Art Day on the National Counting Project Circuit Plus A Magnet for Fires

[mallorys_camera]

Yesterday was Art Day on the National Counting Project circuit.

I got lost in the woods and ran into the Blues Brothers:



A woman created an entire Magic City on the granite outcropping behind her suburban home:



This man makes sculptures:



This lady gives away food:



Later in the afternoon, I was dispatched to what passes as Hyde Park’s historic downtown.

Hyde Park has always looked weird to me.

It has just enough 19th century buildings and storefronts to make me think that at one time, it looked like every other small town in this part of upstate New York. But everyone I’ve asked about it has said, Oh, no. It’s always been like this—meaning great breaks in the Victorian architecture, and empty lots, and a general sense of barren suburbia.

They’ve got to be wrong, I thought

So yesterday as I was tooling around—Sorry, National Counting Project: Nobody lives in the 19th century firehouse that serves as the Hyde Park Historical Museum—I ran into the guy who owns Cranberry’s, a café that’s located inside Tilley Hall, which, in the late 19th century, was the lodge operated by International Order of Odd Fellows.

I haven’t set food in Cranberry’s since the Former Democratic Congressional Candidate died—was it three years ago now? Seems longer.

She and I were occasional movie buddies. Not close friends really, but her death affected me more than one might expect the death of a not-close friend to affect one.

I hadn’t seen her for a few months before she died. She had rectal cancer—which is not only painful and debilitating but also humiliating, and I wanted to spare her that humiliation.

One afternoon, I was running in the Vanderbilt Park when I noticed this large black car—it looked like one of those Crown Victorias that police used to commandeer—gliding along besides me with the Former Democratic Congressional Candidate sitting in the driver’s seat. This was very odd because (a) I knew she was wayyyy too sick to leave her home and (b) though she was sitting in the driver’s seat, she was not driving.

Weird! I thought, but didn’t spend too much time thinking it.

A few days later, I found out that she had died on that very day.

For a few months afterwards, I felt the Former Democratic Congressional Candidate’s presence strongly, and it was a benign presence—interested in helping me, sheltering me, doing me good.

Anyway, Cranberry’s was the place where we used to meet up for the occasional coffee, and I just could not bear to go inside it. It made me so sad to think I wouldn't see her sitting at her regular table.

Roger, Cranberry’s owner, was very pleased to see me again, and we spent 20 minutes or so chatting about Hyde Park history.

“Oh, no. You’re right,” he said. “There was once much more to Hyde Park's downtown than there is today. A big hotel stood right over there. See that little house over there? It was once a photographer’s studio. And the nail salon, Pretty Nails? There was once a really famous bakery there.

“But most of the buildings here burned down.

“I don’t know why, but Hyde Park has always been kind of a magnet for fires.”