Sprindrift, Part Two

 When I finally reached the town center, after almost two insufferable hours on the interstate and then trailing behind a slow moving truck for ten miles, I stopped at a local real estate emporium to use the bathroom, first having to spend fifteen excruciating minutes pretending I was an interested buyer. It was one of those homey offices housed in a ramshackle cape that was in need of major repair- large pots of leggy geraniums outside, flyers stacked in a box tacked up on the front door and a tattoo parlor upstairs. There were a few energetic carpenter ants making hay on the porch beneath two dilapidated white plastic chairs; a gaggle of rather large muffin crumbs, some still with blueberries attached, were scattered across the warped floor boards like an insect smorgasbord.

I schmoozed with a couple of the charmingly quirky local sharks casually posed at their desks trying to appear both city savvy (Oh sure we know what it’s like down there- Hey, I’m from Brooklyn) yet country free-spirited (I hiked up the mountain trail this morning- it was amazing!). Two or three other shadowy office types pretended to busy themselves around file cabinets and computers. I enthusiastically accepted a few brochures with photos of quintessential country ranches and eyebrow colonials draped in weeping willows and told them how much I looked forward to exploring the town. It was all spin of course. I knew the houses were ancient, termite ridden shacks with swamps for basements. They knew that I knew, and that I was just there to use the bathroom. I could sense their cynical, fatigued desperation when I mentioned I had another appointment.  A multi-colored assortment of wind chimes hanging from one of the rotted porch beams clanged exuberantly as the screen door bounced shut behind me.

It was lunchtime and the streets of the town were teeming with vibes of every strange hue and pitch. The scene opened before me like a colorful origami fold, albeit one fashioned by a young, somewhat uncoordinated child who did not exactly know how to neatly line up the corners- the whole flimsy construction appearing slightly off plumb. Milling about the streets and alleyways was a kaleidoscopic assemblage of crackpots whose life’s work appeared to have been  being perceived as cool although in most cases the end result fell way short of that ubiquitous term. It was the kind of place where people came to see and be seen, gawk and pose, still retro after all these years, but lively with a kind of genuine grunge.

Why had he chosen this time warp? Maybe Hermie had always felt a bit anonymous and undifferentiated in his previous existence, a cog in the proverbial bureaucratic machinery, a grain of sand among the endless beaches of the vast civil service world, a pixel on one of the kids’ monitors. My thoughts waxed philosophical. Could anyone find inner peace while trekking each day to a gray cinderblock outer borough high school, an edifice with iron gates on the windows and fluorescent lights flickering annoyingly on the ceilings, where jarring buzzers denoted the end of a class period mid-sentence, to confront much less motivate a slightly hostile group of bored teenagers? The early bird catches more than worm, he passes the class. . . Hermie liked to warn the recidivist latecomers with this nugget, as they engaged in prolonged goodbyes with their friends at the doorway after the bell rang. Was it really any wonder he threw in his Delaney cards and fled to the north country??

The scene in Sprindrift does not appear boring at first glance. In fact it seems so crazily frenetic that it prompts newly arrived day trippers to lump together everyone on the street whom they perceive as belonging to the place, branding them as one entity; upon a closer look however the motley mob breaks down into several distinctly separate groups. The first category entailed a more scrubbed and affluent loose community whose members are identifiable through a too visible lack of the ability to truly connect, an aloofness bordering on vapidity and a preference for dressing in unique, diaphanous fabric to exude what can only be described as a vaguely non-Western elan. These folks clearly did not have their thoughts periodically hampered by the predictable piercing of shrill buzzers over aging, crackling PA systems but rather were free to enjoy an abundance of unscripted hours where they could follow each meandering impulse and idea at will. They were fortunate, moneyed individuals, now and again in their Tom Sawyer straw sun hats and handmade scarves from Nepal, who once in their youth may have traversed mountain peaks in the Himalayas, their corporeal selves cocooned in swaths of orange and vermillion silk as they enriched their universal souls; they subsisted entirely on spelt, tofu, and oms. Their aura of spiritual insouciance was mind boggling. Did Hemie aspire to this persona?

