THE LAST OF A SPECIES
.....oh hell, of course I knew Sailors' Snug Harbor at Staten Island, I used to catch
the launch right across the street from it to go to Bayonne, you know...no, I never
went to the facility, nor had the curiosity to just walk across the street to look
at it....I met some of them in a bar that that I happened to be in...they wandered around
and the seamen 'd get them drunk, I mean it was....oh yeah, eve-rybody knew about
Snug Harbor ....there was always the standard joke, you know...'you can always go
to Snug Harbor'...nobody had the intention to go, really...I didn't know the history of
it until I came here....I made no effort to find out.....they never ever really gave
it a lot of publicity, I mean....it's there....it's available....but now it's getting
too difficult to get somebody in here that the unions are running ads in their papers....well,
the source is drying out....we're the last of a species, really....I mean the maritime
industry is most radically changed...it was about time, it had not changed much since Moses in a basket, for God's sake...I mean, all the old traditions that
carried on for years and years and years....you can look at these ships here...they
all have a mast, but they're actually displaced.... there's no use for them, but
they still put them on ships....now, you see a ship, and it's a utilitarian* deal....it looks
like hell...it's just a floating box with a doghouse set up on top of it...it looks
like a seagoing version of the African Queen, for God's sake.... they don't build
a ship for esthetics now...the lines of it, the way they look like....well, you could
recognize a Dutch ship all over the world by the stern....it was always distinct,
it had a sturdy look...just a little line that you could tell...
Sea Level, N.C., July 27, 1998