A trip to New York City and the end of another school year make up the events of this chapter.

“The purpose of life on earth is to discover one’s true being-and to live up to it!” Henry Miller





Chapter Seven Moments of Awakening




“O.K. lets get back to the question, What is it that controls our machine?” I ask the students at our next meeting. No one answers. “I’ll tell you one thing that controls our machines is attitude. You know, this is a question I’ve been working on for more than thirty years. One of the reasons that I substitute is that the classroom is a very good place to examine your machine and see what makes it tick. You may have noticed that sometimes I get a bad attitude when I’m working with students.”

“You can say that again….”

“Sometimes, yea like all the time….” from a couple students.

“Yea, but sometimes I have a good attitude. What makes the difference?”

A long silence then one student says, “How we act toward you?”

“Yea, your attitude determines what my attitude will be. If I get a lot of bad attitude from a class it automatically put me into a bad attitude. And my attitude controls my whole machine. So, if you want to have a pleasant experience this morning, show me good attitude….”

“Yea well you show good attitude to us, and we show good attitude to you,” Jasmine tells me.

“O.K. are we going to fight about who is going first? Let’s all begin right now together show good attitude. And think, what else is it that controls your machine?” I ask as the bell rings.

Next meeting I tell my students that what we have been discussing is the second education that a man and a woman must under go in life. “In math class, you’re getting your first education. We have to learn how to get along in life, to support the material aspect of our life. The second education is about the essence of yourself, the spiritual side. I began this education in a very small way in the sixties when we began asking what’s it all about. When you begin the education is up to you. But if you don’t develop your essence, you miss the mark. You die an incomplete being.

“I don’t want you to believe anything that I’ve told you. What I’m saying is that you have to question life. Not so much now, though you can begin now, but later in life when you are able to support your material side, when you gone a ways into the first education.

I fought against the trip to New York City from its very inception last September when we first learned that Bella’s choir was going to sing in Carnage Hall. “We just can’t afford it,” I told Anne thinking about the all the money we spent last summer, the expense of Christmas, the money we had to put out to help pay for Bella’s car, the trip to Riverside for Halo’s basketball tournament.

“We never do anything for ourselves, and besides, Bella will be very disappointed if we don’t go.” Anne insists.

At first, we were going to take our grandson, Jake. I figured we could stretch it out to five days. We could stop in Philadelphia; visit some of my old stomping grounds, the Baptist Temple at Broad and Berks, 1859 N. 13th Street, City Hall, Fairmount Park, Columbia Avenue, Market Street. We could visit some of the historical spots, the Liberty Bell, Betsey Ross’s House, the museum where Rocky trained in the rain. Maybe shoot down to Gettysburg. Stop in Yardley and Trenton on our drive to New York; see some of the Yardley Boys, the Trivia crowd. But, that would cost us at least another grand, and with Jake along, we wouldn’t be able to sample any of the nightlife….

Things don’t work out for Jake to go. He gets an F in Biology. Has to make up a class. And, besides, it’s Bella’s adventure. Jake will have plenty of his own in a couple of years or so.

At one point I thought that we had agreed not to go, and instead make sure that we take the grandkids to Disneyland over the summer. But, no, I find that since the Disneyland trip is not happening until summer vacation there is plenty of time to save for it.

And, it’s not just the money that scares me. I’m thinking that if I spend that much money to fly back East, I want to spend more than five or six days. It makes more sense to drive back, spend three or four weeks, visit Philly and Trenton and see the old Yardley Boys, I keep telling myself.

Then there is all the yard work I want to get done over Easter vacation. I need to reseed the back yard, cut down a dead tree, plant the vegetable garden…. There’s too much that I got to do, I keep telling myself.

But, Anne keeps insisting. Then, it strikes me one morning in early January as I ‘m walking through the orchards that a trip to New York City wouldn’t hinder my efforts to awaken one single bit. Make it a work effort, I tell myself and start hitting the Internet to book the best deal.

By the end of February, I have the plane and hotel booked and I’m beginning to take walks through New York City with street maps and guidebooks and Internet guides. In my mind, I walk through Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, Central Park, and The Concrete Jungle. I ride the ferries to Staten Island, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty. I sip Cuty and water in cozy jazz clubs.

