Newburgh, New York- Our small city has more churches per capita than any other city in the U.S. We have the broadest Broadway in the U.S. A higher crime rate than New York City. Our dropout rates are astounding. Our unemployment rate is too. We have a large Historical District.
Hey kids! George Washington slept here!
Do you remember the films of the Kennedys in Hyannisport playing football on the lawn?
It seems like such an idyllic scene. Tossing around the ball in a friendly game of touch football with no referees and probably no score being kept either. Just friends and fun.
It all started Thanksgiving eve.
I was startled and shaken when I heard a noise
A shout and whoop coming from Dubois.
Ten little boys running in the park
Must be trouble since it was almost dark.
What evil do they bring? What danger to all?
None I soon saw- they were playing football.
They played for three hours, maybe for more
The ran, jumped and caught til their bodies were sore.
Playing under the lamplight alongside the street
One team was the winner but there was no defeat.
What joy did they bring? What pleasure to all?
Ten little boys- they were playing football.
The boys have been back many times. They play football in Downing Park.
This morning, one of my neighbors said "I had to call the police on my girlfriend." I asked him what had happened and he told me she has been using drugs and that she brought a crack pipe into their apartment. She was high on drugs. She had been fighting him and he did not want to hit her back because the police would have arrested him.
He explained to the officers that she was causing trouble. He said he was worried because of her drug use. He could not take it anymore.
The police had been there in the past. Once she had hit him in the head and caused him to get stitches to close the wound.
They have a child of less than one year in the home.
He asked the officers to go inside and take her drug paraphrenalia and arrest her. They told him that they did not want to search the place. He gave them permission to look around. They refused.
The police officers told him to leave the home for a while until she cooled down. They suggested that he apply for custody of the child and have the girlfriend evicted. He had to leave the baby in the apartment with the girlfriend.
Newburgh Free Academy- AArts Academy performed Thieves' Carnival (Friday and Saturday 7:00 p.m.) in the Black Box Theater. It was terrific. The play itself is hilariously funny. The kids were really good in their roles. The kids were able to develop multi layered characters with physical traits, vocal traits and costuming.
Slapstick is not dead. There was extraordinary physical comedy. The ability of the kids to get their timing right on the delivery of their funniest lines was astounding.
Too bad the play runs only one weekend.
When I was a kid, I loved to ride my bicycle. I liked going fast. I could go where I wanted. I'd ride with my friends.
We washed our bikes, oiled our bikes and fixed them when they were broken.
We learned our way around our town. We built "jumps" from a piece of plwood leaned against a rock.
I put a baseball card in the spokes. I thought I was Evil Kneivel.
These are bicycles in Newburgh. I wonder who rides them and where they go.
I wandered around looking for bicycles to photograph. I found plenty of bikes, but no riders.
One day I went to the corner store. M. the counterman told me that a boy, a teenager had come to the store and said that he hated M. He told M. that he hated all Arab people. He told M. he was going to kill him, showed a gun and ran away.
M. said that he called the police. After about fifteen minutes an officer arrived. The officer asked him where the boy was. M. said "He ran away. He went that way."
The officer asked why he didn't call when the boy was still there. He told him that if he saw him again to call back. The officer walked out too.
Two boys were coming from behind a neighbor's home one afternoon. It was a new neighbor. Lovely woman with two small children of her own. I had met her. I thought she was a nice lady. I like her children.
Nobody was home at her house, no lights were on. The two boys had a bicycle. I had seen the bicycle behind the house in the past. I thought it was a bad idea to leave the bicycle out like that even though the yard is fenced in.
On this day the fence lock was missing. The smaller of the two boys, who appeared to be about six looked at me and said, "We're getting my brothers bike, he left it here."
"Oh...what is your name?" I asked him.
"M." he answered "My brother's name is N."
"Where do you live?"
"Over there." he pointed his pinkie at a house two doors down.
"Does Mrs. V know you've left your bike in her yard?"
"She said it was okay, she knows."
Two days later I knocked on Mrs. V.'s door. I asked her about the bicycle. She told me how much her daughter had cried when she saw that the bicycle was missing.
I walked her to the house where the boys live. They live in a basement apartment. The little guy M. was coming up the stairs. I asked him what he had done with the bicycle.
"My brother gave it to his friend L. "
"Can you get the bike back? It belongs to Mrs. V.'s daughter and she is very sad because it is missing."
"Unh unh, L. gave it to......"
A series of possessions followed. The crucial element being that the bicycle was hopelessly gone. Less likely to appear than Elvis at the mall or Jimmy Hoffa in a tutu. I asked if his mother was home, I hoped she would take charge of the situation.
"She workin'."
Mrs. V said she'd come back later.
A week had passed. Mrs. V. was coming home from work when I next saw her. Her kids were with her. She told me she had decided to report the bicycle to the police since M. confessed and she had a witness. She said that the boys mother had been no help.
A few days later, I saw the boys at the corner store. I asked if they had gotten the bicycle back to Mrs. V. The bigger boy assured me that they had. Then I ran into Mrs. V.
"Yes the police came right after I called them and they went to talk to the boys. They told the police that they had given the bicycle to you. The policeman said he could not do anything because the boys didn't have the bike anymore."
