Coming Home

Take a step inside and please, be careful. You don’t know what may collapse under foot.

My microphone is down by that floor, capturing the snaps and pops of feet on glass and plaster as we climb deeper into the ruins. A foot sweeps aside debris and solid hardwood floors appear.

Maybe we won’t break through anything. My god, those floors stood up to the times. Not everything else was so lucky.

Doors hang off hinges. Broken glass slices panes. Spring sun streams in and the dust dances.

Some rooms are deep pits that forbid our entry. The stairs are steep and their moans are questions to why do we climb.

Every room peels. Like petals curling as they slowly die in a vase.

My throat is dry and my voice catches on the nail that sticks from stripped mantel. But my ears are sharp.

I can swing my microphone around and hear steps overhead. Someone is quietly considering what used to be their bedroom. Where they would sneak out. Where they would drink a beer. Where they would look across the street and wonder when it will safe to go to leave the yard. Where they grew up. Or grew older.

Officer’s row, where the naval officers lived within the Brooklyn Navy Yard, did not contain normal homes -- they were majestic or magnificent. They had twelve-foot ceilings and mahogany mantles. There were maid quarters. There was at least one bathroom on every floor. You could have your friend come over and impress the hell out of him. After all, these were mansions in Brooklyn across the street from housing projects. Now they are not much more than shells, with little left to offer about who lived there or what those times were like. Now, the houses are spooky and haunted.

Thirty years ago the Wagner family headed out of the solid brick homes and never looked back. Now, the parents and five siblings live in four states. Some are 3000 miles away from each other. Today they came together for one brother’s 50th birthday -- and they came home.

Swing another 90 degrees towards the tall and narrow windows. Trucks rumble and clank and boom on Flushing and even further on the BQE, but the birds are singing too. And there is laughter outside. Two sisters giggle as they remember. A father’s voice booms out, calling for one of his children. One of them will keep wandering off.

Light breaks through the canopy and they are children again. They are playing in the wiry branches of this overgrown gardens. They part vines to discover old paths in and around the homes. They move with expertise as their feet find their bearings. One looks for the remains of a playground that may lie beneath weeds that grow as high as her neck. There were secret places and hiding spots. There were friends and there was loneliness. There was the exhilirance of being in New York and the fear and thrill of traveling beyond their cast iron gates.

Now, they do have their own homes. They have jobs. They have children of their own. However, for this instant, they are children again. Again young at heart. Again in Brooklyn.

It is hard for me to see all of this. I am tracking down seven souls through this Admiral’s or Officer’s row. I need to be concerned on a technical level. This is important. I am watching audio levels. I have to remember introductions and questions. They are facts that need to be collected. Memories that need to be preserved. Reactions that need to be documented.

And around me, the walls creak and the floors groan. The leaves crunch. The branches sing. The dog darts by into the thicket. No. There are more than seven souls here today. And they have all just met again for the first time in a long time.

Post script: This was an exhilarating experience, but only the beginning of a process that we will continue to work on throughout the coming weeks and months. Corie took haunting and wonderful photographs. I took audio recordings. And we have much more material to collect.

Two very large thank you's to the Wagners and to the kind folk at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Please check the Officer’s row website for more information as we collect, interpret and maybe begin to understand our findings.

Posted by alexis at April 6, 2005 12:17 PM