"Gene Turns Tucson"

ARIZONA by Layla Edwards

Sunday June 3 2007 “Gene Turns Tucson”

Gene was at the Fort Lowell swimming pool 3 days ago, because Marty is visiting from New York and Marty is a swimmer. Marty was still swimming when we arrived, Gene was dressed and on the deck. I do not know if he went in the water, but in this great heat I am sure he must have. I think Gene just dawdles around in the water, Marty is the great swimmer. I think our wonderful outside open-year-round swim pools are the reason Marty was willing to buy the Tucson house. Gene has no money, Marty bought it. Gene and Marty have been a couple for 30 years, the whole time Gene lived in New York City. Marty is a New Yorker, but Gene grew up in South Carolina, went to college in Miami, met all the New Yorkers there and decided “New York is where I want to live,” and moved to NYC and never left. Till his friend Natalie, who he had known from New York, settled in Tucson (she has a career here) and invited Gene out to stay with her.

Gene and Marty had separate apartments. Gene had a loft in Chelsea for 30 years, but finally the landlord had figured out how to get it away from him. Gene had been paying very low rent, and when rents skyrocketed in Manhattan, the landlord wanted it back bad, and eventually succeeded. Gene put all his stuff in storage and accepted Natalie’s invitation. Since it seems to me Gene could have moved in with Marty while he was looking for a new place, perhaps Gene wanted a change, a chance to get out of the City for a while. Plus he had that hip problem, I think the idea was to have the operation out here, convalesce from the operation out here, and then return to NYC. Gene did a lot of work for Natalie while he stayed with her. He put in 100 rose bushes, he is a genius gardener, and he bought chickens, raised the chickens and they had fresh eggs and brought them to all their neighbors.

Natalie had a fancy sports car and let Gene drive it. Natalie took Gene to the Fort Lowell pool his first summer, which is how we met Gene. He had just arrived and was getting out of the car, when we arrived and were getting out of the truck, and we fell into conversation. And Gene said how he is a New Yorker visiting his friend Natalie, and we said how we moved here from New York City. It’s possible we saw Gene and Natalie at the Fort Lowell Pool one more time but I am not sure. Instead at the end of the summer the city swim pools raised their prices astronomically, and we joined the Racquet Club instead, it was so much cheaper and open 24/7.

We had been there a few months when Gene and Natalie showed up there, they joined too. Bill got into a long conversation with Gene in the pool, and found out he was an artist, that he had been a cartoonist back in New York. Bill really liked Gene, they became friends. I became curious about Gene and wanted to get closer to him too when Bill told me all about him, what a nice guy he is, and how his cartoons are on the internet, and soon I got close to Gene too. He and Natalie came every afternoon, Bill and I came every afternoon, and the club has a Jacuzzi where people just sit around and schmooze.

I guess eventually Gene got his own car, because Natalie works, she has a consulting business, she tells people how to get grants, and she is successful at it. Once Gene had his own car, he didn’t have to leave when Natalie left, and he spent long afternoons at the club. This is probably when I spent more time with him. Yes I must have seen Gene one more time at Fort Lowell before I saw him all the time at club, because I have distinct memory of Marty swimming first in the Fort Lowell Pool, and then seeing him swim at the club pool. I think Marty came out for that Christmas, and they stayed in a very fancy elegant resort hotel in central Tucson. How Gene found out about it I don’t know, I only found out about it from Gene. Marty was here for 10 days and because he is a swimmer, Gene took Marty to swim at the club every day, and then took him to all the towns around Tucson. It’s possible they were thinking about buying a house out here even then. But I am not sure why, since the plan was after Gene had his hip operation and convalesced from it, he would return to New York.

Marty came out a few times, but not that many, I guess he had big job in New York. We had already been seeing Gene every day at club for two years when I heard from Sally “Gene had applied for the State health insurance to pay for the operation because he has no money, and they turned him down because he has a car,” and Sally reported “Gene was so upset telling her this, he was in tears.” Then next I heard from Sally, “Gene is making the decision now, whether to go back to NYC, or stay in Tucson, all his stuff is in storage there, he would have to go back and get it.” Then next I bumped into Natalie somewhere, maybe in Trader Joe’s, and she told me Gene and Marty bought a house, the most beautiful house in the world, in the most beautiful area in the world, not that far from Fort Lowell Pool, on River Road and Craycroft.

Then we stopped seeing Gene at the club, and Bill said “we haven’t seen Gene in long time,” and I said “you know how much is involved in buying all the stuff for the house, and Gene has such good taste, he is probably doing all that shopping now.” But a whole year went by until we bumped into him at Fort Lowell Pool. It was summer again. Gene told us all about the house. It had been a miracle of good fortune. The son of a very wealthy Tucson businessman had built this dream house for his new bride. But somehow the marriage didn’t work out, she went to Oregon and he sold it. But he wanted to sell it to someone who loved it as much as he did, and of course that fits Gene to a T. So he sold it for a bargain rate, and Marty had the money and bought it. Marty went back to New York and Gene planted the 600 bushes, flowers, trees, etc, and did all the work. It is a whole acre, and way out in the country, because as Gene said to Bill last year, “it is just me and the snakes and bobcats and coyotes out here.”

