------���--THE LANDING IN NoRTH H uDsoN PARK
Across the street from my studio in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, there is a small liquor store. It is typical of hundreds just like it-physically undistinguished, but open fourteen or fif. teen hours every day, and a regular neighborhood stopping-off place, like the dry cleaners or the supermarket. The owners are Bill Burns and George O'Barski, and they have been selling me my dinner wine and doing emergency check cashing for me for over twenty years. In November of 1 975, George O' Barski was seventy-two years old. He is street-wise, astute, and reflective-an essential set of qualities for New Yorkers-and he is also a strict teetotaler. On a particular late November evening, I came into his store to buy a bottle of Soave to have with supper. George was pacing back and forth behind the counter, obviously troubled. He began complain ing about an arthritic pain in his knee, and then muttered some thing to me about how you didn't know anymore what might hap· pen . "A man can be driving home, minding his own business, and something can come down out of the sky and scare you half to death. " Naturally, I stopped him there. "What do you m ean, 'Something can come down out of the sky'?" Slowly and reluctant· ly, he began to tell me the story, and he continued only because I assured him I was seriously interested in what had happened to him. Two or three other customers entered the store and caused lengthy interruptions, so I told George I'd be back after dinner to hear the rest of his adventure. He had no idea, I realized, that I was interested in "things that come down out of sky," so his hesi-
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