Fire on Staten Island
The view out the window from my childhood bedroom in Staten Island is still the same. to a few more townhouses with tiny yards and tiny round pools, and then a golden field of wetland marshes with a strip of blue of the Atlantic Ocean in near distance. The field surrounded our neighborhood on three sides. On very clear days you could see the New Jersey Shore out my window.
Most kids in New York City don’t get a view like this, or hear the sounds of mockingbirds or red-winged blackbirds in the early spring, and then the chirping of crickets and the peeping of frogs at night in the summertime. But Staten Island kids like me, who grew up at the edge of a field, have their senses filled up with country-like sounds and sights and smells while at the same time living at the dooorstep to the busiest, noisiest city in the world.
This week, on a visit back to Staten Island, I was also reminded of one of the dangers of living so close to a field: brush fires. I remember the orange and the heat and the black smoke of these fires as they wrapped around our neighborhood: my parents and neighbors hosing down their siding when the flames got really close, the black ashes that fell from the sky.
This time, the fire was not near my house but came from inside the notorious site of the former Fresh Kills Landfill. Apparently, the brush that was collected as a result from last summer’s Hurricane Irene ignited because it has been so hot and dry.
This white, acrid-smelling fog filled the island and there was no escape from it. You could even smell it inside the Staten Island Mall.
Luckily, no one was hurt and no houses were damaged. But it gave SI a grim reminder of what smog and smoke they could be facing if the city went ahead with plans to open a waste-to-energy plant around this very spot.
Shhhh! Please Don’t Tell my Parents!!
For the first time in your life, your parents are away. They leave their home, the home they raised you and taught you right from wrong, in your trusted care while they take a long overdue romantic vacation for just the two of them.
You know where this is going.
The Party. It’s the right of passage for every American Teen. At least it seems that way in the movies. As the weather warms up, think of all those teen movies that ended in a springtime house party bash. Some that come to mind just from my generation include Risky Business, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and later, Mean Girls
When I was growing up on Staten Island, it was rare to find a house that was not an attached townhouse. For those of you in suburbia, this means a house that shares at least one common wall with one neighbor. Or maybe your house was flanked by townhouses on both sides. The walls that separated one home from another were exceedingly thin and provided no sound proofing.
How thin? We could say “God Bless You!” when we heard our neighbors sneeze. When there was a birthday party, a family fight, or when their coo-coo clock went off at all hours of the night, you heard that too.
So, the first time – the only time – I had a party the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I did the right thing. I let my neighbors know that I was going to have a few friends over. Just a few. And, we might get a little loud. And, would they mind if we put some beer bottles in their trash the next day?
My neighbor, Dom, a man in his late 60’s who played Frank Sinatra on his backyard transistor radio all summer and who introduced me to my first grilled Italian pepper, said it wouldn’t be a problem.
I was a good kid. Really I was. Still am. Even though my teen daughter now views me as irresponsible because I caught mono in my sophomore year of college after a weekend of parties. So, when planning my first keg party, no I was not of age, but my friends and I were all right at the cusp. We were all turning 20 that year. That’s why we had the party, it was for a friend, a girl who received all honors in high school and was studying economics at SUNY Binghamton. She was turning 20 that weekend. We did the responsible thing by asking my friends’ of-age boyfriend to buy the beer.
My underage friends and I were responsible for hiring the DJ. He charged $75 for the night and three of us each chipped in $25. We cleared a spot in my basement where he could set up and play. We didn’t want to set up outside because again, I was trying to be considerate of my neighbors.
More importantly, I was trying not to get caught and get in the worst trouble of my short 19-year-old life.
The party was a success! It was a beautiful night and we would have gone swimming in the pool if there weren’t so many damned mosquitos. (Another thing about Staten Island. No matter how small the backyard, everyone managed to have a pool. It may have been an above-ground pool, but it was wet and cold in the hot New York City summer, that is what mattered most). I remember dancing and lots of kids coming, most invited, some, who barely spoke to me in high school but oh look who’s having a party and decided now they wanted to be my friends.
My friends had their boyfriends with them. A friend of mine became a friend with benefits.
Most importantly, no one got too drunk and no one got hurt. And, my considerate party goers didn’t stay or make noise too too late into the night and my college roommate even mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors when it was all over.
Only one household possession was broken as a result of the party. The kitchen clock came crashing down. That was because one of those previously mentioned mosquitos got in and my brother tried to kill it when it landed on the clock.
My brother…..
