The Day After

The last couple entries were written awaiting Hurricane Irene, or Tropical Storm Irene by the time she went by us, slightly to the west. There were days of preparation at our marina and preparing our boat, tying redundant lines, striping anything that can fly in a high wind, and preparing the boat for rough seas as our stern is to the south facing the mouth of the Norwalk River, a long fetch. The worst case scenario we learned from Hurricane Gloria in 1985. Although our boat (a smaller one than we now have) was further up the river at a different marina, the southeast wind brought high waves into the river and although our boat did fine on its own, another boat broke loose in that marina and its bow pulpit impaled our stateroom, resulting in fiberglass and water damage.

Our present boat is more than a boat; it is our summer home and we have no other place to go. Luckily, we were able to get a hotel room not far from where our boat is docked so we were hoping we would have easy access when trying to return after the hurricane, even if power is lost and street lights are not working.

The greatest danger beside the wave and wind action is the tidal surge and South Norwalk is vulnerable to extremely high tides. Wisely, when our marina was rebuilt by our boat club, the main pilings took this into account. They are tall, made of cement, and the floating docks were designed to stay on those pilings even in the most extreme conditions. And they were extreme as Irene came blasting up the river near an astronomical high tide. Still, the floating docks were only three feet from the top by the time the water receded.

Nonetheless, we returned to our boat this morning with some trepidation. Did all our lines hold and did any of the horizontal rain and saltwater spindrift breach our hatches and windows? It was with a sigh of relief when we entered the boat and realized that except for some seepage under the door, the boat was in good shape. It took us most of the day putting back everything we had stowed or secured. Although all dock and spring lines were tied tightly with redundancy, it is amazing how much they stretched in the heaving seas. In the placid morning light of this day after they lay limply. Also one of the chocks that hold lines on the starboard side of the cover board had popped three of its four screws, a testament to the constant chaffing of the lines. The ‘Swept Away’ was stern to heavy seas for several hours accounting for this slight damage. Had the chock not held, the lines would have cut into the teak cover boards.

The day after a hurricane or tropical storm --- and we have been in several – always seems to be the opposite side of the same coin, as beautiful as the prior day was treacherous. The photograph below shows damage at a neighbor’s dock, but a crystal blue sky with unlimited visibility. In the background one can see Peach Island, one in the Norwalk Islands and beyond that, some eight miles away, the Northport stacks on Long Island further to the south. Goodbye, Irene, goodbye indeed.

Hurricane Irene and Jonathan Tropper

We are hunkered down in a hotel awaiting Hurricane Irene, our boat secured to the best of our ability. So we wait, with our flashlights (as power will inevitably be lost) and enough bread, and peanut butter and jelly to outlast the storm. The storm surge will be the key to our boat’s survival, a sickening feeling having to wait out the next two days and hoping we can return to find minimal damage when the storm finally passes. Meanwhile, it is time to complete an entry concerning Jonathan Tropper which I had started to write before Irene dictated the turmoil of preparing for the storm.

I’m becoming a Jonathan Tropper admirer, a clever and talented writer, with a unique voice, who may deserve to join the company of some of my favorite contemporary American novelists, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, Russell Banks, Richard Ford, John Irving, E.L. Doctorow, Pat Conroy, and Jonathan Franzen, Ever since John Updike died and as Philip Roth ages, I worry about their understudies, who might fill the shoes of authors dedicated to the craft of writing and the chronicling of American life and The Dream.

I had just finished Russell Bank’s The Reserve, a beautifully written novel but humorless and needed a “pick me up” so I returned to Tropper, having liked his Everything Changes, and was curious whether one of his earlier ones would measure up. I chose The Book of Joe with some hesitancy as it seemed to have all its cultural references to the 1980s, where part of the novel is set, the main characters being in high school and juxtaposed to the same ones today. This is my younger son’s generation, not mine. I’m closer to Updike and Roth’s age, no doubt one of the reasons their writing so resonates with me.

But Tropper deals with such universal truths they transcend generational provincialism, certainly the mark of a good writer. My high school years of the 1950s had the same raw pulsating teenage angst, sexual urgency, and social vulnerability, the very ones portrayed by Tropper at Bush Falls High, their Cougar basketball players revered, and everyone else in a subordinate role. Teenagers can be the most sadistic humans on the face of the earth, something Tropper well understands.

Events concerning my 50th high school reunion brought home the fact that the caste system had hardly changed. It was amazing to me that the long bridge of 50 years hardly mattered. It was back to the clickish high school years as if no time had passed at all.

And Tropper poignantly captures this feeling in The Book of Joe, using Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel experience as a very loose outline. Wolfe’s novel outraged the residents of Asheville and had Wolfe returned (actually, there is a fictionalized version of his return written by Asheville native and playwright Sandra Mason which we saw several years ago in Asheville), he, too, would have been vilified as is Tropper’s Joe Goffman who leaves the small fictional town of Bush Falls, CT, somewhere north of New Haven. He writes a novel about the town and it becomes a sensational best-seller, thanks in part to his agent. He tells all in thinly veiled fiction, even his most private sexual fantasies concerning his best friend’s mother. He finally returns 17 years later as his father has had a stroke and he now has to confront his family and former friends and high school hell raisers, the love of his life, and even the mother about whom he had fantasized.

Tropper writes terrifically believable dialogue and it is not surprising that he is also a screenwriter and a couple of his novels are in the process of being adapted for the screen. The Book of Joe is a fast read, poignantly tragicomic. Sometimes his writing reminds me of Joseph Heller’s special gift for ironic humor.

I was surprised by how engaged I was in the world of this thirty-something protagonist, a world more inhabited by my sons, but universal truths never change.

Goodbye, Irene, Goodbye

The irony hasn’t escaped us. One of the reasons we live on a boat on the Norwalk River (CT) during the summer is to leave the oppressive weather in Florida, including its hurricanes. So, when Irene was said to be a direct threat to Florida last weekend, I authorized our house minder to put up the remainder of our shutters and to secure the house for possible hurricane conditions. No sooner than they were up, the National Weather Service revised its path projections and over the last few days these has evolved into nearly a direct hit where we have our boat docked. This is not the first time a storm diverted from our house to the vicinity of our boat, the last one being Floyd. I could become paranoid about being a hurricane magnet.

While we have been able to stay on our boat past storms, this one seems to be more ominous, especially with the added tidal surge while there is an astronomical high tide. So we’ll be moving off the boat Saturday and going to a hotel on high ground, securing our “summer home” to the best of our ability with additional lines and fenders and stripping all canvas.

We’ve had a few calls from friends in Florida, joking (to the point of uncontrolled laughter) that we should return where it is safe from hurricanes. There is some truth in this as Floridians are better prepared, but the suggestion borders on a little Schadenfreude, not intentional I know. One even suggested I take the boat out of the harbor and anchor it off one of the Norwalk Islands, to her mind a simple solution to tying it up so compulsively. Ha. I can imagine explaining that to the insurance company.

So, preparing for the worse, and hoping for the best, and also hoping our hotel (only ten minutes from the boat and 90 feet above sea level) doesn’t lose power, but we’re ready for that too, totting flashlights, batteries, and books.

Good luck to all in what might be the worst hurricane I’ve been in since Wilma (in Florida) and Carol (in Sag Harbor when I was a kid). As lovely and as calm as the eyes of those storms were, I need see no more.