Hell Gate

A railroad trestle runs through the heart of my hometown, Astoria, Queens. It connects with the East River Arch Bridge, which is popularly known as the Hell Gate Bridge.

While I am busy naming things, let’s linger for a moment on the name Astoria. It was chosen by community leaders during the early 1800s to win a $2,000 investment from millionaire fur trader, real estate investor and all-around rich guy John Jacob Astor. While Mr. Astor would eventually be worth a whopping $20 million, he would invest only a disappointing $500 in what would someday become my hometown. Although Mr. Astor came up $1,500 short, his friends exerted influence to make the name stick.

It should go without saying even rich guys need friends.

At the same time, the enterprising Mr. Astor had commissioned two teams of men — one by land and the other by sea — to establish a settlement on the Pacific Coast that would facilitate fur trade linking New York, London and China.

Mr. Astor had been encouraged in his efforts to establish a Pacific Coast settlement by United States President Thomas Jefferson.

Our third president’s wife, Martha, had already been dead for more than two decades. So, she was out of the picture. It is up for debate whether or not he discussed his and Mr. Astor’s back and forth with his slave and concubine Sally Hemings, while the two lay together during the occasional chilly, rain-soaked winter’s day when the President was prevented from pursuing his outdoor activities.

This leads us to wonder if he treated her with the regard she was due, and they companionably shared a bottle of sherry while lying there. Did crumbs fall on the bed linen while they ate crackers and soft, blue veined cheese? Did they absentmindedly pick from a bowl of peanuts grown in a garden up the hill? Did their hours together stretch into the evening? Would any mention be made of Martha, who in addition to having been the President’s wife had been Sally’s half sister.

Add these to the groaning list of queries waiting to be answered by hard working presidential historians.

Mr. Astor’s land mission had also been tasked with the construction of a string of fur trading posts across the North American continent, as fur trading was the foundation of Mr. Astor’s fortune. It stands to reason Mr. Astor was more than a little preoccupied by these herculean efforts that stretched around the globe, with little time left over for the modest settlement located across the river from New York City.

Given all he had going on, I say we give him a pass.

Let it be noted as European fashion preferences shifted from fur, the canny Mr. Astor nimbly shifted from the fur trade to New York City real estate. Don’t fall in love with an asset, one can imagine him advising his children as he stared out a parlor window at the snow beginning to collect on the path leading to his front door while absentmindedly fingering the top button on his vest.

It is unlikely he harbored any hope his first born son and namesake would heed this or any advice. Junior is remembered by history as having been sickly and mentally unstable. Senior’s shoes may have simply been too big to fill, overwhelming Junior who decided to take a pass. Since enough money was left to care for him until his death in 1869, it wasn’t as if his only other option was to stand on the street corner selling pencils.

Nearly a half century later great-grandson John Jacob Astor IV would sink with the RMS Titanic following its collision with an iceberg. Since the Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable, it must have been quite a surprise as the staterooms and ballrooms filled with salt water. His net worth approached $87 million, demonstrating at least when it came to money he had proven himself to be a worthy if unlucky heir.

While perhaps we are getting too far afield, let me add before ending our visit with the storied Astors this demonstrates even rich guys can’t hope to plan for all contingencies. However, it is encouraging to know IV has lessons to teach more than a century after his watery death. Any one of us would be lucky to remain productive even before our visit to Planet Earth has come to its conclusion, never mind more than a century after.

The nickname Hell Gate was earned because the water running beneath the steel arch of the bridge is tortured by whirlpools. It was a widely held belief among neighborhood boys that these whirlpools had pulled treasure laden ships and their crews to mournful ends.

This belief allowed us — me, at least — to imagine shipwrecked treasure waited just offshore for intrepid souls who were brave and enterprising enough to dive for it.

