Sand Sculptures
Dear Diary:
I used to see an older man and his wife every summer by the lighthouse on Fire Island: him, shirtless and wearing Bermuda shorts, her in a floppy pink straw hat.
The man would create two or three sand sculptures of classically styled, voluptuous women, with seaweed for hair and seashells for fingernails. Hundreds of people a day would walk by and admire his work.
The couple had been coming to the beach since the 1960s. We would say a few words, talking more and more as the years went on.
They were both around 80. They would arrive in the morning and leave by 2 p.m. The late afternoon waves would erase the man’s creations, and he would be back the next week with new ones.
Summer would fade, and it would be eight or nine months before we returned. When we did, there he would be, creating his art.
We had grown up in Brooklyn, decades apart. We talked of our lives, our health, the pain and regret of advancing age. I told them of our son, who had died in a car accident. They were silent and crestfallen.
On my last day there one summer, they collected their belongings, the man’s wife gave a little wave and he shrugged. They walked away, hand in hand.
The next summer, there was no sign of them. What had become of them was a mystery. People passed back and forth where he used to sit, as the ocean washed in and out.
— Joseph P. Griffith
Gun Hill Road
Dear Diary:
My flight from Milan arrived at Kennedy Airport amid torrential downpours. I struggled into the mass of dripping humanity outside the arrivals area.
“I’m here,” said the text from my daughter Karin. “You’ll find me.”
I saw her ancient Toyota at the curb, near a service truck whose driver was struggling to remove a flat tire from her car. The rusted bolts finally gave way with the help of a couple of cabbies and a sledgehammer.
Unfortunately, we soon found that the temporary spare was no good.
“Where do you have to go?” someone asked.
“New London,” I said.
It was 10 o’clock on a Sunday night, and the consensus was that we were doomed.
“Think you can make it to the Bronx?” someone asked. “There’s an all-night tire repair on Gun Hill Road.”
“Yeah,” a cabby said, “I know that place.”
A quick search online turned up the number, and a sleepy voice answered: “Get here before I take my break at midnight.”
Off we went to the Gun Hill Road exit off Route I-95, and then west to a dimly lit storefront with a jack on the sidewalk out front. A soul food restaurant was open next door.
“I’m starving,” Karin said, making a beeline for the restaurant. I dashed after her and soon found her, with her purple hair, chatting with the cashier, a young woman with bright blue hair.
The food was great and the new tire was reasonably priced. Having once lived nearby on Decatur Avenue, I felt as if I had come home again.
— Stu Reininger
(Queens, 3 a.m.)
Dear Diary:
I woke when
the city
stopped
talking
Stepped
from my bed
Other un-
dressed men
in windows
listened
relishing
nothing’s
something
Lightly I
lit
a cigarette
and listened
— Rolli Anderson
Lorimer Street
Dear Diary:
I was living in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early 2000s and had never ridden the L train past my stop, Lorimer Street.
One night, though, I was out late with co-workers in Manhattan and had a bit too much to drink. To get home, I got the L at Eighth Avenue, sitting down as the train idled awaiting its departure.
About an hour later I was awakened by the train conductor at the last stop, Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway. He asked what my intended stop was. When I said Lorimer, he asked me to get up and follow him.
I walked with him to the front of the train, where he told me to take a seat across from his booth. He left the door open and for the next hour we talked about life, work and sports while the train made its way back toward Manhattan.
When we got to Lorimer, I got off, fumbled my way home and into my apartment and went straight to sleep.
It was only the next morning that I realized that the conductor’s conversation with me was intended to keep me awake so I wouldn’t miss my stop a second time.
Thank you, Mr. M.T.A. conductor.
— Artur Spiguel
Fruit Stand
Dear Diary:
I was walking toward Grand Central on a hot August day when I passed a fruit stand.
A harried-looking man in a suit was trying to buy a single apple from the vendor who, in turn, was trying to persuade the man to buy more.
“How about this beautiful ripe banana too?”
The man in the suit declined.
The vendor was emphatic.
“But sir,” he said, “you need your potassium!”
— Clara Ruiz
