I'm back(ish)

So I have finished exiting my apartment of the past six years, thrown away dozens of bags of junk, given away several large pieces of distinctly mediocre furniture, donated several working appliances and nice articles of clothing to the Salvation Army and have moved my remaining stuff and my wife's stuff into our home.

Upon moving I we promptly realized I still had too much stuff to keep it all. My first task was to start culling books. Despite having bookshelves that run the length of our home they are not enough.



I have gone through all my books and pulled boxes and boxes worth of things I have will never read/read again/admit I ever bought. I have pulled hundreds of books and it was slightly heartbreaking but it will continue. The proceeds from the sales of books on Amazon will NOT be used to just buy more books. In fact, it will in all likelihood they'll be plowed into buying things to store the remaining things I own.

Staten Island's Boat Graveyard

For as long as I can remember (and some days that further back than others), I can recall seeing numerous rusting boats and small ships in the waters off Tottenville. I know I'm more concerned with the North Shore but this stuff is really, really cool.

I found someone's cool photo collection of the ship graveyard and here's the link.

Boat Graveyard Gallery

Million Dollar Wall

So I don't know exactly why this massive retaining wall was so named but I'll guess it's the obvious one - it cost a million dollars. There's definitely something to be said for letting the public know what a municipal undertaking costs. Remember, the government does nothing to earn money. It only gets money by taking it from us and then, ideally, spending it on things we'll all benefit from.

What's cool about the older picture below is the view of the rail yards. There were rail bridges and barges (my grandfather worked as a carpenter for the Erie-Lackawana Railroad fixing them) that brought everything to the Island it needed. There's another picture I'll try to track down that shows a birdseye view of the railyards from the other direction and really leaves the viewer impressed by their size. Now there's nothing there of any consequence (c'mon, it's pretty but the Yankee's Minor League stadium just doesn't count) except the 9/11 Memorial and parking lots almost up to the water's edge. Someday there might be a passenger train again along the north shore but sort of massive industrial undertaking represented by the railyards will never be replicated.

What I've Read Since March 20th

Lehane, Denis Gone Baby Gone - solid crime writing
Pelecanos, George Shame the Devil - overdone crime writing
Smith, Scott The Ruins - interesting failure
Higgins, George V. The Friends of Eddie Coyle - amazing crime writing Hedges, Chris I Don't Believe in Atheists - too rambling
Puzo, Mario The Godfather - some of the best garbage ever
Mignola, Mike Garden of Souls - great BPRD
Chabon, Michael Maps and Legends - good essays, even better cover
Cotterill, Colin Thirty-Three Teeth - great
Cotterill, Colin Disco for the Departed - great
Wright, N.T. The Gospel of Jesus and Judas - good critique of gnosticism
Brooks, Terry The Scions of Shannara - fun, dumb diversion
Brooks, Terry The Druid of Shannara - see above
Cussler, Clive Raise the Titanic - one of the worst books I've ever, ever read
Mignola, Mike Dark Calls - usual high quality Hellboy stuff
Williams, Tad Shadowmarch - surprisingly good
Ingle, Bob and McClure, Sandy The Soprano State -riveting and utterly depressing examination of NJ corruption

My Tie

This lovely tie was bought for me by my Aunt K. She was quite aware of my infatuation with all things New York City and I had recently become employed by an agency of the city. I worked on Chambers Street, right across from the Tweed Courthouse Building. That's just above the park in the lower center of the tie picture.

At the time my taste in ties was particularly retro. None of the ties I wore were more than a few inches wide and none were especially colorful. In fact they all tended toward black and navy blue. I wore this tie once.

Recently, during the slow process of cleaning out things and boxes others up in order to one day move into my new home I came across this poor bedraggled tie hanging deep within my bedroom closet. I can't bring myself to wear the thing but I don't want to just throw it away. So I took a picture. If you find yourself falling in love with the poor item it will be available for sale at the yard sale I'm participating in on the sidewalk in front of St. Paul's/St. Luke's Lutheran Church on the corner of Decker Avenue and Catherine Street in Port Richmond, Staten Island on Saturday, June 14th, 2008. There'll be plent o' junk for all.

