Spring 2010 - BET ON CRAZY NYC

JoJo, the security guard at the diamond exchange, was a betting man. He gambled the left-overs from his monthly NYPD pension on baseball, basketball, and football. His losses outweighed his wins. JoJo also wagered on odd parlays and on March 1st in 2010 I said that there wouldn't be another snowstorm. Two days ago the city had been buried by a blizzard. It was raining outside on West 47th Street.

A hard rain.

The sleety wind peeled ferules from cheap umbrellas like bananas. The piles of snow were slush in the gutter.

"It ain't gonna snow." The big Pole/Mick was a native of the Bronx. The weather was colder up in that northern borough than Manhattan and the retired cop was certain of his prediction.

"I say that we get one more dusting." I was counting on 'global weirding'. The last decade had seen three snows in April, TS Eliot' 'cruelest month of all. March offered an even better chance for a blizzard.

"Dusting is bullshit. It snowed a little last year." JoJo was a knowledgeable gambler.

"Okay, 2 to 1 odds that New York gets another four inches of snow before the end of April."

"In Central Park." JoJo was fixing the wager. Manhattan is 5 degrees warmer than the outer boroughs thanks to a micro-climate created by concrete, steel, and carbon emissions along with the body temperatures of fat people. JoJo had lost fifteen pounds in the last month by ending a BId Lite drinking binge.

"Okay." I had a good hunch. Cops like hunches too. His was a sure thing. Mine was more a feeling and I started singing the Arrowsmith hit MORE THAN A FEELING.

"Hey, no fair." JoJo was a rock fan. Red Sox too. "Keep that Boston stuff out of the bet. This is New York."

We grasped hands. A bet was a bet. JoJo went downstairs to the vault. It was lunch time. Manny my boss shook his head.

"What?"

"That was a stupid bet." Manny had lost every wager on the Superbowl since 1967 or so he told his son, Richie Boy, who always bet the toher way. We all did. Manny was an expert at stupid bets.

"It's only ten dollars. Plus you never know."

Like the lottery you can't win unless you play.

"No way it'll snow in the next two months." Manny returned to his paperwork. A purgatory of bills and invoices. I pulled out the job box. Not a single envelope was from my sales. Money was tight same as last year. There was no recovery for the middle-class from the 2008 bank collapse, although Manny's son was selling fast and furious to his rich friends. Their sins had been forgiven by the Fed buy forcing the peopple to pay off their losses.

March passed with the temperature rising every day. On March 14 the thermometer hit 70. I studied the meteorological map of the USA. Snow in the Rockies. Canada nothing. The Red River was cresting with ice floes in the Dakotas. The trees in Fort Greene Park showed red buds on the equinox. The planet was on an even keel. I wore shorts. This weather is no good.

"Looks like I've lose my bet," I said at the breakfast table to AP, my landlord.

"It was a stupid bet." He had won a bet on St. Patrick's Day for when our party of four would see a green plastic hat. $5 from each of his three friends. Another $5 for one plastic har worn by a female.

"It might snow in April." His wife was from San Diego. Coronado Beach had never experienced a snowfall.

"Thanks for the optimism." Snow crowned the thrones of the mountains east of San Diego. I was positive too. Ten more days of March and another 30 in April. The odds are heavily in JoJo's favor, then again he had bet that the Red Sox would sweep the Yankees in 2004. $100. He was right the first three games of the playoffs and dead wrong the last four games. That was a bet I loved seeing him lose. The Curse of the Bambino no more in 2004. My snow bet was a goof, but neither of us were welshers and $10 will buy three beers in the East Village bar on May 1.

They will taste good.

Win or lose.

Rain, Sleet, and Snow - North Fork Virginia 2012

Back in 2012 St. Padraic's Day was blessed with spring weather. The next day Sunday was even warmer, as I traveled south to the Northern Neck of the Potomac to meet with Ms. Carolina. She was not faring well and wanted to see me one last time. Her husband Charles thought it was a good idea.

I flew to Ronald Reagan airport and rented a car. Once free of the Beltway I-95 the traffic eased on the interstate. It was smooth sailing to the Fredericksburg, where the 20th Maine had been massacred by the Rebels attacking St. Marye's Height. I turned east onto Route 3 headed to Ms. Virginia's beach house. This was the South under the reign of Barack Obama. Confederate flags hang from the poles in the town squares. That was to be expected in Dixie, but it was peaceful.

