I met a Tade at a Labor Day Weekend beach party in Sagaponack, New York, which was hosted by a mutual friend. We didn’t converse all that much and to this day I can’t say I “know” him as that was the only time we got to hang out, but our friend suggested I’d really like the daily emails, especially the “True Stories” and I was soon added to the list.
When I read Tade’s novel “Conscience Point” last summer, I was struck by some of the similarities between myself and one of the main characters. It was as if he studied me and a bunch of other local friends of mine and found the common experience, worldview, belief system and what it feels like to be a native here. Finding another place as beautiful and special is tough to do.
I grew up in Bridgehampton in a large Polish family. I’m was a painter with a very serious surfing, wandering and wondering problem. I was accepted into a prestigious art school for college and awarded a two-year scholarship. When the scholarship was up, I suddenly became aware of the cost of tuition which I’d be solely responsible for, and promptly left school to chase waves, adventure, spirituality and life experiences.
I’d be gone for a few years, working odd jobs and selling just enough paintings to live, surf, and travel. Then I’d return home for a bit to recharge, make some money working with my brother’s businesses or waitering, and then head back off again. I’ve lived in Maui, all over the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Brazil, Chile, Peru, South Africa, Madagascar, India, Japan, the Phi Phi Islands in Thailand, Ireland and my last stop was in Glastonbury, England, a New Age community which attracts people with both New Age and Neopagan beliefs, where I lived in a monastery. Here I studied myths and legends such as Glastonbury Tor, Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. I completed a mural related to these themes in exchange for food and board which remains on the wall of the monastery to this day.
My grounded, working class family thought I was irresponsible, even insane, as I lived this lifestyle until I was 39, when I felt the universe calling me back to my homeland on the East End of Long Island; my soul was telling me it was time for the journeys to end.
Note to all you kids out there: When you spend your 20’s and 30’s traveling the earth in search of bliss, waves, self-realization and not establishing a career, your employment options at 40 are somewhat limited. Go figure. I got a job at a friend’s family-owned liquor store in Sag Harbor and they let me live in the small apartment (really just a room) above the store that was once home to a whaling boat captain when Sag Harbor, along with New Bedford and Nantucket, was one of capitals of the East Coast due to the booming whaling industry.
I spent much of my time across the street at the American Hotel, Sag Harbor’s Main Street landmark dating to 1846 that is sort of the Hamptons’ answer to Rick’s Café Américain in “Casablanca.” The place functioned as my living room. One evening during a snowstorm I played backgammon there against Jimmy Buffet and Tom Wolfe, who were two of many celebrities who frequented the establishment.
The Hamptons are an artist’s paradise, and I was looking to reenter that artistic community and see if there was a spot for me to contribute. I met a couple, let’s call them the Jones’s, at an exhibit opening in Southampton where I volunteered to hand out nametags, and they happened to be staying at the American Hotel where we met for drinks later that evening.
The Jones’s were extremely nice people, transplants from Austin, Texas, to Manhattan and looking to learn to surf. I offered to teach them, they accepted, and we got to know each other well. The next fall, they called to tell me that while they loved the Hamptons, they’d elected to purchase a home on Block Island, and they asked me if I’d like to paint murals in their new house (and guest house) at my discretion. I could paint anything on any wall I wanted to in both houses, and the pay was good. Done deal! Work was set to start in March.
I’d picked up a few shifts working as a waiter at restaurant in town, and I’d developed a relationship with a woman who worked there who I’ll call Tina. Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, subdivisions in Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest and Ninevah, collectively known as SANS, became a summer home destination for upper- and middle-class African-Americans, many of them doctors, lawyers and dentists, and remains a huge part of the cultural in Sag Harbor to this day. Tina (who I was falling quite hard for) was the youngest daughter in one of the historically prominent and central families in SANS. She’d grew up in Brooklyn Heights and was staying in her family’s home in the offseason and working while she awaited starting medical school in the fall. She’d been a collegiate field hockey player and had spent the past few years coaching at the high school she attended.
Tina’s parents came out for a long weekend and we met for lunch at the Corner Bar. Her father, a well-known family practitioner doctor who I recognized from the store as he was always wearing very fancy and dandy outfits, wasn’t digging his little girl’s new boyfriend. It had a little to do with race and the significant age difference between us, it clearly did have a lot to do with the fact that I sorta kinda didn’t really have a career. I was sheepish in the conversation, intimidated by the man, and careful not to say anything that would rock the boat further. While he was both polite and cordial as was his wife, I could tell the old man wasn’t picking up what I was putting down, as they say.
Tina confirmed as much the next day and there wasn’t really a hell of a lot I could do about it. Tina suggested strongly that if her father wasn’t on board, any hope of a serious long-term relationship wasn't going to happen.
I headed off to Block Island for a month of work very much heartbroken and filled with regret. Choices and actions have consequences, and all of mine had cost me a chance to continue a relationship I was very excited about. Maybe my family was right about how the decisions I made were bound to leave me alone, flailing and a generally in a tough spot.
I took the ferry to Block Island from Montauk and had most of my supplies shipped to the job site. The Jones’s informed me I was to be picked up at the ferry by a guy named Nigel who ran the crew that was doing work on both houses for most of the spring and had been there for several weeks. The arrangement had Nigel’s and his crew living in the main house and me in the guest house.
Nigel pulled up in a pickup truck. Much to my surprise, he was a tall skinny Jamaican man with long dreadlocks. He greeted me with a hug, which caught me by surprise. I struggled to understand him through his thick accent, but he was undoubtedly excited to see me.
