For New Yorkers, the subway is always just underneath, literally and figuratively. Growing up in the 70’s it was part of the fabric of our lives. After falling asleep to our urban lullaby we could keep time on a summer morning by the predictable faces, the waves of professionals, Wall Street traders and secretaries for Ad agencies flowing toward Manhattan.
At school and on the street, we heard stories of the subway; urban legends of rats the size of cats, or tales of the power of the 660 volts of electricity flowing through the lethal 3rd rail. Scariest were the rumors of roving, knife-wielding gangs wreaking havoc on unsuspecting innocents like my friends and I. This was New York in the 70’s, the New York of graffiti, and squeegee men, the New York of Abe Beame, well before Rudy Guiliani cleaned it up. New York and the subway in particular was a scary place.
Thanksgiving 1972, and Mr. Tracey is taking his son John and I to the Macy’s Parade. Two nine year olds, jumping out of our skin, going to see Snoopy floats and Santa Claus. The fly in the ointment is, we have to take the subway to get there. Wide-eyed, we stay close to John’s dad as we buy our tokens and head down the stairs of the Church Ave station. On the platform, giggling nervously, John and I scan the tracks for the legendary rats; all we see are scraps of newspaper and some stray soda cans. “Which one is the third rail dad?” “You see the rail against the wall? With the plank of wood over it? That’s the third rail.” Disappointing, not exactly what I pictured.
The train arrives and we take our seats. The two of us read the advertisements for Broadway plays and dermatologists, we swing on the poles, do chin ups on the hand holds. John’s dad takes us to the front window so we can watch the tunnel as the train’s headlights light the way. We spend most of our time looking out the window. At each new station, we watch passengers getting on and off, keeping a wary eye open for the much feared gangs. Nothing. Warming to the trip, we hit Carroll Street, Jay Street, Delancey Street…arriving eventually at 34th Street. I can only speak for myself but if John was anything like me he had a sense of relief. We had made it! We had run the gauntlet of NYC’s big bad subway. For now.
After the parade, we make our way back downstairs to the Herald Square platform. Once again our minds begin to wander. Maybe on the way home we’ll get mugged? Maybe some bum, in the 70’s we called them bums, will push us onto the tracks as the train is arriving? Maybe we’ll slip and hit the third rail? Or maybe one of those gangs will catch up to us? After standing in the cold, drinking hot chocolate, we both have to visit the bathroom. Panic! If the subway is scary, the subway bathroom has got to be even scarier. Tweety says, “Dad, I have to use the bathroom.” Scanning the area, Mr. Tracey takes us back towards the token booth. The three of us walk right up to the door and John’s dad stops. Is he crazy? He’s going to let us use the bathroom ourselves? Hesitating, we look at each other and back at Mr. Tracey. We’re too little! I want to scream. He’s oblivious to our plight. Slowly, glancing from side to side, looking for random psychopaths, we make our way into the bathroom. Should we use a stall with a door? Should we go together? Should we use the urinal? I suggest, “Why don’t I use the stall and you stand guard, then I’ll stand guard while you use the stall?” That’s our plan. We finish our business quickly and head for the exit. We wash our hands and both scan the bathroom, one of us notices a flesh colored mass, something that used to be round but is now squished in the fetid ooze around the urinal. Tweety points, “Do you think?” “I don’t know. Looks like one!” Ahhhhhhhhh! We run out of the bathroom screaming in Mr. Tracy’s face, “Daaaad, there’s a ball, someone got his ball cut off and it’s squished on the floor in there. Let’s get out of here!” I am sure Mr. Tracy got a lot of mileage out of that story at Hurley’s bar…My son and his friend think they found a removed testicle...
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Around the middle of 8th grade, a group of boys from our grammar school, Immaculate Heart of Mary, were chosen to take the entrance exam for Regis High School. Regis is a scholarship only, boys only, catholic school, on the upper East Side of Manhattan. Regis boasts an impressive reputation and an equally impressive list of alumni. To be “chosen” to go to Regis, and then to attend for free, would be a big deal for any catholic school boy. The exam was on a Saturday morning, in late fall. Following the city axiom of safety in numbers, Sister Elizabeth organized us to meet on the Church Avenue platform at 7:30. We would be escorted by Bobby Snow, a freshman at Regis, and a graduate of our school. Poor Bob had to spend his Saturday going back to school!
We begin to trickle in from all corners of our neighborhood with our bag lunches. There’s Jimmy Quinlan, Mark Bowen, Timmy Boyle, Matty Milbauer & company. It’s funny how we all look different without our school uniforms. “Anybody see the Ranger game last night?”
“What I saw was Lorraine Baldwin’s skirt yesterday. Man! I can’t believe she didn’t get in trouble for wearing it that short.”
