Moses explored Long Island’s baylands so obsessively he regularly stranded himself on sandbars

Evidence

Buying an old bayman’s old, broad-bottomed, very slow motorboat, partly covered with a canopy, which Mary named the Bob, he putt-putted around the bay following the maps described in the books, sometimes with Mary and his daughters, often alone. Heading out to the pier where the Bob was moored, he paused frequently to chat with the sailors who were too old to follow the bay any more and instead spent their days sitting on upturned oyster barrels looking out over it; and, finding him a willing listener to their stories, the old men told him about hidden inlets and about meadows where flocks of wild birds nested, and he spent long days exploring them. Sometimes, in fact, he spent days that were too long; then, as he sat in reverie, the bay’s ebbing tide would leave the Bob stranded on a sand bar. After a while, Mary knew what it meant when darkness came and her husband still hadn’t returned from the bay; she would call a friend, Harry Fishel, whose boat had a shallower draft, and Fishel would go out and bring him in. In the morning, the two men would return to the Bob, now refloated by the flooding tide, and Moses would go back on board with a sandwich Mary had prepared—and spend another day on the bay. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 712

Categorization

• SHARE: A vivid early-20th century vignette — a recreation czar beached in his slow motorboat while locals know where to find him.
• XREF: connects to: Moses’ relentless drive pervaded even his summer evening recreation — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 447; Moses’s personal love of Long Island’s South Shore motivated his later park building — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 696

Broader Connections

• Moses’s personal love of Long Island’s South Shore motivated his later park building #corroborates (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 696
• Moses’ relentless drive pervaded even his summer evening recreation #exemplifies (0.82) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 447