Dear Lafayette Club:
I've tried finding the yacht club online; thus far can not find it anywhere and therefore will post this here and hope the message finds its home:
To Lafayette Yacht Club, Specifically those three or four old salts waiting on the porch as our boat came into shore in 1979. Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the forms and file the paperwork. Thanks too to all those who approved the paperwork.
Dear Sirs and Madams,
Thank you for taking away my father’s captains license.
For seeing to it that he’d “never captain a boat on the eastern seaboard again”.
Thank you.
With More Gratitude Than I Could Ever Express To You,
Maren Alford
PS. The above is really all that’s necessary- the rest is for me but anyone who stumbles across this who has the time, inclination and abilities - I really would like to thank anyone and everyone who made sure the above happened.
On th enight Sandy hit the Jersey coast I briefly searched another storm.I searched hurricane David just to know, just to see because I didn’t know and like “Martha Recipes of Munchausen’s by Proxy” - David and that Snipe was much worse than I ever knew but I had just wanted to know how old I was.
I won’t be able to write this, not tonight. Tonight at just about this hour Hurricane Sandy, the name of our dog in New Jersey…-I digress.
Tonight October 29th, 2012 a hurricane named Sandy and possibly its wall of water are where I grew up, my childhood home, the geographical portion of my life with which I have the most fondness because of people like the ones who ran the Lafayette Yacht Club in 1979 when what was apparently a very large and well publicized storm approached the Jersey coast and therefore our parents put us in a small boat and sailed into it.
We never cried. I never cried.
I was 9. My sister was 7.
I never saw the paperwork so I don’t know for certain that what my mother said was true but it would explain why she continued carrying around her Lafayette Yacht Club Membership card. A card from a yacht club she hadn’t been a member of in nearly twenty years was in her personal effects, her wallet. Allegedly the jib or the main was the rope she used but I never saw any paperwork regarding his license being stripped only that we were never taken back to Lafayette Yacht Club after hurricane David. I only know that during my mother’s dual confession as accusations truth period she boasted this great secret she’d been keeping. In an one-ups-man-ship tone my mother said:
“Your father”, that was her husband’s official name.
“Your father had his captain’s license taken away,” she said giving this news update eleven years after the fact while apparently having forgotten that during the years following his captain’s license being stripped she had encouraged my sister and I to give him nautically themed gifts and we did. Which we did at encouragement continue the nautical theme not knowing we were delivering weapons at her spouse for her. She most certainly never considered how and what that boat had been to and for anyone but her. She and I never spoke of it. She my mother spoke it though but what it was for me or my sister, we weren’t allowed to talk like that, like we could and did feel.
The above sounds good - I believe it is well written (as most writers are delusional on that point) but the thing is its dishonest because the truth is I collapsed into tears tonight on the kitchen floor and the thought in my head : ‘We didn’t cry‘ and “he kept yelling at me, us“.
We never cried. Not in the boat. Not as we drove home. Never, never about this- only now as Hurricane Sandy hit’s the northeast United States do I cry about another storm altogether.
The thought that preceded the collapse and audible sobbing: He yelled at us the entire time, the whole time he was yelling at us.
Two little girls, nine and seven-years-old and he is/was screaming at us because HE put everyone in a boat, in a fifteen foot Snipe for a hurricane, for fun, for kicks -and we were the ones getting yelled at.
On that note, I would also like to thank the Freehold Girls Soccer League who too said: “No“. In their case it was “no- more ‘coaching’ from you as screaming like a complete lunatic at little girls is completely unacceptable”. Thanks too to all the parents who complained about the way he treated your kids because that meant I didn’t have to deal with him screaming at me nearly as much on the soccer field.
But back to the unabridged thank you to those from the Lafayette Yacht Club who made sure he never got to do anything like this again.
