Another Town, Another Trespassing Violation.

I left Bubbi’s house then it was on to the Adirondacks, or so I thought. I meandered through Mexico, past Maple View and onto Rt. 3 North. I made my way in and out of the tiny hamlets determined to make it to the forest’s edge by dark. However, I knew I had a lot of writing to catch up on (since this trip is happening in real time and so is my writing, it’s usually a few days off. I still hadn’t written the segment about Bob Fleming and the Brand, or any of the stuff about Mikey and Bub when I was headed into Watertown), so I stopped there and picked a restaurant on the main street of town, just like I had the day before. Well. What happened next was extraordinary. Maybe everyone is right. Maybe the Lord does work in mysterious ways. I, for one, don’t claim to know. But every so often, I suspect He or She does.

I struggled into the tiny foyer of The Crystal Restaurant in Watertown, noticing the old, old lettering in the window that said "All Legal Beverages". Upon entering, I understood - the place has probably changed only slightly since the turn of the 20th Century, and I’m not exaggerating. It was all deep cherry (albeit dusky) wood and clouded mirrors, with low hanging light fixtures and globe lamps arching off the booths on either side of the room, illuminating the tiny black and white tiles on the floor. The whole place was long and narrow, just like a railroad apartment I had years back in Brooklyn that was built around the same time. The waitresses were throw-backs themselves, except this time to a more recent by-gone era, the 1980's, complete with banana clips, perms, big bangs, and big smiles. I must have been quite a sight, since everyone turned to look at this funny girl with a little jean jacket and a big black case. Except for one large woman sitting at a table in the middle of the room. She was already facing the door, as though she had been waiting for someone. Someone like me.

Before I could even set my case down on a booth close to the door, she beckoned me. "You can come on and sit over here." I froze, so she repeated herself. I must have looked at her strangely because she laughed through her gums as I made eye contact. She waved her arms toward herself, repeating, "Come aaan! Come aaan!" I did as I was told, partly out of not wanting to be rude and partly because I was drawn to this woman, like her soft blue eyes were magnets behind those big glasses.

Her eyes were constantly wide, as though in a constant state of surprise. She was seated opposite a kindly older man with a white buzz cut and his own blue, wide, kind eyes behind his glasses. His folded hands rested on his belly and his mouth in a smile as he sat back and watched the exchange between this woman and I. The apprehensive yet quiet thought in my head was, "Well, meeting new people is what I’m out here for, not blogging." So I did as I was told, put my laptop on a chair at another table, and sat down in between these two strangers.

The conversation seemed to skip like a stone on water. They introduced themselves as Rose and Albert, and said they were from just out of Watertown but came often for doctor’s appointments and errands. Then they inundated me with questions about the laptop, like "What is that big, ol’ thing?" and "So you’re just out going around and stuff?" Then they asked me if I’d ever been to the Beacon of Light Church, because they like everyone and anyone and even let gays come. Then they asked me if I’d ever been to see that lesbian singer up the hill, and gave me a full synopsis of her show, how she sang like a man and embarrassed people on their birthdays. I was thoroughly enjoying just sitting there and soaking them up, so I ordered a coffee and settled in for the next change of subject, which happened to be Rose’s knife collection, followed by Albert’s diabetes and where good hiking spots are in the Adirondacks. After just a few minutes, they brought up the subject of church again and said I was welcome to join them for Weekday Service at seven o’clock. While my mind protested and my immediate thoughts lingered on all the time I had "wasted" spending an extra night in Oswego, my heart told me to stay. It was both odd and unexpected, but I had a feeling it would end up being a crucially interesting part of my trip.
I asked them where the church was and Albert actually got up and beckoned me to follow. It turns out it is literally next door to the restaurant, a simple storefront with a handwritten sign on posterboard, like a child’s school project, giving the name and the mission statement of the church. It didn’t seem to egomaniacal or self-assuming, so I found myself really looking forward to seven o’clock.

