David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Elegy for a Barkeep. Requiem for a Bar?

The Fireplace Café in the old New England mill village of Collinsville, Connecticut is in danger of closing after owner Bill Wilson died last week following more than four decades behind the bar.  Wilson was a crusty guy brimming with strong opinions and cautionary tales who delighted in playing a curmudgeon.   But patrons who got to know him found a friend fiercely loyal, amiable and humorous.  Inadvertently, perhaps, he created a community of people of all stripes, from age 21 to 81 and beyond, who gather to relax and swap stories.  The place is still open, but its future uncertain.  If you haven’t been there, my advice is to stop in and have a brew before you miss out.

There used to be taverns like this in every community in America, but they’re quickly disappearing.  An old-time-shot and a beer neighborhood bar, some people thought of it as a throwback to the 1970s because little work had been done on the deteriorating building since that time, but it’s really a relic of the 1930s when people were more likely to gather at day’s end in a no frills atmosphere to discuss personal travails and issues of the moment.

Autumn's Flotilla: New England's Best Color

New England autumn customarily calls for eyes raised with ridgelines and hilltops lit in electric reds, yellows and oranges that make blue skies infinitely deep and brighten the most leaden overcast.  Maples  immolate themselves with color in pastures, on lawns and along town greens.  While we might enjoy the fading crazy quilt of gold and russet on the ground or enjoy the crisp crunch of dried leaves underfoot, looking down reminds us too much of the arduous cleanup ahead to provide much pleasure.  But downcast glances reveal leaf hues at their greatest intensity—when they float in our rivers and streams.

Flying Skillets

As a well-worn story line might have it, you’d think a man would flinch when a woman picks up a heavy frying pan with the intent of heaving it as hard as she can, but these days you’re more likely to hear  cheers.  Call it the “kitchen shot put,” but the women’s skillet throw is rapidly gaining ground as one of the more intriguing events at Connecticut’s agricultural fairs.  Using a custom-made frying pan (handles break on store-bought models) women stand at a foul line and hurl the metal disc as far as they can within a proscribed lane of fair territory.  The furthest throw wins.

Contestants approach the line like ballplayers stepping into the batters’ box during a tense game.  They survey the field, taking a stretch as fierce concentration steals over their faces.  Technique is critical and the women vary in their grip, windups and release points.  There are handle and rim grippers, the double pump, two handed and windmill styles.  Friends and family cheer their favorites and inevitably there’s a wag in the crowd who yells: “Her poor husband,” after a particularly long throw.

Old Friends (Poem)

Terraced on a hillside, weather-weary houses stand
like people posed on tiered bleachers for a portrait.  Gable
to gable and glassily peering at each other from across
the street, they’ve passed tens of  thousands of days
together.  Rain-lashed, wind-battered, snowed-in and sun-
blistered, they recall horses tethered to porch railings,
long-silenced factory trip-hammers rattling their windows,
the knock of the ice man, and lively step of daily
milk deliveries.

They mark time in layers of rough alligatored paint,
hollows worn in stone steps, newel posts polished
by generations of palms, floors scuffed by the ebb and flow
of feet.  Walls remember sobbing babies and childish giggles,
the last phlegm-clogged cough of a cancer-wasted man
and his wife’s wail.  They’ve witnessed spouses driving
angry words like nails, and the breathless moans of love.

Almost a century older than any inhabitant could ever hope
to be, the houses take in a succession of families, sheltering
them like orphans.  Landlords and banks be damned,
the time-worn dwellings find immortality granted
by tenants who devoutly paint clapboards, shingle roofs,
repoint chimney bricks, and glaze windows.