C & C Part 1

My first cooking job was as a sandwich maker at a cafe-catering outfit down the street from where I was living at the time. They were that type of place with a large cold case where you could order all sorts of salads and a few entrees (and of course, sandwiches) either to go or to eat in at the little dining area across from the counter.

There were a lot of kooky characters working there, me and my sister included, although we like to think of ourselves as among the sanest employees. The first week I was there a guy named Juan trained me, and the second week he disappeared. One day he was showing me how to mix up the cranberry-mayonaise that was the key condiment on the turkey sandwich and scolding me for mincing garlic instead of using the garlic press, and the next, he was gone.

The owners of the business had the police on the case after he missed a couple days of work, and no one could talk of anything else: they told and retold what he had said when they last spoke to him, who he hung out with, what his frame of mind was. A few days after his disappearance he showed up to work like nothing ever happened. It turned out he was on a cocaine-fueled bender with an ex-boyfriend, a sailor who had recently returned to our port from a six-month deployment at sea. 

He was fired, of course.

Dog Fish

Lucy froze when she caught a glimpse of something in the Tidal Basin this morning. "I saw that, too!" Heidi told her as we resumed our walk.

"What was it?" I asked.

"A really big fish!" Heidi answered.

"Remember that time..." I started.

"With Isabel?" Heidi finished.

"Of course!" I said, and we both laughed.

Back when we were new dog owners, and our first dog was only a puppy, we used to take her down to Jones' Point on the Potomac River in Old Town Alexandria. There was a little sandy shore there, and the spot was used as an informal dog beach. Isabel was new to swimming, and we tossed a tennis ball in the water to motivate her to paddle out and get it. But she was new to fetching, too, so often our tennis balls floated away or had to be collected by other, more water-competent dogs. 

Those dogs' owners were generally very nice and encouraging, though. "She's still young!" one woman assured us, even as her own dog literally swam circles around Isabel, retrieving the tennis balls that she would not. 

The three of us stood on the bank watching our dogs, hers swimming out and back, ours standing chest-deep about 10 feet from the shore. Just then, Isabel ducked her whole head under the water and came up with an enormous fish flopping from either side of her mouth. 

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then we started waving at her. "Drop it! Drop it!" 

She opened her mouth and the fish splashed into the river and swam away.

"Wow," said the other woman. "My dog doesn't do that!"

The Road to Gowanda Part 4

According to his WWI draft card, Heidi's great-grandfather was a slender man of medium height with brown hair and brown eyes. In 1918 the 39-year-old was disqualified from service, because he had been a patient at the Buffalo State Hospital since October 24, 1910. At the time he was hospitalized, his youngest son, Heidi's grandfather, was just a year old. Earlier that year, the US Census records him as working as a barber and living with his wife and five children.

Census data confirms that sometime between 1930 and 1940, he moved 35 miles south to the Gowanda State Hospital in Collins, NY. But there are no public records that suggest he ever came home.

It's impossible to say why he was hospitalized; anyone who knows the story is long since gone. It's also hard to say why his son never mentioned him, although at differing times and in various sources throughout the years, his wife is listed as his widow, and she did go on to remarry, perhaps without the benefit of a proper divorce.

The NY State archives has extensive records about former inmates in the asylums, including details of their diagnoses and treatments. Some even include photographs. Unfortunately, access to these records is restricted to all but "qualified researchers under certain conditions." Even direct descendants cannot obtain information about their family members. 

There is no statute of limitations on the restrictions.

The Road to Gowanda Part 3

Into the 1990s, unclaimed inmates in NY State asylums (and many other states as well) were buried solely by number. The records for many institutional burials have been lost or sealed, but for this particular hospital, the burial ledger was given to a museum in Buffalo, and has since been transcribed into entries on the Find-a-Grave website. 

That afternoon we walked the lefthand section searching the cast iron markers for one that was stamped 584.

The story goes that when she received the notification call that her father-in-law had passed away Heidi's grandmother was confused. "I thought he was already dead," she told the caller, "kicked in the head by a horse years ago." Her husband never spoke of his father, and although she was in high school when her grandfather died, Heidi's mom never met him. Like her mother, she thought he was dead.

The Road to Gowanda Part 2

A sunlit clearing lined with neat rows of cement markers lay at the bottom of the hill. To our right and through the woods was another opening dotted with cast iron Ts and on the left was another. We turned around and headed back up the hill. I gave a thumbs up as the car came into view and Heidi's mom was climbing out before we got there. "This is it," I told her.

After spraying our legs liberally with bug spray, we leashed up the dogs and stepped over the chain again. Once seen, this is a cemetery one never forgets the description had read, and it was accurate. Our search was over, we had found the Gowanda State Hospital Cemetery where Heidi's great-grandfather had been buried at the age of 83 in 1962 after living the last 50 years of his life in one of New York's state asylums.

The Road to Gowanda: Part 1

The unmarked dirt road was not a road at all, but rather a couple of ruts at the edge of a grassy field. We had already passed it twice, admiring the cute gray cat lounging like a small panther in the tall grass. And we had already taken the only other turn off this short stretch of Wheater Road: a narrow way between cornfields that had dead-ended by an abandoned shanty at the edge of the woods. 

"The written description says it's here," I insisted as we idled on the narrow shoulder. "It's unmarked, at the end of a quarter-mile dirt road on the east side of Wheater between Bagdad and Rt 62." I opened the map app on my phone. Tapping the satellite image, I could see three light green clearings beyond the woods at the edge of the field where the cat was. "We're going in!" I said and put the car in gear. A hundred yards away I turned onto the grassy lane and drove to the back of the meadow. Over a small rise we saw a chained-off driveway that had been invisible from the main road. 

I pulled up to it and hopped out of the car. "I'm going to check it out!" I said.

"I'm going with you!" Heidi replied, and we left the a/c running for her parents and hopped over the chain.

The path curved around to the left and down a steep hill. I knew why they had closed it off; a car could easily get stuck going up or down this way. We flushed a flock of finches to the right and a woodchuck lumbered across the road ahead of us; clearly this trail was not well traveled by humans. It had been mown sometime this summer, but the grass was up to our knees in some places. Rounding the curve ahead of us, I stopped and pointed. "There it is!"

The Old Man

At dinner this evening, Heidi told her parents about a quick visit she made to a neighbor down the street. John was a childhood friend of hers, and he and his wife and their two teenagers live in the house that he grew up in.

"You were where?" her dad asked, cupping his ear. He hasn't replaced the hearing aid he lost a couple of months ago.

"John's!" Heidi repeated.

He nodded. "Were you talking to the son or the old man?"

Heidi was confused. I could tell by the look on her face that she thought her dad had lost his marbles. John's parents have been dead for 40 years. 

"I think your dad is calling your friend John 'the old man'," I guessed, knowing that his son was also named John.

"Right!" her dad waved a cranky hand. "Do you even know the kid?"

"As a matter of fact?" she answered, "I do. And I was talking to both of them."