Perhaps Gene had the house for a whole year at the point we had that long chat in Fort Lowell Pool about how lonely Gene is. I recognized that 4 year turning point, when your New York City friends stop calling you and each time you call them they are too busy to talk, you realize it is all over. And at the same time, for some bizarre reason, you lose all the friends you made when you first moved to Tucson. Gene said Natalie refuses to speak to him.

Perhaps Gene had been in Tucson 3 full years then, and it was the following summer, when he was just leaving Fort Lowell as we were arriving, that he said he followed my suggestion, just watch old movies on TV day and night, and he still has no friends, and “Marty hasn’t come out for a whole year and that gets old.” And he has started to write and has written 400 pages, and he has nice conversations with the ladies at Walgreen’s check out counter. And that is when I saw Gene’s face and eyes had completely cleared up. Instead of too-much NYC-socializing-confusion in front of his face and eyes, there was just crystal clarity and peace.

And I knew he liked it the way it was, even tho it was hard. Because when I said “everyone at the club loves you, you can go back there,” he didn’t want to. And when I invited him to the Barnes and Noble writers meetings, he didn’t bite. In New York City, Gene’s life, like mine, had been a whole life on the telephone.

And this is what it had taken to clear Gene’s mind-- as it has been the same thing it had taken, to clear my mind. My friends in NYC had also stopped calling, when I called them they were busy. My Tucson friends had either moved away or stopped talking to me. Bill was in art school all day, and then returned for Open Studio at night to draw from the live model. It was long empty days in the house for me too, and it was what healed me too. By the time it was over, I too had peace and a crystal clear mind. I just had to be willing to go thru all the boredom, or more explicitly, find things on TV to take away my boredom, since no one can tolerate boredom.

Which is why I had suggested TV to Gene, it had worked for me.

I guess Marty finally did come out to Tucson to visit, because few days ago, when we saw Gene next, he said “Marty is in the pool swimming.” And I said “Bill will be so happy to see you, after we saw you last time, he thought you’d be there all the time, and when we went swimming he said ‘Gene will be there, good! I will have someone to talk to.’” I didn’t spend much time on deck talking to Gene, I really wanted to get into that deep cold water, summer heat had hit. But when Bill emerged from men’s dressing room I called out and said “Gene is here,” and I saw them talk for 20 minutes before Bill got into pool, and Gene and Marty left to go home.

And Bill told me last night Gene said “I don’t miss New York at all, and I am never going back.” And a rattlesnake was sunning himself on his deck and Gene had to chase it off. And I said “Gene must have turned totally Tucson if he doesn’t miss New York at all and said he is never going back.” And Bill said “yes, Gene has turned Tucson, and his mind is all cleared up now.” And I said “that is what Tucson did for me too.”

And then we talked about the rattlesnake. Bill told me Gene killed it, he didn’t want it on his deck. I was upset about the snake. Bill said, “I told Gene he did the right thing, I didn’t want him to feel bad, and if you talk to him don’t mention it, I don’t want him to feel bad he killed the snake.” “I won’t mention it” I said.

Bill said “Gene told me, ‘I am bored a lot, I rent movies to watch, but I don’t miss New York at all and I am never going back.’” And that is the story of how Gene and I turned Tucson.

"The Lower East Side"

GREEN BOOK by Layla Edwards

October 11 2006 Wednesday Tucson AZ

It is a beautiful morning. Early morning still. I don’t see any birds yet. Maybe they are sleeping late, they don’t want to leave their warm nest for this early morning chill. Lulu is asleep too, so is Bill. Yesterday Bill woke up early when I did for first time. He said “Lulu is the only one who is still sleeping.” She never arises before 8 AM.


It is Columbus Day which was a no-school holiday when I was kid. The idea of school begins off as great adventure, but somewhere along the line it changes, to just get it over. You are always waiting for time to elapse so you can have your freedom. When school finally ends you start a job. You’ve been in harness since kindergarten, have not known any other life.


And then maybe 10 years later or whatever suddenly you find yourself with no job. All your time is your own. The days belong to you. It is a big transition. I once heard a girl in a coffee shop, when it first happened to her, say to her friend “What am I supposed to do now? Go to a museum?”


I entered the dreamy life of my neighborhood. I would go to the Italian bread store in the morning, where the beautiful Italian girl with the big hair presided over it, and she would tell me about Priscilla Presley. And once I was in the Jewish bakery instead. And I turned around and she was waiting on line. And she turned to all the customers there and said “hahaha I caught you.”


I would market in all the little stores and chit-chat with the owner and get to know him. The Italian sausage store, the Polish sausage store, the Italian bread store, the Jewish bakery, the fish store, and the dairy and cheese store. I began to chit-chat with my neighbors. I got to know the whole world who doesn’t go to work. I joined the meandering rhythms of my neighborhood. Talking to the postman as he stood in the hallway putting all the letters in the boxes. I got to know my neighborhood: the shopkeepers and the women who market. I dropped out of the professional class.


