Rooftop decks as blasphemy
Growing up, my neighborhood had handfuls of old Yankees, terrifying to me in their dourness.
My great-grandfather had bought in the neighborhood as a summer person, a summer person from a city upriver, where ethnics were.
He was of Portuguese descent, born from, we suspect, cousins who married and emigrated to the States from a tiny island in the Azores.
He bought on that island in the 20s as a young, newly married man, and eventually chased old Yankees off his beach who rented their boats to tourists illegally.
A decade after purchasing that land and the cottage built, he set out to expel the dingy rentals. I suspect it was because someone had called his daughter of dark skin, the N-word, as she sunned herself on that beach.
My great-grandfather and his one daughter were dark people or darker than what was bred out of them to become me.
My grandmother and her mother were fairer, producing my father, Blond, blue-eyed, burning quickly in the sun. Though given days and months in the sun, he, too, would tan a deeper berry than most people of light complexion could.
I tended to burn, though, and would eventually tan pretty dark. My sister always tanned pretty well. Her eyes were the brightest blue, and she had white…
