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Jeff's Life
Archive
Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Monthly Column... |
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
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