!

 

The Legend of Soo Nippi

Steve & Dave Bruyn with Soo Nippi and Figaro at Twin Lakes, Connecticut (1950)

Seventy plus years after the fact, the Legend of Sue Nippi still haunts me. It all started around 1948 or so when my maternal grandmother stayed at the western New Hampshire resort of Lake Sunapee, a vacation spot for those who sought escape from the hustle and bustle of urban life. Imagine the setting of the movie “Dirty Dancing” and the legend of the indigenous tribe, the Algonquin Indians who once inhabited this area, naming it Soo-Nipi, their phrase for “Wild Goose Waters”. The word Soo-Nipi here, has ironic significance but more on that later.

That summer, while Gramma was enjoying her frolic, I was a budding young boy of about two, just learning to hone my skills at walking and talking. Ma, as we called her brought me back a souvenir of her vacation in the form of a small black, fuzzy, stuffed dog. A cute little fellow, just the right size for a two-year old, and we quickly bonded. I was told that this little critter came from Lake Sunapee and that I might name him “Sunapee”. At that tender age, my diction had yet to develop, and I called him “Soo Nippi”. The name stuck and my new pal accompanied me nearly everywhere. The irony is that the name Soo Nippi was nothing more than toddler-speak, but in actuality, the Algonquins picked the name long before I did.

As time passed, Soo Nippi became my sidekick as adventures unfolded before me in life. Some two years later, our family took a vacation trip to Twin Lakes, Connecticut, Soo Nippi in tow. By now, I was four and brother, Steve, seven. Under the watchful eye of Mom & Dad, we did a little rowing and “swimming”, Soo Nippi by my side. What I couldn’t have imagined on that trip was how dark things would soon turn.

When the vacation was over, and we began our rural ride home in the family Hudson, I took my assigned seat behind the driver (that would have been Dad). In those days, there were no seat belts or air conditioning. Clouds of cigarette smoke billowed from the front seat, and we opened all the windows for fresh air. I decided that Soo Nippi could use a gulp of fresh air too, so I held him out the window as we breezed along that country road. Oh, that country road. I had not yet learned about wind resistance and had no idea that Soo Nippi would be force-ably ripped from my little hand.

And so it was, Soo and I had unexpectedly parted ways. I was horror-stricken and didn’t want to let Dad know as I was afraid, he’d be mad. I began to cry and shrunk down behind the front seat. Some miles later, Mom & Dad did a well-check and found me crying. When asked, I came clean and told them what had happened. Dad turned the car around and we back tracked for maybe 20 miles or so, but we never found Soo Nippi. It was a lesson in emotional loss, one of many that we as human beings suffer on the road of life. To stay grounded, I refer to the spirit of this vignette when someone else experiences great loss.  I think if most people reach down far enough, they will find their own point of reference to help them stay grounded. Food for thought………..

You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out

                                                     You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out

In the beginning.............This story begins with a neighborhood friend who was a studious looking fellow, of slight build with tortoise shell glasses, a kind of cutting-edge nerd prototype in appearance. This guy proved that appearance could be deceiving, as he enjoyed trolling for trouble just as much as the rest of us. One day, we decided to borrow my brother’s BB gun and see what kind of mischief we could create. Now in my youth, I never actually owned a BB Gun as I proved myself to be far too irresponsible as you will soon see. I suppose my parents were thinking I would shoot my eye out and given the chance, I’m sure I would have. Anyway, this BB Gun of my brother’s was a Daisy "pump action" and would hold about 50 BB’s in the magazine. What fun! We could find lots of trouble with that high powered BB rifle! Ahh, and..........surely we did.

The stage is set.....................We decided to go off to the "pits" where we often found some kind of mischief. For those who are unfamiliar with the "pits", it was the Steers Sand and Gravel Pits where the concrete ingredients for much of New York City were strip mined. There was lots of cool stuff there, like a conveyor belt that we could walk on. On the weekends, it was always idle, but it was fun to imagine the danger that it could be switched on at any given time and we could be swiftly swept into oblivion with a Bazillion tons of sand and gravel, only to become concrete aggregate and a permanent part of a New York City highway, building or bridge. Then, there was always the danger of being caught by the watchman which kept us "walking on the edge". The "pits" offered all kinds of entertainment with it’s different topographical features. In the "flats" at Bluff Point Road, we played many a game of baseball. That was when we were not in the mood to find trouble. Then, there was the sand cliffs that were so loose and unstable. We tried to create avalanches there, but were never successful. Next came the plateau area which was then rather large. It offered machinery, steam shovels, bulldozers to climb on, scattered large tools and equipment here and about, and of course, the famous conveyor belt. Then, there were those large piles of illegally dumped trash, that could be found nearly everywhere. "It don’t get no better than this!"
I know a place where we can go.............. The vastness of this Long Island dust bowl enabled us generally mis-behave and to smoke, visually undetected, or so we thought. In reality, I don’t think anyone cared. Our smoking array included cigarettes, corn cob pipes, cigars, cigarillos and tea-gars (our own homemade blend, using paper straws and loose tea). This place was a veritable wonderland of trouble that had our name on it! Proceeding eastward, the plateau gave way to the "bowl" where there was a single asphalt road named Steers Avenue, with limited access to Ocean Avenue by way of a locked chain. That is where sanctioned drag races were held around 1958 or so. A local hot rod club called the "Torque Masters" would drag on weekends from the Asharoken end of the road, using the hill for deceleration at the end of their run. In attendance were some of the fireman, ambulance, police, etc. Actually, it was a great opportunity for the young testosterone charged machos who wanted to abuse and destroy their vehicles (or their parent's vehicles) in acceleration speed trials. These young drivers were our heroes! The "bowl" was also the site of the fireman’s fair which was held each year in the summer and that is where the Police Shooting Range was located which brings us back to the Daisy pump action BB gun. By now, a picture of the pits should be emerging as our personal playground for the not-so-rich and infamous. A badlands for bad boys. The Orlons later sang "meet me on South Street, oh, yeah.........hurry on down". Well, the hippest place in town for us, was the pits.

