Crazy Stable

The last few balmy days in November should be used for:

1. raking Ent leaves (shown below: #342,974)

2. sanding the front door frame now that Spouse has stripped it

3. removing the last paint from the stained-glass window lights

4. repainting the entire front downstairs hallway in time for the holidays to amaze the guests with the transformation

5.   going to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to see how their Ents are doing.

So, guess what we did.

The sun starts to sink behind Flatbush Avenue about 4 p.m.; the entire garden was suffused with mystery and melancholy, gilded way up high and shadowy dark below.

 All the sun was stuck in the chestnut trees.  

These ducks were tucking in. It must be lovely to fall asleep among water-lilies.

So, another post for the Houseblogging network that is not about houseblogging, and another day without tooltime. But the Child is 12  now, and I do not know how much longer she will relish the chance to sit underneath our favorite willow and read me the latest chapter in the adventure saga she is writing. Carpe duckie.

Besides the autumn poets sing,

A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the haze...

Still is the bustle in the brook,

Sealed are the spicy valves;

Mesmeric fingers softly touch

The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain

My sentiments to share.

Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,

Thy windy will to bear! 

--Emily Dickinson 

'Bagel' enjoying an unidentified comestible

Every freelancer has some particular reason for chancing life outside The Office. Having breakfast here, instead of at my desk in a fluourescent-lit cubicle, is one of mine. There are actually three huge windows, not counting the stained glass: one, facing east, just out of camera range to the left; one to southeast, behind the fridge; and a southwesterly one over the sink. The sun's first rays pour in from the garden, then flood the room in a shifting day-long westward march.

Want a nightmarish flashback? Oh, alright. Here we are, "move-in condition" circa 1986:

The stove had stood right below the stained-glass window, where the boarding-house residents had done wok-cookery for over a decade without, apparently, ever wiping up anything. Ever. The ambient aerosolized grease had settled all over the house, forming an impregnable foul layer we dubbed "bioscum"; in the kitchen, at ground zero, it formed an adhesive with the ferocity of flypaper. The vomit-green walls were a nice touch.

But even in this state, I could envision exactly my "country kitchen." Looking out the grease-blackened, fly-specked windows, I imagined dinner guests pulling up in the driveway as I stirred a fragrant pot. But it took five years to even start work--years during which we cooked downstairs in my mother's tiny alcove kitchenette and carried our food upstairs on trays to eat in front of our television set. (Eating together in Mom's apartment was an experiment that was tried and found wanting.) Yes: trays for five years, because the roof, boiler, and electric had sucked out all the cash we had. 

The dream, finally activated by a bequest from a deceased aunt and uncle, was a modest one.  Demolition back to the studs was a given. But without a budget to move plumbing stacks around, we were stuck with the same basic configuration, and because we refused to sacrifice the stained glass, we had little wall space for cabinetry.  The layout, however, worked out fine: I can mess around at the stove while people sit at the kitchen table and chat. Spouse says it looks like the set for a cooking show. (One with cats as stagehands.  Stagepaws?) The first episode, rushed into production as the paint dried, was an anniversary dinner for Spouse's parents in the summer of 1991; my mother-in-law, who wasn't well enough to fancy a restaurant meal, made it up the stairs for a home-cooked one, served up on china we'd unpacked from five-year-old newspaper in the wee hours of the morning.  We lost her the following month, but treasure the recollection of her presence as we "christened" the kitchen that one blessed evening. 

The CrazyStable Kitchen is a very messy set these days, and one badly in need of a paint job. But ours is not a family meant for one of those steely modern kitchens that looks like a minimalist morgue. Every bit that has settled here has a story to tell. There is plenty of colored glass in the windows to catch all that sun.  (The ruby gem was salvaged by Uncle Don from a demolished Manhattan church.)   

Here's the central medallion of the stained-glass window, sans bioscum. (It came off with a toothbrush and a product called Zud.)

The hutch, bought cheap at an auction, holds no cooler object than what I call "the head of Chef Otto," by a friend's talented sculptor sister in Ohio. My Friend with Exquisite Taste was responsible for the grey-kittie teapot; the blue-and-white ware comes mostly from Park Slope stoop sales.

But what caught my eye this morning was our multi-generational family art gallery. Top left, a watercolor sketch of a hawkweed by my grandmother, Fanny Granger Dow, a noted watercolorist in her day who studied with William Merritt Chase. Top right, a cat named Porkchop, painted on a wooden plank by my favorite "outsider artist," Uncle Don. Bottom row: watercolors executed in a family workshop at the Brooklyn Museum's "First Night" last weekend by (left to right) Spouse, Child, and StableMistress. As the young instructor noted over our shoulders, "I see a theme here."

It was a house you would not think

Could hold such sacraments in things

Or give the wild heart meat and drink

Or give the stormy soul high wings

Or chime small voices to such mirth

Or crown the night with stars and flowers

Or make upon this quaking earth

Such steady hours.

William Rose Benét, The House at Evening (1920)

 In honor of All Souls' Day, also known as the Day of the Dead, I'd like to introduce a guy who died right here in the CrazyStable: Mr. Patrick M. Furlong. According to the New York Times, Furlong died at home here suddenly, of heart disease, at age 80, on August 23, 1928; at the time, the CrazyStable was owned by his daughter, Anna B. Murphy, who is the earliest owner of record we've been able to find and probably bought the place when it was new. (Oh, how we wish we knew what it looked like then!) According to his Times obit, he was survived as well by two other daughters, Mary and Jane.

Mr. Furlong has two things in common with your Stablemistress: One, he was fascinated by typography. Early in life he became an "electrotyper," and during the Grover Cleveland administration, he was the foreman of the Government Printing Office in Washington, DC. He was also the originator of the "curved electrotype" (I don't know what that is); at the time of his death here, he'd been retired for three years and was working on a book about electrotyping.

Second, Furlong was apparently a devout Catholic, active in the St. Vincent de Paul and Holy Name Societies, and his funeral was set to take place in our geographic parish of Holy Innocents in Flatbush. I don't know what room he died in, but he seems to have departed peacefully; the CrazyStable has been pristinely unhaunted during our two decades' residence. It feels like an honor to live in a place from which this upright typographer and co-religionist departed this life; may he, and all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Image: Edward Gorey, The Doubtful Guest

We've torn down a lot of walls and never found anything more interesting than a scrunched-up wad of 1940s newspaper.  Which was pretty cool, but not nearly as cool as this long-hidden NYC subway tile, revealed in a massive renovation on the uptown platform of the #1 IRT local at the 59th Street/Columbus Circle subway stop. I was so amazed by it that I snapped a picture as the train doors were closing:

And here it is, delicate as a dessert plate in all its demolition-derby context.

I'm not sure if the intrepid webmaster of Forgotten New York has covered this marvelous little discovery yet, but it sure had me curious. The story, I must admit, was nicely told in today's New York Times--it's the remnant of a sort of Subway Decor Expo, done in 1901, before the subway itself was completed. 

They've got photos, too, but mine are better!