Miles From the Artery

We went to visit a school.  It was a school which had made a campus out of an IBM retreat.  IBM bout up lots of land and did lots of things in this, the town of my ancestors.  And then, they suffered and sold, as disrupted companies do.  Once upon a time this was an estate that had nothing to do with IBM.  It was the summer home for a family that made its money in umbrellas.  How simple the world once was.

This estate had a large guest house.  It looked down towards the Hudson.  I marveled, I suppose, at why it was these people of means chose a house on a bluff, up, so far away from the river.  The Hudson was, I presume, the reason people chose here and not somewhere off , thirty miles from here, to live. 

Upstairs, considering one classroom and then another I kept looking out the windows.  What were they hoping for when they chose this spit of land?  The view is grand, surly, but there is no water to be seen.  What then was their reason for choosing to build an estate all the way up here, miles from the artery that defined the Hudson Valley?

Later it was time to have lunch.  “How do you get to Vassar from here?”  I know the answer to this question. Go right.  We go right.  We pass Our Lady of Lourdes, the local Catholic school.  So that’s out here too now?  It used to be down town.  Straight on, one left and one right.  Now everyone knows where we are.  Should I call my mom, to find the best place to go?  My younger daughter is non-committal but I know what she’d like.  Soon we are having jumbo burgers from BurgerFi.  Look over there.  It’s the woman who handles our banking at the near by Bank of America.  No.  Let’s not bother her.  We finish.  And bus our trays. 

Monday, 8/05/19