Dear Friends,
Had to go to work yesterday putting in a tile floor. Ugh. The image below was on the side of a bus which I cycled past and then doubled back to take this shot. Exactly how I felt.
But on the way home I passed the startling scene below in Lincoln Center and although the Big Apple can be wormy it can also get your attention. Love it or leave it baby!!
Love, Bill
I went for my annual physical last week, which is always daunting—-I love particularly the prostate test where the Doc sticks his finger way up your—well you know. Everything seemed fine until we were sitting afterwards in his office and he said that there was a slight change in my EKG from last year and that I should have it checked out by a cardiologist.
So I made an appointment four days hence and spent the time convinced that cardiac arrest was imminent and every ache and pain that age and penury had wrought was the canary in the coal mine; a foretaste of the heart attack that was obviously awaiting me. Death was palpable. I also went the alternative route. I bought hawthorne berries and starting eating them like candy; chased them down with COQ10 which is supposed to be good for the ticker. Cayenne pepper helps, or so some uncredentialed gurus proclaim: so I put two teaspoons in two cups of water and drank that every day, all day. Did they make a difference?—-I have absolutely no idea, but at least it made me feel that I had some minor control, perhaps illusory, over my grim fate. But even so I found myself, a nervous nelly, on New York City’s East 51st Street in one of those Doctor’s offices that has a cast of thousands, feels like an airline terminal staffed by professionally friendly people, who have a really hard time disguising the fact that theirs is but a tedious job and that you are merely on an assembly line to oblivion.
I filled out an electronic form and proved I had insurance and entered a valid credit card into their data base. It’s always somewhat galling performing the ‘money thing’ because it gives you the sneaky suspicion that your financial well-being is more important than everything else. After a ten minute wait I was taken to an examination room where I had my blood pressure taken and then another EKG by a very confident and competent Physician’s Assistant. After that another white coated gal came in and performed a sonogram of my heart, which is intimidating. At one point the technician who looked like the sphinx, all dark, mysterious and impenetrable asked me if I had been a smoker—and I admitted that I had indulged in the wicked weed, but not for more than forty years, which was a slight exaggeration, but why give them too much ammunition in their war to scare you to death? But by her merely asking I convinced myself that she must have seen something ominous and carcinogenic, and mild panic set in. Suddenly I wished I could have gone back in time and have had all the future pleasures of smoking suddenly sucked out of me in one great whoosh of pain and loss and have all the ill-effects of smoking suddenly exorcised forever. But fantasies quickly whither under the glare of scientific gadgets.
At times she would hit some button on her computer and I could hear wheezing and clicking noises my heart was bravely making that sounded like an old geezer struggling for breath which had to have been why she asked me about the smoking. I stared at the ceiling trying to bravely face death: one’s demise is never a jolly affair. To lie there, so completely objectified, with her jellied probe jammed into my solar plexus all the while waiting to hear that my mortal frame, namely me, was going to be given a death sentence, was not a walk in the park.
The PA came back in after the sonogram and showed me the results: namely my heart beating on a computer screen. This muscle, this thing that works all of our lives, and on which we are so totally dependent, looked ghost-like and awful in its mysterious splendor.
I could see the four chambers and watch the valves opening and closing. I had never seen my heart before and it was eerie to watch the pure animal functionality and the sheer mechanics of myself. I have done my share of plumbing and seen lots of valves, where steel and brass and hard rubber, and even ceramic, open and close with concise precision. But heart valves are completely different: like tender tendrils, almost like long, slender hands clapping as they endlessly open and shut, pumping the blood with no help from me. How fragile and delicate they looked and how humbling to see these faithful servants inside of me, beat after countless beat, while I heedlessly go about the business of being. And yet all of us; our dreams, our hopes, our desires are entirely dependent on their mysterious dance. We inherit this machinery, none of it we asked for or probably deserve-but there it is in us, bequeathing us life.
The Doctor came in and said all was fine which was great to hear, but even so the shadow of death still hung over me for a while. Seeing the delicacy of those valves made the surety of life so much flimsier. What kept them going—-these fragile and vulnerable valves?
Strange to think that Shakespeare, Dante, Emerson, Beethoven, Mozart and all the others who knew so much about the human heart, never saw those fluttering valves swishing; the chambers opening and closing by their ineffable waving. Since then I have been constantly thinking about my valves as I go about living. Now when I look at people, those I love and those I don’t even know, I envision their intriguing valves.
For all our bravado and pride and pomposity and self-importance that we impose on ourselves to survive in this world—-it all comes down to feathery hands wafting in a sea of blood: all of us have that in common. Heart valves are a good thing to keep in mind when our egos blot out all thoughts of mortality, because in the end it all comes down to whether or not we can do a good valve job.
Dear Friends.
Regarding my last concert:
Many have written asking how the concert went. I have limited time, being a consummate artist really sucks all the marrow out of me {NO! Don’t go there!} so I cannot write to the less than ten thousand of you individually, so please forgive this ‘mass mailing.’
A good friend wrote: “I hope there was a good turn out.” I thought I might share my response to him with you:
It's odd that you said that you hoped that there was a good turn out, because at the concert one of my most ardent fans suddenly split his spleen and would have died except that the crack, number one thoracic surgeon in the known universe just happened to be in the audience (he is a real big fan of moi, too---by the way). He got the poor chap up on the hors d'oeuvre table and grabbed some cutlery and went right to work--cut him open like a can of sardines, expertly scooped out all 26 yards of the spleeny guys small intestines, did the Waffle procedure (called ‘The Turn’ in the parlance) and piled his guts into two neat piles between the deviled eggs (with real Hungarian paprika!!) and Kosher pickles. His insides were now his outsides. One of the lucky attendees, a top surgeon himself, said he had never seen someone so well turned out. Thankfully the spleen was expertly repaired and in spite of this very minor blip the concert was superb, as usual. But to answer your question: Yes there was an excellent turn out.
