An Ode to Kenneth Arnold

The Man Who Gave Us UFOs

Story & Photos by Buddy Mays

I wish I could claim that my liver was once examined by beings from another planet, or at least that I have taken a joyride in an alien spacecraft, or at the very least, exchanged nods with a skinny little green dude with an overgrown head and goggle eyes somewhere in the wilds of the world. But I must not tell a lie. I have never had a face-to-face encounter with creatures from another planet, and I don’t know anyone who has. My two brushes with what most people call UFOs, or

Unidentified Flying Objects, or Flying Saucers, were distant ones, hardly worth mentioning, but I will anyway.

The first one took place when I was a 14-year-old wannabe cowboy living with my mother in a trailer house on the edge of an alfalfa field in Tularosa, New Mexico. I remember turning on our radio during breakfast one Saturday morning in search of Elvis or Jerry Lee, but instead of “Great Balls of Fire” blasting out at me, I heard an announcer say this (or something like it): “Statepoliceareadvisingmotoristsnotto drive southonUSHighway54toOrogrande andElPaso.Officershavereportedthata largemetalobjecthaslandedonthehighway, andcarenginesarestallingiftheyapproach.” It was 1957 and although I didn’t know it, there had been numerous reports of flying saucer sightings in the Tularosa area on the news. I asked my mother what she thought. “Probably the Army,” she said.

My second UFO encounter occurred in 1969, at about midnight, in the desert 30 miles west of Las Cruces, New Mexico, where my lab partner and I were trapping wild bats for a zoology research project. The sky was clear and brilliantly lit by the Milky Way, and as we hunkered on the desert floor sipping coffee and waiting for Tadarida brasiliensis to fly into our net, I noticed a large, bright light in the sky, coming towards us from out of the west and traveling fast. When it reached a point directly overhead, the light split in two, half heading north and half heading south, until both disappeared over their respective horizons. Aircraft, whether commercial or military, cannot do that. Whatever we saw that night was not from the local airport.

The flying saucer furor/fascination in America began on the afternoon of June 24, 1947, when an experienced pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted a chain of strange lights skittering across the sky at a speed no human-made craft in the late 1940s could possibly attain. Flying his single-engine CalAir plane near Washington’s towering Mount Rainier, Arnold was cruising at just under 10,000 feet in clear weather when he glimpsed an unnatural flash of blue light ahead of him and to the north. Several seconds later the single light became a string of lights, and as they moved closer, Arnold could make out a row of nine roundish, shiny objects, each one about 60 feet in diameter. They were flying in tandem and moving at tremendous speed. Arnold later said their flight was “like saucers skipping on water.” Thinking quickly, he timed them as they flew between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams 48 miles to the south; the string of objects covered the distance in one minute and 42 seconds, a speed of about 1,200 miles an hour.

Arnold flew on to Yakima, Washington later that afternoon, where he mentioned his encounter to several pilot friends. After refueling, he continued on to his final destination in Pendleton, Oregon. Word of Arnold’s encounter traveled quickly, however, and the following day he was detained and interviewed by reporters from a local newspaper and from the Associated Press. In the following weeks, as word of Arnold’s sighting spread, dozens of other reports of mysterious flying “things” poured into police departments and newspapers across the Pacific Northwest. Several of them corroborated Arnold’s story. One man, for example, told police that he had seen three strange objects flying over Richland, Washington at tremendous speed, heading toward Mount Rainier about one half-hour before the Arnold sighting. Another report was from a United Airlines crew enroute to Seattle, who reported that on July 4th , several disk-like objects had paced their plane for 10 to 15 minutes before suddenly vanishing. Over the next few months, Arnold was questioned by various news outlets as well as military investigators from the Air Force, and in the years that followed, thousands of visual and radar sightings of baffling flying craft were reported to authorities. Many of the sightings were hoaxes, of course, perpetrated mostly by attention seekers or conspiracy nuts. Others were simple cases of mistaken identity. The “Roswell Incident” was one of these. Although many people still insist that a flying saucer crash-landed near Roswell, New Mexico in 1948, scattering debris and supposedly alien bodies across the desert

(and that the bodies were hidden until the government finally constructed Area 51 in Nevada to house them), in reality the debris came from an experimental, top-secret, highaltitude spy balloon program called Project Mogul. The “bodies” were dummies used in high altitude parachute testing.

But of the tens of thousands of UFO sightings reported to authorities since 1947, many have not been explained. On a stormy night above Michigan’s Lake Superior in 1953, for example, the U.S. Air Defense Command reported an unidentified radar blip in restricted air space over Soo Locks, a strategic waterway connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron. An F-89C Scorpion fighter was immediately scrambled from nearby Kinross AFB to warn off the intruder. The fighter chased the object for 30 minutes, finally overtaking it near the U.S./Canadian border at an altitude of 7,000 feet. Then a very strange thing happened. The two radar blips, jet fighter and UFO, seemed to meld, and a second later the blip from the Scorpion simply vanished. The blip from the UFO rocketed upward, and then it too disappeared. Neither the pilot nor the wreckage from the Scorpion was ever found.

Another unexplained event occurred in 1956 in southern New Mexico. Air Force major Bill Cunningham and sergeant Jonathan Lovette, both stationed at Holloman Air Force Base, were part of a search team scouring the desert of nearby White Sands Missile Range for debris from a recent missile launch. During the search, Major Cunningham heard his sergeant scream for help and when he looked up, he saw Lovette being hoisted into the belly of a hovering silver disc by a long cord of some sort. When the sergeant was inside, the craft accelerated straight up and disappeared. Three days later, Lovette’s body was found in the desert 10 miles away, his tongue, eyes, genitals, and anus surgically removed, and the body drained of blood.

In 1959, Project Blue Book, the code name for the study of unidentified flying objects, was established by the U.S. Air Force to investigate reports of UFO activity. Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, the organization, from the very beginning, unfortunately seemed to be more interested in dismissing flying saucers than explaining them. During its life, Project Blue Book collected more than 12,000 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural or man-made phenomena such as stars, clouds, atmospheric disturbances, weather balloons, swamp gas, or conventional aircraft. In a summary of its investigations released shortly before it was disbanded in 1969, Project Blue Book issued this report:

NoUFOreported,investigated,and evaluatedbytheAirForcewaseveran indicationofthreattoournationalsecurity. Therewasnoevidencesubmittedtoor discoveredbytheAirForcethatsightings categorizedas"unidentified"represented technologicaldevelopmentsorprinciples beyondtherangeofmodernscientific knowledge. Therewasnoevidenceindicatingthat sightingscategorizedas"unidentified"were extraterrestrial vehicles.

Throughout the last half of the 20th century and into the 21st, reports of animal and human mutilations, mysterious disappearances, outright kidnappings, crop circles, and unidentified aerial phenomena, have continued. Saucers have been sighted almost everywhere -- San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, New York, Atlanta, Miami, and most other cities, as well as in Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Everglades National Parks. Numerous pilots, both commercial and military, have reported encounters with UFOs, the most notable being from the military itself, particularly the

Navy. In 2004, warships from the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group tracked several unidentified aircraft that would suddenly pop onto their radar screens at 80,000 feet, descend quickly to 20,000 feet, stop, and hover. Fighter pilots from the carrier group chased, and eventually spotted, one such aircraft off the California coast. They described it as white, about 40 feet in length, and oval shaped.

