Walking on Water

In many cultures, as boys approach adolescence, there is a test of manhood. American Indians, for example, have what they call “Vision Quests.” The Japanese have the “Genpuku”, the Amish “Rumspringa”. These test usually involve a ritual that the youth has to perform, to show his compatriots that he has chosen to enter into the next stage of his life. Some of these tests can be simple, others can be brutal, some involve hallucinogenics, and some just wish they did, because they’d probably be a heck of a lot more fun.

Of course, any of those tests would be a problem for a 13 year-old kid growing up in Queens. Indian Peyote was kind of hard to come by in Flushing; although, to be fair, there was an assortment of mind-scrambling substitutes, if you knew a certain type of people. Besides, if I went the mind-altering route, my Irish Catholic father would have killed me, and that was no exaggeration– he would have turned me into an inkblot.

So what was a budding teenager to do? You had to be inventive, that’s what. As the winter of 1973-74 approached, even if only subconsciously, my friend Eddie and I were making plans. The test had to involve something big. What did big mean? Big at the age of 13 is defined at my current age of 50+ as something really, REALLY stupid. And could we come up with something THAT stupid? I proudly state: you’re darn right we could!

Let me fill in a little background here. Eddie and I both lived a few blocks from Flushing Meadow Park, and because of that proximity, it sort of became our unofficial backyard. Back in the 70s, parents didn’t seem to worry nearly as much where their kids were 24 hours a day. I just saw a TV commercial where a mother was relieved that her daughter’s cell phone was on a certain network, because mom could take comfort knowing that the GPS tracking application on the mom’s phone would keep her constantly informed of her daughter’s whereabouts. By the way, her daughter was at the local MALL with her friends, not on safari in the wilds of Africa hunting lions. I had to laugh. Back in the day, I’d tell mom that I was “go’n down to the park,” and that would be it, for at least the next 5 hours. Different times, I guess.

It would often be the case that we would spend most of a weekend down at Flushing Meadows, and during the summer, plenty of weekdays too. There was an abundance of stuff to do there, even though the World’s Fair had closed 10 years earlier. Grab your mitt, a ball, your bat, or jump on your bike. Or just put on your best worn-in sneakers, and just walk. It was fun to simply hang around, there was always plenty to look at, investigate, explore. The park was still full of what could be considered the dead carcasses of the ‘63-‘64 fair, some structures even went all the way back to the one in they had in ‘39.

One sad example that comes to mind was the United States Pavilion. After the ‘63-‘64 fair ended, the city decided they did not want that particular building demolished. Unlike almost all of the beautiful structures that I remember so fondly as a young child, that one (and just a handful of others) could stay. After all, the U.S. Pavilion was a beautiful building, one meant to stand the test of time. Surely, they’d be able to use for… something. So let’s just put a chain link fence around it for now, said the city, and we’ll figure that out. Eventually.

And so it sat, month after month, year after year. Rumors started to spread that there were people who had taken up residence inside, and the cops had to patrol it on a semi-regular basis to roust them out. I even heard a story about a guy they called “The Phantom of the Fair” who eluded the police for months, setting booby traps of all kinds to evade capture. My friends and I used to think that we caught a glimpse of “The Phantom” from time to time, if he ever even existed. In the end, as I bet you have guessed by now, the city let the poor Pavilion decay to the point that they had to pull it down before it fell down. Ladies and gentlemen–New York City planning in the 70s, ya’ couldn’t beat it with a stick!

The park was vast, and to us, that was a good thing. It would often happen that on a weekday, you might walk around the fairgrounds all day and hardly see another soul. If you got down to the park on a nice weekday, you could have your pick of fields to choose from. If you had your baseball stuff, more often than not you were able to snag an empty baseball field. Most times, however, we’d just set ourselves up on one of the hundreds of grass squares of empty land that were everywhere, another remnant of the long gone fair.