Memorial Day

I won't talk about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because my own feelings are long, complicated and too depressing to wade through right now. I will, however, put up this link to CNN about the Americans killed since the Long War began over five years ago. My father always was annoyed that Memorial Day became a sort of general military celebration instead of what it should be - a day to commemorate and pay homage to the thousands of men (and women) who've had their lives cut short while serving in uniform.

Iraq War Dead
Afghanistan War Dead


Whatever your feelings about the war, these Americans served where few of us have the courage or inclination to do so and they generally do so with at least a fair degree of honor (Abu Ghraib as the big exception and that's got a lot to do with the bosses) and without the frothing at the mouth craziness too often expressed in the news or movies.


So take a few minutes and remember these dead men and women and think about their families and the gap they'll never fill. This war isn't working out the way it was planned or presented to the public, but those things aside for the moment, it reminds us that their are hundreds of thousands of Americans willing to submit to the discipline of the armed forces and then risk their lives in order to do the really dirty work we need done.

Married

So I've been distracted from posting my bits 'o' nostalgia because I got married. I haven't forgotten my loyal readers (both of them) and I will return shortly. But I did (did I mention?) get married and I'm getting a house done so I'm a little off track with Ape Shall Not Kill Ape these days. Later.

Albany

I don't know how that book made it there. I lived in that cold, dank town for three years. I can't tell you enough how cold and snow covered it gets there from November to March. Brrrr.

My New York Reference Library

Here's a picture of my slowly growing library of New York and Staten Island books. It's a collection of big easily obtained things like Robert Caro's "The Power Broker" and "The Encyclopedia of New York City" as well as harder to find books like Dorothy Valentine Smith's classic "Staten Island; Gateway to New York" and Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul's The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York"" (it's the broken up one on the left without a spine. I found it in the often cool but more than a little creepy 'Everything Goes' store on Bay Street).

There are some excellent books about the Dutch and English settlement of the area that I bought for my dad and have now transferred to my collection. I also have most of the commercially available books about the Island (except "The Jewish Community of Staten Island" which I need for some great synagogue and Jersey Street pictures) There are a few gems about Staten Island that I'd love to get but don't seem to be available at even ridiculous prices. The best is Staten Island and It's People: A History, 1609-1929" by Leng and Davis". For those I'll have to rely on the College of Staten Island's Staten Island Archive located in the school's library.

I used to keep the shelf in pretty good order (by subject then alpha by author), but with all the work I've been doing lately I just pull things down and put them back up at random. There's really no excuse, but heh, what am I going to do?


My cluttered, sloppy work place. Inexcusable.

Staten Island Hospital

I, and most of my friends growing up, were born at the original Staten Island Hospital on Castleton Avenue at the head of Cebra Avenue. For most of my childhood it stood there, staff and patients flowing in and out, using the florists and gift stores that graced the nearby intersection of Cebra and Victory Boulevard. When Jim D. hit my five year old forehead with a rock it's where I was brought kicking and screaming to get stitches. Later I went to study for my dentistry merit badge in the offices in the back of the complex.

I understand the need to build a big, modern facility as the Island grew but I was disappointed when Staten Island Hospital moved to Seaview Avenue in Ocean Breeze. No one knew what was going to happen to the complex of buildings on Castleton Avenue but they would be empty for at least a little while. Of course my friends and I decided at once to figure out how to get inside them and explore.

When the old hospital first closed there was a guard house built at the front door, so Bruce N., Jesse B., and I simply went around back. We found a hole in the fence by the driveway on the complex's side on Webster Avenue. We looked for open windows and after half and hour or so of skulking around we found one. We had to climb up to get to it and then drop down several feet once inside the building. The three of us found ourselves in a small, non-descript office that had been stripped of all furniture. A few scattered papers lay on the floor but nothing indicated what it had once been.

We decided to carefully make our way into the rest of the hospital. Fortunately we were being very cautious and quiet. As we entered the hallway we heard the very distinctive sound of dog's claws on the linoleum. Fear exploded in us at once and we made ran back into the room. Jesse was little (he was ten at the time) so we boosted him up and out. Then Bruce climbed up and then he helped me up. We ran as fast as we could out the driveway and caught our breaths. When we walked back around onto Castleton Avenue we looked at the guard house and realized there was some sort of cage around the front door. Guard dogs were being allowed to patrol the building at will and we'd almost been caught.