In response to this and numerous other sightings and after decades of silence and denial, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2021 finally admitted that there are things out there (they call them UAPs or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) zipping through the skies over the United States and most other countries, and that they have no idea where the objects came from or what they want. Since that government announcement, more than 350 new sightings have been officially reported to ODNI. Nearly half of those, 171 to be exact, remain unexplained and, according to an ODNI spokesman, “have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and require further analysis.” In other words, we (the ODNI) are as mystified as you are.

Kenneth Arnold passed away in 1984 at age 68. He was many things during his life Eagle Scout, all-state football player, successful businessman, top-notch pilot, published author, and candidate for governor of Idaho to mention just a few. Far more important, though, is the fact that without Kenneth Arnold and his initial UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, the world would have never known such classic movies as Close EncountersoftheThirdKind,2001: A SpaceOdyssey,E.T.theExtra-Terrestrial, IndependenceDay,orCowboysandAliens Can you imagine going through life without watching 2001: ASpaceOdyssey, or CowboysandAliens at least 20 times? My hat is off to you Ken, for helping to bring those terrific galactic travelers, fictional or otherwise, to life. Without you we would all be considerably poorer, at least in our knowledge of otherworldly cultural matters. I hope that somewhere in the Spiritual Cosmos, you and Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke get together often for coffee, doughnuts, and, of course, a lot of schmoosing .

Email from Music City: The Two Sides of Nashville,

Story & Photos by Jay Jacobs

Nashville, Tennessee is without a doubt the country music capital of the world, a storied city rich in American music history. Here, many legendary country music artists got their start, and went on to achieve worldwide fame. While many people are familiar with world-famous venues like the Grand Ole Opry, Ryman Auditorium, and the Country Music Hall of Fame, there’s another side to Nashville that tourists seldom see, what you might call the “Nashville less traveled.”

While my initial plan was to showcase that side of the world famous city, after more than a week of visiting restaurants, guitar shops, clubs and venues, I found that although you can try to separate Lower Broadway, the famous downtown strip, from the surrounding neighborhoods, they’re inextricably linked by the music which is the life blood of Music City.

Like every town across America, Nashville has its people who live, work, go to school, and raise their families there, and in the surrounding areas. These neighborhoods are often only a short drive to the bustling downtown area, which is where most tourists go for the Nashville experience. But there’s the Nashville where the locals go to enjoy the nightlife, restaurants, and shopping, and I was curious to check some of that out. My good friend David Eng, a music producer who has a home here, and Steve Morgan, longtime local singer/guitarist, took me around to some of the guitar shops, restaurants and live music venues to sample Nashville off-thebeaten-path.

My first morning, we stopped for breakfast at the Flat Tire Diner, Scratch

Kitchen & Bakery in Old Hickory, a neighborhood eatery which is a cross between a coffee shop and diner. A parking lot, including commercial vehicles with local addresses, hinted that this was a popular neighborhood stop. Food here is tasty American fare, served in hearty portions by a friendly staff, who welcomed us like old friends with good food and a side helping of southern charm and hospitality. It was just the right fortification for exploration.

Third Man Records is a unique shop just outside the city, but with a great closeup view of the Nashville skyline. Owned by guitarist Jack White of the White Stripes and Raconteurs, the store’s collection included reissues on the legendary Sun label, featuring artists like Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, among others, a connection for those of us who were strongly attracted to early rockabilly music.

As a guitarist, I was excited to visit Carter Vintage Guitars, a store specializing in highend vintage guitars and amplifiers, located just outside the downtown area. For guitar players, this is a “must go to” destination. There is a scarcity of these rare instruments Therefore prices for these guitars, banjos, mandolins and other stringed instrument reflect this, ranging from accessible to very expensive. Hanging along the walls, and on floor racks along the length of the large store were the kind of instruments guitarists, collectors, and aficionados dream about: vintage Gibson Les Pauls, Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters, rare archtop jazz guitars, Gibson and Martin acoustics, and a Bigsby electric mandolin priced at $50,000.

Blues Vintage Guitars & More turned out to be one of the most impressively stocked guitar shops I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. Vintage guitars of every major brand are hanging on the walls or sitting on stands in every room. After checking out the inventory, I plugged a Taylor T-5 into an amp and played it for a while. When it was first introduced, this guitar impressed me with its unique design, and smartly thought-out blend of acoustic/electric features, and it was a pleasure to play.

Jack's Guitarcheology in Lebanon proclaims itself, “Nashville area purveyor of dimestore, weirdo and specialty guitars.” It features a wide variety of stringed instruments, many of which are “off-brands” that don't have the name recognition of major manufacturers. Nevertheless, these lesserknown instruments are fast becoming collectible, and continue to go up in value. They also have an assortment of oddball items, like a unique “toilet seat' guitar.” Not surprisingly, I found one hanging on a wall in the bathroom. There are a few for sale, but you can have one specially made to order, presumably with your choice of toilet seat.

High point of a trip is an event called “Honky Tonk Tuesday,” held at a local American Legion hall. Fun starts at around 8 p.m. and can run to early morning. The parking lot was packed with cars, motorcycles, and pickup trucks, as well as crowds of people outside talking. This is the place to go during the week to have a great time, hear good music, hang out with friends, meet new people and/or go dancing. The backdrop of the stage was a huge American Flag done up in string lights. Once the band started playing the floor became packed with well-dressed couples kicking up their heels. Many of the guys wore cowboy hats and western boots, while a lot of the women dressed up country style. Couples had fancy dance moves, some downright outstanding. It was like stepping into a scene out of a fifties teen movie, or an episode of “American Bandstand.

It was inevitable that my journeys would end on Lower Broadway, the downtown strip in Nashville famous for its live music clubs, restaurants and attractions. At night, the glittering, colorful neon lights rival Times Square for sheet gaudiness, but in a good way. Clubs feature live music, and many open onto the street so there’s nothing between you and the bands just steps away. Of course, we’re talking country music here, and every band featured skilled musicians and an abundance of hot guitar pickers. Going into many of the clubs is not for the squeamish or claustrophobic. Despite the press of humanity, everyone was having a great time.

As I exited the back door of Roberts Western World and out into the alley, I was a few steps from Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Old Opry, and world famous venue for major country music stars like Tanya Tucker, Ricky Scaggs and Darius Rucker as well as non-country acts like Ed Sheeran, Styx, Jackson Browne and the Indigo Girls. No trip to Nashville is complete without checking out this nightlife downtown, so for me, on the last night of my visit, mingling with the crowds here was getting a taste of what it’s all about.

Then There Is Vito’s

Story & Photos by Tony Tedeschi

Ittookthisfamilyof émigrés fromSicily,withnopriorrestaurantexperience, openingasuccessionofrestaurants,beginninginBrooklynin1982, beforesettlingintomyhometown,tore-establishtheauthenticity of ‘justlikenonna’scooking.’