Many thanks and appreciation for those who did come, but I must say I was really sorry for the rest of you who missed such a fantastic performance. I suppose I will have to console myself with the fact that less than a thousand at any show is not so shabby.
I always find the excuses that far too many of you come up with sort of amusing. Let me say, right off the bat, that I refuse, absolutely, to address the ‘sick pet’ excuse. Suffice to say that when puppies, parakeets and pussycats have usurped the importance of my sharing the glories of my instrument with you, my fellow human beings, then the bottom has surely dropped out of the nadir of modern culture.
Sickness with multi symptoms graphically described was probably the most frequent (I will have to check with my numbers people to be sure) lame brain excuse. And folks, just for the record, I can’t even pretend (at this point in my career) to really care how green was your sputum.
The ill-child was almost as popular even though it is tired, abused and overused. But don’t try to kid a kidder because I used it myself last week when I called a friend (maybe now ex-friend) and told him that I couldn’t come to his uninterrupted reading of all of Berthold Brecht’s plays in the original German: that my kid was sick. “But Bill,” he said, “your youngest is 39 and lives in Buffalo.” Oops! Look--no one is perfect, and sometimes destiny calls---and usurps all rules for the few of us.
But folks, just to let you know that when you try to pull the ‘sick child’ stchick please be aware that the latest research is quite succinct: “Children’s diseases are best treated by leaving the kid at home alone, whatever their age.” As any respectable doctor will tell you: “the best thing you can do is to let the kid work it out by himself, because severe illness is best done solo.” Fevers cleanse--give the kids some space--stop being a helicopter parent for one night. For my last show I had seven people use the kid excuse, and after some minor detective work by my people, we discovered that 5 of the 7 were childless. Folks--the ‘sick child’ excuse is no longer acceptable, either by me or my people.
But the supposed accident, usually involving a vehicle, was the close third, at least in the list of excuses that limped in. I can have my secretary look up on Monday an exact count, but I do know there were at least four people claiming to have been hurt trying to get to my show. The one confirmed case we have was young Frank Callow, an eager young fellow, and former keen fan---who in running for the bus, in a blind tear to get to hear me, was hit by a snow plow. Witnesses say that he didn’t suffer too much---his decapitation took only a few minutes.
Young Frank’s absence was perhaps understandable: because let’s face it, Frank had no head for dealing with traffic. But I am having a harder time with the lot of you who allowed inertia to win. Fans and ordinary people, you need valid excuses. You don’t want to be taken off my mailing list. Dare I remind you of Catherine O’Mally who concurrently missed two of my shows, was subsequently removed from my mailings--and less than two weeks later had leprosy of the nether regions. How absolutely ghastly for dear Catherine; Needless to say she is on my prayer list.
Some ‘medical genius’ suggested that it was just a co-incidence, but numbers don’t lie. ‘Nough said.
I will keep you posted about my next show.
Keep well---at least until then.
Love,
Bill
Dear Friends—I was in Walmart the other day and realized how drab all the packaging was and how few choice we really have. Take gum for example……………Love, Bill
In 1951 my father and mother (and 6 kids) spent a summer in southern NH (pictured at left) and we liked it so much that my father, a clergyman, asked the Bishop of NH if there might be a summer chapel where he could preach and get free housing. The Bishop said yes, way up in northern New Hampshire, in a town called Jefferson, which even today is home to just over 1000 souls.
Jefferson is too small to be noted on the map on the left, but it is mid-point between the two top listed towns: Lancaster and Berlin. Many have said the view of the White Mountains from Jefferson is the best of all.
This is the view of the White Mountains from Jefferson. Shown here is what is known as the Presidential Range: from left to right are Madison, Adams, Jefferson and Washington. (MAJ. Washington is the mnemonic to keep their order straight). Mt. Washington is the highest mountain in the Northeast and it is where the worst weather (wind-speed) in the world has been recorded.
In 1952 my father began the summer preaching job at the chapel pictured at right that continued for many, many summers. The building was designed by Renwick, Aspinwall, and Tucker and first opened in 1916. The building is still there but it is no longer an Episcopal church. been recorded.
The main attraction in Jefferson was the Waumbek Hotel, a portion of which survived in our time. It is now long gone. This building was the second Chapel of the Holy Trinity.
About a half mile east of the chapel was the rectory (pictured at left) where we spent many, many wonderful summers. It was a great house. It is still there, but is now a private home.
In the room my father used as a study in that house there was a weird blob of metal that was used as a doorstop (its sharp edges marred the floor). We had been told that it was the remains of a bell when the original Church of the Holy Trinity had burned in 1915. In the years since our summers there, I’ve often wondered what happened to that gnarled relic.
The first Church of the Holy Trinity, which was on the south side of Route 2 and just a bit east of the rectory. It was built in 1898. After it burned a house was built on the foundation, and that house stands to this day.
This is another view of the first chapel (c.1910) seen here on the right. Route 2 is, at this point, little more than a dirt road. The old Waumbek can be seen up on the left. The Waumbek was founded in 1860 and saw several expansions from its original simple frame house. One extension was carried out by the famous architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings--the firm that built the New York Public Library which still stands on 5th Avenue at 42nd Street in NYC. The original Waumbek building burned to the ground in the 1920s. Waumbek (a wonderful name) is the Abenaki word for ‘white.’
