Codger: Blowing up

This year’s fireworks were the best in my memory, including the nasty little personal fireworks after the main event was over.

My son, Sam, and I followed his kids, 7-year-old Sylvia and 11-year-old Alfred, the three-time Turkey Plunger, to the lip of Crescent Beach. Alfred was sure it was the spot from which he had entered the water in November. We splayed out in the sand.

I usually watch from a distance, from a house on the hill if I’m lucky enough to be invited, which makes the fireworks more of a show to be critiqued: less bombardment this year, more artistry, lame ending, etc. If the party is posh enough, I can pretend to be Cary Grant on the Riviera with Grace Kelly, waiting to catch a thief.

But this year, the fireworks seemed directly overhead. I was inside the show, part of it. I could be showered in fire if anything went slightly wrong. I was surrounded and dazzled. I don’t remember a single stray thought. It was a dream sequence and it mounted to a totally satisfying finale. Unlike the world, it ended with a bang, not a whimper.

The march out was orderly; the Shelter Island police had organized an excellent evacuation. We climbed up Shore Road. For the first 10 minutes or so, there were only pedestrians. Then cars began inching up one lane. At the crest of Shore Road, almost at the edge of Goat Hill, I organized my little party for the right turn onto Stearns Point Road. A uniformed young man under a Smokey the Bear hat – I couldn’t tell if he was a state trooper, a deputy sheriff or a Boy Scout — was standing in the junction.

I figured he was posted there to help direct traffic.

I stepped out, waved my flashlight and signaled Sam and my grandkids to follow. At that point, a car that had been slowly making its way up the hill, growled into speed.

I stepped in its path, shined my light at the driver and said, “Watch where you’re going, blank-head.” But I, of course, didn’t say blank. He looked startled and braked quickly.

(Full disclosure: Such language is my default position. Over the years, on this and other islands, I have said it to drivers, skaters, bikers and deer. There have been minor altercations. People in my family have wondered how I lasted this long relatively unscathed.)

As we crossed Shore Road for Stearns, the young hat yelled at me, “Watch your mouth, show some respect, there are children here.”

I whirled on him. “That’s right. And some of them are mine. I don’t want them run over.”

I was pleased with myself for not saying, “I don’t want them run over, blank-head, because you are not doing your job.”

But I think that was the message he got because his face twisted and he shouted, “Watch your mouth, show some respect.”

Respect for who?

We marched across without further incident and headed toward home.

There was, of course, discussion over ice cream. My wife, Lois, and my daughter-in-law, Ceridwen, were debriefed and rolled their eyes. Alfred, a great enhancer of stories, told the group that the young man in the Smokey hat had threatened to call the police and arrest me. He seemed surprised to learn that the young man probably was the police. I wasn’t surprised, of course, but I was, once more, disappointed.

I shouldn’t be. As a young reporter, I covered the cops and as an older one ran into them from time to time. They are, like the rest of us, good, bad and ugly. But the biggest lesson I learned was that as a white man, particularly an older white man, as long as my hands are in sight, carrying nothing more than an obvious flashlight, I’m all right. And I have the first amendment right to speak my mind.

As a pure citizen, most of my encounters with cops have been positive. I don’t get tense when cops show up suddenly, as most of my black friends do.

If I were young and black or Latino, that seemingly inept young fellow might well have become angry because I was not showing him respect. I was challenging his shaky authority. Would he have arrested me, put me in a choke-hold, shot me? Beats me. All I know was in that cherry bomb, roman candle, bottle rocket of a moment, what lit up for me was the privilege of entitlement.

This has been a rough year for cops, much of it justified. The worst examples, the killing of unarmed black men — of any unarmed person — is rarely as clear-cut as self-defense. That the cop was scared for his life, well, that sounds more like a product of poor training and inexperience than a justification.

This smallest of examples on Shore Road — after a lovely civic event — a non-local cop gets up in my grill mostly for showing him up, is an early distant warning of the kind of pyrotechnics we have unfortunately come to expect as normal in other places.

One more little burst: Yes, I do need to watch my mouth.