Rats : Observations On The History And Habitat Of The City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants Part 7

5:19-A man in white pants, s.h.i.+rt, and ap.r.o.n emerges from out of the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant, lights a cigarette, relaxes amidst the refuse. Confucius taught that one eats and one does not know the savor of food. Likewise, one does not know the potential for rankness and repulsiveness of the once-savory food.

5:24-I am sipping coffee, settling in for a few hours of observation, when I see it, the first rat of the night. The rat appears at the top of the alley. The rat stops. The rat crosses the cobblestones, bounding, stopping once, bounding again. The rat circles behind the construction site and then comes back across the alley again to the garbage on the Irish bar and restaurant side. I try to maintain a certain rationality, or clinical aloofness, and yet (as is typical by now) I am mesmerized-first, by the appearance of a rat, still a perverse miracle to me, and second, by a movement that is completely ratlike in its hugging of the wall, in its bold carefulness, and yet also different-a surprise. Who could have predicted that the rat would cross the alley up high and then cross down low again? Seconds pa.s.s. One, then two more rats follow. Ah, the rats of Edens Alley!

5:33-A man emerges from the Irish bar, bringing out more garbage into the alley's growing stream: the sound of the door opening, the crackly thump of the heavy but light-plastic-enclosed trash causes rats to scurry out of human sight.

5:40-Another rat has appeared at the top of the alley, has squeezed himself up through a hole in the sidewalk, paws pulling him up, up and out. On the Chinese restaurant side, I see three adult rats and two juveniles-at least I think the juveniles are juveniles: they are in and out of the garbage bags quickly, with their youthful vigor, their close-to- the-street risks. Juveniles seem to wander farther down the alley, nearly entering the street; the older rats stay closer to the nests. In their small size is the promise of rat regeneration, of rat life reborn in this still-winter alley, in the wounded but healing city. And there seem to be more and more juveniles.

5:44-The rats retreat suddenly. The reason: three men enter the alley, though when I see the men, I wonder which creature left the alley for which creature-sometimes it seems as if the rats' departure is a courtesy extended by the rats. I leave my post at the bottom of the alley and go around the corner and, from out of sight of the young men, see rats in the garage like lot on Gold Street; peering through the fence, I notice rats climbing over lumber, up metal sc.r.a.ps, across broken things. I think of all the rats that have crawled through this alley before, the history of this alley's previous inhabitants. Oh, to know-to really really know-this pellicle of rat-infested ground. know-this pellicle of rat-infested ground.

I can hear the rats too: scurrying, screeching, their strong nails sc.r.a.ping the sc.r.a.p construction metal. Still waiting for the young men, I walk up into Edens Alley and see more garbage and then more rats and then more more rats coming around the corner from Ryders Alley-still being displaced by the three humans. I sneak around, quietly, but at some point I begin to believe that the rats are aware of my presence, and consequently, I back down from the alley, slowly, then more quickly, then a little more quickly still. My movement is noticed almost peripherally by a man who is at this time pa.s.sing the entrance to Edens Alley, arm in arm with a woman. When he sees me seeing the rat, when he interprets my rat alley evacuation body language, he picks up his own pace. And like me, he nearly sprints, slowing down a few seconds later, just down Gold Street, when his partner looks at him strangely, at which point he says, excitedly, even slightly frantically, "Holy rats coming around the corner from Ryders Alley-still being displaced by the three humans. I sneak around, quietly, but at some point I begin to believe that the rats are aware of my presence, and consequently, I back down from the alley, slowly, then more quickly, then a little more quickly still. My movement is noticed almost peripherally by a man who is at this time pa.s.sing the entrance to Edens Alley, arm in arm with a woman. When he sees me seeing the rat, when he interprets my rat alley evacuation body language, he picks up his own pace. And like me, he nearly sprints, slowing down a few seconds later, just down Gold Street, when his partner looks at him strangely, at which point he says, excitedly, even slightly frantically, "Holy s.h.i.+t! s.h.i.+t! Did you see those rats?" Did you see those rats?"

5:55-I am back at the base of the alley, trying to be discreet, but the young men in alley are still there, making loud chattering noises. They notice me. Again, I scurry off. I retreat to John DeLury Plaza, reflexively conjuring up John DeLury himself for an instant: the pipe, the gla.s.ses, the stubborn, shout-p.r.o.ne, un-unrelenting negotiator, his workers. And then I move farther across the street to stand near the trash in front of a Burger King. The young males continue to peek out of the alley at me. Who knows what they are thinking when they are looking at me? Though I was concerned, I was also preoccupied. I had to stay with the rats, no matter what.

6:03-More garbage comes up out of the bottom of the Irish bar. One bag lands on a rodent bait station that is ancient and nearly destroyed. The garbage tide is rising. I am reminded of Milton, in "Lycidas": " . . . tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new." Though when I am reminded of it the words woods woods and and pastures pastures are replaced by are replaced by trash. trash.

6:08-The young men move out. When will the rats return? And, continuing on that line of silent inquiry, what exactly am I waiting here for? Nature, even rat nature, does not answer mortals, even rat-interested mortals. If the alley speaks, it is obscure: Claude os et audit! Claude os et audit!

6:14-Sixty-two people pa.s.s in thirty seconds; even at night, even after rush hour, even when fewer people are on the street because of the World Trade Center attack and because of some lingering fear and even still some panic. Even after all this, New York is stuffed with people, people constantly walking, running, going out to eat, leaving food behind, even if they don't know it. Extrapolating, I calculate that at this slow, semi-abandoned, semiconscious downtown rate, the entire city pa.s.ses, all eight million New Yorkers, in a month and a half. To stand in an alley is to watch the city from its bowels, to feel life grumbling in its gut.

6:15-The first rat returns. He is large. He comes from out of the deep hole, that great hole in the back. I might plumb the depths of that hole, but to what end? Suddenly, as I ponder, the geographic, historical, and animal begin to collide. I think about the hole. I know, for instance, that this is the hole that leads to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the sanitation workers' union hall-that is the raw, coincidence-flavored fact. And yet to my eye, it appears bottomless, as if it goes straight to the other side of the world. And so I wonder further, what is is this hole, this deep pit? this hole, this deep pit?

6:18-They are all returning, the rats, flus.h.i.+ng back out into the alley, like beachgoers after a brief thundershower. As I step slowly into the alley, I am now focused on the hole, the great rat pit. My focus is broken momentarily, though, when someone drops a cigarette from an upper floor of an apartment above the alley. The cigarette hits the ground: a miniature, sparkling orange meteorite lands at my feet, a break in the firmament. I look up and see a faint star.

