For those of us in the teaching business, so many things not related to teaching have to wait until the summer months. Even then, some things we do have some relationship to work. Since the semester ended in mid-May, I’ve been in motion just about every week, and so much of it has had to do with these sorts of things.
The first of my many adventures came the day after graduation. A friend of mine who spent a half-century at one of the big television networks has an amazing collection of rare materials that he collected throughout his career. He’s now at the point where he has to figure out what to do with it, and I agreed to come up and have a look.
But there’s a catch: he lives near New York City. And right now, I don’t feel like flying anywhere. To make a long story short, I drove to his home not far from Manhattan. It was a long drive, yes, but the drive through the New Jersey suburbs wasn’t anywhere as bad as I thought it would be, and the time I spent with my friend and his wife, and lunch at a local diner with one of his lifelong friends (another network veteran) was most enjoyable. When it was time to leave, I could not believe it when I looked out the window of my car and saw the Manhattan skyline off to my left. It was surreal, but it was really happening.
One of the better parts of driving versus flying is that it let me do things my own way, not tied to any schedule but my own. This gave me a chance to spend the night in Camden, where I could wander around the refurbished RCA factory that evening, and spend part of the next morning wandering around the battleship New Jersey, now very nicely preserved as a museum ship.
Across the Delaware were some stunning views of Philadelphia. It’s a city I love, for a lot of reasons. But a couple times I looked down the waterfront and thought of a landmark that’s no longer there, and my heart ached just a bit. Afterwards, it was over to Bala Cynwyd and a quick visit with an old friend, and then back home, with one more night en route to give my aging carcass some rest.
I didn’t have that long to be idle, for late the next week I was off to Huntsville for further business: a meeting with a former student who’s now one of the senior folks at a television station there, and a visit to the Space and Rocket Center the next morning with a couple friends. It was my first visit to Huntsville since 1988, and a lot has changed at the Space and Rocket Center since then. As long as I could stop thinking about how long it had been, it was an enjoyable visit.
“Yeah, a couple!”
A couple of weeks, themselves full, passed before it was time to set out yet again. My friend who works at ABC in New York invited me up to spend another morning with him as he worked on Good Morning America. As if that wasn’t enough, ABC has decamped from its longtime West Side campus to a new facility at Hudson Square, and my friend offered to show me around the place. How could I say no?
This time, I wasn’t doing all the driving. I’d only have to take myself as far as Baltimore, and Amtrak would do much of the rest. So last Friday, bright and early, I made the I-77 to I-81 trip for the third time in 11 months, and it never gets any shorter. Happily, I was spared lengthy delays en route and made much better time than I anticipated. The next morning, I packed a smaller bag for an overnight trip, drove to the train station next to the Baltimore airport, and prepared to ride the rails.
I’ve traveled by rail a few times before – the Alaska Railroad from Fairbanks to Anchorage, and New Jersey Transit from Port Jervis to Penn Station on my first trip to New York a long time ago – but it’s the first time I’d traveled by Amtrak. On a whim I bid on an upgrade and, for a few dollars more, ended up in a Business Class car that was less than half full. The trip was about three hours and went without incident. Had I not been kind of keyed up, it would have been a good chance to take a nap. Instead, I listened to some music and wrote a little in my journal, looked out the window and occasionally took some video footage of the passing landscape, footage that I may edit into a little film if I can get myself to follow through.
The scenes outside got busier, the skyline I’d seen from my car last month came into view, and before long we disappeared into darkness and emerged into the station. Up an escalator and into Moynihan Train Hall, a lovely adaptation of an old building for a new use. I’ll never know what it was like to emerge into the old Penn Station (although I do know what it’s like to emerge into the depressing current one), but what I saw as I came up the escalator gave me an idea of what the old one was like. I got a quick bite to eat, and then realized I had to kill a couple hours before my hotel was ready for check-in.
You would think I’d be resourceful enough to figure that out. Unfortunately, it’s mid-June. Prime tourist season. On a Saturday. The sun is out. And it’s hot out. Hot. We were in the throes of the heat dome, in a concrete and asphalt canyon. I tried to figure out where to go and what to do, and decided to default to what I knew. Thus began an ill-advised hike the 15 blocks to Rockefeller Center, where I knew I could fritter away the time before my 4 p.m. check-in. At 42nd Street, I took a side trip to pay my regards to Patience and Fortitude.
