The Statue of Liberty was shrouded in scaffolding. The Towers were still there. One of us remembered the combination to the Crew team's Sherman Creek boathouse (actually an abandoned Con Edison power plant Fordham used temporarily after the fire). The coach's launch only needed a gas tank top up. The beers ran out on our southbound leg around Manhattan near Battery Park. We decided Staten Island was a reasonable distance for replenishments. The Harbor buoy beckoned.

A free, reckless moment frozen in time.

I'm alive! I'm alive!

And my future is unknown.

Your aerial Attic tour.

The Concept Behind This Blog:

Even I referred to it as Mack's Attic, never "my attic." In what was once a finished apartment on the attic level of my childhood home, Mack's Attic endured during the very late 70s and early 80s as an oasis for a great group of coming-of-age adolescent friends. Among those in-the-know, Mack's Attic was also rebelliously referred to as "the only minors' bar in town." The main room had burlap-covered walls, a dart board and my beer can collection. To make room for the ping pong table in the apartment's former bathroom we had to knock down a few walls...on several occasions. The initial "deconstruction" was a lively group effort that bore witness to the birth of the phrase "Wall Bash." Wall Bash soon became a well known euphemism for "party." There were many Wall Bashes over the years, and a few in which some additional walls were unintentionally altered. Above all, Mack's Attic was a secret social club: friends announced their arrival by pressing the doorbell button hidden underneath the clapboards on the front of the house. And yes, on many occasions, we snuck beers in and drank them ("Sorry Dad, it's true.").

Now, how does all that lead to this blog?

While Mack's Attic is a favorite memory of my formative years, Mack's Attic, The BLOG, is an analogy for what's in my head, as in "I've got a lot of stuff stored up there." Hopefully I'll unload some worthwhile "stuff" into this blog as time goes on. Or maybe I'll just delete the whole thing tomorrow.