That incident kept us away from the building for several months. The next time we went back was over Easter break. This time Jim D. came with us. We decided not to go into the buildings but just explore around the back. Behind the main buildings on Castleton Avenue were a series of auxiliary buildings and clinics. We found the generators in fine working condition along with piles of packages of sutures and needles. They were just lying on the ground and we helped ourselves to them. I don't know why and they served no purpose except, perhaps, as trophies of our expedition.

After that decided to make a climb up the fire escape that ran up the back of the Samuel R. Smith Infirmary, the heart of the old buildings on Castleton. We made our way up the stairs trying to keep as quiet as possible. It didn't make us invisible. Half way up to the third floor we heard an amplified voice yelling at us to "Get down from there!" We obliged and were down and out the hole in the fence in nothing flat. Again we stayed away for months.

We did keep an eye on the place, looking for any changes. Eventually we noticed that the dog cage was gone. We went around back again but the window was sealed. We came back a few hours later with a homemade grappling hook hoping to get up on the back of a low roofed part of the newer hospital building. It didn't work and we didn't get in.

GRAPPLING SITE

Again we kept our eyes on the place and soon there weren't anymore guards. The buildings, a little more than a year after closing, had simply been abandoned. It was the time for a full on expedition. On Columbus Day 1980 we took the chance and snuck into the old Staten Island Hospital.

The party consisted of me, Jim D., Jesse B. and Alex R., the same group that would go into the Silver Lake Reservoir some months later. We had flashlights, ropes, pocket knives and matches. I can't imagine what anyone seeing us walk over Cebra Avenue to Castleton would have thought of us but no one so much as glanced at us.

We started by going around back like in all our other efforts. We made sure no cars were on Webster and went through the fence hole. We were hoping we could find an open door or at least a window we could break without being seen. We found a door pretty quickly and were soon in the building. We decided to just wander around and eventually make our way to the roof of the new building. Alex. R.'s would be our guide as he knew his way around the place. His father was a medical person and had worked in the place for years before it closed.

We wandered around the first floor for some time just seeing what was to be seen. It was obvious that anything left behind by the hospital move had since been stolen if it had any value. Copper wire and light fixtures had been ripped out and removed. Door knobs, switch panels and sink fixtures were all gone. That hadn't been the case a few months earlier. It also meant that people other than us had been watching for changes in the security arrangements. It meant we had to be cautious.

Alex decided to take us into the older buildings. He said there was an underground passage in the basement that would be cool to use. We went down stairs, flashlights casting thin illumination into the tunnel's utter blackness, and started walking. When Alex started telling us that the tunnel was for moving bodies around I admit I just wanted to get out back into the light. A few minutes later we were.

The old buildings were in the same shape as the new one. They'd been stripped bare of anything that could be sold or reused. It was a little sad and astonishing to realize. I had heard about the Bronx burning and being abandoned a few years earlier but that was something in the news. Besides, the Bronx were a faraway place that meant nothing to me other than the zoo. How had this happened? It was no small undertaking to clear out the buildings like they'd been, so where had the police been? Didn't the Staten Island Hospital care?

We decided it was time to head to the roof. We went back to the new building (not through the tunnel) and found a staircase. We made our way upward, occasionally getting out and exploring a few rooms before continuing our climb. We were on one of the upper floors when we saw the light.

We'd come out onto the floor from the stairs and found ourselves in fairly dark surroundings. Some of the floors were well lit because the doors to the rooms were open. That wasn't the case on this floor so we brought out our flashlights. We were looking around when Jim said "Stop." He thought heard something from the end of the hall we were in and wanted to listen. Suddenly we saw the clear light of cigarette light flame. We didn't hear anything or see anything else. The four of us froze for a second or two and then ran all the way down the stairs and out the driveway. It was the last time we went into the hospital.

We speculated about what it was. In the end we decided it was one of what were probably lots of bums living in the buildings. It was no longer safe and we would never go back.