This was made all the more interesting by a very large tour group of teenagers from another country, and I had to weave my way past and through them to get to my next stops. Seven blocks later, the Channel Gardens beckoned, and ahead of me the familiar monolith of 30 Rock.
I wheezed through the revolving doors into that dark, glorious lobby with all its glorious air conditioning. Down into the concourse, I hoped to find a place to sit and rest…only to find there were none, except for the patrons of various eateries. After a while I gave up, figured I could catch the subway downtown, and vamp there until 4 p.m. But the subway entrance I was promised on the map wasn’t there; construction on that corner blocked off the entrance. After running myself ragged, I took shelter in a building’s public concourse, and then bought a bottle of water in the building’s coffee shop. A cheery barista rang the sale up for me, and we traded lighthearted comments about the hellish conditions outside. It didn’t take me long to drain the bottle, and I soon yielded my seat to a family and headed onward.
Finally, a subway station! Unfortunately, the entry area was cramped, with few turnstiles, and some of the folks exiting the line weren’t exactly using situational awareness. I didn’t realize I was standing in the path of the cashier’s window, and a guard instructed me to move away. By this point, tired and fed up, I semi-hollered that I was waiting for the people leaving the turnstiles to figure out what they were going to do. I paid my fare and went onward. It was the first time I’d lost my temper with anyone while visiting Manhattan, and I felt kind of badly about it. On the other hand, it’s Manhattan, the place where the F-word is used the way most people use “and.” In the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor sin.
The E Train took me south, and after my stop, I emerged at a place I’ve known about all my life, but whose meaning forever changed one awful morning.
My hotel was right next to the World Trade Center site. Professor Mondo had mentioned it after his visit a few months back, and when I saw some surprisingly good rates I booked my stay there. After a little homework, I realized it was a hotel that’s etched into my memory for another reason: on the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2001, CBS aired some footage from inside its ruined, dust-covered lobby, showing the abandoned computer screens still going, and the flashing warnings at the control consoles near the check-in desk. That scene, its own version of Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” has haunted me ever since. (You can see that footage at approximately 15 minutes into this link. It’s not in the original context in which I saw it, but it’s the same images.) And now, here I was, in the very building where it happened.
As it happens, the hotel is being renovated. The lobby was closed, and we were shunted to a side entrance. The check-in desk was now on the fourth floor, in what looked like a repurposed meeting room. And there was a line out in the hallway. The two clerks on duty were obviously swamped, and not all the rooms were ready; the two men in front of me were very unhappy about this, and were trying to demand some kind of compensation. I braced for similar news and was already trying to figure out how I would handle it, but my room was ready to go. Back around to the elevators I went, and I punched the button for my floor…only to realize it was an elevator where you have to present your keycard to select your floor. I realized this just as the other passenger in the elevator was about to help me. We kind of chuckled about it, and I used my standard line about “they do that just to cross up those of us who are up here from the country.”
Once inside my room, I collapsed on the bed. I was soaking wet, sore, tired. But the view out my window was not what I expected. Directly ahead of me was the Oculus, One World Trade Center…and the first of two giant square holes, their outlines ringed in black. There weren’t any words for it, and throughout the evening I’d keep coming back to that view.
After cooling down for a while, I changed shirts and set out again. The memorial was my first stop…all the names along the outlines. It really reminded me of my first visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, and how nothing about the scope of the lives lost had ever really got to me until I saw the size of the Wall and how small the names were. That’s all I can compare this to. You have to see it to really get it.
Down into the Oculus I went, both to look around and to find a bottle of water, which I finally found at a Hudson News store. There wasn’t much time to drink it, or much of a place to relax with it. (Tourist season, remember?) Instead, I hoofed it back up and out. I’d wanted to visit the Brooklyn Bridge, since a very dear friend of mine grew up in Brooklyn, and…well, I was nearby. Unfortunately, everybody else in the entire world had the same idea that afternoon, and the pedestrian lane of the bridge was solid humanity. I noped out and headed for a Duane Reade store, where I bought provisions for the evening.
Then it was back to my room for a much-needed shower that almost made me feel like a human again. I spent the evening looking out the window at that unforgettable view, doing a lot of thinking about what happened there, and how everything forever changed that day. I was simultaneously amazed by what was before me, and haunted by the horrors that had played out here nearly a quarter-century ago. And since Fate has a wicked sense of humor, just before bedtime I learned that we’d bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. Tomorrow was going to be interesting. But I got out a book I’d brought and did some reading, hoping to get my mind off things. It worked well enough.
