We've Swooped In Under

 

Cloudy, hot, muggy we weren’t necessarily suffering on the ride up to Kingston.  In the car it was cool.  We listened to different music.  My niece and nephew had their tunes.  My girls had theirs. I just let it roll.  Dorkish, presumably but after “who’s this?” I generally ask: “where are they from?”  This isn’t always something my daughters care to get specific on.  My nephew is playing stuff from the U.S. but also stuff from Nigeria and Tanzania.  Soon we’ve swooped in under the old bridge over the Roundout and are up and arrived at Target.  My older daughter in her red shirt gets out of the car, off to work. 

 

Certainly, nobody wants to go to a museum or anything I’d like.  “Ice Cream?”  Even with older teenagers, it’s a hit.  Where’s the best place in Kingston?  My daughter thumbs threw her iPhone and yells out “Jolly Co.  Wait?  Oh, Jolly Cow.”  It’s just beyond Adams not far from here and soon we’ve parked and taken our place in line, six feet behind the people in front of us and begin a measured consideration of all the different possibilities in the menu, posted above. 

 

They don’t seem to have kept up with the novel assault of mashups that the freezer at Tops with its cookie, peanut butter cups, chocolate chunk thing that they make available.  Jolly Cow seems more at the ‘mint chocolate chip’ era of ice cream marketing.  That’s cool.  Proof is in the licking. I get a double cone with sprinkles on a little wafer cone and immediately the race is on.  Shit is dripping down all over my hands and much worse will befall me if I don’t attack this thing with gusto. 

Later we did the walk over the Hudson.  Unsolicited, I note that it is my favorite river in the whole world.  The water flows both up and down with the tides.  “Poughkeepsie is Lanape for ‘hut by the river.’  She - pointing to my younger daughter, is a sixth generation Poughkeepseian” I remember being in a car with my grandmother and seeing this bridge the day it was on fire.  No one expected this to be a success. But it was. So glad it was preserved.  Right?

I notice a new kind of oak tree on the highland side of the walkway on the way back. I thought they were chestnut oaks.  But the Seek app says it’s a Chinkapin oak, which seems very cool.  And then I wonder if it's accurate. 

 

 

 

Saturday, 08/07/21