To tell the Truth. How to tell the truth about our trip to New York? It actually wasn’t one trip. It was several trips. The first was the one that I took in my mind on my winter walks through the orchards. On this trip we spent a lot of time in the Village. We visited the coffee houses and in one on a side street where mostly regulars hand out ran into one of the old Triv. regulars, Concho. I’m sipping an espresso and eyeing up the New York coffee house girls when an elderly black gentleman stops at our table. “Excuse me, but you’re not Jack. Jack and Vic. from the Triv. You’re not Jack are you?” he asks.

“Concho? Naw…. I thought you split for Chi.” I tell him and introduce him to Anne. He accepts my invite to sit down and I order a round of espressos as he fills me in on what’s happened to the old Triv. Regulars.

“Yea, if I’m not mistaken, Black Barb is having a little get together at her crib. I got a gig here until two A.M. but, I can give ya de address,” he tells me.

We listen to his first set, meet the other members of his group and then follow his directions to Black Barb’s crib.

On our first night at the Wellington, we put away our luggage, slip back down the elevator, and waltz into the hotel bar. “Cuty and water for me, and a white Zin for my wife,” I tell the bartender and focus on the New York City after midnight crowd.

In my mind, we slip into several jazz clubs during the after hours of our five-day visit. It is a real trip sitting at a small table, grooving on the riffs from a tenor sax, sipping a Cuty and water, eyeing up the city hipsters. I go out on my own one night when Anne turns in early. Tripping down a side street off 7th Avenue, I find a small jazz club and take a seat at the bar.

“Where you from?” the bartender asks when I order my second drink.

“About an hour east of San Francisco,” I tell him.

On my walks through the orchards all winter, scenes from New York appear against the almond and walnut trees. I feast my eyes on one of the mother walnut trees and superimposed on it I see the outline of the Chrysler Building. The whole skyline of the city spreads itself among the trees. As I study the lines, grooves, and shades of green moss of the tree, I imagine myself at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gazing at a Picasso. Continuing my walk, in my mind I leave the orchards and stroll through central park, gazing at concrete buildings above the trees, I head over to 5th Avenue for an up close look at the gigantic mansions and apartment buildings.

In Actuality, the trip is different. The actuality cannot be captured in words. What actually happened in New York was in the moment, here and now. What is here and now can never be repeated….

But, the memory of the trip lingers on. We get to the airport three hours early as advised because of expected delays for security checks. The skycap checks our bag at the curb and issues our boarding pass in less than five minutes. We waltz right through the security check and find ourselves at the gate with two and a half hours to spare. Time to read through the guidebooks and study the New York Street Map.

Take off is a roller coaster ride into the noonday sun. We level off at thirty six thousand feet and are soon over the mighty Sierra Nevada. Through patchy cloud cover the snow-topped peaks reach upward. Then, the flight attendants start distributing coffee, sodas, and snacks. Looking around the packed cabin, I see that like Anne, most of the passengers have purchased earphones and are deep into the feature movie. A number fall back to sleep as soon as they finish their nerve soothing snacks. Nevada spreads out below with splotches of raw brown and orange that run into Utah looking something like the surface of the moon. Soon we are over the farmland of Kansas with gigantic circles of brown and green, squares of newly planted corn and tiny farm buildings. It’s mostly cloud cover over Arkansas but I do get a glimpse of towering green forests. There’s a lot of green in Alabama also. And as we start our descent into Atlanta, I’m surprised by the size of the housing developments and the enormous houses.

We take our train for the connecting terminal, use the restrooms, and look for a cup of coffee. I’m listening for Southern accents, but aside from one, “You all….” I don’t hear any. Our two-hour lay over flashes by and soon we’re taxing down a taxiway in the waning daylight. There are four or five aircraft in line ahead of us, a half dozen or more behind us. We are cleared for take off and the roller coaster ride energizes my mind and body. There is more cloud cover, but big city lights show through breaks in the clouds.

