And I always tell them, “I am an elevator operator.” I say that I drive an elevator in downtown Manhattan.
The reaction to my announcement varies. Some people smile politely and then move on to more interesting people. Some ask questions about the art of piloting an elevator in a skyscraper, if I ever forget the route, if I ever get lost. Almost everyone quips, “I bet that job has its ups and downs.”

Generally, when that happens, I’m the one to smile politely. And then I respond with some variation of the retort I learned my first day on the job and have repeated many times over the years: “It sure does have its ups and downs, but it’s the jerks in the middle that cause the most trouble.”

Operating an elevator was not my career choice. I actually taught English for 33 years to reluctant high school kids who preferred drinking beer and getting laid to learning English grammar. Teaching I discovered, like the operation of elevators, is also a job where “the jerks in the middle” can be the most difficult.

The reason I tell strangers who ask that I operate elevators is because of first impressions. I figure that people won’t expect much of some “mobile doorman” who also drives them up and down before opening and closing the door. That way if I say or do anything stupid, their reaction will likely be: “Well what can you expect? He operates elevators for a living.” And conversely, if I am witty, charming and brilliant, their after-conversation will go something like this: “He’s so cultured for an elevator operator. He reads books. He appreciates fine wine and he is a great conversationalist!” For me it is a win/win situation.

I did, in fact, operate an elevator at The Equitable Building, a 38-story office in New York City, located at 120 Broadway across from Trinity Church in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The building is a landmark engineering achievement designed by Ernest R. Graham and completed in 1915. Originally it was supposed to be 40 stories high, but it was reduced on the advice of consulting engineer Charles Knox. He determined the lower height as being optimal for its elevators, the very ones I operated for one summer, the year I graduated college and before I started teaching. My friend John’s father worked in the Maintenance Department at the building and he got the job for me, and for Sal, a high school/college friend who was also going to teach in September. After our interview, Sal and I in civilian clothes took the elevators for a spin in the middle of the mid-day rush under the watchful eyes of veteran uniformed operators. We both passed our driver’s test, and reported for duty the following Monday.

The boss, a man named Andy Rattazzo that everyone called “The Rat,” but not to his face, had a glass eye that glittered under the overhead florescent lights and a jutting jaw. He looked like Benito Mussolini, and like Mussolini, The Rat prided himself on keeping his elevators running on time. He had risen from the ranks of elevator operator to become the “boss of all bosses,” the final boss of temporaries and hangers-on in a dying industry, at a time when all the elevators in the building were slowly being automated. Progress meant forced retirement or unemployment for the many who had spent their lives and logged millions of miles going up and down the insides of skyscrapers. It was summer employment for a select few.

That fact that he was on a sinking ship didn’t deter The Rat from running a taut ship. So every day, before every shift, he conducted mandatory inspections of the crews, checking the cleanliness of uniforms, the starch in the collared brown shirts, the shine on shoes and the condition of fingernails. If someone didn’t pass muster, he was banished, with instructions to stick his shoes under the electric polisher or put on a clean shirt, to the Break Room, a dingy sub-basement filled with discarded office furniture and a leaky toilet the operators shared with the rats. It was where we spent time between our shifts, where the old timers griped about their changing lives, complained about the bosses and played practical jokes on the temps.

Spencer Something-son was a particularly favorite target. A big, beefy kid from Utah, he looked like a gorilla with his blond hair and glasses in his brown starched shirt and uniform pants with the satin stripe. Although he had started weeks before Sal and me, Spencer was eager to please and still so naïve he believed all their war stories from the “glory elevator operating days.”

“We used to have these contests in the old days, to shoot up the fastest to the Penthouse without getting caught, or to see who could pack the most people into one elevator.”

“But isn’t that dangerous?” Spencer asked.

“Only if the cable breaks.” They all laughed. “And then there was that contest to see who could wait until the very last minute before putting on the brakes and stopping the levelest at the Main Floor without crashing into The Pit. I think Rattazzo won most of them contests, before he became The Rat, of course. He won a lot of money and he still holds the building record for getting twenty-six people into a car designed for twenty.”

The elevators at 120 Broadway were organized in banks. The Local cars patrolled the ground floor up, stopping at each of the 35 floors of the 38-story building. They were the most difficult to operate because they involved the most stops, the most people and had the highest margin for error. The Express banks left the ground floor and traveled through a dark, enclosed shaft like a vertical tunnel that opened at the floors they serviced. The three Express banks were floors 11 to 20, 21-30, 31-35. There was also a separate, private elevator that went directly to the top three floors where the exclusive Bankers Club was located. Only the most senior operators ever got to drive that one.

As a safety precaution, a large red #3 bull’s eye was painted on the walls of each Express shaft to alert the operator that he was approaching the ground floor. It served as a warning to apply the brakes, which meant returning the control handle to the center position, so the car would glide to a smooth stop that was also level if the operator timed it right. None of the cars had automatic leveling devices, and each elevator had different accelerating and stopping characteristics, so stopping level at any floor depended on the car, the weight inside the car, the speed of the elevator as it approached the floor and the experience of the operator. In the event of an uneven landing, which was not unusual when there were too many people on board, or the driver was new, “leveling off” required slowly taking the car well above the desired floor and letting the weight pull it down again. Sometimes the maneuver had to be done more than once. The hope was that it would eventually settle relatively level with the floor. Failing that, the customary warning to passengers was: “Please watch your step. Jump up! Jump down!”

Stopping level at the ground floor with a full elevator hurtling down the shaft from above required great skill and a greater amount of luck. Seeing that red #3 bull’s eye was crucial to brake the elevator in time and avoid disaster. Of course the people who designed elevators had taken into consideration the possibility that a distracted elevator operator might occasionally overshoot a landing, so they built catchers in each shaft, at the bottom, called The Pit, and top, The Claw, with heavy springs to cushion the impact and steel hooks to hold the car in place until Maintenance was able to free the car and its contents.

What happened to Spencer the day he was fired was the topic of discussion in the Break Room for weeks after the event. Some speculated that he was trying to earn elevator history glory and outdo The Rat by setting two new building records – for most people in an elevator. They later counted twenty-seven. And for waiting until the last instant, which he seriously miscalculated, before applying his breaks. Others said that Spencer likely missed the red #3 bull’s eye and crash landed in the basement at full speed. Whatever the truth, neither the twenty-seven people trying to get out of the building for lunch, nor Andy Rattazzo were amused. The instant my friend John’s father and the maintenance crew freed everyone from The Pit, a shaken and dazed Spencer was stripped of his uniform and sent walking.

The building operated twenty-four hour schedule, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Work shifts and elevator bank assignments were a matter of seniority or favoritism. The career guys, soon to be searching for new careers, mostly opted for Express elevators on weekdays from 9 to 5. The temps got what was left. Daytimes were busy and nighttimes were lonely. Some old timers preferred working the graveyard shift so they could nap, drink or pull pranks on the unsuspecting. A favorite was pressing the call button on every floor to get a new guy in motion, and then scaring him by jumping out of the shadows when he opened the elevator door.

If the Local elevators were the most difficult, the freight elevator was the most peaceful, but only after hours when there wasn’t much freight to move. Temps never got the assignment during the day because the freight operators often got tips. Whenever I got the opportunity in the middle of the night, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was no roof on the freight elevator, so it afforded an unobstructed view of the entire shaft, all 38 floors, and piloting it was like taking a slow rocket ship into the dark heavens.

