Fact and Fiction

By Dennis J. Carroll

My non-fiction is primarily drawn from childhood memories of Yulan, New York, a hamlet in Sullivan County, during the late 1950s and early 60s. They are anchored in a clarity dictated by subjects illustrating and implying specific points. I consider writing an important and responsible act, part skill, part art, but always an enjoyable activity as seen through the lens of time and memory. In reading fiction, I have always been most interested in character-driven, as opposed to, plot-driven stories. Consequently, my written fictive efforts generally reflect this preference.

My characters are drawn both from my experience as well as from my imagination. Their conflicts, characteristics, as well as, the way they speak, act and see themselves, stem from experience and imagination as well. These characters are generally hybrids of more than one person, either female or male, often functioning in their everyday environments. Some are soldiers, lawyers, police officers, teachers, photographers, painters . . . functioning within varied settings from urban to rural often reflecting a blue-collar nuance and culture.

The plots of my stories function to support the stories that the characters tell: the natural friction between daughters, mothers, fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives generally complicated by changes in their livessometimes major, other times minorthat cause them to confront those around them as well as themselves. From philandering spouses, to selfish, incompetent or overindulgent parents, or individuals who discover that their lives must change. These plots, linear as well as cyclical, reflect the human drama of strength, weakness, doubt, certainty, moral choices and consequences, love, hate, fear, hope, anxiety, despair and happiness.

She stepped over the puddles and around the mud along the driveway to the mailbox by the rutted road out front. Efforts like thisalong with things like thunder and lightning storms, which terrified her, as well as woodchucks and raccoons prowling around all-night, which kept her on edgereminded her that she was not a country person. Still, for the last few weeks, the culmination of months of study, their place in Manhattan hadnt worked. She had needed the tranquility of this remote house, in the Catskills, where she had spent her summer tomboy childhood.

Franca walked slowly back to the house and retraced her footprints as she flipped through the handful of mail. One return address, New York State, Certification and Licensing Unit, caught her attention, and she tore it open with her finger:
From Black Still Water

She climbs the three steps in front of the local high school and remembers sitting on the wide stone slabscoffee in one hand, a cigarette in the otherwaiting for her little girl to finish her dancing class on countless Saturday mornings, but the memory quickly disintegrates when she opens the large steel door, and it clangs shut after her. The escaping music is deafening; vibrations pound against her chest, and in the sudden, overpowering darkness, she finds it hard to breathe. Slowly her eyes adjust, and she makes out the dancing figures through the white smoke generated from behind the jungle of gigantic speakers and amplifiers, off in the distance. She hugs the wall, inches her way along searching and her breathing slowly returns to normal.
From: Dancer

Standing by the sink, looking out over the lake, Jaime listens to the sounds floating up from the basement, work noises: the hammer striking nails homeone, two three . . . four, occasionally punctuated by the high-pitched whine of the power saw and the slap of discarded wood as it falls to the tile floor. All day, he works, non-stop, framing it out, refusing lunch a couple of hours ago, and now it is almost three in the afternoon.

Tonight, after working a four-to-twelve at the uti

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465385338

Dennis J. Carroll

Dr. Dennis J. Carroll, a freelance writer and former Adjunct Associate Professor of English, is retired from the City of New York and the US Army. He grew up in Manhattan’s Alphabet City and Sullivan County in upstate New York. He has traveled to Central America, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Caribbean, the American Southwest, the South, Canada and New England both as a soldier as well as a civilian. He is the author of Cops and Priests, and Fact and Fiction and is currently working on a novel set in the Catskills. His work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Newsday, Catholic New York, the Voice of First Army, the Sand Paper, the Towne Crier and the Hancock Herald. He lives with his wife Francesca in New York City.

Book preview

FACT AND FICTION

Dennis J. Carroll

Copyright © 2011 by Dennis J. Carroll.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011960642

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-8532-1

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-8531-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-8533-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

A Christmas Gift From Aunt Marion

Christmas In The Mountains

Uncle Irving

Detective Richard Chartrand

Of Hurricanes And Memories

Of Labor Days Past And Summers Gone

In Hemingway’s Shadow

James Fenimore Cooper And The Pull Of The Woods: Enriching New York State Memories

The Old Folk’s Smile

Put Me In Coach: Playing On The Grandparent Team

Midnight Mass In Yulan

Once A Soldier…

Picking Blackberries And Other Ways Of Childhood

Reflections On The Delaware

A Sunday Morning In Shohola

911

Springtime

Thanksgiving: A Reflection

Remembering Yulan: A Spring Recollection

Opening Up The Bungalow And Other Rituals And Memories Of Summers Past

Beau’s Bride And Sullivan County Summers: An Adolescent Reflection

The Neighbors

Black Still Water

The Chairman, A Fictive Recollection

Dancer

Decision

Deuces Wild

Favors

First Bikini Summer

Franca

How She Deals And Why She Dances

Miami

Pictures And Poses

Wild Flowers

Realizations

Schoharie Nightfall

Recognition

When Marietta’s Mother Died…

Mothers And Daughters

Fort Bragg Autumn

Tim And Lydia (Excerpt From War Babies)