The lights of Washington D.C. disappear into the darkness of the Chesapeake Bay And, then through the clouds is an endless string of city lights, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton…. As we begin our descent, a full red moon appears on the eastern horizon. The New York City lights, the skyscrapers, rivers, and bridges, flash beneath us as we circle for our landing. Gusts of wind rattle the sheet metal on the wing two rows in front of me. The aircraft shudders as the flaps go down and we lose more airspeed. A furry of snow streaks across the leading edge of the wing. The wind whips past the wings with gale like fury. The ground rushes up to meet us. Bump bump bump out tires hit the runway and we brake to taxing speed. “I think we owe the pilots a round of applause for the beautiful landing he made under very adverse conditions,” a flight attendant calls, and the whole aircraft bursts into applause.

Our plane is a half hour late. We wait for forty-five minutes at the luggage carrousel, lifting off several bags and returning them when we find that they are not ours. At the Delta baggage office the attendant asks if we made a late connection and explains that our bags are on the next flight in from Atlanta. She tells us that they can deliver the bags to our hotel in about four hours. “How long will it be before the next flight gets here?” I ask.

“About fifteen minutes,” she tells me.

We decide to wait and I call the Golden Touch Airport Car to let them know we’re almost ready for our ride. “Call back when you have your luggage,” the dispatcher says. After a forty-minute wait, I finally spot one of the bags, pull it off and wait another ten minutes for the other two. With our bags in hand, I call the dispatcher of Golden Touch. “Your driver will be there in ten or fifteen minutes. Wait out in the middle drive across from Delta,” he tells me.

“Oh, it’s freezing out here,” Anne says as we carry our luggage across to the middle drive. A flurry of tiny snow flakes sweep across the dark skyline. “I’m not gonna wait out here in the cold. Call me when the car comes,” Anne tells me and hurries back across the street.

I turn up my collar and pace up and down in the freezing cold. Looking at my cell phone, I see that it’s almost two A.M. Several empty cabs roll by heading to the stands around the corner. “Damm, I knew we should’da took a cab,” I tell myself and figure we won’t be saving a penny at seventeen bucks a piece for the car. A black limo pulls up and stops several feet in front of me. “You’re not Golden Touch are you?” I ask. The driver shakes her head no, and I walk back to the luggage. I look for Anne inside, but see no trace of her.

Another ten minutes goes by, as the night grows colder and colder. I call the dispatcher again. “Your car should be there in three to five minutes,” the dispatcher tells me.

Anne appears at the door. I wave her over. “They said another three minutes,” I tell her.

The van arrives in about ten minutes. The driver hops out and opens the back door. I wave Anne over and notice that the driver makes no move toward the luggage. I pile it in myself as the driver opens the door. “If I had known we would have to wait this long, I would have taken a cab,” I tell him.

“How, long you been waiting?” he asks as he checks out of the ‘Port’.

“At least a half hour. And that’s after an hour and a half wait for the baggage. ‘Course, that’s not your fault….”

“You should’ a called right back. I didn’t get the call ‘til about five minute’s ago,” the driver tells me and lapses into silence. I figure he’s pissed at me for mentioning cab, and settle back into my seat to shoot a look at the scenery. We’re out’a the ‘Port’ and heading down some lightly traveled streets that are lined with factories and warehouses. It could almost be East Oakland, I think as we hit the freeway and the driver fiddles with the radio. The newscast says something about possible snow showers and tempetures down below thirty.

“Did you hear that? Below freezing….” I say.

“It was seventy eight when we left California,” Anne tells the driver.

“Oh, don’t rub it in. I had a fare a
couple weeks back. I asked her where she was from. She answered that she was one of the privileged ones. One of the privileged ones from California. ‘Privileged ones,’ she said,” the driver tells us.

Anne and I laugh and I ask “Where you from?”

“ Poland,” the driver tells us.

“Oh, how long you been here?”

“Eight years,” he answers and responds to his radio.

Soon we’re off the freeway and the New York City streets start flashing by. We stop on the 57th street side of the Wellington and the driver gets out. I have a two-dollar tip in my pocket waiting for him. As he lays our bags on the curb, Anne hands him a five. A big smile lights up the driver’s face as he bids us good night. As a sign on the door says use other door, I figure it means the door on the 7th Ave. side and we walk around to it. A sign there says use 57th Street entrance. We walk back to 57th Street. “Oh, it must mean the door on the right,” I tell Anne as we look at the double door entrance. The driver gets out of the van that he has parked across the street and calls out are we all right? We explain our mistake and he yells good night.