Over the years the buildings have fallen into deeper and deeper decay. There was plan in the mid-eighties to turn them into condos but that was a money laundering scheme that left dozens of tenants ripped off and in debt. Over the years a few con men set themselves as the rightful owners and let people rent the apartments from them but they were eventually evicted by the city and the lower floors of the buildings sealed with cement.

Later the back buildings were crushed by snow on their rotting roofs and the city pulled them down. Their outlines remain in the aerial shots on Google Earth. Now the large old buildings, the Samuel R. Smith Infirmary and the Nursing Building are rotting away and falling down. The city refused to landmark them in 1983, said though they'd like to in 1987 they couldn't, and finally has just left them to melt into the ground.


Stolen from someone's flickr page (above)





It's in the trees - it's coming (above)




The cheesy castle roof was added during the condo scheme (above)

Charlton Heston, RIP

First Richard Widmark,now Charlton Heston. If you think you know Heston's work just by some of his duller, stolider performances, check out "The Big Country", "Will Penny" or "Treasure Island". The man might have been limited but he's one of the last great iconic Hollywood superstars. I miss actors and actresses who not only brought themselves to the screen but I actually liked that self.

He got grief from some of the dopier elements for his conservative politics, but this was a man who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1963 march on Washington. I'd like to see somebody today take that sort of career risk, by which mean I'd be very happy.

New Projects

While I'm hoping to put together something about the old Staten Island Hospital this week, I'm working on two larger projects. The first will be about the secret architectural history of the North Shore of Staten Island and the second about its plethora of old churches.

The secret history project is about all the beautiful homes that once lined the North Shore's tree lined streets. I always knew there had been big mansions and estates but only as I've been going through books and archives have I started to get a sense of all the other buildings that have been lost over the decades. On as regular a basis as I can manage I'll add a picture or two with commentary when able.

This is where the St. George Municipal Parking Lot now sits. If you look closely at the picture's center you can make out the cupola on the house that's in present day picture of St. Mark's Place. I count at least ten large homes where the lot is today and the picture only shows its upper half.

My plan is to collect historical pictures of some of these buildings and get as many of the few remaining ones with my camera. The hard part will be tracking down histories of the houses but I will try.

The church project is a whole different thing. Staten Island has a long history of Christian denominational diversity. Some of it was based on theological differences and some on ethnicity. At one point there where half a dozen German, Norwegian and Swedish Lutheran congregations, as well as Episcopal and Methodist churches (with missions to the immigrant groups), and Baptist, Dutch Reform, Presbyterian and, of course, Roman Catholics.

Over the years, as populations shifted (to New Jersey) and the strength of the old Protestant denominations waned many of the older churches were sold to different denominations. I used to think this was a new phenomenon but my research has already disabused me of this idea. People were always moving away while others were moving in. During the great immigration periods around the beginning of the twentieth century this happened all over Staten Island. The same sort of thing has been happening again for the last thirty years.

My obsession with the North Shore's churches started when I discovered this beautiful old building on Delafield Avenue. At the time it was an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva but I didn't know anything about its history.

Since then I've learned quite a bit (it was the Elizabeth Methodist Episcopal Church and its congregation merged with Grace Methodist's in the sixties and formed Faith United in Port Richmond. The building was sold to a Jewish shul and later a yeshiva. Now it's abandoned) and it's only left me wanting to know more. So the project was conceived. With luck and work it should be done sometime this fall, though I suspect it will always be undergoing updates and revisions. There are about sixty churches I've discovered that I want to get exterior, interior and historical pictures of as well as historical data.

I plan to start with the Port Richmond Reformed Church as it's the oldest congregation on the North Shore and exists pretty much today as it looks in this old picture. It's surrounded by a graveyard with seventeenth century headstones in it which I remember reading when I went to Port Richmond when I was a little kid.

From there I plan to move on to the dozen or so churches that have changed congregations and denominations, or in the case of a few, face demolition. After that I'll get to the rest. Each building and congregation has its own history that I want to collect in a single place.

