Document text
Forms to be Filled out for Each interview
FORM 1
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF 1OHYFft
Saul Levitt
AT -TRESS
27 Hamilton Terraria, NY.
DA1E
rob. 7, 1959
SUEJECT River end creek Shore 3toriee
FOLKLORE
NEV., YORK
1. Date and time c" interview
kintervires 00114,0%0d over several mouths
and worked into group sketch)
2. Place of interview
tasteoest,Jr 3a/ 4,et Amiss -reek.
3. Name and address of informant
end 'f;est Farms f..!reek
See separate stories on i4astensater 1341.y
4. Name and address of person, if any, wno put you in
toucn with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, cecowpanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE Kew York
N NE OF WORKER. Saul Levitt
ADDRESS 27 Hamilton Terrace, NYC.
DATE Feb. 7. 140
SUBJECT elver and Creek Shore Stories
T1iWATUSLIAS
FOLKLOBE
NE,,4.: YORK
An ec5asional heard of r,ealth inspector will drop *round, take
a ,ender at the plea, and 0 elf.
In some places the bdison Jootrie will not wire and neither
will the Bell Telephone Amilany, and the Coneolidated will net run a
6celine.
And this is not in the Tennessee Valley or the verglades but
in the City of Sew lork4
It is on the shores of the „Aty, in the shacks and the houseboats
which fore little Immunities, at isetahoster bay in the Bronx and the
Haunt on JON0104 Bows
If you take a Loft lidend train to kookamoy on o summer day, you
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pass by a rude Venice with houses on stilts and dories tied to skimpy
two -plank piers and people beinb neighborly across wator alloyd.
Or if you go up on the Third Avenue 'LI over the Harlem River
you oan see down below among the patches of greon and the coal elevators
and railroad sidings, some shaokst and on the local Lexington line the
oreeins which dribble westward from the Last River into the Bronx like
West Farms Creek and Westohester creek harbor little groups of people
in moored barges and in shacks.
Along West Farms Creek a man has cleared off the rubbish and
mad* himself a barden behind a fence of old boards. Near 177th Street
wiliest Farms Creek lives an old lady. She lives on a barge and she
has pounded sod around the cabin on the deck and the Lrass brows there.
WEST FARMS CREEK
The oldest resident of the creek le browned to the color of a
slow -baked potato and he lives on the Creek under the bridge at Whitloek
in -what appears to be tne deckhouse of a boat washed ashore, with.a ehim-
ney pointing out of the roof.
When Res handpicked Rough hiders charged up an Juan Hill
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the shores of the Creek were wooded and the eater ran blue and spark-
ling to the East laver. Then the city began to sprout around the creek,
the hills and vale s and wadflowers disappeared and the red and gray
brisk rose up and uut the horizon to sharp edges*
The blue, the green, the fiat, the ebitc sailboats disappeared,
and now it's gray and brown water, sooty shores, flat barges, derricks
on the Creek, and the fishing beats which go up to Execution Light three
times a meek lie on the old (.;reek like a pink ribbon on a sow's ear.
Every once in a while a body washes ashore, every once in a
-"bile somebody comes down below the bridge with a candid camera to take
a candid pioturo, and up al;ove the youngsters crossing the bridge, going
home free the now high sohool utter shrill pries and don't look down*
The old man never says a word e.:Leept about the we_thor* He
takes ears of the white tithing boats moored to the piers*
In answer to a question asked him owe as to why he lived here
he smiled and looked around hie at the derricks on the shore and the
barges and the gray creek and he said, I just don' know why exactly
ex/Dept that I've been here forty-five years, so I guess I'll go on
living here* I've been around boats for a long time and I don' know
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anything else. My wife and sons are dead. I oan't understand kids
today with their automobiles and movies. Mister, will you tell me
why kids are so tough today and disrespectful, do you know what the
world's ooming to? I don't know if I like living down here or not but
I've lived here for forty-five years and I'm sixty-three now. I guess
I can Eet along without eleotrioity and a bathtub until I die if you
want a drink of water dip the ladle in the pail over there.
There are other residents on the Creek and like the old man they
are camouflaged and their dwelling plaoes are camouflaged and the way
you find them is by looking down there a long time among the barges
along the shore until your eyes get sharpened and the jittery rythas of
the street stop beating in your brain.
In this way you discover a mar veteran who used to be a oars.
penter and now ..4..;ves in a shack near Starlight Park. The shack is
painted white and looks like the boxhouses you see at railroad crossings.
The war veteran's eyes can't hold to any one thing, his hair is
irongray and his mouth is loos, and funny as if it was on a hinge and
he doesn't know how to hold it.
He says the world is going to end in a flood. If I could get a
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radio, he says, it would sure he nioe. I'd listen to everything all day
long but I'd keep it law. After a while I'd fall asleep. Then 'id put
it on again, see? I'm allright anddan't Aention hospitals. I can't stand
red•tape, see? Dm alsoared of something but I don't know what it is, see?
OR DONCRER $EE.
In the barge -home of the you_gest resident of the Creek it's
like being in a movie. Through the window the Creek flows *leaner than
it does farther east, and it's like looking on a unseen, a box -view of
almost...green water with the leaves floating down to the East River,
The youngest fellow's voioe is so high it threatens to oraok
through the roof, if this is a place to live a Chinaman, Pa a
college grad, I'm a meohanio, painter, utility man, I used to vork for
the Edison. If there's all odd job around I grab it. If a war'll bring
prosperity I'm for a war. Listen, dlylknow what Pa going to do when I
get a job? I'm going to move into an apartment, no, into a hotel. I
want servioe. For the love of Jesus.
