Our first full day on Long Island was very much a Día de los Muertos. I wanted to go pay my respects to my paternal grandparents, but as things turned out, it was a bit more than that. With my aunt in tow as my GPS system, we headed off for our first destination, St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale. I knew my grandmother was interred there, but I had no idea of how many other family members were as well. We parked in the road next to the row where my grandmother’s grave is located. I knew in advance that her name was not on the plot, and I have a good idea why, but that’s another story for another time. As we approached the plot, I was taken aback when I read the headstone and its inscription. In large letters was the family name, beneath in smaller lettering, Elizabeth 1893-1956. True, my grandmother’s name isn’t on the headstone, but my great-grandmother’s is, and they were buried in the same plot. I had no clue and wasn’t expecting that, but was very pleasantly surprised. As many people do, I left a rock on the headstone as a sign that someone had visited the gravesite. But that wasn’t to be the last surprise. Located either a few plots away or a short distance away were the graves of more great-grandparents and my great aunt (my grandfather’s sister). My great-grandmother Curry gave me my very first camera when I graduated from kindergarten many years ago. I feel very lucky to have vivid memories of her. She died when I was eight, so I never got to go to her funeral, never got to say goodbye. And I didn’t say goodbye on this particular day either, simply a “Hello again, Grandma.”
From there we traveled a short distance up Wellwood Avenue to the Long Island National Cemetery, where my grandfather is buried. I’ve no recollection of being to visit his gravesite when we lived on Long Island many years ago. Actually, I don’t think I even knew he ever existed until 1978 when my grandmother passed away and his scrapbook of newspaper clippings was sent to my dad. Before we left for our trip to LI, I had printed out the plot number from the cemetery’s site. The problem then became locating his grave in section L. Row upon row of nearly perfectly lined up white marble headstone, each identical in size, every one potentially the one we were looking for. We parked and began wandering about the headstones, looking for the particular number that was his, etched on the back of the stone. As it turned out, I was the one to find him. There I was, for the first time, standing over the grave of my grandfather, a man I never got to know but wished I had the chance to do so. My second impression at that moment was just how rough and abrasive those headstones are. You see pictures of the rows of marble stones at national cemeteries and just automatically assume they’re all smooth. Nothing’s further from the truth. I took some photos of his headstone, and of the area around it. I wanted a shot of the headstones heading off at an angle, but with each step I took the perspective changed. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. We left rocks on his headstone and headed back to my aunt’s house.
My uncle and his wife came up that afternoon to see us, which was a nice inclusion to the trip. Unlike my aunt, I last saw my uncle in 2004 when he made an extra trip to come see my wife (to be at the time) and me a few days before our wedding. The day pretty much wrapped up with everyone heading out to a pizzeria near my aunt’s house, where my uncles (by blood and my aunt’s husband) and me ate pizza and drank pitchers of beer. Amongst family again, and it felt really good.
Everyone was up early the next day…no time to rest…time to drive to Manhasset and catch the Long Island Railroad to Penn Station and Manhattan. After a couple of transfers in the subway system, my uncle acting as a superb guide (as I would have definitely gotten us lost), we finally came to the South Ferry/Whitehall Street station, which is right on the edge of Battery Park on the very southern tip of Manhattan. I know Atlanta likes to call itself a city, but it’s not; it’s in essence a few tall buildings with a lot of suburban sprawl. Places like New York and Chicago, where you can snap your neck looking up at buildings literally reaching for the sky, now those are cities.
Our first destination was Ellis Island, but first we had to wait in a line that stretched back to where 12th Avenue and Battery Place meet. Waiting at the back of the line, looking up 12th Street, I could see the cranes at work where the World Trade Center used to stand. Being accustomed to living in places with a smaller sense of scale, I thought it looked like it was only a couple of blocks away. Later I discovered looking at maps that it’s closer to a 7-8 block walk. No quick jaunt in the park, to be certain. But I didn’t get the chance to visit “The Hole” on this particular visit.
After our prerequisite wait and veritable body cavity search security screening, we loaded onto the ferry and headed out into New York Harbor. The ferry stopped first at Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty. The whole time we lived in New York I had only seen the statue from a distance; this was the first time I got to see her up close. The green patina of her oxidized copper skin stood out from the hazy skies that day. From there it was a relatively quick trip to Ellis Island, where the wonderfully restored Renaissance Revival main building awaited. The next few hours were spent wandering the halls, looking at displays of items brought by immigrants, pictures and logs from ships that carried them across the sea, and of items found during the restoration of the building that were left behind when Ellis closed in 1954. I particularly taken by the Great Hall in the main building, a substantially sized room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling where immigrants were processed after arriving. There were wooden benches along the sides, but during the height of the period of “new immigration” from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, those wooden benches would’ve been set across the room, in multiple rows, seating hundreds of people.
We caught one of the last ferrys back to Manhattan, having used up a better portion of our day on the island. Once back, we took the subway north to Times Square, “The Crossroads of the World.” Once upon a time that area was named Longacre Square, until April, 1904, when the New York Times moved its headquarters to the area and the crossroads were renamed Times Square. As a kid I had been to the city a few times, but never to this place. After one look, who wouldn’t want to live in New York City? The lights, the buildings, countless people all heading off to destinations unknown…except for me, as I broke out my camera and started snapping off shots. Our destination at that moment was on West 44th Street – Carmine’s Italian Restaurant. If you’re ever in New York City, I highly recommend it. It’s kind of pricey, but it’s really worth the money. We no sooner got into the restaurant when the sky opened up with a monsoon-like downpour. The vendors who had been selling t-shirts on the street corners just moments before suddenly had supplies of umbrellas for sale. Crafty fellows, those vendors.
By the time we were done ingesting massive amounts of Italian food, the rain had let up. My daughter wanted to head across the street to the world’s largest Toys R Us store. As we walked into the store, I could have sworn I felt the credit card in my wallet cringe in fear: four stories of toys and games, a full sized ferris wheel, a 20 foot tall animatronic T-Rex, a Barbie playhouse. Certainly potential financial ruin lay in wait here. I was starting to feel like a three-legged gazelle on the Serengeti. She and my wife rode the ferris wheel as I browsed around the store, as I’m basically just a big kid only my toys are more expensive these days. Not long before we were ready to go, the skies once again opened up with another downpour. We staked out a place near the front door as people began congregating there. I noticed that if I looked over the handrail I could see part of the electronics section on the first floor. I also noticed that there were employees down there with mops and buckets, as the first floor was beginning to flood. And there, just outside the front door, were the vendors; and the t-shirts they were once again selling when the rain stopped completely disappeared, replaced by umbrellas.
It was a rainy run to the subway a few blocks away, and a rainy train ride back to Manhasset where we had parked. A completely unfitting end to a great day. But there’s so much to see and do in the city, that to try and take in as much as possible in one day, well, the city just sits on your head until you scream uncle.
To be concluded.
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