SNL Catechism

Every day when I worked downtown I'd take the same train at the same time, like most people. In fact, most likely I'd be in the car with the same people.

Nowadays, subway panhandling is much less common but in those days (1970s-1980s) it was quite common. Sometimes there would be two or more panhandlers on the train. Sometimes I'd see a woman who never talked but she handed out some kind of religious pamphlet to the passengers, one by one and then starting at one end of the car, she'd repeat it but this time asking for the pamphlets back and, presumably, money. I'd of course always stare at the newspaper and ignore her.

Another was the accordion player. I believe this was she. She never held onto a pole. You have to understand that the express trains go very fast and there are curves and when they go around the curves you can be tossed to the ground. But not the accordion player. She never held onto anything. But you know, I do not recall her ever playing anything. Years later I learned that she died walking between the cars.

So each morning for a while in the early 1980s I'd be on the train going downtown and for a while a man would get on at 42nd Street. As soon as the doors closed he'd start in:

"Ladies and gentlemen. I just got released from the V.A. I don't want to hurt anyone, I just need some money for food..." and so on. But the thing was, he's say the same thing each day, word for word. And so I'd sort of memorize his speech and when got on the train and started up, so would I (but very quietly).

And one evening I heard this same routine on Saturday Night Live.

OK, a wee bit of updating

When I first moved to NYC, I lived on East 79th Street. I lived alone. I had that job near Grand Central Station but no one at home. I remember one friend of mine asked me if I could let a person stay over one night and then take her to the YWCA the next day. That was in 1974. I said yes. She came over. A very beautiful woman, maybe 20. Very beautiful. She slept on the living room floor.

That apartment was a mess. The biggest problem after the tiny size was roaches. I mean, like roaches. There was a gap between the floor and the wall in the kitchen and at night they would come out. In the morning, the kitchen sink would be full of them. It was awful. Someone in the building told me the woman who lived above me was blind and quite old. She was a bit-part actress and I guess being blind, she was unaware of the roach problem. I don't know. Anyway, there they were. I found some "organic" bug spray and that really worked.

So this woman stayed the night and the next morning I took her to Grand Central Station. She had never been in NYC before. She was from Cincinnati. I'm not sure which YWCA she was going to but on the subway most of the guys (I assume, straight) were staring at her. Later I learned she was pre-operative. That was the first time I met someone who was going from boy to girl as she was (or visa versa). It was pretty cool, all in all.

So, back to "we" and "me". The "we" part came about a year later. when I went to a bar on 73rd and Amsterdam. I forget the name (I assume it's long gone) and met Roberto there. We danced a lot together and he came back to my place and basically stayed on for a long time.

He moved with me to the Upper West Side and then to Hell's Kitchen. But not long after we split up, but remained in sporadic contact.

The Fart

When I moved to Hell's Kitchen, I'd take the No. 1 train downtown at Columbus Circle to Times Square and there change across the platform to the No 2 or No 3 express to go to Wall Street where I worked (not in finance but in a large print shop).  In those days, Columbus Circle was pretty rundown. There was the Coliseum for large events where Time Warner Center is now. But it always looked closed and abandoned and dirty. Mainly that side of Columbus Circle seemed to be just for buses to take gamblers to Atlantic City. The big subway station beneath was of course very rundown. Graffiti everywhere. Like, everywhere, especially the subways.

And like now, the trains were of course very crowded in the morning rush. Crowded like, you couldn't move at all.

One day, as my train is speeding downtown at 8:30AM, and everyone is just trying to hang on to a pole to avoid falling over when the train goes into a curve, in the midst of this crowd someone cut a silent fart. And it was a bad fart. (Are there good ones?) I froze, everyone froze, We all seemed to have this blank stare as if to say, "it wasn't me." A moment passed. And then someone (you couldn't tell who) made an "Eww" sound.  And this older Spanish lady sitting nearby laughed and said, "The first that smelt it is he that dealt it." We all laughed. But it still stunk.

Nun at the Top of the Stairs

One of my first real jobs in NYC was in Midtown, near Grand Central Station. It was in 1974 and then I lived on the UES, and took the No. 6 train from 77th Street to Grand Central Station each day. The train was not pleasant. At rush hour in the morning, trains came every 45 seconds (I timed them). The crowds were so huge that if a train was delayed, people were backed up out of the station. My daily commute. I loved it!

At Grand Central Station, we all got off and walked in the same direction, to the stairs at the end of the platform. I've tried, so far without success, to find a photograph of those stairs.

The stairs were pretty big and the ceiling was very high, maybe 20 feet. And at the top of the stairs sat a nun. Each day, I assume the same nun but really, who knows. The nun just sat there at the top, sort of in the middle between the upstairs and downstairs sides so she didn't block anyone, facing towards the commuters walking upstairs. And in her lap she had a bowl for donations.

Above her was an arch and it too was very high and she sat at the edge of the stairs right under the arch.

Someone, or someones, somehow, got a large marker or paint brush and right above her on the arch wrote in huge letters:

                                                          BEWARE OF FAKE NUN

with an arrow angling down to where she sat.

So that's what we all saw each day on the way to work.