Grand Central Station Conversation (1)…by Robert M. Katzman
© May 2009
Part 1: Ethnic Bait, Offered and Taken
Twenty-two hours.
I had twenty-two hours to be in New York City, without a hotel room, to attend an annual poster convention and to visit an old pleasure I’d thought was gone forever.
All I took with me was a kind of narrow, over-the-shoulder, sling-like duffel I’d designed to hold jackets, sweaters, gloves and scarves when I went through the periodic agony of America’s airports so my hands remained free. It was May, but NYC is by the ocean, so the weather could vary significantly in a day.
My silent Korean tailor, Ki Sook, was used to my eccentricities, but never failed to smile when I told her what I wanted her to do for me. And she always turned over a first-class result about a week later.
I also took another customized travel bag made from durable denim that was light-weight with not too many pockets but had a large central space to carry anything from a walking lunch (crusty Italian bread, grapes, cheddar cheese, and a brownie with some personality to it) to convention catalogs. It had good zippers, too.
A good strong zipper can keep things that seem to want to be elsewhere, from going there. A bad zipper can get you into all kinds of trouble. I’m talking about travel here, no matter what you may be imagining.
My wife dropped me at O’Hare Airport, just west of Chicago, kissed me good-bye (yes, after thirty-four years together, kissing is still important) and I went through all one must go through to get on a plane and fly somewhere. It was 7 pm Saturday night and I’d been up since 7 am. Twelve hours and counting.
Uneventful flight, didn’t chit-chat with my neighbor, read when I should have cat-napped, but I wasn’t tired. The flight was mostly smooth, except for the part where it ran into rain squalls in eastern Pennsylvania and the little express plane kind of hiccupped…every so often.
Wings tipped to the right, then…they tipped to the left. Then the plane seemed to abruptly drop about a foot. The wind howled outside my window and the heavy rain splattered insolently against the glass. The lights flickered, momentarily. I prayed, momentarily. You can never be too careful.
Like I said, for an American airline, it was an uneventful flight.
We landed in Newark, New Jersey at midnight (East-coast time) and I went looking for transportation to Grand Central Station. A friend told me there was a train now to NYC since I was last there, five years before. That meant I didn’t have to endure the long, long bus ride from Jersey to Manhattan. Good.
But, as usual, I became confused and meandered around the smallish airport for a little while looking for the “Trains to New York” sign. A kind soul who must have recognized a wandering Jew when he saw one, directed me to a bus counter and I waited in line. There were only three people ahead of me and one behind me.