(Originally
published 8/21/11)
When my
father was a young boy growing up in the Morningside Heights section of
Manhattan, the family and some friends would often hop on the Number 1 train
during summer weekends for the short ride up to Inwood Hill Park. Upon their
arrival, they would hike through the area’s primordial woodlands—on Manhattan
Island to this day—to an off-the-beaten trail winding down to a tiny snatch of sandy
beach at the scenic confluence of the Harlem River Ship Canal and the Hudson
River.
On such
excursions, the older Italian men, including my grandfather, brought along their
homemade wines. They placed the bottles in an icy cold
freshwater spring, which trickled down through the nearby hills. Opened in
1936, the Henry Hudson Bridge loomed like a colossus—an engineering marvel—directly
above this Shangri-La. The Spuyten Duyvil railroad swing bridge operated below.
Provided
one did not venture out too far, the waters off this obscure snippet of
shoreline were shallow and free of the extremely dangerous currents farther out.
My father vividly remembered those days at the beach—wading into the
drink awash in, among other things, human excrement. Granted, this fun in
the sun could not have been the healthiest of recreational activities, but
it was the late 1930s and early 1940s, when raw sewage was poured into the
local waters. It was par for the course—the way things were.
Flash
forward thirty years and I recall being at water’s edge in New York Harbor. The
wafting breeze was a curious mix of sea salt and sewer, and unsightly flotsam
in the Hudson River was commonplace. The cleanliness of the waterway in those
days—in these parts—was a familiar punch line.
But a
funny thing happened over the last three decades. The river’s gotten
cleaner—dramatically so. There is even talk of a public beach on Manhattan’s
West Side. And not far to the north of the city, Hudson River beaches are open
for business. And as for swimming in poop in the future, I think it would be
wise to Just Say No. We have been there and done that—and there is no turning
back.