In my mind I had always classified “Hurricane David”, see I didn’t know until tonight, until that same him-ness that lives in me wanted to confirm “its not that bad” or it couldn’t have been. So for me I’d always told myself, figured it was the tail-end of a hurricane (which I’m sure it was). I always figured David had been a small hurricane like a category two or three that had been puttering out and was probably not so much a hurricane but a tropical storm by the time it hit New Jersey’s Barnegut Bay. That’s still probably true.
I didn’t know until tonight that 1979’s hurricane David had been a big storm. The kind of storm that would have had plenty of media attention. I didn’t know until now that both my parents would have known and heard about David because they were partakers of nightly and morning news - so its not something that they would have missed or been unaware of. I guess part of me still believed the lie, wanted to believe the lie but believing in truth I ran a quick search on my pay as you go phone? Mostly I had just wanted to know what age I was on that day.
I saw 1979 which would have meant I was nine or ten depending on the month.
I saw “Category 5” “many deaths” and switched my phone off as that was and is enough to know.
I remember that day so clearly, but in snippets and pieces. I don’t recall how I felt maybe because not feeling, being as numb as possible was the primary survival strategy? I felt dead inside most of the time and had and did learn to “act” as my parents did: act happy, act as if this all isn’t really happening.
But I do remember I was afraid before we ever got in the boat. There was no one at the yacht club. Not one boat was in the water. Not one. There had not been any cars, anywhere- hardly any car on the road as we drove there and now everything was deserted and he expected us to “get in that boat”.
Not a single person was anywhere, not one person and he expected us to get in that boat. The yacht club was entirely abandoned, the club house closed. There was this particular clinking sound of the wind against something metal, a particular sound and its in my head right now. That clink came off of the mast and usually there was the background noises of other people getting their boats in the water but there were no boats in the water. The water was nothing but white caps. The sky was grey, a weird grey.
The Earl/the captain was angry before he barked us in to the boat. Our mother had not wanted to go in the boat and I believe told us not to get in but he snarled and growled “get in the boat”, said it more than once and kept getting scarier and scarier looking and was going into his terrifying face when really, really bad things happened. So my sister and I got in the boat before this got worse. We were raised to do whatever he told us to do. You can’t edict like that to kids and then expect them to pick choose like our mother did at that moment. Fact is he’d hurt us, he’d hurt us later when she wasn’t looking or really hurt us in private, hurt us more. So we got in the boat.
I remember our mother looked betrayed, as if we’d betrayed her and let her down and I felt ashamed and badly about having just hurt her feelings. Her feelings on display and were that when we’d gotten in the boat, you could see on her face that to her it meant we’d chosen him over her, that we‘d betrayed her trust somehow. She ever acted as if we didn’t look afraid and I know we did, especially that day.
See she told us not to get in the boat but we were too afraid of him to not do what he said.
The mud, the surface around the yacht club was white, a strange chalky clay.
When I heard about this storm, Sandy, and heard people talk about media hype I just made a silent wish that they’d all look at it like fire drills in school: there may never be a fire but if there ever were one you’d want to be prepared? I hope they did.
As for me I could write it all and have before except for details like the submarine sandwiches in the cooler, the island we stopped at for lunch, the Christenson’s not being there and later having been shocked we were, had been- that anyone would put a boat in the water in such weather.
Apparently we were in the water for the worst of it -one of the gales, a huge burst of wind and water and the captain kept angrily screaming at my sister and I to bail, which we were - we were already bailing and he kept screaming at us to bail harder and faster as if we weren‘t as if it were our fault that the waves were too big and there was too much rain and as if if we would just do a better job at bailing we might not all die. We’d been bailing ever since we got back in the boat. “There’s too much water in the boat!” he bellowed at us as if this were something within our powers, or anyone’s, to correct- as if that were our job and this, this sinking boat was our responsibility as if my seven year-old sister and I had driven the car, un hooked the boat, lowered the boat into the churning water and he, the captain, just happened to be there.