During my brief tenure at 120 Broadway, I tried to be a good elevator operator. I showed up for my shifts on time. I worked over-nights. I passed inspection. My shoes were shined and I smiled whenever I interacted with the public. I was even relatively consistent whenever I had to “level off,” accomplishing it with a minimal number of tries. But still there was a part of me that was curious, distracted, a part of me wanted to test the limits, to see just how far I might go up without getting hooked, how low without ending up in The Pit. Of course I didn’t want to kill anybody or myself in the process. Perhaps that was that wonder that caused the problem on my last day of work. Or maybe it was the image of a smiling Spencer climbing the maintenance ladder through the escape hatch in the elevator, wondering how it felt riding full tilt into the springs below. In any event, I missed the red #3 bull’s eye and kamikazed my elevator filled with Japanese office workers from Mitsubishi on the 28th floor into the The Pit. I don’t remember much, but I am sure it wasn’t me who shouted, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” as somebody reported hearing on the descent.
Of course I was fired in full view of everyone.

My friend Sal later told me The Rat gathered everyone in the Break Room and announced that my crash landing made a bigger impact on the building than the one he had witnessed in March 1942. That was when a seven-inch artillery shell fired by an anti-aircraft battery near the East River by mistake struck the 37th floor.
“It was one of eight,” The Rat told them. “The only one to hit. And I was right there when it happened. The other rounds all fell harmlessly into the river. That shell caused less damage, and no injuries.”
So my career came to an abrupt and crashing end. But I did make it into elevator operator lore, and in September I started on a new career path, teaching high school.

© 2011 Joseph E. Scalia

"Me, too. I've got to get my kid by 5:30pm." Her answer tinged with aggravation.

Hearing this exchange through the bathroom door, my bladder shut down. I was on the 60th floor of the Woolworth Building, the world's tallest building from 1914 to 1930. My medical exam for the New York City Housing Authority hiring process was concluding with the traditional urine sample.

"Everything OK in there?"

He didn't care if everything was OK, he was telling me to get out of there, asap, so he could escape his eerie dark office. I stuck my head under the sink's spout and began drinking lots of water. Flushed the bowl a few times, and took off my shirt and pants for good luck.

"I hope he's not pee shy," came loud and clear through the door.

I couldn't believe she said it. The pressure already peaking, I drank more water and opened the small window, high over the sink to let in fresh air, and started pacing the tiny bathroom in my bare feet on the checkered marble floor. The socks followed my pants.

"For Christ's sake, it's been twenty minutes, did he die in there?" She said, then one of them fell dramatically into a chair based on the sound I heard of a sizable ass hitting a seat.

I couldn't possibly drink more water, and I couldn't go. My last recourse was sticking my head directly out the window over the sink. I figured I'd rock my bare belly on the ledge, while the rarefied air hit me in the face.

Climbing on the sink, I got most of my upper body through the petite opening. Once I got my arms through, I leaned on my elbows and looked left and saw the beautiful Hudson River all the way up to the Bridge. Then I looked right, and screamed like a girl, "Aaaaaahhhhh!"

Face to face with a stone gargoyle, not a funny gargoyle, a hideous gargoyle that comes to you in a nightmare after eating Mexican food way too late. My scream made me lose my footing and I fell forward. The snug window and my chubby stomach kept me from falling all the way out. The cars below looked like toys. I thought about the Post's headline, "Boxer Shorts Suicide Dives Off Woolworth Building."

Hyperventilating, stuck in the window, I heard, "Hey, what the hell is going on?"

"Nothing, nothing..." I lied, pulled myself out of the window, got off the sink, went over to the toilet and peed like a horse. I got dressed and came out of the bathroom with the specimen cup, refused to make eye contact with my medical providers, somehow found one of their hands to pass it off, and ran out the door and down twenty flights of fire stairs before I felt the urge to pee again. Took the elevator to the lobby with my legs crossed.
 

In many ways Stan was an archetypal post-World War II junkie: Male, urban, working class, first generation American, and Jewish. Like a lot of the estimated 5,000 addicts in New York City at that time - most Jewish or Italian-American - he was a habitué of the drug-heavy jazz scene. For the Stans of the world the 1950s were not a sunny tableau of letterman jackets and chocolate malts, but a time when the status quo enthusiastically supported racial, cultural and religious discrimination and used the police to enforce that status quo. For the outsiders, the American dream was an unattainable fantasy, a ruse from which drugs offered some relief.

I met Stan in the winter of 2006. He was retired and living alone in a Brighton Beach apartment that he’d bought with his modest salary as a drug counselor. At his suggestion we met at a Starbucks during which he expressed sentiments like "why do you care about these kinds of stories?" and, to himself in particular, “why am I talking to you?”

I had first gotten in touch with Stan by phone as part of my research for a film and book on an experimental prison for drug addicts called The Narcotic Farm, which, among other things, housed drug-using jazz greats such as Chet Baker, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Heath and most of Charlie Parker’s band, as well as Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles, and writer William Burroughs, who wrote about The Narcotic Farm in his roman a clef, "Junky." Stan (rightly) saw himself as at the center of this American junkie culture and eventually agreed to sit down for what became a lengthy, riveting on-camera interview about life as a heroin addict on the streets of New York in the late 1940s through the mid 1960s. Before wrapping it up for the day’s shoot, Stan asked if he could tell us a story that wasn’t related to The Narcotic Farm but one he'd like us to hear anyway. We turned off the camera and listened.

Arrested for possession of a needle by an undercover detective in Manhattan, Stan recalled being sent to The Tombs for what would have been his second or third time in April of 1953. Before being assigned his jail cell Stan was already in acute opiate withdrawal. If you don’t already know this from the movies, withdrawal from heroin includes all variety of feeling shitty – you sweat, you experience both anxiety and deep depression, you get the chills, you vomit repeatedly and often, and your nose won’t stop running. This lasts about a week. On top of all this you have diarrhea, fever and, most memorable to Stan this particular time around, a pulverizing headache.

In the mire of this dope sickness Stan was lying face down on his cot with a pillow over his head, sweating like mad and trying his best to make it through yet another wave of thumping headaches when a woman somewhere within earshot began to sing a rousing, a cappella version of “God Bless America.” The voice, he remembers, was pretty good. But this, along with the steady din of the institution, its bootsteps, its clanging doors, and all the other sounds of a large prison, was too much too absorb in this fragile state.

He yelled for the woman to shut up. But her voice kept on going, unfazed and unstoppable. She kept singing and he kept yelling. When “God Bless America” was finally over, her voice started up again. Stan began screaming so loud a guard came his cell to see what was wrong. The guard listened passively as Stan pleaded with him to make this woman stop singing. He took out his ring of keys and opened the jail cell door and gestured to Stan that he was free to walk outside and confront the woman.

"Go right ahead," said the guard, "Just walk down there and tell her to shut up. But before you do that, you should know that that is Ethel Rosenberg who is singing. She’s just been sentenced to death."

JP Olsen is a filmmaker, journalist and musician living in Brooklyn. His film and book "The Narcotic Farm" received praise from Errol Morris and Luc Sante, among others. He also fronts the musical collective The Malefactors of Great Wealth, whose debut EP "Today is the Best Day of My Life," is released March 2011 on Old 3C records (old3c.com).