My attachment to food, as something more than nourishment, started very early with my émigré Italian grandmother’s cooking, in the two-family house my parents, sister and I shared with my grandparents. Saturdays would invariably begin with those aromas, wafting up from her kitchen, through the floorboards into my bedroom, drawing me to follow those scents to meatballs from the frying pan before they could make it into the meat sauce. While she encouraged my delight as I devoured her meatballs, she would always remind me that the sauce had to last all week, beginning with the big, midday Sunday meal.

At those home-cooked Sunday gatherings, if my grandmother could see the end of the table, there weren’t enough people there. Years later, I wondered if my friends, asking if I could “come out,” were just angling for a seat at Grandma’s table. Homecooked Italian meals were a ritual celebration of the food, with those intensely flavored components, even during the weekday suppers leading up to the start of the next round the following Saturday. Since those days, I’ve come full circle, through seemingly every variation on Italian cuisine, at restaurants far and wide, drawn more and more to my need to recapture that home cooking experience, which had faded over the years.

Googling the “most popular ethnic foods in the world,” places Italian consistently in the top three, often number one. I grew up in Astoria, part of New York City’s quintessentially suburban borough of Queens, where almost all of the homeowners in my neighborhood were Italian immigrants, who spoke with thick accents. It seemed like every other word was an Italian descriptive, in the dialect of the speaker’s region of Italy. Everyone’s grandmother was the best Italian cook on the planet. Everyone’s grandfather made the best red wine each autumn. My family even ran a restaurant/cabaret for a couple of years, where my grandmother was in charge of the kitchen because she was the best Italian cook on the planet. Those were days when the meat was sautéed with lard, for the “gravy” (never called meat sauce), which was as thick as porridge to cover the “macaroni” (never called, “pasta”). Nuance was not on the menu. But plates that were not wiped clean with warm Italian bread were an unacceptable dinner outcome. “What? You’re not feeling good?”

Decades and life changes have been dramatic since those days and the culinary variations, which have challenged my tastes, have almost obliterated memories of those dinners of my youth. Almost. But a certain nostalgia has remained as if the result of something printed on my DNA.

Having grown up with that history, to my way of thinking when ethnic cooking went from “food” to “cuisine,” with the attendant escalation in the check, lines were obliterated. Nuance became ascendant. For Italian food, it became a distinction between the pizza parlor with perhaps some checkered-cloth-covered tables in the back, versus the white-linen restaurant with “gourmet cuisine” and wine poured by a “maitre d’” or even a “sommelier.” (OK, wait a minute, aren’t all those terms French?) So, meatball hero or ossobuco ala Milanese and seldom the twain shall meet? Even among those Italian restaurants, which have marketed, “just like your mamma’s or your nonna’s cooking,” my sense of taste can only get as far as: close but no ravioli.

So if that is the tagline for so many Italian restaurants, then why would you leave home to dine at some restaurant’s interpretation of mamma’s table or nonna’s? But Italians are a communal people. When entering Luigi’s Trattoria, there is no greater endorsement that you are a respected member of the community than the Luigi flourish from the man himself. “How you doin’? How’s the family? Did Lucia have the baby? Baby boy? God bless him.”

But while the evolution of Italian cuisine beyond home cooking has, for me, vaulted off into all kinds of culinary experimentation often wonderful experiments it has left behind the basic fare, moderating that portion of the menu to almost invariably ordinary: meatballs without the real tang, thinner sauces, pizza slices with the consistency of cardboard. Definitely no resemblance to my grandmother’s cooking.

Then there is Vito’s of Glen Cove

In 1992, my wife, Candy, and I moved to Glen Cove, New York, a city of 28,000 on the North Shore of Long Island. We immediately bonded with it and the area’s beautiful coastline and beaches; lovely greenspaces and nature preserves; vintage buildings, some even historic. Glen Cove is an independent city within Nassau County, just east of New York City, with its own municipal departments and police force, a bit of an outlier in the county. The longer we’ve lived on Long Island’s North Shore, the more we’ve felt blessed with an array of some of the best restaurants we have ever patronized. For years, the suburbs of New York City have been the beneficiaries of professionals abandoning the restaurateur wars in Manhattan, waged as brutally as the battles to find a place on the Broadway stage.

“Traditionally, chefs trained in New York and then stayed, with the goal of running big kitchens or opening their own places,” The New York Times reported in 2014. “But if making it in New York was viewed as the ultimate measure of success, then leaving was something of a rogue move, maybe even an admission of defeat. No more. Smaller cities are increasingly attractive for New York chefs; there, they find savvy audiences who support innovative restaurants.”

For a family called the Marcheses, the journey was a bit more circuitous than a disgruntled chef crossing the river from Manhattan. It took this family of emigres from Sicily, with no prior restaurant experience, opening a succession of restaurants, beginning in Brooklyn in 1982, before settling into my hometown, to reestablish the authenticity of “just like nonna’s cooking.” Vito’s Ristorante & Pizzeria opened in 2014 alongside the local Walgreens at a strip mall in Glen Cove. Mario and Angela, both born in Sicily, met as teenagers after their families moved to Brooklyn. They went through the strict Sicilian family courtship ritual, settled into marriage together and raised three children. To support his family, Mario began working in a local pizzeria near their home.

“The owner said he’d teach me how to make pizza, but while I learned, I had to work for no pay,” Mario says. “Even after he started paying me, I worked long hours for low pay. Finally, I decided I’m working very hard for someone else to make money. I did that until I could open my own place.”

From a very young age, their son, Vito, knew he was born to the family business.

“He stood on milk crates so he could reach the register,” Angela says.

“My parents brought their hard work ethics and family recipes with them to Brooklyn when they opened the doors to their first pizzeria in on Avenue L in Canarsie,” Vito says. “It quickly became a staple in the community. Ten years of service, two pizzerias, and three kids later, they moved the family out to Long Island where they opened their third restaurant. I learned the trade, studying my father’s every move. ”

“When Vito had gotten old enough, he wanted his own place, so he found a realtor and went looking,” Angela says. “The realtor recommended the Glen Cove location, but we could see it needed a lot of work. Vito felt good about it, however, and was very persuasive.”

Getting the venue into shape is the necessary first step. Then comes the foundational food prep before you can open for business, begin serving customers and developing a patron base. That’s where someone dedicated to recreating an Italian matriarch’s home cooking as a business model is headed off into terra incognita, with those who see the dedication to the profit motive as paramount. Angela, however, had seen the Marchese home-cooking variation on that business model succeed in previous locations, with her family honing and perfecting their approach as they went along. Nonetheless, they decided to hire a chef for Vito’s, but then she came up against the chef mentality with the one they’d chosen to run the kitchen.

“You start setting up your soups and sauces a few days before you open for business,” she explains. “I was preparing a big pot of my chicken soup, when the chef and I had a conversation that went like this:

[Chef] ‘What are you doing?’

[Angela]‘I’m making my chicken soup, according to my mother’s recipe.’

[Chef] ‘That’s not the way my restaurant is going to work.’

[Angel] ‘That’s the way my restaurant is going to work. Our chicken soup is my chicken soup.’

[Chef] ‘So, you want to cook the way you cook in your house?’

[Angela] That’s exactly how I want to cook here I’ve done it before. It works.”