In the 1980s the chapel was deconsecrated as an Episcopal church. In fact, my mother and I attended a service there shortly before that sad event and there were only about three people in the congregation. Around the same time that the chapel was deconsecrated the rectory was sold and I assumed that the melted-bell doorstop was lost in the shuffle.
Imagine my surprise when I visited the Jefferson Historical Society this past summer and found, among other artifacts, the very same blob.
With tag affixed, written by my father {BM} in his organized and concise way, explaining the history of the blob.
Dean Fosbroke, mentioned on the tag above, was Hughell E.W. Fosbroke, who was on the building committee for the second Chapel of the Holy Trinity. In 1915 he was on the faculty at The Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Later, from 1916 until 1947, he was dean of the General Theological Seminary in NYC and conducted summer services at the chapel in Jefferson.
But the bells that hung in the belfry of the original Chapel of the Holy Trinity have an interesting story. George C. Evans in his 1927 history of Jefferson, NH quotes from the “History of the Church of Zion and St. Timothy of New York” (G.P.Putnam and Sons: 1894) that the bells were first hung in the belfry of
Zion Episcopal Church (pictured at left) which was on the South East corner of Madison Avenue and 38th Street in New York City:
In the spring of 1861, the peal of bells, remarkable for purity of tone and harmony, was hung in the vacant belfry under the graceful spire.
There is an episode that is somewhat interesting in this connection. In or about 1846, these bells were on board a sailing vessel, bound from New York to a southern port. The vessel was stranded, during a gale, shortly after the voyage began. The cargo was recovered and sold with the exception of the bells. By order of the master of the vessel these were stored in a warehouse, the lessee of which happened to be, in 1861, a member of the Zion parish. Upon hearing that the Vestry were about to purchase a peal of bells, he offered the use of these three bells until a lawful claimant appeared. They were recast with additional metal, and hoisted into the tower, where for thirty years they have given forth their clear and musical sound....
Zion Episcopal Church was designed by the English born Frank Wills, and oddly enough in all the articles I have read about him, he is never credited with this church. Coincidentally he designed Christ Church, Oberlin, Ohio (pictured at right), which I attended faithfully while in college. I confess that I never once thought about who the architect might have been.
Zion Church was dedicated on the 28th of June 1854 with the Provisional Bishop of the Diocese of New York, Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who had been the third rector of Grace Church in New York City, taking part in the ceremony.
Zion Church was sold in 1890 to the South Reformed Church and to quote from the 1897-1898 Year Book of the Parish of Zion and St. Timothy, New York City: “Two of the three bells hanging in the tower of Zion Church, at Madison Avenue and 38th street, were given by the Vestry last spring to the Church of the Holy Trinity, Jefferson, N.H., and were rung for the first time in their new location when that church was consecrated by Bishop Niles on August 30, 1898.”
I have no idea why Zion Church gave the bells to a small chapel in northern NH. What was the connection? Strange to think that “this sponged shaped piece of metal” that served as a humble doorstop had such a rich history and once pealed forth not only in Jefferson, NH, but also for forty years in New York City.
It would be fun to imagine that Poe might have heard this bell when he wrote his famous poem “The Bells.” It’s conceivable: his tintinnabulation was written in NYC in 1849, and our blob had been a bell at least since 1846 before it went down at sea. But we will never know where it pealed prior to being hung in Zion Church in 1861.
But from all accounts its peal was appealing, not appalling, which is more than most blobs can boast.
William H. Minifie
September 2013 NYC
When I was 20 years old I drove across the country with my brother’s college friend (who was four years older than myself) and his girlfriend. It was a VW bus, but instead of a back seat, there was an open flat bed which had a tie down cover and a mattress. That was where my friend and his girlfriend spent the night. I, on the other hand, slept on a cot which I set up each night outside the bus. Some nights when I settled down it was so dark I had no idea what lay more than 10 yards away except where the headlights had shone. Thinking back on it I don't think I would be so intrepid today--what with man-eating locusts out there and all.
We visited Reno and Vegas and I remember playing back-jack and getting served drinks by flirty waitresses. It was the only time in my life that I felt that I really mattered, that I was important. (Just kidding!)
The trip was especially memorable because on the West Coast I met this fellow who first told me about organic food; that what we shoved into our faces affected our health. I was converted. I remember riding back to the East Coast on the back of the VW bus and looking at all the poor slobs driving past who obviously had not heard about organic food, and didn't know nothing from pesticides, and that coffee was not good for you and you get the idea. How I pitied them. Prior to that summer, food was just something I put in my cake hole to keep the old wolf at the door--as they say.
My zeal has waned (thank God!) since those early days. But I still believe that our bodies are such unbelievably sophisticated and brilliant organisms that we should try somehow not to poison these temples, these mortal fleshy edifices, these--enough already! But let's face it, decay is an ugly word! I am always looking for the next cure-all: The Thing that will give me that surge of energy that will shoo decay away, if not forever, at least long enough for me to be deluded into thinking that I am immortal. Yeah for immortality! I wish.
Here is my latest cure-all and it is an old one that my wife Kemp and I read about almost 30 years ago. It was in a book called “A Vermont Doctor's Guide to Good Health” by D. C. Jarvis and his big shtick was that apple cider vinegar (has to be apple cider, not white vinegar) taken with honey in a glass of water would cure just about every problem known to man. We did it for a while and it's time came and went, it had its season--stop!
But 30 years have passed since then, and there is a lot of you know what under the old ding-a-ling if you know what I mean: the old hymn now best sums it up: “change and decay in all around I see”.
