As I wound down my time in New York's Capital Region after nearly 15 years there, I quickly realized that a proper goodbye wasn't going to be in the cards. Most of the places I wanted to hit one more time before leaving crossed themselves off my list, I worked the entirety of my two weeks' notice period from home, and I had to let myself into the curling club during what would've been a league night to clean out my locker.
Some closure arrived the past week, literally in the case of my house, which is now my old house. The buyers finally received the clear to close on Tuesday, and it was a done deal on Thursday. In between, I received a surprise shipment of Portillo's beef, a gift from the former colleagues I didn't get to see. Two big victories, one particularly delicious.
Yet the situation doesn't really feel any more resolved, because typically when one door closes, another one is supposed to open. Instead, it feels like I've been stuck in a mudroom for about four weeks, and I'm hearing additional locks latched behind me. That's not some sort of tragedy deserving of your sympathy, because completing a move in this climate was a miracle, and reading and writing are solitary pursuits. It's just weird to not be able to support the people and places you know on one side, and not be able to get to know the people and places worth connecting with here.
Let me tell you about how Saturdays used to be. I lived a five-minute roll down the hill from downtown Troy, which blocked off streets for the farmers market every Saturday morning during warm months, and filled an atrium during the fall and winter. The winter edition was only disappointing if you went every weekend in the summer, because that was the area's star warm-weather attraction until racing season opened at Saratoga.
Depending on the time of year and the state of my fridge, I could any or all of the following into one lap around a very handsome city:
- One or two stops at the Placid Baker -- one for bread, and potentially a second for pizza if my first shot came in between trays.
- A ball of fresh smoked mozzarella from mother-and-son cheesemakers, paired with ...
- A massive tomato from whichever farmstand was also selling the most reasonable amount of basil (I'd combine the above ingredients into caprese grilled cheeses).
- A lederhosen-clad Vermonter enthusiastic about his spätzle.
- A credible bagel place that would give you a free frozen dozen bagels if you returned to make a purchase during a weekday (although it had to close for good not long after an oven fire).
- A haircut.
- A run to the post office.
- A hardware store with a helpful staff and a good rewards card.
- A small bookstore with a helpful staff and a good rewards card.
- A small kitchen store that always had what I needed to replace.
- A choice of multiple outstanding coffee shops, depending on lines or specials.
I was on a first-name basis with a few proprietors, and a mutual recognition basis with a few others. You'd see them elsewhere around the city, like when the city's Asian restaurants teamed up for a Thursday night market in a vacant parking lot, which became my Thursday night dinner plan because I drove right past it on the way home.
My favorite place in Troy was the hidden Polish beer garden within a mile of my house. I went in any season -- I walked there on perfect summer nights and snowstorms -- but I circled the day after Easter on my calendar the last four years for the Dyngus Day celebration. I'd throw on my red Polska hockey jersey over my "Enjoyski Troyski" t-shirt, walk nine-tenths of a mile, have a stuffed cabbage and a few Zywiecs while singing the couple polkas I recognized.
I forgot about Dyngus Day this year, because there wasn't one to remember, for anybody. I knew I'd miss it, but everybody else in the Capital Region is missing it, just like they're missing the farmer's market, the barber shop, the plant store with the laid-back golden retriever that roamed the premises, and everything else. And the people who counted on that foot traffic for their livelihoods are missing it the most.
If I still lived in Troy, I'd be doing what I could to order online, pick up curbside, stock up on gift cards and random gifts to others, so on and so forth. I'm trying to do the same in Nashville, but it's hard to form bonds with people and places when trying to make interactions as short and distant as possible.
Why am I telling you this? Partly because I enjoyed my time in the Albany area, a place "The Simpsons" knocked so many times that I used a work day to trace all the references, and I planned to tout Troy and wax nostalgic regardless. But I can also imagine this being a common experience during the pandemic, even if you're staying in the spot. Everybody has their places they're hoping can hang on, whether it's because you went there all the time, because you never got to go, or because the last time you went there, it didn't look like the way it was supposed to be.
The aforementioned hardware store was where I did most of my home-improvement shopping, and it's a place I promptly left one early evening in 2016 thinking Chris Sale was traded because he was abruptly scratched from his start (we'd learn later that he cut up the team's jerseys). It's one of the places I did get to visit right before leaving, because I needed some joint compound to fill holes after removing screws and nails. I'd never seen a longer line at the counter, but it was because they had to put masks and cleaning supplies behind the counter due to theft.
I'm hoping all those places can bounce back, and I'm hoping there will be places here that can eventually replace those places for me. I imagine you have places like those as well, and if you run one of those places, here's hoping even more.