“All this while I watched him dropping whole onions into his soup pot with the skins still on. You could see right through the veal cutlet, he made. ‘Portion control,’ he said “I couldn’t see someone trying to change the recipes we had. He paced around out front for a while, then he quit. At Vito’s, we have cooks, no chef.”

“Our recipes are not typical restaurant recipes, ”Vito adds. “We’ve tried very hard to create a sense of home cooking here. We’ve always wanted people to feel like family when they walk in.”

My wife, Candy, walked in one evening when I was away on an assignment. She bought a couple of slices of pizza, but she liked what she saw in the dining room, just past the pizza ovens. She asked to look at the menu, liked what she saw on it and told me about the restaurant when I returned. We’ve been regulars ever since.

The dinner menu is lengthy. I don’t ask which entrees are family recipes. You just know when that connection is made. Penne ala mamma, sautéed with garlic & crumbled sausage in spicy hot arrabbiata sauce one of my favorites has to be one of them. One of them. The melenzane rollatini: rolled breaded eggplant, stuffed with ricotta, drizzled with homemade tomato sauce and topped with mozzarella has got to be another. Gotta be. I have to believe that even items, which don’t date back to family recipes, are nonetheless created with the same sense of attention that would have been paid to the big Sunday dinner with my grandmother. Innovation becomes more tenable when you have such a solid recurring menu, and Vito’s does offer specials frequently.

“Vito and I do the recipes,” Angela says. “He reads up, he tests, he tries, and if we like the result we do it.”

Why not. Call it new entries to mamma’s menu.

Pizza fit for the Gods

Mario spends a good deal of his time around the pizza ovens. Recently I told him, I seldom order pizza. It’s not that I don’t like it, but it’s hard for me to consider pizza a dinner choice, especially when there are so many other items on the menu I’d prefer.

“Our Roman pizza,” was his terse answer. Reluctantly, I let him talk me into two slices. Everything about them was perfection: the taste of the toppings, luscious tomato and basil on one, pepperoni on the other, just enough mozzarella on both, and that airy, airy crust, which was baked perfectly to an uncharred brownness and just chewy enough. I was too repentant for my initial dismissal of pizza to ask for another, any other, with one of their specialty toppings.

The Roman pizza is one of son Vito’s crowning achievements. He became intrigued with making it, despite the effort he knew would be involved, but his commitment to it finally prevailed.

As with almost anything worth the extra effort, creating Roman style pizza is fraught with challenges. First off, the flour comes from Rome via an importer in Miami, which creates a dependence upon a long supply chain. Once you’ve got the principle ingredient there is the learning curve.

“There are days of prep, including days when you are just waiting for the dough get to where it needs to be,” Vito explains.

Then there were equipment issues. From the outset, it was apparent that the standard mixers and ovens were not going to work with the more demanding dough prep.

“Our mixers couldn’t handle it,” he says, “and our ovens couldn’t give us the desired temperatures, so we needed to add to our standard pizza-making equipment. When we finally had the Roman pizza where we wanted it to be, we handed out samples and it became popular instantly.”

I’ve written extensively about business and found a commonality of all successful enterprises is the solid foundation upon which to innovate. The innovative menu, built upon Marchese family recipes, is at its most basic foundation in the choice of the pasta side dish with each entrée. Despite the attention drawn to the main course, that little bowl on the side, with meat sauce, marinara or just plain tomato sauce atop your choice of pasta grabs its share of attention. There are other choices for that side item but I always order just tomato sauce. Just simple tomato sauce, which for me holds its own against any other, no matter how elaborate. The uniquely Vito’s version of the food pyramid has been enough to bring Candy and me back time and again, especially now that we know Vito went all the way back to the Romans, to find the foundation for his latest innovation.

After I’d gobbled down my two slices of Roman pizza, I was told it would be awhile before the next shipment of flour arrived from Italy. Well, while I wait, enjoying nonna’s style home cooking was never going to be a problem. I tell friends, go to Vito’s, close your eyes and put your finger down on the menu, then order whatever it lands upon.

I Found My Self in Poland

By Kasia Staniaszek

Thisphoto,takenattheNassau County Museum of Art,resonateddeeplywithme beforeIconsciouslyknewwhy.AstatueI’vewalkedpastmanytimesbefore, now markeditsplacesomewhereinmymind.Thismonth,Isetoutonasolotripto Poland,alsowithoutthecompleteawarenessofwhy.Atfacevalueitwasavacation duringabreakfromschool.Butbelowthesurface,atruerreasondwelled. This projectistheresultofthesehiddendimensionscomingintofocus.

Achild,blissfullyreachingouttowardstheworld,isheld,supported,androotedby themother.Throughtheshadowofthebranches,themotherisshownashavingroots ofherown.Weareaproductofourancestors.Thepossibilityofan“I”impliesthe existenceofthosewhohavecomebeforeus.Tolearnaboutmyself,Isetouttolearn aboutmyroots - mygrandparents and Poland.

Celebrationasart,celebrationasritual,celebrationasareminder. Mypaternalgrandparentsteachinguswhatitmeanstoinhabitjoy.

Amusicalsermon.Listeningtomygrandfather playpiano,whowastaughtbyhisfather.

Stolat!Cakeformymaternalgrandmother’s83rdbirthday.

Therearemanyformsofnourishment:water,sunshine,connection, wildstrawberriesfrommyfamily’sgarden.

The House at the Top of the Hill

By Kendric W. Taylor Hehadslowlyregainedhisstrengthandmentalstability overthenextfewdaysasthedestroyersteamedeast.

All Hallows Eve, 1918. It was one of those rare nights of a calm sea on the North Atlantic crossing when the torpedo hit the tanker riding off their port side. The young officer standing bridge watch had been reminiscing over that evening a little more than a year ago at a hotel roof garden in Manhattan with his young wife, and at first thought his own vessel had been attacked. The early light was split by a tower of white-red flame, cutting the tanker in two with a thunderous blast, shoving his own vessel tilting to starboard. He had glimpsed just the barest shimmer at the tanker’s waterline an instant before the fumes in its empty tanks erupted in a colossal explosion, hurling huge pieces of her superstructure skyward. At the pinnacle of this boiling mass rode a pin-wheeling sailor in his white uniform -probably the gun crew –- turning slowly over and disappearing back down into the rising cloud of thick black smoke. When it cleared, nothing remained but churning water and debris. Nothing.

His ears pulsing with the shock wave, he hit the general quarters button as he lurched toward the voice tube, at the same time as the captain burst shouting out of his sea cabin at the aft of the bridge: “Shithouse Mouse! Flank speed. Where’s the messenger? Tell the engine room . . .” the rest was drowned out, as without warning , the first torpedo slammed into their own ship, piercing the port side of the engine room, punching through the hull before exploding, shooting flames up to the mainmast. It blew a 20- ft hole into the hull, rupturing it from the engine room forward to the first boiler room. This was immediately followed by hundreds of tons of water cascading into the compartments, killing many of the engine crew, and trapping the boiler tenders in deadly steam. The ship immediately began losing way and listing noticeably to port as she settled. Already the other vessels in the New York-bound convoy were rushing past at full speed; scattering away from the danger zone like star bursts, leaving a single escort to search for survivors.

