Scrapbook from the Decades

David and I were friends for over fifty years, starting in college. To give you an idea of how well liked he was there, he had not one, but two nicknames: “The Kid” and “Doctor.” It’s safe to say we wouldn’t have lived as long as we did without each other. We supported each other’s projects and coached each other through crises. I fill the crater left in me from his passing with memories. Here are a few snapshots from among hundreds:

David is directing me as the character of a developmentally disabled teenager in his play A Full Eight Hours, which we are performing at Café LaMama in the East Village. The character is modeled on one of the boys he took care of as a night aide at Arlington Developmental Center, where he worked as a conscientious objector. I also worked there, mainly for the stories. (Time was an expendible commodity in those days.) I am wearing a football helmet because I bite people. It is a surreal experience, born of a good collaboration.

We have moved to New York City a few months ago and share a small walk-up apartment on the fifth floor of a building on Sixth Street in the East Village. David is asleep when comes a knock at the door. I get up to answer it. A tall, athletic woman is standing there, holding a small brown paper bag, looking forlorn. She is the stuntwoman and actress Vicki Vanderkloot, who needs David to help her dispose of a mouse that is still alive in a glue trap. This is a hero’s call to action. I wake him up.

David is standing beside a dusty highwy, watching me hitchhike south through the desert outside Santa Rosa, New Mexico, on my way to see my sister in Alamogordo. The transmission of our drive-away car has become a can of rubble, and he is waiting to get it fixed before continuing on to Los Angeles. I am having the feeling we’re in a movie, maybe Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (a favorite of his.) Months later, when we connect up again in New York City, David gives me a sculpture he made from scraps of tile he found behind the repair shop.

There are poker games, there are cigarettes, there is whisky.

David is hoisting the entire back wall of a house he and Stephanie have moved into in upstate New York. I step in to help. It fits into the frame, encompassing the kitchen fixtures perfectly. Is there no project too big for him? And why did he remove the entire wall to begin with? I don’t ask. The kitten he will save from a barn nearby will grow into “Sparky”, a neurotic beast who will terrorize both our housholds for many years.

David is finishing his Albert Strange-deisgned canoe yawl in the basement of a building on Christopher Street in Manhattan. He squats to eye the line of the hull, to make sure the spiling has produced the curve he wants and all is fair. Then he reaches out to run fine sandpaper lightly over the plank in question. I zoom in on his hairy hand, how it caresses the bare cedar. I am thinking, “If you want to know David, watch his hands at work.”

In that same craft, now finished and christened “Isobel”, David and I are paddling between the mats of water chestnut plants that choke the channels of Constitution Marsh near Cold Spring. We will hoist the sail once we’re in the open water of the Hudson. We spot two prodigious snapping turtles in watery combat about ten feet away, oblivious to anything except their battle for territory. When we stop paddling to watch, the quiet around us is profound. We have traveled back to the time of dinosaurs.

Imagine a dinner party, spread with one of Stephanie’s gourmet repasts, at any of the dining tables in David and Stephanie’s homes through the decades. David is drawing on his honors philosophy training and his deep reading to make a point in an energetic debate with a friend. I’m glad I’m not facing him in court.

My wife Elizabeth and I, along with our daughter Elly, are spending the Christmas holidays at David and Stphanie’s house on Barrett Pond. David is standing a rough-hewn pole up beside Elly to measure her growth since last year, and notches it with a handsaw. Nearly six inches taller! The pole will occupy a corner next to similar ones that mark Spencer and Forrest’s growth. When the house is eventually sold, it will take up residence next to the front door of our apartment in Brooklyn. Where will it go from there?

We are walking down Main Street in Cold Spring on our way to the river. We have just finished a snack at the Cold Spring Coffee House where, mysteriously, the charge for David’s cup of coffee didn’t show up on the bill. We pass through the tunnel under the tracks and have nearly reached the dock when he stops, captivated by the play of light and shadow on the sidewalk: the pattern, the color, the texture, the sense of space without gravity. Never mind the dementia he’s been suffering of late – we are in the moment. I snap a photo and get his approval of the composition before we move along to watch the gulls fly over the water.

On a wintry day, David stands sure-footed on a rocky overlook near the top of Bull Hill, where we have hiked for many years. The Hudson Vally spreads out below us, a carpet woven by the gods. David points out something on the icy river that shimmers in the sun below us. His friend Curt and I attend to what he sees, we sit down, I step back to take a photo, wondering if this will be the last time we ascend together to this lookout.

The Doctor was a fair wind in my sails. I will always remember him with admiration, gratitude, and love.