IT SEEMS INEVITABLE IN RETROSPECT. Like a fisherman who becomes fixated on a fish, like a whaler who becomes obsessed with one whale, I notice one rat: a large male, with an unusual tail, strangely curled. This rat appears, through binoculars, to be a little more more than a foot-i.e., longer than a cobblestone, which is easily measured to be twelve inches. I watch this rat graze from one garbage bag to the next. This rat does not leave the alley with food; he eats food in the alley, standing his ground. And most significant to me, when it goes away, it goes into the hole. than a foot-i.e., longer than a cobblestone, which is easily measured to be twelve inches. I watch this rat graze from one garbage bag to the next. This rat does not leave the alley with food; he eats food in the alley, standing his ground. And most significant to me, when it goes away, it goes into the hole.

I move to test this rat. I flinch. It flinches, but it does not flee upon my movement. It hunkers, moves back slightly, and in a few seconds it returns to a large garbage bag, where another more moderate-size rat pulls and pulls at garbage. The big rat joins in. There appears to be no animosity between the rats. They stand on their rear legs. They pull and pull, until first the large rat and then the moderate rat each draw from the bag a large piece of chicken. Again, they do not quarrel. With an abundance of garbage, there is a harmony in the rat alley.

6:32-A sanitation truck pa.s.ses, and then a street cleaner. The rats are unfazed.

6:42-All at once, with a silence-breaking clatter, a small pack of men pour out of the back door of the gourmet supermarket at the end of the alley. They have bags and bags of garbage and they fill the large Dumpsters full of trash. They overfill them with garbage, using poles and gloves. The rats have retreated and the men from the market are now tossing trash down Edens Alley, fire brigade style.

6:50-Out across Fulton Street, the garbage from the Burger King is dragged out, as I imagine is happening at fast food restaurants all over New York at around this time. A small mountain of garbage bags forms, a vile and grease-dripping sedimentary New York City occurrence that nightly turns the streets into miniature badlands, to be eroded by morning, a.s.suming the sanitation workers arrive, after which there will be dark stains on the concrete, like sweat on the morning rocks of a mountain.

6:57-More garbage, more rats, so many more that it's becoming difficult to concentrate: there are too many rats now, more than a dozen visible at any time-squads constantly surfacing, resurfacing. In the foreground are the young rats. In the back, the larger rats, the rats that must be older, given their size: when I venture up with binoculars I can see their mottled coats, the bite marks-on one, a gash like scar. I see also specialty diversions, rat performers in a circus of trash, affording much entertainment for the alley watcher: a rat climbs up a garbage bag, stops at the summit, appears to look around. The rat jumps, nearly straight up, in fact jumps for what my later measurement will show to be one foot-up, up and onto the old ledge of a boarded-up window. The rat walks along the ledge and turns, behind the rusted old steel window bars, to face the alley again, then lowers himself down on a bag back close to the wall, a bag that is inaccessible from the alley floor.

7:15-The rats are drunk on food, I think. Technically speaking, all a rat needs is three or four ounces of food a day, but these rats seem to be greatly exceeding that amount, and wouldn't you? It is not at all difficult to picture the rat eating at its food source until the food source is destroyed, cleaned out, until the rat must move on to the next alley, the next street, the next neighborhood. Now, the rats that grab food and run back to the nest are getting food and running around in circles-as if feigning a return to their nests, or maybe not feigning, I couldn't say. In a few minutes, they are not eating as much, but seem to be recreating, playing. They fool in the little pile of dirt by the telephone company's excavation; they burrow, throw dirt, run off. How free they are! How full of liberty in what was not originally their own environment but is now! Perhaps this alley reminds them of their past in some distant way? In their voyage from garbage to nest, from nest to garbage, with the slight variations that come when they lead each other toward food with the scent of food-hunting success or away from danger with the invisible scent of stress. Do they understand understand old paths, old routes, old rat roads? Does this dirt-filled burrowing spot perhaps remind them, somewhere deep in their genetic structure, deep in their rat bones, of a place where they burrowed freely in Siberia, in the rat-originating Eurasian steppes? Or of their first burrows in old New York? old paths, old routes, old rat roads? Does this dirt-filled burrowing spot perhaps remind them, somewhere deep in their genetic structure, deep in their rat bones, of a place where they burrowed freely in Siberia, in the rat-originating Eurasian steppes? Or of their first burrows in old New York?

7:25-I am moved to move by a man who, apparently not seeing me in the alley, was moved to urinate in the spot where I had been standing. I cross the street and sit in John DeLury Plaza on my portable camping stool. I drink coffee from my thermos and think once again of John DeLury and the time of trash piled high in the streets. I think of big rats in general and then the big rat in the alley, and then I look back in the alley and easily spot him and his corkscrew tail. Some people go off into the mountains to collect themselves and look into their souls, but here I am enjoying the view at something outside my soul, in this case a rat.

7:32-Another guy comes out of the Chinese restaurant. He is kicking boxes as he smokes a cigarette. He leans back when he kicks the boxes, keeps his body back, at a safe distance. Is he too observing rats? Or is he merely repulsed? In a big city, or in any city for that matter, it is one thing to observe someone who appears to be watching rats, and quite another to know how they might feel about them, especially when you yourself having been watching rats for three seasons, and you're still not certain precisely why it is that you are watching them.

IT HAD BEEN A MILD WINTER, to be sure. The following year, I would watch snow fill the alley and notice that the rats coming up from their burrows in Edens Alley tunneled through the soot-peppered ice. But during this winter, snow fell in the alley only lightly, and I wondered if the mildness had somehow helped explode the rat population because on another night, closer toward spring, around eleven o'clock, I saw even more rats, the rat-infested alley seeming more rat-infested. I counted eighteen easily but then lost track. To some extent, the alley seemed clean; it had rained recently and the light from the streetlight glimmered on the slick cobblestones, on the garbage bags' luminescent black. But the alley was more ratty. This evening, for whatever reason, things were not as amicable among the rats. The rats were squealing. The rats were fighting. Juveniles streamed down from the large dark hole on the south side of the alley and gorged in the Chinese restaurant's refuse. Adults settled into the trash by the door of the Irish restaurant and bar. At the foot of the alley, I heard a man pa.s.sing by on Fulton Street, tossing off conversational litter: "That's what life's about-choices." And then I looked to see that in the alley, the rats were mating.

If I draw the line at something regarding rat observations, then it is rats mating. I prefer to let them mate in privacy, though I will say this: the male seemed aggressive, and the female made sounds that seemed to indicate she was not interested in mating, though her movements indicated interests to the contrary. But mate these rats did, and repeatedly, which is a thing about male rats-they have been known to mate with a female rat long after she is interested in mating, sometimes after the female is dead.

When they were done, I inspected the male rat again. His tail was distinctive. Was it the same corkscrew shape I had seen before, or was I just imagining it? Had I spent too many hours in the rat alley? Either way, I could see this rat chasing another rat. This rat was chasing a rat that had come down from the top of the alley, down the hill that begins at the deep black hole. The rat chase stopped at the end of a prescribed range, an invisible (to the nonrat) border that describes the difference between home and not home. The rats ran to the line and stopped, as if encountering an invisible fence. The chase could have been friendly for all I know, but it could have been to the death; rat territory seems sacred to rats.