I was so happy to make these friends because Rose and Albert were definitely the kind of people that narrow-minded individuals would write off as "weirdos". Rose is missing her top four teeth and her thinning brown hair was messy. Offhand I can’t think of anything that would separate Albert as strange except for his size, which isn’t very evident until he stands up, but together they make quite a left-of-center pair. They totally found me, picked me out of the crowd, however small, and I was grateful.

But if I was going to stay yet another night in upstate New York, pre-Adirondacks, I was going to have to get some work done, so after Albert and I returned to the table I excused myself to go write. They promised to meet me outside of the Crystal at 6:50 and we parted ways for the afternoon. Finding a place to get work done in the Crystal was harder than I expected, as all of the outlets were old-fashioned two-prong ones. My Dell, my baby, works off of a three-prong cord and I haven’t remembered to pick up a two-prong adapter yet so I worked off the battery despite my better judgement. I ordered some food from the 80's waitresses, who were so, so nice, and wound up with a cup of minestrone I couldn’t stomach (forgive me, Crystal employees, but I just didn’t like the food at all) and a king’s ransom in odd stares from the locals, none of whom could figure out this "city girl with her big, ol’ fancy computer" parked in the farthest booth (I actually heard an old man complain about me to the waitress at one point).

It was odd simply because it was the first time all week I’d gotten negative remarks or reactions from people, either to my presence or my choice of activities. One girl who looked to be my age, in with her grandfather, actually felt the need to get her cell phone out and start playing games while staring me down from the other side of the room, I guess just to prove that I wasn’t the only one who had manipulatable electronic appliances. In the last couple of days I’ve been seriously thinking back and I don’t think I was at all rude or snobby to anyone, certainly not acting like I was better than them. I realize I may never know what prompted them to be so mean. So I just try not to let it bother me.

Well, two hours later I was still camped out in the same booth, having picked at a salad that consisted of a few chunks of iceberg lettuce, two cherry tomatoes, an onion string, and three pickled sweet pepper strips and the crackers that came with my terrible soup. Then my battery died, so I packed up and asked the waitress who had just started her shift, who was younger and more modern and much ruder than my other totally 80's woman, where I could find a three-prong outlet and someone who would let me use it. She directed me to the "Computer Emergency Room Repair Shop".

So I booked out of the Crystal, not a moment too soon since I felt so unwelcome there without Rose and Albert, and headed for the ER across the street. It was a tiny little place and most of the room was taken up by the casual, ponytailed man inside. He looked to be about in his forties, with graying hair and long, thick eyelashes that made would make any girl jealous. He was a fast talker, very sweet, and let me charge up my machine on his powerstrip. The sign on the door said the shop closed at 5, and it was about ten of 4, so he told me to go walk around for an hour and then pick it up. I was so glad to find him.

I tooled around downtown Watertown, which was pretty cool. I picked up a new guitar pick at the music shop, chatted up the comic book store owner who didn’t have "American Splendor" but specialized in superhero action figures, found a Lyndon LaRouche pamphlet jammed in the flier holder at the bike shop and called Max to laugh about it, and perused the secondhand clothing store while I listened to the forty-something female owners complain about how no men will have them. I was feeling ballsy after getting so acquainted with the area so I offered my unsolicited advice. "You’re really pretty" I said to the woman behind the counter, whose age showed more from the thick layer of makeup meant to hide it. "If a guy can’t admire you for who you are, he’s not really worth it." She looked at me like I was crazy.

"I’m serious" I continued. "You look really good for your age."
"Sweetie, look at these wrinkles. Men don’t want to screw anyone who reminds them of their mother" she said.
I was losing this battle. Through my sometimes useless sense of youth and optimism I always tend to make people see things my way, the happy way, but it doesn’t always work. I relented with a quick shake of my head and a forced smirk, and went back to the computer shop. I thought about trying to play cupid with the comic book shop guy and the secondhand store lady but decided against it since they probably knew each other anyway.