I could pretend that it was because business was changing, as the notice letter said, or that there was a need to make more cuts, as my manager—I’ll call him John—explained to me, but I knew better. The company I worked for had reported profits that quarter. On the other hand, trouble had been brewing around me for months and I knew that my position would be eliminated as soon as it was safe to let go of an older woman with a disabling condition.

Earlier that year, a departmental restructure had brought in a new management team that believed in aggressive deadlines and absolute job dedication.

“I come in at 7 a.m.,” John explained to our team as a manner of introduction, “and I leave at 7 or 8 at night. And if something needs to be done during the weekend, I make myself available.”

At first, I stood up to them. “I have a medical condition,” I said to John. No, I cannot work 12-hour days. No, I cannot be available day and night, weekdays and weekends, at the ring of a cell phone or the touch of a remote connection.

“Everyone in this business unit is ranked according to a Bell curve,” John replied, “and every year, 10 percent of employees are rated as ‘need improvement.’” If I couldn’t meet expectations, I would automatically fall into that category and then, “When it’s time to decide on raises or when it’s time to reduce the work force, well,” he added, letting the obvious answers hang at the tip of his outstretched hands, palms up, in a nothing-I-can-do-about-it gesture. He had the flat emotionless tone and the slight smirk that showed up whenever he set ambitious expectations or redefined goals. That’s the way it was going to be. Period.

I had worked as a computer programmer for all of the 12 years I had multiple sclerosis, and had always received satisfactory reviews and raises. Now, for the first time, I needed to find out what my rights were. The country has laws to protect the disabled, doesn’t it? Multiple sclerosis is recognized as a disabling condition, right? It does and it is, but the protection that offers is, as I discovered to my dismay, very limited.

According to the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), a company should make reasonable accommodations to ensure that an employee with a disability can perform her job. So if someone uses a wheelchair, the employer should provide a desk space wide enough to accommodate it. If an individual’s vision is impaired, the employer should provide large character software.

My drop foot and weak right leg make me limp but they don’t prevent me from sitting at a computer terminal, and the numbness in my fingers doesn’t affect my typing abilities. And I can focus, concentrate and multitask as well as any of my peers. But I do get tired. Fatigue is my vulnerability. I need a regular workday and enough rest in order to tackle the next day’s workload.

I also get an injection several times a week. That requires that I medicate myself an hour before, that it be done at a scheduled time and early enough in the evening so that the flu-like symptoms it generates have time to dissipate before the next morning. How could I factor that into 12-hour workdays?

Also under the ADA law, an employee must be able to perform the job functions she was hired for. If I were an hourly employee, I couldn’t be forced to work overtime. But I was a salaried employee. The definition of my responsibilities was “job done,” and if that meant long days and weekend work, as the new management team expected, that’s what I should be able to do. I wasn’t sick enough to go on disability, but not well enough to be recognized as a competent employee.

What did other people with MS do in those situations, I wondered? I roamed the blogs and talked to my friends, hoping for guidance, but found out that there was no simple answer. Some had understanding managers who accommodated their needs or helped them obtain a disability status. Some worked as hard as they were expected to and lived with the consequences. And some quit or were laid off, many falling into destitution and despair as a result.

“Compromise,” the counselor from the MS Society told me after reviewing my situation with a lawyer. “Arrange to work from home several days a week and use the hours saved from traveling to accomplish more of your tasks.”

This would help, but it wouldn’t be enough for a manager who equaled “job done” with “whatever it takes.”

A compromise of sort is also what my manager offered me after I discussed the issue with the Human Resources department. “It’s best if you look for an internal transfer,” he said. “But not in IT,” he added, showing not one iota of appreciation for my skills and my years of experience, “that won’t work for you.”

So I set out to look for another position and found out that, even in this difficult economy, there were several thousand openings. But few were in the location I worked at, (was I willing to move to Mumbai?) and, of those, many were IT related. I knew that even if I got an interview and did well, a single phone call to John was all it would take to dismiss my candidacy. All I was left with were entry-level jobs which would mean a huge pay cut, or training for a different career; neither of which I was willing to do as I was entering my 7th decade.

I trudged along then, working hard while keeping a close watch at both my health and the milestones our team reached. Would I be dismissed after we completed an upgrade to new software, after important tasks were automated, after routine activities were transferred to another group?

But how could they not need me anymore when I was so busy, all day, every day, and when there was so much more work to be done?

I also went through endless mental calculations. How much money would my husband and I need to live comfortably now that he was retired, our children were grown and we had no large debt to worry about? How much longer would I actually need to work? My husband would get Medicare in seven months; I could collect early social security in ten. Would I get affordable medical coverage as a retiree? Would the Obama health plan pass congress and would it be good enough to make a difference?

When John stopped at my desk that July morning and said, “May I talk to you for a minute,” I knew what it was about and I was ready. I understood that my fate had been sealed the moment I said, “I have a medical condition.”

Using the excuse of the economic situation to lay me off was not simply about the new management team’s expectations. The company was taking advantage of the business climate to get rid of employees who were considered trouble, who earned too much, or who did not fit into the mold. In light of my fine working record, finding a reason to let me go would have taken longer and would have been hard to prove. Letting me go with a package was quicker and it eliminated the possibility of a legal case because of age, gender or disability discrimination. The language of the notice letter was tight in that regard. To protest, comment, publicize or disclose any of it would make me lose the benefits I was getting.

I don’t believe that things happen for a reason or that when a door closes another one opens, as many of my friends told me. But I do think that I was lucky. The best thing would have been for me to choose when I wanted to stop working. The next best thing was to be laid off and get a few months of severance pay followed by 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Together they would bridge us to our 7- and 10-month family milestones. We would not be rich but we would be OK. Compared to families with young children, credit card debt and a mortgage, we were fine.

That evening, my husband took me out to dinner to a family-run restaurant with a friendly Provence atmosphere and the best desserts in the neighborhood. Later I sent a collective email to my children and their spouses. “My job problems are solved,” I wrote. “Cheers.” Better to welcome the next phase of my life.

Before going to bed, I turned off the clock radio. For decades, I had woken every weekday at 6:15 a.m. to weather and traffic conditions, but now my time was mine. I could read late into the night and wake up late in the morning. I could spend lots of time with my grandchildren and my friends. I could be active on issues that mattered to me and do more than signing petitions and sending emails in support of a healthcare public option, more to combat climate change beside using reusable bags and shopping locally. And I could work to improve job protection for people with disabilities.

I thought of my friend and coworker—I’ll call her Sally—who had helped me empty my desk that morning. She was well aware that the workload had not changed and that, with one less person in the team, more duties would fall on her already overburdened schedule.

“It might not feel this way to you right now,” she said, “but you are the lucky one.”

Again, I thought of the possibilities now opened in front of me, the chance to rediscover my aspirations, the time to deepen my commitments. And MS would not be a hindrance. It left me with plenty of strengths; strengths that I had mobilized over the years to remain a diligent and effective employee and that I would now garner to reach my redefined goals.

Emily Azur is the pen name the author uses to avoid retribution from her former employer. She is delighted with her new found free time and continues to enjoy life.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said to me over the car’s shiny black roof. “This ain’t ‘Driving Miss Daisy.’ You’re sittin’ up front.”