I have to admit that my wife and I have sucked many potions and endured many indignities in our health quest: dried egg yolks full of God knows what, coffee enemas (don’t ask) nothing but apple cider vinegar and maple syrup for 11 days, fasting, juicing, correct food combining, no pork, no meat from unknown sources, tinctures of herbs by the truckload, vitamins, minerals, green teas, white teas, red teas and colonics (an indignity!), filtered water, no wheat, no booze, no sugar, no nothing that tasted even vaguely disgustingly yummy!
Last summer I was at the Woodstock, NY flea market and while waiting for my daughter to finish choosing a dress, I heard a woman, standing in front of her stall, asking me if I wanted a five minute message for five dollars. To make a long story longer she turned out to be not only a message therapist but also an acupuncturist. In addition to needling us she zapped us with a light machine that makes cancer cells quiver in their boots, and a foot-soaking device that sucks black tar-like liquid out of your feet: she was the one who got us into the cider game again.
She recommends Bragg organic (there you go again) apple cider vinegar. You can look it up here. All you do is take a couple of tablespoons of the stuff, with some water a couple of times a day. (Bragg recommends adding honey if you have arthritis issues). They claim it cures high blood pressure, lowers cholesterol, stabilizes blood sugar levels, prevents cancer--you name it. It’s also great applied topically, for itches, sore throat, etc.
I have taken it for a few days now, and I gotta say I’m less achey than I often am. I think it is a good life-giving thing!
So friends give it a whirl: it shouldn’t put you in a pickle!
Love---Bill
In the New York Times on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 there was an article about the closing of the Knoedler gallery. It had been around for 165 years---a long time. It was the blurb-- reproduced at right----that caught my attention: not their client list, but the fact that it had been the American representatives of Goupil and Company. I knew I had seen that name before--- But where?
Here are three pictures of Grace Church showing it with the A.T. Stewart building which was just to the south of Grace Church. Stewart built it in 1862 and it was called the ‘Iron Palace’ and was, some believe, the first cast iron building in NYC. I read somewhere that it was also the largest.
Now if you examine the views above you’ll see the building takes up the entire block: all the way from 9th Street to 10th Street and from Broadway right through to 4th Avenue. See in the shot above left just how long the expanse is from Broadway to 4th Ave. But it didn’t start out that way. In this fascinating view on the right--which shows Brady’s studio on the extreme right---you can see the Stewart building on 10th Street, east of Broadway, and if you look carefully you can see that it stops short of 4th Avenue.
In this seldom seen view on the right we can see Grace and the A.T Stewart building and if you look at the building on the north east corner of 9th Street you can see Goupil’s Gallery. Pretty interesting eh? It was a hold out for Stewart’s grandiose plans
Here is another view: less clear but you can catch a glimpse of the Goupil Gallery next to the blank wall of Stewart’s Iron Palace. Sinclair House, by the way, was on the south east corner of Eighth Street and Broadway.
RIP: Here is all that remains of the magnificent Stewart Store (By this time it had morphed into Wanamaker’s) after the horrible fire of 1956. Muriel Grant (wife of E. Allison Grant---former headmaster of Grace Church School) told me that they sat in the school playground for three days and watched it burn. Looking at this picture you can almost taste the ashes.
So there you have it.
William Minifie
December 2011.
One advantage to having an oddball name like Minifie, is that you can track it in a phonebook and be fairly certain that your name, preceded by a few familiar initials, is a relative and not some random upstart trying to wheedle their way into your family genealogical tree.
It all began when I bought a R.L.Polk directory (from 1920-1921) at a school fair several years ago (Shown on right). When I turned to Minifie I found this:
The first listing is for a Charles W. Minifie, about whom I know nothing. (I have a brother named Charles but he wasn’t born until 1941). But the second listing, for a Kath L, is my great grandmother---my father’s father’s mother
She was Katherine Lloyd Minifie, seen at right. Her father was Henry Lloyd who was a sail maker on Allen Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1830’s.
My father loved KLM because ever time she came to visit him in Belleville, N.J. she always had a special gift of candy, or a pen- knife or the like. She, apparently met her husband, Thomas Richardson Minifie, when they both sang in a D.L. Moody and Ira Sankey revival choir. Thomas died young (from a horse riding accident, or so family lore suggests) and there are no pictures of him as an adult.
KLM died in 1926 so I imagine 284 Willis Avenue in the South Bronx, her address noted above, was her last residence. I went up there years ago and found that her address was am empty lot, but there was a simple tenement next door which I imagine was very similar to my great grandmother’s building
The last Minifie in the Polk Book is W J H Minifie who is listed as a clerk in Belleville, NJ. This was my father’s father, my grandfather. His name was William Joseph Haden Minifie. I was named for him without the Joseph part. I took this picture, at left, in the guest room of Grace Church Rectory in 1962. I remember when I asked to photograph him he carefully set the shot up the way he wanted it. (A Whistler’s Father sort of pose). He was a sweet man, but I think, in some ways, he never fully recovered from the early death of his own father. There was something almost shell- shocked about him.
The Walter listed just above my grandfather was my grandfather’s brother about whom I know little, but some memory somehow suggests that he was in the carpet business in Little Falls, NJ.
I spent my 20’s in England doing primal therapy, studying singing and at the end making my living playing a singing Henry VIII. I lived 8 years there, and my last three years I lived in a licensed squat. (Don’t ask).
I tried to get a phone for well over a year. I desperately wanted phone book immortality.
They gave me a number, but no phone. (It wasn’t because I was in a squat; it took everyone that long). In 1980 I moved back to America and imagine my delight when I rented a loft on Eldridge Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and after one simple call to the phone company I had a phone the next day. My own phone! I had tried, in London, for more than 15 months to get one.