A FEW NIGHTS LATER, MIDNIGHT, and the rats were in full swing, and I was looking at the rat that I was amazed to find I recognized. I waited a long time, because the bar around the corner was crowded, and the alley accepted the overflow. Tonight, a small group of young women were a.s.sembled in the alley, standing alongside the dark rat pit. "They're carding," a woman said, voice high-pitched. Two young males arrived. The young males laughed, then walked away. A woman said, "He ratted on us!" When the young people finally left, the rats returned to take their place. Picture me, in fleece and wind-resistant overcoat, furiously scribbling notes. Picture me looking up, amazed, because I saw the rat, the rat with the tail. Picture me understanding a little bit about this community of rats, recognizing some traits, some habits, some of the players in the colony-or at least recognizing what must have been the alpha male.

THE NIGHTS WERE WARMER, and a week pa.s.sed, and on the next night I was in the alley, it was pouring rain, and more people were in the alley, this time a film crew, filming a scene: one man attacking another, a mugging. The actors were at the top of Edens Alley, and as I watched them stand where the rats normally skitter, I wondered what story, if any, the rats would tell about this gutterlike lane.

Two policemen in a police car were watching the movie set, the police car's headlights spotlighting the dancing of the rain. (Policemen were present because of a city law that requires police presence on a movie set on which any weapon, even fake, is used.) I waited on the edge and watched as the rats got used to the actors. As the rats emerged, they appeared in the police headlights like stars in an ice show. After a while, I introduced myself to the director as someone who was observing rats. Of course, I was happy to hear the director mention that he was pleased with the presence of rats-he said they would help the scene, which was about a robbery, as best I could understand. I did not mention the big rat, the one I recognized. This didn't seem like something I should mention to him, or to anyone, for that matter. This particular rat eventually emerged for its cameo, though, and when it did, the director turned to the cameraman, recognized the rat as the star that it so clearly was.

"Oh, man, did you see that rat?" the cameraman said. "Jesus, that is one huge huge rat!" rat!"

MY RAT, MY LEADER OF RATS, my rat that doesn't seem to so much lead as to coerce-my Rat King, which I called it even though I knew it was not a huge Rat King that sat on a ring of other rats' tails, that ruled other rats, as best I could tell. I saw him as a star among stars in the deep and capacious alley of rats. For me, this rat cast a transcendent sublimity that united these unwanted inhabitants of the alley in particular and the city in general, even if they are abhorred. I saw him as the Brute Neighbor in all of us, the representative Unrepresented Rat.

But was I just making him up? Was he a rat of my imagination?

A few nights later, on a night when the private trash-carting truck came to take the rats' habitat away, to open the truck's hydraulic jaw and engulf the trash, I was caught unawares as the truck arrived; I was startled. I backed off as the trash was taken away, as the driver of the truck climbed down into the alley. I was up against the wall when the driver approached, nodded, greeted me with no apparent malice; on the contrary, he was smiling. I said I was looking at rats. The driver didn't blink. "Did you see the big one with the tail?" he said.

I was flabbergasted.

I described the rat. I described the rat's tail. This man knew this rat's tail.

"Yeah, he lives back in that hole in there," the man said. "He's big, boy. I've seen him walk walk up stairs." up stairs."

Chapter 19.

A GOLDEN HILL GOLDEN HILL.

THE RAT HOLE! The rat pit! The darkness that is home to my Rat King. Near the end of a year spent thinking about rats, after three and nearly four seasons examining this squalid parcel of city land, after communing with this Philosopher's Hole, if you will, I am lured by a rat to consider this aspect of the alley of the Rat King. I see the rat, in my mind's eye, climbing down into this hole-this fire-escape-equipped darkness that is, on flashlight-led inspection, more than one story deep. I see the hole. I walk down and out of the alley and around the corner and see the front of the building and realize that the building itself is built into the side of a hill: its back to the hill's incline, its face facing the slope down, which, in turn, explains the steep slope of the alley, which explains-at last!-why the hole down to the bas.e.m.e.nt is so unusually deep. So now, when I follow the rat down into the hole, I am thinking, paradoxically, of the hole's topographical opposite; I am thinking of this hill, this hill that I never really noticed before-I am thinking of Larry Adams, the city's exterminator, who talked about underground places that go back to the city's beginnings. And so again I wonder about the rat's sense of history: as a rat climbs down through the civic vestiges of man, through the layers of the city that reveal its abundant and varied history, as he makes his way out of the trash and into his nest, does he perceive in some history-powered synapse those ancestor rats, the very first Norway rats, who came on s.h.i.+ps from other lands at the time of the American Revolution, who followed these back trails in the past, who fought with the rats that were already here, who colonized and expanded and roamed and, now, in their collective presence in rat history, are the unknowable rat spirit that is part of what makes New York the city that it is? Laugh all you like, but all I knew was that somewhere in this rat hole I would figure out what it was that a year with rats had been trying to tell me*