At the check in desk, I’m telling myself, Oh, well, I figured we’d be in our room by midnight; we’ll make it by two thirty anyhow….

“We have a little problem,” the desk clerk tells us. Ten people have over stayed their booking and there are no rooms available. But, not to worry. They’re sending us to a sister hotel just up the street. He gives me a letter addressed to the clerk at the Blakely, and throws in tickets for six free breakfasts at the hotel coffee shop. A bellhop leads the way up 7th Avenue to the Blakely in the middle of the block. I get a quick glance at mid Manhattan in the after hours. While the desk clerk is getting together our room, I concentrate on what he’s doing and forget to tip the bellhop from the Wellington. I feel bad about it afterwards, but remember to tip the Blakely bellhop. And, a few minutes before three A.M. we are sitting in our up scale room. So, this is how the other half lives, I tell myself as I check out the furnishings, the décor, white bathrobes in the little closet, the basket of cookies, almonds, dried fruit, and other goodies.

I make us a cup of coffee, open a pack of pecan cookies, and peer out the window at the buildings across 7th Avenue. I can’t believe that I’m here in the middle of Manhattan.

In the morning, we head back to the Wellington and check in. A bellhop guides us through the high ceiling front lobby to the elevators in back. We’re unpacked by a little before eleven. We hurry down the elevator so we can get to the coffee shop before they stop serving breakfast. There’s a line of people waiting to be seated so we opt for seats at the counter. Ordering our breakfast, I feast my eyes on the Mid Manhattan crowd. The restaurant owner is stationed at the cash register counting receipts and directing the waitresses and bus boys in a New York City voice. I’m surprised at how casual the dress is; sweat shirts, Levi’s, slacks, and sweaters. Everything’s business like however. People hurry through their breakfast, gulp their second cup, and are off. The line for tables never gets shorter.

We decide to take it easy today and just see the sights in Midtown Manhattan. A block away is Carnegie Hall. Walking around the outside of the building, I just can’t believe that It’s me here in New York City. From Carnegie Hall we walk down 57th street to 5th Avenue. I crane my neck to see the Trump Tower rising into a cloud covered sky. I’m mesmerized by the sight of so many skyscrapers all crowded together and the little curious buildings that are squeezed in beside them.

The sight of St Patrick’s Cathedral completely blows me away. We walk around the building twice before daring to enter at one of the side doors. Inside, the organ music, the vast height and sweeping grander of the ceiling, the statues that line the stations along the side, the odor of burning candles, the stained glass windows, the peace and otherness that permeates it all gives a real sense of spiritual presence. We slide into an empty pew just as a priest comes to the altar to begin the service. His words are lost in the splendor of the gothic work that carries me back to another place and time.

In my mind, I see the monstrous cost of St Patrick’s from one side of the buffer that separates my views on organized religion. This view like that of the secular humanists who sees the suffering and exploitation of millions of poor Catholics the world over who are taking from their children’s mouths to fill the purses of the church fathers with pennies that should have been spent on bread. The true message of Jesus that we should love one another is lost in the splendid materialism of the church structure.

On the other side of the buffer, I see the wholeness and majesty of this artistic creation that can inspire a touch of otherness even in the most hardhearted New York City banker.

Back on the street, a cold blast of wind caresses my awakened senses. We make another trip around the block trying to get back into the twenty first century. People hurry to and fro, traffic lights change, horns honk, venders ply their wares, and our feet carry us several blocks to the Grand Central Terminal. Grand Central Terminal, in my mind it is Grand Central Station. I think from a radio serial that I listened to in the 1940’s. Grand Central Terminal, a temple built to celebrate the material world. And, the immense blue vaulted ceiling with its twenty five hundred electronic stars certainly is awe-inspiring.

Somehow, it seems as If I had come to Grand Central from Philadelphia years earlier almost in another lifetime. Commuters hurrying to and fro, tourists, and a few street people getting in from the cold crowd the main concourse. We follow the restroom sign and head downstairs. Passing up the numerous eating establishments, we reach the restroom lines and head for the separate rooms.