“You know Sister Florence would yell at her if she noticed, probably jealous she doesn’t have legs like that.” “And she doesn’t have boobs like Laura DelSorbo, man I think those things are getting bigger daily. She needs a new school uniform.”
Eventually the conversation turns to our trip on the subway. Timmy Boyle is an old pro as his dad works for the Transit Authority. He regales us with tales of something called the dead man’s lever. “You see, there’s a safety device on the train so that anyone controlling the train has to keep squeezing this lever. Then, if the “driver” of the train dies, the train will come to a stop because he can’t maintain the pressure. You see, dead man’s lever.” Jimmy Quinlan tells us a story of his older brother, Johnny, fending off a gang of kids around Brooklyn Tech with a fire extinguisher. “Broke one guys arm in four places.” Jimmy claims as he makes the swinging motion with his arm. Waiting for just the right moment to reveal my secret, I pipe in, “Nobody’s going to mess with me, cause I brought THIS!” I pull out my garden-variety pocket knife. You know the one, with the faux wooden handle, stamped with Pocono Mountains. “Ooooh.” Impressed, the boys circle closer; then I hear Bobby Snow, our escort, with derision in his voice, “Put that thing away Spinner, as a matter of fact give it to me. The only one’s going to get stabbed with that thing is YOU when someone takes it off you and stabs you with it.”
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I didn't get in to Regis but I am admitted to John Dewey High School, out towards Coney Island which means a 50 minute train ride on the subway. By senior year I am an experienced straphanger. I know how to position myself to get a seat on a crowded train. My friends and I from our neighborhood, still travel together but now we cause our own mischief. Over the four years of high school, the only roving gangs I witnessed were fellow high schoolers, usually from FDR or one of the other schools our train passed during our commute. Senior year, I got a job at Barnes & Noble right around Union Square in Manhattan. As a senior I could leave school when my classes were done. I rigged my schedule so that I could be in B&N around 1 p.m.. This required that I travel the B train from the next to last stop, through many Brooklyn neighborhoods, across the Manhattan Bridge, through Chinatown and the lower East Side to Union Square. The issue here was the time I was traveling. At that time of day, almost nobody takes the train, nobody.
If I ran out of my English class and ran, I could just catch the B as it pulled in to the station. Winded, I would walk through the cars to get to the front car. Not because I wanted to look out the front window, I was a jaded New Yorker by then. No, I would walk to the front car because when we got to Union Square, the front of the train would be closest to the exit I needed to get to 18th Street and 5th Ave. One day, early spring, I catch the B, and out of breath I begin to weave my way from car to car towards the front. But…. as soon as I enter the second car, I get slammed in the face with the smell of pot. It awakens me, I look up and I am surrounded by three guys, about my age, clearly cutting school and looking for trouble. I try to act cool, nod to one of them and keep walking to the front of the car. I prepare to enter the first car and put some distance between myself and the thugs but the door is stuck, or locked, but either way, I’m screwed. I walk back a few steps, pull out my copy of Stephen King’s Christine, put my foot up on the metal pole in front of me and slouch down. I act like I am reading but I am listening to the potheads talk at the other end of the train. It’s not 20 seconds until I hear one of them say, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go get me a quarter off a white boy.” Gulp. I thought it odd that he only wanted a quarter but, whatever. So the leader saunters over and stands over me. His compadres quickly join him and sit on either side of me. They are toying with me, having fun. “What’s that your reading?” “Nothing, Stephen King, you know the horror writer?” “No I don’t know.” The guy standing over me takes his hand and slaps my feet off the pole. I sit up. They are about my age, I'm thinking I could fend them off and make a break for it at the next stop. The dude on my left tries to go through the pockets on my denim jacket. I try and keep his hands away. He persists. I look up to my left and standing in the first car, taking in the whole scene, is a cop. A big meaty, cop with his hands on his hips snickering at the whole situation. I can’t believe my luck. I point and say, “Don’t look now but there’s a cop in the next car.” At first they snicker and then the leader does a double-take puts his hands in the air and says, ‘Don’t worry, we’s cool, we’s cool.” At the next stop, the cop moves into our car. Doesn’t say a word to me, slaps the cuffs on one of them and takes all three of them off the train. Whenever someone says, “There’s never a cop around when you need one.” I tell them that story.
After college, I worked on Wall Street and became a regular commuter, one of the guys walking down the street that my friends and I used to notice I suppose. The subway became part of my New York lifeline. As with a lot of things we fear, once I got to know it, the subway was not something I was afraid of but something I needed and appreciated. In my decades of commuting on the subway, I was only accosted twice, the story you just heard and one night I took the train home late at night when I should have taken a cab. But that’s a story for another time…
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