Now, late at night, I could feel the ache of history under my feet, the secret in the rat-urine-covered cobblestones whispering to me. Once more I dug into Edens Alley's past, cut down into the history of a hill the way the blade of a saw pa.s.ses through time as it cuts through the growth rings of a thick, old tree. I headed back to when the hill was still an easily noticeable hill, into the geography that is mostly lost to contemporary humans: the terrain is smoothed yet the hill, still a factor in the rain, still warrants a few extra stairs in a nearby subway exit and is perhaps still noticeable at rat level. I read the old records in the city's archives and saw the hole itself being expanded in 1968 when the Uniformed Sanitationmen's a.s.sociation put in air-conditioning. I saw the underground vaults installed on the north side of the alley in 1948. I climbed with the rats, in a sense, as time rewound and the worn-down hill rose again, stood up in the ten-block area of office buildings that are filled with large companies but also with small companies too numerous to name. I saw the character of the neighborhood-and a neighborhood is is a character, the more you investigate it-as it transformed in reverse from financial services and residences and a giant housing project to a neighborhood of craftsmen and artisans and laborers, in addition to those facilities attending to the more ignominious duties of those trades. I could see back to when Gold Street was the center of the gold industry in New York City, when, in the rat range of Edens and Ryders Alleys, there were men making gold jewelry and making gold leaf. These gold workers, I discovered, came to Gold Street just after the Revolution not because of the hill but because of the swamp. So just as I went to the alley and found myself on a hill, so I looked down from the hill and saw the old swamp out past the housing projects that stand there now, past the Burger King that harvests fast food garbage each night. The last old printers in New York City still call the neighborhood the Swamp even though the old neighborhood isn't much there, and they recall the stench of the tanneries, the leather-making plants that were on old streets-Ferry Street and Jacob Street-that were built over and are now only rat-remembered. The tanners were descendants of people such as Smith Ely, tanner extraordinaire, who came to the Swamp on Gold Street, in 1835, and with other tanners contributed to the malodorous man-made swamp smell, who came to the Swamp because it was an a character, the more you investigate it-as it transformed in reverse from financial services and residences and a giant housing project to a neighborhood of craftsmen and artisans and laborers, in addition to those facilities attending to the more ignominious duties of those trades. I could see back to when Gold Street was the center of the gold industry in New York City, when, in the rat range of Edens and Ryders Alleys, there were men making gold jewelry and making gold leaf. These gold workers, I discovered, came to Gold Street just after the Revolution not because of the hill but because of the swamp. So just as I went to the alley and found myself on a hill, so I looked down from the hill and saw the old swamp out past the housing projects that stand there now, past the Burger King that harvests fast food garbage each night. The last old printers in New York City still call the neighborhood the Swamp even though the old neighborhood isn't much there, and they recall the stench of the tanneries, the leather-making plants that were on old streets-Ferry Street and Jacob Street-that were built over and are now only rat-remembered. The tanners were descendants of people such as Smith Ely, tanner extraordinaire, who came to the Swamp on Gold Street, in 1835, and with other tanners contributed to the malodorous man-made swamp smell, who came to the Swamp because it was an actual actual swamp-a swamp fed by a spring that popped up in September of 1879, when the men building the Manhattan support for the Brooklyn Bridge hit it at a depth of eighteen feet below ground: fifty gallons a minute had to be pumped when the spring was working alone at low tide, and two hundred gallons a minute at high tide. The tanners came, filled the swamp's dreck with more dreck, the rats reaping the discarded results. swamp-a swamp fed by a spring that popped up in September of 1879, when the men building the Manhattan support for the Brooklyn Bridge hit it at a depth of eighteen feet below ground: fifty gallons a minute had to be pumped when the spring was working alone at low tide, and two hundred gallons a minute at high tide. The tanners came, filled the swamp's dreck with more dreck, the rats reaping the discarded results.

But back to the Rat King, who has led me deeper down into the pit-even if I can't capture him in the tremulous beam of my flashlight, in the green light of the night-vision gear, for the Rat King has now taken me down to the time in history when his very first rat ancestors arrived in New York. Now, from my rat vantage, I can see way back in time, to the dawn of the lineage of New York's Rat Kings. I can see, for example, that the land of the rat alley is at the crest of a little valley that runs south to what is today Wall Street. The Leni-Lenape, the first humans known to have inhabited the then Rattus norvegicus-fvee Rattus norvegicus-fvee New York, perhaps described it with one definition of the word New York, perhaps described it with one definition of the word Mannahata: Mannahata: "hilly island." Then again, perhaps they did not: other explanations of the origins of "hilly island." Then again, perhaps they did not: other explanations of the origins of Mannahata Mannahata point out that it could have derived from the word point out that it could have derived from the word manahatouh, manahatouh, which means "place where timber is procured for bows and arrows," or even from which means "place where timber is procured for bows and arrows," or even from Manahachtanienk, Manahachtanienk, which means "the island where all became intoxicated," a reference to a time when Henry Hudson landed on the island in 1609 and everyone got really drunk. Certainly, the Dutch saw the hill too, and as high as it was above the swamps and streams, they filled it with wheat, so that when people looked up into it, when the wheat was kissed by sun, the hill appeared golden-in Dutch, which means "the island where all became intoxicated," a reference to a time when Henry Hudson landed on the island in 1609 and everyone got really drunk. Certainly, the Dutch saw the hill too, and as high as it was above the swamps and streams, they filled it with wheat, so that when people looked up into it, when the wheat was kissed by sun, the hill appeared golden-in Dutch, gouden bergh gouden bergh or Golden Hill. Gold Street was named for Golden Hill. In cities, we are surrounded by hints of the past, such is the richness of nomenclature! or Golden Hill. Gold Street was named for Golden Hill. In cities, we are surrounded by hints of the past, such is the richness of nomenclature!

But the existence of an ancient hill is not all that the Rat King showed me. I had followed rats through rent strikes and union movements. Now I was following a Rat King back to the forgotten history of the Golden Hill. I looked at the old maps and read the stories that are no longer read, and I discovered that it was on the Rat King's Golden Hill, on the top of Edens Alley's, that a long-forgotten battle of the American Revolution took place-the very first battle, in fact.

At least sometimes it is called a battle. Other times it is called a riot or just some trouble with a mob. What happened was, British soldiers attacked an unarmed crowd that was just as angry at the soldiers as the soldiers were angry with it. The first man to be attacked was the leader of the colonial ma.s.ses, Isaac Sears. In the days before the Revolution, Isaac Sears ruled the streets of New York. He is almost completely forgotten, but at the time he was known by the British and the colonials alike as King Sears or just The King. I will tell you just a little bit about him now because Isaac Sears is the hero of Edens Alley, my rat Rosetta stone. See how he precedes all that is ratty in New York and inadvertently summons the very first city rats.

ISAAC SEARS WAS BORN IN Cape Cod, Ma.s.sachusetts, the sixth of nine children, the son of an oysterman. Sears grew up in Connecticut and made his name as a sailor, during the Seven Years' War, a global war in which the colonies mostly fought the French and their Indian allies, and during which New York became rich as a supply port for the English and got used to a certain kind of independence. Sears was a privateer. A privateer was a legalized pirate, who worked freelance for the government, keeping the spoils of plundered enemy s.h.i.+ps. He was known for his daring, even among privateers, a survivor of impossible battles, of s.h.i.+pwrecks. Sears was described by a contemporary as a man of "great personal intrepidity; forward in dangerous enterprises and ready at all times to carry out the boldest measures." In 1759 he was s.h.i.+pwrecked on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, and saved his crew of nine men. After the war, he settled in New York, marrying Sarah Drake, the daughter of Francis Drake, owner of Drake's Tavern, an alehouse popular among sailors, boatmen, and seaport characters. They had eleven children. Sears invested in s.h.i.+ps, which traded with the West Indies and the island of Madeira. When the Seven Years' War ended, a recession hit New York. The British taxed the colonies to make up for revenue lost during the war. As a result, colonial trade with the West Indies came to a halt. People said that the streets in Madeira, once filled with merchants, had grown green with gra.s.s.