It was about 4:30 when I got back to the shop, and when I walked in the big nice guy, Mike, motioned to his assistant (I guess it’s just the two of them) and said, "We were just talking about you!" Then he told me story upon story of when he moved out of Watertown and went to Arizona. He took a little camper with a workbench in the back and a generator and would drive around the southwest fixing people’s computers. We agreed that too few people were willing to break out of their comfort zone and see what belonged to them as Americans and swapped stories of nights spent on the road. He asked me where I was sleeping that night and I told him I’d probably pull my car into a fire hall parking lot and sleep there after church, since it would be too dark and late to try and find a campsite by then. Then the conversation switched to mobile electronics and that was that.

Brian called at one point and I told him my plans for the evening. "Don’t go!" he joked. "It’s a cult! They’re gonna brainwash you!"
"It is not a cult!" I replied.
"Yes it is."
"Whatever, it is not" I retorted, like a child on a playground. I changed the subject in the way I’ve learned to do with him, by putting a girlish tone in my voice and sighing, "I miss you."
A few minutes later, as we were saying our goodbyes, he said, "I miss you, baby. If you’re not brainwashed when you get out of cult class, call me, okay?"
I smiled and said in a robot voice, "Okay, I will."

I opened the laptop at one point and started typing. And Mike never told me to stop, so I just kept on working, and working and working, until I looked at my phone and it was 5:40. I whipped around in my seat to look at him and asked, "Why haven’t you kicked me out yet?"
"I always work late. I’m here and you’re not bothering anybody. You can stay as long as you want" was his answer. So I did.

I wrote like a mad woman and then posted a bunch of pictures. The sense of accomplishment was amazing. At one point Mike said, "You know, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything, and I’m not a crazy killer, but it’s gonna be damn cold outside tonight and you’re welcome to stay at my place in Black River, it’s just a few miles away. I’ve got a sofabed that’s never been used. And I sleep upstairs so you won’t have to worry about me. Don’t feel obligated, I’m just saying, you know? It’s just gotta be better than sleeping in your car." I thanked him and said I would think about it. I took down his cellphone number and told him I’d call him when I got out of church. I was a little wary, not only because he seemed nice enough, but because he seemed nice enough and I’m a terrible judge of character sometimes and I think the craziest, evilest people are great when I first meet them (see Lynch, Sean).

By that point it was seven and I needed to get my ass to church, as Outkast says. I crossed the street and was a little late so I didn’t even bother throwing the laptop in the car, I just carried it in with me. They were just about to start and when I came through the front door this is what I saw beyond the tiny foyer: a long, narrow room just like the Crystal but narrower, three rows of folding chairs along the left side facing the right, an overhead projector, like we used in middle school, in the center of the last row facing a screen on the opposite side, and a small table with a candle and two vases of flowers along the righthand wall. Rose and Albert were sitting in the first row of chairs, in between another older couple and a younger kid whose brown eyes swam behind glasses and a baseball cap who looked to be about 17. A few young children were seated in the second row, two little tow-headed girls and a boy who was probably 11. A man stood in front of the rows; he was Pastor Dave and he had long, brown wavy hair and a plain brown sweater on, with blue jeans. His wife, Maryanne, was seated at a desk further back from the tiny altar on the right side of the room, also casual in her grey t-shirt and grey leggings.
They all turned to look at me and smile as I lugged my stuff in and grabbed the seat the young man was in as he moved over. Rose announced, "This is the girl I was telling you about that we met at the Crystal and we made her sit with us and then we told her to come over and now she’s here that’s her!" I giggled in that way that people do to make themselves look comfortable when they’re not. I said hello and settled into my seat, stowing the laptop case behind my knees and my purse on my lap, trying to take up the least amount of room possible. I was still nervous and a little unsure of myself, not having been in a church, storefront or otherwise, in years.
I looked around the room as we waited for some other worshippers to come in. There were posters mounted on the wall, all with scripture verses and colorful artwork depicting happy people. Two microphones and two small amplifiers were set up between Maryanne’s desk and the altar. At first I thought it was silly to have mics and amps in a room so small, but they did add to the acoustics during the singing. One poster hung directly behind the microphone set up next to the table; it was a sepia picture of a sculpture of a man made of glass and bronze. The man stood on a jagged bronze mount and was looking skyward, and he was shrugging off his bronze skin, revealing the radiant glass self beneath. His head, arms, and torso all shone brightly. Beneath the picture were the words "Born Again", with a verse of scripture underneath.

