Subject: Re: Back from the dead, or the living
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 22 2000 - 13:26:48 EST
On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 03:53:06PM -0500, Paul Kennedy wrote:
> OSR--Tim tells touching stories about hanging out around Holden's ersatz
> bunk in New York's GREAT Grand Central Station (the big wooden 'bunks' have
> since been cleared away, lest any homeless person personally offend the
> Mayor), but I should maybe leave his storytelling to him....
Paul, thanks for remembering that!
Yes (for anyone interested in this sort of thing), I had a menial job
with United Features Syndicate (the people who handle cartoons like
Peanuts and Garfield the Cat), in an office that was in the big building
that sort of sits almost on top of Grand Central Terminal. I was very
poor then, trying to get back on my feet after serious financial
setbacks, and was living on about fifty cents a day, which meant that
I ate once a day at breakfast, and it consisted of a dry bagel and a
free cup of water. If I got to work too early, the doors of the office
would not be open, so I would kill time by sitting on the benches in
the waiting room.
At that time, the terminal hadn't been prettified to its present state,
and the waiting room had become a campground for the homeless.
So, every morning when I was early, I would sit there with a cup of
water and bagel, starving and trying not to choke, scrubbed clean and
wearing a clean shirt and pants and tie. In the morning the cops would
make the rounds of the waiting room to roust all the homeless people
and if someone was found sleeping, the cops would smash their
nightsticks (a/k/a billy clubs) on the benches next to the heads of
the sleepers, waking them up, telling them to move along elsewhere and
half the time scaring them out of their minds (and making me jump a
little, too).
The cops always left me alone.
They didn't know that there was only a fine line between me and the
people camping out in the waiting room, where the only difference was
that I tenuously had a place to live, and I had my spare fifty cents to
spend on food, and I had clean clothes and access to a shower.
As they say, there but for the grace of God was I....
If nothing else, it taught me a lesson about empathy and assumptions
about people and their appearances. Today, of course, the waiting room
looks like a rich man's ballroom. The marble has been scrubbed and
restored and the lighting is impeccable. But it is a vast chasm. No
benches. No seating of any kind. No people, most of the time! Only
things like vaguely interesting exhibits or flea markets or other
temporary displays. And still when I walk through there, I mumble a
silent thanks that I was able to pull myself out of the hole I was in
(with eternal gratitude to Zaro's Bread Basket, which sold such cheap
and filling bagels, and took pity enough to give out a cup of water
at no charge, in those days).
I have more than a slight suspicion that our mayor, to whom Paul
alludes above, has never spent time sitting in that waiting room. The
mayor knows where his next meal is coming from, as they say. He has
little sympathy for the people who don't know such things.
That is the news from Manhattan (the island off the coast of America
[trademark 1987, Spalding Gray]), where the chasm between haves and
have-nots gets wider every week, and the police ... well, I won't go
into the shameful state of affairs on THAT subject.
Obligatory Salinger Reference: I cannot remember, does Holden ever
run into a police officer during his odyssey? These are the times a
scholar wishes there were a concordance (paper or electronic) to
Salinger's work....
--tim
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat Apr 01 2000 - 10:11:40 EST