Isaac Sears became King Sears during the time of the Stamp Act, the first direct tax on the colonies-it required colonists to purchase stamps for all legal papers and was intended to raise money to send troops to America. On the arrival of the stamps, people protested in the streets, so that the governor, Cadwallader Colden, was forced to imprison the protesters in Fort George, the British fort. A crowd then destroyed Colden's expensive carriage and burned him in effigy. On the day before the Stamp Act was to take effect, Judge Robert Livingston called a meeting at a tavern. Livingston was against the Stamp Act, but as a member of the city's aristocracy, he was also against the disorder represented by a rioting crowd. His plan for the meeting was to convince as many citizens as possible to pledge armed support for the fort. As the meeting opened, the men in attendance paid close attention to Livingston-until Isaac Sears pushed forward, charging that the meeting was an attempt to keep the stamps from the citizens. "We will have them within forty-eight hours!" Sears shouted. The crowd roared. Sears shouted again: "Huzzah, my lads!" Now, Sears turned to Livingston and said, "Your best way, as you may now see, will be to advise Lieutenant Governor Colden to send the stamps from the fort to the inhabitants." In a way, Sears ratted on Livingston. Later, Sears compromised and allowed the governor to turn the stamps over to City Hall; something that people who didn't like him didn't necessarily recognize is that Sears almost always compromised-he understood that issues weren't black-and-white but often gray. From that day on, Sears found that he could exploit his reputation as a mob leader to get what the Liberty Boys wanted without necessarily resorting to force; he would hara.s.s people and ridicule them, shout them down in the pubs-he was the people's jerk. Isaac Sears became, in the words of George Bancroft, the nineteenth-century historian, "self-const.i.tuted, and for ten years, the recognized head of the people of New York."

Sears reigned as a member of the local chapter of the Sons of Liberty. The Liberty Boys, as they were also known, were a group of workers-sailmakers, printers, shopkeepers, day laborers, a songwriter, fishermen, oystermen, and the tradesmen sometimes called mechanics-who worked in the trades in the city, especially on the docks. (A precursor to the Sons of Liberty in New York was the Sons of Neptune.) In Boston, Liberty Boys were men like Paul Revere and John Hanc.o.c.k and Samuel Adams. They were the revolutionaries just before the Revolutionary War's revolutionaries, the fathers of the Founding Fathers.

Initially, the Liberty Boys didn't want a revolution. They were united in their interest in getting rid of the revenue acts that hurt their businesses. They saw liberty as the freedom to work and make money; the watermark on the stationery of the Sons of Liberty in Albany, for instance, was "Work & Be Rich." They fought for opportunity and the opportunity to work-for many years after the Revolution, the Fourth of July was celebrated as Labor Day. They were protesting for their rights as British citizens, rights they saw not as revolutionary but as standard. To protect their rights, the Liberty Boys encouraged each other's organizations through meetings and correspondence; the Sons of Liberty recommended the establishment of the first colonial postage system, and they arranged the first intercolonial a.s.sociations. In some cities the Sons of Liberty united with radical farmers in the countryside. (This was not the case in New York, however. "The Sons of Liberty are of opinion that no one is ent.i.tled to riot but themselves," wrote a Tory commentator at the time.) The aristocracy shared the Sons of Liberty's opposition to taxes, but to most of the aristocracy in New York the taxes imposed by the British were not as bad as what they called "the leveling principles" and the "democratic notions" of groups like the Liberty Boys. The nonradical rulers of the city called the Liberty Boys all kinds of names. They called them vermin, the mob, mobile vulgus, mobile vulgus, lobsterbacks, Negroes and boys, "flaming patriots without property," "the mixed rabble of Scotch, Irish, and foreign vagabonds," "descendants of convicts," "foulmouthed and sin-flaming sons of discord and faction," "the meanest people," "Children & Negroes," oystermen, and rats. Philip Foner, in lobsterbacks, Negroes and boys, "flaming patriots without property," "the mixed rabble of Scotch, Irish, and foreign vagabonds," "descendants of convicts," "foulmouthed and sin-flaming sons of discord and faction," "the meanest people," "Children & Negroes," oystermen, and rats. Philip Foner, in Labor and the American Revolution, Labor and the American Revolution, joked that an entire book could be written just using the derogatory names that the upper cla.s.s called the Liberty Boys and their Hke as they swarmed through the cities. joked that an entire book could be written just using the derogatory names that the upper cla.s.s called the Liberty Boys and their Hke as they swarmed through the cities.

The Liberty Boys gathered in taverns, communal places, where they rented pipes and shared cups. Pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, and handbills were read aloud for the benefit of the illiterate. There were more taverns in New York than in any other colonial city, and the talk in New York taverns was considered especially effusive. "There is no modesty, no attention to one another," John Adams wrote, after he visited New York on his way to Philadelphia. "They talk very loud, very fast, and altogether. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again, and talk away." After the British taxed tea, New Yorkers began drinking coffee and taverns were sometimes called coffeehouses but they were still taverns. The Liberty Boys met in Burns Tavern, in Fraunces Tavern, at Drake's, in Montayne's, and in a tavern that they chipped in and bought for themselves, called Hamden Hall. The Liberty Boys also met with women on occasion; they are thought to be the first a.s.sociation in America to have a women's auxiliary, the Daughters of Liberty. The Daughters of Liberty refused to drink tea after the tea tax and boycotted British clothing, saying, "It is better to wear a homespun coat than to lose out liberty." (Once during a Daughters of Liberty demonstration, a man spoke out against American independence, at which point a Daughter of Liberty stripped him of his s.h.i.+rt and, in lieu of tar and feathers, covered him with mola.s.ses and the tops of flowers.) A song that the Sons of Liberty sang went like this:

With the beasts of the wood, we will ramble for food,And lodge in wild deserts and cavesAnd live poor as Job on the skirts of the globe,Before we'll submit to be slaves; brave boys,Before we'll submit to be slaves.

They posted handbills around the city that said LIBERTY, PROPERTY, AND NO STAMPS. They erected a Liberty Pole, a flagless flagpole in the Fields, which was also called The Commons and is now City Hall Park-it was the place where New Yorkers gathered and talked and shouted. They said they would "fight up to their knees in blood."

Isaac Sears's great power as the leader of the Sons of Liberty and leader of the revolutionaries of New York was that he. could convince so many people to see things his way. Before the Stamp Act and the Sons of Liberty, New Yorkers had no access to government, nothing akin to the public meetings that Bostonians held at Faneuil Hall. Sears used the mob to give people some legitimacy as citizens-for the first time in New Yorkers' history. What the aristocracy saw as riots, the rioters saw as a kind of power; a Loyalist official said, "The mob begins to think and reason. Poor reptiles!" Sears's great tactical success was in helping to foil the Royalist New Yorkers who had promised British officials that New York would desert the revolutionaries' cause; he was the unrelenting rebel presence, always gnawing away at Royalist gains. It has been argued that the British lost the Revolution because they devoted so much time and energy to holding New York. If so, then the leader most responsible for the colonies' ultimate triumph is Edens Alley's forgotten privateer.

