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T. was very proud of the new shoes he had bought at Thom McCann's.
For one thing, he was attracted to their sportiness -- the way they projected a certain devil-may-care attitude towards things. So they could be worn with jeans, or with casual slacks such as the kind he taught in during the year. They even went with shorts, since these shoes were light enough in hue and sufficiently informal. (He had utter contempt for those older men -- executive types mainly -- who wore their polished deep mahogany Florsheims and black socks with such attire.)
But as well -- and this was the real kicker for him -- he could play tennis in them up at Lake George! For the rubber soles, white and thicker than the normal boat shoe, were completely smooth and flat on the bottom; thus they would be acceptable for use on the clay courts there. In fact (and this is the aspect that really convinced him that the shoes were 'fated' for him), the shoe leather was exactly the rusty red hue of the clay on the courts.
As a matter of fact, they would even look good with a suit -- provided the suit was light enough in hue. The one suit he had at present was navy blue, an obvious problem. But perhaps its blunt staidness might be relieved a bit by the relative informality of the shoes. He could always hope...
All in all, he had spent relatively little for a pair of shoes that were enormously versatile.
As soon as he had purchased the shoes, T. left for his trip 'south' (as he put it to himself.) He was not merely using the word in its geographical sense; he was also half-humorously invoking the Yankee notion of The Old South sociologically -- as a relatively conservative place stubbornly resisting meaningful and necessary change.
In other words, he was driving down from Massachusetts to visit his mother in New Jersey. It was his annual combination Mother's Day/Birthday visit. (In fact, his mother would turn 80 in a few days.)
He arrived in time for Happy Hour (by definition ten minutes after he got there on any given trip) consisting of a glass of wine and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. Then dinner (the usual pot roast, boiled potatoes, and lima beans, all washed down with cranberry juice.) In all of this the relationship with his mother was easy and bantering; but T. knew from past experience that it probably would not last through the weekend.
As they ate, he reminded her of their plans for the next day. They would drive up into the country after lunch, take a peek at Birchwood and visit with Louise Lippi, and then have dinner at McEwan's on Culver's Lake on the way back. His mother did not object to this beyond murmuring that "it seems like a lot of driving". But he soothed her by saying that it would be "a trip down memory lane."
(Birchwood had been their family cottage up near the Delaware. It'd been purchased when he was 10 -- the perfect age to appreciate four acres of woods while toting an air rifle; and to appreciate as well the river once they got access through a neighbor's yard. The family went up there every weekend from April until October, and T. remembered how much he felt sorry for their friends at home who didn't have such a retreat. T.'s mother sold the cottage right after his father died a dozen or so years ago.)
T. did the dishes. Then he and his mother sat in the living room -- she watching her evening programs, he reading (while taking occasional sneak peeks at the TV.)
His mother did make one unfortunate remark that evening. As they were sitting together in the living room, she said, "I hope you're not planning on wearing those shoes on our outing tomorrow!" T. grunted but made no further response.
On the way up to the country the next afternoon they stopped at a liquor store in order for his mother to get some more wine. She chose two half gallons of chablis. As T. put the bottles on the counter, he remarked casually to the salesperson, "One for the lady and one for me -- and that's only for this afternoon!" This embarrassed his mother, and she quietly admonished him. But he only laughed at her: "I'm afraid we've become real drinkers, Mom!"
When they were in the car again, T.'s mother said, "There's one more stop we need to make." His ears perked up: she had said it with that determined tone in her voice which T. from long experience knew spelled possible trouble up ahead. She directed him to stop in front of a cut-rate shoe store. "Come in here with me, T-die." That had something of an order about it; and she had used the diminutive form of his name from childhood. She closed the door and without another word strode with determination (the operative word here) into the store. T. felt like he had no choice but to follow her.
She quickly found what she had apparently been looking for: a pair of dark brown wingtips. Even in his modest shoe size they were huge, formidable -- dominating. She sat down with him so that he could try them on. All this time he was saying to himself: "This is absurd! Nothing is further from my taste or the persona I want to project than these shoes! But, what the hell, it's her birthday so I'll humor the old lady until I can get out of this gracefully." So he put her off with various improvised excuses: the shoes were "too large" or "too small" or just plain "uncomfortable". She found other styles of shoes for him to try, but those were just as forbidding as the wingtips had been. And so he continued to take evasive action.