The colors of the Creek are yellow, brown and gray. There's nothint
nowhere -ohow. Nobody knows any tall stories or broad stories.
The City and the news 00MA here via the milk train and when it
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rains on the Greek ther,i is a patterinL on junked oars, bedsprino and
old newspapers soattered along the snore.
The City kids come around with mongrel dogs and play gum& along
the shores of Ist iarms Creek.
THE ROCHESTER COLONY ON EASTCHESTER
You pass out of a olump of woods near Pelham Bay Park and the
Baythester 'colony' lies very law, almost lost under an expanse of
flat fields and the widespreading LJng Island Sound. People finally
are seen by the naked eye in much the same way that the eye finds live
things when it looks for a long time down among the tall grasses
Men who are weatherbeaten and quiet, a woman in gingham, a long-
legged girl.
There are no signs up but it is written everywhere: beaohoombers,
odd job men., boat mechanics live here. ill the summer it ,;ets very hot
and towards evening, in backwater inlets, litle olouds of gnats and
mosquitoes hover a foot over Lhe water. wal1. boys livin‘ hereabouts
craw up by the green high tide -marks on the pier -stilts, the whistle of
ound
the k3o5ton-bowid,fSteaaer on logy afternoons, the winter snow decking
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the swamp grass, and the tenoent tip of the party that hes hired
papa's down-at...the-heels sailboat for the day.
In the summer the boathouse people are awake very early waiting
for the dollar, one dollar and a half for a rowboat for the day and
other prices in proportion.
Did you ever hear the one about weakfish, and were they weak.
We went out for weakfish to Execution Light last week and there was a feller
aboard didn't catch a fish all day. But about the time we were going
baok he pulled up a watch right through the eye which was nothint, beoause
the feller next to him quick as a flash pulls up another watch and what's
more it had the right time on it.
There's a feller on a barge who has come down to the sea and he
won't ever go back anymore. Look at you, you're wearing an overcoat and
me I'm in shirtsleeves. I'm through with that kind of life. Would you
believe it, the wife likes it too. And the kid, he's grown up here, it's
home to him. I was a plumber but the depression knocked me dead. The
bit,taots in that union, YOU KNOW i(HAT I MEAN. THE GUYS GETTING FAT IN
SWIVEL CHAIRS.
Did you ever hear the one about the discriminating fish, and did
they discriminate, and I'm not superstitious either. I guess the fish
don't like my line. I once had two butterfish going around my hook
I clocked them thirteen minutes by the clook. Now you and Jack and
Jill can set your lines in the water on the other hand and I can take
those lines and the fishIll bite. No, I'm not superstitious but that's
the way it works, they don't bite at my lines.
Listen, said the plumber -sailor, are you going, down there to
the boathouse. TO THAT GOY. I want to tell ;;,-ou something confidentially
about the -people around here and especially about that old guy. I'm a
progressive. DON'T SPILL hE LAU. I know the world situation all
around. YOU AND ME BOTH UNDERSTAND.
THJIT jUYs he wears a turned down felt hat and his face under the
hat is old and red with blue veins along his nose and little red streaks
in his eyes.
The old man sits on the deok of his barge -boathouse, wearing a
hearing apparatus on his chest and goiag to his loft ear.
DOT GUY OVER DERE HE AIN' NOBODY AROUND HERE DON' TALK TO HIM.
I'm yost old man sixty toree years i don' remember so goot excuse as
battery don' work so soot --a sailed out England, New Zealand, Nch,
Yurrk. Cams here inside I show you ..-this picture dat's Tilly Baker,
ttres mast bark out of Noo Turrk. Pm a Finn I °snit talk Finnish
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language no more but I'm born dere. I only find one country better
than Woo Yurrk dat's New Zealand. The laws in dat country are soot.
Nobody 6sts rich a man gets 200,000 pounds he can't stay in business.
Die picture i can't Eet name it's too lon6 ago it's English vessel,
no I can't remember name I work very hard. Tass, I work very hard. I
vas peeling potatoes for clog* von I were eight year old. I sail only
sailing vessels no steam. I have to get out to sea von I were eight
year old. I were two year old when fadder died so mudder got a pension
but not enough. I get nervous when I think how I slaved in my youig
days I were next 2roungest ohild my fadder vass skipper excuse me I
bettor not talk no more. EXCUSE HE I BETTER MOT TALK NO NOPE. I'm
old sailor -man I better live here. EXCUSE ME.
10******************
Everywhere along the shores of New York it's like this or some
thing like this.
All t'lcse places look cute from a train window. Cute is the
word.
They are a population on the fringes of the City. Some have
radios and electricity and most do not. There are fewer bathtubs.
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rothing happens thy shores of New York arid when you open
tr.is fringe poptlatia into talk Lie talk is as free as the wind but
it's a cold wind.
You will find these people scattered on .iest Farms Creek and
Westchester Creek and al::ng the Harlem River or colonised at Bayohester
acid the Raunt oa Jamaica bay.
The hurricane got them as well as the ,people of Cape Cod and
along,the Ataal:lic coast a.:.d they wonder why their part of it never
got into the papers.