Now, my parents are very wise. Later, they told me that they had their suspicions that I had a party whether or not they found a letter on computer print-out paper (the kind that came in a stack with holes on the sides to feed it into the printer. Remember, this was the late 80’s). The letter was written by my brother, an impressionable teenager at the time who had just written a letter to his friend that “my sister had a wild crazy party at our house and there was beer and everything!”
Yes, that was a very dark week in the Cooper household. My parents felt betrayed by me and my good girl friends that never got in any trouble in high school. There were tears of guilt and apology later that week in my parents’ living room among all the guilty. But I’m 43 now and I’m not grounded anymore and I still love my brother.
So, why do I bring this up now?
Now, after 20 years of being away, it is my parents who are the retired empty nesters living on the other side of the wall from a family with three teenagers. Last weekend, the parents of these teenagers went away for a vacation. Last weekend, it was my parents who were the couple who could not get to sleep because of a teen house party that went deep into the night.
The next night, my parents pulled into their driveway after spending the evening with friends and were greeted by all three of the kids next-door. With a big plate of home-baked, shamrock-shaped cookies.
“We baked these for you. We are SO sorry that we made so much noise and kept you up all night,” mom told me over the phone, and we laughed as she described how this girl pleaded for forgiveness.
Sure, they were sorry about the noise. But they were more worried about getting potentially ratted out to their parents. That was the main reason for the cookies.
At this, my mom took the cookies and laughed. “No problem. Been there. Done that.”
So, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone. And keep the music down after 1 a.m., will ya?”
What to do when you are the “not-quite-Out-of-Town guests?”
semi-finals at a Bat Mitzvah Hula Hoop Contest. How long can she spin 12 hoops at once?
To anyone reading this who lives in a BIG metro area like Los Angeles, New York City, Toronto…. let me ask you this:
If you are invited to a wedding/Bar Mitzvah/christening/fill-in-the-blank life occasion across town with a religious service in the morning and party at night,do you get a hotel room for the weekend?
I didn’t think so.
If you are the planner of a big life event occasion and invite many out-of-town guests, do you pull out all the stops in providing them with extra special treatment: (reserve a block of hotel rooms, extra dinners and brunches, goodie bags in their hotel rooms)?
Of course you do, they are the out-of-towners!
This past weekend, my whole family was invited to the Bat Mitzvah of a friend my son made in Camp Ramah. My daughter is friends with the girl’s sister, and our two families have developed this great Camp Ramah connection over the years. We were very honored to be invited to this happy occasion as a family. There are too many sad occasions in life that we juggle our lives to attend,so why not do a little schlepping for the happy ones?
As a kid growing up in Staten Island, I remember going to weddings and bar mitzvahs, and later on youth group dances “out on the Island” – in this case Long Island. My dad had a special name for this stretch of suburbia that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. It didn’t matter where your destination was on the Island. Any trip from SI to LI was to a place called “all the way out” on the Island.
I remember the traffic as we traveled and my dads angry muttering at the wheel. There was traffic on the Belt. The BQE. The LIE. And the GCP. (If you don’t know what these stand for, you are not from NYC.) It would take what seemed hours to get anywhere. And still does.
In reality, the distance in miles was only 40 miles or so, but it was the traffic that made the journey take hours. But never did my parents think about getting a hotel room or consider staying overnight. Because LI was still considered “in town.” I remember drowsy drives back to the other island, Staten Island, when my brother and I would fall asleep in the back in our party clothes, my parents singing doo-wop oldies tunes to their heart’s content in the front seat.
Drive over an hour in the New York Metro Area, you are still in the New York Metro area.
Drive over an hour in Rochester, you are in Buffalo
So, at the beginning of the weekend, when we parted with friends at a Friday night dinner and announced to our Rochester friends we were headed to Buffalo for a Bat Mitzvah, they actually said to us “Have a nice trip!”
When you are transplantednorth, traveling an hour to go for a visit is nothing. Staying at a hotel overnight was out of the question.But the question remained, how were we going to pull this day off?
The day came with logistical challenges. We left our house very early Saturday morning to get to the synagogue in Buffalo**. We had to pack two extra sets of clothes for each family member, one casual outfit for hanging around the hotel, and then more formal attire for the evening party. Plus bathing suits because the kids were invited to swim in the hotel pool, so that meant toiletries too, but where to shower?