I began to realize that everyone who had stayed behind in my neighborhood, an immigrant neighborhood, were immigrants who had not bettered themselves. They all had family on Long Island and Brooklyn, and some of the owners of the stores lived there. But for the ones who were born in their tenement apartments and stayed there and lived there their whole life, the Lower East Side was home, they had never lived anywhere else. Either they had no ambition or they didn’t want to leave their mother, or both. Many had been born in the building and their mother lived in the apartment across the air shaft. The ones who never married, or for whom marriage didn’t work, still lived with their mothers. I began to see their childhood in the neighborhood. There was a big step down to the feather pillow store, and to my surprise I discovered my neighbor Vee (Vincenza) when she had been toddler, would try to make that big step.


My neighbor Carmine was the oldest one. I heard from my neighbor Sal (Salvador) Carmine used to play stickball on 7th street, but when the boys became interested in girls the stickball stopped. Sal was still younger and serious about his stickball, but Carmine and his friends stopped playing seriously. Sal said Carmine and his friends belonged to an older crowd, they were called “the old crowd,” and on Sunday mornings they all went to the saloon by the Precinct on 5th Street, they would call it "going to church.”


I was starting to discover where I was. Baby Vee had played on the big step on First Avenue down to the feather man’s store. Carmine had played stickball on 7th Street and spent Sundays in the bar by the Precinct with his friends. Dottie and Mike had been the first ones to rent an apartment in my building after the landlord, a doctor, renovated it. It was hard to find tenants then in the ’40s, and the landlord had offered them any apt. they wanted and offered to repaint the walls any color they wanted. Before landlord renovated and put in the parquet floors and French doors and in-door bathrooms, our building had had toilet-down-the-hall. “We were first building on First Avenue with in-door bathrooms” Dottie told me.


Vee was born in apartment 4A. When she and Bob married they moved to Apt 3A. After their wedding they went on the bus upstate for their honeymoon but Vee got nauseous on the bus so they turned around and came home. Vee showed me her autograph album for 8th Grade. She only got as far as 8A. On the pages the girls had written “If all the boys lived across the sea, what a good swimmer Vee would be.”


Dottie’s Polish priest had refused to marry her to Mike, so Dottie said “if you don’t marry me I will just live in sin with Mike,” so the priest did it.


Carmine referred to where he grew up as the 4th Ward. When Jimmy Durante came to visit Carmine, Carmine said “Jimmy Durante grew up in 4th Ward too.” When that famous movie star who was in “Laura” walked into the pizza shop on corner of 4th Street, where Carmine hung out all day-- this is when Carmine and I were already friends but I wasn’t there when it happened-- Carmine recognized his old friend from the 4th Ward and the famous movie star recognized Carmine. “Carmine, what are you doing here” he said. And Carmine said “let me treat you to anything you want.” Dana Andrews, that is the name of the famous move star.


When I asked Carmine “who is your favorite movie star?” he gave the question a lot of thought. And finally he said-- I forget his name now but it was familiar to me, I watched him recently in “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” They rarely play the movies on my cable tv old-movie station which feature Carmine’s favorite movie star. (I just remembered, John Garfield.)


I was learning where I was. My relationship to time changed. I was living in a stop-time place. And I got caught on a thread of history. In some ways, as the world moved forward in time, I moved backwards in time. For me personally, the world had begun in 1949 in upper Manhattan, that was the world I opened my eyes to, the old A & P on Broadway.


But this world anteceded that. I realized Carmine’s slang was the slang of the '30s. He didn’t say “I’m broke” he said “I’m busted.” He would offer me a “slug” from the bottle of whiskey I bought him in the morning. When he got back from the “saloon” I made him fried egg sandwich and coffee. He called our French neighbor Catherine, "Frenchie."


It all came to a moment of finality, of apotheosis for me, about a year before I left my old neighborhood. I was on the other side of Houston Street, the real Lower East Side, it must have been around Pesach. I went to the matzo factory and bought a box of matzos there. And then for some reason I wandered into a wine store there. I saw all the wine bottles in their dark bins and knew this store had not changed one iota since the 1930s. It was April 1991 and I was in a store from the 1930s. I had reached back as far as it could go.


That was the Spring I was buying Carmine his underwear. He had sent me to the real Lower East Side to the store where he used to shop at for his sox and shorts. Maybe that is why I was wandering around there, buying the matzo at the matzo factory and walking into that old wine store, I had bought Carmine his sox and shorts and undershirts.


A lady with red hair, I forget her name now, such a nice lady, who lived with her brother on 4th Street, said “you are buying Carmine his underwear now, I used to do that for him.” That was another thing about my neighborhood, how many sisters and brothers lived together. They had grown up in that apartment, and when their parents went to Heaven, sister and brother continued to live there. That lovely red haired woman and her brother were the generation of my parents, but my friend John and his sister Theresa and their brother Rick, were my generation.


I think when I walked into that old wine store around the corner from Orchard Street and saw the world of the 1930s before my eyes, I knew then my excursion back into history had completed itself. 6 months later I moved into my new Tucson apartment. I had a lot of catching up to do, I was 60 years behind the times. I had lived in the modern world in the '50s and the '60s, but the modern world of the early '90s was very different, and I had spent the previous twenty years working my way back to the 1930s.


I spent my first 6 months in Tucson catching up with the modern world, and then opened up A Course In Miracles and the glorious future opened up before me. And I moved into the future and never looked back. I love this new modern world I have found in Tucson, but my feet are in it very shallowly. My mind is in the stars and the glorious future. O what a voyage I have been on!

