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neglected Beesmer
Friday, May 2 2008
I took the dogs and the "new" black Honda Civic hatchback when I drove out to Catskill Mountain Coffee to pick up my three pounds of Zanzibar. The most obvious problem when I drive that car, aside from the six inch crack in the dead center of the windshield, is the trashed suspension, which shutters and complains at the smallest of road inflections. There's a short segment of Beesmer Road just outside the Hurley Township, running from the township line past the Harley dealership to Route 28, that appears to have fallen into some sort of bureaucratic no-man's land. This 300 foot long stretch of road never sees a snowplow in the winter and its enormous potholes have grown so large that they are best negotiated as topography. Beesmer Road is part of the shortest route from our house to Catskill Mountain Coffee, but because of its condition it has always been something of a challenge to drive. Driving on it today in a car with particularly bad suspension was arduous and slow, and it was also stressful for the dogs, whose little world kept tilting back and forth at absurd angles. Without the aid of prehensile thumbs, it was difficult for them to brace themselves against such a non-inertial frame of reference. Lucky for the dogs, though, I would soon be walking them down to Onteora Lake after picking up my coffee (as well as some beer from the neighboring beer place, it being pizza and beer Friday).
The water on the lake was glassy still and it felt good to just sit on its shore and stare vacantly at the forest on the other side. I've been to Onteora many times, but I've never found it a particularly restful place. Either mosquitos are attacking you, hunters are returning drunk to their vehicles, or fisherman are whipping treacherous hooks through the air. Today, though, there were no mosquitos and the only human disturbance came from a couple of hippie women talking and laughing loudly at the lakeside picnic table. I noticed they were both drinking beverages purchased at Catskill Mountain Coffee. They'd come in a pickup truck with North Carolina plates. First in flight.
Tonight, as already mentioned, was pizza and beer Friday, and the couple Gretchen had invited over initially had plans to bring their kids, but at the last minute one of them got sick (a statistical likelihood when one is dealing with groups of children so large), and so the whole bunch of them had to stay home, looked after by the oldest one (who is now in his teens). It meant more pizza for the rest of us, enough to last well into Saturday.
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