‘Hundreds of people a day walked by and admired his work’
Sand sculptures
Dear Diary:
I saw an older man and his wife every summer at the lighthouse on Fire Island: he, shirtless and wearing Bermuda shorts, she in a floppy pink straw hat.
The man made two or three sand sculptures of classically designed, voluptuous women, with seaweed for hair and shells for fingernails. Hundreds of people a day walked by and admired his work.
The couple had been coming to the beach since the 1960s. We said a few words and talked more and more as the years passed.
They were both around 80. They arrived in the morning and left at 2pm. The late afternoon waves would wipe out the man’s creations, and he would be back the next week with new ones.
Summer would fade and it would be eight to nine months before we returned. If we did that, he would make his art there.
We had grown up in Brooklyn, decades apart. We talked about our lives, our health, the pains and regrets of growing older. I told them about our son, who had died in a car accident. They were silent and dejected.
On my last day there one summer, they were collecting their belongings, the man’s wife waved and he shrugged. They walked away, hand in hand.
The following summer there was no trace of them. What became of them was a mystery. People walked back and forth where he sat as the ocean washed in and out.
– Joseph P. Griffith
Gun Hill Rd
Dear Diary:
My flight from Milan arrived at Kennedy Airport amid heavy rain. I struggled into the mass of dripping humanity outside the arrivals hall.
“I’m here,” said the text message from my daughter Karin. “You will find me.”
I saw her old Toyota on the sidewalk, near a service truck whose driver was struggling to remove a flat tire from her car. The rusted bolts finally gave way with the help of a few taxi drivers and a sledgehammer.
Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the temporary spare part was not good.
“Where do you need to go?” someone asked.
“New London,” I said.
It was ten o’clock on a Sunday evening and the consensus was that we were doomed.
“Do you think you can make it to the Bronx?” someone asked. “There’s a tire repair going on all night on Gun Hill Road.”
“Yes,” said a taxi driver, “I know that place.”
A quick search online turned up the song, and a sleepy voice replied, “Get here before I take my break at midnight.”
We headed to the Gun Hill Road exit off Route I-95 and then west to a dimly lit storefront with a jack on the sidewalk out front. A soul food restaurant had opened next door.
“I’m hungry,” Karin said as she headed for the restaurant. I ran after her and soon found her, with her purple hair, chatting with the cashier, a young woman with bright blue hair.
The food was great and the new band was reasonably priced. Having once lived nearby on Decatur Avenue, I felt like I had come home again.
— Stu Reininger
(Queens, 3 hours)
Dear Diary:
I woke up then
the city
stopped
to talk
Stepped
from my bed
Other un-
dressed men
near windows
listened
to enjoy
nothing
something
Light I
illuminated
a cigarette
and listened
— Rolli Anderson
Lorimerstraat
Dear Diary:
I lived in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early 2000s and had never ridden the L train past my Lorimer Street stop.
But one night I was out late with colleagues in Manhattan and had a little too much to drink. To get home, I took the L at Eighth Avenue, where I sat as the train idled as it waited to depart.
About an hour later I was woken by the train conductor at the last stop, Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway. He asked what my intended stop was. When I said Lorimer, he asked me to get up and follow him.
I walked him to the front of the train, where he told me to sit across from his booth. He left the door open and we spent the next hour talking about life, work and sports as the train headed back to Manhattan.
When we arrived in Lorimer, I got out, rummaged home to my apartment and went straight to sleep.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that the conductor’s conversation with me was intended to keep me awake so that I wouldn’t miss my stop a second time.
Thank you, Mr. MTA Conductor.
–Arthur Spiguel
Fruit stand
Dear Diary:
I was walking towards Grand Central on a warm August day when I passed a fruit stand.
An anguished man in a suit tried to buy one apple from the seller, who in turn tried to persuade the man to buy more.
“How about this beautiful ripe banana?”
The man in the suit refused.
The seller was emphatic.
“But sir,” he said, “you need your potassium!”
–Clara Ruiz