BxM18, WTC, and 9/11

Five years later, I still have a tactile memory of a place I'd left eight years ago. It still hurts like hell to recall five years ago. It still hurts like hell to recall eight years ago, last I set eyes on my WTC, but five years ago still breaks my heart.

I used to work at Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City, which was straight across the Hudson River, straight across from the majesty of the Twin Towers. Most of the time, I drove to work, an endless maze of little roads which took me the shortest route from across the GW and eventually into Jersey City. Other times, though, I let the Liberty Line do the driving for me, and took the BxM18.

The BxM18 (which stood for the Bronx-Manhattan 18 Bus) was the express bus that went between Riverdale and downtown Manhattan, cruising down Broadway for most of the trip, and leaving you off right at Vesey Street. I would walk up Vesey to Church, with the WTC right in front of me. I still don't know which one was WTC 1 or WTC 2. I just knew I would enter the front doors, look at the shoes in the window of the Nine West store, and go right down the stairs or escalator into the WTC concourse.

The concourse was that little diversion right before I made my way to the Path train. There was a coffee shop that prepared decadent chocolate mint coffees that I toted across the Hudson. If I spilled the coffee on that which I was wearing, I could always stop at the Gap store in the WTC and buy a new shirt. I remember buying certain articles of clothing in several stores in the concourse. The newstand (where I recognized the distinctive elderly gentleman who had previously worked at the newstand in the bottom of Rockefeller Plaza) was where I picked up a Daily News or Post once in awhile (snotty NYT reader that I am.;-)). The lunch treks my friend Michael and I used to take across the river just to get the chicken pita at Miami Subs on Liberty Street.

But it was the little diversion I had before even arriving at the WTC that I've remembered in these past few days leading up to today. It was the BxM18.

By the time the bus arrived at 261st and Riverdale, it had probably picked up passengers at two stops. I knew it originated at the Yonkers-Riverdale border, right in front of where the nuns used to play basketball. The folks who had been picked up first had determined their seats on the bus a long, long time ago. I was a relative newbie compared to these seasoned riders, who were older folks in their late 50s, 60s, maybe even early 70s. They had the gravelly voices and accents of southeastern New Yorkers, sounding like all my aunts and uncles from the Bronx and Westchester.

I would sit about two seats back from the driver, as an act of respect to the more established riders who wanted to sit in the middle of the bus. Eventually, I established my seat right there, two rows back. I would take out my NYT crossword to work on. Except that I didn't always work on it. Instead, I listened.

These veteran riders had been riding the same bus together since time immemoriam, it seemed. They all knew one another by name. They knew about one another's jobs, families, lives. Their comfortable patter, in those inimitable accents, was a soothing balm to me during the harried start-and-stop ride down the highway and city streets.

They talked about old times. One gentleman sang the old Robert Hall theme song. They dredged up other 50s and 60s pop culture examples, Maypo commercials, remember what used to be on Johnson Avenue!, what about Father so-and-so over at St. Ann's, my grandson had his bar mitzvah, and oh so many gems. I was rapt. My heart used to swell with affection for these individuals, some whose faces I would never see, only big winter coats and briefcases as they ambled down the narrow aisle of the bus at their stops.

I hadn't thought about these people in years until now. And now I think of the many faces I never saw, only the voices I heard that filled my mornings with a bit of history and times gone past. I wonder how many of these people actually worked in the Twin Towers. I wonder how many of those voices were silenced that day forever.

It was my WTC. But more than my WTC, it was theirs. Their morning journey was a rich part of some rich lives. I am grateful to have been privy to their lives, their stories. And my heart breaks a little more again today.

Yonkers 10705 Part I

Note: I've missed a few days of this repartee due to a really nasty stomach flu. Truly grotty.

So I'm in bed last night, tossing and turning. Thinking about that time in my life when I was living in Yonkers, NY. Not quite The City, but if you stood at a certain place on Riverdale Avenue, right near the Convent of Mt. Saint Vincent, where the NYC bus stopped, you could be both in The City and Westchester at the same time. I used to place my feet astraddle this imaginary line on the sidewalk, right in front of the cooler shade of the convent's stone fence.

I always felt I had this dual citizenship, this ability to span being a Yonkers girl and a New York City girl. Truth be told, lots of folks believe that Yonkers is really just another town in the borough system. So I guess I was always a city girl by default.

