If the weather is cooperating, I take advantage of this early rising. I am out of bed and out the door in ten minutes, and by the time I get to the park, it is light enough to feel safe. I get to observe the changing light until the rising sun breaks through and provokes my gratitude.
Because of the early hour, I am often the only person at the park. I like it that way. Not for nothing do I refer to "my park," as if I own it. Beyond the area where I do my thing, there's a field where grown men fly toy planes. I give them a "two high" when they drive past me on the way to their playground, and most of them return my sign of peace. I have befriended a couple of these men, and they will pull over to chat it up a bit, their toy planes taking up most of the back seat of their cars.
Today, Bill stopped to chat. I think he's about 85, because he told me that he got out of the service in 1955. (I was five years old then.) Bill is from Brooklyn, and he sounds like it. After he flies his toy plane, Bill heads over to Green Cay, where he walks three laps around the boardwalk, which he estimates is about four miles. Did I mention that he's about 85? And what a memory! Unlike mine, as I can't remember what it was that got us talking about Greenwich Village.
Bill rented a room in the Village, on McDougal and Bleeker Streets. He said it was in an architecturally beautiful building and very clean, but there was one problem. In the room he rented, over his bed, there was a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. (I know this picture, as there was one over my bed when I was a kid, too.) Bill, who thought it necessary to tell me that he was a "matzo," asked his landlord if he could remove the picture. "It's ruining my love life!" he said. The next evening, Bill returned to his room with his girlfriend (a ballerina), and immediately noticed the faded place where the picture had been. Great! he thought. It wasn't long before he saw that the picture hadn't been removed, just relocated to the opposite wall, where he could gaze upon it from his bed! Despite this, he and his ballerina girlfriend stayed together for quite some time. Bill rattled off names of famous dancers, artists, and actors that he met during this time in the Village.
Having recently watched the musical drama I'm Not There, about Bob Dylan, I asked Bill if he ever saw Dylan in the Village. Bill was familiar with the movie (telling me that most of it was filmed in Canada, as it was cheaper to film there instead of the Village). Not only did Bill see Dylan perform, he was also "served" by Dylan! Early in his career, Dylan had a gig as a singer/waiter. Bill says he was a terrible waiter. But as we all know, you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Bill had many more stories to share, about rent parties where you paid the host $5.00 to eat from a big pot of spaghetti and down some pink Catawba wine while trying to hook up with someone. Kind of like an early GoFundMe with a little Tinder thrown in? He told me how he made a lot of money when he sold an idea for a toy to Hasbro, but Bill talks so fast, I didn't get a chance to ask him what toy! I'll be sure to bring it up next time I chat with him.
After we parted company, I thought about my recent post about the "seven identities" of my life and bemoaned the fact that my experiences seem so dull compared to Bill's. And then I passed by the silver fork that I stuck in the sand last week, gleaming in the morning sun. Yep, it's still there. And although I cannot explain it, somehow it made me feel like my life is fine just the way it is. Like Bill, I have stories, too. We all have stories. Take advantage of opportunities to share them.
Be the star in your own Woody Allen movie. Be like Bill. (But maybe not like Woody.)
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