A St. Augustine Street Man

He knew she was looking at him. He didn't even look up, just kept scratching his leg – well, it itched: probably some insect bite of some kind. St. Augustine was warm for an April day – mid 80s, the voice said from an open car window; no wonder the insects were out. The usual crowds were out on St. George Street eating ice cream french fries, drinking everything from water in bottles,to soda in cups and booze in plastic wineglasses. The pizza and hamburger joints were busy as well as all the fancier places. He didn't understand all the talk about the bad economy since it seemed just as many people were spending the same money as in other years. But then, his personal economy was always bad, and he also spent the same money as in other years, the same income from street-begging (he liked 'pan-handling' better) limited by the time in-between the cops on the bikes' telling him to 'move it'. He always smiled at that: 'move it' meaning move to the next store-front? the next street? the next county? The next state? The cops never told him, never went beyond 'move it'.
He wandered south on the street to the Cathedral Basilica, and joined the wedding party inside. It was crowded , and he always was given a lot of personal space – maybe something to do with the lack of washing up or showering for a week now – pure laziness on his part: he could have gone out to the beach and used the showers there – just didn't.
Back out on the street, he saw this guy leaning against a beautiful car – his photo being taken by a pretty lady with one of those digital cameras, while another pretty lady watched. Some guys have all the luck, he thought. In truth, the guy was better looking than him, and probably smelled better.
He loved all the sights in this historic area of a city that's been around since 1565. He watched a group of nuns, 'sisters' he used to call them in school, the Dominican Order, he heard one of them telling those same two pretty ladies. The 'sisters' were young and cute, and friendly, nothing like the teachers at the parochial school when he was a kid. Where had he been a kid? Growing up where? And when? He couldn't remember any more. Seems like he had thoughts at times of wives and kids, but wasn't able to get any detail in his mind – no specific memories. He told himself a man should be aware of a history, a previous time and place, experiences, but every attempt drew only vague and hazy responses.
He'd spent part of the afternoon outside the Castillo de San Marcos fort – cost $7 to get inside now – and saw the volunteers in hot woolly uniforms marching and then heard the cannon they shot as part of the entertainment you got for your $7. When it was free, there were no cannon shots or people in uniforms. (Other than the cops who are telling him, again, 'move it').
The plaza and gazebo in front of the Cathedral Basilica was where he 'moved-it' to, his home for the night.

A LAWN MEMORY

It feels like it's going to rain. The wind (sorry Chamber of Commerce - it is not a breeze - it's a wind) has picked up - against me, of course - as I ride my bike home coming from the Gulf Beaches Library. It was sunny going there - even also against the wind - (YES, it turns around whenever I head in the opposite direction, not just here, also in Salt Lake, there a hot & dusty wind). But, as usual, I take a long time at the library - books to sample, just the smell of a library is great - and I'm out just in time to hit an afternoon thunderstorm coming in.

Riding my bike is, and always has been, a 'fantasy' experience. It seems I've been riding a bike every day of my life. As a kid on a tricycle, I played 'bus' - pulling small leaves from hedges - used as money. Escaping my school-yard friends by getting on my bike in my pre and teen years, also as a bus going to the Fresh Meadow Terminal, or the Field Terminal heading home, or being a 'motorcycle' on the dirt frontage road of Horace Harding Blvd or in Kissena Park.

And even delivering groceries on the strange-looking bike with the big basket over the small front wheel - a basket I also rode my little sister Kathy in - after lunch, and before heading back to Harding Food Center for another delivery to 'ElecChester', the Electrical Union's Housing

Co-Op of about 10 buildings, each 6 stories tall with 6 apts - hundreds of apartments, or to the other big housing project - Pomonok (it's an Indian - 'Native-American' - word, a tribe that I guess centuries ago lived there), a NYC Housing project for low- and low-middle-income families, also probably over 400 apartments in the city 'housing project' as it was called.

Both of these housing developments were built on what was previously the Pomonok Gulf Course - a great place for sleigh riding, playing 'soldier' and 'making out' with Mary Lou Simione (that's another story). The west side of the golf course was Kissena Blvd, where Queens College was, and a number of un-occupied huge old 'haunted' mansions ideal for playing all kinds of games (even some without Mary Lou!!). The mansions area later became part of an expanded Queens College campus, where my Dad in 1956 wanted me to go, but I wasn't smart enough - you needed above a 96% cumulative high school grade to get in - it was free. So I got a music scholarship to Brigham Young University. Which brings me back to my bike ride.