Who doesn’t dream of exiting his hometown in high style? This is especially true when your hometown is crowded with run-of-the-mill, two-family, semi-detached brick housing. It was a comfort to believe a pickax, rope, boat and bold initiative were the only things standing between me and wealth beyond measure. This was before state sponsored lotteries offered their own handy solution to this tricky bit of financial sleight of hand, so you had to be resourceful.

In addition to the promise of shipwrecked treasure, there was this footnote fueling the furnace in this boy’s overheated imagination — US intelligence analysts uncovered German WW II bombing maps targeting the Hell Gate Bridge. This, of course, only increased my intrigue while listening to mighty freight trains straining across the arched bridge bound for the windswept Great Plains and onto the vast Pacific Ocean. Did I imagine boxcars packed tight with hobos, outlaws and dreamers would pass herds of dumbstruck bison and vengeful Lakota ghosts as they traveled across this great land of ours? Do you even have to ask?

Here is the thing about imagination: There is absolutely no sense in limiting yourself to plausible reality. War, hunger, disease, death, savagery, butchery, carnage, blackmail, corruption, betrayal, sadness, heartbreak and their intrusive, bothersome, loathesome kin are all too real. Who wouldn’t agree that crowded room is already full to bursting with hideous faces.

Because even at a young age I understood there need be no boundary to imagination, I added the possibility the engineer pushing the locomotive beyond its limit might be a barely-clothed, long-limbed, wild-eyed, red-lipped, auburn-haired, sun-tanned, poorly-behaved, hot-tempered, Jewish-Irish-Norwegian-Native American beauty who bit down hard on a cheroot while shouting out dares to the churning water below.

This is why I offer the following as a possible explanation why older folk fall asleep while watching television at night: wild imagination crowded out sleep when they were young.

Beneath the bridge stretched a two-lane road that was a thoroughfare during the day and a Lover’s Lane during the evening. Following sunset, mischievous Hermes would hover at one end and lovesick Eros at the other. These two ancient gods would wave their hands in unison as their magic spells collided and rained down below.

This road ran at the bottom of Astoria Park where it met the East River, which, of course, is not really a river. As anyone with a keen eye for detail would realize, it is a tidal strait.

Wise guys might playfully connect the metaphorical dots and say just as the East River is not really a river, the urgent giving and getting, wishing and hoping, thinking and praying, planning and dreaming that was going on behind the fogged windows of parked Firebirds, Thunderbirds, Mustangs and Stingrays was not really love. For the most part, I suppose these puckish wise guys would be correct.

Unkind moralists might point out just like tidal navigators who had unsuccessfully threaded their way through the treacherous straits on their way to watery graves, ill-prepared young couples would be sucked into whirlpools of calamitous consequences as they held tight to each other. It is as if they realized the road stretching ahead would be perilous, and at least during these few sublime moments they would confront the peril while lassoed together as one.

These moralizing scolds, too, I suppose would be right. There were bound to be fraught days and nights ahead for shipwrecked heroes and heroines who hadn’t planned ahead by first stopping at the corner drug store. One can imagine them standing before a court of hand-wringing parents, with their heads hung in shame and their eyes averted to avoid their parents’ anguished, scolding disapproval.

What became of the wrecked treasure laden ships?

It is with utmost regret I report the ships and their treasure would remain buried beneath the dark, churning surf. During a lifetime in which the annals of history have recorded my seemingly pathological inability to achieve great and noteworthy things, I proved myself to be unequal to the challenge of recovering the lost treasure.

Let’s forego windy excuses and state the case plainly: I couldn’t swim.

There is another possibility too painful to consider for more than even a passing moment. The treasure may have been a legend with absolutely no basis in reality.

Whatever the reason, when it came time for my family to join hands and courageously exit my childhood home for what turned out to be a run-of-the-mill split level ranch house on the south shore of Long Island, we didn’t do so in grand style. Instead, ours would be a quiet exit remarked upon only by a few elderly neighbors who happened to be outside sweeping their front stoops or snapping the ends off string beans freshly picked from their gardens.