I think of this place on rainy Spring days. Not torrential downpour but constant light rain in the Spring.
The cabin was deep in the woods in the Catskill Mountains (Kaaterskill as Washington Irving would say).
Donna and I drove through the steady downpour from Kinderhook, N.Y.
Donna’s Uncle Chet and his brother were staying at the cabin for the weekend. A hiatus from New York City.
They were both in the publishing trade and another uncle was Quentin Reynolds who wrote some of the Landmark Books which I read voraciously as a kid.
I was recently out of the Navy, Vietnam Era, and recently out of the Veteran’s Hospital in Albany. It was a hard time to be a young kid just out of the service. Here in my home country, no one bought me a drink, Hell I was lucky not to get egged when I got off the plane in San Francisco. A guy dressed in Viet Cong” black pajamas”
got treated better than a guy in uniform. For that reason we changed into “civvies” on the plane.
“Thanks for your service” is what they say to guys now. None of that for us, more like, “Fuck You ‘baby killer'”.
Forty years later I was talking to a guy who was a helicopter pilot in Iraq . I told him no one ever said “thank you for your service” to me.
He said, Welcome Home and thank you for your service.”
I started crying. It was partly because I had been having an affair with his wife while he was in Iraq.
It is an imperfect world for sure.
The calm in that rainy cabin was icy martinis, a good steak and peas cooked raw the way I like them.
Donna taking care of those old and young guys who were pretty well lost in the world.