"Adventure at Access TV"

GREEN BOOK by Layla Edwards

Adventure at Access TV
Saturday April 8th 2006

I went down and did the show for Alice yesterday.

Bill and I left at 10:30 AM to go to Office Depot to pick up the booklets I had made of 4 of my stories, then we went to pool so I could swim a little, and then we arrived at Access TV studio in downtown Tucson. After I picked up the booklets and paid for them, I spent most of the trip on way to pool wondering why each one had cost 10 dollars. But my Higher Self kept saying, “forget about the money, you are going to be on tv, you want to be in happy frame of mind.” And eventually I was able to put it out of my mind.



When we arrived at pool Bill said “it is already 11:30 and Alice’s thing begins at noon, you can only swim for five minutes.” I said “but Bill Alice told Ruthie it will take her an hour to set up the lights, that is why it is fine for Ruthie to arrive during her lunch hour.” But Bill insisted we arrive on time, so I shortened my swim. I had found an email from Ruthie just before we got up to leave, saying “I am very sorry Anne but I won’t be able to make it after all, it just feels too rushed to me, so you read the story, you will do fine.”



I took short swim, showered, put on dress, and we got in car to drive over there. There was a lot of construction on Stone Road, which was the cross street for downtown. But we both tried to be patient as traffic was at standstill.


We parked in Access TV studio parking lot. And Bill said he was going to the Main Library, he didn’t want to come up, so we arranged he would ask his Higher Self when I was finished, and we would meet in coffee shop across the street.



Alice came down with a woman to help her bring her paintings upstairs just as Bill and I were saying goodbye. And I figured that woman was another one of the artists Alice was going to do a half hour show on. Alice looked beautiful, I’ve never seen her look so beautiful. Her hair was long and lovely with one side swept back with jeweled barrette. She had a long skirt made of all different patchwork designs, silk, but figure hugging. So it looked like one of those bustle skirts women wore at turn of century, except for the outstanding color and design. And a kind of black velvet jacket for top. She looked like a knock-out.




I went upstairs to Studio A. It is a huge room with many cameras high up. Alice was there, the woman artist I had seen downstairs, a man and a woman. Alice introduced me to the two women. I had thought both the women were artists going to do their shows for Alice, but the younger one, Deborah, turned out to be a cameraman too. So was the young man. Just the woman (Dorfay) was an artist waiting to do her show. The young woman (Deborah) was wearing a dress as if she was in a renaissance fair. The woman artist (Dorfay) was wearing tailored clothes and pretty necklace. I didn’t catch the name of the young man.




They were all involved in setting up Dorfay’s paintings and arranging them so the light would be right on them, and then setting up all the other lights. I sat in a chair in the corner by myself. Dorfay was talking to everyone. They all seemed to recognize her. Finally she came over to me and began talking to me. She said “I had that operation, I had had so many operations, and after that last one a few months ago, Carl came to take care of me. It was thought I was going to die and he would live, but it turned out the reverse, 3 days later he died. And that was several months ago. I am fine, but I am not going to have any more operations. But my memory isn’t as good because I am so surprised to find that I am alive and he is not.”




She said all this to explain why there was something she could not remember. I hadn’t planned to get involved in socializing before the show, I wanted to keep my focus, but I actually understood what she was telling me. Because back in NYC my friend Marjorie had told me, “I never planned to live past 30, so now I don’t know what to do with my life.” I told Dorfay what my friend Marjorie said, and she was into it. She was happy someone understood her own experience.




Then she went back to help them light the paintings, and she was happy talking about her paintings with them. And I began to realize this was going to take a very long time. She and I had now been there a whole hour and nothing had progressed as far as I could see. And I figured she would do her show first. I had waited an hour, and was now looking at waiting two more hours. And I put my face in my hands. It was so uncomfortable sitting there. I don’t mind empty time if I can lounge myself and communicate with my Higher Self. But to just sit uncomfortably on a chair, and have to go downstairs and outside each time I wanted a cigarette, and the wait seemed long, especially since there was no end in sight.




I was starting to get unhappy. Dorfay walked over when I had my face in my hands, and said “I know just how you feel.” I said “is this thing ever going to happen,” and she said, “I don’t know.” I was so surprised and touched she identified and understood that I said “I love you.” I realized she had come over to pierce thru my unhappiness and I made huge effort to become happy.




After that I eavesdropped when she talked to the others. It seems Carl was her husband, and had been State’s top Prosecuting Attorney, then Chief Justice of Arizona Supreme Court. He had many interesting cases, and the young man wanted to ask her about them. He said “tell me about Angela Davis, I’ve heard her name but I never knew what she did.” And Dorfay said “that was a very interesting time” and “Angela Davis had been framed.” “It was all a frame” she said. And she said how Angela Davis’ brother had come into court with a bag, opened it up, took out a rifle and began shooting people. And the man said “why was Angela Davis on trial for what her brother did?” And Dorfay said “it was all a frame.”




