Tuesday, October 27, 2015



The weather has turned cool. The leaves are putting on a show. Our bags are open and we’re packing our things to go. An awful feeling comes over me when I think about closing down this house. Twenty three years of heating and cooking and building and repairing and maintaining and now it is all going to stop... There will be a cold, damp winter chill invading the depths of this house. I am not worried about the pipes freezing-I am confident that I can drain and protect them. It is the spirit of the house, an organic, breathing presence I feel in this house that is somehow being put at risk. It is like I have created a work of love, and art-no different from a painting or a sculpture-and I am putting it out into a field under a sheet of plastic and the snow and the wind will have at it all winter.



In the spring when we get back it will be different. I remember the cabin up in Mountaindale. I would “winterize” it each fall and in the spring when we returned it would be cold and damp and it had a different smell. I hated that smell. It never completely goes away no matter how you air it out with the warm air of summer. Something sinks down into the wooden skeleton of the structure and does not want to leave. It is the combined smell of humidity and cold and sometimes death. Bugs die and mice die and freeze and thaw. A winter’s worth of dust settles on the heating convectors and when the system re-starts it burns off with the odor of dry bones. I don’t want that smell in this house.



Out in the garage my toys will sit for six months. Batteries to the car and motorcycle will be hooked up to chargers and they will look like patients on life-support. My tools are all hung in their places. All of our food, the cosmetics, the cleaning solutions, paint, anything that might freeze will sit sharing the tool room with the tools for the same six months protected by a tiny heater. The heater is fixed to a thermostat that will maintain 35 to 45 degrees. The cast iron furnace that has not had a day off in twenty-three years will get a six month nap and in April Julio-the boiler guy-will clean it and “kick” it back into service. I fear that, like an old person waking from a nap, the furnace will never be quite the same. It will creak back grudgingly and find excuses to stop from time to time, and rest.  Other appliances might take the cue and hobble along. The web of our daily lives is woven around a loom of conveniences we take for granted. Pumps in dishwashers and clothes washers and tubes to ice makers and the condensate traps in A/C units up in the attic, all full of water. Toilet tanks, and sink traps, hoses, and hose-cocks...and after I lock the front door and set the car on a path for Florida all that water will want to start freezing. I have to empty all those pipes and appliances, disconnect all those hoses, all those traps. I’ll blow everything out with a compressor. I’ll dump some anti-freeze into the pipes to seek the low spots where water I’ve missed might be laying, waiting for the cold.



Electricity will still flow in the cold so I unplug everything. Used to be that something was either “off” or “on”. If you turned the dial on the TV to “off” that was that, no more electrons flowed. Now there is “off” and “on” and “standby”. There are vampire chargers that continue to suck juice so long as they are plugged in whether or not they are charging anything. TVs and microwaves stand at a low level attention twenty four hours a day so that we will not be inconvenienced even one moment waiting for them to warm up so we can thaw our bagel or watch Good Evening America. All of these little creatures must be disconnected. All the batteries taken from the remotes so they will not liquefy and rot the metal guts of our “clickers”. And still the job goes on.



Screw shut windows. Double lock doors. Secure the garage door and unplug the operator. One last look back as I pull the trailer down the drive. I will leave a light on a timer so that if I come home and it is already night I will see a light shining in the upstairs window.

The Customer is Always Wrong!

When did the “customer” begin to be “wrong”? I mean, wasn’t the old saying “The customer is always right”? When did that change? Why didn’t I get the memo? I dunno but something changed and now the customer doesn’t mean shit. (Sorry for the language but that’s how I talk normally and I just decided today that I am gonna talk like I talk and fuck the fucking fucks who don’t like it. If you’re offended stop reading now because it is only gonna get worse!)



The Customer is Always Right Wrong (chapter 1)

I took a train into the city today. I know the “train to the city experience” as good as most because I did it for a third of my life and I know the trains, the stations, the routine (buy the ticket, show the ticket, keep your feet offa the seats and put your luggage into the overhead rack. Don’t talk too loud. If someone is talking too loud keep your mouth shut because you don’t know who’s packin’ and who might whale the living shit outta you if you mouth off. Just get on and get there-pretty much the name of the game.) I bought my ticket. I waited for the in-bound Hudson train and watched the new normal at the Peekskill train station. This new normal includes about twenty or twenty-five heavy, track-bound, construction related machines parked on the western most track between the platform and the Hudson River.