Often, we just walked. If there was one thing you could do down at Flushing Meadow, it was walk, a lot. It is often said that men don’t talk enough. That was never a problem for my friends and I. I spent many a day sometimes with a group, sometimes just Eddie and myself, walking and talking, often going no place in particular; wherever our feet took us. After a while, Eddie and I started to build a particular path we would follow most days. It was basically from my house, 8 blocks or so to the park, and then south down its length, following the concrete shoreline of the Flushing River, till we came to Meadow Lake. Meadow Lake was one of two large lakes that were at the southern tip of the park; the other one was Willow Lake. We would follow the shoreline of Meadow Lake all the way around, and then return the way we came. All in all it was about 7 miles or so; a nice stroll. We walked that path so many times that it became subconscious, sometimes I’d be coming back out of the park and not actually remembering any of the time we spent in there, and no Peyote was involved.

Of course, sometimes we’d do things other than just walk, like fish, for example. Fish? There were fish in Flushing River? Yes, believe it or not, there were, a couple of hardy types.

Flushing River in the 70s had, what is commonly known as a “reputation”. TV host Merv Griffin made “Flushing River” jokes on his show all the time, and anyone who lived in my neighborhood with a nose knew when the river was at low tide. Boy, did you know.

So, often we would get quizzical looks, snickers, sometimes downright laughter as we would arrived at the banks of that river with our fishing rods, and cast our lines into its murky waters. Most people thought the only thing you could catch in that river was a bad case of Cholera or Dysentery. Not true, if you were an optimist and willing to believe. The river was full of Sun Fish (or Sunnys, as we called them) Catfish, and Perch. Mid-sized fish, the type you always threw back. Besides, they DID come out of Flushing River. We were optimists, not idiots.

The park was the place we spent most of the summer. Even when the fall season arrived, the park still was the place to go, where millions of fallen leaves from hundreds of trees made piles of damp, scratchy, crunchy, dirty fun. But as the year ticked toward its end and the temperature dropped, the park saw us less and less.

Winters in New York City can be rather brutal. The temperature often gets into the single digits, sometimes below zero. The wind can cut through you like badly sharpened knife. TV weathermen will often warn viewers that skin exposure for more than a few minutes could cause painful frostbite. Best to stay indoors, turn up the heat, put on your fuzzy slippers, and hunker down for the duration. Only an idiot, a fool, or a certified crazy person would purposefully trek off on one of those single-digit days to a wind-swept place like a wide-open park, just for the sake of seeing if it could be done. You could be any of those demented types, or instead, you could just be 13 years old and daring yourself to do it. Yeah, that was reason enough for us.

I’m not sure which one of us came up with the idea, but the other one of us agreed almost instantly. The plan was a simple one: pick one of the coldest days of the winter, preferably one of those single-digit ones, and walk our normal route, down to the park, hike down the length of the river, all the way around Meadow Lake, and trek back home again. It was an easy arrangement, no problem whatsoever.

Our plot solidified, all we had to do was watch the weather reports on the news each evening, and listen for the prediction of a bone-chilling day. Of course, we told none of our family members of our plans, knowing full well that this type of lunacy would be quelled instantly by either set of parents. Of course they would. They were not insane, or 13 years old, like us.

December passed, as did the last of 1973, and soon after, January was gone too. But we were not disheartened, because as most New Yorkers know, February is the cruelest month. Watching the 10 o’clock news on channel 5 the first week of February, I heard what I was waiting for: single digit temperatures for the coming weekend. The next day at school, Eddie and I agreed… Saturday would be the day for the winter test of manhood, or whatever it was we thought we were doing.

Saturday, February 9th, 1974 dawned a brisk 6º, and was set to be jumping up to a balmy high of 14º. Of course, that did not take into account that magical “wind chill factor”. Although I don’t think they talked about that “factor” back in ’74, believe me, it was there just the same. There was also a dusting of a couple of inches snow on the ground, not enough to make any real impact on the walk, but the black ice it would have created when it melted and refroze the day before would just add to the dangerous, bone cracking fun.