Sunday, Sunday!.............It was a cold windy March-day in 1958. I know that because I was in the 7th grade. My accomplice with the tortoise shell glasses was in the 6th grade. We were veritable men of the world as we readied for a little "shooting practice". Setting up a few beer cans on the target range, we picked them off with deadly accuracy, but this soon became BORING! I guess we figured there must be more challenging targets. There was a storage shack down there at the shooting range that I guess the cops used for storing their shooting equipment. That looked like fun! We zeroed in on the brass keyed door lock with the idea of trying to hit the key slot. We did hit it many, many times. Enough to destroy it for use. Then, we decided to look through the door glass which had some hardware cloth over it for protection against guys like us. I took the barrel of the gun and "bumped" it against the hardware cloth which promptly gave way to glass breakage! Oh, man, we had done it now! Broke a window at the cops shooting range! The answer was.........run! And we did!!!!!!!!!

Sunday night................In unraveling the reality of our caper, that night I concluded....... "hey, this was a vast wasteland of sand and gravel with no one for miles. Kind of like the desert in New Mexico we had seen on TV where the likes of The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy would ride. Who could be the wiser?" Who could have seen us? Figgetaboutit!

Monday, Monday (can’t trust that day)................Stopping at Craft’s Stationery on the way to school, as we often did to buy cigarettes, with another trouble-making buddy, I chanced to run into a celebrated man that knew me ....... a little better than I thought. We all knew him as Police Chief Percy Erwin. He greeted me with a "Good Morning, Mr. Bruyn" (those were his exact words). He asked me if I was on my way to school to which I answered in the affirmative. He then said that he would like me to stop by his office after school for a "little chat". For me, it was Black Monday. I sat in those old wooden desks at the Laurel Avenue School all day, just thinking about the trouble I had created and how I would have to pay for it when school was out. Surely, I had painted myself into a corner, but how could he, or anyone have known? The pits were vast! Who could have seen us? Oh, boy, that was the Monday from Hell.

Can’t fight City Hall!.................In those days the cop shop was across from the old library in an old wooden building which once housed the Fire Department. It now was the offices of City Hall, the Building and Zoning Department, the Jail and the Police Athletic League, of which I was a member. There was a long wide flight of creaky wooden stairs in the center of the building which led to the cop shop upstairs and ultimately to the Chief’s office. The climb up those creaky old stairs that afternoon was like climbing Everest. When I addressed the desk sergeant and announced that I was there to see the chief, he asked me if I had an appointment. An appointment I thought?  Uh.........Yes, I guess I did. I was seated in Mr. Erwin’s office and the Chief commenced to scare the Hell of me. Someone had in fact seen us mis-behave in "pits" and we were busted!

Learning new words...........Can you say restitution?............ Oh, my God, I was busted now and would certainly be branded as a "JD", would have to get a "JD" card (whatever that was) and maybe be "sent up the river". My life was done! I was barely 12 and my future was toast! The Chief really did paint some dismal pictures for me, and I was very remorseful. So much so, that I sang like a bird. Told him who my accomplice was and told him that I was sorry, and I wouldn’t ever do it again and I really was a good boy and please, please, please, don’t tell my parents!. Well, he compromised. He did tell my parents, I was made to pay for my part in this destructive little caper and I had to serve a penalty at home. I guess my accomplice did the much of the same. The compromise was that I didn’t have to learn to make license plates!

Hail to the Chief..............The lessons learned that afternoon ended my BB gun career and 45 years later, I am grateful that Chief Percy Erwin did the right thing and made me responsible for my misdeeds. Today, I still have use of both eyes and, in spite of myself, did not shoot my eye out! You never know how other people may cross your path in life and enrich you in some subtle, but lasting way. If you are reading this, you may very well have both out your eyes too!