As the old revolutionaries became more revolutionary, Sears's Liberty Boys moved accordingly; if Samuel Adams was the first to philosophize about breaking off from England, Isaac Sears was the first to act. With his boats intercepting s.h.i.+ps filled with British goods, with his rallies and visits to Tory homes, with his constant verbal and physical hara.s.sment of Tories in taverns, Sears is said to have done more to boycott British goods than anyone else in the colonies. In 1765, he sent two Liberty Boys to Connecticut with letters intended to form a military pact between the colonies in the face of possible British aggression-the first move toward concerted physical resistance in the American Revolution. I have never seen a contemporary portrait of him, but I imagine he often had his fist clenched and his mouth open. He was the first in a long line of crowd rulers that subsequently bred Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall and machine-led governments all over America. In 1775, Sears was arrested but the crowds rescued him, carrying him on their shoulders through Wall Street and up Broadway to the Fields. Disgusted that the city did not intercede, a Tory wrote, "Our magistrates have not the spirit of a louse."

After the battles of Lexington and Concord, in 1775, the Sons of Liberty raided the a.r.s.enal at City Hall, arming citizens. Sears marched 360 men to the customs house and closed the port. He sent patrols out from his home. He was on a short list of people that the British military called "the most active Leaders and Abettors of the rebellion." His Majesty's s.h.i.+p Asia Asia was ordered to attack Sears's home in Beekman Street, due to Sears's success in blocking supplies to that and other British s.h.i.+ps. "[F]ire upon the house of that traitor, Sears . . . and beat it down," wrote Vice Admiral Graves. The British put a bounty on his head and tried their best to exterminate him, but at the last minute, just before the British took control of New York, King Sears slipped away. was ordered to attack Sears's home in Beekman Street, due to Sears's success in blocking supplies to that and other British s.h.i.+ps. "[F]ire upon the house of that traitor, Sears . . . and beat it down," wrote Vice Admiral Graves. The British put a bounty on his head and tried their best to exterminate him, but at the last minute, just before the British took control of New York, King Sears slipped away.

BUT LET'S NOT FORGET THE rat and the rat alley, because it is there where I stand on a warm evening at the beginning of spring when my Rat King, fed and fought with and triumphant in an overindulged-by- garbage kind of way, waddles down into history-it is in this very spot, I realize at last, that Isaac Sears struck the first blow for liberty, in a skirmish called the Battle of Golden Hill. It was an unglorious blow, an animal-like action, and the first blow in a battle that led directly to the conception of America-as well as to the introduction into New York of the Rattus norvegicus. Rattus norvegicus. It's an example of the circles of men and the circles of rats closing in on each other, to a point. It's an example of the circles of men and the circles of rats closing in on each other, to a point.

The buildup to the Battle of Golden Hill began on January 13, 1770, with a fight at the Liberty Pole, a flagless flagpole that was the lightning rod for both sides' fermenting discontent. The British soldiers hated the Liberty Pole as if it were a living thing; they had already destroyed the pole on several occasions. They had blown up the second pole on March 18, 1767, the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The third pole-larger and protected with iron bars and hoops-was destroyed on the night it was erected. This fourth pole stood for three years, but by 1770 relations between the British troops and the Liberty Boys were at a new low. More British troops had arrived in the city, and New Yorkers were being taxed to garrison them. The British soldiers, meanwhile, were given jobs when they were off duty-in the eyes of the citizenry they were taking the colonists' jobs. New Yorkers resented the troops and the troops resented the New Yorkers' resentment of them. The taverns teemed with philosophical arguments and gossip, and people met and talked in the same place where people have always protested in New York City, union leader and ragtag community protester alike-in the Fields around the Liberty Pole, in The Commons. A British military commander in Manhattan wrote to a British commander in Boston, where the situation was similar: "It is now as common here to a.s.semble on all occasions of public concern at the Liberty pole and Coffee House, as for the ancient Romans to repair to the Forum."

On the night of January 13, 1770, forty British soldiers crept out of their barracks, which was only a few yards away from the pole, and attempted to blow up the Liberty Pole: they drilled holes in it and filled the holes with gunpowder. A cordwainer noticed the soldiers drilling. He sprinted into Montayne's tavern, across the street, where a number of Liberty Boys were hanging out. Two Liberty Boys ran out of the tavern to investigate and then scurried back in. The troops lit a fuse but it fizzled. The Liberty Boys came outside again, yelled, "Fire!" to alert the town, then stood and hissed at the soldiers. The soldiers chased the Liberty Boys back into the tavern and then wrecked the place; the soldiers beat up a waiter and chased a customer out the window and threatened Montayne himself. The soldiers tried again two nights later to take down the pole but failed. On January 15, a Liberty Boys broadside, signed by "Brutus," called for a rally at the Liberty Pole the next day. Aside from lamenting the taxes required to house the troops, Brutus argued that New Yorkers were paying poor taxes to "maintain many of their wh.o.r.es and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the work house." "Every man of sense among us knows that the army is not sent here to protect but to enslave us," Brutus wrote. These remarks upset the troops further, and before the Liberty Boys had their rally, the soldiers finally managed to cut the Liberty Pole down. They sawed it up into small pieces and quietly laid them at the door of Montayne's.

It was cold, and snow covered the ground, but when the bell rang on St. George's Chapel the next morning, three thousand people turned out at the spot where the pole had stood. The crowd was mad. Many of the men present had lost their jobs to the soldiers. The Liberty Boys read a resolution against employing the soldiers, against soldiers roaming the streets at night, against soldiers behaving in "an insulting manner." Violators, the resolutions said, "shall be treated as enemies of the peace of this City." The crowd cheered. "Huzzah!" the people said.

In this primordial moment, at this moment in American history and the history of the city of New York-at this moment that is, in my mind, akin to the moment wherein organic life might have originated in the thermal vents that dot the seafloor-the rivals were face-to-face. A carpenter pointed to a British guardhouse and shouted, "It must come down!" The soldiers standing nearby immediately drew their swords. Bristling with weapons, the soldiers dared the crowd to try to take the house down, and the crowd-growling, roaring-began moving in to do so, until the British officers and city magistrates calmed the two sides. That day, a party of sailors patrolled the streets and docks with clubs, turning out any soldiers they found. On Friday, January 19, the soldiers went out on the street with a broadside of their own. Their broadside argued that the Liberty Boys were the real enemy of the peace of the city; it described the Liberty Boys as murderers, robbers, and traitors "who thought their freedom depended in a piece of wood." The soldiers described themselves as the defenders of English liberties. They said they would not "tamely submit."

