So the Last Shall Be First

Well, that’s definitely the case with the Number 1 train. The last car going downtown is the first car coming uptown. I ride the first car going downtown and the last car coming uptown. It’s a matter of science based on the various cars’ locations vis-à-vis the subway station entrances. Typically, they are among the least crowded. Anyway, this is my story of another first—in December—with my random observations of what I encountered along the way.

Foremost, the holiday season is in full swing. Signs of the season abound. Christmas tree sellers are—to use an old phrase of my father’s to describe a busy retailer—doing “a booming business.” From the looks of things, a lot of people buy their trees quite early nowadays. Once upon a time, selling trees before Thanksgiving—which I saw in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago—didn’t happen. But that was then and this is now. What I would like to know is how these trees survive an entire month or more indoors without drooping, drying out, and becoming a fire hazard? As a youth, the family tree went up a few days before Christmas. It was almost always a Balsam fir, which couldn’t wait, as I recall, to start shedding its needles.

Recently, I read of a Manhattan tree seller charging twenty-five to thirty dollars a foot. He claimed the extreme pricing was the consequence of an industry shortage. On the city sidewalks, busy sidewalks yesterday, I just didn’t see it. Shoppers had a bumper crop of trees from which to choose. When I spied a young woman with a Charlie Brown-sized tree awaiting a train, I calculated she would have paid—using the price-gouger’s arithmetic—at least fifty dollars for the privilege. When I snapped a Christmas in New York shot of the tree, what I got was an unintended image of straphangers one and all mesmerized by their devices and not the Charlie Brown tree. ‘Tis the season to stare into your smartphone.

Prior to these unmistakable signs of the season, a woman sat beside me on the subway in what are—in practical reality—Billy Barty-sized seats. Sitting with her back to me, this gal found it necessary to speak with her husband—eyeball-to-eyeball—on her right. With her big head of hair practically in my face, I assumed the role of the back of a seat for what seemed like an eternity. It was all very annoying but, regrettably, par for the course. Fortunately, there were more uplifting encounters in my journey, like coming upon belching steam pipes. There’s something about these things that cry out: “Take my picture!” And no two shots are ever the same!

For some reason, I associate New York City steam pipes with Christmastime. An annual holiday tradition during my childhood involved a Manhattan shopping jaunt with my aunt and brothers. Upon exiting the subway directly across from Macy’s main entrance was, as I remember, a billowing steam pipe, which always seemed to complement the December cold. Toss in the sounds and scents of Christmas—sidewalk Santas ringing their bells and street vendors peddling hot dogs, chestnuts, and pretzels—and that’s a festive ambiance if ever there was one.

One such year—just before entering Macy’s—we bore witness to an accident involving two yellow taxicabs. A passenger in one of them exited with a streak of blood running down the topside of his bulbous nose. I must admit that this was all great theater for a kid and made the outing particularly memorable. Of course, that was about forty-five years ago. The fellow with the bulbous nose is no doubt long gone—and not from injuries sustained in the fender bender—and so are the stores we patronized, with the sole exception of Macy’s at Herald Square. Gimbel’s, Korvette’s, Woolworth’s, Kress’s, and Brew Burger, too, are in the dustbin of history. Brew Burger, by the way, was a 1970s chain specializing in—you guessed it—charred hamburgers and beer in the pre-craft era. Sans the brew, we patronized the place a time or two. But Christmas future is far away. And Christmas past is past. Christmas present is here today. So, I'm grateful that—at the very least—the steam pipes endure in the here and now.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)