Tag Archives: New York

New York Baptism

Nationality: American-Paraguayan
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Orlando, Florida
Performance Date: 3/15/19
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Main Piece: A New York Baptism is either the first time you get badly splashed by a taxi in NYC or the first time mysterious droplets (which might not be water) from above trickle onto your forehead.

Context: The informant (OC) is half Paraguayan and half American, and she speaks both Spanish and English. Her mother immigrated to the U.S. as a young adult, so the informant is first generation, but the rest of her mother’s side of the family resides in their home city – Caazapa, Paraguay – and are very well-known in their community. Her father’s side of the family are “classically Jewish” people from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York. Although she is not religious herself, her upbringing was culturally Jewish and Catholic. Our discussion took place in her home in Orlando, Florida while her mom made us tea and lunch in the background. As stated in the main piece, OC has heard multiple different variations of the joke, both originating from New York City situations. She originally heard the iterations of the joke from her immediate family based in Brooklyn, NY and finds the sayings funny for their grudging celebration of uniquely New Yorker situations as well as their play on the concept of baptism, given that she grew up in a religious family but still remains skeptical of organized religion. She also has personally experienced a New York Baptism and delights in witnessing the bewildering baptisms of others.

Personal thoughts: The New York Baptism joke is essentially a coping mechanism to deal with the poor conditions of an overpopulated and polluted city. Baptisms are generally seen as wonderful ceremonies where you are reborn into the purity of God’s forgiveness and light, so to place such “negative” experiences on par with a baptism seems discordant and ironic. However, the juxtaposition between the uncleanliness of the city and the purity of religious experiences makes us question what the difference really is between a baptism and dirty city water. Who’s to say that whatever splashed onto your forehead isn’t Holy Water? Are our religious ceremonies really that “pure” anyways, or are we just placing arbitrary concepts of dirty and clean onto a world that will always, in some way, be dirty? To come back to my original point, the joke takes the undesirable concepts of mysterious substances and inconsiderate taxi drivers and turns them onto their head. Although New York is crowded and dirty, those conditions are out of any individual New Yorker’s control, so why not embrace them? People will always call New York home with all the love and devotion in the world, which is why mysterious liquids are not seen as something to be disgusted with, but rather cherished like you would cherish an annoying but lovable family member.

Christmas Traditions

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 26, 2018
Primary Language: English

The interviewer’s initials are denoted through the initials BD, while the informant’s responses are marked as NC.

NC: Another tradition we have is Christmas morning. We have a very specific routine on how to like—attack the day. So first, everyone had to, like, wait for everyone else to get up. We normally had a preassigned time when we allowed to wake up the parents. Normally—I’m the youngest—normally I’d wake up first, then I’d wake up my brother, and then we would wake up my sister. Then, after that, we would wait, and all go down at the same time. No one was allowed downstairs before everyone’s allowed downstairs, so we’d all go down together. This includes parents. No one was allowed downstairs until the whole family was ready. And then we would go into the kitchen, and we would let my mom start preparing the coffee cake, because we would always have a coffee cake for breakfast. And once she had put that in the oven—she had already set up all the ingredients the night before, so she just had to mix them together and put it in the oven, we were then allowed to open the stockings. After that, once the coffee cake was done, we would eat breakfast and clean the dishes, and then we could open the presents around the tree. And we did this one by one, looking and commenting on each present, telling stories why we gave the present to each other, or why Santa gave it. And that was our day. I think this is funny because we’re actually Jewish, so this has nothing to do with anything that we believe in. It was just like, a fun tradition, that became very systematic.

BD: Who set this tradition? Your parents?


NC: I guess—my mom is Jewish, and my dad is Catholic, but he doesn’t celebrate Christmas. He’s from Spain, and they celebrate Three Kings’ Day, not Christmas in the same way. So I don’t really know, I guess it evolved as we got older.

BD: Where’s your mom from?

NC: She’s from New York.

Analysis: The thoroughness of this holiday tradition was both startling and quite entertaining. It reminds me also of another Christmas tradition I had listened to, and I am surprised at the ease with which immigrants to the United States adopt some very American traditions. As the informant said, his family is Jewish, so Christmas Day should not be that big of a deal. However, his dad is Catholic, though this does not seem to affect their traditions very much. Perhaps it is explained by his mom’s background—she is not first generation, and perhaps helped to start what the informant thinks is a more “American” Christmas tradition.

 

The Local Legend of One Armed Joe

Nationality: American
Age: 71
Occupation: Farmer
Residence: Margaretville, NY
Performance Date: 4/11/17
Primary Language: English

Nationality: American

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): None

Age: 71

Residence: Margaretville, NY USA

Performance Date: April 12, 2017 (telephonically)

 

Allote is a 71 year old woman, born and raised in Catskill, New York who lives and owns a farm in upstate New York. She was a high school graduate and raised three children. She is a 6th generation American of Scottish Ancestry.