For my grandchildren—James, Domenic and Julianna—

my daughter—Lauren-Megan—and my wife—Francesca—all of

whom contribute to my efforts, in their individually unique ways.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT

FROM AUNT MARION

It was first day of an extended Christmas vacation, December of 61, my second year at Rice High School, where the Irish Christian Brothers took their annual spiritual retreat the week before Christmas, giving me an extra week off. The ICB’s gift to me, and the rest of the student body, was a week of directed work in every subject, due—no exceptions—the first day back from the holidays. But the day after New Year seemed years away that morning, sitting in my aunt’s kitchen, in Yulan, New York, where the winter sun reflected blindingly, off a good month’s accumulation of snow, and I was probably thinking about Sergeant Preston of the Northwest Canadian Mounted Police and his wonder dog, Yukon King.

The kitchen table was large—it could comfortably fit eight—in that old Victorian house, where I sat across from my Aunt Marion, who was finishing her breakfast coffee, listening to Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club. The program was from Chicago, probably taped, or a network feed from New York City, but came in as a clear AM signal during the early morning, up across the mountains in Sullivan County, finding its way through the small, green Philco radio on the dish cabinet. The Breakfast Club provided background for mornings in Yulan—my Uncle Fred, had it on too, in the Post Office, a couple of hundred yards away from the house, entertainment for the townspeople waiting for their Postmaster to finish sorting the mail at the height of the Christmas season, as they stood in the wet snow tracks, they had dragged inside.

The radio program had its own jingle—Good Morning Breakfast Clubbers, today we bring you . . . coupled with a catchy little, first, second, third and last call for breakfast, sung after the station breaks—played some music, had a few guests, and, I think, actually originated from some hotel in the windy city. I had long mastered the ability to tune out background noise whenever I read or did homework—if it held my interest—but that morning, Don McNeil was winning, but, like all special moments in our lives, things have a way of changing.

What are you doing? Aunt Marion asked, her blue eyes locking onto mine with the seriousness of a heat-seeking missile.

Her coffee cooled in the saucer, which she held just below her mouth, blowing on it from time to time; the dish supported by the thumbs and index fingers of her left and right hands, arms perpendicular to the large wooden surface—the only exception to the house rule: elbows off the table. The steam wafted off the deep, dark, drip variety of her coffee—the image of a misty lake, a boy, a sword and mysterious lady comes to mind, retrospectively, then quickly dissolves. Coffee was a morning stable at their house, either bought at the A&P in Eldred, about three miles away, or maybe Clouse’s General Store over to Barryville, something I remember, mixed with the creamy, Crowley milk left at the door in bottles that had to be bought in quickly during the winter months, before they froze.

She was probably in her fifties then, my father’s only sister, Marion Carroll, who changed her name to Hensel when she married Fred, in January of 1947. They had met when she was one of Yulan’s numerous summer vacationers, during the boarding house hay days of the Forties, one of the many city girls, staying at the Maplecrest, next to the Colonial on Washington Lake across from places like Sunset Farm, Laurel Cottage, Twin Oaks… My uncle and aunt stayed together for the rest of their lives, dying not quite a month apart from each other, in December and January of 1978 and 79 respectively, years later, far from Yulan.

I looked up from my blue Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition, the tenth grade edition that followed the green one in ninth years and preceded the brown and red editions to come.

I don’t know.

You don’t know. What do you mean you don’t know? Both she and my father did not, as the saying goes, suffer fools gladly, resulting in a certain edge to their voices, when something began to annoy them. She put down her saucer and reached across the table. I remembered thinking how much my father and his sister resembled each other. Give me that book and hand me my glasses over by the toaster.

I got up and looked at the white, General Electric clock above the window by the sink calculating just how much Aunt Marion’s interest in my homework would increase the already agreed upon two hours of homework each morning. I had planned the rest of my day wandering through the woods with the German shepherd, Sandy, and maybe heading up to Bodine Lake and tossing sticks out on the ice for the old dog to chase and fetch.

"Never mind the clock—she was a sharp as a tack until the day she died—and was on to my youthful lack of commitment to a task, of wanting to rush through what I considered a chore, so I could move on to what I really wanted to do. Inattention was something people of Aunt Marion’s generation regarded as a character flaw in the making and their duty to extinguish.

Hand me my glasses.

She looked at the page. "What’s the matter? You’re supposed to parse these words."

I’m not sure what parse means.

