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| Friendship Beach, Rocky Point, New York Sunset |
The first half of my life was spent within walking distance of this image.
Barnacle Rock barely juts out of the water in the middle of this photograph.
Imagine a line drawn from the clifftop–through Barnacle Rock–to the opposite side:
a trapezoid would be formed.
Within that space, I have at least one thousand and one treasure-trapped memories.
The first of which was learning to swim at the age of fourteen months.
The last time I swam in Rocky Point, I butterflied further than the water length
of the trapezoid, never more than twenty feet from shore. Instead of counting
the strokes, I counted memories.
***
Two pages ago, Sigmund Freud made an appearance.
The Godfather of Psychoanalysis made a career of dissecting memories.
And I have a treasured memory of a psychiatrist in Rocky Point
but he was not my doctor. He was my friend.
Dr. Joseph Viola insisted I call him "Joe."
***
In the Friendship Beach photograph, Barnacle Rock is only partially exposed
but at low tide, it was six feet above sea level.
A reproduction of a mussel image, albeit vague, from the GodFather of Math is necessary
to provide backstory for my musscular adventure with "Doctor Joe."
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The fortnight leading up to the 1977 adventure involved my swimming
to Barnacle Rock with a five gallon bucket. Only the top of the rock
had to be above water.
That was where I set the bucket down while proceeding to "catch"
countless mussels tethered below sea level. It was the epitome of
hands-on-fishing.
Getting the shellfish home involved swimming slowly–but kick-stroking
rapidly–with the full bucket resting on my chest.
Then walking two blocks and making a big mess in the kitchen sink.
In the summer of 1977, I was the "Mussel King of Rocky Point,"
where every household had scrumptious clam recipes.
To the delight of my family and friends, I duplicated those recipes
with a slightly sweeter meat.
One of those friends was Dr. Joseph Viola who lived only one block from Friendship Beach.
When he asked if he could go "musseling" with me, of course I said yes.
The Viola's next door neighbors were two of my uncles, two aunts,
a pair of cousins and–most lovingly–my grandparents.
The older cousin introduced me to Catcher In The Rye but it was
Uncle Tony who nicknamed the psychiatrist "Humpty Dumpty."
Pleasantly plump Joe Viola welcomed the monicker "only if
it is withheld from my patients in Brooklyn."
Uncle Tony and Joe Viola were born on the same day: January 15, 1921.
***
At low tide, Barnacle Rock was fifty-ish yards from shore
but an egg-shaped body is designed to swim that distance slowly.
However, by the time Joe reached the rock, he had the same glow
my friends could only attain by consuming psychedelic drugs.
The rock was so-named because it was, of course, coated with barnacles.
And barnacles provide a housing development for mussels,
the ugly ducklings of the sea.
Joe glowingly stood on the top of Barnacle Rock
with bucket in hand while I dove into the water, each time
re-surfacing with fistfuls of shellfish mired in muck.
After the twelfth dive, the stress set in.
Not for the diver but for the psychiatrist.
The glow of glory morphed into the face of fear.
A terrific experience yielded to tremors of terror.
The bucket was full when Joe said
"How am I going to get back to the shore?"
"The same way we got out here: by swimming."
"But I cannot move!"
As I had done numerous times before in the summer of 1977,
I kick-stroked to the shore with a five-gallon bucket on my chest.
Then I swam back out to Barnacle Rock.
I repeated the round-trip with a psychiatrist tightly gripping my two feet.
I butterfly-stroked at super-slow speed.
When at last we got to shore, Joe was glowing again.
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Footnotes
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| Low Tide & Wet Memories |
In 2004, the former "Mussel King of Rocky Point" returned to the scene of the rhyme.
The soft black blur in the center of the photograph above is the peak of Barnacle Rock.
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