I got into the suicide seat beside him. The security guard waved us through the gate and onto the city’s streets. Kurt turned north and gassed it until we were slowed by the midday traffic. He turned to me with a mischievous smile on his face. “I think this calls for the siren,” he said.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked.

“Who said anything about necessary?” Kurt sometimes talked like a character from a movie. We were no longer cowboys but some epic pairing of Charles Bronson and Dirty Harry, the greatest crime-fighting duo the city had ever seen. He hit a switch and the siren wailed. The traffic parted like the Red Sea and our car hurtled through at double the speed limit and double the fun. My body was pressed into the seat by the acceleration.

It was the summer of 2001. We both worked as aides to Mark Green, a candidate in that year’s New York City mayoral campaign. Kurt was Mark Green’s driver. Or Mark’s gay driver, as he liked to introduce himself. This was not to distinguish him from Mark’s straight driver; Mark had only one driver. Kurt just thought it was a funny but honest way to introduce himself to everyone from members of Congress to newly-hired interns. “Hi, I’m Mark’s gay driver.” It had a way of breaking the ice.

We took a screeching right onto Canal Street, passing car after car that our siren had blasted to the curb. We flew past two cop cars heading the opposite direction. I covered my face with my hands. What if we get caught? If we get pulled over by the cops, this will certainly become a news story. It’ll be the worst kind of embarrassment for Mark, an example of just the kind of abuse of power that he fights against. And worst of all, I’d lose my job.

I peeked through my fingers at the two officers in a squad car that was stopped at a red light. They weren’t even paying attention to us. They looked over when they heard our siren, then, seeing the black Lincoln, continued on with their conversation, unfazed at the sight of us barreling down a busy street.

And why would they care? These cars wouldn’t be equipped with sirens if we weren’t authorized to use them. And how were they to know that the occupants of a government-issued vehicle were two low-level city government workers taking advantage of one of the few perks their jobs provided. We just as easily could have been the police commissioner. Officers’ fear of pulling over their boss meant that the city’s traffic rules did not apply to us. So I began to relax, enjoying being above the law.

Kurt continued his Mario Andretti impersonation as he headed into the East Village. He turned right onto Second Street, driving the wrong way on a one-way street. I gripped the door handle and braced my feet against the floorboard, panicked.

“Kurt!” I pointed to the One-Way sign.

He waved me off with his right hand as he dodged potholes with his left. “That’s what the siren is for.”

At the next corner, he skidded to a stop in front of a brick tenement building that appeared to have been a church.

“This is the place,” he said. “You wait here. I’ll be right back.” He walked over to a metal door and pushed the buzzer. I heard a woman’s voice answer.

“Yeah, I’m from Mark Green’s office,” Kurt said into the speaker. He waited. A minute later the door opened, a manila envelope was thrust into his hands, and the door slammed shut. Oh, shit, my middle-class suburban alter-ego said inside my head. What am I witnessing here? Is Mark corrupt? Why else would we need to pick up something from someone hiding behind a metal door? And what is it? Drugs? Money? Drug money?

Kurt slipped back into the driver’s seat, opened the envelope, and slowly pulled out its contents. I watched intently. And then I saw it. It was Mark Green’s face staring back at me.

“Headshots?” I yelled. We did all that for headshots? We broke traffic laws and risked life and property for black-and-white photographs of our candidate?

“He’s gotta lot of teeth, doesn’t he?” Kurt ignored my question. “I think he has more teeth than most people. They’re bigger, too. That’s some shit-eating grin.”

I had no idea what we were going to do when Kurt stopped by my cubicle in the public advocate’s office and asked if I was busy. I said no, and he asked if I wanted to come along while he ran an errand in Mark’s car. That was all I knew and that would be my defense under interrogation by the FBI’s public corruption unit.

Kurt tossed the envelope onto the back seat and turned onto Avenue A, this time going in the right direction.

“You know who took those photos?” he asked. He then answered his own question. “Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. He’s a famous fashion photographer or something. That was his studio back there.”

That made it even worse, our racing through the city streets to get to a famous fashion photographer’s studio. The New York Post, the sensational Rupert Murdoch-owned daily, would have a field day if it found out about this. The conservative Post desperately wanted to prevent Mark, whom the paper viewed as a pinko commie, from becoming the city’s next mayor. Breaking the story of such a scandal would certainly help their cause.

“Well,” Kurt said, “what do you want to do now? Should we keep driving around or go back to the office? I’ve got another 45 minutes before I have to pick up Mark.”

I thought about my choice for a moment.

“Let’s keep driving,” I said. What the hell. We were above the law, and this certainly beat work.

Sam Roseme's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reader's Digest, New York Law Journal and the mystery anthology Pulp Empire, Volume 2. He recently wrote a book about his experience in New York City politics.
 

“Can I pull out the tulips?” I said to Richard. “ My knees are in bad shape and I’m afraid of making them worse by kneeling on them.” He replied, “Sure, do what’s best for you, no need to hurt yourself.” It began to pour as I walked over to the shocking pink and red tulips that were in the main garden. Richard said, “you don’t have to work in the rain, go home.” I said, “Richard, rain won’t hurt me.” I proceeded with my job of pulling up the tulips and I loved working in the rain and there was a perk in taking home as many tulips as I could carry. While I was knee deep in dirt, I briefly looked up at the tall buildings surrounding the park and was amazed at the contrast.

Just then the wind began to blow, and many of the pink cherry blossoms floated off the trees into the air and fell to the ground. I stood there feeling I was in the middle of pink snow. The blossoms covered everything including me, and I felt like a fairy princess. The garden maintenance workers were hurrying like crazy to clean up the blossoms, but they finally gave up because there were so many of them and they just kept coming. They were just trying to do their job, and I was loving the pink snow.

I proceeded with trying to get the bulbs out along with the tulips, but those bulbs wanted to stay in the ground. They were giving me a real hard time and not coming out so easily. Just then a man by the name of Rodrigo walked by and said, “may I have some of the tulips?” I said, “sure take as many as you like.” He told me that it was for his garden in Brooklyn and he said “I wasn’t even planning to walk through the park, but I decided it was shorter and here I am and look what I’ve found.” I asked him “do you work in the City?” He said, “no, but I used to. I worked at the World Trade Center. I was on the 27th floor when the attack happened.” There was silence. We looked into each other’s eyes. Just then the gardener walked over and began talking to Rodrigo and me. I shared with them that I was a healer and that I worked with a modality called Plant Spirit Healing and that I was totally in my element. Richard said, “you need to read The Magic Life of Plants. I’ll bring the book for you the next time we meet.” Richard showed me a piece of soil that was leftover from 9/ll, covered with dust and the dirt crumbling into more dust. Richard said, “I lost a lot of people in the WTC. There used to be a woman that would visit me frequently in the park. I would give her flowers from the garden. After the attack I stopped seeing her, and then her friend came by one day, and I asked her friend ‘where is your other friend?’ She said, ‘she was lost in the WTC.’" Chills ran up my spine and I looked into Richard’s eyes and there was more silence. He went off to do more gardening and I continued on with the tulips.