When we got to Buffalo, we sat through a very nice warm service and at the luncheon reception, known as the kiddush, we made fast friends with several couples who all were from out-of-town to bring their children, also campers, to celebrate their friends’ Bat Mitzvah. I told them we were “from” Rochester, but as conversations went on, our native accents revealed themselves.
As we relaxed that afternoon in the hotel lobby, one of the dads spoke up and asked my husband and I: “You didn’t grow up in Rochester, did you? Where are you really from?”
That night, after eating and dancing to the sounds provided by a DJ company called the Bar Mitzvah Boys – who are from Rochester – we didn’t get home until 1 a.m. For my husband and I, it was now our turn to stay awake and sing while the kids slept in the back all the way home.
**Yes, we drive on Shabbat. Conservative Judaism has a decree that allows one to drive if it is to worship at a synagogue. There was some irony to all this, because once we arrived in Buffalo, we had nowhere to go and nothing to do but read and chat with some real “out-of-town” guests who invited us to spend the afternoon at their hotel. So, we did drive, but in the end had a very relaxing Shabbat.
Stealing glimpses of other fireworks from the Piers of Staten Island
Mostly thought of as NYC's garbage dump, Staten Island has many places of beauty, like the pier
Last night it seemed that every other town with a beach or shoreline had a fireworks show. Every town, except, Staten Island.
Staten Island really does have some fine beaches that have come a long way since their more polluted and burned down boardwalk days of the 1970s and 1980s.
But, no fireworks. Staten Island, stuck between the sands of Long Island and the New Jersey Shore, remains the bastard stepdaughter for deserving her own fireworks display on the 4th of July.
Even the famed Macy’s fireworks, once visible from the waterways around the Staten Island Ferry, have been moved up the Hudson River and away from the Statue of Liberty. Got me mad enough to think about tearing up my Macy’s charge card.
But, my two sons had come down from Rochester to the Big City to see the Big City fireworks. We can’t see the Hudson River along the Upper West Side from Staten Island. And we were not driving to Jersey City.
They had two options: watch the Macy’s fireworks like the rest of the country – on TV – or take our chances and see what we can see from the Ocean Breeze Fishing pier off the South Shore of Staten Island. The Ocean Breeze Fishing Pier opened in September 2003. It is 835 feet long and 30 feet wide, making it the largest steel and concrete recreational pier on the Atlantic Ocean built in 100 years in the New York region.
As the sun set, families gathered. People continued to fish off the pier. The air smelled of rotting fishheads, cigarettes, salt air and tar. A woman yelled at her young daughter “Do you know what you said? That’s a curse word in Italian and I better not hear it again…” And then, something bright exploded off in the distance. In every direction.
From the pier, we had a panoramic view of nearly every fireworks display – from the Atlantic Highlands of the New Jersey shore, to ones out in the Far Rockaways. Some “homemade” shows were on display in nearby South Shore neighborhoods. But we didn’t feel the boom of fireworks that can rattle your insides like a drum like when you see them up close. Most were too far off to even elicit a sincere “oooooh” or an “ahhhhh.’ But they were fireworks, alright. They were just meant for some other place, some other town.
And then, around 9:45, one could make out the very top glow of the Macys Fireworks coming from the other side of the Island. Maybe we could have seen them from Bay Street after all. Maybe. Maybe next year.
Get on Your Bike and Ride to Feel Like a Kid
To quote a song from Queen, “I Want To ride my Bicycle.”
I remember my first bike ride. It was shortly before I could ride a two-wheeler of my own. But my first cycling outing did not take place in one of those pediatrician-approved baby bicycle seats, a toddler bike trailer, or even a tandem bike. No.
Just before I learned to ride, an older girl on my block would take me for a spin on her Huffy Spyder bike with me sitting backwards on its banana seat. Bravely, I hung onto the u-shaped metal bar of the seat and waited for her to push off the curb. I marveled how she could balance us both on those two wheels. I remember watching the pavement roll away from beneath the wheels and feeling that uneasy tilt in my stomach when she made an unexpected turn, all the while assuring me that she wouldn’t fall.
Do you remember getting a ride like that, on a friend’s bike? Hanging on for dear life either on the back or riding on the handlebars? This was the 1970’s. This was before all the worry about safety and helmets. These days, finding kids riding like this or without a helmet is enough to warrant a call to Child Protective Services.
When I want to feel young, I ride my bicycle. I’m not an avid, up-at-dawn, century riding cyclist. I just like riding around the block, just like I did when I was a kid. All it takes is coasting along a stretch of flat road, the sound of the wheels spinning to take me back to childhood and the thrill of learning to ride a bike.
