A Walking Tour Through a Home in Peekskill

(To all my friends,

Your response to my last entry was amazing. I have never felt so good about anything I have written. For all of you who are upset, thinking I was just laid-off, I was not! The fact is that the piece was written in 2003! I have not re-read it in all that time and when I did I realized it fit right in with the blog and, in fact, was as true (if not more so) than it was the day I wrote it! Fear not. I am ok.

So, Stu, Jay, Joie, Don, Candido, Judyth, Kathie, and a lot of other people, all my love and thanks for the kind words. I will try to keep it up. In fact, see below.)

A Walking Tour Through a Home in Peekskill

The man of the house was all alone. “My son.” Thought Herb as he pulled up into the driveway. It was difficult at first to be sure which of the tiny concrete parking spaces belonged to the beige and brown house where his son sat on the front porch steps. The houses were so close to each other. It reminded Herb of Queens—different style of house, of course, but something about the neighborhood made Herb think of the row home in Queens where his young family had lived for eight years. It was the sidewalks and the closeness of the homes. The way each house sat in the shadow of the one right next door. And the porches. In the summer Herb could imagine each family living out its overheated private lives right there on those porches with the neighbors watching and yet not watching.

Herb pulled in off the street and rolled out of the car door. He pushed the latch that opened the rear hatch door of the seven year old CRV and walked around the back of the car. His son Rick met him on the sidewalk. Herb knew that under his cap was a Mohican haircut and in his lower lip Rick had a stud like a small collar button sticking out. But none of these fashion statements meant anything to Herb anymore. It was not his business. The menthol cigarette still bothered him, though, and he was just about to say something when he caught himself and let it go. After all, Herb had smoked for twenty years and nothing anyone else had ever said to him had made him stop. Herb felt immensely proud of his self control at that moment. He also felt something else at that moment. The urge to hold his son in his arms and hug him. But before Herb could reach him Rick had dropped his smoke in the grass of the small lawn and reached into the car to pick up the plastic box of tools Herb had brought him. He was smiling like a kid opening presents under a Christmas tree, anxious to see what goodies were in the box.

Herb had collected, over the years, an assortment of hand tools and small electric tools. He was meticulous about keeping his own tools clean and sharp and filed away so that they were always at hand when he needed them. But the odd assortment of extra tools that had come his way over the years sat in buckets and in drawers and on shelves all over the basement. Now that Rick had moved into the old house in Peekskill with his girlfriend, Herb figured he might as well put together a small starter tool kit for his son. He fished though the garage and boiler room gathering screwdrivers, pliers, a few wrenches and a sheetrock knife. He threw in a drill that had once belonged to Irma’s father along with some drill bits and a magnetic screw gun tip. He also put in the first jig saw he’d ever owned, purchased at least 35 years ago, but it still worked well. He had plenty of blades for the saw. A nearly new extension cord and a cheap hacksaw, and he sharpened a one inch wood chisel which he covered with a cardboard sheath wrapped with electrical tape. He threw in the tape in as well. Herb worked on the kit for about an hour. When he was done he was satisfied that the “kid” would have anything he needed to scrape through a little household project. Now, on the porch, sitting on the stoop, Herb watched Rick examine each of the tools. 

“I don’t know if you’ll need any of this stuff” said Herb, “but I think you could pretty much do anything you need to…I mean these tools were just sitting around the house…”

Rick took the cardboard sheath off the chisel and tested the blade with his thumb. “You don’t have a sharpening stone somewhere in there do you?”, he asked.

“No,” said Herb, “I only had one of those. You can buy one pretty cheap though. Sharpening is an art. You’ll have to learn how.”

Herb had been over to Rick’s new house about six or eight times in the past few weeks. Picking him up to come over to eat his moms food at home or once to go to temple on a Friday night. Every Thursday Herb picked him up to go to a meeting at a church on Crompond road. Herb dropped him off and continued on some nights to attend the “Coffee with the Rabbi” adult education in Yorktown. “Coffee with the Rabbi” was every other week but Herb still picked up Rick and dropped him off for his meeting every week. Rick had lost his drivers’ license a couple of years ago for DUI. Getting around was a problem. Work was a problem. Everything was a problem for Rick. Just recently, after a second stint in a rehab, Rick had moved in with his girlfriend and Herb was coming to grips with having an adult son. He was trying to think of him as an adult—not “the kid”. He was trying not to give advice. He was hoping for a little movement from Rick’s side towards adulthood and responsibility but trying not to be disappointed with the slow pace of Rick’s progress. Strangely enough, he was struggling with his need to continue to be in Rick’s life—to get that hug when they met and to be invited into Rick’s home for the first time.