I had a decent, if truncated, night’s rest, beating my alarm by about an hour, and was up and out by 5:30. My friend was expecting me at 6:30, and I wanted to give myself some extra time in case anything happened en route. I left the hotel, wandered through the World Trade Center site and took some photos, and then started walking north. Even in the early morning hours, it was getting hot and sticky, and by the time I got to Hudson Square I was spent. The front desk checked me in, my friend came down and greeted me, and up we went to start the day’s fun.
For the next three hours I got to see professionals at work, and there’s kind of a vicarious thrill that comes with it. You’re watching this stuff happen in real time, and yet the people you’re with have done this so much and for so long. It makes me think of really good doctors performing surgery, responding to the unexpected with calm wit and trained hands. The breaking news from the night before threw a curveball into the proceedings, and it was interesting to be there when the network went to a special report. But it got done.
After the morning’s duties were done, my friend and I went just about everywhere we could inside ABC’s new facility. To say it’s impressive is an understatement, and in some places I felt I’d stepped ten years into the future. It made me wish we had something similar where I work, but since I don’t have anywhere near the resources Disney could pour into this facility, it ain’t happenin’ soon. Oh, well. But as much fun as the tour was, it was as much fun to spend time with some of the folks my friend works with. I learned long ago that the people who like what they do are eager to share what they know with you, if you’re genuinely interested in it. It’s opened many a door, and many a friendship, for me, and this trip reminded me of how valuable that is. Now, when I come to New York, it’s not for a tour so much as it is to be with friends again, friends who happen to work in the teevee business.
Noon came and went, and we had to part ways. For me, it was one more ride on the E back to Moynihan Train Hall, and then the train to Baltimore. I had a quick bite, spent some time writing in my journal, and then off to the very full Amtrak 87. It was scorching hot outside, and our take-no-crap conductor reminded us all at every stop to be safe and stay hydrated if we were getting off. The heat also messed with our progress, and outside Aberdeen, Maryland we were stopped for about 20 minutes due to heat issues. In due course, though, we were on our way, and I was back at BWI soon enough. From there, it was a not-too-lengthy drive to my hotel for the night.
The final morning of this trip, I was up in plenty of time to get ready, and then I headed east to Norfolk and a visit to the battleship Wisconsin, now moored as a museum ship at Nauticus.
There’s not as much to see on the self-guided tour as there is aboard New Jersey, but I also got to see some areas aboard Wisconsin that I couldn’t see aboard New Jersey, either. It was already getting really hot, and less than an hour later I was headed back across the river for Newport News and The Mariners’ Museum.
This was kind of a sentimental journey. The last time I was at The Mariners’ Museum was August 1991, when my family took a vacation to Newport News so I could do some research about s/s United States. As will tend to happen, a place gets frozen in your mind as it was the last time you saw it. Since then, the museum has changed a lot, and it’s going through some renovation now. It’s not a bad thing, and indeed there were a good many things I remember from back then that I was happy to see again. Maybe, though, it isn’t the changes that sadden you as much as the realization of how much time has passed. What seems like yesterday was nearly 34 years ago.
Driving through Newport News itself reminded me of this. I remember when we crossed the James River Bridge that first day back in 1991, and how I looked down the river at Newport News Shipbuilding and then down the waterfront, to the Big U languishing down at the CSX coal pier. USS Enterprise was in the shipyard, in the midst of an overhaul, and that I wasn’t expecting to see. Now Enterprise is at that yard again – that huge cube of an island can’t be mistaken for anything else – but this time, it’s the long goodbye. A few hundred yards away, though, a new Enterprise is under construction in a graving dock.
It wasn’t the ships that I was really thinking about. It was the time that had passed, how 34 years is the blink of an eye, and how no one knows where the time goes. That’s what was really in my head as I took one last look behind, then set a course for Emporia and then the long drive back to home, and the future. I got home later that night, much to the gratitude of two cats, one of whom was relieved to finally have his Emotional Support Human back home.
And after a month or so of travel, I’m thankful for all I’ve been able to do and see, but I need the rest. There may be short trips here and there over the next month, but none of the multi-state extravaganzas for a while, although I am hoping there will be a conference in the cards for me come September. For now, though, I need a break, and there’s plenty for me to see after here.