Eddie was to arrive at my apartment about 1 p.m., suited up and ready for battle. We had gone with the conventional wisdom, which was to dress in layers. So we had layers, and lots of them. Starting from the top, I had my hat, which was a wool cap. Next, I wore a regular tee shirt, covered by long sleeved underwear shirt, covered by a wool sweatshirt. Then I donned briefs, covered by a pair of long underwear, covered by a pair of Wrangler jeans. Lastly, I armed myself with 2 scarves, one inside the coat, one outside, my lined leather jacket with hood, and lastly, 2 pairs of gloves, 2 pair of socks, covered with winter snow boots. And thus I was prepared to face the frozen tundra.

As I stated, we had to have a cover story, and since I got dressed earlier behind my locked bedroom door, the story I told my parents was simple: Eddie and I were going over to our friend Timmy’s house, just a couple of blocks away. My mother even looked at me about that short trip to Timmy’s quizzically.

“You know, it’s freezing cold, you’re not going to be playing outside, are you?” she asked.

“Naw, too cold for that… we’re not crazy!” I answered, while looking away, lest a snicker explode from my face. Man, I thought, I’ve got her completely fooled! Yep, I contemplated, how COOL will this be!

Now, did it ever enter my juvenile mind that my mom might be justifiably worried that such a foolish trip might be ill advised, even dangerous? Did I consider that not telling ANYONE where we were going or what we were doing would mean that the authorities might not find our really COOL frozen bodies until the spring thaw? I think you know the answer to that question.

After Eddie rang the bell, I threw on my coat, grabbed my scarves and gloves, and with a “Bye Mom”, I was out the door.

Eddie waited for me by the roof stairs, dressed essentially the same as me. “How bad is it out there?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not too bad,” Eddie answered, not very convincingly. His red face and slurred speech told another story, and he had only walked a few blocks to get to me. Not important, I told myself. This was SUPPOSED to be as cold a day as possible, so we were right on track, you bet.

“Let’s time this.” Eddie stated. “I bet we can do the whole thing in a couple of hours, tops!” I nodded in agreement. Eddie dug to find his watch under several layers of clothes. “It’s 1:06 right now, so let’s shoot for 3:15, 3:30” he said. Sounded good to me, a completely doable plan. So, with everything decided and tied up in a nice organized bow, off we went, bounding down the stairs.

When we first stepped outside into the covered courtyard of my building, I smiled to myself. Not so bad, this will be easy! A few feet more, and we hit the street, and the wind. I say wind, but that was only the technical term. In reality, we both instantly got slammed in the face by a bucket full of hot, tiny needles, thrown with body staggering force. My glasses pushed up on my face, and for a second, I had trouble catching my breath. This was my first gentle hint that the trip might not be as easy as I thought. I turned my back to the blast for just a second, and looked over at Eddie. He did the same thing. “Not too bad, huh?” I yelled through my scarves.

“Just a gust, it does that sometimes,” Eddie yelled back.

“Okay, good,” I answered, quietly praying that he was right. Sure enough, the wind died down, and we both turned around. With a nod, we headed for the park.

The first few blocks were okay, about what I expected. The more we walked, the warmer I started to feel, which was great. I figured by the time we hit the park, I’d be practically toasty warm. There would be an occasional blast of wind in the face, but we got pretty good at turning with it if it got too bad, and just continue walking backwards. I guess it goes without saying but we didn’t talk much; between the wind and our scarves it was hard to hear each other anyway. After a few blocks, we turned down the last road to the park entrance. Walking under the highway underpass, we entered Flushing Meadows.

The first thing I noticed was that the park was empty, and I mean there was not another soul, not a car, not a squirrel, not even a pigeon. It looked like for all intent and purposes we were the only living things who were stupid enough to be here, and for some lunatic reason, that made me proud.

The wind was back, and this time, the gust seemed pretty steady. It seemed to me that all the heat equity I had built up on the walk to the park entrance was gone in an instant. The wind pushed us, and we had to put our heads down, just to brace ourselves.

Ed looked my way, and yelled, “You okay?” I gave him a gloved thumb up in response. Eddie pointed toward the start of Flushing River down the path, and we pushed ahead.