Maybe in his own youth Hermie nurtured secret and unfulfilled yearnings for cosmic wisdom, clandestinely perusing the sage reflections of Swami Satchidananda or his ilk, as he rode the subway each day to the gulag, at a time when such multi-syllabic gurus were so very popular with the proletariat. He never mentioned any of this when we met for lunch sixth period sarcastically reflecting as we stood sullenly on the line whether it was wiser to partake of the “gray” or “brown” entrée. He scoffed at the thin, dark “swill” passing as coffee but as a self-proclaimed “java junky” tended to overlook this small failing of culinary art on the part of the dietician. Perhaps he developed a taste for whole grains and quinoa somewhere along the way- even mastering the correct pronunciation of that latter delicacy early in the game- “keenwah” as opposed to “kin-o-uh- before that product left the health food stores and hit the supermarket shelves- would we have known?

Can we ever really know another person, much less ourselves? No, these former wannabe monks and high priestesses wafting along pathways of light in bright colors and scarily brighter stares definitely were the antithesis of anything vaguely resembling a Herman Treadwell, even though eventually they too did cast off their robes and end up at noisy parent teacher associations, contentious meetings of selectmen and a variety of other jobs, some with vaguely artistic whiffs: part-time volunteer at the local crafts fundraiser, obsessive writer of letters to the editor of The Spindrift Times, and other sundry occupations of moral and spiritual rectitude. Not infrequently they also landed in smallish offices around the Village Green, busying themselves with bursting rolodexes and reams of paper - forests of felled trees notwithstanding- in the pursuit of the very material perks of property investment during the boom times. Hermie would never have volunteered for anything non-paying as he considered his profession to be sufficiently sacrificial, nor was he interested in local politics unless it affected the pension system, and he had never done much travelling out of the country. Had he taken real estate courses in his spare time, and why hadn’t he mentioned any of this at the table? As for affecting poses, he hated phonies and their lackeys whom he referred to as the propriety police.

So I began scrutinizing another “demographic” to see where Hermie might fit in. This group consisted mainly of refugees from the ethnic ghettos of the boroughs, southern Westchester-notably Yonkers-, upstate New York and parts of Long Island who had come for The Concert back in the day and basically never left. Practically starving and sleeping in the muddy fields of a farm located many miles from what became the actual, “iconic” town, they suddenly found themselves in what was looking like the middle of nowhere but feeling like Everywhere.  Or perhaps they just saw the movie and were smitten.

Forsaking cramped family apartments and tract houses, dead end jobs and crazy relatives back home, a goodly number of these downstate refugees never finished college. These folks now comprised the Sprindrift townies, quite different from the gownies of the flowing vermillion muumuus. Being of relatively modest backgrounds, townies did not have the promise of wealth much less enlightenment, but still were intent on being perceived as cool. And so they took or gave evening classes in yoga, hemp quilting, tai die chi, the sacred art of mandala-making, nose threading and cheerful chanting to show that they were regular, esoteric guys and gals- usually after a full day’s work of retail sales in a touristy Main Street boutique or behind the wheel of a school bus or delivery van.

But in a strange irony, it was the gownies with their mantra of reverence for all things natural, those very same devotees of rushing streams and soothing birdsong, who wound up living much closer in and more convenient to the actual town- more often than not as second homeowners nowhere to be seen in the dead of January. The townies on the other hand, most of whom became full timers out of necessity, were relegated to uninspiring bungalows, some with peeling exteriors and questionable septic tanks, flimsy dwellings much further afield and not as easily accessible to the center of the universe, the bustling  and heady Village Green. Hermie would never have put up with faulty plumbing or weak water pressure, field mice and mosquitoes- and imagining him twisting his pudgy limbs into various pretzel-shape formations was ludicrous- he probably had never seen the inside of a gym since attending high school himself as a student and was completely and defiantly out of shape. This was a guy who could enjoy a cheeseburger and fried onion rings or a steak and buttered mashed potatoes without the slightest trace of guilt, then partake of a Twinkie-like confection for dessert- not the kind of fare readily available on the Green. He coined the phrases wellness widgets and veggie voodoo when they tried to include bulghar wheat on the school lunch menu. He was particularly incensed by the food fascists. “What’s next?” he said, “Will we have to give up popcorn? Try, I dare you, settling in for a good movie with a bucket of soggy edemame beans. . . ." 

   So I continued to peruse the crowds at the Green, in hopes of figuring it out. . . .