Reunions at the Rare

On the day after my father’s service at Holy Rood, I returned to New Hampshire.  Traveling first by train into Manhattan and then by bus to Nashua, I had a few hours’ layover in the city.  With the weather unusually mild for the first day of February, I took this opportunity to walk around and revisit some of my favorite spots.  Even though I hadn’t actually lived in the area for a long time, I remained a native New Yorker, and I still felt very much at home there.

From Penn Station, I went first to the Franciscan church on West 32nd Street and spent some quiet moments there.  Next, I walked six blocks south with the intention of briefly stopping by the Rare Bar and Grill for old time’s sake.  Located on the first floor of the Hilton Hotel at 152 West 26^th Street near Seventh Avenue, the Rare was an easy walk from Penn and has been the site of several happy meetings with my friend and former colleague Walter Burke.  I had happy memories of the Rare, just as I had of many places in the city, and I thought it might be nice to stop by for a moment and reminisce.

When I arrived, something didn’t seem right.  The signs were gone.  The outside menu was gone. The inside was dark.  No one was there.  A notice on the door revealed that the hotel was seeking a new tenant for the restaurant in order to improve the dining service for its guests.  Then I realized, to my utter astonishment, that the Rare was closed!  Not closed in the sense that it just hadn’t opened yet for the day, but completely shut down and out of business!  I was shocked and disappointed.  How could this be?  I had been there with Walter only the previous May, although admittedly, that was now eight months ago.  I walked away feeling very dejected.

This dejection soon turned into sentiment and nostalgia.  I remembered the first time I had met Walter at the Rare.  That had been by his invitation on Monday afternoon, March 28, 2016, and it was an exceptionally happy and truly memorable occasion.  That first reunion after so many years proved to be so enjoyable that we met at the Rare again several months later on Wednesday, November 2, and then again a year afterwards on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.  Most of these meetings took place when I was in New York visiting my parents; thus, their timing was very convenient.

The Rare was a great place for two alumni of the sea to meet and dine and remember the voyages of their youth.  It was a quiet and uncrowded restaurant with great food and attentive service, and it was very convenient to Penn Station.  Also, in a neighborhood that was practically saturated with sports bars and fast food joints, it was neither of these.  It was a cut above the ordinary, but not so fancy that two merchant seamen wouldn’t know how to behave there.  Furthermore, since the Rare formed a link to our past seafaring careers, it was easy to start feeling some attachment to the place.  I’ve never felt sentimental about any other restaurant, but then, the Rare was different.

Dinner alone at the Rare would not have been any fun.  The enjoyment lay in the companionship and camaraderie even more than in the food.  With the palpable common ground of the fraternity of the sea, and with a shared outlook on life formed by the rigors of going to sea, our conversation flowed as freely and as strongly as a flood tide.  There was always so much to talk about!  The time seemed to stand still as we recalled ships and shipmates, voyages and destinations, adventures at sea and in port, and so very much more.  But of course, the time did not stand still at the Rare any more than it had all those years ago aboard ship.  Always too soon, we needed to return to the present day and walk back to Penn Station.

Our last reunion at the Rare took place on Tuesday, May 28, 2019.  Almost a year ago now.  It never occurred to me then that the Rare would be shut down and that our reunions would never take place there again.  But “time marches on,” as Walter remarked, “whether we’re ready for it or not.”

Indeed, time has been marching on relentlessly since the very beginning.  Everyone and everything have lasted only so long.  We recognize the brevity of our own lives, of course, but even grand creations that were built to last for centuries, such as the World Trade Center and the original Pennsylvania Railroad Station, have lived only for brief moments of time.  So, too, did most of the ships that Walter and I sailed on.  To my knowledge, all but two have gone to the scrap yard.  Only the Mercury and the Comet remain, moored in the reserve fleet on the West Coast.

As family members, former shipmates, old friends, and even great ships and iconic buildings leave this life and return to dust, it becomes easy for one remaining to think as the Psalmist: “I am a stranger in the earth” (Ps. 119:19).  As everything that was familiar becomes lost, one can feel out of place in the world as it changes incessantly and becomes increasingly different and even strange.  The demise of the Rare Bar and Grill has come to symbolize for me the loss of so much more.  With it closed, one of the last links to my irretrievably gone seafaring past is now itself irretrievably gone.  I will miss the Rare just as I miss going to sea.

But as the deacon asserted in the service at Holy Rood, “we have our citizenship in heaven” (Phil. 3:20 NAB).  No longer will we be “strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19).  On an earthly voyage that by its very nature is fraught with uncertainty, change, loss, and sorrow, there can be no better future than to ultimately return to our celestial home port.

Now, we have photographic documentation of a reunion at the Rare.  A member of the wait staff took this portrait of Walter and me after dinner on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.  Walter stands on the left, and I’m on the right.  It was a wonderfully happy and festive occasion.