04/15/01

Since Percy had Fauntleroy, Swami Hard Salami and me captive in his car yesterday he must have thought it was high time to punish us for Joe Dirt. He gave us all a field trip to various historical places around Newburgh before dropping us off like, I don’t know, two hours later. Man that fucker loves to blab!

First was the Balmville Tree: a 300 year-old Cottonwood recently saved from the chainsaw by this intricate system of braces you see. The tiny parcel it occupies comprises the smallest state forest in America.

Then it was up to the Gomez Mill house, the first known Jewish homestead in America, dated to 1714.

Luis Moses Gomez was a Sephardic Jew who obtained an Act of Denization from Queen Anne to obtain 6000 acres here. He established a fur trading post at this home and was very successful. With the wealth he gathered, he helped build the Mill Street Synagogue in New York, the city’s first.

Then Percy takes us to the statue of George Clinton, the great native son, on Fullerton Avenue:

Not only was Clinton placed in charge of defending the Hudson at the highlands soon after the start of the Revolution, he was also appointed the first Governor of New York in 1777. Ruttenbur said Clinton was to New York State what Washington was to the country.

Percy said the Clinton statue was originally located in a square down on Water Street down near the river, where the whole area was leveled in the 1970’s as part of a huge urban renewal project. He said a famous painter from Newburgh named Chatterton had a well-known painting of the now extinct neighborhood called “Clinton Square”. At some point they moved the statue to the West End in the Colonial Terraces neighborhood, which has become the new “Clinton Square.”

Meanwhile Swami is lavishing all kinds of praise on Percy, his comedic partner and cheerleader, says he should write a book. Of course Percy has to point out that he is writing a book, and then he starts going on and on about his Crypto-Judaic research shit into families of Sephardic descendent driven into Holland after the Inquisition who ended up making their way to New Amsterdam as Dutchman generations ago.

You certainly sound like you know your sheet, as they say, Swami comments.

I sure wish someone thought I knew my sheet. . . Then again, that might make me sound like a Ku Kluxer.

Anyway, today we went up to jail for Easter. That’s what every good Christian family does you know—visits jail on Easter. I’m not sure why Phebe left me in the dark about this---seems she knew this before now--- but I just learned today that Rocky now has at least 20 years total to serve with the new sentencing on manslaughter.

Damn that sucks to think about.

Oh, yeah, and Rocky’s being sent way far away upstate now too.

Really sucks to think about.