“Want to go out for a cup of coffee?” asked Herb. “I thought I’d go over to the coffee house in Peekskill and grab a cup.”

“Naw. I’ve had enough coffee for one day. Besides, I’ve got a batch of ribs in the oven.” Herb turned to look into darkness beyond the screen door and he could smell the ribs cooking. “Come on in for a while,” said Rick, “and take a look around.” Herb perked up and stood at the screen door next to a muddy colored mutt that followed Rick everywhere. When the screen door was opened they all went in and Herb flashed back to all the old, crooked places he’d lived in his life. All of the threadbare carpeting and broke back furniture and dim lighting and poor heating—it all came back in a rush. The place was not so bad, thought Herb. Certainly better than South Street in Philly. He petted the dog that rubbed up next to his leg and thought back to the cold, damp space, on a dangerous street in Philadelphia where he’d spent a year finding himself after dropping out of college. The basement had been flooded and there was dog and cat shit everywhere on the first floor. He slept in an unheated room on the third floor. He was always broke and hungry. There was always the threat of getting mugged or robbed but even so these were some of the best times of his life. He had been free of family and his childhood past. He had discovered sex and late nights and hard work and it all seemed so good at the time. Now, in this place in rundown Peekskill his son was experiencing the same things. Herb didn’t know which was stronger; his sense of dread for all the things that he knew could go wrong or his sense of wonder at all that he knew could go right.

The house was a small, framed structure, typical of all the working class houses in all the industrial towns of America. Clapboard siding and a crooked front porch and a crooked stoop. On the first floor level was a kitchen and sitting room. The kitchen was very clean and modern with plenty of cabinets and counter space. The smell of Rick’s ribs was sweet and spicy. He was becoming a good cook. The dog had his nose up in the air sniffing the meat while his backside danced on the linoleum. Behind the kitchen was an airy workshop where Rick’s girlfriend kept equipment for a side business she worked at. She silk screened posters and tee shirts. Rick said he was trying to help with the business. Herb looked over the frames with stretched fabric and the cans full of ink and solvents. Rick would be good at that, he thought. Rick was good with his hands and he always had enjoyed art.

The second floor was a warren of small rooms. There were two small bed rooms and a connecting sitting room which was filled with cardboard boxes. Rick opened one of the bedroom doors to show Herb but Herb waved at him to close the door. He had no interest in looking into someone’s bedroom. Herb noticed the rubble where the dog had chewed up the corner of a box full of shoes and the outlets full of extension cords and jury rigged electrical connections.

A narrow, tight stair led to the attic. Someplace meant for storage but now serving as a bedroom and living room for Rick and his girlfriend. There was barely enough headroom at the top of the stair to allow passage and the peak of the house allowed Rick to stand only in the center of the attic space. But where Herb saw squalor, Rick saw freedom and the adventure of being here and now and on his own. He clearly was enjoying his first experience on his own. Herb was trying to be careful not to intrude on this experience.

It will all be all right, thought Herb as they descended the narrow stair and made their way back out to the porch and finally out to the CRV. Herb promised to come back with a test light so they could find out why some of the lights and switches didn’t work. Rick said he would like to come over to the house for Passover seder next week but his girlfriend had to work so she couldn’t attend. Rick and Herb would see each other on Thursday night. Until then be well…

Herb went on into Peekskill and had coffee at the coffee shop alone. He watched the scruffy young fellow behind the counter grind beans and wipe his hands on pants so greasy that Herb wouldn’t have worn them to change the oil on his car. With him behind the counter was a high school girl with a stud in her nose and a red thong peeking out of her low cut jeans. Herb sat in a sunny spot in an old chair. He waited for his friends from South Street to come in through the front door. Tommy and Kathy. Stephen and Saint Looie. Seldom Tom and Cowboy Tom. He knew they weren’t coming but he would wait here a little longer. You never knew.