Saturday, May 01, 2004

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
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About 15 years ago someone discovered that it was Walt Whitman’s birthday, so naturally Schultz, Gross and I rushed to the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge, under the anchorage, where we could look up at Mr. Roebling’s spun iron miracle and pay homage to the patriot and wanderer, and also to honor the people, for whom Whitman wrote and loved. We decided to walk over the Williamsburg Bridge first, and on the Brooklyn side we noted the irony of George Washington’s equestrian statue in the eponoymous park, as few horses had been seen recently trotting on Williamsburg’s paths in recent years.


Then, each of us clutching his own copy of Walt Whitman’s poems, we worked our way to the older of the bridges. Stepping over broken bottles and abandoned baby baby carriages we ambled as close to the river as we could, hugging the fence of the Navy Yard, until we gained entrance by walking on the side of a huge truck as it stopped at the guard house.

Crossing the Navy Yard saved us about a half an hour of walking, and we took in the sights, the old brick factory buildings whose three foot thick brick walls once contained iron-monging businesses, with their huge lathes and weighty presses. Now, when a door opened we saw well lighted advertising shops, or photo labs, and the building where Sweet and Low is packed. A dry dock is still in use, though on this day it was vacant, vast in its emptiness, a volume of empty space, deep, wide, and very long. A slight stain of water, not even a trickle, snaked across its bottom.

We found our way to Navy Street, and it was time for lunch. Providence proved herself providential and we found a grocer, really an artist, who made us a hero sandwich, a long, crusty loaf of bread slathered in olive oil, filled with salami, provolone, lettuce, olives, peppers, tomatoes, and certain never-identified lunch meats.

As none of us were true, real heroes, we had the loaf sliced three ways and shared it, easing its way to our bellies with a swigged quart of Rheingold, a beer once made in another of those brick-work buildings, an honest brewery of Bushwick, Brooklyn, but sadly, now a beer only in name, made in a generic, effete beeratorium somewhere in the Midwest.

We were close now to the Anchorage, and it was time to read Whitman. We were at the verge of the river, the wind obligingly sent some spray over our jackets. And we began. A spring flush of tiny green mayflies hovered over the river. Its rush and the traffic high above our heads conspired to muffle our voices, but we pressed on.

“O Captain My Captain!” Gross called out into the wind, “Our Fearful Trip is done; The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won.”

His declamation started to attract a following of young children, and a few older men who had nothing better to do. We bravely forged on.

“O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!” Schultz read, “O for the dropping of rain drop in a poem!” Some of the children had moved in very close, Whitman would have been intrigued.