Walking was slow, a lot slower than I thought it would be. The wind was constantly pushing against us, and my muscles all felt sluggish, like the connection they had to my brain was filled with static. We had made it down to the riverbank, and were about a mile down its length. We both kept about the same pace, a slow trudge. Because I had put the hood of my coat up and could only see straight ahead, I had to look to my right occasionally to make sure Eddie was still there, and he had to look to his left to do the same. It was hard to hear, I had pulled my hat down over most of my ears, and the hood added to the dampening effect. Even with all that insulation, I would still hear the whistle of the wind working its way into any hole it could find in my padding, and my ears burned jaggedly from the cold. A jet flew overhead on its way to LaGuardia Airport, and I noticed the engines sounded different, like they were at a higher in pitch. The frigid air was making everything weird.

That old “wind chill factor” was definitely in control now. I didn’t have a thermometer with me, of course, but my guess was it was well below zero ever since we had hit the park. Everything hurt now, in that “numb pain” sort of way, and I realized with slight alarm that we were not even a quarter way done with our trek. As much as I willed my feet to move more quickly, they just responded with a “you’ve GOT to be kidding…” attitude, and kept the same, mindless pace.

At one point on the route, we would have cross a cement bridge/dam that spanned the width of the river. The dam was set up to catch any large pieces of floating debris, and let the “clean” water through. In the middle of the bridge there was a void of about 4 feet, in which a thin metal grate had been placed to catch the garbage. It was a short jump over the grate to make it to the other side, normally an easy leap. It was only after we got on the bridge that day that we realized it was covered with a nice, shiny coat of black ice.

We looked at each other, but did not have to say a word; not that we could actually talk anyway. Both our mouths were mostly frozen shut by this point. Leaping over the gap from one side without any traction would be difficult, landing on the other side and staying on our feet even more so. The river itself was one solid sheet of ice, except here, where the constant banging up against the cement dam wall and grate had broken the ice’s surface enough to allow water to flow through the gap.

I looked down at the icy cement. So what, I thought– the worst that could happen is I’ll jump the gap and lose my footing, and either end up on my butt, or slip and fall in the river, no biggie.

13-year-olds are indestructible, as we all know.

Always the bravest, Eddie went first. He planted his feet, crouched, and jumped. On the other side, he did a small “uh-oh” ice dance, as his feet fought for purchase. In just a second or two, he was still, stable. Then he was waving for me to follow. He did it without much problem, I thought, this will be a cinch.

Parroting Eddie, I planted my feet, crouched, and jumped. At the last millisecond, I felt my jumping foot slip. I was in the air when I realized that the slip had cause me to leap short, and I would barely make it to the other side. I leaned forward so I would at least land mostly on the concrete and miss the water. I crashed down on the cement on my knees and arms, almost doing a face plant. If I wasn’t so numb, that would have REALLY hurt. As it was, Eddie helped me to my feet, and I brushed myself off, all the time doing the “I’m fine, I’m fine” wave.

Assured I was okay by my waves and nods, Eddie stepped off the bridge on to the other bank, a nice-sized step down, and I followed behind. That’s when I realized I was not so okay, my left knee felt as if it was creaking like a rusty hinge, and almost went out from under me. And oh boy, oh boy, did it hurt now, you bet. I winced and let out a little yelp, but thanks to my many layers and the constant wind, Eddie never heard a peep.

This side of the riverbank was narrower that the first one because there was a chain linked fence to our left, so we had to walk single file. This was a good thing; otherwise Eddie would have noticed I now had a significant limp. I was determined NOT to look like I was in pain; I was WAY too “macho” for that.

We had made it most of the way down the river by now, we could see Meadow Lake just around a couple more large bends in the stream. Walking along the rocky river bank was getting harder, and more painful. Just ignore it; it will go away, I kept saying to myself. But my knee had a mind of its own, and was all about keeping my attention with a constant call of “Hey you! Yes, YOU! I’m heeere, HELL-OOO!”

I began to look for ways that I could quietly shorten the trip as much as possible, and without letting on that at this point, all I wanted to do was go home. But I was also stubbornly thick enough not to let on that this was my plan; had to keep up the tough guy stuff.