Upper right is a view of Eldridge Street from my loft. You can see the Empire State Building on the extreme right. In the middle of the picture is Adam Purple’s peace garden. It was a beautiful piece of art. It was, in fact, featured in the National Geographic Magazine. He collected horse manure from the horse carriages in Central Park and used it for fertilizer. One January morning the city brutally and callously bulldozed the whole thing. It destroyed some part of me that believed our government was there as an advocate for us. The image, above right, shows my loft’s interior. I bought those hanging school house fixtures from a demolition company rewiring Brooklyn schools and sold and installed them all over the city.
Back in the early 80‘s the whole neighborhood was filled with drug buyers and sellers. I saw many things, but perhaps the most vivid was when some fellow wandered into the deserted and littered lot just north of our building, pulled down his pants, and with his ass facing me, projectiled a stream well into the atmosphere: What was that stream you might ask: let’s just say it was not a stream of consciousness; but what was even more pungent, (for lack of a better word), was that that self-same stream was bright orange. I kid you not.
I was 30 years old and this was the first time ever that I had a phone, and would, at long last, be in The Book. Anticipating the arrival of that ‘first-time-ever-name-in-the- phone-book-kind-of-thing’ got me so worked up I couldn’t sleep for three weeks before its arrival. (Just kidding!--I’m not that nuts.) But somehow it did mean that I would be real, established; that I had arrived. OK maybe it was just a blob of ink on a cheap piece of newsprint---but to me it was a Wright of passage--I was flying! Wright of passage--flying-- get it?? Never mind. I know I saved a page of that 1981 phone book, my first ever, which showed my Eldridge Street name and number, but for the life of me I can’t find it, so I cannot demonstrate to you, with printed book in hand, how I was able, for the first time, to open a phone book, proudly point at my name and declare: “Yes Sir that is me! or that is I” --or whatever. My father (seen here at age 19 in 1929) had been the rector at Grace Church, in NYC from 1960 until he retired in 1975, when he and my mother moved to Rhode Island. What was slightly strange was that he was listed in that 1981 directory right above my name, six years after he left NYC. He died in March of 1988, but the phone book people, as you will see, could never accept that fact.
I was married in 1986 and moved uptown to East 86th Street, and left the Lower East Side for good.
By the year 2000 my father had been living in RI for 25 years and had been dead for the last 12. Imagine my surprise then when I received the 2000 NYNEX directory (shown below). There he was, alive in black and white. {The 802 Broadway is the address for Grace Church}
He was achieving PHONE BOOK IMMORTALITY!
But phone directory makers are only human, they make mistakes, which they correct over time: Right? Fair enough, but 8 years later, there he was again.
Below is the 2008 NYNEX directory.
Now please don’t get me wrong, it was great to see my father’s name in The Book-it meant that he was still around; still alive, at least according to the phone book. But just the same, part of me felt that I had paid my phone dues, it was time for Benjamin to let me have my own Minifie phone book space.
But the listing below was the real kicker. This came out this year. Yes this year---2013, and guess what? There he is again! Please keep in mind that my father left the city almost forty years ago. No use denying it: He was no longer merely achieving, he had achieved: PHONE BOOK IMMORTALITY!
Verizon Manhattan White Pages 2013-2014
But wait, look again at the names above. Have you spotted the omission? I am not listed at all, and yes, I have kept my land line!! On some very real level I no longer am, I no longer exist!
I’m not a Big-Oedipal-Complex-Sort-of-Guy, but this whole phone book thing has really destabilized my non-Freudian stance.
And since phone books are being quickly phased out this 2013 phone book will probably be the last one ever published. So it can never be put right! I have been axed, eliminated, terminated--call it what you will. Is this fair? Is this just?
No it is not! I will never, ever achieve PHONEBOOK IMMORTALITY.
William Minifie
NYC September 2013
I know you’ve heard old geezers (like myself) go on and on about how cheap a gallon of gas was, or a pack of cigarettes were when we were kids. It’s pretty annoying for young people to listen to this constant bragging about how cheap stuff was way back then, and how expensive things are nowadays. Yes things were much cheaper; but even so, I was still always broke because wages were low, at least my wages were, as you will see.
But one thing in particular recently struck home as to how much prices have gone up since my younger days; namely the price of a ride in a pedicab, shown above, in all its bipedal glory.
Go to Central Park West and 72nd Street, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side across the street from the famous Dakota Apartment Building (at right) and you will espy the greatest herd of pedicabs in the city: perhaps in the universe, (huddled at left). They gather here hoping to snare the hapless tourists who have come to gawk at the building (The Dakota) where the overexposed John Lennon lived and died. The man who advocated for ‘no possessions too’ managed to garner about 8 apartments for himself in one of Manhattan’s most prestigious and expensive buildings. I have been in several of the Dakota apartments- both as a guest and as a worker, and there is no getting around it, the place is magnificent. In high school the father of one of my schoolmates was Robert Ryan (at left) who owned a huge apartment in the Dakota and who a couple of generations back played some very scary guys in the movies. Once I was at a party in his apartment and one of my besotted numbskull classmates spilled a beer all over Mr. Ryan’s pool table and I immediately knew why Ryan was good at playing scary guys on the silver screen: He was good at playing them in real life too. Thankfully, though, he was not wearing a trench coat or carrying a gun at the party. (Whew!)
The deification of Lennon is apparent all around this area, from the panoply of picture souvenirs to the name of the park that abuts the pedicab corral, (named Strawberry Fields--after a good acid trip)--to the ‘Imagine’ mosaic tile.