Then another hour passed, and I was looking very down in the mouth again. So Dorfay came over and told me when she was 17 years old and living in Tokyo she had rheumatic fever. The Tokyo doctor showed her the x ray, and showed her how her heart was leaking, and said “you only have till age 21 to live.” And Dorfay went home and got out her mom’s medical books, her mother was a physician, and looked it all up, and sure enough she only did have few years to live. So she got an alarm clock and decided to live by the clock. 15 minutes for this, 15 minutes for that, no regrets, no looking back, make each 15 minutes count.




She said the result is, she has had a very unusual life. And when she tells people about her life, she discovered no one believes her, they don’t believe the things she said she did, she really did. Again I understood what she was telling me, because of Alice. Alice’s life is like no other life, and each time Alice tells me about her life, I have a hard time believing it, but I am learning now it is all true, and it all did happen, she just happened to have had a totally unusual life. Dorfay said “when I discovered no one believed me I stopped telling them about my life, but I decided ‘who cares what others think.’ I tell about my life because how else can I remember it all.” I didn’t tell Dorfay why I understood what she was saying, but I think she realized I did.




She said she studied Oriental painting because she was in the East. And then she studied painting with the Indians. She said “Oriental painting is very interesting, they have a whole other way of painting.” And then she told me China had invited both her and Carl to live there. “You can live wherever you want” they told her. They wanted Carl to teach law there and for her to teach.. “Painting” I guessed. “No, they didn’t know I was painter, they wanted me to teach speech and theatrics.” I don’t know if she and Carl took up the job offer, but I do think they were taken all over China on guided tours.




Then there was another long wait. I was starting to get uncomfortable and unhappy again. It was now 2 PM and I couldn’t take it. I still didn’t see any progress. Dorfay’s show looked complicated, I figured she would go first, and it would be another two hours. I said to Alice “I am leaving, I will be back at 4 PM.” And “Alice said “Don’t go! We will do you first because you are only 15 minutes and Dorfay’s show is complex.” So I said “OK.”




So about 15 minutes later she had me and Dorfay sit on the stage to try out the lighting. And I thought “at last the show is on its way.” But it was another 45 minutes of us just sitting on the stage while they tried out the lighting. Each time we started to get impatient, they said “this is so you will look beautiful and glamorous, we are doing all this for you.” As I said to Dorfay on the stage, “they appeal to our vanity, they say ‘just be patient, we’re doing this to make you beautiful.’” And Dorfay said “and it works!” And I burst out laughing. “Yes” I said “it works, we'll sit forever in order to look beautiful on tv.” I caught a glimpse of myself on the screen and got upset. I told Dorfay “I have not looked in the mirror for 20 years, because each time I see myself in the mirror it ruins my whole day.” And Dorfay said, her too, she never looks in the mirror. “Why have your whole day ruined?” I said to Dorfay. “Exactly” Dorfay said to me. And we both agreed we would not watch the show when it came on tv. “Why ruin our life” I said. And Dorfay said “exactly.”




I felt immensely close to Dorfay sitting on the stage with her, both agreeing how we won’t look in the mirror and we won’t watch our show, because we don’t like how we look. “I will pray we both look like beautiful goddesses” I told Dorfay. “Thank you” she said.




I was going to tell Dorfay to take off her glasses, but I thought maybe she doesn’t want to. But we were up there so long that finally Dorfay said, “I am going to take off my glasses, I only need them to read my poem, I’ll put them back on then.” “Good idea” I said “Dorfay, because your eyes have a sparkle to them.” And I have to admit sitting next to Dorfay up on that stage for that 45 minutes while they did the lighting, the joy and beauty of the sparkle in Dorfay’s eyes, really lit me up. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s as if a star in the night sky was greatly greatly greatly magnified, so all you saw was huge sparkle.




And that’s really the story of the show. Dorfay and I were up there holding hands the whole time to give each other support. When I was finally allowed to start I didn’t waste any time because I really wanted to do this thing already. I launched instantly into my story with my hand on Dorfay’s thigh, I had my left hand pressed on her thigh, with my right hand I read my story, I only took my hand off to flip the pages. They said “don’t look at the camera” so I looked at the clock. But each time I started a new part I looked into Dorfay’s eyes. And that huge loving sparkle of love and joy, sparkled, bigger than any star, with love and joy for me. Dorfay turned it into heaven for me.




When it was over Alice came up and said “you had the page in front of your face the whole time,” and she looked dismayed. I know I had made some mistakes. I had taken one part out of the story to read on tv, that I decided I wanted in when I discovered it wasn’t there. So I had stopped myself from reading the final two paragraphs in the middle of reading it, got out my booklet I had made in xerox store, and read that part, and then went back and read last two paragraphs. I know it was weird.




But Alice looked totally dismayed about the whole thing. I had figured something wasn’t going exactly right when I felt people leave the room and talk. I knew Alice and some of the others who worked there had left the room to say something I was doing was wrong. I didn’t know it was because of the paper in front of my face. They should have had a table to put my story on.





Then I got off the stage and Alice got on to interview Dorfay, and her show was starting. And a woman in the back of the room, I guess she had arrived to do her show, said “I like your dress.” And I said “your outfit is beautiful and that necklace.” She was wearing the most beautiful African outfit, she could be the cover of a magazine. She said “the children made this necklace, it is play dough, and my friend said ‘wear it with your costume, it goes.’” It is a stunning costume, she will look glorious on tv.





