DUCK POND

         The gloom and rain of the morning lifted as I ate lunch, this time in a restaurant in another city an hour from home. I was meeting a fellow practitioner, trying to see if we could assist each other with our practices. Both of us were rather guarded at the start, but within a few minutes, we were 'Hail Fellow, Well Met.' My dog does this to people. She had come along to navigate, a Fred Noonan to fearless Earhart in the driver seat. I had stopped at a school yard near the destination to let her use the facilities and promised her that after lunch, we would stop at the park we had seen on the way.

         As my new friend and I went our separate ways, we agreed to meet again. I headed back to the Interstate, keeping my eye open for the park. I found it, pulled in and discovered there was an admission fee to enter. I rolled down the window, paid the fee while the dog barked furiously, and drove in.

         It was a large park. After a mile or so, I found a nice spot where boys were fishing on one side of the road. A hill rose into woods in front of us. Parking would be on a stone bridge, on one side of which was a small lake and the other a duckpond. The dog was excited to see friends in the water and thundered down the wooden steps to the edge of the pond. There she stopped, realizing swimming was neither of our strong suits.

         Having a dog whose eyes are buried in fur and who resembles nothing so much as a large gray mop has advantages when it comes to meeting strangers. A woman asked if she was friendly and approached to pet her. She said she wished she had brought bread to feed the ducks, explaining that she had not been here in years, but had come often as a child. Bread was not needed for shortly thereafter, two youngsters approached with their father and began throwing crusts in the water, to the delight of the ducks and the children.

         At another duckpond, in another year, a man took his daughter to do the same thing. The setting was more upscale. The pond was surrounded by houses selling for unheard-of prices, but the ducks had yet to be gentrified out. His dog of that time had frightened the ducks. His daughter was angry at the dog and would not let her out of the car the next time they came.

         I meant to ask this woman if her father had brought her to this pond. Feeding ducks always seemed to be a project for fathers. Mothers get the grunt work. No ponds for them; they pound the aisles of the supermarkets and discount stores, little children in tow. The children are disappointed there are no ducks. They carry on until she buys them a placebo to hold them off until their father has the time.

         There were no duckponds in the North Philadelphia neighborhood where my father walked his son. He would tell one and all that the only thing David wanted to do was watch trains. The two of us would head through the park across the street from Shibe Park, home of the A's and Phillies, and gaze from a bridge down at the freight yard on the Pennsylvania Railroad's main tracks to New York.

         I think he liked it too. We would not wave at the trains, but we would watch them for what seemed like hours. Sometimes we would walk north and see other trains going to the Pennsylvania coal country. We never rode on a train that I can remember, nor did we throw them bread, but we were their number one fans.

         We moved out of the country. In Venezuela there were no trains. The first day back in the United States, in a Miami no one would recognize today, I could see trains from the hotel window. The vision excited me. We stayed in a hotel because we missed our flight to the north. The next day Dad took brother, sister and I to the station and we boarded a train.

         His version of the trip had me spending all my time looking out the window. He claimed I did not eat my dinner, but I do remember the breakfast pancakes and the Florida East Coast, Atlantic Coast Line and Richmond, Fredricksburg and Potomac railroads and the rain that greeted us in Virginia and followed us home. I have a hazy memory of a steam locomotive pulling the train into Washington, but this may be sheer romanticism.

         My sister took my place as his walking companion in the suburb where we moved. There were no trains nearby and our trip had slaked my thirst. My sister's thing, or rather Dad's new thing, was parades. I am sure he would have told anyone asking about her in some later year that 'all Janet wanted was to watch a parade'.

         The dog grew tired of the ducks, sought other smells and after a good walk returned to her back seat of the car. She put on her goggles and readied herself to guide me home through the Berkshires. As we left, she barked at the woman we had met who was now walking to her car, precious memories having been recovered for a scrapbook we are all making.

Valatie NY, June 4, 2001