Just then a young couple came by on their bicycles. They spoke in a language I didn’t understand and they told me it was Czechoslovakian. They wanted some flowers for their garden in Long Island, so I asked them to join me in the garden and whatever bulbs they were able to root out, they could take home with them. They said “we came into NYC to go on the bike tour that is happening today, but we were stopped in the beginning of the tour because we weren’t wearing our helmets, so we decided not to waste the day and do some sightseeing on our bikes.” I said to them “this is the magic of the City. They smiled in full agreement and we continued on our work together. They stayed in the garden with me for an hour and then went on their way. Many more tourists came over to me. Some couldn’t speak English, but I knew what they wanted, and when I gave them some tulips their faces would light up. The entire park was lit up with these happy faces that had received the gift of flowers.

I worked in the garden for 3 hours and then it was time to leave. I exchanged good-byes, feeling exhausted, happy and full of joy. I came up to my apartment, dumped all of my dirty clothes in a pile, jumped into a hot shower, fell into bed and slept for 4 hours. When I awoke it was 4:30pm and I couldn’t believe how long I had slept, but my body felt rested and I got dressed and walked outside deciding what to eat for dinner.

Sherri Rosen has had her own publicity business in NYC for ll years. She’s a mom, writer, performer, interfaith minister, and singer. She’s missed City Hall Park since she moved to Harlem a year ago.

I walk ahead of them, keeping my eyes down and forward to keep from slipping. Having underestimated the snow, I left my boots at home and am wearing sturdy slip-ons whose color reminds me of dry fall leaves.

The man asks the woman why she isn’t more bundled up. She says she wasn’t prepared for how cold it would be, much less snow. That makes many of us this morning. We were waiting for night when we’d be out of work, at home or some other place warm and pilled as an old sweater.

“But I’m from Canada,” the woman relates. “I’m used to this.” The man reckons she is. They stand close together under the umbrella. He towers over her protectively.

The kindness of strangers often has designs. I’ve had men offer to help me carry heavy boxes from the subway to the street and then ask for some money. Or fawn as they give me directions or make room for me on a bus, concluding the exchange with offers of a date or requests for my phone number. I’ve purposely misplaced a number of business cards.

In college, I found a guy’s wallet once. There’s wasn’t much in it, but I gleaned plenty of information. His student ID had a small photo, but I couldn’t determine whether he was handsome or not. I was attracted, however, to the schedule of classes he’d registered for recently, printed, and folded into a neat square, sharper than the one with his picture. Engineering, Japanese, Government. The courses suggested someone with abilities I don’t have who likes to challenge himself.

I looked him up in the school directory and sent an email. He replied immediately. I told him he could catch me between classes later at my dorm, which had the convenience of having the school’s nicest cafeteria on-site. I mention this not because I considered lunch at Kinsolving to be a classy date, but a meal together could be an option if he was dreamy and whether or not I was hungry.

When we met, I saw how much of a nerd he was and how much of a nerd I am on paper. Maybe he was really inspiring and brilliant, but he just wasn’t my type, which was then something like indie-looking boy-bander. He seemed kind of interested in me, but I said something like, “You’re welcome. I’ve gotta study now. Bye.”

It would’ve been a sweet way to start something, though.

That’s why I slow my pace to eavesdrop and root for the man with the umbrella. The woman talks about the forecast. “Partly cloudy with a 30% chance of a phone number,” I think.

She indicates her destination is near, so the man turns in the right place. “Would you like me to walk you to class, too?” he jokes. She laughs and thanks him outside the office building. He wishes her a good day and smiles. His stomach crawls into his throat.

The man takes two quick steps to cross the street and turns back. “Hey, do you wanna have lunch today?” he calls out. I wonder if other people on the sidewalk think they knew each other and are unaware how bold he is.

The woman is holding the door by now; it’s heavy in her shivering hands. “No, thanks!” she answers. She walks in the building and doesn’t look back.

My heart falls a little, as I imagine his does. But it is nothing compared to the snow around us, a bunch of strangers who every now and then try not to be.

Amanda Green lives in Manhattan on the north side of Central Park. Her writing has appeared in New York Press, The Guardian, and The New York Times City Room blog. She writes about her misadventures in the city at www.noisiestpassenger.com.

I was to take a package containing plane tickets belonging to one of my bosses, go down to the Knitting Factory in Tribeca, pick up another oversized envelope from the boss there, and take them both up to a travel agency in Times Square.

Back in the ‘90s, before Metrocards were commonplace, you’d hold up your school train pass and the worker in the booth would buzz you through the gate. But around 3 p.m. gates underground all over the city would usually stay open and kids would all crash through unmonitored. Despite the fact that I only lived a few blocks from my school uptown and never got my own pass, I was in the habit of walking through those gates whenever they were open.

After finishing the Tribeca leg of the journey, I went back into the Canal Street station and walked through the gate that I was not supposed to enter. As I was waiting for the N/R to come, listening to my walkman, an enormous meathead in plainclothes walked right up to me, pulled a police badge on a chain out of his shirt and asked for my train pass. I was speechless. When I admitted that I didn’t have one, he instructed me to follow him. Not knowing what else to do, I let him lead me through an underground maze from one train platform to another. I was terrified. And annoyed. And worried that I was about to lose my job. For a second, I had a fear that he wasn’t a cop, and that something really terrible was about to happen.

We finally made it to a small, dank room where two other plainclothes cops were waiting for us. They asked me where I had planned on going, and made me empty my pockets. There was a collective smirk when it was revealed that I had several subway tokens on my person. They were assholes about it. They repeatedly asked me about prior arrests and if I had any drugs on me. I was feeling pretty stupid by this point. For some reason I expected to be released with a ticket after they were finished interrogating me. They told me that they had a quota to fill, and we had to wait for another arrest before going to the police station. I let out an exasperated groan. Then they put me in handcuffs. I don’t know what I had anticipated happening, but it sure wasn’t that. After a torturous half hour, they brought in a black kid with large dreads, a couple of years older than me. He was pissed. He had jumped over the turnstiles to catch a train that was about to pull out. I sat there while they put him through the same shit I had just endured, except they were even meaner to him.

So the three cops led us two kids out through the busy station, hands in cuffs behind our backs. People in the station stared at us and our invisible scarlet letters as we marched out into the street. I couldn’t believe this was happening. We were being treated as if we had done something far worse than we had. I felt queasy. We came out into the daylight on packed Canal Street and were thrown into an unmarked car. Since there was already a driver, we had to squeeze four in the back. I didn’t appreciate the cops’ cavalier attitudes and lame jokes on the quick drive over. Nothing was funny.

There were some scary guys in that cell. And it was small, and I hadn’t much experience with petty criminals at that point in my young life. One guy came in seemingly stoned out of his mind. He thought everything was hilarious. I had smoked one joint in my entire life, and I barely even drank at that point. For all I knew this guy was on 20 tabs of acid. These people scared the shit out of me. Fortunately, no one really got in my face. I’ve never worn a watch, so it was hard to keep track of time in there, but those hours dragged on. Whenever a cop would come by, I asked about getting a phone call, but to little avail. I would’ve paced, but there wasn’t enough room. Some of the longest few hours of my life were spent in that tiny cell. And for much of the time I was thinking about how I was gonna be fired from my new job when I got out. Someone finally pulled me out to get fingerprinted. That didn’t feel so good, but it was a relief to be out of the cell…until they put me right back in, still without phone call.

