Monte’s Garden

Miles G. Cohen
Nov 4 · 2 min read

Rays of sun glinted off of Monte Bernstein’s chrome blanket and reflected across his wrinkled brow. The eighty-three-year-old reclined in his lawn chair, unperturbed, as voices of children, musicians, and weed dealers carried throughout Washington Square Park.

For Monte, however, the only stimuli worth absorbing was the sun.

“I’m just tanning,” he said as he lifted the edges of the chrome blanket, angling it so the light could reach his face.

Monte lives around the corner but spends most of his time here within the park’s greenery.

“It’s a garden,” he said. “My garden.”

Above him towered an English Elm. Now leafless, the two o’clock sun passed through its branches with ease, illuminating the foil of his blanket.

In his high school days, Monte had several of these blankets, which he called “reflectors.” During his afternoon escapades to Brighton Beach, vendors could be seen selling them all along the crescent shore.

“Real reflectors,” he said, squinting his eyes in the Washington Square sun.

Back then, with his newest reflector in tow, he would set up his lawn chair in any number of sunny spots along the water. While his friends swam, Monte tanned.

“I used to go every day, winter and summer,” he said, “as long as the sun shined.”

Then one year, at Abraham Lincoln High, Monte found another calling.

“We had a teacher, Leon Friend, who taught us poor Brooklyn kids everything about advertising,” he said.

Like many of his inner-city peers, Friend spring boarded Monte into a flourishing career at a “Mad-Men” type advertising boutique.

He passed those nine-to-five days in a dimly lit cubicle. The long afternoons that he used to spend at Brighton Beach were reduced to an hour lunch break by the East River. Still, the Coney Island kid managed to take out his reflector every sunny day of the week.

After 35 years of drawing in the studio, computers had replaced pen and paper. Monte knew then it was time to go.

“[And] that was it,” he said, “it passed me by.”

Monte packed his bags and moved into a temporary apartment on Thompson Street, just a block from Washington Square.

Today, Monte still lives there and still lives without a computer, preferring instead to read the print edition of The New York Times or listen to his collection of live-recorded Cuban tapes.

Throughout his three decades in the neighborhood, he has watched his favorite restaurants and bars come and go, but the park has remained.

Nowadays, Monte’s trips to the beach are few and far between. Just as sparse are days like today, where the November sun shines.

Toting his reflector, he couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s a really nice day, isn’t it?”

storiesbymiles

Stories about people.

Miles G. Cohen

Written by

Student journalist at New York University writing about food, folks and fine arts.

storiesbymiles

Stories about people.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade