Malissa Post Prattsville NY
I first saw Prattsville in 2012 – a
year after Hurricane Irene nearly swept it down the Schoharie Creek. The main street was one shuttered house
after another, one boarded up window after another, a series of X's
indicating a house that was abandoned, waiting for demolition.
Sprinkled in between the desolation
were signs of life – a bar, a diner, a man sitting on his porch.
I met Larry that day, a lonely elderly
expat French Canadian watching the cars go by. Larry's house was
immaculate.
“My family helped me rebuild,” he
told me. “But all my neighbors are gone.”
A year later, I stopped at the
Prattsville Diner and asked the lone waitress if she knew Larry and could
tell me what had happened to him.
“It's kind of sad,” she told me.
“Larry's such a sweetheart. He's moved to an assisted living center
a ways from here but no one ever goes to see him. Most people didn't
get to know him because they had trouble understanding his accent.”
It was a sunny late summer day. The
annual Mudfest, the community event commemorating the floods that
nearly destroyed their town, were over.
“Not many people came this year,”
the waitress, Malissa Post, told me. “I think a lot of the crowd last year was from New
York City, and this year they're still cleaning up after Hurricane
Sandy.”
I had a cup of coffee and watched
Malissa work. There were just a couple of tables to handle, a group
of elderly ladies meeting for lunch, a man in a blue workshirt
sitting by himself, a regular stopping in for “just a coffee,
honey.”
One of the older ladies left her
styrofoam container of leftovers on the counter.
“I'm visiting the little girls room,”
she told Malissa. “Don't let me forget this!”
Sure enough, she came back out and
shuffled deliberately out the door without it. Malissa went running
after her, waving the styrofoam over her head.
“Martha my dear, did you forget
something?”
“I love my locals,” Malissa told
me. “I'm here Monday, Thursday and Sunday and they know my
schedule. If they don't show up, I worry.”
Malissa grew up in Prattsville. She's
worked at the diner for ten years.
“I was a CNA (certified nurses'
assistant), got my certificate and worked for just four months. They
paired me with a girl who was a lot smaller than me. We were lifting
a 195 pound man and I asked her if she was ready. She said she was
but she couldn't hold the weight. And you know you can't drop him to
the floor – you have take yourself to the floor with them and take
the patient's weight on you, break their fall. I messed my back up
and I can't do it anymore. Being a CNA was my plan for life.
With them, I was making $15 an hour. Per diems it meant I could pick
my hours. I did not plan on working in a diner the rest of my life.
Nope.”
“This job pays $240 a week. But now
I've got no arm strength. None. I have a hard time lifting these
buckets. If we had to carry trays here like you do in most
restaurants, I couldn't work here. I'm so grateful we have a
dishwasher on the weekends, cause those buckets fill up so quick and
I can't lift 'em. When I got hurt I weighed like one fifty, now I
weigh one thirty, but I have no muscles. I'm forty and I already have
back issues. I've lost all this weight walking for six months
straight. I finally just now got my car back on the road. I've been
walking back and forth to work. If I had to go to the doctor's, God
forbid I had to find a taxi. We don't have those.”
“I work three jobs. I babysit for my
cousin in the morning, she has two little boys. I work from six in
the morning to fifteen minutes to twelve. And, uh, I try to get ready
while I'm babysitting. You know, get dressed, do my hair, my makeup,
so when she walks in the door I'm ready to go. She's my cousin and
it's hard to find a babysitter around here. She pays me twenty
dollars a day. So if I work five days, that sets the salary, what
20-40-60-80, I only usually work four days a week, that's $80 on top
of $240. Well, I say $240 but by the time the taxes come out, I end
up with like $150. So $150 plus $80.”
“Then I clean for my aunt who has
handicapped children. She went through knee surgery last year and
her knee is worse now than it was before the surgery. Her surgeon
says it will never be any better. So I clean one day a week for her,
she pays me $75 a week. But she doesn't pay me on the day I clean –
because she gets Social Security disability, I get paid the beginning
of every month for the work I did the month before.”
“I have to basically live off this
job and babysitting. I don't touch that other money – I live on my
tips and my salary here and $60 from babysitting. I live alone. I am
moving into a very small studio. My children are both grown and out
of the house this year. It was easier when they were with me, 'cause
they both had jobs. I said, look, you're this age and this is Mommy's
job and you've got a little summer job and you're going to
contribute. And I made them put the extra away, so in the winter
they'd have their little jobs at the ski mountain and I have my
little job here, but when you need extra money it's there.”
“My daughter moved to Florida and my
son moved to Ashland and it's just Mommy now. I moving out of the
four bedroom house I had just a month ago. I'm leaving a lot of my
furniture behind and moving into a tiny little studio. All I need is
my bed, I have an overstuffed chair, a coffee table, two little end
tables, that's all I need. I'm good. It's $500 a month, everything
included. You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.”
I noted there weren't many options for
living or working in such a small community.
“There's nothing in this town. Yeah,
I love the owner of the local grocery store to death, but all he
hires is little schoolgirls and college girls. I've put in
applications three times in the past six years. Every time, I say,
'Jim, are you doing any hiring?' and he says, 'I will be in a week.
Fill this out and come back and see me in a week.' And I go back and
in that time he's hired four new girls.”
“We've got that, we've got the liquor
store, Agway and one bar in this town is about it. My cousin actually
works in the grocery store. I may end up taking a fourth job cleaning
houses on the days I'm not working here.”
I asked if she considered moving to a
bigger community.
“My father lives here and he's in
hospice, dying. I lost my mom two years ago. Actually, July 24, right
before the flood I lost my mother and then we had the flood. No way
am I going anywhere right now. But I tell my friends and even my
sisters, the day he closes his eyes and don't wake up, once
everything's settled that's the day you see me saying, 'Call me. See
ya!' I'm going back to Tennessee.
I actually lived there for two years
before my dad got sick and I loved it there. It's so much cheaper to
live and that's what I'm going back to!”
“I'm not involved with anyone right
now – I had a boyfriend for five years and we broke up a few months
ago. So I'm free. I have kids but they've moved on with their lives.
So the only thing stopping me is my father. And I know it's just a
matter of time.”
“I can't believe he's hung on so
long. He's got something called myesthenia gravis. It's almost like
multiple sclerosis, but instead of paralyzing you, it shuts down all
your major organs. My dad's had surgery three times on his eyes –
he can't have surgery anymore. Now it's started to affect his heart
and his lungs. Hospice came in and he's on morphine. He weighs like
seventy pounds. So it's just a matter of time before he lies down and
that oxygen just won't be enough. And I'm okay with that. I have
three younger sisters and the one he lives with isn't – she thinks
it's horrible. I try to tell her, do you want to see him keep
suffering or do you want him to be free? After the last time in the
hospital he looked at me and told me, 'No more. You tell them no
more, I want to go home to my bedroom to die.' And since I'm his
health proxy, there's nobody can do a damned thing about it. I love
my dad to death. I loved my mom to death, too, but I always had a
closer bond with my dad. When I was growing up, I was working with my
dad. I was hanging sheetrock on walls. I was taping, I was painting.
I was working on cars because my father had two older boys, and they
moved away and then he had me. So I was his tomgirl. My sisters had
no desire to get dirty or greasy, but as long as I was with my dad I
was happy.”
