Saturday, November 15, 2008

Remembering Whitney Hubbard



I want to remember Whitney Hubbard and his wife. They were my mother’s friends in Greenport Long Island during the Second World War, 1941-43.

Whitney Hubbard taught my mother watercolor. She included me though I found it boring. The first class was private at our house. I painted, labored over, a picture of the doghouse. I chose it because it related to my dog, King.

One day when we were painting on the pier in the Village of Greenport my mother looked up to see me diving off the end of the pier into the harbor. I had taken advantage of her distraction to beg a dollar to buy a bathing suit and the next thing I was in the water. That was the last time she asked me to paint with the class.

I remember Whitney as grey haired, a small slender frail looking man in a dark suit with hat and tie. He may have had a little mustache. I remember him as being quiet and patient. He and his wife lived in a run down house in the village across from the Episcopal Church and up the street a bit. I went there often with my mother. His wife whose name I will try to remember was probably manic at times but she greatly amused my mother. She was very funny. She was large, with a prominent nose, a bit over weight and had brown hair. They seemed an incongruous couple to me.

Mrs. Hubbard was a musician. One of their sources of income were her engagements to play the piano. She may have played the organ at local churches as well.

I remember her description of one of the “Ladies” clubs in the village. She imitated one of the fat ladies with a big bottom seating herself at the piano bench. My mother and I were in hysterics.

You entered their house through a gate and stepped into an over grown and neglected garden. Kind of like an enchanted forest to my child’s eyes. Their house had a lot of plants. The floors were uneven and it was musty. I remember a green house room along one side with lots of windows and a brick floor. It did look to me at aged eight to ten, like it was about to fall down.

The Hubbards were very poor. Mrs. Hubbard always had tea for us when we stopped by. My mother tried to help them by taking lessons and buying one of Whitney’s paintings

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Fire!

In 1935, when I was three years old my mother took the opportunity to teach me about fire. The Rossiter House in Nyack, New York had burned. The roof was collapsed and the windows were gaping dark holes. There were streaks of smoke across the exterior, a bleak scene indeed.

“This is what happens when children play with matches.” She said.

The scene emerged from the oldest memories stored in the deep recesses of my brain where first traumatic scenes are encoded.

Today I went with my friend Eugenia to view what is left of her condominium association building in Lexington Massachusetts.

“I’ve seen this before,” bubbled up in my minds eye. We stood looking at the big brick historic building, the Hancock School on the National Register. Workmen setting up a Pigeon trap on the roof had ignited the roof with their acetylene torch.

What a sad scene. The thick brick walls and chimneys stood clean, almost new looking, but the slate roof looked like some broken rollercoaster ride created by the "Mad Hatter". It heaved and sagged, gave way to the burned timbers that had supported it these one hundred and ten years. The rough edges of the slates dangled as if still trying to cover and protect that top floor. The fourth floor under the roof was totally burned out. Across the facade the windows of the third floor were dark holes.

Eugie and I stood at the yellow tape looking up to the windows of her unit. She was on the third floor, a home to twenty-five people, four floors, four units on each, twenty-five souls who called this building home. They are now caste upon the waters to find a new berth. No one was hurt. Most residents were at work. Eugenia's bedroom windows are intact but the window to her sitting room was gone. We heard there was only water damage on the third floor.

Eugie had been stopped as she turned into her street.

“There is a fire.”

“At what address?”

“33 Forest Street”

“That’s where I live.”

I have her with me now, in my extra bedroom. We are both in shock.

“I’ve lost everything.” She says.

Slowly, protectively, her mind recalls the material representation of her life.

“Its just things” she says. Then later, “I feel sick to my stomach.”

How do you deal with such a loss, death come early, books, Manuscripts. Photographs, Antiques passed on by your parents.

My twins started kindergarten here. One had suffered from school phobia after the neighboring building where they walked in a line for gym, burned down.

“I always thought it was a fire trap.” He said.