Still a Happy Camper

This past weekend, I went camping with some friends in Vermont. It had been many years since I was camping, and I was determined to make a go of it and enjoy roughing it in the great outdoors.

I woke up early on a Friday and took Metro North to New Haven, where my friend Luke met me. We began our drive to Vermont and made good time despite a little bit of traffic congestion.

Our first destination was Curtis’ Barbeque in Putney, Vermont. Curtis’ is an outdoor place where the kitchen is two old blue school busses and Curtis himself grills under a corrugated steel awning outdoors in the company of the restaurant’s pet pig. They serve some of the best ribs I’ve ever eaten, and their chicken and baked potatoes are excellent as well. It is a delicious meal and if you’re anywhere near Putney Vermont, go there.

Luke and I were the first of our group to arrive at Fort Dummer State Park in Vermont. We celebrated our arrival with some beers, which became beers of consolation as we were soon scrambling to set up our tents in monsoon-like rains.

Despite being drenched by the rain twice, our group of campers had a good time. The rain eventually died down both Friday and Saturday and we got fires going and cooked delicious food and drank delicious beer.

Saturday, I accompanied Luke’s wife Sarah and her friend Michelle to the nearby town of Brattleboro, Vt. It was very satisfying to shop for dry clothes at Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters, which not only had free popcorn but awesome socks and hunting and camping equipment.

Brattleboro is full of used book stores. We visited Brattleboro Books, where the owner told us about her job as a truck driver who transported expensive art. The job went well until hijackers shot at her truck while she was transporting a $50 million painting.

Saturday night brought even more rain, and some of the group went to a restaurant in town, but four of us: Luke, Debbie, Mike and I stayed in the rain and Luke’s fire-tending acumen kept the campfire going despite another monsoon. We huddled in our rain ponchos and once the rain died down we feasted on burgers and chirizos.

Later, a bunch of us visited a possibly haunted slate quarry.

The next day we visited the quarry again and Luke, Sarah, Martha and I stopped by Curtis’ again and I filled up on ribs and a baked potato.

I’m already signed on for the next camping trip in late September. Hopefully I’ll stay dry, but either way it will be fun.

The Vantastic Blue Betty, Part I

My latest Notes from a Polite New Yorker column begins to document my adventure retrieving a van from Long Island.

What would have been a horrible and maddening day became a fun adventure thanks to spending much of the day with Jon P., also known as The Beast, and our mutual friend Joey Bones. The company you keep is very important, never more so than when things go wrong, and I was in the best of company that day.

The story of Blue Betty is not over; it is being written as we speak. She currently sits in my mother’s yard in Westchester. How she got there is a long story.

The Upper Decker Column

When my Notes from a Polite New Yorker column ran on GetUnderground.com, the most popular column of mine was the one about the Upper Decker.

For those that do not know what an Upper Decker is, kindly read the column, which is now archived on Kotori Magazine’s Web site. I am proud that this piece is again available to the public.

For many years, the first listing on Google if you searched “upper decker” was my column. One or two people who had executed Upper Deckers even sent me cell phone photos of their work. It was by far my most widely read columns and I like to think that I have helped popularize it.

If ever questioned, I would of course deny any knowledge of an individual Upper Decker. The brave legion of souls who carry out these actions must, like the French Resistance, operate in the shadows and let their anonymous work speak for itself.

If you have not read it before, kindly take the time to read my Upper Decker column now. Thank you.