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50 Encanto Park, 1961 The Civil Defense siren wails and sends pigeons circling the ersatz stem-wheeler, the Confederate Belle. The captain casts the bow line off and jumps into his canvas pilothouse while the great cool shadow of the hull swings into the channel and sends bluegill fluttering beneath the dock. The Evinrude sputters, purrs. The electric motor bums its oil and turns the phony paddle wheel that never touches water. Somebody's birthday, though I don't remember whose as we sit in our paper hats under the fringed pink awning and stare ahead into a future of landmarks and guideposts that will never change: the white-spattered rocks and cracked bamboo of Duck Island, the blue thumb of the band shell that hid behind the jointed fingers of the towering palms, and the little predictable train that skirted the circumference of the parkits silver engine's chuff and hoot, its dark thunder inside the Quonset-hut tunnel. And out in the large bowl of the cement-banked lagoon, the rented canoes and pedal boats flash blue, red and yellow, and shoot off white sparks of water from oars and paddles. But all of this we saw through the glare-struck distance of the afternoon as the Confederate Belle, slow and boxy, hugged the grassy shore and near the fragile Chinese bridge made its wide turn that steered the prow back into its wake, which now had almost disappeared, though something of its smooth calm V remained so that the pilot singing loudly from his little house could find the watery seam and close his eyes, safe and blind for the journey home. 51 ...

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