The property was perhaps the best on the island but the homes did need some work. The main house boasted 9 bedrooms and 5 baths with views of the ocean off the southside of the island that remind you of the God’s artistic powers. The guest house had 3 bedrooms, a sporting room, but it too needed work, as did the yard and grounds.
Nigel showed me around and introduced me to his team. Three sons, three grandsons, and two nephews. They all had the same dreadlocked look and similar happy, gregarious demeanor. Nigel was about 60.
Nigel and his clan were from the mountains of Central Jamaica, and had done work for friends of the Jones’s on Jamaica’s north coast. The Jones’s were so impressed with the work they hired them and paid for all of them to get to Block Island for this extensive renovation. We had a big dinner around that evening of delectable Jamaican cuisine and I retired to the guesthouse, eager to start work in the morning. The idea of being there for a month with this crew wasn’t something I’d fully expected or contemplated, and I had no idea I was about to have my perspective altered permanently.
These 9 individuals woke each day before dawn, ate breakfast and as soon as the sun was up, they simply got after it. They were ripping down the deck and replacing it. They climbed up trees without the use of a ladder and cut down limbs, using the wood inside the house in various creative ways. They were replacing the roof and installing an expansive widow’s walk on it, redoing the siding, fences, walkways, windows, ripping out flooring and replacing it. They were attacking this house with a lifeforce that I’d never seen before. They worked with astounding relentless energy, cohesion, precision and joy while bantering with each other constantly, and they didn’t stop for any reason, including to eat, until about an hour before sunset.
At that point, they’d abruptly cease working and begin playing an extremely aggressive competitive soccer match in the yard. They’d slide tackle each other, there was constant smack talk and gamesmanship, it was as if the World Cup was at stake. The game would end about 10 minutes before sunset, when they would all take off their clothes, run down the steep pathway to the ocean completely naked and go swimming…in March. It was freezing out.
They’d then run back to the house, shower and begin work on an that evenings epic Jamaican feast, which naturally included a tremendous amount of ganja, fine rum and oddly enough they all drank thick English stout, which Nigel explained was derived from Jamaica’s English colonial history. Before dinner, they’d say a prayer that involved all of them speaking, chanting and singing at once, and then they’d eat, spend another hour or so listening to Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh or Dennis Brown and relaxing, then they’d hit the sack and do it all again the next day.
I watched this routine for a few days before I started following it myself. I’d paint while they worked until the soccer game commenced, where I’d join in the activities for the rest of the day. I was brutalized during the soccer game; no punches were pulled.
I’d watch Nigel as he made the rounds before dinner, talking to each person, including me, to make a connection that was unique to that day. With the smell of jerk chicken, curry goat, fried fish or oxtail filling the air, he’d move through the room in his jumpsuit, glass of rum in hand and joint in his mouth.
Over the course of that month, I opened up to him about my life and eventually about my current situation with Tina, her father, and all the rest of it. He’d listen and offer advice when he had it. I got to know everyone else a bit as well, and I was amazed at how they seamlessly and naturally just extended their circle to include me. As the month went by, I feel into a trance like contemplative Zen state.
Like most people of Polish descent, I was raised catholic and I suppose I remain one. Over the course of my life and travels, I’ve seen many different religions and forms of spirituality. Noticed I said “seen” and not “experienced” or “practiced” or another more active, involved, encompassing word.
It donned on me that in many ways in my life, I’d been more of an observer than an active participant, a traveler passing through that never stayed for long. Perhaps a person running from something. Like commitment, routine or dare I say responsibility. And here I was surrounded by these bold participants of life. They “owned it” as we say in this socio-economic universe that those of on this list exist in, while they would have no idea what this phrase means in the slightest. They were too busy living and appreciating each moment. They were spiritual. In each thing they did.
When the murals were complete, I announced I’d be leaving in the morning, and they prepared me an exquisite farewell meal complete with a traditional Jamaican potato pudding for dessert. During the music, ganja, rum and stout infused relaxation period that always followed dinner, I remember the tune that hit all of our brains and souls in the most perfect of ways and it remains pinned in my memory to this day. (Tade's note. Click on the below for a great video)
I returned to Sag Harbor the next day, and the next weekend was Easter. Tina’s parents reluctantly let her bring me to Brooklyn Heights for church followed by brunch at the River Café. On the walk back to their home on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, I lagged behind with Tina’s father and told him, warts and all, about my upbringing, travels, triumphs, insecurities, and my most recent experiences with Nigel and the crew on Block Island. He listened more intently this time. We sat on a bench while the others continued on home. He opened up a bit to me. About his domineering, demanding and distant father. He expressed his worries about young African American men, how their systemic failure at fatherhood handicaps so many aspects of the community, and he impact it will have on his grandchildren. We sat there that day listening to one another as we presented ourselves honestly.
Three years later, that man became my father-in-law when Tina and I married. He was a fantastic grandfather to our three now college aged children before passing away just over a year ago. I loved him and miss him badly. Tina completed medical school and took over her father’s practice. We split our time between the Brooklyn Heights brownstone she grew up in and Sag Harbor. I was a stay at home dad for a while, and eventually went back to school and became an Art Therapist practicing from our home.
The Jones’s had us up to their Block Island home a few years later, and Nigel and his wife were also invited for the weekend. I was dying to tell him about how my time with him and his crew changed and emboldened me, but I didn’t have to. When he looked at me, I could tell he knew.