 

Interviewer: Good Afternoon. You mentioned that your current house is linked to a local legend. Appreciate if you could explain it to me?

 

Informant: Not a problem, I would love to. Ok we just ah bought a house that was built in 1928 and they told us that our chicken house was a historical building, because it used to be, there use to be a still in there. The owner always wondered why it is 30 feet long on the outside and 27 on the inside and when they investigated they found a false wall and when they took it down found a still in there, a pearl handle revolver in the wall and in the cement floor outside where all the chicken manure was there was a cut in the floor they kept all their bottles. And they say his name was “One Armed Joe” and he sold moonshine all around the Catskills at the farmers markets, He hid it underneath his corn when he went to the markets”.

 

Interviewer: And what town was this in?

 

Informant: Margaretville, New York in the Catskills

 

Interviewer:  What years?

 

Informant: Well they built the house in 1928, so I imagine it was about this time. People say that he carried on for a number years

 

Interviewer:  Did you ever see the still, revolver or bottles?

 

Informant: Nope.  When we bought the house from the owner I guess he kept them or sold them or maybe gave it away.

 

Interviewer: What does this piece mean to you?

 

Informant: In our small town, it is great to be a part of a local legend.  It helps business in selling our vegetables to locals and visitors. The kids that stop by really love hearing about the story.

 

 

Thoughts about the piece: 

Margaretville in upstate New York continues to be known for clandestine illegal businesses like marijuana farming but moonshine (and its folklore), has been adapted to upscale retail sales at local farmer’s markets. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/dining/22Distill.html The term “moonshine” may come from English smugglers or “moonrakers,” historically describing backwoods Southerners.

 

 

 

 

 

Old Miss Hackley

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 2016
Primary Language: English

The informant, a 20-year-old college student, attended a private Ivy League Preparatory school in New York, the Hackley School, for grades 6-12. While I was out to lunch between classes with the informant, I asked if she could tell me about her school’s history, and if there were any traditions or narratives related to this history that all of the students know about.

“Well, Hackley is named after the woman who founded it over a century ago, Miss Hackley. Everyone thinks of her as this old, gray-haired, witch-like woman. Deep in the library there are a lot of old books and paintings. The story goes that in this one really old painting of the school, there was a shadowy figure towards the back for as long as anyone could remember. Then, a few years ago, the figure disappeared. So supposedly that was Miss Hackley, and she moves in and out of pictures and paintings throughout the campus watching the students’ every move and making sure that nobody is acting out or being disrespectful.”

This legend regarding the founder of the informant’s school is a way to keep the institution’s history alive by implying that the school’s long-dead founder is still very much aware of whether the students are being respectful and behaving appropriately. The informant said that while she does not believe that Miss Hackley’s spirit inhabits the school, thinking about the possibility still creeps her out. This legend functions to keep the students at Hackley School in line by providing an ultimatum that, while perhaps not entirely threatening, would make a student think twice before sneaking off into empty classrooms or cutting class: if you fail to obey the school’s code of conduct you are disrespecting Miss Hackley, and if she knows of these the potential for her to discipline you exists. The legend is not dependent on students believing that Miss Hackley’s spirit actually inhabits the school, but rather on the slightest bit of doubt that it possibly could. I think that the nature of the institution, as an old, elite private school on the east coast, allows the legend to operate much more effectively than it would at, say, a relatively new public school on the west coast, due to the fact that the older school as a more extensive, and unknown, history that a newer school would lack.

Alligators! No, not in Florida…

Sara is a very gossipy, religious, fun girl. Sophomore at USC, she’s in the Helene’s and a sorority. She’s from Anaheim, California. And she has an incredibly interesting memory and past.

Sara once visited New York with a friend of hers in high school. She had never ben before and was excited to explore the big famed city. When she got their her friend kept messing with her about the fact that their were alligators in the sewer. Every time they walked over a Manhattan grate on the sidewalk, or a manhole cover and the pedestrian’s crosswalk, her friend would tell her to “Watch out girl, jeez.” Sara was believing it too. It wasn’t until they went home to her friends mother when she asked “How come no one’s done anything about all the dumb alligators.” Her friends mother gave her a state and that’s when she knew she was punked. Her friend was then shamed and shunned for the next fifteen minutes.

The story of alligators stalking the sewers of in American cities, not just New York, is an urban mystery. Most people have heard the rumors about alligators in the sewers, in large part, because of Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel.

What would happen is, he wrote of the little pet alligators purchased as Florida souvenirs were eventually flushed down toilets. Then they grew and spread throughout all of Manhattan. Moving through the underground system, Pynchon told us, they were big, blind, albino, and fed on rats and sewage. Pynchon envisioned an “Alligator Patrol going into the depths of the sewer system, working in teams of two, with one man holding a flashlight while the other carried a twelve-gauge repeating shotgun.” As no one before him had, Thomas Pynchon wove the rumor of alligators-in-the-sewers through a work of fiction. But is it all fiction?

1_small