As I'm riding home, thinking I'm a teen-ager (ignoring, obviously, that reflection in the windows of cars I pass), I smell one of life's most enjoyable scents along with ocean and mountain pines:

the smell of fresh-cut grass - a newly mowed lawn, and I'm down memory lane to when I was a teenager, 14 years old, and I mowed the lawn of the new - still being-built - Queens Ward - the summer of 1953. I rode my bike from home in Flushing out to Little Neck, east out Long Island, singing 'No Other Love', 'Doggie In The Window', 'P.S. I Love You', 'Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes', Istanbul', 'Rags To Riches', among so many others, all of which I still remember all the words to, (and so probably do my kids).


In those days, the members of a ward (parish/local congrgation) paid for and essentially built with alot of their own labor, their own buildings. (And, that building still stands today, 57 years later). I cut the lawn, dug ditches, trenches, and so did my Dad. (For some reason I don't remember my brother Bob there) (this was also where Dad was the care-taker of the ward-house 1956-1957 to earn the money to keep Bob on his Windsor Canada LDS mission).



So the lawn scent brings these memories, and then since church and violin are interwined, reminded me of playing my violin for President George Albert Smith at October Stake Conference at the Manhattan Ward/Stake house in 1950, for which I got a thankyou note from the stake president George H Mortimer, for the violin and a talk my mother made me give ("If everybody said 'No' like you would if I, your Mom, let you, what kind of meeting would it be??") SHORT!!

Then the rain hit, my memory lane trip ended, and I pushed against the wind to get home.

(You know, you'd think with all that church activity, HE would have turned the wind to help me, and brought the sun out... wait.. melanoma... the rain was better...).

........

TIME WILL TELL

My Dad was told by my Mom: "If you want to marry me, you need to be baptized a Mormon". (He was a non-religious Jew). On January 2nd, 1938, a month before they were married, Dad was. In Mom's history to Diana, she writes: "At his baptism, he was asked how he liked his new-found religion, his answer was 'Time Will Tell'." As Dad was extremely quiet (I can recall perhaps only 3 or 4 times in my life a conversation with him beyond a few short sentences), a man of few words, who rarely ever expressed his opinions or observations, what his answer ultimately was, is unknown to me. Mom, of course, more than compensated for Dad's lack of verbiage. Except apparently at his job, where he worked over 30 years with the same guys (unheard of today) and I had witnessed on visits there, he was 'conversant', his life was lived with little, if any, social interaction. And friends of mine, even in the house, never mind for a meal, was nonexistent. I, certainly over the years, have become my 'Mom's son', although I have also exhibited during my parenting years, that same exclusionary life-style, e.g. when I moved to Long Beach in 1966, I deliberately lived down the street from the school-yard - that's where my sons were to play with their friends. And in Utah I dreaded parties, sleepovers, 'dates' visiting, Home Teachers, Visiting Teachers, etc.

Somewhere over the years, becoming 'too talkative', 'too opinionated', 'too curious' re: people's reason's for doing what they do, and asking them!, has been my personal challenge. And I have failed miserably. I could partially fault others, as when I have tried to be 'quieter', I'm asked: "What's wrong?", "Something's wrong", "Why are you acting like this?", etc. But that's nonsense to even partially fault others - I'm responsible for myself - Exaltation is an individual event, as is so many others in our experience.

I will become my father's son. I will be quiet. I will be non-opinionated. I will, essentially, avoid personal interaction with others; I will 'cocoon' myself (yes, even more). I will find even increased joy and pleasure (if that's possible)' in music and reading, and day dreaming as I gaze out my back-yard over the Gulf of Mexico. I will somehow avoid family household dissension and arguments in my goal of isolation - 'my home is my cave' - I am a recluse - leave me be.

Will others be upset, mad at me, take any of this as a personal affront? I hope not. Will I be reminded of responsibilities and obligations to others? If so, I may perhaps respond: "My life is not an apology - it is my life".

Many decisions in my 70+ years of life - all of which, without exception, would be made exactly the same way - (Inane thought - life is not 'replayed') - have caused those I love and care about, pain, sadness, and disappointment - I hope also joy and happiness and well-being- but I'm addressing the problems, both deliberate and inadvertent, I've caused thru my exercise of selfishness, self-centeredness, persuasion, control, theatrics and manipulation, raising questions to myself as to who I am, what do I want, how to achieve, and thus retreating within myself, with minimal, only as 'absolutely necessary', interaction external to myself.

"Time Will Tell". Thanks Dad.

.....