Coasting home was one fat anticlimax, despite the (never spoken) possibility of our burning up on reentry like an obsolete spy satellite circa 1962. Of course, we were all chuffed, as the English say, that we’d made the trek and maxed out the memory on our iPhones with iPhotos. But questions arose about what we were going to do upon our return, apart from making some bitchin’ posts on Instagram. If I ever run into Al Bean again, I’ll ask him what life has been like for him since he twice crossed the equigravisphere. Does he suffer melancholia on a quiet afternoon, as the world spins on automatic? Will I occasionally get the blues, because nothing holds a wonder equal to splitting Dufay down the middle? TBD, I suppose.
“Whoa! Kamchatka!” Anna called out as our heat shield expired into millions of grain-size comets. We were arcing down over the Arctic Circle, gravity once again commanding that we who went up must come down. When the chute pyros shot off, the Alan Bean jolted our bones, causing the Jambox to lose its duct-tape purchase and conk MDash in the forehead. By the time we splashed down off Oahu, a trail of blood was running from the ugly gash between his eyebrows. Anna tossed him her bandanna, because guess what no one had thought to take around the moon? To anyone reading this with plans to imitate us: Band-Aids.
At Stable One—that is, bobbing in the ocean, rather than having disintegrated into plasma—MDash tripped the “Rescue us!” flares that he’d rigged under the Parachute Jettison System. I opened the pressure-equalizing valve a tad early, and—oops—noxious fumes from the excess-fuel burnoff were sucked into the capsule, making us even queasier, what with the mal de mer.
Once the cabin pressure was at the same psi as outside, Steve Wong was able to uncork the main hatch, and the Pacific Ocean breeze whooshed in, as soft as a kiss from Mother Earth, but owing to what turned out to be a huge design flaw, that same Pacific Ocean began to join us in our spent little craft. The Alan Bean’s second historic voyage was going to be to Davy Jones’s locker. Anna, thinking fast, held aloft our Apple products, but Steve Wong lost his Samsung (the Galaxy! Ha!), which disappeared into the lower equipment bay as the rising seawater bade us exit.
The day boat from the Kahala Hilton, filled with curious snorkelers, pulled us out of the water, the English speakers on board telling us that we smelled horrid, the foreigners giving us a wide berth.
After a shower and a change of clothes, I was ladling fruit salad from a decorative dugout canoe at the hotel buffet table when a lady asked me if I had been in that thing that came down out of the sky. Yes, I told her, I had gone all the way to the moon and returned safely to the surly bonds of Earth. Just like Alan Bean.
“Who’s Alan Bean?” she said.
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Our Town Today
with
Hank Fiset
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AT LOOSE IN THE BIG APPLE
NEW YORK CITY! On my own for three days as my wife let me tag along as she celebrated her Twenty-fifth College Reunion with her Sorority Sisters of Gotta Getta Guy. I had not been to the isle of Manhattan since Cats was on B’way and hotel TVs were not high-def.
SO, WHAT’S NOO in Noo Yawk? Too much, if you have fond memories of the place, but little if the Naked City leaves you feeling, well, naked. I think NYC comes off way better on TV and in the movies, when a taxi is just a whistle away and superheroes save the day. In the real world (ours) every day in Gotham is a little like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a lot like Baggage Claim after a long, crowded flight.
HITTING THE STREETS of the Big Town ASAP is a requirement, especially when the Mrs. takes the family credit history off to all those big stores with one name: Bergdorf’s, Goodman’s, Saks, Bloomie’s, not a one of which is any better than our own Henworthy’s, which has been open at Seventh and Sycamore since 1952. For my money (a dwindling supply) those fancy places charge too much for just shopping bags. But give NY, NY, this—walking those streets is a show unto its own. I mean, where is everyone going?
CENTRAL PARK, MAYBE? That big rectangle of greenery has more musicians than the East Valley High School Marching Band, but they’re all solo acts. Those sax blowers, horn players, violinists, accordion squeezers, and at least one Japanese samisen musician are all in competition with the fellow starving musical artist who performs a few yards away, making for a funky fugue that mars the relative peace of the park. Add in hundreds of serious joggers, power walkers, cyclists, an equal number of lollygaggers, tourists on rental bikes, tricycles towing passengers, and the horses and buggies that make the park smell of a petting zoo, and you’ll yearn for our own Spitz Riverside Park, with less postcard views, true, but at least our Tri-Cities squirrels look a lot happier. On foot, you cross the park from the East Side streets tall with former tycoon mansions to the West Side avenues jammed with Starbucks, the Gap, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Had I just stumbled into our own Hillcrest Mall in Pearman? Looked like it, but where was the convenient parking?
NOT WITHOUT MAGIC is Metropolis, a.k.a. New York City, I admit. When the sun drops behind the towers and stops baking the pavement, it’s nice to cool one’s heels at a curbside table with a cocktail in your fist. That’s when Yankee-Town has the charm of our own Country Market Patio Bar and Grill. I sat and sipped and watched as a world of Knickerbocker oddballs strolled by. I saw a man with a cat on his shoulders, European tourists in the tightest pants imaginable, a team of firemen pull up in an engine, go into a high-rise apartment, only to come out later talking about a bad smoke detector, a man rolling a homemade telescope up the street, the actor Kiefer Sutherland walk by, and a woman with a big white bird on her shoulder. Hope she avoided the guy with the cat.
A CAESAR SALAD is the true test of any hotel restaurant—write that down! Our own Sun Garden/Red Lion Inn at the airport serves a beauty, but at a Times Square eatery—pretheater dinner with the Wife and still-foxy coeds—my salad was limp and the dressing too tart. Hell, Caesar! After I picked up the check, the girls headed off to see the B’way production of Chicago—like the movie, but without the close-ups. I don’t know much about musical theater, but I bet cash money what the girls saw that night was not any better than the Meadow Hills Community College Drama Department’s production of Roaring-Twenty-Somethings, which went to the American College Theater Festival last year. Does the Great White Way beat out the best of the Tri-Cities? Not according to this reporter.
IF YOU’RE HUNGRY and crave a frankfurter, they’re for sale all over Manhattan—on street corners, every few yards in the park, in subway stations, with papaya juice. None of them beat a tube steak from Butterworth’s Hot Dog Emporium on Grand Lake Drive. A bagel in Manhattan is the stuff of theologians, but Crane’s West Side Cafeteria serves up a heavenly leavened bun to all in the Tri-Cities. Much is made of N’york, N’york–style pizza, but I fork my money over for a slice of Lamonica’s Neopolitan, and, yes, they deliver within a ten-mile circle of each of their fourteen locations. And speaking of Italian food, Anthony’s Italian Cellar in Harbor View has all the authenticity of any joint in Little Italy without the mobster rubouts.