American Pie: The Geezer Bench
...It is possible to sail alone, lots of people do: most famously Sir Francis Chichester, the redoubtable Chay Blithe, and the mysterious Bernard Moitessier, to name but a few; and not to mention the thousands of weekend, single-handed sailors. But in the end, sailing is such a specialized, almost minority interest sport, that sailors are inevitably drawn together. Only then can they converse freely in the curious verbiage of their chosen avocation. Only among fellow aficionados are their adventures and accomplishments accorded the kudos they rightly deserve...
And the place to share experiences at the sailing club of which John Merchant is a member is the Geezer Bench.
To read more of John's splendid columns please click on American Pie in the menu on this page.
I have never been much of a “joiner.” Never felt drawn to a church or a temple, the Freemasons, the Elks or the Kiwanis, or the Lions. Too much secrecy, ceremony and mumbo jumbo for my taste. Even if that were not the case, I have always held jobs that were very people-intensive and often interactively exhausting, leaving little of my resources for after-work, group activities. Someone, who could only have been a behavioral psychologist, once determined that a human being can handle only eleven effective human interactions of consequence per day; I have no idea why not ten or twelve. Be that as it may, clustering and grouping was never my thing, until I took up sailing.
It is possible to sail alone, lots of people do: most famously Sir Francis Chichester, the redoubtable Chay Blithe, and the mysterious Bernard Moitessier, to name but a few; and not to mention the thousands of weekend, single-handed sailors. But in the end, sailing is such a specialized, almost minority interest sport, that sailors are inevitably drawn together. Only then can they converse freely in the curious verbiage of their chosen avocation. Only among fellow aficionados are their adventures and accomplishments accorded the kudos they rightly deserve.
The congregating point for sailors can be a regatta, a boat show, an association, or in my case, a yacht club. In the fourteen years I have been a member it has fascinated me to observe and be a part of the dynamics of a like-minded group of people, where acceptance is taken for granted. The Club was founded in 1903, and at that time was little more than a beach and a bar with a few moorings. The Club house walls are hung with faded, sepia photographs of men and women who, from their appearance and dress, might well have been drawn from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. In the years since the founding, the members have added a restaurant, a swimming pool and a marina, so it is a relatively grand undertaking compared with its humble beginnings.
Members join and resign for a variety of reasons, but there is a core group whose parents and even their parents were members. There appears to be something about being on or near the water that promotes longevity, and many of these “lifers” live on into their nineties. Even more amazingly, many of them continue to sail until they’re either bed-ridden, befuddled by dementia or dead. Along with the improvements to the Club that I mentioned earlier, we also have a Dock Office. This is home to the Dock Master and his staff, who take care of the marina maintenance, assist sailors to dock and undock their boats, and attend to visiting boats.
At some point a bench was placed in a shady spot just outside the Dock Office for the staff to use in slow times on hot days. There’s always a cool breeze there, and it’s a good spot to collect scuttlebutt about the Club from the flow of members who pass by on their way to their boats, or to pick up ice. Over time, several of the “lifers” decided that the bench was really for their use, and usurped the staff. Thus it became known as the “Geezer Bench.”
Originally, the Bench was a fairly crude and simple affair, assembled from planks of wood and painted grey, but recently it was replaced by two rather elegant, teak seats that wouldn’t look out of place in a Victorian gazebo. In a nice touch, one of them bears a plaque dedicating the bench to a much beloved, deceased past commodore. There’s some morbid speculation among the Geezers about who the next dedicatee will be.
Acceptance to the bench is an arcane and unstated process. If you unwittingly sit there and aren’t qualified, the conversation quickly tapers off, but if you have entered the realm of Geezerhood, then due deference is paid to your opinions and reminiscences. Though not a “lifer” myself, recently I too have found acceptance, which I’m not sure how to explain, nor am I sure whether I’m happy about it, but there it is.
Whatever other functions the Geezer Bench facilitates, its most solemn one is to keep a tally of who is thriving and who may have succumbed. Winter time is a testing period in the North East, so whoever makes it to spring is probably going to last through the summer. But the first warm days of spring are when the surviving Geezers come out of hibernation like old bears, and quiz each other for news of their bench mates.
Many of the Geezers already have had at least one brush with eternity – heart by-pass surgery, prostate and various other forms of cancer etc., but you wouldn’t know it from their demeanor. These guardians of Club mythology are as crusty and ornery as the day they were accepted to the Bench, and I’m working on it.
# # #