It was at this point that I came up with an idea, which in retrospect was probably hatched in a mostly frozen brain. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I thought, everybody knows that from school. The river made a couple of wide turns, and the rocky riverbank painful to walk on. But look at that nice, flat, hard frozen river! I could cut out quite a bit of walking just by taking a shortcut, just cut across the river at the big bends; straight ahead, point a to point b. Not the WHOLE river, mind you, THAT would be crazy! The answer was easy, no problem whatsoever.

I tapped Eddie on the shoulder, and he turned to look at me. All I said was “I’m tryin’ a shortcut,” and pointed down at the river. I’m not quite sure he understood what I was gesturing, and I’m pretty sure it was impossible for him to hear me. The problem was, Eddie’s brain was in much the same condition as mine, so he was not much help in stopping my stupid train barreling down its tracks. He just nodded, and off I went.

I stepped down onto the ice, and started walking. It was not nearly as slippery as I had feared, by let’s face it, it was frozen Flushing River– it was less a smooth consistency than it was chunky.

It was about at this point that I noticed I had pulled even with Eddie, and I looked over at him on the bank. It was hard to tell through scarves and hoods, but I could swear he shot me a look which if verbal would have been: “What the HELL are you doing?!” I just smiled to myself, and kept walking. I had the whole thing figured out, I thought to myself. This will be a cinch from here on out.

I had now passed Eddie, who was still forced to follow the bank of the river as it turned. I just kept walking straight ahead, point a to point b, no problem. Then something happened.

I have no memory of the exact circumstances, what foot stepped where, but suddenly, I was aware I was a couple of feet lower than I had been just a second earlier. And the funny thing was that the ice on the river was now coming right up against my belt. I was no longer walking ON the river; I was now IN the river. I was just waist high but definitely in the river, and standing on the bottom.

Before I had much time to even contemplate my circumstances, Eddie was there, putting his hand out, and grabbing him with one hand and pushing myself against the ice with the other, I was back on top of the ice. We both headed back to the shore, shuffling all he way, lest we have a repeat of my “adventure”.

Back safely on shore, Eddie pulled down his scarf and asked the obvious, just what I thought he was saying with his eyes earlier: “What the HELL where you doing!?” At this point I was forced to own up to my earlier injury, my brilliant shortcut plan, the whole macho stupidity thing. Here’s a tip: if a plan sounds really asinine to yourself as you repeat it back to someone else, it was not macho– it was just asinine.

Now I figured I might have a real problem. It was still sub-zero with the wind chill factor, we were pretty sure, and now the bottom half of me was soaked. Well, to be honest, not really soaked anymore. From the moment I climbed out of the river, I had noticed something. My pants were changing, feeling different, not like normal jeans anymore. No longer like cotton, more like aluminum, or tin. And to my amazement, I was not as cold in them as I thought I would be. The water in the pants had frozen almost instantly, and was acting as an excellent insulator against the wind. Still, I would not recommend this particular method of winter protection. It’s only for the cream of the truly stupid crop.

I turned to continue with the trek. Eddie tapped me on the shoulder. “Where are you going?” he asked, looking truly amazed.

“To finish the…” I started to say, then saw that same “What the HELL” look in his eyes. Apparently, one of us was just this close to being totally unhinged. I was not sure which one, but I think Eddie was positive. In retrospect I can honestly say I must have been totally out of my mind.

“No. We’re going back. NOW”, Eddie stated. I did not argue. The journey was to be incomplete, and that’s just the way it had to be. Looking back, by that point I had pushed my luck not once, but twice. I had a called strike one, a screwed up knee, then a strike two, a Popsicle bottom half. If I had a third strike I might have been attacked by a snow-mad squirrel, or something. It was best to cut our losses now. We headed back the way we came.

The journey back is a fuzzy memory. The bitter cold seeped in deeper and deeper, but now at least the wind was at our back. The return leap over the bridge gap must have gone well, but I have no memory of it. Walking became just the mindless repetition of putting one foot in front of the other, feeling my pants clank along with every step. My limp formed its own rhythm, and hardly slowed me down. For some odd reason, I kept picturing the movie “The Wizard of Oz” in my head, particularly the scene where the Tin Man starts to freeze up and needs his oil can. I started mumbling to myself “oil can, oil can” over and over. Eddie looked my direction, and asked, “What did you say?”