I learned when I was seven or eight. My parents got me my very own Huffy Spyder, complete with an iridescent banana seat and handlebars with streamers. And, a white woven basket decorated with flowers.
At first, I rode with training wheels but my dad at some point decided it was time to ditch them. So, he held onto the back and ran behind me as a pedaled. I started to get the hang of it, enough so that I guess dad felt confident enough to stop and talk to some neighbors – and let go. I went for a while, not realizing he wasn’t there. Riding straight was easy. Stopping was not.
After I crashed, dad encouraged me to get right back on.
May was Bike Month. Many communities around the continent hosted “Bike To Work” Weeks. My town, Rochester, NY was voted by Bicycling.com magazine, as one of the top 50 cities in the country to bike to work. Okay, so it came in 50 out of 50, but still, that’s pretty good for a town that sees an average of 90 inches of snow a year.
It’s no wonder that biking is one of the best ways to get fit. In fact, in a recent article, studies showed that biking increases happiness, suppresses appetite, and is just plain fun. And, as gas prices edge towards $4 per gallon, biking also saves money and is good for the environment.
But I didn’t have any specific reason in mind when my husband and two sons set out for a bike ride late in the afternoon over the weekend. We just wanted to spend some time together on a ride to the library to return some books, and maybe go a little further. And in the late spring air, zooming around the quiet streets of our town, I imagined myself anywhere: Cape May, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard…we smelled the remains of the lilac bushes, fresh cut grass, and whatever was being grilled in someone’s backyard.
As we biked throgh the side streets of Brighton, my sons discovered where classmates live. We also stopped by the house of an older couple we knew. They are well into their 70’s. As they saw us pedaling by their house, the woman turned to her husband and said, “Now, why did we get rid of our bikes? We need to get new ones. There is no reason why we can’t ride too.”
In addition to chatting with our neighbors – something you can’t do while speeding by in a car – we discovered shortcuts that we wouldn’t have thought about while driving. A useful one ambles along quiet, curved streets and ends up at a traffic light that allows for safe passage into Buckland Park, one of Brighton’s newer recreation areas. This park contains, you guessed it – lots of bike paths. This will be very useful in the school free days ahead.
But bike riding with my kids reminds me that in reality, I am definitely no longer a child. Instead of feeling completely carefree, I am barking very grown-up, mom-like orders such as: “break at stop signs!” or “DON’T dart out into the middle of the road! That’s how you can get killed!”
Another reality that brings me back to my current age after a childlike bike ride: the ache in my very middle-aged knees.
What do you do to feel like a kid again?
A Fashion Statement I Regret Making
As I write this, I am watching the academy awards. No, my biggest fashion blunder thankfully wasn’t televised, nor was it as bad as Bjork’s Swan dress from 2001. But, in a time when one should try to act as cool as possible – the first day of high school – I truly missed the mark.
My 25th high school reunion is coming up. Now, I don’t remember what I wore my very last day as a high school student, but I sure remember what I wore the first day.
No, the picture below is not actually my legs. Thankfully, I dont think there is a photograph to document my first day of Freshman year of high school.
My mom had just started a subscription of Seventeen Magazine for me. The preppy look was totally “in” for the fall, according to Seventeen’s big, thick back-to-school August issue. Maybe if you went to a prep school in New Hampshire, but back in Staten Island, not so much.
So there I was, high school freshman, which is cause enough to get egged or suffer a head full of shaving cream the first day of high school. But no, I had to draw further attention to myself with khaki knickers, argyle socks and penny loafers.
I just got it all wrong.
Over the River and Through the Woods: Tips from Thankful Road Warriors
How do you get from here to there?
Thank goodness for Thanksgiving. The long weekend affords most of us a breather from modern life’s breakneck pace. We pause to focus on coming together with family and friends, preparing a meal, tossing a football and sleeping late in your own bed.
But, if you are like my family – transplants – Thanksgiving means hitting the road. Or, heaven forbid, the airports. That is the only way the family-coming-together aspect of the holiday happens for us.
In our case, traveling is not as idyllic as over the river and through the woods. It’s more like Down the Thruway and over the Outerbridge Crossing to Staten Island We Go. Where there are hardly any woods left to go through.