There is usually a dazed cackle of tourists standing in hushed and reverential poses around the ‘Imagine’ mosaic, and there are, more often than not, flowers or some other form of tribute, ceremoniously placed on the altar to the man whose band was more popular than Jesus.
No one seems willing or even capable of walking on the mosaic itself, to do so would violate, somehow, a sacred space.
In spite of its being listed as a ‘Quiet Zone’ (see park sign above) there is always one or more Lennon wannabes playing a Beatle tune as homage to the slain martyr:(see picture at right). They are all part of the rich tapestry of New York
But before we get back to the pedicabs, some transportation information about NYC is necessary in order to see how expensive pedicabs are in relation to every other way of getting around.
The Staten Island Ferry which is a magnificent 30 minute ferry ride is free. On the subway you can travel from Far Rockaway in Brooklyn to 241st Street in the Bronx, which is more than 38 miles, for $2.50.
On a horse and carriage (seen above left) where travel is pretty much limited to the area around Central Park, you can ride for up to 20 minutes for $50.00, with an added $20.00 for each additional 10 minutes-- rates above right.
Yellow cabs (one above) are probably NYC’s most famous mode of transport. There are more than 10,000 of them trawling the streets of the city. The initial fare is $2.50 with each additional 1/4 mile forty cents and for each minute you’re stuck in traffic idling, another forty cents. All in all, if you are part of a group of three or four traveling by cab, especially short distances, the fare is almost on a par with the subway or bus (which has the same $2.50 flat rate).
Pedicabs are a fairly recent phenomenon in NYC and had been largely un-regulated, but this past year there were a couple of incidents that changed all that. A Japanese tourist was charged $720.00 for a 20 minute ride, and then this past summer a Texas family paid $400.00 for a 14 block trip. Apparently they were heard shouting “Remember the Alamo!” all the way back to Texas.
It’s shocking, shocking to rip-off unsuspecting tourists, but who would fork over that kind of money, I ask you? I would like to meet them because I have a bridge I’ve been trying to unload for a while.
The new regulations, which went into effect in July, basically state that pedicabs can charge whatever they want per minute, but they have to post it clearly on their vehicle and they have to have an approved stopwatch/timer to calculate the time. So what are the pedicabs charging? I went to Central Park and shot some examples.
$2.50 seems to be the average cost, but there are plenty of them who are charging $3.00. (Examples above). I asked a driver who in their right mind was going to pay that kind of money, but he said that New York was full of rich people who would think nothing about spending a king’s ransom to go a few blocks. But what really got my knickers in a twist, were the rates posted below.
Now just calculate about this for a minute: One hour in the pedicab above right would be $240.00. Can’t your rent a private plane for about that much?
Admittedly that is not as much as the poor family from Texas paying that $400.00 for a 20 minute ride, but it is not too far off.
Why the two examples above struck such a chord with me has not so much to do with the exorbitant amount of money that they are charging, but more with how much money I was paid for jobs I had earlier in life. To give you some perspective on that, I want to share with you some jobs I have had, and then tell you about my first job, which is the one that struck such a clear contrast to pedicabs fees
In 1964, when I was 15 years old I worked on my mother’s cousin’s boat yard on Cape Cod. I pumped gas all day out on a dock, painted boat bottoms, scraped and painted windows and whatever the yard foreman could conjure up to keep me from being idle. I worked 7 days a week from late June through Labor Day. I lived in a small cabin and shared meals with my mother’s cousin’s family. There were good things about the job. I learned to sail in a half-assed way; I can still tie a bowline. But one benefit, if you can call it that, a back-handed bonus if you will, was that I was given a key to the Coke machine, which I often used until one fine day, I can remember it so clearly, I was drinking a Coke and looking out at the ocean and suddenly I felt as if every tooth in my head was rotting. I have not had even one sip of Coke since that day. So that was good! No? But best of all I got to know my mother’s cousin, Raz Parker, (seen above left) who was a wonderful man--one of my childhood heroes.
But there were few people around my age and I was often terribly lonely. My pay was $1.00 per day. At the end of the summer I was given a check for my summer employment (I think it was for $75.00), which I dutifully turned over to my father for some education fund he had cooked up.
In 1972 I got a job building a wall for Arlo Guthrie in Western Massachusetts. Arlo had built a studio next to his house and became worried (justifiably so, I think) that the studio was going to slide down the hill. A friend of mine was an engineering genius and he got me on the crew tying rebar and building massive plywood forms to pour a concrete wall. It was a huge wall, about 25 feet high and about 50 feet long. Arlo had been burned by the contractor who had constructed his studio and was wary of all of us. In any event, he was very guarded. I once found myself in alone with him in a kitchen somewhere, not at his house, and the conversation went nowhere: not without my trying. One fine day one of the crew brought some LSD to the work site. (Remember it was still the 60’s--well almost anyway--so that was not as far-fetched as it would seem today). Anyway we all dropped it, as they say, and I remember Arlo wandered by and I think he knew that something was up, but I don’t think he realized that we were all tripping our brains out. Aside from that one bout of recreational drug use we worked hard and built him a fine and sturdy wall; it’s still there. My pay for a full week of work was $72.00.
In 1975 I was studying singing in London and worked at Billingsgate Fish Market in the City of London. It was a rough and tumble place. We had to be there at 6:00 in the morning and worked till about 2:00 in the afternoon, six days a week--although Saturday we got off a bit earlier. About five of us wrapped the fish that the cutters and gutters had cleaned and stacked them in our vans and then delivered them all over the greater London area.