The Roof Garden

Seconds before, his watch almost over, he had been recalling that last night ashore. After six months of training, the final last part at the Naval Academy at Annapolis where he was commissioned he was going to sea for the first time, as a very young, very junior officer crossing the Atlantic on the USSSusquehanna , a converted passenger vessel carrying thousands of troops heading to the war in France.

The nightclub was packed, the women looking so fashionable in their bouffant hair styles and long evening gowns, but he knew his young wife easily outshone them. They had splurged that afternoon on her dress: baby blue silk, with tulle and lace cut just above the ankles, crowned by her glorious, mysterious, raven black hair, falling daringly long to the shoulders around the square neck of the gown the way she knew he liked it. All around them it seemed were tables of young people, many of the men in uniform, themselves heading to France. Yet, even amidst the excitement of departure, it was a war the men were going to, and if they outwardly chose to ignore this, those they were leaving behind knew. Anna Maria, his wife certainly did; he saw that in her eyes just a hint of concern, if not fear maybe, of their future – or at least trepidation over what it held in store.

“It’s ok,” he said, rubbing the back of her hand. ‘Everything is going to be fine. Ships are going across every day, and nothing is happening. We’re too fast for the Uboats.”

“I know, I know, but I just worry.”

“Well don’t. Please? This is our night to dance and be jolly. We can talk about what happens later.”

“You mean later tonight? In the room?” She gave him a sideways glance.

“No, silly, I mean after the war,” he responded with a blush, even after nearly three years of marriage. “Really , Mrs. Hearn.

“What we are going to do after,” he continued. “You know, the song the band just played: ‘the Yanks are coming, it’s all over, over there ’”

“That’s not exactly how the song goes, Edmund. “It’s ‘when’ it’s over, over there,’ I think it says. Or did Mr. Cohan say it was ok for you to change it?”

“Ah, you know what I mean. When we’re together again.”

“That sounds like another song. But OK, start with you,” she said.

“Well, you know, I had always thought of being an engineer, and I studied it at Dartmouth, but now I really think I want to build boats, and sail them.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. But this is after our honeymoon in Italy, yes? You promised me.”

“I did, and we will. And you?”

“What I have always wanted – to paint. You can sail and I can paint the sea.”

“Ah, like Turner?”

“No, no. He’s too murky and vague. You’d like him though, it’s said he used to strap himself to the mast to better observe the waves. I’m more interested in landscapes and portraits, like Mary Cassatt. You know, we’ve talked of her.”

“So we’ll go to Paris to study.”

“Oh yes, Edmund, Paris. We must have Paris. You can scout it out for us when you have leave in France. Find a place we might live later on. But, wait. Do they build boats in Paris?”

“It’s on a river.”

“Of course. How silly of me, again. And I will have ample time to paint?”

“Of course, and I will have ample time to kiss you, and ”

“Oh you think so, do you?

“With your permission, of course,” blushing again.

“Of course.”

“And we’ll have a big family, as we discussed,” he said, looking at her and smiling.

“Oh yes, of sailors.”

“And poets,” he added, “don’t forget Grandfather.”

“Yes. You love my granddad, don’t you?”

“Oh yes. What a bully life he’s had.”

“And all our children will go to Harvard.”

“Hey! What?”

TheShip

Back on the bridge of his ship, USSBrandywineCreek , amid the moan of the stricken ship’s siren, the muffled boom of exploding depth charges and the blasting of the two forward 6-inch guns firing away, the captain was fighting to save his ship. Reports were coming in from damage control parties, he was talking with the engine room, and all the while issuing orders to try and stabilize a vessel already losing power from its twin steam engines. The increasing list to port was causing storage lockers around them to burst open, hurling their contents to the deck, while charts and navigational gear were swept off the plotting tables. The signal flag locker groaned in its housing, with pennants sliding out of their cubbyholes, as Hearn felt the deck tilting even more beneath his feet, as he grabbed the binnacle to steady himself. In the huge cargo holds below, he knew the cars and trucks were straining relentlessly against their lashings, gravity pulling them dangerously close to breaking loose and crashing into the bulkheads.

The Captain shouted in from the port wing: “Mr. Hearn. Get down aft and report conditions there. Make sure ladders and ropes are overside, boats and rafts are ready to be put off.” With a quick “aye aye, sir,” he was through the hatchway and skinning down the ladder to the aft deck, just as the few surviving black gang shot out of the engine room hatch, shoved by the enormous blast of air rushing up from the flooding spaces. He imagined he could hear the screams of those trapped in the boiler room as the steam hit them.

Trying to shut out the chaos, he went over his options: fortunately, the huge ship was comparatively empty, carrying maybe about a thousand souls, instead of more than double that on the Europe-bound passages. These were odds and sods, as he heard the Royal Navy refer to them. This trip, the Brandywine’s manifest included returning government and military officials, minor dignitaries, along with some walking wounded. There were even a sizeable number of recovering cases from the influenza epidemic spreading through the trenches, the men too debilitated by deadly virus for further active service.

He had his own reason to be aboard – there had been no mail from Anna Maria now for months. He was proud of the record he had made during his months of sea time: his fitness reports were outstanding; he had been promoted from Ensign to LT JG, and he was considered a good seaman. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was inordinately proud of the gold stripes and a half on his sleeves, tarnished green from the sea air. Most of this time had been aboard the Susquehanna , a German ship of the Hamburg American Line. A 501-ft long, 10,058-ton passenger ship taken over by the Allies at the beginning of the war, it was overhauled and reconditioned, spiffed up and dazzle-painted in zebra stripes for camouflage. Based in Brest, they were kept busy back and forth across the Atlantic, hauling thousands of troops from America to France.

But then, that odd and unexpected thing had happened her letters had stopped just stopped. Months now had passed, and he had heard nothing. She had left their flat in Greenwich Village several months after he had enlisted and gone back home to her parents in the Hudson Valley. Then, later, she moved with her grandfather back down to Hoboken, his ship’s home port, in the spring of ’18. The hope was that she would be able to see her husband on one of the Susquehanna’s turnarounds. There was even talk of her volunteering for one of the groups that served hot coffee, donuts and cigarettes pier-side to the troops. That had never happened, of course –Susquehanna began docking at Newport News instead of Hoboken. And, even if his wife could have gotten down to Virginia, it was a short turnaround: passengers disembarked, cargo off-loaded, stores resupplied, coal barges alongside refilling bunkers, then new troops taken aboard and berthed, lines cast off, a long blast of the horn, and it was back out to sea.

All during that time, there were always her letters, until there weren’t. Her last letter had been so full of happiness. She wrote about the house that he had never seen. More of a cottage she said, perfect for the two of them. It has blue shutters, she wrote, which she particularly loved, so bright against the whiteness of the house itself. The windows let in so much light for her to paint, she wrote, that she hated to close them in the evening. She included a small gem of a watercolor of the house she had done for him. She had written him at least once and sometimes twice a day in all that time. That’s why it was so bedeviling – the letters just stopped. After waiting out an agonizing period to account for any natural delay in the over-stressed trans-Atlantic mail service during which he still sent her increasingly concerned letters, followed by cablegrams -- he finally went to the Red Cross for help. No answers from them either. At his wit’s end, he had asked his commanding officer for stateside leave.

