I saw the old man sitting on his stoop but looked past him, kept walking. After all I was in New York City and that's the way people do it there; city mode, mind your own business. But my instincts told me that I should have acknowledged him, said hello. I felt as if I'd missed an opportunity to make both of our lives just a little better.
Jonah later confirmed that my instincts were in fact correct. Talking about the Brooklyn neighborhood he now lives in he said that everybody was really friendly, except the white people moving in. He said, “The white people are singular,” and made a flat plane of his hand, bounced the tip of his index finger against his forehead a couple of times then forcefully extended his arm away from his face. “Singular.” That's exactly what I had done with the old man thinking it was what was expected of me. Of course Jonah and Brandon are white, but then they're gay, perhaps there's a difference?
Over the course of our stay I found that to be true, that the people in the neighborhood were friendly. In fact I'd already noticed it, in a way. Not that people were friendly, but that they certainly weren't hostile. We'd gotten in Thursday afternoon and parked the truck at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where I'd loaded the back haul for our return trip. Tashicka, the security guard who is stationed outside of the facility we parked at saw us walking with our backpacks on, Cathy trailing a wheeled carry on bag. She asked to make sure that we'd cleared parking with the office, which we had, and where we were going. “Oh, that's right around the corner. I'm just getting off work, hop in, I'll give you a ride.”
If there were a theme for this trip it would be how nice everybody was, how neighborly, in a city known for cold indifference.
Apparently Tashicka trusted our vibe. Right around the corner turned out to be several miles away, through cross town traffic. The whole time her purse was sitting on the back seat next to me, open. Perhaps she was testing me, watching in the rear view mirror ready to claw me with her extravagantly painted nails if I tried anything. Between the demands of driving and her continuous monologue about her sister, her niece, and her friends I'd probably have had several chances to have stolen something, but even if I'd had the inclination I know better than to underestimate a native New Yorker.
An unintended consequence of the ride was that we had hours to kill before Jonah got home from work. If we'd had to orient ourselves and find public transportation at least some of that time would have been used up, but as it was we wandered around for quite a bit looking for some place to land for the wait. It was a residential area and there weren't many options. We finally found a little tree filled park right around the corner from Jonah's brownstone, but until then we got quite the tour of the neighborhood. The area is overwhelmingly black and we passed quite a few people, including groups of young black men loitering on street corners, but I never felt threatened. My radar never once registered danger, and believe me I had my radar on.
There was one time when we'd crossed the street to avoid just such a gathering when we accidentally walked right into the middle of another group of young black men coming around a corner. One of them was in front of us, separated from the group. He didn't pay no never mind, he turned around and started walking backwards, still talking to his buddies. But the rest of the group stopped and one of them actually called the guy ahead of us back, then they waited until we'd walked on a ways before they followed.
Courtesy, what a quaint old fashioned notion.
The park we found was quiet. We claimed a bench under some trees, basketball goals before us and playground equipment behind. After awhile school must have let out or something. The basketball court developed a real game and the playground got busy. Some beat cops came in and spent about twenty minutes talking to some young mothers watching their children. I remember thinking then that Sesame Street must have been somewhere close thereabouts.
But no, I haven't gone back over the road. I was determined not to let years go by before I visited my son again. I was asking for time off to do just that when they offered me a load to take out there, rather than buying a plane ticket. They said they'd find me a place to park. I waited for months for this to happen and then all of a sudden it did. There was enough lead time to clear everything with Jonah and Cathy, the woman I've been dating for about a year, so we did it. They still hadn't found us a place to park when we'd left, so I was biting my nails over that, but it all worked out.
Yes, believe it or not I actually volunteered to drive a big truck in New York City. As expected it was a trip. We drove out to the truck stops in Bordentown NJ to overnight, then enter the city in the wee hours to make a 8:00 AM delivery of cut limestone in Maspeth, Queens. I got the directions from the contractor but when I compared them to the map they didn't match. I called back. “I don't find Maurice Ave. off of the BQE (Brooklyn Queens Expressway), I find it off of the Long Island Expressway.”
”The BQE turns into the Long Island Expressway.”
”Excuse me but it doesn't,” I thought, but didn't bother to say. I could certainly get onto the Long Island Expressway. Then I went over the rest of the directions again from there, twice, because the dude was Scottish and a wee bit hard to understand. Coming from Brooklyn get onto the LIE east, get off at Maurice, turn left under the freeway then left at the second street, just past the BP station, park and call him. Got it.
Everything seemed to be going according to plan. I took the second left under the freeway on Maurice avenue and there was even a BP station there. We were on time despite an unexpected construction backup over the Verrazano Narrows. Parking, however, meant occupying my lane with my flashers on, but this was NY, people double park all the time. There was a grave yard on the right and a police impound lot on the left. I was just hoping we didn't end up parked in the latter.
I called the contractor. He said he'd be right there. Twenty minuets later I called back. He said he was looking for me, where was I again? I had to move a couple of time to allow other traffic to do things. In fact I was running out of road to move forward down when the contractor called back. I very carefully repeated the directions he had given me the evening before. “Oh, I know where you are.” He then gave me further directions and said I'd see him and could follow him then. Having looked at the map and compared the directions I'd been given the first time to the directions I'd been given the second time, and inferring from the street numbers that hadn't ever matched either I'd intuitively guessed that what he now told me to do was what I was supposed to do all along, but I wasn't about to go following hunches when I had explicit instructions. At least I was comfortable with this next step.
Sure enough when I turned onto 55th Ave. an arm waved out of a red pickup truck which then jumped into traffic in front of me. We were off. He led me through a warren of narrow streets driving like a New Yorker, which is to say fast, and without turn signals alerting me to set up for a left or right turn. I went through a red light to keep up with him. At one point I had to go up onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street to make a tight right hand turn, but then that's not unusual for NY either. We ended up on a narrow one way street above the Long Island Expressway.
There's more that I could tell you about the unloading process that you might find amusing but I'll move on to the next phase of the adventure, getting to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I'd gotten directions to that at the same time that I'd gotten directions to the Queens delivery, back in Jersey. We had our eyes peeled on the way in. “There it is, exit 30, cool.” Only that was on the way in. There was no exit 30 going west on the BQE. I got off at the very next exit which put us in downtown Brooklyn during noon traffic. Oops. I knew the general direction that we needed to go so I took what roads I could make turns onto but we weren't getting there. Cathy used Hello Google to map it. The congenial voice of Google kept telling me to turn left at the next street, only those turns were impossible with a big truck, even going left. These directions were clearly meant for a passenger vehicle, not a semi-truck. There was one road I could have turned down but a beer truck was double parked there with it's flashers on. We finally made it back to where I could simply ignore Google, which was trying to take us to a different gate, and follow my original instructions.
Oh yeah, driving in NY is always fun, especially in a big truck. Cathy tells me she has new respect for what I do for a living.
Given my druthers this would be a work in progress, but I figure I've left my readers dry far too often and won't withhold what I've already written until I feel it complete. Hopefully I'll be back with more on our trip to the big city and more...
