The Shores Of Flushing Bay

The Matinecock Indians gathered fish and shellfish in the bay.  When the Dutch settlers came in the seventeenth century, they named it Vlissigen Bay after a seaport in Holland.  When the English took over, they pronounced the name as Flushing.  The bay became a waterfront resort for wealthy New Yorkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. 

In the twentieth century, it was no longer a resort, and became home to LaGuardia Airport, where I worked as an airport engineer.  I was on a survey crew, and I got to know some of the airport’s neighbors.

LaGuardia’s airplanes take off over water, most of them flying directly over Riker’s Island, which is New York City’s main prison.  Sometimes our crew needed to survey on the island.  One time, our boss decided to make our excursion to prison more pleasant; he asked his wife to make lunches for the crew.  Her specialty: pot roast sandwiches.

I didn’t know you could make sandwiches out of pot roast.

We got to Riker’s Island by the prison ferry, did some surveying, and took a break for lunch.  I sat on a seawall, and started to eat my pot roast sandwich.  There was a lot of trash floating in the water below me.

The trash included a dead rat bobbing in the little waves.  I noticed that the dead rat was gray.  In fact, it was the same color gray as the pot roast sandwich.  My appetite disappeared.

Besides surveying in a prison, we got to survey in a sewage treatment plant on the shores of Flushing Bay. 

The supervisor of the treatment plant always greeted us.  The World’s Fair was going on that summer, and he wanted us to know that all the sewage from the Fair went through his facility.  The fact that his facility could handle this huge amount of sewage made him proud.

One time he wanted us to know that the facility did a great job of treating sewage.  There was a little tap on one of the tanks; he filled a glass with some liquid from the tank.

“This liquid is the end result of our treatment, and it is fit for human consumption”.  He held the glass up to the sunlight for us.  It was like an invitation --- come sample the cleansed sewage from the World’s Fair.

But no one on the survey crew took him up on the invitation. 

In my mind, the shores of Flushing Bay were associated with a busy airport, a huge prison, and a sewage treatment plant.  Not a happy picture. 

Then I read that Nathan Hale was captured on the shores of Flushing Bay on September 21, 1776.  The next day he was hanged, after announcing that he regretted that he had but one life to give for his country.  

Definitely not a happy picture.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com