“Hello Mr. Smith,” said my father, his bright eyes twinkling with a giddy, mischievous grin under his white beard. 

The other man held the door with his back and asked in a time-softened Long Island accent, “How do you know my name?”

“I used to work here,” said Dad. Then, with a nervous chuckle, he patted me on the shoulder. “And this is one of the things I made.”

I had jetted up from Puerto Rico on Thursday, taking the Long Island Railroad out to Cutchogue to surprise Dad for his seventieth birthday. On the way back, he drove me to the station in Babylon. We had an extra half hour and he said, “Wanna go to Glen’s Diner? Get an egg sandwich.” 

I considered the diner, where my mom worked when my parents met, then remembered the egg scramble I’d made for the trip home, waiting and leaking in my bag. Instead I said, “Can we go to the place where I was born?”

“Sure,” he said, always up for an adventure. “We’ll go see if Charlie is still kicking!” 

So we stood in the parking lot of small, tidy boatyard, just two docks and one narrow canal lined with modest motor boats. A towering travel-lift waited at the end of the canal, a long-legged, thick-wheeled monster machine, hung with giant slings to hoist boats from the water onto the “hard” for work. A line of boats sat on land, waiting repairs.

And two men – two old men, I guess, although legends and sailors never really get old – stood considering each other at the door to the marine office. My dad’s hands were stuffed in the pockets of his unzipped jacket, more from excitement than cold I sensed, and his shoulders rolled forward towards the older Mr. Smith, a characteristic Welshman posture that is less of a slump and more of a permanent electric charge forward into life. 

In return, Mr. Smith stood steady and slow, catching up with the words of this stranger. “When did you work here? I’ve been here fifty years,” he said softly, with a strong intensity that alluded to a younger ferocity.

“Ohh, the eighties?” thought Dad. Eighty-five for sure I thought with a smirk. “I was in and out for a few years, doing odd jobs.”

It didn’t seem to ring any rusty bells, but the men carried on talking about other Babylon characters, what had become of them, which had passed away. I stood and took it in, as always. The generation of small town story tellers, sailors and vagabonds. Tales of mischief and innovation. Gossip that turns impulsive lives into legends…in retrospect. 

But my Dad has been a legend before retrospect. The most mischievous, the most innovative. I’d seen it firsthand, and I’d heard testimonials growing up. Pirate clam-digger, magician woodworker, MacGyver mechanic. He is legendary. And so, in association, I must be legendary too, right? Legends birthing legends?

Something was wrong. How could this man not remember us? All of us. The family I’m so proud of. Genius father, his adventurous sisters, my fearless mother, my bruiser of a brother, and me, the baby born on the boat.

I could tell the conversation was wrapping up, and I cut in, unable to contain myself. 

“And do you remember when there was a baby born in this boatyard?” 

Or maybe the owner had never known, which seems hard considering it took place a hundred feet from where we were standing.

But Mr. Smith paused and his taught face changed a little. His eyes rolled up in memory. “Once there was an incident here,” he said quietly, and turned back to my dad, “Do you remember a man they called “Quick and Dirty”?”

Dad chuckled and scrunched his shoulders further, turning away pleased and bashful as he laughed, a boy caught years later in a crime. “That was me!”

Mr. Smith’s eyebrows popped up, his face finally lifting and shifting, and he smiled as much as it could in disbelief. “That’s you?!” 

Lightbulbs lighting, the moment, the emotion I craved. Then he turned to look at me.

“I’m the “incident”,” I beamed. I’ll take it! Legendary.

They carried on from there, Mr. Smith saying how Dad comes up in conversation every once in a while, remembering how people would always come asking for his work.

“Well, I got it done quick,” Dad demured.

“And you were good,” said Mr. Smith. Then he pointed down the dock to the right of the canal, just five small boats end to end. “You were down there near the end, weren’t you? In a half-made boat, fiber glass on bottom, wooden cabin top.”

“Brian’s Song,” said Dad.

It all felt familiar to me, guaranteed because of my yearly birth story, as told by my mother. Starting labor running down this dock to catch the line. Water breaking six hours later stepping from the dock to the deck. And me plopping out after a quick push, the only baby born in this boatyard.

So I swelled with emotion as Mr. Smith marveled at my father, the infamous ‘Quick and Dirty’ reappearing out of nowhere years later. And the ‘incident’ baby all grown up. He took a picture for his wife, and Dad promised to come back later to say hi. 

Then we headed back to the train, through the little town where I never lived, but which has filled my life with stories and legends made for me by my parents and their parents. Stories shared next to a wood stove, or around a dinner table, or out at sea, not through videos and posts. 

Stories which filled me with the desire to see the scene, revisit the stomping grounds, surprise old men in their boatyards and remind them of the mischief days. Satisfy their curiosity of how things turned out, a curiosity we can too easily sate now by spying, rather than dropping in to surprise.  

In person, we ignite nostalgia and fill our hearts with a sense of wonder and serendipity and catharsis. Of lives lived to the fullest by a generation of revolutionaries and misfits and innovators. And I quench my thirst to know my place in it all. My place among legends.