One thing the Missus noticed after we’d left the city for the leafy expanse of the ‘burbs two years ago was that everyone around us had actual New York accents–something she’d rarely encountered after a decade in Manhattan, where the guy in the apartment next to you was as likely to be from Copenhagen as he was Canarsie.

I like the New York accent. I grew up with the New York accident. But I have to put my foot down at a certain popular pronunciation of Hawthorne, by both residents and the occasional train conductor, that sees the tiny Mount Pleasant hamlet pronounced “Hore-thawn.”

Yes, the utterers of this prononciation are taking the ‘r’ from the second syllable and moving it up to the first–with complete and utter disregard for the hamlet’s namesake, kindly nun Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, a helper of the cancer-stricken and the daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Note, she’s not the daughter of Nathaniel Horethawn.

I’ve heard perfectly well-educated and gainfully employed lifelong residents say “Hore-thawn,” and I’ve heard Metro-North conductors say it too–usually the same fellas who pronounce the stop before Horethawn…I mean Hawthorne–as Vuh-halla, an egregious affront to fallen Vikings everywhere.

Let us collectively agree to drive the Hores out of our fair hamlet.

That knack for when to hold out for the choice seat and when to promptly dump oneself into lesser real estater that I’d bragged about failed me this morning. I passed up on some decent ones–aisles, middle of the car–while walking toward the front in search of a winner (aisle, no one behind me, or the coup de grace–the 1-3/4 seater).

With each step down the aisle, it dawned on me that I was essentially walking the plank, and finally dropped my dejected ass into a handicapped folding seat.

So jammed is the front of the train that not only did a guy take the folding seat across from me at Valhalla (unspoken words to the dude seated six inches away: “uh…how ya doin’?), but another guy took the available eight inches on my folding seat at North White. I spent the rest of the trip folded up like Flat Stanley being mailed to his friends in an envelope.

To make matters worse, I had the whole trip to lament the (hopefully temporary) loss of my new bike light, a sweet $25 piece of hardware that flew off its handlebar mooring somewhere along Elwood Avenue. I didn’t notice it falling off, per se, but did note a fleeting awareness of having run over some piece of debris, perhaps a soda can. If I don’t find it today or tomorrow and the bike shop in Chelsea gives me a hard time about replacing it, expect to read said bike shop’s name next to unflattering adjectives for days on end. I’ve had the thing for all of two weeks.  

I guess my morning could’ve been worse–I could’ve been on an LIRR train that crashed at Jamaica.

Isn’t it always the case–you come back from a vacation (or, in this case, a four-day weekend) and your first commute is a nightmare–a giant f-you from the commuting gods to get you back for taking a little time off.

Indeed, I boarded at Hummerville this morning, and something was amiss. The seasoned commuter instincts kicked in just after I boarded and told me the usual array of choice seats available were taken, and I’d better claim whatever remaining vinyl real estate there was.

I’m glad I did, because there was some pretty heavy volume shuffling down the aisle, including the man who gets quite nervous when he fails to secure his private 1-3/4 seater (he looked particularly nervous this morning).

A moment later, the conductor came on the loudspeaker and told us that a third-rail problem had caused a breakdown in Valhalla, and we were down several cars from our usual eight.

We positively crawled into Valhalla, got pretty darn packed by North White, and had about a dozen people in the vestibule at White Plains.

The situation was crummy enough to make it onto the hallowed cyber-pages of the Journal News.

You are known locally as the man who simply must have his 1-3/4 seater–those wonderfully cocooned off seats, occasionally locked in an upright position by killjoy conductors, that ensure that no fellow passenger is within 10 feet of you.

I see you, positioning yourself at the perfect spot on the platform each morning so that when the train doors open, you can bolt to your beloved 1-3/4 seater. I’ve even seen you lurking over a locked up seat until the conductor comes around, at which point you politely beg them to unlock it for you so you don’t have to sit with the other people and their imperceptible but no less infernal cooties.

When one looks up “O.Seat.D.” in one’s medical journals, you, sir, are pictured.  

Perhaps you’re claustrophobic, or have social anxiety, or some other afflication that makes 45 minutes in tight quarters with fellow riders unbearable. I hear ya.

Problem is, I like those 1 3/4-seaters too. Not as much as you–occasionally I’ll even bypass an open one to sit with the chattering hoi polloi–but I do enjoy me a little Metro-North privacy now and then.

I saw you heading up the stairs at Hummerville this morning, and I said, I’m taking that mofo’s 1-3/4 seater. The train pulled up and you prepared your move, unaware of just how stiff the competition was going to be this morning. I entered from the next door down and made a beeline for the 1-3/4 seater. I followed your progress through the door that separated us. You were held up as a woman in front of you pondered the option of left versus that of right.

