I Love New York (I)

Blog: I Love New York (I)

I love New York and it was way past time for me to return there to get my “New York fix”. So in between one granddaughter’s wedding in Maine and another’s confirmation in Connecticut I was off to the The City. As the bus rolled down the streets of Harlem the memories flooded in. There was that Lutheran Church just barely surviving while almost across the street the Abyssinian Baptist Church still reverberates with beautiful soul and echoes of Adam Clayton Powell. The Lutheran School On the Hill, which produced so many wonderful black graduates, sits shuttered.

The street-side food hawkers await me at the Port Authority Bus Terminal entrance and I can’t resist that fully loaded New York hot dog, delaying the mustard smeared pretzel for later.

After a good night’s sleep courtesy of faithful friends and colleagues Marlene and Helene, I am off from their wonderful apartment on East 93rd Street determined to walk all the way to Times Square. Second Ave. now is overwhelmed with a new subway going in underground and the blasts of dynamite regularly raise the ire and shake the very building foundations of neighbors.

But business must go on and so I pass the shops showing only women’s hats, or thousands of options in olive oil, delis and fruit stands. I watch in admiration as a young mother is determined to get her photo of her little son trying to maneuver his skateboard in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.

I work my way west into that most marvelous green heaven called Central Park. Baby carriages of all descriptions are pushed in all directions. The pushers are women from every country on earth and usually with a skin color different from the baby being tended – who all seem to be white. Then I notice the competition and yet harmonious sharing of space all around me. That woman is leading a class in yoga. There is the small musical trio with traditional brass while barely out of earshot is the guy beating the rhythms of his country on a set of pots and pans. Tourists mingle with lovers weaving their way around pre-school outings. Horse drawn carriages glide next to skateboards, wheelchairs, and pedicabs while just outside the Park the New York cabs stream by as in an unruly funeral procession.

I leave the Park and enter the Plaza Hotel. I need to stir those memories of high tea in the vast entryway, drinks at the Oak Bar and the remembrance that the last time I stopped there it was on my way home from a grand event at the top of The World Trade Center. I must at least pay a quick visit to the Trump Tower and recall the serendipitous visit I had with a resident of that address who had invited me aboard his big yacht moored in the Bahamas when he was there for vacation and I was there to mediate a conflict at a Lutheran church/school.

I make it to Times Square in time for lunch. I sit at the bar, sip my beer and reflect on my years in New York. I recall those incredibly committed teachers and parents of the more than 50 Lutheran schools there, the hard-nosed negotiations with government officials to ensure that non-public schools get their fair share of allocated state and federal funds, my time as part-time assistant to the Bishop, work at the Center for Urban Education Ministries, church/school conflict resolutions, anniversaries, the AIDS epidemic!

Memories seep in and out-and as I get ready to pay my check. The gal tending the bar looked at me and (out the blue) says “Just notice that I decided not to charge you for that second beer. It’s on me!’ And all of this takes me until only early afternoon. The evening is another story and the topic of my next blog, I Love New York (II).