A GIFT FROM THE STORM

By Grandpa Gerald D’Arcy Klee

September 19, 2003

  One of the best things that ever happened to our family was caused by a hurricane. It happened long ago, but every time another hurricane comes I’m reminded of it.

  Yesterday, Hurricane Isabel, packing heavy rain and winds of 100 miles per hour, struck the North Carolina coast. Here in the Baltimore area we were able to watch on live television as beach homes were being destroyed by wind and ocean waves and highways were washed out. Boats were smashed or washed out to sea. Human lives were lost and more deaths were expected as the storm continued on its way. Chances are that you watched it on television and experienced it first hand when it hit your neighborhood.

  Moving up the coast, the storm hit our community in the Baltimore area last night, causing severe flooding,  knocking down trees and power lines and causing much other damage, but much less than in North Carolina. As I write this it is still heading northward, hitting coastal areas and inland, where its path of destruction is causing serious flooding, fallen trees and smashed cars and buildings. Broken power lines caused loss of electricity in millions of homes, which means no electric lights, no radio and no television. We still have electricity in our home, but the cable connections for television and the Internet are not working, so we can’t watch Isabel’s rampage as it continues on its path.

  There are few things as impressive as a hurricane. A big one like Isabel has far more power than a bunch of atomic bombs, so it is no wonder that hurricanes often reshape the barrier islands along our coast. They can be very frightening, but they are also exciting to watch.  Most people prefer to watch from a safe position such as on a TV screen. It is scary to be in one, but when the winds have slowed down it is less dangerous and it can be fun to hear the wind and rain and feel it against your body.

  Most people who witness a hurricane up close remember it for their entire lives. I have seen a number of hurricanes. For example, just four years ago, there was Floyd, which passed up the East coast in September 1999 causing havoc from the Carolinas up through Long Island and New England . Agnes was another really huge one that came by in 1972 and caused some of the worst flooding anyone had ever seen in this part of the world. The hurricane of 1938 is famous for the exceptional amount of destruction it caused. Every hurricane brings back memories I have from the first one I saw. That one was in 1933, when I was about six years old. It was very destructive, but it had a silver lining for our family.

  Like Isabel and Floyd and the1938 hurricane, the1933 hurricane came up the east coast across Long Island and through New England . Hurricanes didn’t have names in those days.  No one thought of calling them Agnes or Bonnie or Floyd. Storms were simply part of nature. Weather forecasting was not very good in those days, so we often didn’t know when hurricanes were coming. Sometimes a hurricane produced unexpected consequences. The 1933 hurricane delivered a gift to my family, which we gratefully accepted. You’ll soon learn what it was.

  We were poor during the 1930’s, like nearly everyone else, because it was the time of the Great Depression, when jobs and money were hard to find. We lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, at the Western tip of Long Island . Brooklyn is part of New York City . Our favorite place to go was to the Eastern part of Long island , far from the city. Out there, there were potato farms, and woods and very few houses. Best of all there was the Atlantic Ocean on the south side and Long Island Sound on the north side. We loved going to a beach called Miller’s Place on Long Island Sound about sixty miles from our home.  

  The only way to get to Miller’s Place was by car or boat. We didn’t have a boat, but we were lucky enough to have a car. Most people couldn’t afford a car in those days, even though they cost much less than now, but my father had one that he needed for his business. Although it was old and not very roomy, it got us there. We always talked about how great it would be if we owned a boat, but we never expected to have one, since we couldn’t afford it.

  The whole family, all six of us, piled into the car, with two in front and four on the backseat. Since the backseat was only big enough for two full size people that meant that my sister Lolly and I each sat on someone’s lap. Sometimes we took along a family friend as well. With seating so tight, it had to be a good friend and preferably one who wasn’t too big. Because roads were poor, it usually took three hours of driving to get there and another three hours back. That made a long day, especially for my mother, who often had me sleeping on her lap.

  Once there, we never found it very crowded, because so few people had cars and few of those who did wanted to spend so much time driving in one day. Brooklyn is surrounded by water, with New York Harbor on one side. It is a few miles further to the open Atlantic Ocean where Coney Island is located. A little past Coney Island there are more beaches, including Brighton Beach, Riis Park, and Far Rockaway, all of them on the ocean. Coney Island was the most popular choice for New Yorkers. It is a huge beach that sometimes accommodated a million people on a weekend, despite being polluted with sewage. Most New Yorkers who didn’t go to Coney Island went to the other nearby beaches, but none of the other beaches were as nice as Miller’s Place and its surroundings, so we found it worth m ak ing the long trip.

  Below is a badly faded photo taken at Miller’s Place, probably in 1933, when I was 6 years old. I don’t know if it was taken before or after the hurricane. My father isn’t in the photo because he was taking the picture. I’m the little scrawny kid in the front. In the rear, left to right are my brothers Fred and Barry, my sister Lolly, Mary Flynn, a girl who lived next door to us, and my mother. You can see how different the bathing suits were then. What you can’t see is that they were made of wool that scratched your skin something awful, especially where it rubbed between the legs.

  While beaches near New York City tended to be crowded and not very clean, Miller’s Place and its surroundings was an unspoiled paradise. Our family had lots of fun on the beach and in the lovely, clear, clean water of Long Island Sound. For years we dreamed that if we just had a boat our happiness would be complete.

  It was in 1933 that our dream came true. Just after one of the great hurricanes that year, we went to Miller’s Place as usual. It was late in the season and we had the beach almost entirely to ourselves. The tide was coming in as we were enjoying a picnic. We saw an unusual looking boat drifting in on the tide. As it drew closer we saw that it was an old fashioned dory, the kind associated with whalers of earlier centuries and still occasionally used by fishermen and lobstermen on Long Island Sound and New England in the 1930s. Soon it floated up to the beach just in front of us. There was no one in it. Instead of metal oar locks there were two parallel wooden pegs on each side that served the same purpose. Although it was well preserved it was clearly from an earlier age. It had no oars.

