Chapter 5 - Quicksand Duo Rescued

CHAPTER 5

MEMORY LANE -- EARLY 1970'S

ALFIE'S QUICKSAND

...........This story has to do with the family that purchased a neighbors home in Staten Island back around 1970............. If I remember correctly that family had three sons, one of them, I believe had the name Alfie...........The way that I am able to remember this family is thru other related associations, in this particular case, it was because Stan a fellow worker and neighbor who lived next door to this family, from time to time would mention them in our "ferry boat ride to work stories"........

While another set of homes across the street from me were being built, probably in the early seventies, Alfie would come up, like most of the kids his age to inspect the surrounding wooded area and the progress being made on the home construction site made reference to in this story................One day after a heavy rain fall he had come up to see what was going on with the home building in that area and apparently went too far into the construction site land fill that was mostly made up of clay fill..........One may remember what happens to clay when it gets wet, it becomes like quicksand.........A few years earlier, when I was going to view the model home before I moved to Staten Island in 1964, I had entered the street where the model home was located, with my '57 Plymouth and it became stuck and sunk in the wet clay after a heavy rainfall......That took me, Vinny the builder and several others to remove this car from the wet clay on that day.......

While we're on this subject of my '57 Plymouth I need to interject how I came about in purchasing this car.....You most likely will remember, if you have already read it, Chapter 10 http://www.americantorque.com/page/0/2143/ where I customized my dad's '49 Chevy.....Well that car was sold for a miserly $400 dollars when I joined the National Guard in 1957 and went away for military training at Fort Dix, NJ and Fort Bliss, Texas.....At one point in Fort Bliss our southern tuff looking sergeant who was a good man and I certainly would want to share a foxhole with him in combat, was marching us recruits thru a field when we came upon a very large bill board sign that displayed a beautiful '57 Plymouth on it ....It became love at first sight and I promised myself that I would buy this car at the end of this training tour.......I kept that promise to myself and in November of 1957 when I came back home to Astoria, I went to a local dealership and purchased this nice looking Plymouth with a total of a $2300 dollar loan......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jG5wWl--zw ....Christine

Well anyway, getting back to Alfie he did get stuck in the muddy clay fill and the more he struggled to get out the deeper he would go into the so called quicksand........He would finally end up waist deep in this clay fill..............Another of my next door neighbors, a doctor by profession would notice Alfies situation and rushed over to assist him to get out of this trap..........You guessed it, he too would end up waist deep in this clay quicksand...........Now it became my turn when I too noticed the predicament that they both were in..........When I ran over to assist them I noticed that they both were at least 35 feet across into the the clay landfill away from the safe road way..........I don't know what made me think of it but what I proceeded to do was to pick up the "foundation forms" that were at the construction site and used to build and pour the cement foundation...........I laid the forms one after the other to act as a roadway so I could walk on them without sinking in the quicksand until I reached both stuck Staten Islanders, and helped both of them out of their stuck positions...........Alfie's father would later come to my home and personally thank me with a bottle of wine for helping his son out and than later calling the local newspaper to have the story put into print..........

Many, many years later when another Staten Island neighbor Jack Aversa would pass away, there was a large gathering of family, friends and neighbors who would come to Jack's wake, one of them being Alfie who no longer lived in this neighborhood and was a grown man by now.......Jack was well liked and respected by many, as he through the years, would have an assemblance of Christmas ornaments displayed outside his home each year and the last several years also included having the local High School Band playing Christmas music that drew a large neighborly crowd of people from all over Staten Island......

Jack over the years that we were friends would many times consult with me with some of the projects I had in improving my home and was always very helpful with his sharing of ideas to help me along.....He was a good friend indeed.......

Although Alfie was extremely friendly to me at Jacks wake, he didn't introduce himself and even though I knew, I knew him I really didn't realize who he was other than an old neighbor........After the wake I kept thinking back to this young man and it wasn't until months later that I would recall the boy in the quicksand...............Nick.....March 25, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT2TEwF634c .......Dionne Warwick - Alfie - 1967

PS........To remove the seriousness of this story, as to what could have been, I have taken the liberty below to add a "tongue in cheek" quicksand video......