I had one delivery to a place called Whitelands which was some sort of ballet school down near Wimbledon. Every day I would deliver the dripping-with-fish-oil box of fish to this most unpleasant woman who sat at a small desk just inside the huge kitchen. She would grab my receipt, sign it and hand it back to me, never saying a word while dismissing me with a wave of her hand. One day I screwed up my courage and said to her: “You know, you could say ‘Thank You!’” She was so flabbergasted at my effrontery that she was momentarily rendered speechless, but finally managed to sputter back at me: “But you are only the delivery boy.!” As I was leaving I turned back and shouted at her: “I am a Human Being!!!” Williamson, the owner of the fish stall, almost lost the account, and only after much cajoling did he manage to keep her on as a customer, but I was never allowed to deliver fish there again. What a relief!
The clothes I wore on that job became so stiff with fish oil that my trousers could stand upright without me in them. Guess what my take home pay was? Twenty Three Pounds a week---about $46.00. But I did get wonderfully fresh fish for my singing teacher at music college and more importantly I got really good at driving a stick shift van on the wrong side of the road, which have proven to be very crucial skills for surviving in NYC in the 21st Century.
But again, it was that summer job that I had when I was 11, 12, 13 14 years old that really got me thinking about how much wages and costs have changed. Comparing today’s pedicab fees with what I made on that first job was the jolt that made me write this article.
That first job was being a caddy; you know one of those poor schmucks who lugs a heavy bag around a golf course.
And when I say heavy, I mean heavy. The bags contained a couple dozen golf clubs, an umbrella, often a small chair, golf balls, tees, a ball cleaning device, perhaps a jacket or sweater--you name it. They must have weighed 40 pounds or more. Hell the bag itself, sometimes made from several dead reptiles (reptile disfunction!) must have weighed at least 10 pounds alone.
I am a fairly large man, but as a young lad I was pretty skinny and slight. The picture at left is one of the many cockamamie Christmas cards my mother cooked up where she was able to utilize all six kids in some suitable sappy tableau. I am a front left angel. Can you dig the halos? They are aluminum pie crust tins with the centers cut out. I didn’t dig them because they dug into my scalp for the only way to prevent de- haloizing was to plant them firmly in one’s scalp--so to speak. We all look slightly pissed off because it was a real drag posing in our bathrobes in the hot sun.
The course that I caddied was the Waumbek Golf Course, way up in northern New Hampshire. It is the oldest 18 hole course in NH. The views of the white mountains are spectacular--see above.
We caddies, waiting our turn to...to...well--caddy, gathered in a dirt floored space under the porch of the club house: (shown at left).
There was a Coke machine with Cokes for a nickel, a makeshift table where we played endless poker and tried to act cool, all at that age when I was starting to try and fathom what this ‘life thing’ was anyway, and how I would ever even vaguely fit in at all. (Right where I am now!) We all smoked endless cigarettes. It was the early 1960‘s and it was fine and courageous to smoke back then because the surgeon general’s report didn’t say it wasn’t until 1964
Years ago I collected postcards of Jefferson, NH (where the Waumbek Golf Course is located) and I met a lovely woman named Betty Haas. She gave me the card seen below. It was shot in 1914 when the original Waumbek was in full bloom (It burned to the ground in 1926) and back then if it was not the grandest, it was one of the grandest hotels in the White Mountains. (You can catch a glimpse of it in the background). But what draws me in are the four lads in the middle back right of the shot. They look like they are caddies, my predecessors there. They are all long dead, a fate, I’m afraid to say, that awaits all caddies everywhere.
The Waumbek is (though the hotel is long gone, the golf course survives) a very long course: The score card is right. Study it carefully, there will be a quiz in the morning!
What doesn’t show up in the yardage posted, is the endless hills that were part and parcel of the whole shebang. You started off from the first tee going down hill, but the second hole was up a higher hill and so it continued on and on-- seemingly forever. The 17th hole was 575 yards long and then finally the 18th was up this exhausting, interminable mountain. By the time I arrived at the 18th hole I was panting like a dog. Sometimes I would arrive back at the club house sun-blinded and in a semi-hallucinatory state.
I called up to the golf course yesterday and asked the fellow who answered the phone how long the course was. He said it was about 6 miles. But it seemed much longer; and what with chasing the balls of the duffers who often played, carrying their bags and dealing with the broiling sun it was an ordeal.
It took about 4 or 5 hours to complete this tribulation. Our pay was $3.00 plus a 50 cent tip was almost always thrown in for the grand total of $3.50.
So it had taken the better part of a day, sweating and grunting, lugging some huge bag around for some ingrate who couldn’t care less about my pain and suffering to earn what a pedicab driver makes in one minute. In other words by the time a couple has settled into the cab, a few introductions have been made, a route determined etc. the pedicab driver has made what had taken me a long and incredibly arduous day to earn.
Now maybe you can see why those pedicab price postings precipitated such a plethora of plosives in my prain.
My caddying days have been over for more than 50 years and many of us have experienced the financial ups and downs since those days. But that $3.50 caddy rate has been seared so deeply into my psyche that even today when I see a sandwich for $8.00 or a cup of coffee for $4.00 I immediately translate that into how many times around the Waumbek Course that would be. Whether that is good or ill I can’t say. All I know is that it’s there--notched into my fiber; but they say fiber is good for you. I hope that’s true.
The Waumbek Course: Scenic Sweatshop.
William Minifie
NYC
September 2013.
Bill Cairns in Jefferson, N.H. 1956 Bill would have been 54 in this picture {1902-1985}
Jonathan Minifie c. 1971 1950-200
My brother Jonathan was an English teacher, and his last job was teaching English at Groton School in Groton MA. He died suddenly of a heart attack in August of 2000, climbing Mt. Moosilauke in northern NH.