Besides these thoughts plus a massive craving for Carvel (across from the convent, and still there...and also indicating that perhaps my appetite was returning!), I took an astral walk down Riverdale Avenue. Of course, this was 1968. Everything's a bit different in 1968. Finely manicured apartment buildings, including the mysterious "co-op," which was an apartment neighbourhood which was supposed to be private and don't take the short cut through it or some guy in grey will come out and yell at you...The Associated grocery store, where they carried those tiny little green glass bottles of coke and the guys were named Murray, Meyer (the butcher) and some other guy with a grey buzzcut and Fassbinder glasses who manned the register. The only things we ever shopped for there were snacks, like cokes or ...mmmmm.... Wise Cheeze Waffies...or the occasional candy bar. Too expensive, my mom would say. My family did their shopping up on South Broadway or across the city line in Riverdale at the Daitch.

For the real sugar rush, though, there was nothing like Lane's Luncheonette. This place runs throught my blood memory like
nothing else. I could draw the place in finite detail...from its jaunty diagonal placement at the corner of Riverdale Avenue and Valentine Lane...to its sign above the door in black lettering on white...to the glass door that proclaimed "It's KOOL Inside!"...and when you entered: to the right, display racks of grown-up books and then lots more of Archie Comics and the forbidden "love" comics. Beyond that, there were wooden racks containing newspapers (Yonkers Herald Tribune, Daily News) and then magazines above that (Playboy right out there, all the way to the left so maybe you don't see it, but there). Toward the back were more wooden shelves holding toys and paper and just stuff, and then THE BELL SYSTEM phone booths. Wooden, private, with ights that went on when you closed the door to dial your mom and ask if you could buy the "love" comic because you were 8 now.

But to the left when you entered...ah, to the left...first, the candy, the candy. Hersheys and red hots and licorice, oh my! Sylvia, the register lady, always tried to pawn off pieces of Bazooka from a plastic box on the counter in lieu of change owed. There was a Murray there, and a Mary, and I can't remember the fourth guy who was part of this family but they were somehow all related.

And then there was the lunch counter. Malteds and milkshakes in the silver containers, poured into the hourglass-shaped glasses, with a paper straw and a pretzel rod from the glass container on the counter. And the tuna fish, the tuna fish sandwiches! What the hell was in the tuna fish that made it taste like pure heaven on a piece of triangular toast? My brother and I have been attempting to replicate this memory for a thousand years now. I haven't even eaten tuna in about 10 years because of suspected contaminants, but the memory of the tuna fish haunts me. Some delicate balance of tuna, mayo, celery and perhaps pickle relish, I don't know, whipped into this impossibly ethereal concoction, filling the white toast slices with some sort of mousse-like perfection. George, not related to the rest of the gang, was the cook and I wish we'd pumped him all those years ago so our moms could replicate our favourite sandwich...but then again, it never would have tasted as good at home at the kitchen table as it did on a lunch trip to Lane's.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Somewhere over the Atlantic, Santa is cruising at an altitude of 25,000 feet with the likes of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. Oh, yeah, let's not forget Rudolph. Could've used him during the ice storm the other day. All should be in our neck of the woods around 1am.

I wish a Merry Christmas to all. And to all...a good night.

P.S. I am quite new at this blogging stuff so I do hope these posts become more engaging as I continue to write. cheers...

Pampered and Prodded To Within An Inch of My Life

One day this summer, when my mom was visiting me, she told me, in no uncertain terms, that we were going to get a manicure. One of those luxuries I'd always deemed unnecessary, I agreed but was decided that I would do the minimum. One colour, no French treatment, real low-maintenance was what I was solely interested in.

I can get pretty excited about NARS Orgasm blush, or Smashbox lipstick or even that gloss that Monica Lewinsky was wearing when she was interviewed by Barbara Walters...but manicures. Or massages, or anything I perceive as being too self-indulgent, where someone has to provide a service for me. All of that Judeo-Christian guilt comes into play.

After the manicure, though, I thought, hmm. My nails do look swell. But no, no, no, no...

Now a day before Christmas Eve, I have to fess up. I got the works. Within the past two days, I have had a warm stone massage, a French manicure (complete with an aromatherapy paraffin dip for my hands), and today got my hair highlighted in nice warm tones.

What the heck is wrong with me?

Nothing, I hear. I'm supposed to be on the upswing with taking days for me, treating me, being good to me. The massage and the manicure were purchased by gift certificate at the end of last year and I've found every excuse not to use it until now when it was to expire. The hair was just the icing on the Pannetone. Which is something I am craving but having honoured my body and soul in myriad ways, I think I'll be taking it easy on the other indulgences.

Maybe not. We are going to a Christmas Eve hors d'oeuvres-y thing and there might be some indulgences that will honour me, body and soul ("I'm all for you, body and soul."--Lady Day