I went downstairs and there was Bill. And I said “come on up, Alice prepared all this delicious Turkish food for everyone, it is all your favorite dishes.” So Bill said “let me lock up the truck.” And the Green Room had lots of pizza and all of Alice’s food she had worked so hard to prepare. I had pizza and Bill had both. He had wanted to eat in an Arab restaurant and was so happy to find all these Middle Eastern dishes. And then Dorfay joined us in the Green Room, I guess her show was finished. And a lovely woman named Miriam arrived to do her show, she is writer too.



And Miriam and Dorfay began to talk. I said to Dorfay “you saved me.” And Dorfay said “I was very nervous myself, but seeing you through your nervousness totally relaxed me, by the time I did my show I was completely relaxed.” “We saved each other” I said. “Yes” Dorfay said.


Alice edits my Video
May 3 2006

I hadn’t seen Alice since we did the show together. But last week I saw her at the pool. “I began editing your video” she said, “it is only 15 minutes.”

“So put it on with Dorfay's” I said, “that will make a half hour, and you have half hour show.”

“I will” she said, “but it means taking 4 minutes out of Dorfay's, maybe I will take out the poem she read.”

Alice said “I edited out all the stuff from your video which shouldn’t be there, I took out the part where you were naked.”

“I was naked?” I said, “I don’t remember that.”

“And I took out the part where your dress fell down.”

“My dress fell down? I don’t remember that.”

“And I edited out the part where you discovered a part of your story you wanted in, wasn’t in the pages you were reading, so you stopped, and said ‘I want this’ and found it on the table and read it from that.”

I have problems with accuracy myself, but never would I have called pushing my bra strap back up 3 times, to I was naked, and my dress fell down.

Old Forge

Moose River Old Forge

Tuesday, February 6, 2007
for Marion, with love, Anne

Just as Mildred was my dad’s favorite sister, her sons were my favorite cousins when I was growing up. Richie was exactly my age, we were best friends, and Alan was only two years younger, he could be included in our play. And even tho my little brother was 5 years younger then me, Richie nicknamed him Guchie and included him too. Every Sunday we drove over to their apartment in Jackson Heights, where the two sets of parents had coffee and cake together, and the 4 of us played together. We always had a wonderful time.

And in the summers we were all up in Old Forge together. On beach days we all were at the beach together and I played with Richie in the water. But mountain summers don’t have that many beach days, half the week is always cold and cloudy and rainy. I would walk over to Richie’s house in my raincoat and boots and we'd lie on his bed and read comic books and then walk over to the drug store for a phosphate, and visit the dogs in the neighborhood, there was a collie I liked a lot. I loved our summers in Old Forge but Richie didn’t. He said “it is boring, there is nothing to do,” he had far more fun with his friends back in Jackson Heights.

Life only got interesting for him when he sent away in the comic book for that Daisy BB gun, and set up the targets outside, and shot at them with his gun. We were best friends then and of course he offered to take turns with me and I tried. But the BB gun didn’t do anything for me, and it did everything for Richie. I guess it marked the end of our friendship because after that all he wanted to do was play with his BB gun, and it just didn’t hold my interest. A girl named Nina arrived with her family to rent the house next door, and after that I spent all my time with Nina.

Richie and I had done a lot of things together before the BB gun arrived. We would fish together off the pier, we would go in the canoe together, he would take the back, I would take the front. And we would plan when we had real money to buy a motorboat together. He said he will have money when he has his Bar Mitzvah and I said I will have money when I have my Sweet 16.

I really don’t know why I was so completely content up in Old Forge and Richie was so bored. When he said he had so much more fun with his friends back in Jackson Heights, I just took his word for it. I mean I assumed he had far more fun with his friends back in the city than I had with my friends. But I wonder now if that was true. I visited Richie and Alan as kid, and sure it was fun throwing water balloons out the window on people, and flipping baseball cards, and playing fort with his friends downstairs in the trees around the apartment building. But I was a jump-rope freak, what more fun is there than jump-rope with all your friends! And we played Skelsy, and Girls and Boys, and over-the-knee, and Jacks, and Chinese handball and stickball and Potsy, and the box with the marbles game. We had a lot of good games too.

When I was very young in Old Forge I played with the Dennises across the street. They had so many kids, that playing with one family meant we could play all our games, thrilling games of Hide and Seek and Kick the Can. And Richie and Alan had the Beckinhams, with 10 kids, next door to them, as well as Dolphie in the big house, so they had kids to play with too.

I just liked our routine in Old Forge, I didn’t miss my NYC life when I was up there at all. I found it totally fulfilling to be there. I would wake up and get out my bike and ride my brother on the back fender, and ride into town for jelly donuts. I loved jelly donuts. The lady who worked in the bakery of D and D who sold us the jelly donuts was Floanne Wormwood’s mother. She and Floanne lived in a trailer not far from us and I was friends with Floanne.

When my dad woke up he would build the fire in the pot belly stove, mountain mornings are cold. And when my mom put up the hot cereal, he and I would take long walk together while the cereal was cooking. We would walk down the road to where Floanne’s trailer was and the other trailers, and then take the path behind it thru the woods, and walk on that path as long as we wanted to. It was probably a logging road, the Adirondacks is filled with logging roads. And we would chat and then come home for hot cereal.