"Second year of high school and you don’t know how to parse a word? I only went to the eighth grade, still can do it. This is the way Sister Ramona taught it: When you parse a word just say person, number, gender, case, object of a funny face. Understand?"

Sure.

The Christmas tree in living room, two rooms behind her, caught my eye, as Bing Crosby began to sing White Christmas on the radio, but my aunt was what might be called today task oriented.

It’s not Christmas yet. She got up and clicked off the radio. Pay attention.

She began with first person singular through third person plural, then how singular and plural, constituted number, the lack of masculine and feminine word endings for gender in English—different in Latin though, she said—nominative, objective and possessive cases, as well as direct and indirect objects. In twenty minutes, she had achieved what my teachers had been unable to do in ten years; their timing or my interest apparently off.

I did the exercise and she looked it over. A hundred percent, then adding what a lot of her generation of Irish-Americans did to discourage hubris, not bad. What else do you have for the rest of the week?

The snows of that winter eventually melted; Christmas gifts thoughtfully selected and carefully wrapped were ultimately forgotten. Aunt Marion and Uncle Fred would, in time, retire, move to New York City and sell the house, but every so often—perhaps not as much as I would like—I take the drive up and look at the house in Yulan. It’s been repainted—at least once that I can tell—and what used to be a little tree at the bottom of the lawn is now a full grown maple or oak. My eyes scan the wraparound porch and in my mind I walk up the brick stoop, go through the door, make a right and I’m in her kitchen again. This Christmas, so many years later, I think about my Aunt Marion and the gift she gave me that December morning in her winter kitchen in Sullivan County. She was a clever woman who perceived the right moment to teach some of the intricacies of English to her oldest brother’s first born, who just wanted to go out in the snow and play, but had to learn something first and, years later, realized how gifts come in many forms and how some of them touch your life forever.

CHRISTMAS IN THE MOUNTAINS

Old-fashioned Christmases—not those of Currier and Ives variety or the saccharine commercial kind you see in Holiday-released movies—but those infused with the spirit and warmth of people sharing and children playing, still exist, probably in fact, but surely in memory. They certainly do for me:

When I was in high school, my Christmas vacations were spent in the mountains of Sullivan County in upstate New York, and I traveled the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad to get there from New York City.

In the final leg of the two hour journey, the train snakes through the mountains on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River paralleling places like Route 97’s Hawk’s Nest on the New York side—a road with some views that rival the mountains of Switzerland.

When I got off at Shohola, I’d watch the train creeping away into the night up toward Lacawaxen, until all that remained was the red lights of the last car. I would then walk across the three sets of tracks and take a final look in the direction of the departing train until the red lights too would be gone. The mournful sound of the diesel was all that remained as it echoed off the mountains. There’d be a car waiting, driven by a cousin of sorts, and we’d travel cross the bridge into Barryville, New York, and take a four mile journey into the sleepy hamlet of Yulan.

As we rode along through the cold, dark night, he’d fill me in on things that happened since last summer. Some things like venison dinners, clam bakes and penny sales, never changed but woven throughout these almost ritualistic events, the real news would filter through. I’d learn of births and deaths—mostly automobile accidents that took place on icy roads or miscalculated turns at high speeds. I knew this road well, every dip and turn, but I wasn’t concerned with the road then, just the expectation and excitement of being back.

We’d arrive at my aunt and uncle’s home, passing houses already illuminated with Christmas decorations that reflected off the accumulated snow and ice that would remain at least until March. Aunt Marion and Uncle Fred—a childless couple—were always glad to see me, and we’d sit down to a late supper. He was the Postmaster of Yulan, and had lived there for most of his adult life; she lived there from when married. There’s been a marriage of a vacationer and near-native. There was no television at the house, but there were books; a radio existed but reception was poor, but there was always conversation.

Although in the throes of my adolescence—fourteen or fifteen at the time—I was impressed by my uncle’s recollection of past events: World War I, World War II and Christmas’s past. Thanks to Uncle Fred, I learned to appreciate the spoken narrative, the tall tale and history’s connection with the present—my present and theirs. Fred Hensel was German-American and Marion Hensel was Irish-American; they were a happy couple. Years later, he would die on a Manhattan Street, after a routine medical appointment, at ninety years old, and less than a month later, she would follow him. It was as though they could not exist apart.

My room, at their home, was ready, as always. I could see the road in the light of the full moon, through the large bay windows of the reconverted boarding house that was once called Yulan Cottage. I never remember falling asleep that first night, anticipating chopping down a Christmas tree the next day.

The next morning my feet would gingerly touch the cold floor of this old mountain house, but the excitement of the day would propel me into the kitchen for a breakfast of coffee, toast, Cream of Wheat and maybe even a piece of home-made crumb cake—I didn’t know what a calorie meant then.