Everyone seemed very relaxed and happy to be there, so I tried to act the same. To be honest, I was shit-scared. I was scared that I would like church. And become one of those crazies that Max and I talk about while we roll our eyes, the ones that talk about Jesus and pass out pamphlets and demonstrate for Terri Schiavo. But I kept quiet and concentrated on having a good time at church for once - I mean, if there were ever a church to have a good time at, it was this one.

Another middle-aged couple came and after everyone welcomed them like old friends Pastor Dave got down to business. He said the focus of the evening was "redemption for the media" and started by reading an article from a Christian magazine about praying for the media to stop capitalizing on destroying the innocence of children. His short sermon was about the same. Some of it I agreed with wholeheartedly, some of it I didn’t necessarily agree with but understood from a born-again context. Then we bowed our heads to pray for Hollywood, that the stars wouldn’t become too engrossed in their fame to lose sight of their values and the paparazzi would learn to lay off and the impressionable kids would have the guidance to see past the sex and violence and the groupies and fans would learn to put as much stock into their own lives as they do their objects of worship. I thought that was pretty cool.

We sang some songs and Pastor Dave played guitar along with another man, while Steve, the young kid with the glasses, who turned out to be 22 and not 17, used the overhead projector to shine the lyrics on the screen. I didn’t know any of the songs but they were simple enough that I could pick up the melody by the end. Rose kept turning her head to smile at me, which made me blush, and once when I looked behind me I caught Steve looking at me too, from beside the overhead. I smiled shyly through the middle of a lyric and so did he. By the time we got to the praying portion, I was beginning to feel right at home.

I actually found myself wanting to speak during the open prayer session, but I wasn’t sure what about. Well, I really wanted them to pray for me. I wanted them to pray for me to be safe and warm and successful. And I also wanted them to pray for me that I wouldn’t be so scared of Christians.

The service continued for three hours, I’m not even kidding, but I’m not going to go into detail on what happened during or after the prayer session. It’s a combination of the fact that I don’t feel comfortable posting it online, for fear of what people would say and because I’m not even sure how to start wording it, and also because it was somewhat personal and private. Let’s just say it was a great experience for me and there was not a dry eye in the house, and if you really want to know what happened you can ask me yourself. No, my soul was "saved", and I wasn’t "born again", I still maintain all the ideals and ideas I had prior to last Wednesday, but I will say this: I am not as quick to write off people who consider themselves Christians anymore. That is all.

After the service, I stayed and talked with Maryanne, Dave, and Steve for a whole extra hour! Time really flew, and when I mentioned that, laughing, Steve joked, "See! And you thought Christians didn’t have any fun!" The three of them were incredibly nice people, but again, their niceness was so vast and our connection so interesting that I’m almost afraid to talk about it here. Details are going to have to wait until I can delve into them, probably in the finished manuscript of the book.

They walked me outside and all hugged me goodbye, telling me that they would be praying for me. I appreciated that immensely. They laughed when I called after them, "Thanks for not kicking me out of your church when you heard about my pagan background!"

By then it was 11 o’clock. Brian had left a message at 9, saying, "I knew you were going to join that cult! Call me back if your brain isn’t mush." I called him from the car on the way to Mike’s house, telling him, "I can’t believe I was just at church for four hours!" He laughed.
"Did you find God?" he asked, snarkily. I was seriously offended, almost on the verge of tears suddenly, that he would make fun of it.
"Don’t make fun of me! I had a good time and I learned a lot, that’s not very nice to just make fun of me like that!"