I remember the water rising inside the boat as the waves kept breaking on and increasingly in the boat. The waves + the rain = the boat was sinking. Too much water in the boat and only then did the captain look at all worried. Up until that point he had been completely elated and quite obviously enjoying himself, that no none else was- up until that point that‘s what he’d been enjoying most about the day. That’s what he got off on.
Other than the water, there too of course was the wind and the clamps failing.
I remember thinking that we might die, drown. I remember feeling great sadness at that and noting the unfairness of dying at nine. Worse for my little sister because she was really little. I looked at my mother and felt badly for her; I was very reliable at feeling badly for her. Not until a little over thirty years later when Sandy came to the Jersey coast did I cry about that day on Barnegut Bay.
Martha, during her personal commission of truth period had said the angry faces, who at the time when I was nine years old just seemed like more people who were angry in my direction, standing on a porch waiting. Martha said of those that had left their homes gone out in the storm, stood and waited on the yacht club’s porch - waited stonily for who? To say what to who?
Nearly fifteen years later my mother announced triumphantly, of her ex-husband and those old salts waiting on the porch “they said ‘take your family out in a storm like this!”. In the world of my mother the accusation only pointed at “your father”/her husband because Martha was human Teflon. She was just following orders, being an obedient wife and the man making all these insane decisions was “their father”. Ever it was as if we gave birth to him and our mother was just dropped into the situation as if by a stork.
My father/ her husband/ the former captain never took his family into hurricane David on Barnegut Bay in a Snipe because he never had a family; he had hostages. Then of course there’s what he came up with following hurricane Hugo, came down specially for that but that was a full decade later.
The thank you I give may have started with residents of Barnegut Bay I may have never met and never will. Those storm watchers who from their homes saw a little boat on the water and started making calls, watching us from shore, noting we were still afloat but struggling.
So thank you to all of you and you are in my thoughts and prayers these days-those living along Barnegut Bay, those of The Lafayette Yacht Club, the state of New Jersey and the Coast Guard for surely being there “if“. But most especially my love to and for you who made sure my father could never put us in that boat or take us into a hurricane for his personal amusement ever again. Thank you.
I've tried finding the yacht club online; thus far can not find it anywhere and therefore will post this here and hope the message finds its home:
To Lafayette Yacht Club, Specifically those three or four old salts waiting on the porch as our boat came into shore in 1979. Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the forms and file the paperwork. Thanks too to all those who approved the paperwork.
Dear Sirs and Madams,
Thank you for taking away my father’s captains license.
For seeing to it that he’d “never captain a boat on the eastern seaboard again”.
Thank you.
With More Gratitude Than I Could Ever Express To You,
Maren Alford
PS. The above is really all that’s necessary- the rest is for me but anyone who stumbles across this who has the time, inclination and abilities - I really would like to thank anyone and everyone who made sure the above happened.
On th enight Sandy hit the Jersey coast I briefly searched another storm.I searched hurricane David just to know, just to see because I didn’t know and like “Martha Recipes of Munchausen’s by Proxy” - David and that Snipe was much worse than I ever knew but I had just wanted to know how old I was.
I won’t be able to write this, not tonight. Tonight at just about this hour Hurricane Sandy, the name of our dog in New Jersey…-I digress.
Tonight October 29th, 2012 a hurricane named Sandy and possibly its wall of water are where I grew up, my childhood home, the geographical portion of my life with which I have the most fondness because of people like the ones who ran the Lafayette Yacht Club in 1979 when what was apparently a very large and well publicized storm approached the Jersey coast and therefore our parents put us in a small boat and sailed into it.
We never cried. I never cried.
I was 9. My sister was 7.
I never saw the paperwork so I don’t know for certain that what my mother said was true but it would explain why she continued carrying around her Lafayette Yacht Club Membership card. A card from a yacht club she hadn’t been a member of in nearly twenty years was in her personal effects, her wallet. Allegedly the jib or the main was the rope she used but I never saw any paperwork regarding his license being stripped only that we were never taken back to Lafayette Yacht Club after hurricane David. I only know that during my mother’s dual confession as accusations truth period she boasted this great secret she’d been keeping. In an one-ups-man-ship tone my mother said:
“Your father”, that was her husband’s official name.