King Sears was not happy about the soldiers' broadside. When he ran into a small party of soldiers hanging the paper in the Fly Market-at the intersection of Maiden Lane and Liberty Street, three blocks from Edens Alley-he grabbed the leader of the party by the collar. Sears shouted at the soldier, and according to a report at the time in the New York Gazette, New York Gazette, he demanded to know what they thought they were doing. He didn't wait for an answer but dragged the soldier to the mayor. Walter Quackenbos, a baker who was a friend of Sears's, grabbed another soldier and followed Sears. A third soldier tried to stop Sears. The soldier drew his bayonet, but Sears had a ram's horn on him and, seeing the sword-tipped rifle aimed at him, threw the ram's horn at the third soldier, hitting the soldier in the head. Amazingly, the soldiers all scattered off, except for the two that Sears and Quackenbos had in hand. Sears and Quackenbos brought the two detained soldiers to the mayor. A crowd quickly gathered outside the mayor's house, and in a few more minutes, twenty British soldiers arrived, their swords and bayonets drawn. A soldier-a colonial soldier who, it was reported, was unemployed because of the British soldiers' presence in the city-went to the door of the mayor's house with a small group of men to turn back the British soldiers. Seeing the soldiers' weapons, people began arming themselves with wooden rungs that they ripped from sleighs. There was shouting. The mayor appeared and ordered the British soldiers back to their barracks. The soldiers obeyed, but as they retreated, the crowd followed them. The soldiers proceeded directly back to their barracks, until they arrived at the foot of Golden Hill, at which point they sprinted up the hill. When the soldiers reached the top, one of them shouted, "Soldiers, draw your bayonets and cut your way through them!" The other soldiers charged, shouting, "Where are your Sons of Liberty now?" he demanded to know what they thought they were doing. He didn't wait for an answer but dragged the soldier to the mayor. Walter Quackenbos, a baker who was a friend of Sears's, grabbed another soldier and followed Sears. A third soldier tried to stop Sears. The soldier drew his bayonet, but Sears had a ram's horn on him and, seeing the sword-tipped rifle aimed at him, threw the ram's horn at the third soldier, hitting the soldier in the head. Amazingly, the soldiers all scattered off, except for the two that Sears and Quackenbos had in hand. Sears and Quackenbos brought the two detained soldiers to the mayor. A crowd quickly gathered outside the mayor's house, and in a few more minutes, twenty British soldiers arrived, their swords and bayonets drawn. A soldier-a colonial soldier who, it was reported, was unemployed because of the British soldiers' presence in the city-went to the door of the mayor's house with a small group of men to turn back the British soldiers. Seeing the soldiers' weapons, people began arming themselves with wooden rungs that they ripped from sleighs. There was shouting. The mayor appeared and ordered the British soldiers back to their barracks. The soldiers obeyed, but as they retreated, the crowd followed them. The soldiers proceeded directly back to their barracks, until they arrived at the foot of Golden Hill, at which point they sprinted up the hill. When the soldiers reached the top, one of them shouted, "Soldiers, draw your bayonets and cut your way through them!" The other soldiers charged, shouting, "Where are your Sons of Liberty now?"

It was a melee, an anarchic moment. Free of civil restraint or control, it was like when you are in an alley full of rats and you stomp, thinking you are in control of the rats, and then the rats freak out and come at you and you end up being freaked out too. As the soldiers and the crowd fought, a second group of soldiers arrived from the barracks. A soldier on the bottom of Golden Hill shouted to the soldiers at the top, saying they should, as one colonial newspaper reported, "cut their way down, and they would meet them halfway." The second group of soldiers attacked. The crowd fought the soldiers. A twenty-two-year-old chairmaker's apprentice charging up Golden Hill with a chair leg managed to grab a musket, a belt, a bayonet, and cartridge box, all of which he saved and subsequently used to fight in the Continental Army. In the end, three people were injured, a sailor was beat up, a fisherman had his finger cut off, a water seller was slashed, and Francis Field, a Quaker who had been standing in his doorway, had his face ripped up. The soldiers finally chased the people out into the streets; the crowd scattered, though when other people opened their doors to see what was going on, the soldiers ran after them too. That evening the soldiers attacked two lamplighters, cutting one in the head and pulling the ladder out from underneath the other. The next morning the soldiers came out and attacked a woman on her way to market, and the Liberty Boys broke up a fight between British soldiers and some sailors. Later that afternoon, the soldiers attempted to stop another gathering in the Fields but were beaten back into their barracks by the Liberty Boys. All told, it was two days of vicious scuffles and taunts and armed rioting, a dirty, ratty fight.

The Liberty Boys put up a new pole; it was a mast like thing, made by seamen, covered with steel sheeting on the bottom and guarded with a fence-British-troop-proof. The pole was carried to the site in a great parade, led by King Sears and his people. The fifth Liberty Pole survived until 1776, when it was cut down by the Loyalist sheriff, who had been whipped at its foot. And two months after the Battle of Golden Hill, after four colonists were killed in Boston in what became known as the Boston Ma.s.sacre, it was said that an underlying cause of that that melee was that the British soldiers had been upset by the treatment of their counterparts in New York. melee was that the British soldiers had been upset by the treatment of their counterparts in New York.

THE ARRIVAL OF RATTUS NORVEGICUS RATTUS NORVEGICUS in America went unnoted-the opposite of the appearance, for instance, of a rare species of bird. But it seems to me a matter of physics that in America went unnoted-the opposite of the appearance, for instance, of a rare species of bird. But it seems to me a matter of physics that Rattus norvegicus Rattus norvegicus arrived when Sears left. Personally, I believe that it arrived not too long after the fifth Liberty Pole was cut down. In other words, the rats came after Sears had sold his house and moved his family and children, first to Connecticut and then to Boston. It was as if a Rat King vacuum had been filled. arrived when Sears left. Personally, I believe that it arrived not too long after the fifth Liberty Pole was cut down. In other words, the rats came after Sears had sold his house and moved his family and children, first to Connecticut and then to Boston. It was as if a Rat King vacuum had been filled.

