2005-11-28 - 10:14 p.m.
Yesterday, Nya and I took the el back from Midway Airport. (This is actually pretty uncommon, as most el stations are inaccessible while the buses are all accessible.) Most of the trip downtown was above ground. The train track is elevated, not by the skeletal trusswork you might think of when you picture the Chicago el, but just on a raised right-of-way. Much of my subway trip to school when I was younger through Brooklyn was on a similarly raised track. Looking out the car�s window yesterday at the houses and apartments and gritty low-rise industrial buildings of the South Side brought such an unexpected flood of memory of that trip to school.
I took it almost every weekday from seventh to twelfth grade (1986-1992 � actually, I think I might have only taken the train in the mornings in seventh). Since my neighborhood, Sheepshead Bay, was so out there, it was a two fare trip. I had to take the bus around the corner to get to the subway. This leg of the trip was quite variable in duration. I had a half-fare bus pass (and a free subway pass), but the bus didn�t always come. The transit folks hadn�t seemed to figure out that three buses every 15 minutes is not the same as one bus every five minutes. It got cold sometimes waiting on that corner (Nostrand & Ave. X).
Seeing an opportunity here, gypsy cabs followed the bus route to the train station. Usually driven by Russian immigrants, they would take whatever the bus fare was at the time (it went from 90 cents to $1.25 during these years). They would also accept transit tokens as fare, which they would then sell to other passengers. However, I was a cheap kid and if the bus didn�t come I�d have a big internal debate about whether I wanted to pay full fare for a gypsy cab. As I was often running late (I remember the whole journey as about 45 minutes, although my sister now says it took her over an hour for the same route), I usually broke down and ponied up.
The Q express stopped at the Sheepshead Bay stop and also the D local. Again I would debate with myself whether to pass up a local train that�s here to wait for an express that might or might not come. (In my first years of this trip, I didn�t face this dilemma as track work meant there was no local/express service, but rather �skip-stop� service by both lines.) If I got on a local and an express passed me, I�d kick myself. If I passed up a local and ended up waiting interminably for a Q, I�d kick myself. Despite all this stress, I think the time difference was only a few minutes.
Because it was towards the end of the line and I was going inwards in the morning, I almost always got a seat. Sometimes, especially if I�d been up late, I sat down and instantly sacked out. I was quite good at falling asleep on the train; the jostling of the ride was pretty soothing, like being rocked to sleep. Sometimes I did homework, particularly my Latin reading for some reason (c.f. fellow Saint Ann�s graduate Mike D. of the Beastie Boys in �Root Down� � �Every morning I took the train to High Street station, [the A train stop kids from Manhattan might walk to school from] doing homework on the train, what a fucked up situation��). I think I translated most of the Aeneid on the train.
Most of all, I remember the sights of the ride. Mostly outdoors until I switched trains across the platform at Dekalb Ave. for the last few stops to school, we went past the streets of Gravesend and the single-family houses of Flatbush. The house lots butted up to the tracks and you could peer in people�s small backyards. Who had a boat they were working on back there, an above-ground pool crammed into the space, a picnic table, a detached garage/shed. I could see the campus of Edward R. Murrow High School with its track and football field out the window. And a big painted sign for the original Stanley Kaplan test prep location at Kings Highway.
In my craziest days, I would get off at Prospect Park and switch to the S shuttle train (it had beautiful old wooden platforms). Then I�d transfer to the A train. There was a ridiculous elaborate system with paper tickets for transfers because the S ended on an elevated platform and the A station was at the same spot, but underground (there were always derelicts around trying to talk you out of your transfer ticket). If I walked to school from the A train station, I wouldn�t see as many people en route and I�d approach the school from a side street. At 17 and probably at the height (trough?) of my depression, I didn�t want to be seen by others, so making this circuitous trip was comforting. Oh, I told you I was a troubled kid.
I began to learn who got on at each stop. More African-Americans on their morning commute around Church Ave. More kids like me going off to school at Parkside. People didn�t always get onboard at the same door (I guess I didn�t either), so I didn�t always see the same faces. One time I did see a commuter I�d seen before and announced that it was my birthday (maybe it really was). �Uh, happy birthday,� he said before scooting away from the crazy white kid. Around Newkirk, the train went into a below-grade trench for a few stops before heading underground before Seventh Avenue. There was a clock in that station and I would check the time to see how late I was.
When we passed through the station, I would always think of that line from Simon & Garfunkel�s �The Boxer�: �Just a come on from the whores on Seventh Avenue�� I know they were talking about Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, but still. A street busker once played that while I was at dinner outdoors in Faneuil Hall in the summer of 2002, right before I was starting college again. I broke down crying, thinking of how long it had been since my subway ride. Right in front of the waiters and my girlfriend and everything; very embarrassing. Still, it had indeed been such a long trip.
Such a long trip. I�d like to close this with some kind of thought on the deeper meaning of my journey to school. Maybe something from pioneering urbanist Kevin Lynch�s The Image of the City on the meaning of �lines�, mental maps of pathways that can delineate space even if they have no real relationship to geography. But I�m afraid I can�t really determine what the broader implications of the trip were or if there even were any. I can�t figure it out. Maybe it�s just time I spent on the train long ago, in a world that doesn�t exist anymore (they�ve even redesignated the D/Q line as the B train). What did it all mean? I don�t really know; maybe just travel.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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