His tone suddenly changed. I was surprised when he said, softly and seriously, "I’m not making fun of you, sweetheart. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. Shoot, if I didn’t think I was a hypocrite and had no right to go there after all the jackass stuff my friends and I have pulled, I’d be there every Sunday. I’m sorry, baby. I’m not making fun of you, I promise." I paused.
"Brian?" I squeaked. "Would you like to go to church with me when I come home?"
"Of course I would, honey."
"I’d really like that," I said.
"Me too."

I stayed on the phone with him all the way to almost-Mike’s house, getting lost trying to find Mike’s house, and stopping to get directions to Mike’s house. That little exchange made me feel closer to him than ever. I finally let him go, after he acted like the protective boyfriend and made me give him Mike’s phone number, telling me that "this guy better not chop you up into little pieces, ‘cuz I’ll track him down and do the same to him." As macabre as it sounded, it made me happy to hear that, even though the chances of it actually happening were so slight. I said goodbye to Brian and called Mike to get oriented, and when I finally got to his place he was outside waiting for me.

"You can cook if you want to, I have some ground beef and stuff." He was a fast talker, a doer in every sense. His apartment was modestly furnished but nice. I declined the cooking offer, even though I was starving, thinking that if I waited to eat I wouldn’t be as hungry in the morning. Then we set up the sofabed together and he said goodnight, saying again, "I just didn’t feel right about you sleeping in your car, it’s way too cold out tonight."
I joked with him, saying, "You must be a daddy."
He hadn’t mentioned any family until that point and when he did, all he said, quickly, was, "Nope. Never been married. No wife, no life, that’s why I have some much time to work. Well, goodnight."
Well, I felt like an ass.

I worked on the laptop until I passed out. Like an girl in a strange guy’s house, I slept with my pepper spray close to my side, although looking back it seems funny because Mike was such a gentleman. He let me take a shower, gave me a fresh towel, and then sent me on my merry way. He didn’t try anything skeevy, he didn’t even let me hug him goodbye, although I would have if he hadn’t climbed in his truck so fast. He didn’t give me a business card or say "keep in touch". Nothing. But he was a saint. And as I pulled out of his neighborhood I thanked Whoever that I found him.

I pulled out onto Rt. 3 again, the same road I had taken to get to Watertown. Black River is between Watertown and the Adirondacks, but I back tracked to see some stuff I hadn’t gotten a chance to check out the night before. The first place I stopped was Black River Falls, a man-made but stunning waterfall that generates power for a lot of the towns residents. The roar of the water was astounding as I called Brian to let him know I wasn’t in pieces.

Then I moved on to another place, a place I was dying to see since I had made out the fading sign in the darkness the night before, the Black River Drive-In. (I have an obsession with abandoned places.) The whole place was in worse shape than Deer Lake, I noticed as I pulled past the "Private Property" sign. There was no ticket booth, and although the speaker poles were more in tact, the screen was deteriorating and had large holes in it. The snack shop, which I determined to explore this time since I was too chicken last time, had been looted and set on fire, presumably by the same kids (or adults?) who had spray-painted the outside walls with obscenities and smiley faces with joints in their mouths. One whole wall of the snack shop was torn off and inside there was trash and rotting boards. The place looked as though it had survived rather well during the fire since most of the building was made of concrete block. I poked in and out of the different rooms, guessing that the one with the electric fixtures and discolored patches of tile had been the kitchen and the one with the broken armchair and rusty file cabinet had been an office. An animal or large bird had built a big nest in the top drawer of the file cabinet. Part of me wanted to move to Black River and restore this forgotten place, part of me knew that would never happen.

Part of me half-expected to find a dead body behind a door or around a corner but I looked anyway. It was like stepping into a horror movie, albeit in the middle of the day. It made me sad to know that this place had once been the site of such happiness, and now it was nothing but shattered memories and splintered wood.

I wandered around a bit more, careful not to disturb any of the dirty, overturned toilets or broken boards. Then I got back in my car and drove on, to the Adirondacks, to another adventure, to what I didn’t know.