He wrote the essay (beginning on page 5) about about a childhood hero of ours: Bill Cairns. Jonathan and I were two of six and our father ran a summer chapel in Jefferson, NH and, luckily the rectory was right next door to a huge barn where we spent all of our time: milking the cows, mucking up the manure, bringing in the bales all under the kindly eye of Bill Cairns. He was a warm, bright, beacon all those summers.
That is Jonathan on my mother’s knee in NH in 1951.
Jonathan on the rectory steps, NH c. 1955.
Jonathan at the same rectory by the driveway, c. 1967.
But before we get back to Bill Cairns and Jonathan's essay we have one more detour to make: Namely to Jackie and Burton Ingerson.
August 2013.
Burton Ingerson
Jackie is Bill and Dora’s daughter and this past August I went and visited Jackie and her husband Burton. She has been married to Burton for almost 60 years. Burton often worked with Bill. I spent countless hours riding on the back of the tractor while Burton was cutting the hay or running the baler. (Jonathan describes this mesmerizing phenomenon). Burton was the strongest man I ever knew. When we would bring in the hay he would throw the huge and heavy bales onto the wagon as if they were nothing. He really was like a man of steel. He is a wonderful man, one of my childhood heroes.
But without further ado--here is my brother Jonathan’s essay about Bill Cairns:
I went up to Newport, RI, with the family right after Christmas, and while we were there I stopped into a favorite used bookstore. There I found New York’s Greenwich Village, by Edmund T. Delaney. When I got home, I gave the book a perusal, and was surprised to see the following dedication.
Mr. Seymour was a well-known lawyer and served as both junior and senior warden at Grace Church for many years. He was also head of the American Bar Association. A few years back, I wrote a reflection about growing up in the rectory of Grace Church, from which I quote below:
“The church still had a few remnants of old New York families in 1960-- like Whitney North Seymour and his wife Lola, who was elegance itself—and about whom we used to say: “Whatever Lola wants Lola gets.” I can remember seeing Whitney and Lola strolling through Washington Square one Sunday afternoon on their way to their house on Sullivan Street. Whitney was adorned with morning coat, striped trousers and derby, while Lola wore a long black frock with an expensive stole across her stylish shoulders. They moved through the smoky throngs of guitar playing hippies like an apparition of an era that was quickly passing away.”
Charles Proffitt also served as a warden. My mother used to say, “Having them as wardens, the church had all the law and the prophets.”
The lantern in the outer porch, just inside the Broadway entrance to Grace Church, is a memorial to Charles Proffitt.
Coincidentally, Charles Proffitt (1896-1982) was the head of Columbia University Press. The following is from his New York Times obituary:
Mr. Proffitt, who retired in 1969, directed several of the press's most important projects. Chief among these were…the Papers of Alexander Hamilton,'' a 26-volume set.
And continues:
Mr. Proffitt originated the Alexander Hamilton Medal, the Alumni Association's highest award. He also participated in the design of the medal, which has been awarded every year since 1947 to an alumnus in recognition of distinguished achievement in any field. Hamilton was a student at King's College, which was later renamed Columbia.
You will see, soon enough, why I mention Mr. Proffitt’s connection with Alexander Hamilton.
But before we get back to Delaney’s book on Greenwich Village, allow me a necessary digression to a monument in Grace Church--namely, the tablet below:
The tablet, in and of itself, was of enough interest to warrant an entire page in Edyth McKitrick’s guide book on Grace Church.
William R. Stewart, who wrote the book on Grace Church, has this to say about Dr. Post:
Now, finally, back to to Delaney’s book, where on pages 20 and 21, he describes the most famous duel in American history, which took place in Weehawken, NJ, on the morning of July 11, 1804, when Aaron Burr fatally shot Alexander Hamilton:
I hope you noticed, discerning reader you, that Dr. Post is mentioned as the attending physician to Mr. Hamilton. Aside from the Morris letter quoted above I have found no other source crediting Dr. Post for attending to Mr. Hamilton’s mortal wounds.
I did, however, read an article published in 1828 (the year of Post’s death) which gives us an idea of the magnitude of Dr. Post’s skills as a surgeon.
BY VALENTINE MOTT, M. D.
It is certainly for the honour of our time, for the credit of America, and for the pride of our city, that the first successful operation of tying the subclavian Artery above the clavicle, on the scapular side of the scaleni muscles, for a brachial Aneurism. situated so high in the axilla, as to make it expedient to tie this Artery, was first successfully performed by him, whose skill and science we are now endeavouring to commemorate. To succeed in an operation of such delicacy and danger, and which had failed in the hands of such master spirits in Surgery, as Ramsden, Aberaethy and Cooper, was a triumph reserved for our friend; and it was certainly an achievement, which, if nothing more had been done in this country, must have removed the imputation of inferiority in one of the most important arts of civilization and humanity, and furnish the most com- plete rebuke to the taunting inquiry, " what have your American Physicians and Surgeons ever accomplished ?"
He concludes with this rather maudlin wish for his friend and colleague:
He now lies mouldering in the lone Country Church Yard. Cold as the clod of the valley is that heart, which till lately, beat in unison with ours. Light be the sod that rests upon the bosom of our friend. May the dews of night be distilled in mildness, and may the winds of heaven pass gently o'er his grave.
So the next time you pull out one of these:
you might give a thought to Dr. Wright Post, about which this post, I positively posit, is posted this penultimate day of 2012.
Happy New Year!!!
William Minifie
December 2012
New York City