Tuesday, September 12, 2006

9/11 in NYC

Sept. 11, 2006
Peggy and I have just had a most inspirational experience. Because we are not allowed to deliver our current load to the consignee in Hatfield, MA until Tuesday morning, and having picked it up on Friday, we decided to run it out to the east coast and use our weekend to visit New York City. We couldn’t leave till Saturday morning from Mt. Vernon because we had some work done on our truck at Freightliner Friday night. Peggy and I teamed last week, but I dropped her off in Goreville on the way from Rosiclare, IL (on the Ohio River E. of Paducah) to Mt. Vernon, IL. Peggy went home for a few hours to work on the house and met me in Mt. Vernon about 6:00 a.m. Saturday. We drove almost continuously all day and arrived in New Haven, CT about 4:00 a.m. EST Sunday. My brother Jeff, Renita and the four kids picked us up at the Pilot Truck Stop promptly at 6:30 and took us to breakfast at a cozy diner. We had a nice visit. I fiddled while waiting for the food to come because I knew I wouldn’t have a chance for the next couple days. Though I seriously considered taking it along, I decided not to tote it on the train, and for all that walking around NYC. Jeff & family took us to the train station in New Haven about 8:15. We arrived in Grand Central Station at 10:30. The actual commute was about 1 hr. 45 min. We got off the train and bought a street map ($7.00 - and we found a comparable one later for free.) We walked west past the huge public library on 42nd str., past thousands of people speaking other languages, never getting out of the jungle of skyscrapers, to Broadway and discovered hundreds of police and many streets blocked off. We had hit the day of the once yearly ‘Broadway on Broadway’ show - how cool. Right in the midst of Times Square was a big stage set up on one side of the square. There were cameras and huge TV screens to project the actors’ images hugely, several stories tall, high up on the side of a building for the thousands of people to see from blocks away. It was wonderful. If we had paid attention for the whole time, we’d have heard excerpts of ALL the musicals being presented on Broadway this season, which is just now beginning. We heard a lot, but we did not stick around the whole time. In fact en route from IL, I had looked on the internet for tickets to a Broadway show; that would be one of my highest priorities for a trip to NYC - to see a Broadway show. But I was discouraged by the high ticket prices, and besides none of the shows had opened yet this weekend, so it’s a moot point. Someday we will go again with that purpose in mind - to see a show. If you want to see why I was so discouraged, go to Ebay - Broadway or NYC tickets. There are 49 pages of tickets including sports, music and theater. A pair of Streisand tickets are going for upwards of $2,000. Unbelievable. We passed the small B.B.King Theater & Buffet on 42nd Str. Hmmm, looked interesting, so we bought tickets for that afternoon. Then we walked up to ‘Broadway on Broadway,’ found some cheap T-shirts and postcards on the way, and walked back for the dinner-show at 12:30. “The Harlem Gospel Choir” performed! Wow! We had church! The place was packed. We shared our table with a young couple from Australia - Hettie and Don - jazz musicians from Melbourne. They had never heard gospel singing and they loved it. It was tremendous. Those women have amazing vocal range. And what energy! There were 6 women I believe and 2 men., plus a drummer, bass guitar and keyboard. The director, who started the group in 1985-ish, did not sing but acted as MC. He’s much older than the rest. He told us about the touring they have done lately and will be doing - Russia, the Vatican, South Africa, British Aisles… And these are overweight, black women & men who aren’t going for glamour and glitz, but who are aggressively pushing the gospel in the marketplace. It was cool. Only I’m sure many of the people were oblivious. Everyone appreciated the excellence of the music and the energy, but I got the feeling no-one caught the gospel that was strongly present. Sad. Afterwards we started thinking about where we might sleep. We had about 3 hours before the church service would start at Times Square Church, so we walked to the YMCA which is near Grand Central Station - they are sold out through November. OK. I called another place - $189./night. Uh, no… We walked over by the U.N. Building and saw a policeman on the corner. He gave us advice about looking uptown, north of Central Park for cheaper rates. He said the further north, the cheaper the rates. We stopped in at another place to ask rates - $219. Don‘t think so… But that place had a helpful concierge who looked up some places for us and found us the LaQuinta on 32nd Str. That is still pretty far downtown - way south of Central Park, but we took it - $100. That solved, we went to church. I had remembered that there was someone at Times Square Church who had belonged to our church in Carbondale when he was a student. I called Cathie Paull to ask who that guy was, because I knew it was a good friend of her son’s. She told me it was Warren Carr; I remembered him singing at Craig & Elisa’s wedding. So I went backstage before church to ask around. Unfortunately, he had been there in the morning services but not now. That church is great - meeting in an old, ornate theater from the vaudeville era. Very lovely. The gold-robed choir has about 70 voices - more black gospel. We loved it. There was a guest speaker from Canada. David Wilkerson was on the stage and spoke a little but not