“I can’t spare you,” his captain had replied sympathetically. “And even if it were possible, I can’t grant you compassionate leave just because you haven’t gotten mail. It happens all the time. You’re not the only one. Everyone in the AEF is looking for mail.” Struggling to keep the pain from his face, he saluted stiffly and turned to leave:

“Ah, hell, the captain grumbled disgustedly, calling him back. “You’re a good man Hearn. The goddamn war’s almost over anyway. If you can get somebody to take your place, I’ll approve. But you gotta get me an experienced officer. Someone good.”

It took an unbelievable stroke of luck mixed with minimum persuasion and a maximum bribe of a married college chum with a French girlfriend in Brest to swap posts –- Hearn to go aboard their sister ship, the USSBrandywineCreek , bound for New York. In two days, he was heading back across the Atlantic.

TheSinking

He had no time now for anything but the perilous situation facing him. Events were moving so swiftly that only the endless hours of life boat drills on his old ship “the drowning drill,” they called it -- along with the highly trained crew in his division here on the Brandywine were letting them keep pace for the moment. But he could see how quickly the situation was deteriorating. Outside of another torpedo strike, he figured, his only enemy now was time – how fast he could get the passengers lined up at their assigned stations by the lifeboats – get netting, ladders and ropes over the sides, while making sure the elongated donut-shaped rafts hanging off the superstructure were ready for jettisoning.

Even though the crews were quickly ready, standing by the winches, boats prepared for lowering, passengers nervously standing in rows, wearing their kapok life vests or cork life rings, it was difficult keeping their balance on the slanting deck. The vessel was now noticeably slowing, the engines probably dead, the fantail almost awash. Finally, he heard the executive officer shouting up through his megaphone to the bridge: “Captain, all passengers assembled and ready to debark.”

Almost instantly, a forward lookout called: “torpedo 200 yards off the port beam.” The captain instantly threw the helm over to port, but the torpedo struck fairly at the bulkhead separating the coal bunker and mess deck, blowing open a hole nearly 20 feet wide. Clouds of black coal dust came shooting out, followed by a mass of coal, mixed with shattered pieces of wood from the lifeboats. It was the final blow; within minutes a breathless messenger had burst onto the bridge: “Captain, chief says there’s a hole in the mess deck’s plating big enough to drive a trolley car through!”

The emergency power cut off as the word came up to the bridge: “Comm’s dead, Captain.” This was followed shortly by the second officer shouting up from the main deck: “She’s settling fast, Skipper.” There was a long minute of silence on the bridge, then the order came quietly: “Pass the word: Abandon ship. Lower forward. Get those boats away on starboard. Rafts away.”

Down on the aft deck, it was already too late. If the first rule for old blue water sailors was always one hand for you - one hand for the ship, then the rule for one that’s sinking would almost certainly be – put your goddamn life vest on. And he hadn’t.

The noise above and below decks was deafening: a cataclysmic roar of shrieking steam, the insane rumble and crash as the bow rose, and the heavy equipment broke loose and thundered back toward the stern; and beneath them, the terrifying grinding as the huge plates holding the ship together began shifting. The six-inch bow guns still fired, only now further and further depressed downward as the bow continued to rise into the air.

He had been moving pretty fast across the rear deck toward the starboard vest locker, when that second torpedo came hissing in, trailing a wake of bubbles. The blast threw him off his feet, slamming him into the bulkhead, knocking the wind out of him. In the brief period it took for him to regain his senses, he was already sliding inexorably down toward the fantail and the sea.

He had lingered a few fatal moments too long at his job, he thought ruefully – what a good seaman before he hit the water. He had only time for a few strokes away from the sinking ship before exhaustion and his heavy bridge coat began pulling him under. He felt the sea closing around him as he raised his hand above the surface. A last thought flashed through his mind: “Oh God, now I’ll never know why ”

He had considered everything, every reason why the letters had stopped. Was there someone else? His heart said no, and his mind agreed: neither of them would do that, she was too intelligent, too strong, and, they both were too much and too early in their love for that to happen. He had already almost lost her once over unfounded jealously. He would not do that again.

The Red Cross had screwed up somehow? There were millions of Doughboys over in France, and thousands still arriving every day, and it seemed like everyone was always bitching. The YMCA wasn’t much help; too many Holy Joes out looking to lasso souls for Jesus. But it would get straightened out. It would be OK. Nothing could touch her.

His strength gone, too weak to struggle, he slid below the surface, his hand still outstretched when it was gripped from above by another hand, and he was laboriously hauled into a circling life boat, where he slumped into unconsciousness.

The Lake

He awoke curled across the bottom boards of a huge whaleboat, shivering, still wrapped in his soaking bridge coat. Too exhausted to assist in the rescue of those few afloat around them, his mind struggled to overcome the trauma of his plunge into the sea, still too stunned to process what had just happened to him, his arm sore from the stress of being pulled out. He felt his mind wandering again: he was glad there was no ice this far south in the Atlantic, too early in the fall probably. Anyway, ice always made him think of her.

It was cold that first time, out on the ice. He was over from school in New Hampshire, supplementing his summer job at the Club to help out with the Annual Winter College Week, to earn some Christmas cash. Walking by the frozen lake, he saw a girl weaving in and out amongst the couples on the ice, all graceful swoops and swirls, coal black hair sailing wildly along behind her. In seconds he was in the Ski Room, lacing up a pair of rentals, telling Ski John, the proprietor, he’d be back later, and in minutes was launching himself onto the ice with his short choppy hockey strides. There she was out in the middle, very boyish and up-to-date in a skating costume he remembered even now: thick woolen waistcoat, long woolen scarves wrapped around her neck and waist; floppy woolen knickers, thick woolen stockings up to her knees, and – unforgettably – all topped with a gay, hand-knitted Tam- o’Shanter over her luxuriant raven hair. (How many sheep went into that outfit, he wondered ungallantly?)

Normally shy around girls, he was in his element on the ice on skates he could show off, and he did, slicing in front of her and turning to face her as he glided along backwards, a skill developed as a defenseman on the hockey team at Lawrenceville.

She showed no surprise, and by the second turn he had made her laugh. That was it: they were friends. A couple of turns on the ice later, she seemed to slip. (How such an agile skater could slip, he wondered, again). He reached out his hand to steady her, and somehow they forgot to let go. Soon her glove was gone and her bare hand was in his. He could feel the touch of her flesh shock through his body, making him grateful for the scattered flakes of snow that were cooling a face that he knew was turning bright red.

As they moved over the ice together, the amateur band playing on the dock, a bonfire on the shore throwing its warm glare through lightly falling snow, Christmas lights on the club winking at them across the white lawn in the early darkness, he was sharply aware of the moment -- more and more sure that this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

The chill had finally reached them, and they steered over to a bench near the fire and sat for a moment to warm themselves. He asked her about herself, and she answered modestly: she was 18, a girl from a small Adirondack village, in her last year of high school there, and she was sure she wanted to be a painter. She was English/Irish, with an elegant touch of Italian from a much loved granddad and an Irish grandmother, whose legendary beauty was reflected in her own young face. Did he like Gilbert & Sullivan, she asked. He thought they were bully, he replied, and she said she had been one of the Three Maids From School, in the Mikado, in her school production, and was amazed to discover they were standing outside the ski house, looking at each other. Almost from the beginning, he had been working up to this minute, hoping for the courage to ask if he might see her again, and now time had brought the moment to him:

“Could we consider this a date,” he gulped in a voice even deeper than he intended to fake, “so I could be bold enough to ask you out again?”

