dead men tell no tales...

..they just speak in mind boggling riddles...

a boy has never wept...nor dashed a thousand kim.

mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.

I showed him boss, did you hear him meet me? An appointment, appeal stuck. All right mother.

French Canadian bean soup, I want to pay, let them leave me alone.

I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers for crying out loud. It isn't worth a nickel to two guys like you or me. but to a collector it is worth a fortune, it is priceless. I am going to turn it over to....


Seventy five years later, I'm trying to make sense of it all.

journey to the center of the earth.

I left my city in a dark morning and I returned to it in a dark morning. In between that I encountered the following:

Day 1:

A bus ride, a train ride and then a car ride... then over a hundred miles of these....

A general store, a gun show, a museum dedicated to little league baseball, abandoned farms. Phone loses signal for most of the way and as service provider had warned service would be provided by another carrier, in this case a bunch of strange digits. and lots of ads on the road for these:

wanna deal on a 12-gauge shotgun???

couldn't drink the water as the filter system was down, given one bottle to use between two people and told if we needed more "we could go to the pharmacy down the street."

A news broadcast that played for over ten minutes phone calls of people who actually condoned the beating death of an immigrant saying things like "that's one less foreigner in the world and those boys just had a fight that got out of hand"

Travel Buddy: We really are in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Me: What time do you want to leave tomorrow?

TB: How bout near three? ( We left about an hour after this proposed time, still not bad)

Sleep with the dehumidifier on as a lullaby as the silence outside is too deafening.

Day 2:

Reason we are in the middle of bumble fuck goes beautifully, bride looks like a silver bell.

Then a five mile journey (up) through here:

To get to here:

Then back down the five mile path to a lovely dinner and dancing and just before me and travel buddy depart turn around to be gawked at by people in jeans, fur vests and shotguns.

Back through the rolling hills and mountains, racing against the sunlight ( almost like a reverse vampire), three cups of coffee in a row to be hot wired, bright eyed and bushy tailed, fight with relatives over the phone who are trying to get me to make a pit stop.

Me: I want to go home...thanks anyway...I already told you I am going home.

back to the train, rushing through the station that was the final leg of my journey, still bright eyed I get here:

Tip of the morning on Day 3:

Return to my city in the dark of morning, filled with a constant lullaby I recognize to go to sleep by.

the medicine for the day

Wasn't feeling well, but there is only so long that I can stay in the house before getting cabin fever. Had enough strength to go somewhere familiar.

"Hello Mr. N"

" Oh hello!, you know what you're doing so you don't need my help." He says in his thick Russian accent and gestures to the back with a smile.

tabletops, shelves, floorspace and every corner filled with books, ledgers and boxes documenting over 100 plus years of history. All permanent, and a stroke of luck for me the originals as the state is too poor to document anything. Anger from the records keeper as no one seems to care.

Almost breaking my back to coax a cabinet to open it's drawers. This thing must be as old as some of the dusty ledgers around it. Been through it on three separate occasions and each time it refuses to open a different drawer.

Fingers black with dust as I gently sort through papers and for the second time this month I hear how unusual I am from the bespectacled man in the corner.

" You know, where I came from...history was destroyed on purpose, and here I go to work surrounded by it. People need to listen to what is in the documents as this is our future, not the technology that can rewrite history." He shakes his head and stares off in the distance for a minute. I try to keep the pages of ledger book from coming loose.

what I would prefer right now

Times Square-1943

The rain I would like to see, verses what is outside my door.

Penn Station-1910

If I had to leave New York, I wouldn't mind passing through here...




Soda Fountain-1921

If I needed a mental break in the afternoon.

*all photos from Shorpy

a small treat

After emptying my head on paper the night before I wanted coffee and hotcakes. Diner coffee to be more specific and set out to get some. My usual haunt was filled to the max ( a good thing!) but I couldn't take the noise level and wanted some place a little more quiet. Thus appeared the little hole in the wall with the old style letters on the awning.

I had to adjust my vision when I stepped over the threshold. Everything seemed to be tinted in a yellow glow. The light covers, the in scripted tiles on the walls, and the cases displaying an assortment of cakes. I had to look up at the white tin ceiling to adjust my eyes a bit. Conversations in English, Spanish and Greek floated around me and I floated to the counter and swiveled on the stool, happy to have my coffee and hotcakes.

"Everything is a good? How bouta now? More coffee?" The owner inquires with a toothy smile.

I smile back and watches as he fills my cup, banters with a waitress and relish the quietness of the moment before I go home to bang my head out some more.

slight sensation

foreign language scripted in gold on the wall as I steal a moment to trace as many with my fingers standing on my toes. At one time I knew how to sound out those letters from the tattered paper that belonged to my grandfather, a paper in my hand that warranted looks of astonishment and disbelief from the Hasidim one morning on a packed A train to work and a few questions coming my way. I think it was my response of a "mixed marriage" that threw them off. I did get a wave and a tip of their hats out of it. I waved and smiled back.

Beautiful glass lamps, installed over 123 years before, use to be gas, made the transition to electric in 1907. The Edison bulbs still work, how's that for getting your monies worth. During a history lesson going on around me, I slip off a shoe and trace the worn grooves in the floorboards underneath my feet. Souls upon souls that offered up their hopes, dreams and fears and that wood absorbing every one of them.

baby steps for healing

vent your frustrations out on a dead research subject...

go into one of the oldest hat stores in the city, get wide-eyed at the newsboys, fedoras, bowlers, you know real men hats, with staff who wear said real men hats and get an impromptu history lesson on said hats and try not to grin as you imagine a time when gangsters, card sharps and the like wore such hats...and oh yeah and grin at the original moldings on the walls, ceilings and display cases.

repeat step one and vent frustrations out on dead research subject.

talk to my grandmother who remembers riding on the trolley when she was around 16 and going to the Stetson store cause she wanted to buy her father a Stetson hat for his birthday.

"Of course, I couldn't as I didn't have his head with me and men got measured. So they gave me a mini fedora in a little box with his appointment time on a card to come in and be measured. Next time you go in there ask them about the mini hats!"

repeat step one and vent frustrations out on dead research subject.

wonders whose apartment she can haggle into on Sunday nights as I don't have cable and Boardwalk Empire starts on Sunday.

talk to my great uncle on the phone:

" Me and Aunt Marie just celebrated our wedding anniversary. Been together over forty three years...I told her you been with me all this time, no use looking for anything else now! You know, we have arguments, but at the end of the day we're still together and that's what matters. The arguments fade away"

repeat step one and vent now cooled off frustrations out on dead research subject...subject no longer liking being beaten to a pulp starts talking...feebly, but still talking.

End result=heart slowly healing.