The rats came after Sears evacuated the city he loved in the summer of 1775, along with four-fifths of the population, or about twenty thousand people. In 1776, a third of the city's houses were burned. Then, the city burned again in 1778. Many of the remaining colonists lived in a place nicknamed Canvas Town, a camp of tents and shacks with people living "like herrings in a barrel, most of them very dirty," according to an English correspondent, who added, "If any author had an inclination to write a treatise upon stinks he never could meet with more subject matter than in New York." The occupying troops cut down nearly all the trees on the island, the trees Manhattanites had been so proud to have lining their streets. Meanwhile, the British s.h.i.+pped in German mercenaries; observers noted that the British treated the mercenaries like cattle, prodding and herding them off s.h.i.+ps. Rattus norvegicus Rattus norvegicus had already invaded Germany by 1776. Consequently, had already invaded Germany by 1776. Consequently, Rattus norvegicus Rattus norvegicus invaded America on the German s.h.i.+ps of England's invasion force; it was a shadow invasion. The rats couldn't have had less hostile territory. When Britain surrendered New York, the city was all dug up with trenches and garbage was everywhere. It was the perfect habitat for the newly arrived burrow-loving rat-in addition to poverty and injustice, war is good for rats. The black rat or s.h.i.+p rat was already in the city, living in wooden attics and in the holds of American s.h.i.+ps, but now the Norway rat arrived and thrived and ama.s.sed, eventually rising up from its lowly new immigrant status to rule the city, from a nonhuman-mammal perspective. The newest rat took the throne. invaded America on the German s.h.i.+ps of England's invasion force; it was a shadow invasion. The rats couldn't have had less hostile territory. When Britain surrendered New York, the city was all dug up with trenches and garbage was everywhere. It was the perfect habitat for the newly arrived burrow-loving rat-in addition to poverty and injustice, war is good for rats. The black rat or s.h.i.+p rat was already in the city, living in wooden attics and in the holds of American s.h.i.+ps, but now the Norway rat arrived and thrived and ama.s.sed, eventually rising up from its lowly new immigrant status to rule the city, from a nonhuman-mammal perspective. The newest rat took the throne.

Now THAT I HAVE SEEN the original Rat King of Edens Alley, I see Isaac Sears all the time in New York. Since that winter, I see him on the streets, for instance. I see him in the crowds of people standing on subway platforms or in the lunchtime street traffic at busy intersections or even in the trading pits on Wall Street. I see him in the guy who is simultaneously shouting with and leading everyone in chants and laughing louder than anyone else as you leave a baseball stadium. I see him in the woman with a bullhorn on the steps of City Hall, in the people chanting at a protest in Union Square. I even see him in the past: in the bars and saloons and rat fights and riotous mobs in New York; in the riots in Harlem in the sixties, which weren't as bad as the riots in Detroit and in L.A., where I would probably see Sears too, if I looked. I see him with the student demonstrators of the sixties and standing alongside John DeLury, who, like Sears, watched crowds gather and grow and grumble in the very same spot that Sears saw his crowds-City Hall Park, which was once The Commons and before that the Fields and before that a gra.s.sy plain bordered by swamps and ponds and in sight of a golden hill. I see Sears in Wisconsin and in Chicago and everywhere there are people, which is everywhere there are rats-people who are sometimes moblike, sometimes the embodiment of justice, sometimes just looking for a good time or something to eat and a decent place to live.

When I look into the rat alley, when I watch the Rat King descend into his dank hole, I see the first New York rat. I see a n.o.ble king, a leader of the people, and I see a jerk. I see the beginnings of the great city of New York. I see the great city's forgotten moments and its forgotten people, its bowels. I see rats being killed and then multiplying and then being killed again. I see fear and courage. I see nature and I see human nature and I see great crowds of hungry or drunk or tired or righteousness-inspired men and woman as they rise up and shout, Huzzah, America! Huzzah! Huzzah, America! Huzzah!

THE QUIET CODA TO THE secret of my rat alley is Isaac Sears's fade into obscurity-the story of how his life story skittered off into a hole. I think he may have been forgotten because he once got perhaps a little too self-reliant.

In 1775, Sears rode back into New York with a band of Connecticut hors.e.m.e.n, seizing prisoners along the way, and broke into the print shop of a Tory printer, James Rivington.* Sears and his men sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as they carried off Rivington's type to melt down for colonial bullets-just as the British believed that the colonial rebellion would end if the ringleaders were rounded up, so Sears felt that if Loyalists like Rivington were quieted, then the Loyalist ma.s.ses would turn to the colonists' cause. It was a huge misstep for Sears. At the time, he was about to be appointed secretary of the American navy. He had been a.s.sured of the position. But after breaking up Rivington's presses he was pa.s.sed over for the job. The young Alexander Hamilton, the next generation of revolutionary, condemned the raid as a defamation of the press. Sears was branded uncontrollable, one of the things he probably was not; George Was.h.i.+ngton called privateers like Sears "squirrelly," each s.h.i.+p "a free lance." Sears felt betrayed, more so when he asked the Continental Congress for reimburs.e.m.e.nt for the men on the raid and was turned down. Today, we think of the revolutionaries as being selfless and uninterested in financial gain, but like many colonists fighting the British, the old privateer believed that unrewarded patriotic service was a luxury affordable only to the well-off. "[W]hen a man has done most, he gets least reward," Sears wrote in a letter. He was left to ponder his career-ending moment of unrestrained violence. He worked with the military through the course of the war, advising on marine matters, devising fortifications for the Hudson Valley, and he returned to New York as soon as the war was over. Like many of his generation, he was forgotten, the younger revolutionaries now leading the way. Sears and his men sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as they carried off Rivington's type to melt down for colonial bullets-just as the British believed that the colonial rebellion would end if the ringleaders were rounded up, so Sears felt that if Loyalists like Rivington were quieted, then the Loyalist ma.s.ses would turn to the colonists' cause. It was a huge misstep for Sears. At the time, he was about to be appointed secretary of the American navy. He had been a.s.sured of the position. But after breaking up Rivington's presses he was pa.s.sed over for the job. The young Alexander Hamilton, the next generation of revolutionary, condemned the raid as a defamation of the press. Sears was branded uncontrollable, one of the things he probably was not; George Was.h.i.+ngton called privateers like Sears "squirrelly," each s.h.i.+p "a free lance." Sears felt betrayed, more so when he asked the Continental Congress for reimburs.e.m.e.nt for the men on the raid and was turned down. Today, we think of the revolutionaries as being selfless and uninterested in financial gain, but like many colonists fighting the British, the old privateer believed that unrewarded patriotic service was a luxury affordable only to the well-off. "[W]hen a man has done most, he gets least reward," Sears wrote in a letter. He was left to ponder his career-ending moment of unrestrained violence. He worked with the military through the course of the war, advising on marine matters, devising fortifications for the Hudson Valley, and he returned to New York as soon as the war was over. Like many of his generation, he was forgotten, the younger revolutionaries now leading the way.

After the Revolution, Sears was in debt, like New York. Now that its old British trading partners were gone, the city was looking for new trading partners. Sears arranged one of the first trips to China, believing it would be the key to the new nation's economic success. Sears set sail for China in 1786 on a s.h.i.+p called Hope. Hope. He came down with a fever and died on the way. He was buried on an island in Canton Harbor. He came down with a fever and died on the way. He was buried on an island in Canton Harbor.

Somewhere around 1898, a plaque was erected to designate the site of the Battle of Golden Hill. It was on a building at a corner on what I calculate to be the base of the old hill, a block away from the rat alley. That building was demolished and the building that replaced it was called the Golden Hill Building, but the plaque disappeared. In 1918, a reporter investigated the whereabouts of the plaque and discovered that it had been moved a few blocks away-in 1918, in other words, the plaque marked the site of the battle on what w