“Oh fiddlesticks,” she smiled at him. “You’re not that shy, I’m sure. Besides, I was going to ask you,” she giggled, the same small smile moving her lips in a way that he knew he must memorize.

“After all, it is the 20th century. We could ride the jitney into town to the Inn,” she continued, “if you’d like to take me for a hot toddy to warm us after all this skating. I think I hear the bells on the horses coming up the hill.”

He had never had a girl suggest anything like this before, and was stunned and thrilled. Was ever a young man so lost to a smile and blue-green eyes? he thought. And to one of these modern women he had heard so much about? Here in 1912?

“Yup,” was all he could manage.

Later, sitting by the great stone fireplace at the Inn sipping toddies with extra cinnamon, he saw in those eyes the sunlit Mediterranean, in that black hair a vein of the deepest anthracite, in that voice, a sound as soft and moving as Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The warming fire was now causing them to shed hats and scarves and layers of wool, and in her case – to his joy what was emerging, could only be described as a magnificent figure. (Not that it had any bearing on his burgeoning courtship –- of course not). Overloaded with metaphors, giddy with the pure luck of the day, and sharing a second toddy, he contented himself by just looking at her. He kept hearing the song the band had played that afternoon:

“Letmecallyousweetheart. I’minlovewithyou. Letmehearyouwhisper,thatyoulovemetoo.”

His imagination wove in and out with the imaginary music; observing that face if she were a princess in some land of silence, she could rule her divinely happy people just by her expressions alone. At the same time, he determined to be ever vigilant against incurring one particular glance the one hinting at disappointment vowing never to let her down, lest he be the recipient of it. He would spend his time thinking of ways to say or do something for her that no one else would hear or know, so that when those blue-green eyes triggered that tiniest beginning of a smile toward him, it would be his alone. It was like a lady’s favor from knighthood days, he thought, a boon he both sought and feared simultaneously.

“What about you,” she asked.

“Oh,” startled back from silly love songs, he brushed through his family tree – not dismissively, only anxious to get back to her. He was 20, from a nice family, fairly welloff with a pretty much English heritage dating back to Alfred the Great, his grandmother said. He was from New Jersey, gone to school there, and now was at college at Dartmouth. That was it for him – now back to her -- he wanted to know everything.

Very well, she nodded, if you insist: her granddad came from a family of fireworks makers (Pirotechnicos). He had been a college professor, teaching art history in Florence. He had fought with Garibaldi in his youth, and later in life, possibly looking for new horizons, renounced his religion, became a Freemason, and emigrated to America. Unfortunately, there was no time to learn English, so he could find no work. Remembering his youth around Caporetto, he recalled the lakes there; how the men would cut the ice in the winters, store it, and then sell it to the mountain villages in the hot summers. He made it his American story: he worked and saved, finally going into business for himself, cutting those huge blocks of ice out of the frozen Adirondack lakes, hauling them in long flat sledges drawn by enormous farm horses to barns he had located around the area. There the blocks were stacked high into the rafters and heavily sprinkled with sawdust to prevent melting. In the spring they were re-split, washed down, and heaved onto smaller horse-drawn ice wagons that traversed the neighborhoods through the hot summer days. At each stop, the ice was chipped into smaller blocks, hoisted by black iron tongs onto leather mats or burlap sacks on the iceman’s broad shoulders, and taken to the back porches there to be installed in the family’s icebox. The village children loved the icemen, dancing along the dusty streets behind the carts through the neighborhoods, scooping the ice chips from the tailgate into their mouths by the handful, just for the pure cold pleasure of it.

It was a good business that had grown into a good living. He had married the daughter of John Dillon, a prominent local farmer, the first of his clan over from Ireland, who had prospered mightily, resulting for the granddaughter in a family amalgam of an Italian agnostic and an Anglo/Irish Protestant, that had somehow resulted in a line of Episcopalians, dotted throughout with various Catholic in-laws thrown into the pot. Nowadays the old revolutionary generally kept to himself, writing poetry (“I generally prefer poetry to people, except for you Anna Maria.”).

Growing up, her grandfather enthralled her with the glories of Florence, the art, the sculpture, its bridges, palazzos, the famous bronze doors of the Baptistery, along with the overwhelming glory and history of Rome, not to mention the orange groves of Tuscany. But it was not music or sculpture that lured her but his knowledge and love of art; the splash and swirl of color, the soft intrusion of light through an open window, or rising from below into the frame. She particularly loved Vermeer, but it was Mary Cassatt she wanted to follow.

As Hearn continued to spend most of his time with her, he saw a girl that was highly intelligent, kind, considerate, wise and gentle in all things; one who had grown up in a classical house, with music, good books and art, and with a thirst for more of the same. Oddly enough, the tales her Irish grandmother had spun of going back to Italy with her handsome revolutionary for their honeymoon had created a longing for her own honeymoon there, whenever that might be.

One afternoon they had a picnic on the side of a hill, the Adirondacks rising behind them. She held up an orange she was peeling, “I want to go there, where they grow these, in Tuscany, where my grandmother saw them on her honeymoon,” she related. “I want to see the Sistine Chapel in Rome, I want to see Shelley’s house at the foot of the Spanish Steps, and I want to be there with my lifelong love, as she was.”

“You will,” he said, (He could deny her nothing).

In the months to come, they managed to see each other as often as possible. They never had a fight but one, and that escalated into disaster. Well into their courtship, right after his graduation from college, he had been away with some classmates for a celebratory weekend, and she was visited by a former boyfriend, who came to the house to pay his respects to her parents, and who was invited to dinner. She had mentioned this to him later in passing, and he made the fool mistake of being jealous, compounded by the fact that there was no reason for it, and he knew it. He left her vowing to make his absence forever. Naturally, as these things go, the old boyfriend took immediate advantage, making himself indispensable in providing slyly sympathetic support.

This lasted for several months – an eternity in a lost lover’s life, her absence itching and gnawing at him relentlessly, while the thought of her with someone else tortured him. When he could stand it no longer, he caught her one afternoon on a lovely spring day after art class. They circled the town’s park slowly, while he inwardly groveled and groaned, wringing himself out trying to explain how really sorry he was to have caused this, how they were so destined to be together, and how he could see no future for him without her.

“You hurt me deeply, you know,” she said, “not trusting me. How could you think that?”

“I know, I know,” was all he could reply, ”I hate myself worse than you ever could.”

“I’ve been seeing him,” she said, “did you know?”

He hadn’t, and the words bit into him from that snake of jealously.

“He’s asked me to marry him.”

He struggled to find the right words, ones that would not push her even further away, determined at least not to beg: “I love you with all my heart; I always will. It’s not too late; I promise I will never cause you to doubt me, ever again.”

“I don’t know. I need to think.”