After quite a bit of this sort of avoidance, she expressed frustration: "Well, you have to choose something, T-die -- we don't have all day!" T. felt a part of him harden up inside. He was about to do something he had never really done before in his life: oppose her. And so he said with a firmness that surprised himself: "No, Mom, we don't 'have to' do anything!" [He used the plural form so as to defuse his rebellion, but the effect was nearly as blunt.] "None of these shoes appeal to me and I cannot see myself wearing them in a million years. If you buy them, you'd only be wasting your money!"
Once she saw that it was hopeless, T.'s mother retreated into an acoustical shell which T. recognized from his childhood: she would ignore him and hum ominously to herself.
They got back in the car. T. thought to himself: "This will certainly be a sentimental journey; it just won't be the one that I thought it would be!"
T.'s plan was to drive up to the country using the old state highway routes they had used when he was a boy. Yes, it would take longer; but it would be fun, after 25 years, to note which emporia and eating places were still around, and in general to see once again the old sights, such as the boats docked on Lake Hopatcong (the highway took an abrupt turn to the right there -- one could not speed on such a road) and the ducks on Culver's Lake. So he began on Route 46, and resisted the siren song to turn off onto Interstate 80.
After about fifteen minutes of silence, T.'s mother suddenly said out of the blue: "Did you know what Louise told me when I called her yesterday? That Ed Doherty bought Birchwood -- and quite some time ago."
(T. recalled that Ed Doherty had been a student in his brother's class at their high school. T. and his brother held Ed in high regard because he had once bowled a perfect (300) game. He was apparently a very bright student, for at the end of his senior year he was ranked 10th in his class; and the top 10 students graduated with honors.
But then T. remembered that something 'unfortunate' (a kind word in this context; he was more apt to term it 'terrible') happened: the mother of the student who was ranked 11th met with the principal. She was a powerful member of the community and so, as incredible as it may seem, she persuaded him to switch the two boys' rankings. Ed had no advocate for his cause (he came from a foster home) and so the change stuck. As a result, Ed boycotted his high school graduation.)
T. asked his mother, "Do you remember what he did when his diploma arrived in the mail? He trampled upon it in a fit of rage!"
"I don't blame him!" T. suspected that she said this not so much out of a sympathy for Ed as because of a dislike of the woman who had demanded the change.
T. had already pointed out a few familiar sights as well as some changes to his mother when he suddenly realized that they had entered onto an unfamiliar highway. Instead of the interesting congestedness of the two-lane road, they were now traveling on a four-lane road through some countryside of no interest whatsoever. Apparently in the intervening years they had built this 'cutoff' to relieve congestion on the state highway. In doing this they had reassigned the number of the highway to this cutoff -- hence T.'s innocent mistake.
This unfamiliar blandness went on for a few miles, at which point they were suddenly funneled back onto the old familiar highway. This sort of thing happened one or two more times. It was like being periodically thrown into a time warp -- and then, after a bit, as suddenly yanked out of it again.
T. vowed to himself that he would not be tricked in this way going back: he would keep himself alert enough to detect any changes from the old route. (Unfortunately, most of the driving would be after dinner, so it would probably be dark by then.)
They finally reached the broad welcoming entrance to the bridge across the Delaware to Pennsylvania. There were two lanes in each direction and modern tollbooths on the Pennsylvania side. This contrasted absolutely with the old bridge which T. only remembered vaguely (they had crossed it once on the way up to his grandmother's when he was little): that bridge had been one single lane where men swinging lanterns took the tolls and directed the traffic at the same time.
But T. and his mother were not crossing the river today, for they were going to see Louise Lippi and she lived on the New Jersey side. So T. veered off onto River Road. He knew that about 100 feet down the road on the left was a quaint little gas station/variety store. The remnant of an earlier age, it sat there right on the corner to serve the traffic going to the old bridge down at the bottom of the woods. The store (which included a tiny lending library) had once been jointly owned and operated by a little hunchback woman and her brother. Of course when the new bridge was built in the early 1950s, their little gas station/store became marginalized. But T.'s parents had still liked to visit the place to get gas and other basic necessities. T. thought that he may as well get gas there while he was about it.
