My Life in the Landfill

Give the last week of horror we are living, I am hesitant to continue with my plans this week to begin telling my story about life in the landfill. Although Bridgeport is the City of my birth, Boston is my muse and my love. I somehow feel telling this story is like writing Mommy Dearest while watching an Affair to Remember. Yes Bridgeport is my Joan Crawford and Boston is my Terry Mackay. One gave me life but left me scarred, while the other showed me what true love could be only to now learn she is wounded and will never walk again. But who am I kidding-  Boston's wounds will no more handicap the Spirit of America than the British did in 1776. The world I love began on the waterfront of Boston and I hope the telling of this story pays that glorious old girl the tribute she is so richly owed. Damn the terrorists, full speed ahead.

So now I give you, My Life in the Landfill- 6 years living on the Nation's most disgusting waterfront.

Chapter 3

It was not a foregone conclusion that CCB would start in Bridgeport. My first aims were set on the town of my youth. When a "friend" who served on the Stratford Town Council learned of my thoughts to create a community boating program, she thought it made perfect sense to bring it to Stratford. After all, Bridgeport and Stratford are next door to each other, formerly of one family and it truly is one Sound.  Unfortunately, corruption is like water and even the tightest ship has a bilge pump for a reason. Good ideas in a corrupt world are soured with corruption despite the soundness of their reasoning. And when my "friend" tasted power, that corruption killed the idea of community boating in Stratford.

But that is how I found the landfill. It was late June 2008 and kids were getting out of school in a week. I had been battling with Stratford since March trying to get permission to park a half dozen sailing dinghies on Long Beach or any other place I could get permission in Stratford. The politicians of the town however quickly kicked that idea into fair play as a football for personal gain and on June 25th, 2008, I found myself with 8 Hunter 140's I couldn't afford and legal threats of eviction from the Reverend of the church where I grew up if I did not move the boats out of the church parking lot immediately. When an agent of God is giving you the heave ho, you have to realize its time to go.

Having absolutely no clue where to move the newly acquired fleet of vessels, and running out of time, I recalled a meeting I had earlier in 2007. At some point I had a thought to reopen Pleasure Beach. To that aim the Mayor, the Parks Director and the Harbor Master and I all piled into a police boat to head to the "Jewel of the Eastern Seaboard" in order to eye the place as a home to community boating.

It wasn't such a far fetched idea either, Pleasure Beach was home to a YMCA sailing program in the 1960's and 70's and hundreds of kids learned to sail, waterski and swim from the shores of Pleasure Beach over the years. Our mission was to see if we could reasonably restore the fishing pier to service as a community boating facility to do that once again.

 The three men, reminding me of the Hawaiin shirt wearing mobsters in the movie the "The Wanderers", listened to me intently as we boarded the the police boat to Pleasure Beach in 2007. "How can I say no" the Harbor Master snorted, " This is Mom, Apple Pie and the American way". It seemed like a no brainer. And when we returned that day to the mainland, I thought I had made three new friends and we were on our way to opening a community boating program in Bridgeport.

Back to the Hunters in Stratford.  The plans for Pleasure Beach quickly fell away when the Mayor of Bridgeport was discovered to be snorting cocaine on his desk in City Hall, the Harbor Master decided to cash in his swollen pension and skip town and the Parks Department came under the thumb of the new mayor, a green cowboy who was  going to bring Bridgeport back to it's glory but instead backed out of every promise he made to get elected and drive the City to the brink of failure. Such is Bridgeport.

But at 305 on a Friday afternoon,  when Stratford was coming down on me hardest, I called the Bridgeport Parks Department one more time. The Director, to my surprise remembered me and our conversation earlier the year before at Pleasure Beach. He explained that the new Mayor had pretty much killed our plans for Pleasure Beach  and that it wasn't going to happen. I explained to him my woes of Stratford finding myself with a fleet of boats and no way to access the water. And that is when I was introduced to the Landfill.

At 315 on a Friday afternoon, I rushed to Seaside Park to meet the Parks Director and discuss the possibility of moving our fleet to those beaches. With long manicured sidewalks over looking the Sound, ball fields teaming with life and open space that when compared with the choked streets of Bridgeport seemed like the Great Plains, the City of Miami and the City Atlantis all rolled into one. I hadn't been there since I was a child, but I fell in love immediately.

At 328PM on a Friday afternoon in late June, The Parks Director explained to me that if I could secure my fleet, I could park my boats and begin teaching sailing that Monday. After a year and half dancing the political dance of death, a ray of light opened up for CCB and within 10 Minutes, I had received permission and was making plans to move the fleet to Seaside Park's Landfill area just next to the Municipal Boat Ramp in Seaside Park. Constipation is often relieved with a sweet rush of relief- such is politics in Greater Bridgeport.

At 6AM Saturday, I found myself tiptoeing to my next door neighbors house to see if he was drinking coffee yet. He was the only man I knew would answer me at that hour and time was of the essence to move the boats out of the church parking lot. "Tom" I whispered "Are you awake?" A gravely voice yet to be lubricated with coffee grumbled back through the open window and the still curtains, "yeah". I asked him in my sweetest neighborly way if he was busy that day because I had just gotten the green light to build a community boating program. With a gruff clearing of the throat and a sniff, he said, "Sure Chris, what do you need?"

We piled in his truck, drove an hour and half south to Stratford to load 8 boats onto a trailer and move the entire fleet to Seaside Park. Each boat weighed a few hundred pounds and after one boat you had to check yourself for hernias. By Boat four I thought Tom not only was sporting a double hernia, but also was on the verge of a coronary episode. But in classic New England fashion, he muscled through and together we loaded all eight boats and were going to meet a few other volunteers at the Landfill to offload the two tons of sailing craft and begin planning for Monday when the kids were supposed to show up.

And that was how it started. There was no ribbon cutting, no camera flashes and handshakes- just two overweight, outta shape guys humping a few thousands pounds of second hand boats past the Golden Rooster and down Main St to Mandanici's Mountain to begin teaching a bunch of inner city kids how to sail. When I put it that way I do see the humor in it all. Sailing from a landfill has a certain comic sense about it. But if I had know then, what I know now- that the economy would crash, the extent of pollution I had to deal with, the games people play to get a pay check and hold power - if I had known all of that was coming, would I have gone forward? Probably- because Im naive,  head strong and stupid and if it was easy, everyone would do it.