Voices From Old New York

Stuck in the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.  Traffic is down to a crawl.  I’m drifting in and out of to sleep.   We just had a remarkable Mother’s Day lunch with my mom for the first time in how many years, at a restaurant in the West Village known as the Beatrice Inn.  My sister knew the chef.  She specialized in rich meats in huge portions that reminded me of the heaping plates of family-style Shandong. My sister made a comment about gout that seemed fitting.

My nap had begun to lay deep root work. It is 6:30AM for me just now.   I couldn’t see light at the end of the tunnel.  Then I notice the clouds and saw . . . tall buildings.  Wait.  Did he go through the wrong tunnel?  That’s not what the other end of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel looks like.  I looked again and noticed we hadn’t even entered the tunnel yet.  This was just an approach leading into the Battery.  Descending now, slowly. I keep feeling suprised that no one is driving opportunistically the way we do in China.

“The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel” has a wonderful New York ring to it.  But as we crawl along, I notice that we’re not supposed to call it that any more.  Rather, we are entering The Hugh L Carey Tunnel.  I lived here when Carey was Governor.     I can’t remember strong feeling good or bad about the man.  Will anyone really refer to the tunnel this way or will it be just a name on a sign that everyone ignores?  I thought of old New Yorkers who’d tell me to take “The IRD” from the days when the subway lines were privately run.  Perhaps we’ll be quaint voices from “old New York” one day too, if “the Carey” tunnel and the “Ed Koch Bridge” really do become common use terms.

The tunnel feels tight.  The wall face appears to have been excavated, rather than simply tiled. I think about the sandhogs and reckon that much of this was dug with human labor.  No wonder the walls are close at hand.  But it’s too dark to read in here.  I have to put down my copy of Mary McCarthy’s “The Company She Keeps.”  I’m sure this tunnel felt like the height of modernity during that time.  (I’m wrong.  This book depicts the 30’s and the tunnel only opened in 1950.)  That New York has the feel of Robert Moses-like ambitions to it.

Ahh, daylight.  Now, we are in Brooklyn.  No tall buildings.

Sunday, 05/14/17