As a Lutheran I'm interested in how other Christians worship and what things they surround themselves with in terms of buildings and interior appointments. As a Staten Islander and historian I'm fascinated with the borough's shifting populations, demographics and development. Hopefully I'll convince other people that it's equally intriguing. If not you'll at least have, hopefully, dozens of very cool pictures to look at.

Sorry - Here's the New Pictures

So I promised pictures and I didn't deliver right away. I apologize.

I have a few bigger projects connected with this site percolating right now and they, plus work, plus wedding have led to distractions. I did manage to drive around and collect some cool pictures but I failed to get them up in a timely fashion. Let's go.

This is the intersection of Port Richmond Avenue and Richmond Terrace in, naturally, Port Richmond. Once the commercial center of the western side of the North Shore, the neighborhood fell on hard times with the opening of Forest Avenue Shoppers' Town in the sixties and died with the opening of the Staten Island Mall in the mid-seventies. It struggled on for years, trying unsuccessfully to reinvent itself as a location for furniture dealers. When that failed it became a neighborhood for Mexican immigrants, legal and otherwise.

Now on a typical morning you can see dozens of men shaping up to bust their humps for inadequate pay. The old Jewish and Italian owned shops have mostly been replaced with dollar stores and Mexican delis. The old apartment buildings and apartments over all the stores are now packed to the gills with far too many people to be safe for their inhabitants.

I first noticed this particular building when I took to biking along the Terrace to get to the Bayonne Bridge. At the time it looked like it probably did at the turn of the last century. It was built by a local industrialist and by the eighties had become a residence for older, single men.

Since then, about 1982, several of the buildings on the left have burned down and the whole area has fallen down the tubes. I think the building on the right was still open as a bank, but now, after a fleeting time as evangelical church it's abandoned.
I wasn't able to get the exact same perspective as the original picture because there are buildings on the spot the original must have been taken from.




When I first saw the picture of St. Mark's Place in St. George from the 30's I thought I recognized the turreted home on the left. When I went to get the comparison shot I was disabused of that notion. Nothing in the old picture exists anymore except part of the stone retaining wall. The beautiful homes and the small stores are all gone, replaced by some of the ugliest buildings on the Island. The original Brighton Heights Dutch Reform Church, built in the 1820's, burned down in 1996 during a renovation project gone awry when heat guns went wild.

I've also added a picture cribbed from Staten Island historian, Thomas Matteo's book, "Then & Now Staten Island". It's a closer look at the church and the pretty brick home next to it that's tantalizingly unclear in the first picture. Today its lot holds an ugly little building that used to house a Manufacturer's Hanover bank, then a church and now, nothing, I think. Ah, architectural progress. Can it get any better?





I have no specific knowledge of the Stork's Nest or the Stork's Nest II. It's one of those neighborhood bars that I've seen from the bus all my life, but not living in the exact neighborhood (Tompkinsville) never really knew anything about or anyone who went there.

At some time in the past it was obviously some sort of big deal. Now it's subdivided and the ornamental stork has long flow the nest. It's a little hard to tell from the present day picture (the park across the street from where I'd need to be to get a matching shot is fenced off for renovations), but the left side of the original Stork is now a Central American restaurant.

When I was little, Tompkinsville was heavily Italian with some black families starting to move in. Later the older Italians died off and their kids moved out of the area. At some point a lot of the clientele of the methadone clinic in Stapleton seemed to be living in the old apartments above the stores in the area.

In the nineties the neighborhood changed again. Like in Port Richmond there was a sudden influx of immigrants of both legal and illegal status. Many of them are from Honduras, Guatemala and the rest of Central America. Over the years their presence has led to the establishment of shops geared towards their tastes and wants. This is one of those places.

The Staten Island Historian

I just came across the site for our borough's own historian. The Staten Island Historian, is an unpaid post that was occupied by the late Dick Dickerson for many years. The new man, Tom Matteo, has got a nifty website going but it left me a little disappointed. He's got the same NYPL Digital Collection links I've got but he doesn't offer any additional information. One of the drawbacks of the NYPL's collection is that there's too little detail about the pictures. Too many give little real indication of their locations and dates. I was hoping the Borough Historian would have access to information the rest of us don't.