It was all gone. Not just abandoned but totally and utterly gone without a trace of anything which spoke about its once-existence (there did not even seem to be any oil stains on the ground.) T. was shocked at the senselessness of the disappearance. After all, nothing else had been built on that site. And as far as he knew, the little place had not constituted the remotest threat to anyone. So why obliterate something for no reason at all?
They drove up the hill past the Minisink church: that at least looked the same, if a bit more dilapidated. They continued on down the hill. "I wonder how the cat-house is doing?” T. asked his mother humorously. His mother knew what he was talking about: a gracious older house on the river side almost hidden by a riot of wildflowers in bloom. Their family had given it the fanciful name after they saw cats walking on the roof -- a frequent occurrence.
The house was gone, as surely as the little gas station/store was gone. Only tall grass and some sapling trees remained in its stead. Gone, too, was the next nearly as gracious older house -- and the one after that as well. T. held his breath as they rounded a curve, fearing the worst. Sure enough, the entire farm belonging to the Wiener family, from the house to the large barn and silo as well as the fences for the animals -- all this too was gone with no trace of there having been a working farm there.
And Mrs. Ford's all-stone house, with its inviting front porch snuggled down beside the road (they had kept their canoe down the sloping woods behind her house)? Gone as well and without the trace of so much as one stone.
It was only, T. noted, on the river side of the road that this decimation had occurred; the (much more prosaic and newer) houses on the other side had all been spared. There seemed to him to be something horrifyingly biblical about it all: not just choosing an arbitrary set of infants to murder in their beds, but rather the first-born -- that is, the most desirable. Just so these structures: whatever terrible force had done this for whatever reasons, it had swept away the oldest, the most gracious, the most poetic, the most valuable, the most beloved of the buildings.
At least the Lippie's house and Birchwood were on the 'saved' side of the road.
Henry and Louise Lippi were all year long residents who had lived next door to Birchwood. They and their dog Blackie had been the unofficial 'watchdogs' of the cottage during the winter months. Now Henry was gone, but Louise, a hearty large-boned older woman, still lived up there. She welcomed T. and his mother into her home and almost immediately was serving them tea and cookies.
T.'s mother began the conversation by asking Louise about Ed Doherty. Louise replied, "Well, he is a very private person. He lives by himself and pretty much keeps to himself. I never see anyone else over there. At first I tried to make neighborly overtures to him, but he didn't respond. I would almost call him a recluse."
T.'s mother told Louise what had happened to Ed in high school. "Well, that may account for his strange behavior."
T. was still in a state of shock because of what he had seen. He asked Louise what had happened to the houses on the road. "Was it some kind of horrible force of nature?" She shook her head bitterly. "Worse: a force of Man. At least nature is arbitrary and uncalculating; whereas the Government is deliberate and selective." Louise shared the suspicion of Big Government with those who lived in the country.
When T. looked puzzled, she continued, "It was the Tocks Island Dam Project. Tocks Island is a bit upstream from the Water Gap. After the '55 flood, the authorities decided they needed some flood control." T. remembered seeing barrels in the tops of trees from that flood. A cottage they had almost bought was washed away. "They proposed building a dam to create a 37-mile-long and 140-feet-deep lake for recreation."
(The thought of such a lake almost made T. sick. He and his brother had spent countless summer afternoons on the river, and they came to know it -- at least a select portion of it -- as well as anyone. In their canoe they explored the various islands nearby as well as the shoreline all the way up to Port Jervis. They pulled the canoe up the rapids and then shot those rapids going back down. They came to love the river, which had a character all its own. By contrast, a lake such as Louise described would have no identity whatsoever; it would be a vapid mass of water, is all.)
"So they began buying up property for pennies on the dollar. If anyone refused to sell, their property was condemned and they were forced to move. In all, I believe they acquired about 72,000 acres."
T. had a sudden insight. "But there seems to be an irony here: they destroyed all the properties they were supposedly doing this to save from the next flood!"
"Yes. Places like Dingman's Ferry down the road are now essentially ghost towns."
"It reminds me of that awful saying that came out of the Vietnam War: 'We had to destroy the village in order to save it.'"