Still, it was going to be close. I jetted through the door just as you approached the 1 3/4 seater. I craftily thrust my foot in front of it to mark my territory. Adding insult to injury, I even looked at the seat and shrugged casually, as if to say, ‘yes, this one will do, but it doesn’t really matter to me where I sit.’

You, sir, were stunned. What amount of currency you’d cough up to claim that seat–your seat!–back. In all your years of boarding the train at Hummerville, I don’t think you’d ever had serious competition for your 1-3/4 seater before. You didn’t even have a Plan B.

Actually, you did. You testily made your way through the door, where a second 1 3/4 seater sits, only to find that one occupied. The anxiety mounted, I know it did. Perhaps you bolted off the train to wait for the next arrival and, God willing, an open 1-3/4 seater.

To be honest, I don’t know what you did, because I was already immersed in my newspaper and iPod, enjoying my personal heater, my personal window, my personal coat hook, in my ambulatory little pied a terre.

See you tomorrow, suckah.  

The leaves came down freakin fast this year.

There was this two weeks ago at the train station.

Then there was this a week ago (note the male tree pattern baldness).

Finally, this last Friday.

It’s 8:15 on the Hummerville platform.

A woman dials up the cell and gets the desired connection.

“Hi sweetie!” she trills. “How was your book?”

“It was about a goose and a butterfly?” she continues.

Her face scrunches up in frustration.

“Speak up, Dylan, I can’t hear you.”

“The goose fell in love with the butterfly?”

She twists in an effort to get a better connection.

“I can’t hear you, Dylan, please speak up!”

“What happened with the goose and the butterfly, Dylan?’

Then the 8:16 rolled in, and we missed the end of the story.

We’re still dying to find out what happened with the goose and the butterfly. We googled Goose and Butterfly, hoping to unearth a synopsis of a children’s book.

No luck there, but we did find a lovely “Silly Goose butterfly sleeve bishop dress with sailboat smocking.”

There is a school for troubled teens in Hummerville; the school’s Website describes it as  “a safe and therapeutic residential option for students in crisis.”

I think the students come up from the city. It’s not hard to spot them in our tiny hamlet. Putting it in the starkest of terms, Hummerville is one color and the students are another.

When I take a certain train, there is a northbound train that arrives just as I’m locking up my bike. It offloads dozens of these Cedar Knolls students, who then hop a bus to cover the mile to the school. When I see that train pulling in, I hustle up the stairs, because the kids come down en masse and FAST–as we all know how eager one must be to begin another day at a school for troubled teens.

I often see this one teen boy who’s not quite like the others. He wraps himselfs in frilly scarves and carries himself in a dainty manner that’s in striking contrast to the thug comportment popular among many of his peers. Perhaps my gay-dar has gotten rusty after two years in the ‘burbs, but it was sharpened across a dozen years living below 14th Street, and I generally trust its functionality. I’m just sayin’.

I wonder about this kid. It must be tough for anyone to hold their own amidst the rigors of this Sing Sing-Lite environment–I wouldn’t last a day–but tougher still when you look different, and nothing about you projects thuggery.

I saw the kid climbing the stairs this morning. He wore a blazer with a t-shirt underneath, a shirt featuring a giant Barack Obama face and the slogan “Yes we can!”

He had a cellphone extended to his ear. “Good morning!” he sang into the phone, broad smile on his face.

Good morning, indeed.

The leaves are falling faster than the Dow. Every day, the giant tree at the entrance to the Hummerville train station gets a little more sparse, the pile below it a little thicker.

The chilly air finds every gap in your coat’s defenses as your bike flies down Broad Street.

It’s just about dark when you get home from work.

Instead of people in Yankee jerseys on the 6 and Mets fans in Grand Central, it’s dopey Rangers fans milling about in our train stations. Fans of a game played on ice.

The outdoor patio at Pershing Square, across from Grand Central, shrinks commensurate to the big tree in Hummerville. Each week, a few more tables are taken away, until everyone is moved inside until spring.

I never really minded the encroaching cold seasons when I lived in the city. Most of my fun happened indoors anyway, often in places with the prefix “Mc.” (No, not McDonald’s.) Cold weather was just something you dealt with during short hops from Place A to Place B.

Now I come to dread the cold months, the mornings where it’s too cold to bike, too cold to play with Little G outside. I dread switching the clocks in a few weeks, and having it be freakin’ dark when I leave work. I dread the onset of Slippery Rail season, though Metro-North did a wondrous job slaying that infernal beast last late-fall.

I’ve noticed a distinct aroma as I ride home these days–the thick smell of fireplace smoke, much thicker and much earlier in the season as everyone dreads that first Con Ed bill that equals a week’s wages.

Five months till spring.

It was just a year ago when I stumbled off a late train at Hummerville, wearing the most unlikely of outfits–a tuxedo I’d rented from Yesterday’s Man or somesuch for our company’s annual black-tie affair.

