Yikes! I about fell over when I looked at the last time I was up here. I admit it, I’ve been remiss. Not lazy, just remiss. I published a kids’ book called Belle’s Star with a traditional publisher and it’s been doing so well that I’ve had my hands full trying to keep up with it. Now we’re in a little lull, though I must brag that it won a Mom’s Choice Award. Check it out on Amazon. Anyhow, I promise to return now. Here is something for you.
This One Ya Can’t Eat.
Remember when romantic black-and-white murals of New York’s underground trains circa 1910 decorated Subway sandwich shops? Did you ever wonder if they resembled anything in the modern New York subway? Don’t bother. The restaurant designed its wall paper from historical photos, but the modern New York Rapid Transit System bares little resemblance to the nostalgic images of ladies in long skirts, girls in pig tails, boys in knickers, and gentlemen in derbies, which complement your roast beef and shredded lettuce. Today’s New York subway has the logic of tangled spaghetti, enough people dashing for trains to make Santa Fe at the height of tourist season look easy, and an energy level that would exhaust a killer tornado.
Don’t go near the New York subway if you’re looking for quiet. The repertoire of noises a train can make in a fifteen minute run across Manhattan can make you wonder whether you’re in a railroad car or an alien zoo. Take a trip on the subway, and accept that you are Alice in Wonderland. Anything goes (and comes) on the thousands of miles of rails that make up the system. The subway even has its own version of the alphabet. A Train, B Train, D Train, E. The C Train doesn’t exist. QB, RR, SS, K –! Oh never mind.
Think you have a shot at a train’s open door? Don’t believe it. The thing’ll slam as you’re about to jump aboard. Another train won’t arrive for hours, especially if you’re in a hurry.
Figure out the Interborough Rapid Transit line can whisk you home from the Museum of Modern Art faster than the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit Line. Learn the complex transfer points between the Independent and Canarsi trains. Someone at the Metropolitan Transit Authority will change every route and station he can find. You’ll land in the Bronx trying to go in the opposite direction to Brooklyn
When you approach a train, get ready for confusion. Its front will proclaim it a South Ferry Local. Signs inside will announce it’s headed for some unheard of destination in Flatbush. Ask a Transit Cop where the train’s going, and he’ll name some spot near Shea Stadium where the Mets play.
Platform signs won’t help you either. UPTOWN BRONX . Swell. DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN.. Fine. Which direction do you need to go to get to your destination? Ask a token booth clerk in a faultless Chicago accent, and he’ll say, “Sorry, no sprechen deutsch.”
But what the heck — grab that train. and for the pure rush and adventure, roar through tunnels on the express track with sound ricocheting off walls. Watch station lights flicker like crazy strobes. Smell ozone and garbage. Observe people: the business man in a three-piece suit struggling to keep his New York Times s folded, a big task when the daily edition’s as thick as the Sunday Albuquerque Journal.
Watch a drunk babbling to no one about his cheating girl friend. He’ll remind you of a country western song wailed in an eastern accent, as a woman in a mink coat squirms away from a bag lady, and a three-year-old nibbles a soft pretzel, mustard oozing down her chin.
Listen to friends yell conversations above the train. Ignore them. They’ll ignore you. New Yorkers don’t talk to strangers.
But, then you’ll reach a station. No one will get off or on — except a pigeon. Stiff-legged and neck jerking, the green and gray bird’ll wander into the car from the platform. The woman next to you will make brief eye contact and laugh as the train pulls out, and the pigeon jumps on a seat as calmly as the stock broker across the car, settles on hers with her Wall Street Journal .
At the next stop, as everyone in the car begins to laugh, the bird will hop off the seat and waddle out the door. The woman beside you will howl. “I love New York.” Her r’s will sound like w’s, and her o’s like ah’s. She’ll tell you about her voyage to the South Pole on a cruise ship. You’ll tell her you’re from New Mexico. She’ll ask you how you can live in polluted Mexico City.
Don’t think one of our fifty missing as you explain that New Mexico is in the United States. To New Yorkers, forty-nine of our fifty are missing. They’ll visit Europe, Asia, South America, India and Africa; but not venture west of the Hudson River. After all, a person could spend ten life times of 90 years each wandering through Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, Statan Island and Queens, without experiencing all New York could offer. Who would need the rest of the United States?
Laugh at the logic and stay on the train. Ride it to Yankee Stadium and home again after a bottom-of-the-nineth, bases-loaded home run has won the game for Steinbrenner’s boys. An old man smelling like a couple of beers will break the code of silence and say that as a kid he saw Babe Ruth’s 60th home run fly over the fence, or wept at Lou Gehrig’s farewell.
You’ll pull into Lincoln Center as he finishes the story. Get off the train to buy a ticket to the Mostly Mozart Festival. Stride up the ramp leading to the box office at Avery Fischer Hall. Walking or running will throw you off balance, the way the slope’s pitched. See a man wearing a jacket turned green from brown. Three or four battered buttons and a large safety pin fasten it. Reflections from neon lights shimmer on his wrinkled head, and salt-and-pepper hair bristles behind his ears. He carries a violin case and a cracked brown satchel with music sticking out. You catch up to him. His mouth turns up as he sees you. “You are in a hurry,” he asks softly in a German accent.
You hang on to a banister. “Yes I want to hear tomorrow’s concert.”
Behind gold-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes become animated. “Den, I just play it dat much better for you.” He’s on his way to orchestra rehearsal for the performance. When you find tickets sold out, he gets you a complementary seat. You go back to the subway with your ticket zipped into the safest pocket you have. When the concert’s over, that ticket stub will remain special among special things.
You get in line at the token booth. The woman ahead of you has two small children, and change two cents shy of proper fare. The clerk can’t change her twenty dollar bill. You give her two cents and buy your own gold token to drop in the turnstile. She thanks you. You spot a flower seller and pick up some daises.
“Two-oh-two,” the seller quotes the price, wiping her hands on an apron.
You dig through your wallet. “Can you change a ten?”
“Nope.”
You start to put the daisies back. She stops you. “Skip it already. Who’s gonna know?”
You think of the sandwich shop wall back home and realize that no pretty old fashioned inane will ever compare to the gritty, pithy reality of the experience you’ve just had. You sit down on a bench to wait for for your train, and as you hear its moan a mile away, anticipate your next adventure with the rail road called the New York subway.
Posted on February 24th, 2010 by Connie Gotsch
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