Sunset Playland: Chapter 29, "Andrew's Dream, Part 2"
When I finished my freshman year at Utah State University, Andrew was a just entering St. John’s University in New York City, where his father, my Uncle Joe, was an intercollegiate basketball star. Uncle Joe had a good reputation there with many connections and lifelong friends. Joseph was still trying to decide where to go to college. I was shocked when he decided on Utah State. Joseph was really a smart kid and he could have gotten in to any school he wanted. How I ended up at Utah State was an accidental fluke of nature. I think it’s called ‘fate’. I was the ‘accidental college student’. I think his mom, Aunt Jo, Josephine, was more comfortable with me in the picture to show Joseph the ropes and watch out for him. He was more of a mama’s boy than I was. Although I must admit, when I left for college in “Yumaha” my mother was hanging on my leg as I dragged her out the door of our Brooklyn home to the cab for the airport, literally screaming ...”Don’t go!!! ...don’t go!!!.
At this point Joseph had no idea what he wanted to do or where he wanted to go in life. Not uncommon for many of us, me included. But Joe was more of mess in that regard than most of us. I think it was too much disco. He didn’t know how to fend for himself. I had decided on geology as a course of study only because my dad suggested it. I’m not sure Joseph’s dad, Uncle Joe, suggested anything about college or a course of study. I’m not even sure Uncle Joe approved of Joseph going to Utah State.
Joseph didn’t “get” Utah, and Utah didn’t get Joseph. He was looking for the discos and a nightlife that just did not exist in Utah. You can take the boy out of Brooklyn… Utah was a beautiful place. It is and always will be a beautiful place. This is largely due to the Mormon culture. Some say it is a backward culture and crackpot, cultish society. And maybe in some ways it is, or was. But Brigham Young had it right, “This is the place.” ...it certainly agreed with me. Basin and range country. Snow-capped mountains, alpine mountain valleys and canyons, red rock deserts and canyons in the south. I live here to this day, and probably always will. You can take the boy out of Brooklyn. Besides, it’s not so much the people, as I am a bit of an introvert, it’s the place. It’s the healthiest place I’ve ever lived, the only place I am drawn back to ...except for Brooklyn, for the obvious reasons. It’s home. That was the difference between Joseph, and Andrew and me. Andrew and I had a wanderlust. We had dreams and chased sunsets. Joe was very practical.
Predictably, Joseph dropped out of school. He used his student loan money to ski all winter quarter. He moved in with his girlfriend spring quarter, she left him, aunt Jo and Andrew showed up to take him home. He didn’t last a year. He ultimately became a mortician in New York. Not that that was a bad thing. It made perfect sense to me. Really, no joke. He had to go to school for it. He got a good job. It’s an honest ...living ...
I had always noticed Andrew’s interest in honest work also, but as his own business of some sort. I think it was the snow shoveling in Brooklyn when we were kids that put cash in his hand that turned him on. The instant gratification of work turned into cash money. But Andrew liked to get his hands dirty, he liked being out in the open, he was a mother hen who liked to watch over things, take care of business, daily chores ...”fetch” things. The kind of work that, say, a golf course, even miniature golf, or a driving range represents. So too, did I notice Joseph’s morbid fascination with death. He was always oddly interested in the funeral scenarios surrounding our grandparents’ deaths. It was very noticeable to me. He was afraid to go into the funeral home to see the body in the casket. He challenged himself to go in and he received self-gratification for being able to do it. He was attracted to death like a moth to a flame.
One day, dark and stormy night, actually, a few years later, when I was home for Christmas holidays, Joseph was giddy to take me down to the funeral home where he worked and show me around. It was after hours and Andrew and I went with him. The whole scene was very creepy, Joe’s enthusiasm being the creepiest part of it. There were bodies on stainless steel tables, some covered in white sheets, some naked. Joe was like a kid in a candy store. Andrew and I were like …kids in a mortuary on a dark and stormy night. Joe said he’d seen some really beautiful women come under his knife. I was hoping this wasn’t going where I didn’t dare think it was going. Then he quickly added how sad it was to see that, and also the bodies of small children as well. He noted how wasteful it was for some of the bodies to be dressed in such expensive clothing and jewelry just to be buried in the ground. I couldn’t help noticing the very expensive Italian shoes he was wearing.
I’m not sure how Uncle Joe felt about Joseph’s calling, but there was some ribbing from other family members. I don’t think Joseph liked it, he resented it even, but it couldn’t be helped. It was the elephant in the living room. But it all wore off. I liked Joseph and respected his choice and calling. He made a good living from the dying.
Eventually, Uncle Joe and family moved away from the Brooklyn neighborhood. My parents bought their share of the house and still lived there until Mom passed away, then Dad. My two sisters still live there to this day. Joe got married and had two children, and moved further out on Long Island.
Uncle Joe, moved to Vermont and lived in their cabin / home in Sandgate. He became a gentleman farmer. Meaning, he drank a lot of beer and coffee, read the paper and lots of books, banking and stoking the fire. He spent hours at the yellow farmhouse where Floyd lived, and sitting by the wood stove in the kitchen area. He seemed content. My dad and I spent a lot of time there too, and I can still smell the delightful aroma of burnt oak and cherrywood coming from the wood stove, Miss Briggs’ Anadama bread baking in the oven, Floyd’s cigarette, and wet farm dog, Dixie, who was always stretched out on the well worn linoleum floor on a rainy March day.