I eventually got to call home so I could freak my mother out. The cop who was with me at the phone was sympathetic to my cause and knew that I wasn’t a “real” criminal. He felt bad for me and got on the phone with my father, reassuring him that this was no big deal, just Giuliani cracking down. They wound up talking for a while. The Good Cop informed me that I should have told someone that my father was a lawyer for the Department of Corrections. Would’ve saved myself some trouble.

In a daze, I walked out onto a side street in Chinatown at dusk, with an information sheet regarding my court date for the following month. I didn’t even know what direction I was facing, and spent my ten dollars on a cab back up to the club. There was no show that night, but luckily the artist who designed the ads was working late at the office. He buzzed me in, and I told him the whole story, and made him promise not to tell anyone. My father came downtown and picked me up. He wasn’t mad at me, but just disappointed, which was even worse.

It seems strange to me now, but my parents told me not to tell anyone. I told my girlfriend that night on the phone. I felt like an idiot, but also a little tougher for making it through the day.

I showed up to work the next afternoon nervous as hell, but to my amazement, no one even blinked. Not one person questioned why it took me over five hours to run an errand that I didn’t even complete. My boss had someone else finish the job that morning. I wound up working there for almost three years.

***

About a month later was the big trial. The night before I was due in court, I went to see Pavement at Roseland. I didn’t tell any of my friends what I was doing the next day. It was cool of my parents to let their delinquent punk of a kid go to the show, even though I was cutting school the following day as reward for my stupidity and petty greed. I don’t know if I’d have done the same if the situation was reversed. I remember talking to my girlfriend on the phone when I got home that night. She had visited colleges that weekend, and decided that she wanted to go to Vassar.

My father and I showed up with a criminal attorney friend of his—the two of them in suits, me in a jacket and tie. We were greeted by an incredibly long line of other arrestees, plus friends and family, waiting for their hearings. There were hundreds of people milling about, and we appeared to be the only ones dressed up. My lawyer briefly vanished to speak to someone in charge, and returned to my father and me, telling us we were to go to the front of the line. I was to be the first case heard. This made me anxious.

It just so happened that that Monday morning was the day that a whole bunch of judges were sworn in to start their new careers. So I stood up in this huge courtroom in front of a few hundred disinterested fellow criminals, and was the first case that this judge ever heard. Maybe he remembers me fondly. Maybe he’s writing this same story down right now, but from his perspective. Yeah, maybe.

I was convicted of Theft of Service. The judge happened to read my verdict wrong, and was stumbling over his words. But my punishment was one day of community service and six months of probation.

Fortunately, when a friend and I got busted a few weeks later for switching price tags at the HMV on 86th and Lexington, security just banned us from the store instead of prosecuting us for shoplifting. That would have been bad news for my probation.

***

This story ends the following month, on the last Saturday of June. The heat at seven in the morning was so bad that I got drenched with sweat just walking to the train. I showed up at the Times Square subway station, not knowing what “community service” entailed, and cursing myself for having gotten into this situation.

There were 40 of us lined up in a row near the Shuttle platform. No girls. I was the wimpiest looking one there. I was sixteen years old, and couldn’t have weighed more than 115 pounds. I was intimidated, to say the least. I was also struck by how almost everyone there was either black or Hispanic. My mother had packed me a bagel and cream cheese and a Coke, because we were told to bring a lunch. I vaguely made friends with one other kid. He looked like a guy I went to summer camp with named Kenny Mandel. I even thought it was him for a minute. He was the only other person who came with a lunch.

We spent that interminable day cleaning out garbage cans and transporting trash throughout the Herald Square station. I kept expecting to see someone I knew, and having to explain to them what I was doing there in my neon orange vest. I saw nooks of that place that I never imagined existed, and took breaks in those mysterious-looking rooms you only pass by and yet never really see into.

I crawled home soaked with sweat and reeking of garbage. That day competed with the day of my arrest as containing some of the longest hours of my life at that point. I know all hours are 60 minutes but sometimes I just don’t believe it.

Sam Axelrod was born in Manhattan in 1980. He used to have a band in Chicago called The Narrator. He is a senior editor and regular contributor for Take the Handle.

But in my case, I was only into my third or fourth year of study when I received my first remuneration from playing the violin. It wasn’t a large sum of money, as will be seen. Perhaps it helps to give a short back-story to that occasion, so that the reader can fully appreciate the circumstances.

When I was about eleven years old I would ride the Independent subway from Queens by myself, on Saturday mornings, to the Henry Street Music School, to take violin lessons. The school, at 8 Pitt Street, in Lower Manhattan, just off Grand Street, was an adjunct of the famous Henry Street Settlement House, located several blocks away, and actually situated on Henry Street.

Prior to that time, my mother would accompany me there on the subway, and during my lesson, she would while away the time in the waiting room, conversing with other women. (She struck up a friendship with the mother of a two gifted brothers, one an older violinist, and the other a gifted pianist about my own age, both of whom later would become famous as performers and teachers. In fact, my mother received from this woman gut strings discarded by her violinist son, because they were too worn for him to continue to play on, but were still adequate for me, considering my skill, or lack thereof. (Remember, this was still the Depression).

The building housing the school, which, in retrospect, was probably a renovated old-law tenement, was connected to an old theater, or playhouse, just around the corner, which was used for recitals by the students and faculty, or dramatic presentations. Its address was 466 Grand Street.

On Saturday mornings, in order to reach the school, after exiting the East Broadway Independent station, I would walk several blocks along the north side of East Broadway, until a block before it met Grand Street at a sharp angle, and the school was right across Grand Street, on Pitt Street. On the opposite side of East Broadway, there was the tall Forward Building, which housed the largest Yiddish language daily newspaper, followed by the Educational Alliance Building, a stately structure, as well as numerous four-story walk-up tenements, extending for several blocks to the east. On the north side, however, starting at the end of the park, the old-law tenements ran one after another, tightly packed together, with ground-level stores (looking like they needed a thorough cleaning) having signs in Yiddish, (which I couldn’t read or speak), some of which were translated into English. These shops offered for sale such exotic items as glass eyes, with some wondrous examples displayed in their windows, or trusses “for men”(who knew what a truss was?). There were also store windows which stated “We do cupping,” which is an ancient Chinese traditional treatment, still in use today. It was also adopted as an Eastern European Jewish folk remedy with the Yiddish name bankes. In any event, being the Sabbath, the shops were always closed.

While walking along East Broadway, I was frequently accosted by men with long beards, wearing broad-brimmed “strummels” (fur hats) and long black coats, who apparently spoke no English, but who nonetheless vociferously reprimanded me for playing the violin on the Sabbath, or possibly, for all I knew, even for only carrying the violin-case. (It has always been somewhat difficult to conceal a violin-case from view.) I obviously understood what they were saying, regardless of the fact that their speech was foreign to me, but having been brought up Reform, I didn’t take their admonitions to heart. On one morning, which I distinctly remember, a man similarly bearded and dressed, stopped and asked me to read to him the contents of a postcard he had received from a public school. It saddened me then, and still does, when I remember it, having to tell him that his daughter had not attended school for some period of time, and was therefore considered a truant. He was instructed to see the principal of the school. I can only imagine how he must have felt.