Unfit to bike, and probably even to walk, I shared a cab with the kindest of gentlemen en route to my house. So moved was I by his kindness and selflessness that I felt compelled to pen him a letter.

I once again have my rented tux for the Night of a Thousand Stars tonight. We’ll see what pleasures await me when I turn up in Hummerville in the wee hours.

An Open Letter To:

The drunk guy in the cab at Hawthorne station last night.

It was late. I was tired.

I was wearing a rented tux with uncomfortable shoes and I just wanted to go home.

I climbed into the cab and the driver told me he was new. He asked me where I was going and what it normally cost. I told him.

He was told a few more riders were getting in. A woman climbed in the back next to me; she was going one block away from me.

Then you stumbled in, Drunk Man, and poured yourself into the front seat.

You had dark, wavy hair, glasses and a mock turtleneck; in fact, the word “mock” could describe several aspects of your appearance.

You told the driver where you were headed–”Four Corners,” I think you said, near the diner. The absolute opposite direction of me and the young lady in the back seat.

The driver asked where to go first. I spoke up, said, we had two going south and one going north. I left it at that, assuming logic would prevail.

But not you, Drunk Jerk Who Lives Near Four Corners. We pulled to the station exit and you slurred a “go left.”

And we did.

The driver, he wasn’t the sharpest blade on the Swiss Army knife. As we headed north toward your beloved Four Points, the driver asked the woman again where she was going. She gave the address, reiterated that it was back the other way.

Then you, Inebriated Clod, instead of simply celebrating your successful hijacking in silence, you gloated. You turned around to the two of us and went “Hah!”

I restrained myself from smacking your bloated face with the heel of my rented patent leather shoe. It wasn’t easy.  

But your behavior gets worse. The driver asked you how much your fare normally was, and you stammered, “Five dollars.” Nothing is five dollars, pal. It ain’t called the dishonor system.

And, to make matters worse, when we finally happened upon your foul lair, you gave the driver just that–five freakin’ dollars. Perhaps you think “Gratuity” is that Pixar movie about the rat chef.

Oh, dear Drunken Fool, the stories we told as you stumbled to your door. The laughs we had at your expense, Besotted Clown, as you fumbled for your keys. The ill-tempered chortles we chortled as our cab, at long last, headed south.

Kind disregards,

Trainjotting

I had the rare pleasure of venturing into the city for friend Christian’s going-away party over the weekend.

It’s always weird, sharing Metro-North with the amateurs on weekends. No one on board knows the unspoken rules. You see people using seats in ways you’ve never seen before. People eye your monthly pass like it’s that shining suitcase in Pulp Fiction. You see people stand up and head toward the exit a few minutes into the tunnel toward Grand Central, then stand there like fools as the train crawls from 59th. (That’s a Premature Evacuation, if you’re scoring at home.) Amateurs, you think to yourself.

My first thought when I heard the party was to be in Queens was the same thought everyone has when they learn they’re going to Queens. (It goes something like….Queens?!?). But it was only Long Island City and it couldn’t have been easier. Under Grand Central, I found an escalator that went straight down to the 7, and was off at Vernon Boulevard five minutes later.

The route to Long Island City Bar reminded me of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg around 1996–a handful of pubs, a few trendy restaurants, wondrous views of Manhattan popping out from around the corner, quietude a few blocks from the subway.

Heading home after a few drinks, I waited for the 7. Three boozy floozies swore like sailors and asked a young guy to take their picture, imploring him to “get the rat” in the background into the frame.

Two more young women had a discussion about one of the woman’s jobs, or at least her schooling. It involved cutting open cadavers. Here are some of the better terms I overheard from the future Meredith Grey, who was a brunette, about 5′ 10″ and slim, but in a skinny way, not model-y, way:

1. I tore it the fuck apart.

2. You put a sheet over the body, then zip up the bodybag.

3. The zipper started separating from the bag. The body gets really dry if somebody, like, has a shitty dissection.

4. We didn’t like, completely dissect the head. We cut, like, from here to, like, here.  (I looked away and mercifully don’t know where “here” or “here” is.)

5. I have, like, dead body fluid like, here, and like, here, because my gloves stop here. (Again, didn’t see where “here”, “here” and “here” is.)

6. You wash, you wash, you wash. My hands are, like, so dry.

7. When people put together, like, ACLs.

The train showed up 10 minutes later. It was more than half empty. The non-medical friend sat down. Grey’s Anatomy stayed on her feet.

“Sit,” urged the friend.

Grey’s Anatomy made a face as she looked at the subway seat.

“No,” she said. “I don’t sit.”

So the woman with dead-guy fluid up and down her arms won’t touch the subway seats… Is she just weird, or does she know something we all should know?

That’s what I wondered as I waited for the 12:06 back to Hummerville.

[image: merriamwebster]