64 Purchase, NY: PepsiCo Sculpture Garden

I returned to my car and zipped across the parking lot corner-to-corner again. When I reached the light at the main road, I headed straight across to the grounds of PepsiCo's headquarters, which also houses a fine sculpture garden on what was once a polo field. As with the campus, I had the garden to myself on this non-workweek day. However, unlike the mundane SUNY-Purchase, the sculpture garden was fantastical. A huge garden trowel by Claes Oldenburg seemed half-buried in a giant's sand box. On the middle of a lake, a metal hoop miraculously balanced on the water's surface. And, as if by magic, I spied in one office that some employee had hung on the wall a print of Hopper's painting The Long Leg. Maybe Purchase's part-time residents related to Hopper's isolated characters. I wished Purchase had a gathering place other than the museum where I could interview some townsfolk, like a coffee shop, or even a barber shop.

I pulled back up to the traffic light at the crossroads that defines Purchase. When the light changed, I turned back onto the main road and headed out of town, passing the shuttered firehouse.