mainly. BTW, this was at the end of a long day of walking, so our feet were killing us. I took my shoes off and rubbed my feet during the service. The theater was nearly full and very mixed racially. When it was time to leave, a kind Indian man walked us all the way to the train and down into the terminal to be sure we got the right tickets and gave us detailed directions about how to get to our hotel on 32nd just across from the Empire State Building. He did save us a couple bucks by getting the $10.00 pass rather than per ride. We found LaQuinta in the middle of Korea town, which made us feel right at home, having spent 5 years in Seoul. We checked in, set our knapsacks down and went back out to the Korean market next door to buy some common Korean snacks - salty kim (seaweed,) Tin-Tin cookies, Yakult (drinkable yogurt) and ’Milkas’ (a soft drink that was my favorite in Korea.) Whoa, this stuff was much cheaper back in Seoul! We took our treasures up to room 1005 and settled in to watch a Jennifer Lopez movie on TV - “Enough.” Never heard of it, but it kept our interest through to the end. Underprivileged girl marries rich guy who beats her until she leaves with small daughter, learns self-defense, confronts thoroughly evil husband and must kill him or be killed… There, now you don’t have to see the movie. We were so beat at the end of this day, we slept like logs and didn’t wake up till 9:10 on Monday. We had planned to get out early, but needed the sleep. After our comp breakfast, we took the train to Ground Zero. Isn’t God good! We couldn’t have afforded to take off work for a trip like this, and this was the first time we had ever picked up this same load on a Friday. We have always picked it up on Monday or Tuesday. The Friday pick-up allows us to run out to the coast and use the weekend on that end in any way we like. We decided to take the opportunity to see NYC, and it just happens to be 9/11. President Bush was in town, staying at the Waldorf Astoria. We overheard that just walking around on Sunday. We were in the vicinity of the Waldorf, so we decided to walk through the lobby of the finest hotel in town - world class. There were FBI and police everywhere. It was intimidating. I felt afraid to enter the lobby, thinking our backpacks would be searched and my dirty underwear would be found! Peggy on the other hand is fearless. Embarrasses me sometimes… We also walked into a most lovely, old Anglican church next to the Waldorf. The church has tall stained glass windows, one huge round one, heavy stone interior with carvings at tops of columns. I told Peggy I wish our church could worship in such a lovely building. This beautiful place is wasted on a lot of prideful people. Sorry, that’s over-generalizing, but we did see some awful signs of pride and, well…wealth. At Ground Zero, there were thousands milling around, and of course plenty of political statements, placards and news media. It was just great to be part of this. We were awe-struck by the testimonials, flowers, pictures, mementoes, photo-journalism. Very moving. We heard this ceremony on the TV before leaving the hotel - the reading of the list of 3000 names. We had intended to go to the service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral which we had walked past on Sunday in uptown Manhattan, but that was too far since we had gotten up so late. We did happen across another service at a nearby St. Francis of Assisi Church. People were coming out; bagpipes were playing. It was for the firemen. The World Trade Center is near the river. After leaving the ceremonies, we walked along the Hudson River south to Battery Park, with a view of the Statue of Liberty to our right all the way along the walk. Lovely day. Near the old fort at Battery Park was an old man from Trinidad on a bench with his fiddle. I asked him to take it out and play. He is quite good. He reads music, had classical training from age 12, had played in orchestras, but now he plays all kinds of popular tunes, show tunes, national anthems of various countries… He was a neat old guy named Dave. I played “Jolie Blonde” for him on his fiddle. He didn’t know it or even identify it as Cajun, but said he likes that droning style - playing 2 strings together. Now it was about time to make our way back to Grand Central for the trip back to CT and our truck. We took our final subway ride, ate Indian food at Grand Central’s food court and boarded the train at 3:07, arriving back in New Haven about 5:00. We had a nice dinner with Jeff & Reni, Jessica, Trenton, Dillon and Ivy. And here we are back in our truck ready to start our work week. My excellent wife loves to mess with anything mechanical, so as we were doing computer chores, paying bills, etc., she was messing with my new digital camera which she gave me for my birthday a couple weeks ago. We haven’t figured it all out yet. We had taken lots & lots of pictures and some video in NYC with the new camera. Peggy was trying to edit and figure out how to download and view the pictures. Well…she deleted everything in an instant with one press of a button. She was much more upset than I was. It’s okay; we’ll get it figured out and will eventually be able to send images of our adventures on the road to you by email! Blessings Always, Ken & Peggy (Fiddler & Ladybug)

1 Comments:

Blogger kregg said...

What a weekend in the Big Apple! When I go there, instead of seeing a Broadway show, I'd like to see a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden (that's basketball, Ken). What's BTW?

10:03 AM  

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