Wing Ning Ning
by
Jeff Stimpson
This sunny Sunday, Jill thinks we should take Alex
and Ned on a train ride. She suggests a half-hour ride to
Westchester County on Metro-North, a local commuter line.
I guess it'd be something to do, and they'd
probably love it. They're always playing with the wooden train set
from grandma. I've since added a plastic set from eBay; Jill
recently came home with a Thomas the Tank Engine roundhouse and,
believe it or not, an engine-washing garage. As little Americans,
all they need to complete their railroading empire is a tiny toy
herd of buffalo that their passengers can shoot wantonly as the
train rolls by.
The subway has often taken us on urban rattlerides
to other boroughs of New York. The boys love the subway, especially
the emergency brake lever. But they've never taken a long train
trip, which in this part of the United States tends to involve
Amtrak, America's dining car-equipped alternative to hitting the
freeway. Vistas from passenger trains in this part of the country,
excepting the scenic ride up the Hudson to Albany, look like a
moving mural about the wrong side of the tracks: tenements, vacant
lots, abandoned factories, the thrill of an occasional boat on a
canal or splash of color of a strip mall, but mostly it's just the
graveyards of the rusted automobiles.
One stretch of tenements and lots that Metro-North
commuters get a view of, however, is ours: The line runs elevated
along the section of Upper Park Avenue near our apartment building.
Often, as I wheel the boys through East Harlem in their stroller, we
see the train flashing by, and I make my train noise.
"Boys, train!" I say. "Wing ning ning..."
The subway gets us to Grand Central, where Jill
buys tickets while I take the boys on a tug around the concourse. We
pass the many cops leaning against the wall and the many National
Guardsmen in combat fatigues. One plus about the post-9/11 world:
Your odds of getting mugged in a New York transit center have
dropped to almost zero. I'm admiring a sergeant's M-16 when Alex, a
hand-to-hand combat expert in his own right, lifts his own legs from
beneath him and lets his body weight fall on my arm and shoulder.
Apparently he wants to break free and discovers what in fact is
under a commuter train as it pulls from the station.
Jill comes back with our tickets. "Twenty-two
bucks!" she says. "Maybe next time we won't go so far." She doesn't
know where we get the train, so we head for Grand Central's famous
information booth, the round one topped with a clock, where millions
of dates (including some of mine and Jill's) have begun. Jill gets
the track and time, and we dive underground.
The silver train hisses at the platform. Heads and
eyes peering from many of the bright windows. We board, me tugging
Alex and Jill bringing Ned, and Jill holds out until we find four
seats facing each other. The car smells of cheap upholstery and
passing strangers. We get all settled in, the train pulls out. Alex
looks out the window at the lights of the tunnel flashing by.
Ned explodes. He's pitching a fit; he's kicking;
he's crying. Probably hungry. We dig out his jelly sandwich. I start
to open the Baggie, but Ned wants to do it. He's kicking; he's
crying. Every screech makes me want to become one of those
passengers who hates passengers like me. Across the aisle, a Chinese
couple with a little boy about Ned's age politely ignore us.
A conductor stops over Ned, a portly man in a blue
kepi and sagging worn black leather belt. He starts punching a
ticket. He punches and punches as a flurry of white paper ticket
pieces flutters onto Ned's leg. "Here," the conductor says, handing
the ticket to Ned.
Ned quiets down as he studies the riddled ticket.
I pass him a wedge of cream-cheese-and-jelly sandwich. He slaps it
to the floor, where it lands on a cigarette butt; so much for that,
unless we get desperate. Ned accepts the second wedge, and I root in
the diaper bag for my own ham-and-cheese. By the time the train is
into the tunnel leading north from Grand Central, Ned has a corner
of sandwich in his mouth. He's having a little trouble, though, and
I lean in to help him.
"Don't touch him!" Jill says. "He's like a little
quivering, poisonous snake. He's like an asp. Don't touch him." I
look across the aisle at the Chinese boy. He's doing math. In
Chinese.
Ned munches his sandwich as the train surfaces.
Alex looks out the window at the slums flying by. One of them is
probably our building. "Ned, look," says Jill. "Look, there's our
street! That's where you stand to watch the train!"
Wing ning ning. The train surfaces above East 96th
Street in Manhattan. Ned clambers up to peer out the window
alongside Alex, and together they watch the scenery evolve from
overused New York and South Bronx to a landscape that slowly becomes
cleaner and richer. Brick gives way to trees. Grass replaces broken
glass. As the stops go by, pricier cars twinkle in the parking lots.
The boys are glued to the window. Jill is reading
a book. I'm sated on what Jill likes me to call "one of my wife's
excellent sandwiches," off my feet at least on cheap upholstery,
savoring a few minutes' peace even though I'm with my kids, and
wondering why we didn't do this sooner. Twenty bucks is a bargain to
let our boys watch the world zip by, a moving mural painted, on this
Sunday, just for them.
Copyright 2003 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