Nonetheless, there's plenty of great stuff on the page and it does bring the NYPL pictures together by easily searchable categories (ex. churches, schools, etc.). Definitely worth examining.

Upcoming Things

Work and labors for my upcoming wedding have prevented me from getting out and getting the pictures I need to show in contrast to the olde-timey postcards and photos. Be happy with these little tidbits for the moment and I'll get something more substantive done over the weekend.

Why I Do This

The first inkling of what would become the present version of Ape Shall Not Kill Ape came about when I saw the following poster:



The utter dumbness of the ad and the cheap shade of orange reminded me of so many ads of my youth that I was compelled to get a picture of it. Then I was faced with what should I do with the picture. I've got lots of pictures tucked away in various directories on my computer that just sit their in digital silence and are eventually forgotten. WondeRoast demanded more of me than oblivion.

I remember the reds, blues and oranges of the window ads and sale signs in the five and dime stores of my youth: Woolworth, of course, but also Kresge's, W.T. Grant's, Kress', McCrory's and Lamston's. My mom would go off shopping for socks or whatever and I'd wander the toy aisles and pet section. That silly WondeRoast ad managed to rekindle some of those odds and ends of my memory and I owed it something for that little blessing.

So here's WondeRoast. It hangs in the northfacing window of La Mexicana Deli and Grocery on the corner of Broadway and Cary Avenue in the poorer section of my own neighborhood of West New Brighton. Hey, it might even be good.

What I've Read Since January, 1, 2008

Reeve, Philip Starcross
Carroll, Lewis Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis Through the Looking Glass
Chesterton,G.K. The Everlasting Man
Pushkin,Alexander The Queen of Spades and Other Stories
Durrenmatt, F. The Pledge
Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory
Bloom, Harold Novelists and Novels
L'Engle, Madeline Walking on Water
Powers, Tim The Drawing of the Dark
Burke, James Lee Crusader's Cross
Burke, James Lee Pegasus Rising
Burke, James Lee Tin Roof Blowdown
Lehane, Denis A Drink Before the War
Lippman, Laura The Power of Three
Higgins, George V. The Friends of Eddie Coyle

To the Center of the Earth

THE CAUSEWAY AT SILVER LAKE PARK

In 1980 and 1981, New York City suffered one of the greatest droughts in its history. Its reservoirs dropped to around a quarter of their capacity and Ed Koch popularized the beautifully cheesy "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down". As a fourteen year old it really didn't seem to have any bearing on me whatsoever. However, it did lead to one of the coolest adventures my friends and I ever had.

For one reason or another we wandered into Silver Lake Park on our way back to my friend Alex's new house on Howard Avenue after a trek down Victory Blvd. to Luke & John's Deli for sandwiches. It was the start of summer and Alex and I had just finished our freshman years.

When we entered the park we were startled to see that the lake's level had dropped an easy six or seven feet. It was amazing. The sides of the causeway were exposed and we could see the place beyond the stone shoreline where it dropped off to the lake bottom. We had to get closer and see whatever else there was to see.

We went down to the lake and climbed the low black fence that borders it went down to the water's edge. We started walking along the shore skipping stones and looking for anything that might be considered cool. About fifty feet from the north side of the causeway on the lake's east side we found the sort of thing we hoped to find - a concrete tunnel.


AS IT LOOKS TODAY - THE TUNNEL ENTRANCE SUBMERGED

The tunnel appeared to run eastward from the lake into the heart of the hill that rose up from the shore and to Victory Blvd. Under that hill was the actual reservoir (the lake itself is merely decorative) and who knew what else.

We ran to Alex's house and grabbed flashlights. We got back to the lake as fast as we could, switched on our lights and entered the tunnel. We didn't go that far the first day. Our lights weren't that illuminating and the tunnel seemed endless. Its ceiling was high enough for all to stand in but only wide enough for us to be comfortable if we went in single file. We walked into the hillside only far enough to know we'd need to plan more thoroughly and be better equipped.