“Your father had his captain’s license taken away,” she said giving this news update eleven years after the fact while apparently having forgotten that during the years following his captain’s license being stripped she had encouraged my sister and I to give him nautically themed gifts and we did. Which we did at encouragement continue the nautical theme not knowing we were delivering weapons at her spouse for her. She most certainly never considered how and what that boat had been to and for anyone but her. She and I never spoke of it. She my mother spoke it though but what it was for me or my sister, we weren’t allowed to talk like that, like we could and did feel.
The above sounds good - I believe it is well written (as most writers are delusional on that point) but the thing is its dishonest because the truth is I collapsed into tears tonight on the kitchen floor and the thought in my head : ‘We didn’t cry‘ and “he kept yelling at me, us“.
We never cried. Not in the boat. Not as we drove home. Never, never about this- only now as Hurricane Sandy hit’s the northeast United States do I cry about another storm altogether.
The thought that preceded the collapse and audible sobbing: He yelled at us the entire time, the whole time he was yelling at us.
Two little girls, nine and seven-years-old and he is/was screaming at us because HE put everyone in a boat, in a fifteen foot Snipe for a hurricane, for fun, for kicks -and we were the ones getting yelled at.
On that note, I would also like to thank the Freehold Girls Soccer League who too said: “No“. In their case it was “no- more ‘coaching’ from you as screaming like a complete lunatic at little girls is completely unacceptable”. Thanks too to all the parents who complained about the way he treated your kids because that meant I didn’t have to deal with him screaming at me nearly as much on the soccer field.
But back to the unabridged thank you to those from the Lafayette Yacht Club who made sure he never got to do anything like this again.
In my mind I had always classified “Hurricane David”, see I didn’t know until tonight, until that same him-ness that lives in me wanted to confirm “its not that bad” or it couldn’t have been. So for me I’d always told myself, figured it was the tail-end of a hurricane (which I’m sure it was). I always figured David had been a small hurricane like a category two or three that had been puttering out and was probably not so much a hurricane but a tropical storm by the time it hit New Jersey’s Barnegut Bay. That’s still probably true.
I didn’t know until tonight that 1979’s hurricane David had been a big storm. The kind of storm that would have had plenty of media attention. I didn’t know until now that both my parents would have known and heard about David because they were partakers of nightly and morning news - so its not something that they would have missed or been unaware of. I guess part of me still believed the lie, wanted to believe the lie but believing in truth I ran a quick search on my pay as you go phone? Mostly I had just wanted to know what age I was on that day.
I saw 1979 which would have meant I was nine or ten depending on the month.
I saw “Category 5” “many deaths” and switched my phone off as that was and is enough to know.
I remember that day so clearly, but in snippets and pieces. I don’t recall how I felt maybe because not feeling, being as numb as possible was the primary survival strategy? I felt dead inside most of the time and had and did learn to “act” as my parents did: act happy, act as if this all isn’t really happening.
But I do remember I was afraid before we ever got in the boat. There was no one at the yacht club. Not one boat was in the water. Not one. There had not been any cars, anywhere- hardly any car on the road as we drove there and now everything was deserted and he expected us to “get in that boat”.
Not a single person was anywhere, not one person and he expected us to get in that boat. The yacht club was entirely abandoned, the club house closed. There was this particular clinking sound of the wind against something metal, a particular sound and its in my head right now. That clink came off of the mast and usually there was the background noises of other people getting their boats in the water but there were no boats in the water. The water was nothing but white caps. The sky was grey, a weird grey.
The Earl/the captain was angry before he barked us in to the boat. Our mother had not wanted to go in the boat and I believe told us not to get in but he snarled and growled “get in the boat”, said it more than once and kept getting scarier and scarier looking and was going into his terrifying face when really, really bad things happened. So my sister and I got in the boat before this got worse. We were raised to do whatever he told us to do. You can’t edict like that to kids and then expect them to pick choose like our mother did at that moment. Fact is he’d hurt us, he’d hurt us later when she wasn’t looking or really hurt us in private, hurt us more. So we got in the boat.
