Between the Bridges: Penny for Your Thoughts?

by Peter Mahon

This Saturday, October 17, the guys and gals up at the Broad Channel VFW will be holding aPenny Social and everyone is invited!  Admission is $10 with doors opening at 6 p.m. and raffle calling starts one hour later at 7 pm.  There will be early bird specials, a door prize and a 50/50.  There’s a 50” flat screen television, several brand new bicycles, tickets to attend network television shows like the View, the Chew, Live with Kelly and Michael, a Porter-Cable compressor combo kit, Christmas decorations, toys, kitchen tools, a myriad of tchotchkes, gift baskets galore and much, much more!  All proceeds of this event will go towards the VFW Post’s annual Thanksgiving Dinner and other programs and activities for the disabled veterans residing at St. Albans Hospital. Everyone is welcome so stop by Saturday evening for a few hours with your family, friends and neighbors.  You are guaranteed to have a good time. Refreshments will be served.

Last weekend’s Chili Cook Off and Music Festival benefit for the New York Families for Autistic Children (NYFAC) at the VFW was a great success. Despite Friday evening’s thunderstorm and heavy rain, which kept many of the registered contestants from making long trips from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, there were still several local chili heads on hand to make the afternoon interesting. Congratulations to Bill Bowden, a local Channel Chili Head, who walked away with the best tasting chili trophy!  Once the chili cook off finished, the VFW Post began to resonate with the sounds of live music and song provided by several bands, all of which were, in addition to being loud, spectacular. The VFW’s hall, canteen and backyard were rocking with the more than 130 guests who stopped by to support the NYFAC cause.

This week I am going to let our neighbor Dorothy from West 14^th Street close out the column for me.

“For months, in the middle of my canal, there has been a large yellow glass bowl filled with water.  I always wondered how it got there as I have the same kind of bowls. Recently I spotted a horseshoe crab inside the large bowl and turned over with its tail sticking out and its claw trying to overturn itself.  The tide had already receded from the bowl. I mentioned to Sean (a young BC guy enrolled in training to be an EMT) the article I had recently read explaining about horseshoe crabs and how you weren’t supposed to pick them up by their tail but everyone usually does and that one was stuck and that he was moving–and lamented ‘What a shame the tide is out — he will probably die.’ Or maybe that was the crab’s intent I thought. In any event, a little while later I see Sean’s shoes and feet wet. When I questioned him, he admitted he went through the mud to the bowl and took the horseshoe out of the bowl and put it in the mud.  It dug itself in to the mud as the tide was out. When I checked the next day I did not see it and the bowl floated away. A young kid with a good heart–and he wants to be an EMT. Amazing.

Only in Broad Channel – Dorothy West 14^th Road.”