Callicoon

I was thinking about my dad this morning.  He passed away in early 2005.  Went in for heart surgery at NYU and was dead five months later from the damage accumulated from post operative infections.  He hated New York City. I always thought that maybe it was intuitive.

My father was a very social creature.  He would get up at 4:30 in the morning so that he could join the gang down at the local gas station eating nook to commisserate before they went out to do logging or road work or whatever occupation required an early morning start time.  The people in my town always enjoyed the oral history, especially laced with humor.  There seemed to be a practical intelligence to them.  And they didn't really care who you were as long as you could entertain or be entertained. Dad lived for this stuff.

Dad was also very quietly an active contributor to the well being of the town.  Later I would hear what he did for the conservation of the town and the Delaware River that ran through it. He was always going to meetings for zoning or the park commission or what have you.  It wasn't something we spoke about at home.  I read about it later.   Which is why the following does not suprise me.

His friends were not generally aware of the direness of his condition until the end.  They were a little shocked that he actually died. There wasn't much to visit because he couldn't communicate.  Mostly he drifted off as his body lost the battle as one infection after the other slowly defeated it. There was a helplessness permeating the situation that was infuriating.  His friends were used to fighting for him if he was wronged and there was nothing they could do.

At the time that Dad passed away, there was a terrible flood in Callicoon.  It rained so hard that the river and the creek did something that hadn't happened since I was a little girl.  It breached the banks, eating and spitting out most of the things in its path.  One of the few places we had together as a community....the only  besides a small park where they set up the farmers market in the summer in recent years....was The Youth Center.  It was where we had town picnics and the local swimming pool.  There was also a playground, a basketball court, tennis courts and a large softball field.  Nothing fancy.  Built for practical upkeep and longevity.  The waters annihilated it all, leaving the playground buried in dirt.  The floors of the main building were wrecked. The soft ball field looked like a meteor hit it, pitted with ditches.  The center, so important to the community, was a not for profit reliant on the kindness of donations. It would cost the community center which was maintained by a local board of directors, thousands of dollars to fix the damage.

One day soon after the flood, a convoy of trucks drove through town. They passed by the window of the local newspaper where one of the men who sat on the youth center's board of directors worked and continued on to the youth center then pulled into the baseball field.  The man on the board of directors became immediately concerned because no money had been had been confirmed for repairs yet.  He walked across the very resilient bridge that went over the creek to the remains of the softball fields and found a man leading a group of workers. They were in the process of filling in and repairing the destroyed playing field.

"Excuse me?  Who are you?" He asked. The man gave him his name, returning with, "And who are you?"  The man on the board of directors said, "I am not aware of a work order for this.  Who sent you?" And the man with the work crew said, "Eddie Curtis."  "But Ed is dead," said the newpaper man. "Now, ain't that just like him?" The contractor replied.

The newspaper man on the board of directors  gave up trying to make sense of the situation and  began to walk away. The man with the trucks called back to him,  "Hey!" He yelled, "Where do I send the bill?"  He pointed to heaven, "Up here?" And then he pointed to hell, "Or down there?"

The workers finished the field and drove out of Callicoon.  The following year it was flooded again, this time taking out the out building.  But the softball field remained fixed.  I'd say it had guardian angel but Dad was an atheist and would just say that it was because his friends did good work. He would be happiest that I was told this story in the local grocery store by one of his cohorts. Because ain't that just like Callicoon?