“Oil can,” I said, and pointed to my frozen jeans. After pausing for a second of thought, Eddie started to laugh. That’s how you know you have a good friend: he gets your sick mind without you having to explain it.

At last, we came to the park exit. I was happy, yet disappointed. I had rightfully taken full responsibility for our failure; and macho was a distant emotional memory. Now all that kept me moving, all I kept thinking about was the inside lobby of my building. There, on either side of the front door, sat two enormous steam radiators, covered by coffin-like radiator covers. The sole goal still burning in my increasingly icy brain was to plop myself down on one of those radiators, and slowly and blissfully thaw. Never mind that sitting on one of those red-hot steam boxes might give me 2^nd degree burns; those burns would feel soooo good. I poked Eddie. “Lobby, my house…” I slurred.

“Radiators…” he answered as he nodded.

And so it went, until blocks later, we shuffled into the covered courtyard of my apartment building. For just a second, panic flashed in my brain– what if the boiler was broken again? It was not as crazy a notion as one might think. Sometimes during a normal winter our sole source of heat in my apartment was our gas kitchen stove with its door open, plus a single electric heater. When the building boiler was overtaxed, sometimes it would just die. Lord knows it was being taxed today. I kept my frozen digits crossed.

I fumbled for my door key, and we were in the lobby. The air inside was alive with a hissing sound, the sign of blessed steam heat. Without a word we headed to the radiator to the left, our normal choice of refuge on many a winter day spent assaulting friends or each other with snowballs, or various other frigid activities. We collapsed onto the hissing box. The covered surface was crazy hot, almost dangerous to the touch. I was in heaven.

We sat for a couple of minutes, just making various ooh, aah and uhh sounds. Finally, I spoke.

“Sorry I screwed us up”, I muttered, “Guess that’s the end of that idea.”

“No way!” Eddie exclaimed. “It’s only the beginning of February, we’ll try again!” He sounded so positive, I believed him.

“What time is it”, I asked, “how did we actually do?

Ed looked at his watch, and looked, and looked. “What?” I asked again. He pointed his wrist at me. It was 4:35, an hour later than we figured, and we had only made it half way. The cold must have created time a warp, which was the only explanation.

After a while of sitting there, our nerves woke up, and the radiator got too hot to sit on. Besides, remember that we had dressed in layers. Great idea if you don’t get them wet. The result was my thawed bottom half felt as if I was wearing 50 pounds of wet sand. I wanted to change, so we gathered our drying gloves, scarves and hats and headed upstairs.

“How was Timmy’s?” my mom asked as we hurried past her to my room.

“Normal, boring stuff,” I called back. I’d dare not let her get a good look at me, or worse, smell me; I had the aroma of a dirty wet dog.

We went to my room, where I grabbed a new set of pants, underwear and socks. “Be right back,” I whispered to Eddie, and headed to the bathroom. There I changed, and then I rung as much of Flushing river out of my soaked clothes and down the bathtub drain as possible. We had an aluminum and plastic clothes dryer standing in the tub, so I left my clothes there, praying they would mostly dry before my parents needed to use the facilities.

Still in the bathroom, I practiced hiding my limp. That would be tough, keeping my black and blue knee a secret even more so. My Mom had makeup, I’d figure something out.

Mom being whom she was, when I came out of the bathroom, Ed was in the kitchen, enjoying some Carnation hot coca she had made for him. A cup was waiting for me, too. Normally, made just with boiling water, it would be way too hot to immediately drink, but I downed it anyway. The burn all the way down felt really good.

As you probably guessed, we never did attempt another walk that year, but by the next year the painful memories had faded enough that we tried it again. This time we made it, all the way around Meadow lake and home again. It was a trek that I wouldn’t even entertain the thought of at my age, so I’m glad Eddie and I did it then.

Sometimes, I miss those blissfully ignorant days. You’ve got to grab them when you’re still too naive to know better. When you still believe that if you just try hard enough, you can do anything, like walking on water.