The Hudson River view is the reason (the only reason!) anyone could possibly comment favorably on the beauty of the Peekskill Train Station! There is nothing else beautiful about that train station. It is just a place to get on the train and get out of Peekskill... I wish I had a nickle for every minute I have spent looking out at that majestic river. I watched until I could see the train rounding the bend at the Annsville Creek and the bridge and screech into the station. I looked out over that vista for twenty plus years and it never got less beautiful until today.

Today there were the multitude of afore mentioned vehicles parked between the platform and the view and they were crawling with Metro North employees thinking about work-not doing any, just thinking about it-starting up the noisy diesel engines. They sat and idled there, belching their smoke and fumes. They sat and waited to move them out to the track removal and re-installation at 10:00 am while we, the customers, choked and had no view and yelled at our families to be heard over the din... It was painful. Do you know what twenty diesel engines sounds and feels and smells like when you are five or ten feet away and have no choice but to stand there? It sucks! It is not what the customer paid for, but that’s what they get.

Why, I ask you, could they not position those work vehicles/machines 200 yards further up the track? Why, I ask you, could they not walk up there a short bit and start them where they would not fuck up the eye/ears/nose and throats of a hundred or so “customers” condemned to remain on the platform to wait for the train? I had to laugh when I saw the cautionary signage on the sides of these machines that warns “Hearing Protection Must Be Worn!” No body gave me no Motherfucking hearing protection! I would much rather have been sitting inside of the cab of one of those machines wearing my “hearing protection” and waiting for the caravan from hell to move to the section of track to be worked on today and being paid mucho dollars per hour with little to worry about except keepin’ track of my lunchbox (I saw a lot of lunch boxes out there!) than to be stuck on the platform waiting for the train I paid to take into the Big Apple! Damn Right!

To add insult to injury, the Metro North repair team had roped off a huge section of the commuter parking for their own use. So they could be close to their work while the paying customers park farther away and take an hours ride into the city to get to theirs. My favorite memory from today was the bright yellow forty-thousand dollar pickup truck parked in the shade in the taxi pick up area. Two over-weight “workers” sitting comfortably cool in their vehicle while the taxis struggle to maneuver all day and fight for a fare and sweat in the heat in the sun between trains. Upon arriving back in the station seven hours later I noted the same two hard working employees-being indirectly paid by me and all the other “customers” of Metro North--were asleep in the truck waiting, no doubt, for the end of their very productive shift so they could go home.

I am sure I missed the memo. The customer is always wrong.

The Hillside

The Hillside

I spent a couple of hours in the back of the house clearing the tangle of growth that yearly covers the hillside. (I hesitate to call it a yard as it is only a thin, six to twelve foot strip of earth with my tool shed at the widest part. Behind the strip is the hill side ascending steeply and held back by a monster rock wall. It could not be less yard-like...) Knots of tough vines, low-growing bushes and ground cover, including brambles, wild roses, golden rod, poison ivy, etc.

The vines include wild grape and my least favorite plant, bitter sweet. This tough vine puts out tough, orange colored roots that form a web under the soil. It sends its shoots out from the roots and the shoots seek the sun, climbing whatever vertical ladder it can find. Trees, buildings and fences-it winds around its host and climbs. As the bitter sweet winds around the host, creeping up to the light, its spiral hold chokes and shapes the tree like a boa constrictor(this takes place over a year or two or ten) and the tree trunk takes on a cork-screw shape. The vine thickens and can be two or three inches thick if left uncut. Eventually the weight of the vine drags the host down to the floor of the forest. If one can pull the young vines out of the ground and get the tough, orange root the growth can be checked, but that is nearly impossible. The young shoots are soft and break off easily. The plant sacrifices the shoot to save the tough root system. Next year the shoots will sprout profusely from the old roots.

