Ive been bugging hubby Mark to share his very personal Pete Seeger story. And finally, he did. Here it is: I guess many of us have our own personal Pete Seeger Story but here’s mine. It took place about twenty years ago, I’m guessing around 1994 or 1995. We had purchased a tiny, tiny country cottage in the late 80’s up there in the Hudson Valley of New York, and back then, as today, I was always restless to explore something new. So one warm summer day, I’m reading about this group of sea faring hippies and folk singers who had staked a claim on some old abandoned water side diner, and they were in the process of renovating it into what they were calling The Beacon Sloop Club. Now that sounded pretty neat to me. And apparently they were being lead on and inspired by Pete Seeger, which didn’t surprise me at all. So with no plans that day, I was on vacation that week, I convinced my lovely wife Madeleine to explore the Beacon Waterfront. I told her this would be fun. There was still time to see Beacon BEFORE it was discovered, and then we could appreciate the differences after it was. She was not pleased by the idea. You need to understand that Beacon was a broken town. Most of the stores were abandoned, and the waterfront was still trying to recover from its former life as a garbage dump. But I persisted. I convinced her that the views of the surrounding mountains and the river would still be scenic and we’d just take a quick peek and then moved on. The truth was I was curious about that Beacon Sloop Club clubhouse. Was it real? Did it really exist? Could you really do such a thing in this day and age? Just pick out an abandoned waterside structure, only 65 miles from Manhattan, restore it and claim it as your own? By then my wife and I had been living in New York City for over 25 years and such things just did not seem possible, but then again we were In the Country. So we followed the main street all the way down to the river, and I just kept driving the car closer and closer down this steep incline until I could get no closer to water, and there it was; a squat little rustic building in the distance. And as we approached, I see this very tall, very thin, very gangly old man wobbling from side to side as he carries this enormous boulder from one side of the road to the other. I whispered to my lovely wife Madeleine, “That’s Pete Seeger. And I need to help him out or he’s going to kill himself!” And my wife just sighed; knowing that once her boy scout of a husband gets one of these crazy ideas in his head there was no changing his mind. So we made a deal. I’d leave the car to spend a couple of hours with Pete and she’d look for a bookstore to kill some time. After she drove a way, I wandered a bit closer to where he was, and I noticed he was continuing to carry large rocks from this immense pile across the street back to what appeared to be a stone chimney in progress. So now what? I figured I’d play the student. I’m an engineer so I’m always interested in how things work and how to build stuff, and so I asked him what he was doing. And he told me he was building a Stone Fireplace and Chimney. And then I told him if he would be so kind as to show me how to do something like that, I’d be more than happy to spend a couple of hours helping him do it. The truth was I was afraid this frail old guy would hurt himself carrying all those heavy stones, and what can I say, my Jewish Guilt got the better of me. So Pete says, Sure, roll up your sleeves and give me a hand! So I did, and that’s when I quickly learned HOW MUCH STRONGER this frail old guy was than me! I’m in my early forties and he’s in his 70’s and here I was having a hell of time trying to keep up with him. But we made great progress that day on the chimney, and I learned how to do this stuff. It’s really just like a jigsaw puzzle. You just mortar in a stone, and then carefully look for the next stone which will fit in best. So we worked and sweated and talked and talked about fireplaces and chimneys and the Hudson Valley and life in general. But I never ever let on that I knew who he was. I was dying to of course, since I had been a fan of Pete’s since my early childhood, but I’d like to think he appreciated that. What can I say? He had to be the most gracious man I have ever met. I vowed to join him and his friends one day for one of their monthly pot luck dinners, once the fireplace was finished, but I never did. But I still hope to someday. And when I do, and when I see that roaring fireplace, and hear those old and young hippies, singing their old and new folk songs, I’ll think back fondly on my own personal memory of Pete Seeger.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:29:54 +0000