The Time I Realized I Needed Glasses in Calvary Cemetery

As one proceeds up the glacier-carved hillocks that define northwestern Queens – climbing the shallow slope of Laurel Hill and leaving the eluvial plains of the East River shoreline, while approaching the Maspeth plateau and the start of the terminal moraine of Long Island, the intrepid pedestrian will pass through an arcade of highways and overpasses and cannot avoid finding Second Calvary.

Old (or First) Calvary is the original cemetery – second, third, and fourth Calvary are the sprawling additions to the venerable 1848 original – which form a significant portion of the so called Cemetery Belt.

Calvary Cemetery is the organizational name for the entire funerary complex, and a whole lot of it sits well above street grade – with many interments set six to seven feet or more above eye level along its fenceline. Unfortunately, I’ve got a pretty vivid imagination, and have always been a huge fan of George Romero and horror movies in general, so…

…brrrr…

One day, while walking on 48th street towards Maspeth, I noticed this box.

I should mention that- “in the field” — the label on this box was misread by your humble narrator, and my error filled me with wild fancies.

I read it as “Catholic Protection Rectifier,” with the secondary label admonishing that this box must remain padlocked at all times. I wondered aloud – does it contain some emergency supply of Eucharist or Holy Water for usage by some squad from the church? One which stands ready for dispatch to combat an outbreak of Vampirism – or battle an appearance by flesh eating mobs of the Walking Dead?

I am a fool, of course, and should read things more carefully.

The enigmatic steel box found on 48th street contains a Cathodic Protection Rectifier.

Apparently, Cathodic Protection is an electrical technology widely used in pipelines, buried metallic structures, and in maritime situations to guard against corrosion. Operating on the theory that by supplying a specific electrical frequency to a metallic structure, even one clad in masonry or immersed in sea water, an ionic charge imparted by the current will not allow oxygen to bind into the affected alloy at a molecular level. Its the reverse of electroplating, essentially, to my ignorant and amateur vantage point of observation.

I’m not much of anything, but I’m especially not an engineer. Cathodic Protection Rectifiers were news to me, I thought it a Catholic Protection Rectifier after all.

This unit was manufactured by Corrpro Canada Inc., should you be in the market for one.

From Wikipedia:

Cathodic protection (CP) is a technique to control the corrosion of a metal surface by making it work as a cathode of an electrochemical cell. This is achieved by placing in contact with the metal to be protected another more easily corroded metal to act as the anode of the electrochemical cell. Cathodic protection systems are most commonly used to protect steel, water or fuel pipelines and storage tanks, steel pier piles, ships, offshore oil platforms and onshore oil well casings.

Cathodic protection can be, in some cases, an effective method of preventing stress corrosion cracking.

Cathodic protection (CP) is a technique to control the corrosion of a metal surface by making it work as a cathode of an electrochemical cell. This is achieved by placing in contact with the metal to be protected another more easily corroded metal to act as the anode of the electrochemical cell. Cathodic protection systems are most commonly used to protect steel, water or fuel pipelines and storage tanks, steel pier piles, ships, offshore oil platforms and onshore oil well casings.

Cathodic protection can be, in some cases, an effective method of preventing stress corrosion cracking.

Queens being Queens, of course, the device is installed next to a bus shelter and along a public sidewalk, contravening the operating instructions found in this pdf.

Possible recipient candidates for the devices services to be working on are innumerable on this locus of piplines, sewers, highway bridges, and overpasses. Most likely its effect is applied to the decaying fences of the cemetery itself, or to the concrete foundations of the roadway it adjoins.

I will continue to refer to it as a Catholic Protection Rectifier, and hold to my ideation that some Jesuit Emergency Services Unit stands at the ready to defend Queens against those hidden threats of the supranormal night which only fools like myself, guileless children, and the very old believe in.

Also, it turned out at my yearly eye exam (shortly thereafter) that I needed to start wearing glasses, so there you go.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.