The wild grape and poison ivy grow in similar ways to the bittersweet. It is easy to walk by a huge old tree and not notice that the leaves that fill out the tree are not those of an oak or hickory or buttonwood it is a canopy of vine leaves. It is easy to miss the thick, hairy looking vine that clings like a cancer onto the trunk and spreads out into the branches. Closer inspection (not too close!) will show it to be old-growth poison ivy. It is easy to see in the fall when the magnificent colors of the ivy are on display, usually before the host tree takes on it’s own fall colors. If you try to chop the mature vine off of the side of the tree you risk major contamination by the poison sap that oozes from the root. It will, in time, also kill the host with the weight and blocking the sun and rain but the poison ivy takes its time.

Far easier to control is the wild grape. Young vines come loose when you pull them away from the rocks and soil. This vine is a house cat where the ivy and the bittersweet are tigers. Even when it grows old it does not poison and its thick, mature vines can be cut and sometimes pulled out of the host tree. Make no mistake though, it kills its host too and the forest around here is full of grape vine.

The smelly Ginko trees(Sumac) sprout and grow, soft and bright green, until they reach six or eight feet high-which they can and do within one or two growing seasons if left uncut. After a couple of years the Ginko hardens and is a hearty growing tree that can double in size each year. It is a mistake to ignore it because in a few seasons one will have a tree removal problem. Better to get it while still young and soft and easily cut. After cutting it down it is good to get the roots too but if you don’t it will wither in a season or two of consistent chopping. The roots will probably die off but don’t ignore it one year or it will come back. I have them return year after year with persistence.

Sycamore, Tulip, Locust and Black Birch are among the other trees that grow like weeds if unattended. Best to cut them with a vengeance. I love the smell of the Black (Sweet) Birch when you cut it. It smells like root beer and I have memories of this smell from my child hood (Royal Castle birch beer!) and from the Black Birch trees on the first piece of property I ever owned (Mountaindale N.Y.). These memories make it difficult for me to chop down a sweet birch tree but they must be cut. They grow like the Sumac-in leaps and bounds-and it is easy to end up with a huge tree where it is not wanted. I have several right now that will take a tactical assault to remove as they huge and are near electrical wires and growing out of rock walls. Best to get them gone while they are young.

Along with the trees and the vines the low-growing plants-weeds and flowers proliferate on the sunny hillside. I have a love/hate relationship with the flowering, thorny wild roses . Stubborn and dangerous, wild rose can snag your flesh and tear it like a sharp saw blade. The thorns are curved and long like a cat’s claws and if you get snagged it is difficult to extricate oneself from the barbs. And Oh so painful! (One of these tore our dog’s ear once and the bleeding would not stop. Finally had to staunch the flow by suturing the ear with crazy glue and tissue paper. It did the job) It is impossible to pull the roots of the rose out so cutting them back is a yearly ritual. I try to stay away from the thorns by pulling at the branches with a long-handled, stiff-toothed rake and lopping off the branches as close to the roots as I can possibly-and safely-reach. They come back stronger and stronger each year because of the pruning , but the exercise is rewarded with the smell of pungent wild rose.

Another thorn-bearing hazard is the raspberry (or maybe it is a black berry-I am not sure?). I try to leave them alone as they are less invasive on the hillside and they give me wonderful fruit. I prune them gently and carefully and reap quarts of sweet (but seedy)fruit.




The weeds (such as golden rod and mint) are controlled by cutting before they “bolt” or pulling them out roots and all. The golden rod comes out very easy. The mint clings and breaks leaving the roots which just continue to grow. Nothing is really easy on the hillside. Up until recently I used to use my scythe and rake and lopping shears and clear off the hill in a day by myself. My age has caught up with me and now I think it will take me two or three partial days work. Yesterday I cleaned about a 1/3 and I will go out again today for another session. The vines and thorns are merciless and do not give an inch even as I grow older. I feel like a huge, old tree with giant vines hanging from my branches, pulling me earthward. The work shapes my actions and I must spend my effort and energy wisely. Eventually the hillside and the other travails of life will pull me down. Until I can no longer do it, I will clean the hillside.