He slumped away, his certain impending doom settling around his shoulders heavy and cold like a slab of her grandfather’s ice. A few blocks away an eon of time he heard footsteps, getting louder, coming up behind him. He turned to face her, resigned, waiting for the ice cold guillotine blade to drop,

“All right. I’ll come back,” she said, her beautiful face solemn.

Oh God the realization crashed in on him like a Beethoven coda prayers answered, wishes realized, dreams come true; those few amazing words she spoke making it the newest, happiest moment of his life! He grabbed her with the simple joy of it, their elbows interlocking, feet tripping each over the other, the two of them tumbling giggling to the grass in their excitement. A little girl passing on the sidewalk with her mother ran over, clapping her tiny hands at the sight.

“We’re going to get married,” he shouted at the child, all three of them now laughing happily.

“We’re getting married.”

TheVillage

Now, sitting there in the deserted wardroom of the destroyer that had rescued him, waiting for dawn, watching the cup of coffee left by the steward congeal in the cold, he thought back over the short, happy time they’d actually had as a married couple. He had remembered what he had told that little girl on the sidewalk, and when the right moment arrived, they wasted no time – straight up to Greenwich where there was no waiting period, and married at a lovely ramshackle hotel on the Boston Post Road. They spent their first night there as a legal couple, and the next morning took the train down to Manhattan and their first home – a small room and kitchenette in Greenwich Village, not far from Washington Square.

He had gotten work over in Brooklyn through one of her Irish cousins, at the New York Shipyard, as an apprentice shipwright. And his new wife – imagine! – began as a substitute teacher at the local public school. It didn’t pay much, but at least gave her the money for art lessons. If it was cramped, sometimes hardscrabble, they didn’t notice it, and the occasional checks from their families allowed small treats. They were together, learning their chosen trades, and more importantly, still exploring the depth of their love. He crossed the Brooklyn Bridge twice a day, lunch box in hand, while she scurried around the Lower East Side, teaching, learning, painting; both happier than they had ever been. Soon they would have enough to move to Paris, they hoped.

Her grandfather had treated them to the New York Armory Show in 1913. To her, it was amazing: there they were in that vast building on Lexington Avenue, all the avant-garde artists from the continent, all those she had heard and read about, daydreamed about: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse, Duchamp, Dufy, Picasso, Renoir, Seurat – it was overwhelming. Later, she even studied briefly with two of them – Americans and fellow Villagers Childe Hassam, and George Bellows. Birthday and holiday checks meant occasional trips uptown, to the museums, seats in the upper reaches of the Metropolitan Opera at Broadway and 30th street; they even got to see Al Jolson at the Winter Garden, where he shut down the show that night, and sat on the runway almost in front of them, singing favorites to the audience.

That event in Sarajevo in June 1914 was just another day in their happy life, passing with little notice, until the end of August, when Europe dissolved into a pit of mass murder. But even then, that was far away and little changed even at the shipyard. Then, on April 6, 1917, the US declared war and everything changed. As the hostilities drew the United States in closer, he knew he would enlist when the time came, but he was afraid to tell her. He was sure she had guessed, and he had even gone for advice to her grandfather, who could only tell him that he must do what he thought was right. He told her that night and spent the following day trying to convince her why he must go. She finally – against her deepest wishes acquiesced. She knew how much this meant to him, and even somehow admired him for it -- as she did in most things – but she knew too, that was not enough. It was no victory for either of them; she knew, all it did was to make something almost perfect less so. Nor was it made better for him that she never gave him that look of disappointment. He joined the Navy the following day.

The Hill

He had slowly regained his strength and mental stability over the next few days as the destroyer steamed east. The Navy yards in Hoboken were in their usual congested turmoil as they arrived, and as soon as possible, he was hurrying down the ship’s gangway to the processing unit ashore. He managed to get through that fairly quickly - the ship’s laundry having made his uniform slightly presentable and wearing a borrowed garrison cap, he was on his way out the gate to the taxi stand. It was a short drive up the hill, to a silent house; he had known it immediately by the blue shutters. Dismissing the taxi, he walked up the front path. He saw the shutters were closed. The bell didn’t ring, and no one responded to his repeated knocking. At the front door, he could peer through the glass and could see mail piled in the foyer. It took him two houses on the block before someone could tell him what had happened. At the first, the man had a slight accent: “I’m sorry sailor; I don’t know anything about them. We just moved here, um, Friday, a week ago. With a final “Sorry,” the man moved back inside the closing door.

He felt suddenly warm despite the fall weather, and reached up and moved his cap back on his head, running his hand across his brow. He felt a quiver in the hand.

A neighbor from across the street had been watching from his lawn and crossed over toward him. He knew.

“You’re asking about the family that lived there.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, the Hearns,” he moved down the path toward the man. “My wife, Anna Maria Hearn, I haven’t heard from her in months.”

They met on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry . . . is it . . . Lieutenant?” glancing at the stripes on his sleeves: “They’re all gone,” he said.

“You mean they moved? Do you know where?”

“They’re dead, Lieutenant,” the man said quickly, shaking his head slowly.

“Anna Maria?” He felt the life squeezing out of him as if a giant clamp were crushing him.

“The whole family,” the man repeated. “Everyone. The Spanish Flu. I don’t know much else to tell you. I’m really sorry,” he repeated, seeing his face: “It was in all the papers -- about the epidemic in Europe. We’re so close to the port, you know, one of the seamen or somebody brought it in and it spread like mad. That whole household came down with it all at once it seemed, and it did for them all. The local authorities here didn’t know how to cope – all over town, they were taking people out- dead and dying. . Your folks here, no one in the neighborhood ever found out where the bodies were taken. They mostly kept to themselves anyway; she was a painter, I think. When the Red Cross came around later asking questions, no one knew what to tell them. Their man said they had originally gotten the wrong address. They said they’d come back and check again, but they never did – too busy I guess, with so many sick and dying. You’re the only one been here since. We never knew anything about any husband in the Navy. Your folks there were never really here long enough to get to know. Nice, but like I said, they kind of kept to themselves.”

In that instant, his mind closed on the fact that he had touched the pinnacle of his being; this girl and the love she brought would remain true and untouched for them both from where she left it.

For a moment he was back with the old Brandywine : the waters closing over him, the hand reaching. He wished…

“What? Did you say something” the neighbor asked.

“Nothing.”

“Are you all right? This must be a terrible shock. Listen, come across the street, my wife can make some coffee . . . or a brandy?

“What? No. I have to get back to my ship,” he lied, not knowing what else to say, only wanting to get away from there. “Thank you. I have to go.”

He turned and walked down the street, the brown leaves falling in the touch of breeze; down the hill toward the port, to the ship he said he was going to, a ship that didn’t exist anymore, now shattered on the bottom of the Atlantic; toward a future now empty and eternal as the old Brandy herself. He tried to think of what he had to do now; who to contact. Who was left? What was he to do? What was left to him? He had to find a way.

He thought of that honeymoon he had promised her, the one she would never have. For some odd reason something he had read in college came to mind, words by Goethe, about Italy:

“Do you know the land where the lemon-trees bloom And oranges glow from the leaves’ dark gloom And a soft wind wafts from a cloudless sky, You must know that land? It is there, I long to go with you, my beloved.”