When I was even littler, his favorite walk was to Charlie Able’s farm. To get there we walked right on Route 28 in front of our house, there was a kind of footpath next to it, no sidewalks. And we’d pass about 4 houses. And just before the big fancy stone house which belonged to the principal, was Charlie Able’s farm. We’d walk up the long winding road to reach it. And my dad loved talking to Charlie Able, and I got to have my one and only experience of a farm. I got to see the baby pigs and the chickens and everything. I loved it. And my dad loved Charley Able. A rose bush grew up in front of our house which had the most beautiful smelling roses there was, pretty pink roses with a fragrance to die for. And Leon always said he must have picked up the seeds on his shoes when he was visiting Charley Able, that was his explanation of the roses. He loved those roses. And when I went away to camp he would always include one in the letter he sent me, and it would still have its miraculous perfume even if it had lost its beauty.

After that I would put on my swim suit underneath my dungarees and flannel shirt and head to the beach. Because Maurice Dennis, the father of the kids across the street, was the beach lifeguard back then, and he gave swimming lessons in the early morning. And I wanted to earn those Red Cross cards. I took Beginners with him, I took Elementary, I took Intermediate Swimming. I earned card after card. And then the big day came when I was allowed to take Junior Life Saving which was my passion back then.

We had an eat-in glass porch. Which meant there was table there to look out at the woods and field, and 4 burner hot plate with small black stove sitting on top of it, my mother did all her cooking on that. The field was adjacent to our house but where our house ended the woods began. And my father would sit and have his meals there and watch the deer come out of the forest. Or his favorite, watch the humming birds alight on the field wild flowers. He loved both. There would be hush when he would espy the deer arriving, and his thrilled joy at the humming birds. When the sun was actually warm and if it was sunny day, my mother would put up roast chicken in the little black oven on top of the burner, and we’d all set off for the beach.

I was allowed to buy jelly donuts for me and my brother in the early morning in town because my mission was to buy the New York Times for my father. He did not like to go one day without reading his New York Times and he had arranged with one of the drug stores to have one put aside for him each morning. So I would waltz in with my brother and ask for my father’s New York Times and they would give it to me. My brother and I ate our jelly donuts right away, I discovered jelly donuts up in Old Forge. And then arrived home with Leon’s New York Times.

It was on one of these excursions home with the New York Times in the basket of my bike and my brother on the back fender, that we bumped into my father’s friend from New York, Vicky. She was older than even my father’s big sister Esther. She was the doyenne of all the school teacher families from New York. And she said “did you hear the great news the war is over.” I realize now she was referring to the Korean War, but at the time it didn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t even aware there was a war, I wasn’t even aware what war was. I was in a world of jelly donuts and swimming lessons. She was beside herself with joy and excitement and happiness, and I tried to chime in. But I don’t know if I even mentioned it to my parents when I got back home, it simply didn’t register. All that registered was that Vicky had talked to me as if I was a grown up. Saying “great news the war is over” seemed like grown up talk to me.

My mother set up our beach blanket next to the other families from NY, and I looked for Richie and we went into the water together and played games in the water. And I guess my father headed straight for the tennis court and played tennis. And we all had glorious time until my mom said “time to go home for dinner.” In Old Forge we had our meals differently. We had dinner at lunch. When we arrived home the roast chicken was already roasted, the apple pie she had made from apples in the backyard was already baked, and we had our delicious meal on our eat-in porch. And that is when my father would see the deer or the humming birds.

Then we would return to the beach and it was the long wait of one hour before we were allowed to go back in the water. Old Forge was so far north, evening did not start till quite late. So there was time for endless afternoons. Richie and I played in the water, walked up to Rudy’s for ice cream cones, collected empty bottles, brought them to Rudy’s for two cents each and bought candy with it, and we played a lot of cards. The men all sat on one big blanket and played Hearts.

And when we had changed out of our bathing suits and back into shorts and tops again, the serious tennis playing began. All my aunts and uncles played tennis, they played doubles with each other. But my father was the best tennis player of all and long after all my cousins and aunts and uncles had gone home, my brother and I would sit on the bench, I guess my mom was there too, and my father would play with all the best tennis players in the neighborhood. There was one young man who would come from up the Channel on his motor boat to play with Leon every evening. He was a great tennis player too. And my brother and I sat there for long endless beautiful match. It was how tennis got into our blood. Love ten, Love twenty, Deuce, all the names, we knew them by heart. Set, match, serves, backhands.

My father taught both of us how to play tennis as soon as we could hold a tennis racquet. Each time he got a new racquet he gave his old one to my mom, who gave her old one to me, and I gave my old one to my brother. Back then you had to keep your tennis racquet in a press with screws, and sometimes I got a good enough one from my mother that I had to do that too. I knew all about tennis racquets and which were the best ones. We would play as a family if no one else wanted the courts.

Sometimes instead of watching my dad play tennis, my mom would take me and my brother in the car to go buy the chicken and eggs from the egg lady. That was a nice drive in a different direction, around the lake, up and up a windy road, and we would come to some house. And she would ask for her capon and her two dozen eggs.

