Scooters whiz through the night. Damn those guys are good, I thought, as I walked out the front door of Sunny’s, some years back, to have a cigarette and see what was going on in the night.
A scooter goes whizzing by on the sidewalk. As it turned out, a friend of mine decided to bring a scooter to the bar and let people drive around on the sidewalk. I was thinking that is probably not such a smart idea, given the nature of things at that point of time.
Those guys were tearing it up as they often do on Wednesday night. What a great night, for anybody who has not been there, I highly recommend it. Lots of fun, great dancing and very good atmosphere. at is Wednesday night.
Everybody was done driving the scooter, and I thought, I have not driven a scooter in a while. Still recovering from a recent accident I’d had, where both of my legs were broken pretty badly, it was probably not such a wise idea for me to take a scooter ride, but I said yeah, what the hell.
My buddy was pushing me, go ahead Robbie, get on that thing. Pretty close to the front door of Sunny’s, I hit the throttle and she doesn’t respond right away, and then, all of a sudden, she takes off. I was not prepared. Now I am heading directly between a re hydrant and a round planter box.
I am thinking, here we go again, please, God. I knew the gap was not big enough for me t through. At the last moment, I decided that it would be better to hit the planter than the fire hydrant. I glanced it barely, and almost made it through the gap. I dropped down to the ground and the planter exploded into quite a few pieces. All the plants seemed OK but the planter was a complete disaster. I am thinking, oh my God, what I have I done!
I go inside and I see Sunny’s wife, Tone. Sunny was not around yet. He and I had just recently met. is was approximately three years before Sandy.
I approach Tone and I said “I am so sorry, I drove this man’s scooter and I should not have been doing that and I ran into the planter and I destroyed it! I am terribly sorry, but I promise you, by this time tomorrow in less than one business day I will have the situation rectified and I will make it right—that is my word.”
She was a little upset, but she was relieved and was not only looking to me for responsibility but to the person whose scooter it was. The person whose scooter it was, said I didn’t drive it, this guy drove it. She goes, well whose scooter is it? The gentleman goes well it was my scooter. She goes, “Well, what are you going to do to make it right, Robbie already said what he is going to do.” “I don’t need to do anything.”
And you know that look that Tone can give to those that are not quite on the same page as her. That look was felt throughout the whole bar, and at that point in time I figured it would be best probably to head on out and gure out how I was going to make this happen.
I am walking home. I didn’t sleep very well, wrestling around thinking about how am I going to make this right.
I had remembered that in the King St. garden, the one that used to be on the corner of King and Van Brunt, there was one of those half barrel planters that I most desperately needed.
I go over there and the garden is all chained up, everything is grown over, you can’t see anything. Being the thin but muscular guy that I am, I was able to squeeze myself through. I began looking through the growth, the undergrowth and the top growth, for this planter. I encountered some vermin of types as we all know live here in Red Hook—possums, raccoons, maybe even a skunk.
I finally found the planter. It had vines growing over it, it was quite heavy, and still being a bit incapacitated from my accident a year and a half prior, I thought I am going to have trouble get- ting this thing out of here. It definitely would not t through the opening in the fence.
Just as I was scratching my head, a buddy of mine came walking along, my buddy Mark. He asked what I was doing. I said, “just come over here, I am going to hand you this thing, I am going to try to get it over the fence and you are going to grab it.”
I didn’t have time to explain to him what was really going on. We get the planter over the fence.
At that point in time I had just started working at Bait and Tackle. I knew that there were tools down there and items that I could use to refurbish this planter and make it appropriate and make it as nice and as sturdy as I possibly could, for Sunny and for Tone, and for the actions that I had committed against such a fine establishment.
I bring the thing down to the basement of Bait and Tackle and I begin to sand and refinish and to make it beautiful. I wanted to return it in better condition that the existing planter that was originally there.
I found what I thought was just some canvas and very nice leather strapping, which I used to put around the planter. I cut the thing up and I put all this nice strapping around it. I found one of those brass call boxes that people used to have in their front door that had the little tube that ran upstairs so you could hear people. I mounted that to the front.
At the time little did I know the canvass thing with the nice leather strapping was actually Barry’s straitjacket that he had down there and apparently had been wearing for some time prior to his foothold in Red Hook.
I guess there was a section of his life where he was very intimate with the straitjacket. He is in the jungle now in Caracas or somewhere in Venezuela doing whatever Barry does in the jungle, which I can only imagine.
We get the planter all in good shape, and we get it on a dolly and proceed to Sunny’s. I pull up and there is a photo shoot or something going on in there and there is extra activity going on.
Sunny was sitting on the bench outside. Tone had not yet explained to him what was happening.
I begin feverishly getting to work. is planter was a little bigger than the original one, so I used some of the pieces of the old planter to pad the inside of it, build up the bottom of it. I put the liner back in, I put all the plants back in it.
Sunny offers me a cold beverage, it was quite hot out, and I sit down. We don’t say much, he sees the big scar on my leg and I explain to him that yeah that was not my first motor vehicular accident. Fortunately, this one did not result in any bodily injury to me but the previous one both my legs were broken. I was not really focused on that, I wanted to focus on the task at hand.
I get back to work, maybe half an hour later, everything is done, I even found a few extra nice plants to put in there, I built it all up and it looked really, really nice. Tone came out, she was quite impressed that I was able to be a man of my word and in actually less than 24 hours I had it all back in shape, ready to go, looking great.
Sunny says, come on Robbie, come over here and sit down and he gets me another beer from inside, someone brings it to us.
We are chatting for a little bit and it gets quiet for a minute and he looks at me, looks at the planter that was still there, the one that I didn’t break, and looks at the one that I broke. He gives it a good up and down, looks at me again, looks at the other planter, and he goes “you know what Robbie, break the other one.”
Sunny had a way of just making you feel good, even in situations where you were very uncertain how you are going to be held, how you were going to be viewed upon, how you were going to walk away from this situation not knowing whether it was going to be good or bad. Sunny always had the ability to make you feel good no matter what, and boy did we get a good laugh out of that.
I love Sunny very much. Our relationship grew after that. I am so grateful for the time that we got to spend together and for the time that I still spend at Sunny’s. And every time that I am there I say hello. Sunny is still there, he is all through the place. I do miss him. I learned a lot from him just in that one experience.
After Sandy, he gifted me all the fishing gear that had been accumulated by he and his brothers and his family over the years that really was not being used anymore.
I knew it was the last thing on his mind, but after Sandy I said “you know Sunny, I hate to see all this gear go to waste, I will take it out of your hands, I will bring it home, I will refurbish it, I will bring it back for you, whatever you want me to do.”
It is was not a high priority for him, but for me it was something very special.
He said “Robbie, you know what, take all of it.” He knew that I was quite a prolific fisherman. He goes, “take all of it Robbie, use what you can, and bring back a few pieces here and there that we can put up in the bar and that will be great.’”
That is what I did, and boy is it some special gear. That gear, the energy it has built up in it and the fish catching abilities of it is unsurpassed. What a great gift for me and like I said, this was several years after the planter.
The planter remained there and stood proud for three years. After Sandy, I walked back that first day and looked for it. I didn’t see it and said, “wow, it is gone!” A couple of days later I was walking down by Fairway and there it was, on the edge of the rocks, still in one piece, kind of beat up. The next tide came in and I didn’t have time to go grab it, it was such a chaotic situation. I believe either someone grabbed it and repurposed it or Mother Nature took her back and probably washed her up on the beach somewhere in France.
Much love to everybody. Sunny we all love you. Tone, thank you for keeping the faith and keeping the place alive.