The subway entrance that I used, both coming and going to the Music School, was located in Seward Park. There were no doubt at least two different exit kiosks for the same station, but this one, located at the rear of the train coming from Queens, was the only one that I used, as it was the closest.. One flight below the park level, there was a change booth, where a male attendant would change bills or large coins, so that a rider could have a nickel to insert in the turnstile. (The fare wouldn’t go up to a dime until 1948, some years later.) Two long escalators led to the deeply buried tracks.

On one particular occasion, returning home from my lesson, after I had gotten change at the booth, the attendant asked me: “Hey kid, what are you carrying in the box?” or words to that effect. I told him that it was a violin. He suggested that I play something for him. I tried to resist gracefully, but he insisted that I play. “Tell you what, if you play something for me I’ll let you go in free under the turnstile.” (Remember, again, this was still the Depression).

So I went inside the change booth, rested my case on the floor and took out my fiddle. I played “La Cinquantaine,” by Gabriel-Marie, a short piece I had memorized and played in my lesson only a few minutes earlier. The agent seemed pleased enough, and told me I could duck under the turnstile, which I immediately did, after packing away my violin. Even though I have been playing the violin and viola in numerous orchestras, and as a soloist for organizations, for well over 60 years since then, that was the first and only time that I ever earned any money (although it was only a nickel) as a solo violinist. I seem to recall, however, receiving a severe tongue-lashing from my mother when I related the story to her. Apparently young boys were not supposed to be induced into change booths by grown men, for any reason.

Just under a year ago, my wife and I had the occasion to revisit the area, after many years in my case, in order to see an old friend who had moved from Queens to a condo apartment on Grand Street, which happens to be just a block away from my old music school. We took the subway down from Penn Station, and although I wanted to retrace my exact steps from sixty-odd years ago, we inadvertently got out of a different exit, so I was unable to see if the change booth (the scene of my “debut”) was still there. However, walking along East Broadway was truly an enlightening experience. On the south side there still were the imposing Forward and Educational Alliance buildings, now no longer used for their original purposes, but beyond them were what appeared to be tiny store-front synagogues or religious schools, in each of the old-law tenements that had remained there apparently unchanged since the end of the 19th century. In fact, one building similar to most of the others had the date 1889 engraved in the frieze above the roof. Some buildings looked even older, but it was certain that many decades had gone by since they had either been repainted, in the case of painted fronts, or had their exposed bricks repointed. There were some buildings that were finely detailed, with figures carved into their ornate stone lintels. They must have been extremely fashionable in their day, but now a coating of grime covered all of the surfaces..

On the opposite side of the street, there were a series of newer high-rise apartment houses, apparently post-war, surrounded by park-like settings. The old four-story walk-ups and their grimy show-windows with glass eyes and other exotic products displayed, were no more. The disparity was striking. One side of the street had been modernized, at least relatively so, and on the opposite side it appeared that well over century had passed from the time that the buildings had been built without any physical changes to them, whatsoever.

And when we reached the site of my old music school, the old playhouse, now renamed the Henry Street Settlement Harry DeJur Playhouse, at 466 Grand Street, was still there, and in fact in 1975 had been designated a National Historic Landmark, as a bronze plaque so attested. A much newer and larger modern building, named the Abrons Arts Center, had been appended to the east side of the playhouse, where other buildings had once stood. And farther along Grand Street, there were several post-war high-rise apartment buildings, in one of which our friend lived, as well as ground level stores of all types, attesting to the dramatic changes made to the entire neighborhood.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the old tenement buildings along the formerly narrow Pitt Street, west of the playhouse, had obviously been torn down to widen the street, and my old music school was only a memory. How a neighborhood can change after 60-odd years, and what remembrances it can bring back. Especially, about the only time I received any payment for my violin playing.

Philip Wesler is a retired engineer living with his wife in California, land of wildfires, earthquakes, floods and landslides.

A little while after that, my dad became the neighborhood pet rescuer. He had always loved animals and had tended pigeons on many rooftops in Spanish Harlem as a child and teenager. I have vague memories of animal wards on our fire escape. Shoeboxes with anything from a broken-winged pigeon (that disappeared) to a baby squirrel (that died) to a couple of poor, mangy, flea-ridden kittens, one of which my mother actually let me keep (it died too). But one day on his way home from work he saw a puppy get hit by a car and thought if he saved it and found the puppy’s owner he’d get a reward. So my dad brought it home, shaved and cleaned up its gashes with hydrogen peroxide and sewed up the biggest one with my mom’s crochet thread. He made a splint for its broken paw—with sticks from the popsicles he made all of us eat after dinner—in January. He gave the puppy a bath, fed and brushed it, and pet it until it fell asleep. It was the best treatment that poor dog probably ever had and as I recall, my dad did not get bit once. But when my dad tracked down the owner—who happened to live in our building—the owner said he had thrown the dog out on purpose, he had wanted him to die. And my dad said, “What?!? How about I take you outside and throw you in front of a car, see how you like it!” “Oh yeah, how about I punch you in the nose!” “Oh yeah, how about I… “This went on until someone finally called the cops. Nothing happened to my dad except having to hear every Bible verse about minding one’s business for the next couple of days. I don’t remember what happened to the dog. But that was the end of his veterinary hobby.

Then when I was a little older, my dad got the idea he could rewire lamps people had thrown out and sell them back to the junk shop (this was before “junk” became “vintage”). My mom said, “What do you think you’re doing? You know nothing about electricity.” But since, or maybe in spite of her not being able to find any verses about lamp wiring in either the Old or New Testaments, our living room was soon filled with a collection of lamps that had probably been “the cat’s pajamas” when they were new. But one day I came home from school and plugged one of them in. The next thing I knew, my brother was crying, my mom was saying “I told you not to bring junk into the house!” and my dad yelled back, “Well, who told her to plug the damn lamp in!” Meanwhile, I was clear on the other side of the living room with overcooked spaghetti for limbs and brain, and little black marks on my right thumb and left toe. The trip to the emergency room ended up costing my dad more than he would have made on ten lamps. That was the end of his electrical career.

A couple of years after that, my dad lost his real job. The construction company he worked for closed down overnight and moved to North Carolina. He didn’t work for almost two years–and it turned him from a life-long Democrat into a “Republi-Rican”–but that’s another story. For almost two years we endured welfare peanut butter that tasted as if it was made from shells off a barroom floor, welfare cheese that tasted like mutant Velveeta combined with spackle and various powdered food products that none of us dared talk about. My mom’s Bible readings now centered on prosperity and blessings, as opposed to punishment and damnation. And for once, my dad had no money-making ideas.

Then Louie “The Light Bulb Man” Eisenberg hit the legal number, (a.k.a. “Lotto”) took his million-plus dollars and retired, and somehow my dad ended up with his job, at the courthouse on 100 Centre Street. In-between screwing in light bulbs, he followed the cops and detectives around all day, picking up the trash they left behind. My dad would bag it up and put it out back, on Baxter Street, to get picked up. One afternoon he was leaving the courthouse from the back way and saw the neighborhood homeless guys picking through the trash bags. “Hey Rudy!” they called out to him. They all knew who my dad was because my dad would buy them coffee every morning. There was Flaco, who was fat, Lucky, because he obviously wasn’t, and Ching who was well…Ching: The Drunken Kung Fu Master of Columbus Park. “Hey Rudy, can you do us a solid? If you separate the deposit bottles and cans from the rest of the garbage, we’ll cut you in, 10%.” “What do you do with them?” my dad asked. “We take ‘em to the Pathmark on Cherry Street, can make $20 a bag. C’mon man, do us a solid!” I can only imagine the ring of light bulbs appearing around my dad’s head as he did the math: At least 10 bags a day @$2 a bag, every day… “Deal.”

