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.......................................England Shoots. Scores!!....................................

Sam spends a good hour or two or three or four every day at Dykeman Playground, across Broadway from his apartment (you can see a glimpse of it from Grandpa's apartment window- check the upper left corner of this photo of Paul waving while cleaning the car). It is at the northeast corner of Fort Tryon Park.

Fort Tryon Park, which includes the Metropolitan Museum's medieval art collection at The Cloisters, lies north of the George Washington Bridge, and is mostly situated along the top of a rocky ridge, with steep and gorgeous views of the Hudson River. It opened in 1935, built mostly with Rockefeller money. Built during the great Depression, this is what the Federal Writer's Project (a Roosevelt-funded program for unemployed writers), said:

"Fort Tryon Park is one of the most beautiful public parks of America -- landscaped with trees, lawns, terraces, rock gardens, paved walks, and many benches, all cleverly ordered in harmonious composition. The precision of its design is explicitly urban. The views from its heights are perhaps the finest Manhattan offers, for they sweep mile after mile of the Hudson and the Palisades, and, to the east, range across the lowlands of Inwood. At the sourthern entrance to the park, near Fort Washington Aveune, a large sloping rock garden forms an approach to the stone ramparts marking the site of old Fort Tryon, built in the summer of 1776 and taken in the fall of the same year by the Hessians. The landscaping was done, appropriately, by Frederick Law Olmsted, son of the proposer of the park plan for Inwood.

The Park's sixty-two acres include the grounds of the former C. K. G. Billings estate. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., bought the property in 1909 for $1,700,000, gave it to the city in 1930, and spent $3,600,000 improving it. The gift was in accordance with an agreement between Mr. Rockefeller and the city whereby the eastern ends of Sixty-fourth and Sixty-eighth Streets were closed and conveyed to Rockefeller Institute."

By the way, Rockefeller was so intent that the views from these cliffs overlooking the Hudson remain spectacular that he bought all the land on the other side of the Hudson, and preserved it.

But hey, what does Sam care? He just knows it's a fun place to play. If you look real closely you can see Sam and Mom at the drinking fountain at the south end of the playground, and Dad a bit off to the right.

Let's move in a little closer. That better?

On this particular day, Sam and Dad came out in full England regalia (including the ball). Sam had a lot of choices. He could strike out on his own with the ball, getting a bit lost in the vastness of that part of the playground, or team up with his parents, or simply watch them go at it without him.

(note: in the background of that last photo, note the green playground equipment. It is on the ground next to this equipment that, a bit more than a year ago, Sam first started to crawl)

It's a good playground, in an amazing park (Sam will be giving youngsamwise fans a tour sometime soon we hope).

Time for one last great peek at Sam and his Dad:




Oh hell, I can't resist one more.