Uncle Joe, Aunt Jo, and Andrew, split their time between Vermont, and Las Vegas of all places. Uncle Joe’s sister, Dotty, had moved to Las Vegas years before and opened a beauty salon business there that she moved from Queens. During one of those lost disco summers past, Joseph and Andrew worked at Dotty’s Salon in Queens. They were hairdressers. I was off to college in “Yumaha”. They both had frizzy permed hair, tight bell bottom jeans with wide white belts, silk shirts open at the top and gold chains around their necks ..and platform shoes. I think they had Saturday Night Fever.
They all would live and work in Vermont in the summer then spend the winter months in Las Vegas where they leased a home. Joseph was pretty much out of the picture working in the City. Andrew got a job as a bartender at the Cowboy Bar on Fremont Street in the old part of town. Scary part of town now, and then. It had wood plank floors and was one of the few places in Las Vegas with penny slots. Aunt Jo spent her days playing the penny slots while Andrew tended bar. Dotty died. Uncle Joe died. He died peacefully sleeping in his chair in his Las Vegas home, probably dreaming of Vermont. It was winter. He was buried in the Sandgate cemetery. He truly loved his Vermont. I thank Uncle Joe every day for finding that place in the Green Mountains, and for the friendships and memories that came along with it.
Aunt Jo and Andrew continued to live between Vermont in the summer and Las Vegas in the winter for some years before it got too hard for aunt Jo to travel. She was getting old, probably in her 80’s at that time, so they moved to Vermont permanently. Andrew worked odd jobs to keep things going. I’m not sure if he ever finished at St. John’s. In the meantime, there was some new blood moving in to Sandgate, Vermont. The Hendriksens prominently stand out. Old man Hendriksen had discovered Vermont, and Sandgate, and like so many others, befriended Floyd, Junior, Miss Briggs, and the gang, and he retired there bringing his wife, Mrs. Hendriksen, and their two daughters, Samantha (Sam) and Victoria (Vicky) with him. Hendriksen was reported as being “well off”. He apparently had owned the Volvo franchise in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut). So he became a gentleman’s farmer gentleman farmer. I was told that he was a bit of an odd duck, eccentric. They say, that when he died he was buried vertical, at his request, not horizontal. I don’t know if this is true, but it sounded like him. I’m sorry I never had a chance to met the gentleman. I wasn’t around much at that time, I was away in Utah, but I heard the stories. I can’t verify if they were true or not. Either way, he sounded like someone I’d like to know.
Sam and Vicky, pretty much grew up there, with Mrs. Hendriksen, in Sandgate, and had ingratiated themselves with the locals, becoming locals themselves. Sam, especially, took to the country life and became well known for her abilities as a hard working farmer. She built barns, bridges and grain silos with her bare hands, and with the help of the money her dad left her. She apparently had no financial worries, but all the same she was a hard worker and a very capable person. Still is to this day, she’s still up there in Sandgate, Vermont kicking ass and taking names. A very prominent, respected, high profile person in that community. She had a hip replacement operation recently. Not having any insurance, she found a doctor specialist on the internet, had the operation in India. She took her sister, Vicky, and several others with her, spent about three months there, and said it still cost her less than it would have if the insurance companies were paying for it here in the U.S. Classic Hendriksen. A very formidable, capable, woman and family.
After my mom died my dad started spending more time in Vermont. He’d spend weeks on end there in the summer months. He got along very well with with Sam, Vicky, and Junior. By then, Junior was about the only original old timer left there. My dad would stay with Junior for weeks on end, driving up from the City, and he became part of that family. My dad was the ultimate “hard worker” and they all admired and appreciated him for that. Dad was in his element and glory bailing hay, fixing a tractor, helping out anyway he could. To him, working was a vacation. This would be shockingly evident if his Vermont friends could see him at home in Brooklyn. He had nothing to do there. He was bored to death. He drank too much there, watched too much TV. If it wasn’t for my two sisters still living at home, he would have sold the building and moved to Vermont permanently.
Aunt Flo, Uncle Pat, little Pat …remember them? ...’Lady of Spain’ on the accordion ...? They added two more kids to the family, Jill and Barry. The kids all grew up and moved away, and Pat and Flo moved from Peekskill to Grandville, N.Y., just a few miles over the Vermont state line and a short drive from Sandgate. They purchased their dream house there in Grandville. Life was good. Aunt Flo was sister to my mom and aunt Jo, and Uncle Pat was a wonderful uncle to have, so they became part of the loop again and we visited them often. One big happy family again.
Andrew never married. He had several girlfriends over the years but he must have felt a stronger responsibility to his mother, aunt Jo, and they lived together there at the cabin in Sandgate. The girlfriends he did bring home didn’t last long. I don’t think aunt Jo approved of any of them. As mothers sometimes don’t. Mothers and their sons. Andrew saw less and less of his brother, Joseph, as Joseph had his own family and job, and life (and death ...job) to manage.
Andrew saw an opportunity to realize his dream and he took it. There was a piece of property for sale near Bennington, just south of Sandgate and Arlington. Bennington was the largest town in the area and attracted tourists from all over the region in summer and winter. The property was located on a small hill between Route 7 and 7A, Harwood Hill Road, the main local road to Bennington, next to the on/off ramp. There were about four acres of meadowland, no forest, but with plenty of trees and forest surrounding. It was beautiful. Zoned residential but with a commercial overlay. The outstanding feature of the property was the western view of the sunsets. They were spectacularly framed by the contour of the surrounding hills and the Green Mountains and the Adirondack Mountains in the distance to the far west. Every evening was a picture perfect postcard sunset. With love, from Vermont. Wish you were here.
This would be the site of Andrew’s long time dream. He would call it Sunset Playland. It would be a miniature golf course at first, then he would add go-carts, batting cages, sell soft drinks and hot dogs and maybe later add a restaurant ...a dream realized ...
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah
https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
Some past articles and op-eds