Exploding Peaches

I was just thinking back to 2007, when that whole Moriello Pool debacle started. I pass the location all the time -- it's on my way to the Village -- but what triggered my memory was seeing a woman sunbathing on the lawn of the Hasbrouck playground today.

My family had just moved to New Paltz the fall before, so 2007 was our first (and only) summer of the pool. We bought a family membership just a few days before the whole breast-feeding incident that brought about the end of the pool and thrust New Paltz into the national spotlight for the first time since the gay weddings of 2003.

I was at the pool the day the fiasco started, and in fact, I overheard most of the conversation that started it. A camp counselor from the Y rather loudly "asked" a friend of mine -- let's call her Cherry -- to stop breast-feeding in plain view of the camp kids. Stunned, Cherry walked over to her friends at the pool to describe what had just taken place. People were always running into friends at the pool, which was one of the reasons my family joined up; even though we'd been in New Paltz for less than a year, we always ran into at least three families we knew.

At the time, it struck me as ironic that this particular councelor was accosting Cherry about public breastfeeding. Cherry's breasts, at their largest, would be completely obstructed by the head of a child. One would have to use a good deal of imagination to be offended by Cherry's public display. I should also point out that Cherry's infant isn't translucent. Since I wasn't standing on a rooftop at just the right angle, I didn't happen to catch a peek that day, but as Cherry pointed out a moment later, her breasts are only about the size of small peaches. The councelor, on the other hand, had what my high school friends had called bazooms. Nowadays I use the more PC term "melons." And what made this encounter between the women so unexpected was that the peaches were almost invisible beneath a child and a few layers of shirt while the melons were almost completely visible beneath one of those criss-cross bathing suit tops that expose several square feet of melon.

This is not to say that the councelor was wearing anything inappropriate. Her bathing suit was of the current fashion, and no one but a lunatic would have complained about seeing too much of her ample offerings. Had I been a woman with her endowment, I might have chosen something slightly less revealing when my job was to look after gobs of middle-school kids, but she clearly felt that she was within normal standards.

The encounter ended as so many of these do, with the breast-feeder walking away stunned while the offended party huddled among her like-minded friends. Since I had happened to have my towel right in between both groups, I overheard the councelor's friends making comments like "That's disgusting" and "In public?" Meanwhile, Cherry had quickly regained the power of speech, and from her camp I overheard "2007 -- that's crazy" and something about how women are allowed to go topless in New York state. It was as I was walking over to make this last point that I also heard one of the women mention how the La Leche League would not take lightly to this whole situation.

The name of this group has always sounded a bit odd to those of us with any appreciation of a foreign language, since it would translate to "The The Milk League," but I suppose it's no more annoying to most than the redundancy of an "ATM machine." The La Leches are not redundant, however. They're the only group in this country working to protect the rights of babies who want breast milk instead of formula. Doctors worldwide have agreed with these babies about the benefits of breast milk, and even formula-makers have made it clear on their packaging that their products aren't as healthy as the real thing. The only problem the La Leches face is how to deliver their product without offending camp councelors and others who are put off by the sight of the back of a baby's head next to a woman's armpit.

We all know what happened next. I think the La Leches went a bit far this time, but I can understand their point of view. The Sierra Club protects endangered species, and the La Leches protect endangered breasts. They quickly mobilized their troops -- breastfeeding women who needed a vacation -- and brought four nursing mothers to New Paltz for two days of fun, and milk, in the sun. The nursing moms positioned themselves around the Moriello Pool just as several groups from the Y were arriving. Cherry wasn't present -- she'd been warned away from the scene until the nursers had done their work -- but Melons was. Within minutes, the kids were back on the bus and the pool was virtually empty.

Word of mouth travels almost as fast as the speed of sound, so by the next day, most people were talking about the pool. With each set of passers-by, one would pick up talk about breasts and milk, pools and Leches. The impression I got was that most people understood the law and the health issues, so that even if they disagreed on the notion of public breastfeeding, they didn't take sides. That's what I like about New Paltz: It's a live-and-let-live environment.

Of course, even a barrel like New Paltz can be spoiled by a bad apple or two. I'm not sure how this proceess of spoilage works with fruit, but with towns, it mostly comes down to finances, and that was certainly the case here. Another problem, in retrospect, was a lack of communication. I think that the whole mess would have been avoided if the Mayor hadn't been vacationing in India. He probably would have calmed things down enough that the police wouldn't have been called. And those arrests made frontpage news everywhere and didn't help matters at all, especially since the women were protected by several laws. I also appreciated the motivation of the SUNY women who went topless at the pool in support of their sister (their much older sister), but that only served to divide Noopers even further. It was almost as though people who would rather have ignored the whole thing were forced to decide between sides of an issue that, legally speaking, had already been decided.

The eventual bankruptcy and closing of the pool made the news eighteen months later. By then, the incident only rated mention on page 20 of a Wednesday copy of the Times. No one was surprised that the Post, which had dubbed Cherry the Boob Queen, did not even offer a follow-up, though this may have been a result of Cherry's lawsuit against them.

So when I saw the topless sunbather outside the Hasbrouck playground today, my first though was for Cherry and her explosive peaches. My second thought was that I'd better head to the playground with the kids before it gets closed down, too.