Supper was simple. I was allowed to go to the movies once a week. There was a movie theater just before you hit the center of town. I used to take the short cut in the field beside it when I was visiting Richie. Outside the movie theater were the movie posters. And I would study them to make my choices. The other night “Shane” came on TV, and I remembered when I had stood outside that movie theater and the poster from “Shane” had been up, and how long and hard I had looked at it trying to decide if that would be my choice.


The movies changed on Saturday, Sunday was different movie, I could only see one. I did miss “I Love Lucy” my favorite show, when I was up there, we had no TV, and when the movie poster showed “Long Long Trailer” with Lucy and Ricky, of course I chose that. The other choice was Danny Kaye movie “The Court Jester.” But for me there was no competition with Lucy. I chose “Long Long Trailer” and went to see it. It was not good. The next evening my parents went to see the Danny Kaye movie, and my mother loved it so much she broke the rule for me. She said “you can see it too even tho you already went to the movies.” And I loved it. I had felt very gypped that the one I had chosen turned out to be a lemon and the one I had not chosen was so great.

Danny and Sarah, one of the couples up there as New York City school teachers, knew how to lead folk dancing, so once a week, in some huge long log cabin affair, officially called the hay fever center, with an old cannon from the revolutionary war in front of it with plaque, Danny and Sarah held folk dancing. First all the children had folk dancing. Then the grown ups. Sometimes we stayed to watch the grown ups dance, most of the time my brother and I were sent home to bed. I had no idea that after the folk dancing the grown ups would walk across the street to the beach, take off their clothes and swim naked in the lake, until one morning my mom told me “we were all swimming naked in the water, and when we wanted to come out and get dressed, there were teenagers on the swings, and we couldn’t get out of the water until they left, and they would not leave.”

There was bingo in the Fire House once a week which I loved too.

And then Chuck who worked in the Post Office told me he was opening up a miniature golf course, and of course once that happened life really took off. I fell in love with miniature golf, I loved it. It was open every night and they sold popcorn there too. It was high up, on top of the big hill across from the Fire House, and all thru August we would watch the shooting stars as we played miniature golf. My cousins did that too, I played with Richie. And I learned to see the Big Dipper and the North Star and the Little Dipper too.

And some mornings instead of beach, or maybe when it was too cold and cloudy for beach, my mother took us all near the ski slopes to go huckleberry picking. I always think of huckleberries in hot dry dusty places, but there is no way we would be huckleberry picking instead of at the beach unless it was not beach weather.

And on Wednesday mornings she took all the cousins horseback riding in Thendara, which I loved too. Richie’s horse was Daisy, a pinto. And I rode Freckles. I don’t know which horse my brother rode. I remember my mom rode Dexter, he was chestnut.

Mrs. DuBois ran the riding stable and CarolAnn who lived across the street was her assistant. CarolAnn was my age and we became friends, and she taught me games to play with horses. How you can slide off backwards, like on a slide. You just slide down their tail, it was fun.

My dad once took home movies of me sliding off the horse that way, but for some reason it was at night, the movies are too dark to see. If I hadn’t known what I was doing in them I wouldn’t have known. But there is CarolAnn and me and my horse and my climbing up again and again for the fun of sliding off. I wonder now what the horse thought, but I guess he found it fun playing with two joyous little girls.

Because it rained so much up there, many many afternoons I put on my raincoat and boots and walked into town to the library. It was right next to the movie theater. There was a wonderful librarian there. As soon as I walked in she would say “I know just what you would like” and she would pick out ten books for me, and they were all heaven. My father had paid Maurice Dennis to remodel the house one winter, to put in a knotty pine kitchen, and a little bedroom next to it so I could have my own room, and have the little bedroom painted pink the color I wanted. Before that I shared a bedroom with my brother on the second floor next door to the bathroom and my parent’s bedroom.

I loved my little pink bedroom on the ground floor. There was a little brass bed in there. I would lie in bed and practice my scissors kick for Intermediate Swimming, that is when you are taught the side stroke. But mainly I would read. Yes I found “The Saturdays” all on my own in the Pomonok library near our house in Flushing and I discovered it was a series and I read all of them. And I think I discovered “Dr Doolittle” in Queens too and read all of them, that was a huge favorite. But the librarian in Old Forge introduced me to everything. I read “Black Beauty” because of her, and “Bambi,” and a book about a whale where the whale describes his whole life thru the seas, that was an amazing book. I read so many books from the point of view of animals that she found me. I even read a book about the adventures on a submarine, the only book my cousin Richie took out too. I don’t think we had the same taste in books but he and I both liked that wonderful adventure book of the submarine. I am sure she found “Mary Poppins” for me. I had read a chapter from “Caddie Woodlawn” in my reader in school and loved it, and she showed me they had “Caddie Woodlawn” there and I read the book and loved it. And she introduced me to “Little House on the Prairie” and I loved them all.

And several months ago when I was wondering what a perfect life in Heaven meant, and I tried to think about a perfect life-- how I wanted to have everything I have in Tucson, my beautiful desert, and everything I loved in Old Forge, a lake and docks and trees. And I thought about all the people I wanted to be friends with, I remembered that wonderful librarian in Old Forge and wanted her to be my friend too.