"Well," said Louise, "in that light there are other ironies. For one thing, this project was being undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers."
"So what is the status of this monstrosity?"
"Here's the heartbreaker: it was never built. Some people whose properties were unfairly seized filed lawsuits against the government. But I suspect the real reason it stopped was because they ran out of funding. It was all taken by the Vietnam War."
"The final irony."
"Yes."
Louise then asked T. what sort of work he did. T. told her that he was a math teacher at a couple of colleges near Boston. "I'm what is called an adjunct -- which means that I am only part-time with less pay. But I enjoy the work very much."
T.'s mother had been silent throughout the discussion of the dam project. But now she came alive for her favorite subject.
"I've tried to tell T. that he needs to get a real job, but he won't listen to me. Certainly he'll never be able to get anything better if he continues to dress the way he does!"
"But weren't you a teacher yourself? It was good enough for you..."
"Well, I think he can do better."
"Let your son find his own way, Helen. What matters is whether he's happy or not. He seems to be quite content."
T.'s mother was sensing she'd lost this argument. "Well, he shouldn't be!"
Soon after this 'discussion', T. went for a walk by himself into the back of the Lippis' property. Everything was wet after some rain the previous night. He had the idea that he wanted to try and find the treehouse his father had built for his brother and him when they were kids. He walked parallel to the stone wall which divided the two properties. Unlike the Birchwood side which was heavily wooded, the Lippis' side had few mature trees amongst a lot of undergrowth. Presently T. saw some buildings through the mist.
There were perhaps 10 or 12 abandoned chicken coops in the backmost part of the property. T. now recalled his parents talking about the Lippis and their plan, long before Birchwood was built, of raising chickens -- a plan which came to naught when, in one short period of time, all of the chickens died. Henry and Louise had to abandon their plans to build a lovely house well back on their property (T. could see parts of a concrete foundation peeking out from weeds and undergrowth.) He realized that Louise was living in the building that was to have been their garage.
T. had reached a point well back on the property where he sensed he was about even with the treehouse. He climbed over the stone wall and entered onto the property that once belonged to his family. Twenty-five years before this moment, he and his brother had known every square inch of land anywhere near the treehouse; they had kept it clear and well raked.
(It had been a marvelous structure as T. recalled it. One climbed with a knotted rope up to the crotch of the tree, and then entered the house from underneath via a trap door. The floor inside was covered with asphalt tile; there were screens on both windows, and hinged glass windows opened inward. A table and two chairs folded down, and a lantern hung from the ceiling. A deck of cards sat on a shelf. Yes it had been marvelous!
(But something else about the treehouse lingered uneasily with T. and he could not shake it off. Before this one had been built, T. had built his own near the cottage. However, it was very rickety and unfortunately he had built it on a dead branch -- something for which his brother mocked him mercilessly. Finally their father went to a lumber company and bought cheaply some old wood and other things left over from the '55 flood; he even had some materials made especially for him at his workplace. Then he and T.'s brother went back into the woods in order to, as his father put it, "build a real treehouse.”
(Of course T. would come to love the new treehouse, and he spent a lot of time there with his brother. But he was never able to completely rid himself of the slight feeling of resentment toward his father and brother.)
The memory of the treehouse filled T. with mixed emotions; but these only whetted his appetite to find it. However, as soon as he stepped away from the wall, he found himself in the middle of an unrecognizable jungle. There had been so much growth over the past quarter-century -- a growth which seemed to have filled up every available empty ground space -- that T. could not get his bearings beyond gross references to the stone wall. The fact that everything was wet just emphasized the fecundity of the growth. He wandered about in this sopping wilderness for several minutes, hoping to find at least the oak tree if not the treehouse itself. Finally though, soaked and disenchanted, he abandoned the search without finding anything he wanted.
T. began to clamber back over the stone wall. As he stepped up he noticed that his shoes were mottled with water stains -- something he knew would probably set his mother off again. He was angry with himself for not having bought mink oil and rubbed it into the shoes before he had left for the trip. He ambled slowly back down toward the Lippis' house. Perhaps Louise could be a mediator, as she had been before. He could always hope.
(1 August 2008)
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