  It was a large, heavy boat with high sides that fanned outward from the bottom, m ak ing it wider at the top than on the deck. The bottom had a gentle curve from bow to stern. It was about 15 feet long with a sharp bow and a narrow stern board with a notch in it for sculling Sculling is a way of propelling the boat by putting one oar through the notch and wiggling it in the right way. The old time whalers found uses for that, but we found it too hard to get anywhere. The boat was big and heavy enough that even rowing it wasn’t easy.

  Clearly, the boat had been cast adrift by the hurricane. It had probably come a long way, since we didn’t know of anyone nearby who used such a boat. It might have come from Montauk Point, which was miles further out or it could have even come across the Sound from Connecticut or Rhode Island on a current. Since there was no way to locate the owner, by the law of the sea it was finder’s keepers. My father claimed it and went to town to buy a pair of oars and an anchor. Since I was too small to handle the boat, I went along as a passenger while Dad and my brothers rowed it several miles from Miller’s Place to a beautiful natural harbor known as Crystal Brook where we anchored it and kept it. On the way we marveled at how easily it rode the waves. It was designed to stay afloat in even the roughest seas.

  The boat soon became the center of our summer activities whenever we could get to it. Mom and Lolly weren’t fond of the beach or the water, nor could they t ak e much sun, so the boat was used by the male members of the family. We fished from it and swam from it. It was a challenge for me to row it, because it was very big and heavy and I was small and light, but as I grew bigger and stronger I was able to manage it, although not with the skill of my father and older brothers. We were so attached to the boat that we were in it on the water by day and at night we sometimes hauled it up on the beach and slept under it beneath the stars.

  Having the boat helped teach me how to rough it. It was a long walk from where we parked the car at Crystal Brook to where the boat was moored at the end of the harbor. I always had the assignment of carrying a lot of the equipment, such as ropes, oars and the anchor. Returning to the car in the early evening we were greeted on the beach by swarms of gnats and mosquitoes. That’s when the distance back to the car seemed infinitely long, because my hands were full and it wasn’t possible for me to defend myself from those nasty bugs. The gnats were the worst. Gnats love to get into people’s hair, where they seem to burrow into the scalp. It was torture, but it came with the territory and it was worth putting up with.

  Our trip out to Miller’s Place and Crystal Brook took us through the salt marshes in Jamaica , Queens, which is part of New York City . I had to hold my nose because of the awful stench from raw sewage that the city disposed of into Jamaica Bay . You can easily understand why the fish and other wildlife in Jamaica Bay were nearly wiped out.

  In contrast, Crystal Brook with its pure water and extensive wetlands was a nursery for all kinds of marine life and birds. It teemed with fish and crabs and oysters, to say nothing of the endless supply of clams we could dig there. The water looked like it was boiling when huge schools of little silvery fish, known as shiners, swam by with numerous hungry bluefish in pursuit. Flocks of seagulls added to the excitement as they wheeled overhead and dove to snatch a meal. When I first hooked a bluefish it was so big and powerful that it nearly pulled me out of the boat. I was better prepared the next time. As you can imagine, we ate well.

  When we went boating at night we were treated to an enchanting light show with the moon and stars reflected in the crystal clear water. To complete the spectacle, the action of the oars caused little swirls that glowed beside us as we glided through the water. The glow was caused by tiny, iridescent creatures called plankton that are too small to see. These abundant microscopic creatures are a major food source for little fish and even for whales.

  We cared lovingly for the boat. We wanted it to last a lifetime.  Each fall we scraped the bottom and painted and caulked it. Most often it was done by my father with me assisting. All winter I dreamed of going back to it in the spring.

  It never occurred to us to give the boat a name any more than anyone thought of giving the hurricane a name. It was the boat and will always be the boat in my memory. That does not prevent it from having magical qualities in my mind. It was like something almost supernatural in a fairy tale, except that it was solid and very real. Our family always entertained the fantasy that the storm god knew of our need for a boat and delivered this one to us for our safekeeping and enjoyment.

  Those fabulous times came to an abrupt end when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 forcing the US into World War II. Due to the war, my brothers soon left home to serve the country, my father’s business failed and he went to work at night in the office of Todd Shipyard, a defense contractor. My mother also worked at night and Lolly went to stay with our cousin Frances and her husband in Peru . The family’s outings were at an end, never to be resumed. After the war there was an explosion of housing developments built on Long Island as people wanted to move out of the city. But they brought the city with them and the pristine quality of Miller’s Place and Crystal Brook was gone forever.

  Dad and I went out to the boat together several times in 1942 after Barry and Fred had left for the war. While returning from a youth hostelling trip to New England by bicycle in 1943, I took a ferry trip from Bridgeport Connecticut to Port Jefferson, Long Island , which was close to Crystal Brook where we kept the boat. It was gone. I learned from an old man named Schultz who had been hanging out at Crystal Brook for years that a recent storm had t ak en the boat away. It didn’t bre ak up in the storm as some other boats did. He saw it float away from its mooring and out into Long Island Sound, where he lost sight of it.

  The following year I entered the Army and we never resumed our trips to Miller’s Place or Crystal Brook. But my vivid memories of those glorious days have brightened my life ever since.

  The storm god had blessed our family with the gift of the boat and once we no longer had need of it he took it back and carried it across the waves to another family that deserved it. That’s how I like to think of it. I wonder who has it now and if they taking good care of it.

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