Fairfield Inn by Marriott New York City LaGuardia Airport

From Vlissingen to Flushing

by gilabrand

Moving to a new land is an adventure, but nostalgia for what you left behind seems to be part of human nature.

Take the Israelites, who were slaves in Egypt and led to freedom by Moses. True, they spent a lot of time wandering around in the desert (forty years is nothing to sneeze at), and they were not exactly well treated in Egypt. But when the going got rough, they moaned and complained. “We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all!” (Numbers 11:5-6).

The first Dutch colonists in America were traders. They settled at the tip of Manhattan Island and built up a roaring fur trade. Back in 1624, it was a wild, forested place, probably very different from Holland, but they named it “New Amsterdam.”

In the 17th century, Vlissingen, a city in the Netherlands, was the main port of the Dutch East India Company. So again why wrack your brains to think up new names when you can recycle the old ones (and reminisce, in the bargain). One of the first colonies in the New World was named Vlissingen.

So what does Vlissingen mean? There are many theories, but one of them is that a 7th century Christian saint named Willibrord came to this region in southwestern Holland to spread his faith. He shared his bottle (fles = bottle) with some beggars, but a miracle occurred. They drank and drank, but the bottle was still full. You can see this legendary “bottle,” actually a silver-tipped leather flask, in the Vlissingen museum.

In 1664, the Dutch colonists surrendered to the British. New Amsterdam was renamed New York, in honor of the Duke of York, and Vlissengen became…Flushing.

Under the Big Umbrella

by gilabrand

Today, all that remains of Flushing's famous 151-year old weeping beech tree is a stump, after park officials declared it dead a few years ago. It was planted by Samuel Bowne Parsons who brought back a shoot from Belgium in 1847. It was in a park at the end of my block, on 37th Avenue, surrounded by a fence to keep the kids out. But we had our very own weeping beech in my friend's backyard, across the street from my house, and that's where we hung out in the days before computers and hi-tech. It was like a big umbrella, a hideaway from the world.

Flushing As It Was

by gilabrand

I weep for the weeping beeches of Flushing that are no more.

So many days of my childhood in Flushing were spent under an ancient weeping beech in the backyard of my friend Margaret, laughing and talking, swinging on the long swooping branches that unfurled to the ground, hiding us from the rest of the world. It was our secret place, and it's gone - chopped down to make way for what the world calls "progress"...

Flushing High School, which I went to for two years, is a grand Gothic-style building on Northern Boulevard and Union Street with an imposing tower and beasty gargoyles peering down at you from the doorways. Established in 1875, it is on record as the second oldest high school in New York City.

Funny, how you don't see that your school was actually a beautiful place until you're old and gray...