One of the benefits of living in a non-trendy part of New
York City is that you can benefit from a lot of cultural enrichment without
crowds of five-borough tourists that flock to the city’s more fashionable
haunts. Everything in the Flushing-Whitestone area where I live is a long train
ride plus a bus ride away from where the ‘in’ crowd frequents in Brooklyn and
Western Queens.
We recently took a journey to Little Bay Park, a slice of
land between the Cross Island Expressway and Flushing Bay. It is directly
adjacent to Fort Totten, an old U.S. Army base
that is now a public park but still houses military and other agencies such as the
police and fire departments and the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
The larger family fun day that had been scheduled for Fort
Totten was canceled, as recent rain made their fields too muddy for any public
events. Instead a smaller event was taking place on a small strip of land right
along a walking and bike path that lead from Fort Totten into Little Bay Park.
The main attraction being free kayaking for families.
Here is where a semi-suburban city Dad gets to experience
some of the monotony associated with being a hipster festivalgoer. We stood in
line in the hot sun for quite a while waiting for our turn to have a free
kayaking experience. The start was delayed because the kayak operators found
they had only a small sliver of beach to work with and it was covered in
garbage. Vest-wearing volunteers using rakes and shovels filled six large
garbage bags with garbage while would-be boaters and other park visitors gawked
at them while also enjoying the sights of the bay.
This was going to be a killer father-daughter experience
that would instill a love of nature and the seafaring life upon my two older
girls. My wife had no interest in boating and was happy to wait on land with
the baby and the stroller. I have good upper body strength and have paddled
canoes before through swamps and on lakes. How difficult could kayaking be?
After a long wait we were finally given life vests and lead
to the kayaks. The launch area was filled with empty kayaks and there wasn’t
really enough room to both load and unload boaters at the same time. Once we
managed to get around the empty kayaks and other boaters, we found that our
vessel was already taking on water. That’s normal, the people told us. Water
just gets in there. So I sat down in a puddle of water on the seat after having
to step into water in my sneakers and socks (you had to keep your shoes on so I
thought they had a system where we wouldn’t get our feet wet).
With the girls loaded into the boat, we were ready to
launch, but it was a lot harder to do than I thought. I couldn’t hold the big
oar steady in front of me without hitting one of my girls in the head, and it
felt like we were sinking since I weigh so much more. I managed to paddle us
out a little ways, but the wind began blowing us back pretty steadily, and I
narrowly avoided getting blown into a rocky jetty.
Now I had something else in common with the hipster
festivalgoers of Brooklyn: a general ineptitude and overall disappointment in the
performance of manly duties. I’m not stupid and I’m strong enough to lift and
move heavy things. But a plastic kayak with a payload of two 40-pound little
girls had me stymied. After just a few minutes, not happy with sitting in water
and feeling insecure in the shaky boat, they asked me to paddle back ashore. I
happily obliged.
An essential part of living life and embracing adventure is the
knowledge that not every adventure is going to go so well. This was one of
those adventures that didn’t go so well. Not to fear though, the promise of a
picnic and some delicious food was enough to motivate our girls to move on to
the next thing. Soon we were enjoying a delicious lunch in the shade of a small
tree in Little Bay Park.
After our meal we returned to the event area and acquiesced
to the demands of ice cream at one of the city’s ubiquitous Mr. Softee trucks,
we visited more of the event.
The highlight of the day was singing along to pirate and
seafaring songs with Scuttlebutt Stu, who regaled everyone with great
sing-a-long songs about pirates and sailors. His songs came with a lot of
interesting history. I learned that the term “son of a gun” came from times
when sailors would be allowed conjugal visits with their wives aboard their
ships, with private beds being made between ships’ cannons. I knew that the
term “groggy” came from grog, a mixture of rum and water, but did not know it got
its name from Admiral Edward Vernon, known as “Old Grog” from his wearing of
grogram jackets. Each song that Scuttlebutt Stu sang came with an interesting
lesson that increased our fascination with the sea and demonstrated just how
much of our modern culture has been shaped by the ages of the explorers and
privateers.
Scuttlebutt Stu was dressed like a pirate with a heavy vest,
long-sleeve shirt and tri-corner hat in 86-degree heat and no shade. He was a
trooper like I’ve never seen. The breeze and briny smell of the bay lent a
great aura of authenticity to the experience of learning about the pirate life
through song. Stu is part of a duo called The Royal Yard that performs
frequently in the New York area both together and individually.
I’m not a great singer but it was great fun to sing along,
the wife and kids sang along as well and soon others joined in. It was
perilously close to the kids’ nap time, and it’s always somewhat of a race to
get home so they can sleep a little longer and get some more rest. But we
stayed around for a few more songs and then headed home.
We made it back in time to let the kids nap in their own
beds, another day’s adventure behind them. We were all the richer for it.
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