Tuesdays Downtown (another embarrassingly backdated post)

Twice a month, I vary my work schedule: instead of making the trek to NJ as usual, I head to the Seamen's Church headquarters in downtown Manhattan. The purpose of this change in location is twofold: for one, it allows me to work with people in other departments and get a broader sense for what all SCI does. Two visits ago, I helped out in the 'Christmas at Sea' office, boxing up hundreds of hand-knit scarves and hats to be shipped to distribution sites around the country. Last time I compiled a database of every ship that has been hijacked by pirates in the last 18 months for the Center for Seafarers' Rights. But more importantly, my visits to Manhattan let me hang out with some of my favorite people in this city: on the first and third Tuesdays of every month, SCI hosts a luncheon for merchant marine vets. After my first encounter with these men, I begged my supervisor in Newark to let me make this ministry a part of my schedule. 

I never would have thought that I'd so enjoy spending my afternoons shooting the breeze with a room full of crotchety old men. But these are old men who've traveled the world, who have veritable treasure troves of stories from life at sea (and often from WWII as well), and many of whom still have a lively sense of adventure. One of my favorite maritime vets is Gabe, a hunchbacked man in his 70s who speaks an inseparable mix of English, French, Spanish, and Italian, as well as words and phrases from any other language he's picked up along the way. When he's not off traveling the globe - which he still does with astonishing frequency - he jumps from language to language, telling me about orphans in Mexico and pirates in the Indian Ocean, while I struggle to keep up. Needless to say, Gabe and I have become fast friends. 

We eat, we drink coffee, we fold bulletins. Sometimes we sing patriotic karaoke, which is always interesting. But mostly, we just talk. They're delighted to have a new audience for their stories, and there's no shortage of reminiscence about the glory days of the maritime world - before containerization became the new shipping norm, back when seafarers actually spent appreciable time in ports all around the world. 

While sitting around a table during my latest visit with the maritime vets, I had a particularly shocking conversation with a former navy commander and native New Yorker, who'd been in retirement for some time. "And where are you originally from, young lady?" he inquired. "From Wisconsin," I replied. His initial response was a blank, somewhat confused expression, then:

"Wisconsin...is that in France?"

At which point I died a little. 

Thank you, Commander Soto, for lending further support to my deeply held conviction that Americans need to learn their geography (especially in their own damn country), and that most New Yorkers think that the Midwest might as well be on Mars. Or in France.