And so, in the wake of the first wave of Reaganomics, a new economy was born. In-between the cans, letting JFK Jr. leave from the basement so Pablo Guzman, now a Channel 2 investigative news reporter, couldn’t ask him why he failed the bar again–plus getting free hot dogs from Pablo in return for information about JFK Jr.’s whereabouts–my dad was making about an extra $100 a week. But then one day Flaco disappeared and Lucky and Ching, being small, skinny and quite likely in the final ravages of alcoholism, couldn’t handle the load. “Hey, you guys gotta get this junk out!” “Yeah man, we do it, we do it. Give us time, man.” Later that afternoon, my dad’s boss opened up the storeroom, saw all the bags and told my dad he had to get them out of there or else. That evening, dad went to Columbus Park, found Lucky and told him he’d pay him to get the bags out of there. “Yeah, man, no problem, I meet you 10:00 tomorrow morning.”

Well that Saturday morning happened to be my 18th birthday and my dad was going to take all of us to Carmine’s at the Street Seaport for lunch. But as we were having breakfast he said, “You and your brother have to come to work with me first, I need help with something.” We got to the courthouse, went to my dad’s storeroom and found it filled top to bottom with huge black industrial garbage bags bursting with cans. “Just help me load this up outside, someone is going to come and get it.” So we carried the bags outside and we waited and we waited, and Lucky never showed up. After a while, Ching passed by and asked my dad for a quarter. My dad said, “Where’s Lucky? You guys gotta take these bags, I can’t keep them inside anymore.” Ching goes, “Hey, man, not my problem.” So my dad said, “OK, the hell with this, we’ll just leave the bags, let’s go”. But then a cop, who obviously had been watching us the entire time, came over and told my dad he couldn’t leave the bags there. And when my dad said, “Well, I can’t bring them back inside”, the cop went, “Hey, man, that’s not my problem.” My dad turned around to offer Ching $20 to take the bags but Ching was long gone. So we had no choice but to take the bags ourselves. We loaded them into a wheeled canvas dumpster that looked like the biggest shopping cart you ever saw and my dad said, “Look, we’ll just bring the cans there and someone will take them. It’ll be fine.”

It took all three of us to wheel that cart, that huge canvas dumpster chock-full of garbage bags the 15 or so blocks from Centre Street to Cherry Street and the FDR. All along the way people were looking at us funny, my brother was almost crying from humiliation and my dad was quite visibly pissed. But I was okay with it, I thought it was kind of punk actually. When we finally made it to Pathmark, my dad saw Lucky, grabbed him and said he had to take the cans, but Lucky told my dad to fuck off. Of course he did. He was homeless, he was happily drunk at 11:30 am and he had already done his cans and gotten his 50 dollars, so why should he do any more work. My dad was so angry he himself used the F-word, something he almost never did. “Fuck it! We’re leaving them here.” So we started unloading the cart and the same cop, who must’ve followed us all the way from the courthouse, came over and said “You can’t leave them here,” and my dad said, “Well, what am I supposed to do with them?” The cop pointed across the parking lot to the row of redemption machines and the lines of homeless people in front of them. My brother couldn’t take it any more and really started crying. But with the cop watching us we had no choice, so we took our bags and took our place among the homeless.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, if it hadn’t of been July and the cans hadn’t of been so sticky and there weren’t so many yellow jackets buzzing around. After doing two or three bags my brother refused to do any more and walked over to the side of the parking lot to sulk. I went to him and said, “Why are you being such a pussy? I’m the one spending my birthday with homeless people.” He threw a can at me. I went back to the redemption machines. My dad was kind of slow at it, but for some reason I got the hang right away. You just tossed a can into the slot and pressed a button. For every five cans, you got a quarter. It got to where I was doing two machines at a time, right and left-handed, and I was so quick, some of the men on the line offered me a cut if I’d do their bags. I looked over at my dad, who I knew was keeping an eye on me the entire time. It never crossed my mind that I was probably the only female ever to grace the Pathmark Redemption Center. But even at the age of 18, I still looked about 12 and with my black jeans, Doc Martens and Devo t-shirt, not to mention my “Flock of Seagulls” haircut, they all probably thought I was a boy anyway. So I said, “OK,” and on top of the bags we brought I must have done an extra ten bags and as promised the homeless men came back and gave me my cut. Some of them looked at my dad and nodded. I guessed they thought my dad had brought me up right. Yeah. Right.

By the time we finished all the cans it was three o’clock and we had made $200 dollars. In quarters. By the time we had stood on yet another line to redeem the change, it was after four and my dad said “OK, let’s eat”. We took the dumpster back to Centre Street–which went a lot quicker being it was empty–and finally got to the Seaport. Only we were all filthy. Our hands were black and sticky, my brother’s new, white, New Balance sneakers were new and white no longer and all our shirts were disgusting. We looked homeless. My dad said he’d buy us some new clothes, so we went to the brand-new Pier 17 shopping mall where he took us to the Gap. My brother smiled for the first time all day. But now I wanted to cry. The Gap? The antithesis of punk? The shame! But I had no choice. My dad bought us all new t-shirts and jeans and we had to go to the public bathrooms to clean up and change. In the ladies’ room, a couple of people looked at me with averted eyes. I resisted the temptation to ask them for a quarter.

At Carmine’s we had the Lobster Fra Diablo, the Veal Marsala, the Eggplant Parmigiana and the Zabaglione with Ricotta Cheesecake. After all, it was my birthday. But my mom never made it. Between Lucky and Ching and the cop and Pathmark, my dad had forgotten to go to a pay phone to call her. When he finally did–from outside the restaurant–she was so angry, she said she wouldn’t come. My dad joked that between the dinner and the new clothes we really didn’t have a lot of money left over for her to eat anyway. My brother and I laughed. What mom did remains a mystery to this day. And as we walked up Fulton Street back to the subway, who did we run into but the same cop who had been the catalyst to all the events that day. He unwrapped a piece of gum and tossed the wrapper into the street. My dad walked right up to him and said, “Hey, you can’t leave that there.” The cop looked at my dad for a long moment, bent down and picked up the wrapper, stuck it in his pocket and said, “Even.” As we walked away my brother asked, “Daddy, you know that cop?” “Who, Officer Colletti? He works at the courthouse. I used to pick up his cans all the time. Not anymore.” And he whistled all the way home.

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Michele Carlo has lived in four of the five boroughs of NYC and can remember when a slice of pizza cost fifty cents. She has been published in the short story anthology Chicken Soup For The Latino Soul, is Editorial Director for the online underground entertainment newsletter Toxic Pop and is the curator/producer of It Came From New York, a storytelling show featuring and celebrating native New Yorkers. She is currently at work on a memoir of growing up in the NYC of the 70s-80s, entitled Red Sheep: The Search For My Inner Latina.