That night we planned our big incursion into the Silver Lake tunnel. We got big dry cell battery flashlights and rope. We didn't know where we'd actually need rope but it always seemed to indicate that whatever you were doing was going to be serious. We also got markers so we could leave signs to keep from getting lost and a crowbar to break things if needed.

The next day we undertook our great expedition. There was myself, and my three friends , Alex R., Jesse B. and Jim D. We went around noon time when the sun was high and rest of the world was at work. There were some adults swimming and sunning themselves around the tunnel entrance but they clearly didn't care about what we were doing.

With a rising sense of excitement we walked into the tunnel. Now well lit, the tunnel revealed itself to be a bare, cement construction that ran in a straight line into the hillside. We walked for about ten mintues, keeping a slow pace so as not to be surprised by anything, before the we came to the stairway.

Rising up at the end of the tunnel was metal staircase with grating levels. We, of course, started walking up them.

I don't remember how many levels we climbed but memory makes it seem like a lot. Finally we came to the top of the stairs and into a concrete gallery. There were metal rungs set into the wall facing Victory Blvd. leading to a metal hatch in the gallery ceiling. Towards the lake side of the room the wall only went up to our waists. With our flashlights in hand we looked over the wall and I think we all gasped.

Like I said, the hill housed the real Silver Lake Reservoir. I have slight memories from my childhood of construction going on the park but this picture does better justice to what's under that hill than anything I can describe - - -


UNDER THE HILL

Even with our big flashlights we couldn't see to the other side of the reservoir. We were basically where the bulldozer is in the picture above. The holding tanks are vast and silent and our lights made only the slightest dent in the dark space. Moved by the scope of what we were seeing I decided to commemorate the moment by writing my D& D character's name on the wall. Today there's probably still a little chalk scratching proclaiming that "Alzhak was here".

The final stage of our inward journey was to climb the rungs. I mean if there's a ladder at the end of a journey you can't not climb it. We assumed that the ladder would bring us into the control house and we were right.


THE CONTROL CENTER

The hatch in the gallery ceiling was silver colored and lifted right up when Jim pushed it. The rest of us were right behind him. We found ourselves in a control room with panels with meters and dials. Gaguges monitoring the water level and quality hummed with quiet electrical life and little lights blinked on the consoles in seeming random sequences.

Then the alarm went off and we hightailed it out like cats with their tails on fire. I'm not sure if the alarm had anything to do with us or with problems caused by sewer work going on out on Victory Blvd. but we quite sensibly assumed it was our fault and we climbed down the ladder, flew ourselves down the stairs and hightailed it down the tunnel as fast as we could managed without killing ourselves.

When we got back out into the light the adults asked us if we saw anything cool. We told them heck, yeah.


We went back the next day hoping to repeat the previous day's undertaking and spend more time in the control room but it wasn't to be. When we got to the top of the stairs we could see that the hatch was open. Before we even climbed out into the gallery a guy stuck his head down and told us not to move. Which we did. We were out of the tunnel even faster than the day before.

We went back one more time a week later and found that the tunnel had been sealed forever. Thick metal bars had been installed in the tunnel mouth and cemented into place. We had been thwarted by the city from carrying out any new expeditions.

Coming Soon - Beneath the Earth

Later today I hope to post pictures and a story about one of my more noteworthy adolescent undertakings.

Gary Gygax - RIP

My friend's brother went to school in Wisconsin and discovered Dungeons & Dragons in its early pamphlet form. My friend brought the books along on our Boy Scout camping trips, showed them to me and even reffed a few loose games. I'd already read "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" and coupled with the beautifully terrible illustrations of such wondrous things as Owl Bears and Black Puddings, I was hooked.

Eventually I stopped playing D&D. My buddies and I took our role-playing too seriously to stick with such a flawed and restrictive system. We moved to SPI's Dragonquest before settling on the HERO System. Our games became more engrossing and more complex. Looking back over my shoulder, though, I think that had more to do with our growing up and maturation than a different game system. For all the fun we had after D&D I don't think I ever recaptured that early falling in love with becoming submerged into games that were as much fairy tale as Howardesque sword and sorcery.

A socially misfit, fanboy, geek never had a such a friend as the man who created fantasy roleplaying. So thank you Gary Gygax and rest in peace.