Charles and Ms. Carolina's summer house was on the Neck's northern shore. Ragged Point Beach lay on the Potomac. Maryland began at the high water jetsam on the sand. I pulled before their house. The two were waiting at the end of a dock. No boat in the water. A super-sized moon rose over the eastern horizon of the Chesapeake Bay and the equinox sun set to the west below a screen of yellow pines. The lilting breeze promised an early spring. Ms. Virginia did not look well and she moved with pain. The blonde huntress confided that she might not make the autumn.

The cancer had torched her body and she showed me how bad.

"Guess winter is over." I stared into the Potomac. The temperature was in the 70s. The water had to be much colder. The spring equinox was two days away. There was no backing out. This was for Ms. Carolina.

"Hush your mouth," Ms. Carolina's dog, Spot, barked at her side. Her husband and she had lived in Virginia over thirty-five years. Her childhood was spent in the Adirondacks, where winter holds onto the cold and snow for a month longer than anyplace else in the North, except Fort Kent, Maine.

"I have a good feeling for new season." I flexed my knuckles. They had been weapons in the hundreds of fights waged over the decades. No cracking meant dry weather. Snap, crackle, pop was a good indication of wet.

"You goin' in now, Yankee?"

"Naw, but tomorrow for sure."

"You hungry?"

"Very."

Mrs. Virginia was a great cook. She went to bed early. Charles and I drank whiskey. We didn't say much. Men like us were good at that.

My knuckles were right about the moisture, however the temperature had dropped through the night. Frozen dawn dew glazed the lawn. My better judgment argued against the plunge, but after a suburb breakfast of sausages, eggs, and grits, Ms. Virginia, Charles, her dog and I walked to end of the dock. Maryland was across the Potomac. I lifted the thermometer from the river.

39 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cold

I stripped to my bathing suit. Ms. Virginia held a towel for after my swim. Charles a glass and a bottle of Dewars.

"Are you going to do this, Yankee."

"Hell, yeah." The Maine side of my family had fought in the Civil War. Where I didn't know.

He filled the glass and I down the whiskey. It burned down my throat. I returned the glass to Charles.

"I want another once I'm out of the water."

"It will be waiting." Charles was a friend. We never talked about Ms. Virginia and me. He was a gentleman that way and I was happy to see he wasn't carrying his .38. leapt off the dock.

The water was more than cold. My fingers went numb.

My arms scratched frantically at the water. I scrambled up the dock. I had been in the water

Ms. Virginia laughed, Spot barked, and Charles , who had timed my immersion, said, "Crazy Yankee, you lasted seventeen second." I scrambled up the ladder and Barbara handed me the towel. Charles was quick to offer the whiskey. It went down even quicker.

"You one crazy Yankee," repeated Charles.

"Anything for a laugh."

"How long you think you could have survived in that water?" Charles had been an officer in the Navy during WWII. His friends had cruised the North Atlantic in warships. Not all of them returned home to Newport News.

As a child I had lived on Portland Harbor. Fishing boats docked at the and of my street. Every winter the fleet lost a boat. I had heard tell of some people lasting up to forty minutes.

My grandfather had a friend on the Titanic. He drowned in the Atlantic. My grandfather traveled to St. John’s to identify the body. It had been battered by the sea.

"I think I might be able to last five minutes, but not today." I shook off the chill from my core, but the extremities were still cold.

"Once was more than enough."

It had been worth seeing Barbara laugh and she said, "Be my eyes on your travels."

"That I will." It wasn't a promise. Only the truth. The following day I drove back to DC on Ms. Virginia's suggestion up US 301 across the Potomac. Maryland wasn't Virginia, but it was still the South. She was a good traveling companion during out affair in the 1990s. Wyoming, Montana, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Death Valley, Guatemala and Peru.

Back in Fort Greene, Brooklyn the sweep of the season reversed from spring to winter. Snow fell on Tuesday night and Wednesday evening was a melange of hail, snow, and rain. I wore heavy tweeds impervious to the cold and wet. Even my knuckles were safe from the chilly damp in cashmere-lined gloves. Ice pellets bounced over my Donegal cap. I was ready for more winter, but not another two months of it and the next weekend the forecast was for more snow.

Barbara lasted till the autumn. I asked if I should come down. She said no. That as the last word I heard from her. Charles lasted longer. I visited him in 2015. We went to her grave. We said nothing and that night drank Dewars.

"You crazy Yankee."

"That I am."

We spoke on the phone every week. About football. His Redskins and my Patriots. He passed in 2017. I miss them both

But not that damn cold.

To see my plunge