Codger column: Catching up

As the airbus from Dublin nosed down into Kennedy Airport, the pilot said, “We’ll be flying over the Hamptons, folks.”

Codger was filled with joy. Fly low, driver, and rev those engines, he thought. Give the South Forkers some of the pain they’ve given us with their helicopters.

Then Codger noticed that the video map in front of him showed the plane flying over the North Fork and Shelter Island. You’d think with all the Irish in Montauk an Aer Lingus pilot would know better. (Mr. Clancy, who runs this pub, reminds even those who haven’t yet re-read Ulysses that Thursday was Bloomsday.)

Codger’s sinking realization that nothing much had changed during his two-week vacation was soon affirmed. St. Gabriel’s Chapel had not moved an inch, there were plastic bags at the IGA and affordable housing was still an issue (though “workforce” housing was the new buzzword). Proportionality continued to grow out of proportion to Codger’s understanding of exactly how it would be codified. Dering Harbor just hired a “licensed code enforcement agent,” so maybe that guy knows.

Meanwhile, the service in the post office that Codger does not frequent — wouldn’t you know it’s one of the country’s richest zip codes, according to Forbes — is still a problem, as are the threats of deer, ticks and gridlocked North Ferry traffic, not to mention party houses and site plan reviews to prevent “eyesores” on Route 114. As any code enforcer can tell you, one person’s eyesore is another person’s business opportunity.

Codger had hoped that while he and his wife, Crone, crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 and then visited castles and abbeys around Cardiff, Wales, at least some of the simpler problems of Shelter Island would be solved. Dream on.

Take St. Gabriel’s Chapel. Please. Despite the good intentions of neighbors raising money to move and improve the chapel, Codger never understood why anyone should think it was a local problem. With the reported $15 million they received for a property they never paid taxes on, the Passionist Fathers could have taken the chapel along on their getaway and found it a home in one of their other spas. Or, the luxury developer who bought the 25 waterfront acres could have created a little sanctuary to remind his one-percenters that something spiritual once happened here.

After a long free ride, St. Gabriel’s Retreat should have gone to the town. It was a perfect place to build a community recreation center and affordable housing for seniors in diminishing circumstances, local young people priced out of an island they grew up on and for Island workers, including police and teachers.

Nothing has seemed so sleazy and elitist to Codger as the comment by a Reporter letter-writer that affordable housing is “a ferry ride away.”

But, of course, as anyone who has ever circled the Island by boat and seen the many waterfront mansions invisible from the road, there is plenty of affordable housing here. It’s just not affordable to Codger or maybe you.

Also still bubbling is the squabble over attaching a two-bedroom unit to a one-bedroom unit on Route 114 off Hedges Road. It sounds petty enough until words like dormitory and tenement and subsidized rentals begin floating in the zone. How would that affect property values in the Center Zip code? Will it bring weekend visits from the gangs of Greenport? Will they barbecue on the banks of Fresh Pond?

As you can see, Codger has been in an aggressively ruminative mood since the death last week of Muhammad Ali, a person he has actively covered since 1964, first for the New York Times, then for CBS, NBC, the Times again, ESPN and most recently Time Magazine. Many causes have been posthumously attached to The Greatest, but it’s easy to imagine him at least rolling his eyes at the reluctance to find a way to make room for people who want to stay on their home land.

Writing and talking about Ali these past few days meant reviewing Codger’s own life. Where did it go? It seems so recently that Codger and Ali were talking about how jittery they both were awaiting the birth of their firstborns. That was 48 years ago.

Time runs on. For the 37th year in a row, Codger will not participate in the Shelter Island 10K today.

Some years ago, while still a jogger, he had toyed with the idea, but about then such small regional races were, ahem, overrun by traveling bands of professional African racers. This made the races more exciting to watch than to run.

Or at least that was Codger’s excuse. He took up bike riding until small deer began passing him on the road with sidelong smirks.

Now he just tries to stay proportional before the code enforcer gets him.