I remember our mother looked betrayed, as if we’d betrayed her and let her down and I felt ashamed and badly about having just hurt her feelings. Her feelings on display and were that when we’d gotten in the boat, you could see on her face that to her it meant we’d chosen him over her, that we‘d betrayed her trust somehow. She ever acted as if we didn’t look afraid and I know we did, especially that day.
See she told us not to get in the boat but we were too afraid of him to not do what he said.
The mud, the surface around the yacht club was white, a strange chalky clay.
When I heard about this storm, Sandy, and heard people talk about media hype I just made a silent wish that they’d all look at it like fire drills in school: there may never be a fire but if there ever were one you’d want to be prepared? I hope they did.
As for me I could write it all and have before except for details like the submarine sandwiches in the cooler, the island we stopped at for lunch, the Christenson’s not being there and later having been shocked we were, had been- that anyone would put a boat in the water in such weather.
Apparently we were in the water for the worst of it -one of the gales, a huge burst of wind and water and the captain kept angrily screaming at my sister and I to bail, which we were - we were already bailing and he kept screaming at us to bail harder and faster as if we weren‘t as if it were our fault that the waves were too big and there was too much rain and as if if we would just do a better job at bailing we might not all die. We’d been bailing ever since we got back in the boat. “There’s too much water in the boat!” he bellowed at us as if this were something within our powers, or anyone’s, to correct- as if that were our job and this, this sinking boat was our responsibility as if my seven year-old sister and I had driven the car, un hooked the boat, lowered the boat into the churning water and he, the captain, just happened to be there.
I remember the water rising inside the boat as the waves kept breaking on and increasingly in the boat. The waves + the rain = the boat was sinking. Too much water in the boat and only then did the captain look at all worried. Up until that point he had been completely elated and quite obviously enjoying himself, that no none else was- up until that point that‘s what he’d been enjoying most about the day. That’s what he got off on.
Other than the water, there too of course was the wind and the clamps failing.
I remember thinking that we might die, drown. I remember feeling great sadness at that and noting the unfairness of dying at nine. Worse for my little sister because she was really little. I looked at my mother and felt badly for her; I was very reliable at feeling badly for her. Not until a little over thirty years later when Sandy came to the Jersey coast did I cry about that day on Barnegut Bay.
Martha, during her personal commission of truth period had said the angry faces, who at the time when I was nine years old just seemed like more people who were angry in my direction, standing on a porch waiting. Martha said of those that had left their homes gone out in the storm, stood and waited on the yacht club’s porch - waited stonily for who? To say what to who?
Nearly fifteen years later my mother announced triumphantly, of her ex-husband and those old salts waiting on the porch “they said ‘take your family out in a storm like this!”. In the world of my mother the accusation only pointed at “your father”/her husband because Martha was human Teflon. She was just following orders, being an obedient wife and the man making all these insane decisions was “their father”. Ever it was as if we gave birth to him and our mother was just dropped into the situation as if by a stork.
My father/ her husband/ the former captain never took his family into hurricane David on Barnegut Bay in a Snipe because he never had a family; he had hostages. Then of course there’s what he came up with following hurricane Hugo, came down specially for that but that was a full decade later.
The thank you I give may have started with residents of Barnegut Bay I may have never met and never will. Those storm watchers who from their homes saw a little boat on the water and started making calls, watching us from shore, noting we were still afloat but struggling.
So thank you to all of you and you are in my thoughts and prayers these days-those living along Barnegut Bay, those of The Lafayette Yacht Club, the state of New Jersey and the Coast Guard for surely being there “if“. But most especially my love to and for you who made sure my father could never put us in that boat or take us into a hurricane for his personal amusement ever again. Thank you.
