CHAPTER 17
“The people in Building 27 are scared!”
OK, let’s calm down, let’s relax. Let us put aside fear, as we have nothing to fear, anyway.
For here is a story from grandpa’s owns memories:
My family lived in Beach Haven Apartments from when I was five until we moved out from there to our own, 3-bedroom, semi-attached, cookie-cutter home located at 46-05 216th Street, Bayside 61 – Queens, NYC, NYS.
The Maintenance Union was on strike. My mother told me that Management [which decades later I realize was Uncle Donald’s own father…Freddie…] had “hired scabs,” which to the best of my understanding were bad people who endangered us by starting fires, because — unlike the Union Guys — the Scabs do not know how to properly run the boilers!
Anyway, from one of my bedroom windows I can see maintenance guys whom I recognized, walking around the campus-like grounds of Beach Haven, especially one young guy around 20, who now was not marching with a rake or a broom; but with a ON STRIKE! Placard.
I was leaning through my open window and blowing on my metal Policeman’s Whistle — with the tiny pea-sized spinning-ball creating a shrill turbulence in the mini-volcanic air spinning within it’s plate-metal confines, but making a worthy presence in the Neighborhood, as the shrill sound bounces back at us from Building 26 across the way.
Then, on a path which soon brings him 27 ft beneath my perch; the voice of this young, on-strike maintenance punctuates the steady blasts of my Police Whistle, with his familiar voice, announcing:
“THE PEOPLE IN BUILDING 27 ARE SCARED!”
“THE PEOPLE IN BUILDING 27 ARE SCARED!”
“THE PEOPLE IN BUILDING 27 ARE SCARED!”
I guess, sooner or later we all have to deal with fear. For me, it was maybe at about 6, which is not too bad, I guess, on the childhood-trauma scale.
Right now, with Covid-19, it feels like a “People in building 27 are scared” moment. And I should tell ya, it all came out OK.
You see, me and this young Union Guy had a deep psychic connect and together we soon and safely brought things back to normal.
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