At the New York Public Library, I pose in front of one of the lions as Anne takes my picture. The marble walls and ceiling again gives the feeling of being in a Greek or Roman temple. I just can’t believe that Henry Miller use to while away his days here just reading from the more than thirty eight million volumes. To me the building is too magnificent to read in.

From the Library, we make it over to Broadway and Times Square with its gigantic flashing signs, vast flashing T.V. screens T-shirt vendors, a lonely jazz saxophone wailing, and throngs of excited tourists. It somehow reminds me of Pier Thirty-Nine, a place to avoid.

Back at the Wellington, I catch a quick nap. When I wake up, Anne comes in with coffee and deli sandwiches. Refreshed we head out for the Museum of Modern Art. I had read on the Internet that there is no admission charge on Friday nights. Inside, we learn that we have to stand in line to get free tickets to enter. Looking for the end of the line we discover that it stretches for some four or five blocks. “We can maybe come back tomorrow or Sunday,” I tell Anne.

Another quick walk around St. Patrick’s and we direct our feet toward Central Park, figuring maybe we can make it to the Met. We walk Fifth Avenue feeding on the sights of the luxury apartments across the street and the new spring growth of the park. At 65th Street we go into the park and stop to stare at the skyscrapers that ring us. Here, it is just like I imagined it would be. From the green of the park the city is ‘like a scene for all those movies.’ A squirrel races across the grass and pauses in front of a tree. Squirrels here in the middle of the city and I never see one in the orchards, I tell myself shaking my head as the first squirrel’s buddy chases after him. We stay in the park until near dark not quite making it to the Met. The lights coming on in the city fill us with enchantment. But, it’s been a long day and bed sure is attractive.

Saturday we decide to take in the Village. At the vending machine for subway tickets, the guy in front of us with a wife and a couple kids is having trouble figuring out how to work the machine. The guy behind us gets impatient and tells the subway agent that the man needs help. The agent, a middle aged African American woman offers her help. “ I know what I’m doing,” the guy says in broken English.

“Sure you do,” the agent tells him brushing his hand aside and punching the right buttons.

“Wait ‘til you come to my country. See how easy it is,” he tells the agent in broken English as she asks what kind of fare he wants and pushes more buttons.

At my turn at the machine, I hurriedly punch in eight dollars and stick my ten -dollar bill in the slot. “We take the R train, right?” I ask the agent.

“That depends on where you’re going. I’m not clairvoyant, you know,” she tells me.

“ Oh, I thought all subway agents were clairvoyant,” I say and explain that we are going to Greenwich Village.

“The R or the Q. Get off at Prince,” she barks in a stern voice but flashing a big smile.

I slide our pass at the turnstile
and we walk to the platform. I’m surprised at how clean and well kept everything is. There are a couple dozen commuters waiting with us. The R comes up. The doors open and we climb aboard. I get a rush of excitement as the doors close and we whish down the tracks.

Zooming along under the city streets is an awakening experience though it seems to put most underground travelers deeper asleep. All but a couple seats are occupied with what seem to be New York City commuters. Several sit with heads buried in books, others are into their cell phones, or tuned in to their MP3 players with eyes tightly closed and a couple singing along. Not a single eye meets mine as I scan the rows and listen for the next station. I discover already that the train slows down about two blocks from the next stop.

I read the station signs as we slow down, and the bright blue and white tile walls flash into sight; 51st., 42nd., 33rd., 28th., 23rd., 8th., Prince…. I picture us running beneath all the traffic and buildings of 5th Avenue, running below Grand Central, below Union Square. Whiz, whiz, whiz the city flashes by.

When we exit the Prince Street Station, there are at least three different ‘I’s fighting for my attention. One is reading the street quide and trying to find the literary stops that are marked on the map. This ‘I’ wants to do the right thing, see as much as possible and share the experience with Anne.

Another ‘I’ wants to be free and follow the whims of the inner spirit, stop for a drink, rub elbows with real village people, maybe run into a writer or two. This ‘I’ is just a little frightened that if he breaks out, he may never come back.

There are several work ‘I’s who are hinting that I should just pay attention and take in all that I can. The street guide ‘I’ wins and I whip out the map and begin looking for addresses.