For eleven years now, we have traveled to see our family every Thanksgiving but one. This is another consequence of being Transplantednorth. If you leave the area where one’s family roots are still entrenched, the roads are rarely traversed the other way. It’s just expected. We are the only part of the family “upstate.” We left. Everyone else still lives Home — the New York Metro Area. Or, in a term I only learned when transplantednorth – “downstate.”
And on Thanksgiving, just as the larger planet pulls on its smaller orbiting moons, down the Thruway we go.
One especially hectic year, we stayed in Rochester for Thanksgiving. The weather was beautiful – warm even — and we spent a relaxing weekend feasting and playing into the evening at the Brighton Town Hall playground. I prepared perhaps the only Thanksgiving feast I will ever make. I made the turkey on the barbecue. I made a chestnut stuffing ala Martha Stewart. Everything tasted delicious. But the lonely looks on my childrens’ faces taught me a lesson: Thanksgiving tables are too empty without grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
So, after traveling for 11 years with two and then three kids in tow, I have become thankful for a thing or two on what I have learned and would like to share them with you, especially if you are a novice at parenting on the go:
- I am thankful that cries for Sippy cup refills and diaper changes have been replaced by three contented souls in the back who can pass snacks to each other, operate the remote to the car DVD player, and participate in family sing downs and games of 20 Questions.
- I am thankful for every rest stop we have discovered between here and there, especially to kind workers who have supplied us with buckets, hoses and slop sinks for carsickness cleanups. Really, if you do have a kid that gets sick in the car, find a truck stop like the Flying J Travel Plazas that have showers and washing machines. The folks there are all too kind to help you in your distress.
- I am thankful that we finally come “home,” we have relatives who bound down steps and out into driveways to greet us, no matter the lateness of the hour.
In our 11 years of travelling down to New York City, here are my family’s dos and don’ts when traveling the Western New York-to-New York City Route:
- DO strap everything down very carefully. On our first trip back to Rochester, on a windy, windy passage of Route 78 in New Jersey, our Peg Perego Stroller came loose and flew off our roof rack. One minute, there it was, and then it was on the side of the road, thankfully killing or injuring no one in its catapulted flight.
- If you are traveling with very young children that might become carsick, but may not alert you at the most opportune time that they will become carsick, DO pack a puke kit. This kit includes a roll of paper towels, a bottle of Lysol all-purpose liquid cleaner, and a change of clothes that is easily accessible.
- If traveling with those same small children, DO invest in one of those Art Cart on the Go Tables that can be placed over a child’s lap. The Art Cart has legs that double as side pockets that keep paper, crayons and markers handy. Or, in the worst case scenario, those pockets also can come to the aid of the carsick child. I speak from experience.
- For a meal break, DO stop in Scranton or Dickson City, Pa. It is exit 191 A or B on Route 81. Home of The Office, it is a great little town to stop for meals. If we hit Scranton for lunch or dinner, we eat at Tonalteca. The place is clean, the decor features hand crafted carved booths from Mexican artisans, and there are plenty of choices for vegetarians. The guacamole is outstanding. And, for those of you who get stir crazy in the car, they play great salsa music in the bathroom. If they have the security camera going by the sinks in the ladies room, they might have footage of me doing some salsa steps I learned in Zumba for all I know. Anything to work off that guacamole.
- DON’T stop in the Poconos for any reason. There really is no place to stop. The gas stations for bathrooms have nothing more than outhouses or bathrooms around back that you have to carry in those huge keys for admittance. And, if you see a billboard for The Cheesecake Factory, don’t believe it. No, it isn’t The Cheesecake Factory, the upscale eatery. It’s just – a cheesecake factory. So, unless you want to sit in your car with your family consuming a cheesecake for a meal, ignore the sign and keep driving.
- DO find the small village of Whitney Point along Route 81 and stop at Aiellos Italian Restaurant for the best pizza you can find in Western NY. And I am not saying this is good pizza for Western New York. I mean, this is thin-crust Brooklyn Pizza that somehow found its way to Western New York. And, the quaint restaurant in the back will be decked in its Christmas decorations this time of year. You won’t want to miss out on this.
And as for traffic…..
- DON’T be anywhere near Binghamton or Syracuse on Sunday afternoon if you can at all avoid it: college kids coming back from Thanksgiving break.
- DON’T go near the Delaware Water Gap if you don’t want to get stuck in traffic during peak hours
- DON’T go over the George Washington Bridge or traverse the Cross Bronx Expressway. Ever.
Safe travels to you and a very happy Thanksgiving.
About Me
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Stacy Gittleman 