This time of year, or just a few weeks later, Richard Nixon, who in his exilic retirement lived in northern New Jersey, liked to drive up state route 9 along the Hudson River to see the fall foliage. In Peekskill for a family wedding, enabling the latest in a series of photos of her with sisters Maureen and Nancy, Kathy and I followed 37’s old autumn trail this morning, past West Point and making it as far as Cornwall-on-Hudson. We drove back down the Storm King Highway, five miles of breathtaking vistas, skirting the river through tunnels of green on the verge of bursting into orange and red.
Kathy told me about being with 37 on one such expedition. While he enjoyed being recognized, he was achingly self-conscious. He was never sure what people would say. Kathy said one citizen, mistaking him for Ronald Reagan, thanked him for the Strategic Defensive Initiative. Nixon said you’re welcome and laughed with Kathy afterward.
The Episcopalians were instantly recognizable at the thrift store at Holy Innocents in Highland Falls, where J. Pierpont Morgan was a benefactor. I commiserated with Carla Burns, church warden and a member of the diocesan Standing Committee, about the difficulty of calling rectors these days. Too many cures chasing too few candidates. She hopes for one who speaks Spanish, for the sake of a substantial cohort of neighbors who do.
A New York City teacher for 45 years, Carla is former chair of the diocese’s anti-racism committee and the coordinator of its annual Jonathan Daniels summer youth pilgrimage to Alabama. She said she’d love to have young people from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles along next year, the 60th anniversary of Daniels’ martyrdom. With him in glory are members of the Hannigan and O’Connor families Kathy and I visited Friday at Gate of Heaven cemetery in Westchester County.
As I learned my first full day living in the city in 1980, among countless things making New York glorious are its diners, with 12-page menus featuring everything, including cheeseburgers deluxe, “deluxe” signifying fries, lettuce, and tomato. I almost never post pictures of food. Reckon this one as a cultural artifact.
We’ve been to two diners so far, one beside a pond in Croton-on-Hudson, the other in Bronxville, where a high school classmate, Henry Mueller, recognized me and introduced us to his spouse, Gerilyn. He’s retired, I on the verge. If we see one another again, it will be at our 55th reunion. Since there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, my next cheeseburger deluxe will probably be on the way to campus four years hence.