We’d get into the pick-up truck—a utility vehicle long before they became fashionable—and travel to a swamp somewhere along the Eldred Road. Once there, we’d walk into the swamp for about a mile or so. I’d already be winded by the effort of plowing through knee-high snow and occasionally breaking through the icy marsh into the freezing water below. We’d see the tree we wanted and start to chop one, then another for a neighbor and drag the trees back to the truck. My sense of adventure and imagination runs wild in the country, and when I’d look back over my shoulder; I’d picture, Native Americans dragging small trees behind them to cover their trail. It was lunch time by the time we got home.

Since I’d been coming up to Yulan from when I was a baby, I held dual citizenship—a city kid, still friendly with the native kids. As school was out for them as well, we’d go sleigh riding down Smith’s Hill off what now is called Airport Road. It was a mile long or so driveway that lead to a farmhouse along the valley floor that extends to Beaver Brook Lake. There is something about the feel of the ground, the vibrations you feel through your chest, while you fly across the rutted snow, picking up speed as you traverse the turns, that remains with you forever. Those days we’d form a train, and six or seven sleds would wind their way down the hill, approaching the straight-away. One time the lead sled miscalculated the last turn and careened into the soft shoulders of snow while the rest of the train broke apart, as each driver strove to control the ride. Some sleds overturned, and all of us collapsed in laughter.

At night there’d be a basketball game at Eldred Central High School. Sporting events are big social happenings in rural areas. After the game, there’d be homemade cookies and hot chocolate made with evaporated milk. Older kids broke up into couples to drive their dates home, a convoy of pickup trucks leaving the parking lot with horns beeping and gravel flying. Though the rear windows of the truck’s cabs, you could see each girl huddled next to her guy with an arm around his shoulder. For some of them, home could be some thirty miles away.

Many winter vacations were spent sleigh riding, walking through the woods and across Washington or Bodine Lakes—the ice sometimes a foot thick. A lot of nights were spent listening to stories around the supper table. My uncle told me about the ice boat races across the lakes I swam in during the summer and how, in winter’s past, some people skied the dirt roads, just as they had as children in Europe. Later in the evenings, we’d sit in the living room, my aunt, my uncle and myself; each of us reading a book.

Finally, there would come the night when we’d trim the tree, set up the manger that my uncle built himself. I remember the sand he had glued to the stable floor and the reflection of the bubble lights in the old Christmas bulbs. It was a good time to be growing up. Collectively, I remember a lot of warmth, good company and conversation and yes… a lot of love.

UNCLE IRVING

I had an uncle who used to collect newspapers, entire editions. His room—he lived with my grandmother—was filled with old Journal Americans from floor to ceiling. There was hardly enough room for his bed in the five room apartment at Six Rutgers Street; had he read the New York Times, he would have been sleeping on the floor. Why he collected newspapers was never explained to me. Since, I was a kid at the time, I was afraid to ask, and since I was a kid, nobody gave me an explanation.

My uncle never worked after World War II; he came home from the Pacific, having served with the 77th Infantry Division and spent his days walking over the Manhattan Bridge and collecting Journal Americans. He didn’t work because "someone had to be home in the morning if the insurance man or when the iceman came, while my grandmother was shopping or at daily Mass down at Saint Andrew’s Church. Saint Theresa’s Church was on Rutgers Street but that was for Sundays. Weekdays, she would walk the two miles, or so, one way, and treat herself to a ride on the Madison Street bus for the return trip. Why the iceman or insurance man might randomly show up any one morning or an old woman in her eighties chose to walk over two miles a day, when there was a Church right down the block, never made much sense to me as a kid. As I think of it now, I see it as just another part of the lunacy of my formative years.

Despite my uncle’s peculiarities—the Irish hardly ever use the word crazy, someone might be a bit peculiar but never crazy—I always had a good time with my Uncle Irving. Oh yes his first name was John; he was as Irish as Paddy’s pig, but they always called him by his middle name, Irving, another unexplained mystery of my childhood.

It was during the 50’s when Irving taught me how to box, take me on walks over the bridge, played catch with me, and let me climb the monkey bars in a playground on the Brooklyn side. Never one to panic, Uncle Irving handled life on his own terms. If I fell off the monkey bars, he rubbed the bump on my head and told me I was alright. When I would skin my knee, he would tell me to watch where I was going. If we were getting on a bus—he pronounced it buzz—he would grab the back of my collar to anchor me while he paid the fifteen cent fare.

Uncle Irving—pronounced Irvin by my grandmother, who spent her days going to Church in the morning, cooking the rest of the day and singing songs of the Irish Rebellion as only a third generation American could—never called me by my name. He always called me kid when he spoke to me and always referred to me as the kid when he spoke about me. But he