COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES -- peter buffa

Well, I’m back. Hoo boy. Where does one begin? The wedding ran like a

Swiss watch, the weather was perfect, everything was exploding in fall

colors, and the team I promised I won’t talk about anymore swept the

World Series, which makes 25 championships in 100 years, a sports record

to which no other compares -- team of the year, the decade, the century,

the millennium, but I won’t say a word about it. See? I’m getting better.

After the matrimonials, we spent a couple days touring the Hudson River

Valley, which runs north from New York City. Given my predilection for

the Northeast in the fall, it was the ultimate case of being in the right

place at the right time.

The Hudson River Valley is shot through with the sights and sounds and

smells of autumn and the whimsy of Halloween. It’s a land of apple

orchards, pumpkin fields, hills and valleys painted in fiery fall colors

-- traversed by winding roads and punctuated with soaring white church

steeples. Every turn brings the peace of Robert Frost’s words to mind,

and the frustration of not remembering more of them.

We spent a few days with wonderful, lifelong friends, Sal and Sue

Devincenzo, who live in a startlingly beautiful place appropriately named

Sterling Forest. It’s about an hour north of New York, near Tuxedo and

Sloatsburg if you’re into maps.

Their home is impressive enough, but the setting is almost impossible to

describe -- perched high above a postcard of a lake, surrounded by tall

pine, birch, maple and elm.

One night, having the usual trouble sleeping, I was drawn to their huge

living room window sometime before dawn, and frozen in place by the view.

An enormous full moon was hanging above the ridgeline across the lake,

casting a bright shard of moonlight on the water. The moonlight was so

intense that you could see dashes of color on the trees around the lake.

I will remember that view, or try to, for a very long time.

We also spent some time in Tarrytown, a small town on the Hudson beneath

the majestic Tappan Zee Bridge -- and the heart of Washington Irving

country.

We took a stroll through the ancient graveyard at the Old Dutch Church,

and that should be enough of a clue if you don’t recall Irving or his

work. But, just in case, Washington Irving (1783-1859) was the first

American writer to become an international success. He was a very popular

humorist and satirist, with a particular interest in the history and

legends of the old Dutch who settled and ruled New York when it was New

Amsterdam.

His most famous works are “A History of New York” and “The Sketch Book.”

The first is the saga of a fictitious character named “Knickerbocker,”

whom Irving described as “a small, elderly gentleman, dressed in an old

black coat and a cocked hat -- not entirely in his right mind.”

“The Sketch Book” is where you’ll find two of my, and everyone else’s,

favorite short stories -- “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy

Hollow.” Tarrytown is, in fact, Sleepy Hollow today. The Old Dutch Church

and its wonderful graveyard are almost unchanged from the time when the

nerdiest schoolteacher in history, Ichabod Crane, and his aging horse,

Gunpowder, rode through it on that fateful autumn night.

As a Halloween gift to you, and a thank you to Tarrytown for a lifetime

of wonderful fall memories, I’ll leave you with a few passages from “The

Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

o7 “In the bosom of one of the spacious coves which indent the eastern

shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by

the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, there lies a small market

town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is

more universally or properly known as Tarry Town. From the listless

repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants who

are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen

has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are

called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country.

f7 “In this by-place of nature, there abode Ichabod Crane. He was o7

tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs,

hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served

for shovels, and his whole frame hung most loosely together.

“It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and

bedrooped, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty

hills which rise above Tarry Town and which he had traversed so cheerily

in the afternoon. All the stories of ghosts and goblins that Ichabod had

heard on that afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The

night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky,

and driving clouds occasionally hid them from f7 sight. He had never

felt so lonely and dismal.

o7 “As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump; he gave his

horse half a score of kicks in the ribs and attempted to dash briskly

across the bridge; but instead of darting forward, the perverse old

animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence.”

f7

Now, do something nice for yourself. Find a copy of “The Legend of Sleepy

Hollow” and see what happens next. If you’ve got kids or grand kids, read

them the scary parts on Halloween night. Who knows? It could become a

holiday tradition.

Happy Halloween! I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Fridays.

E-mail him at o7 [email protected]