A sign of hard work, stranded on the Upper West Side and more reader tales of New York City in this week’s Metropolitan Diary.
Concrete Dust
Dear Diary:
I was at the 68th Street-Hunter College station, standing in a neat row of commuters dressed in suits and punching dumbly at the keys of MetroCard machines that all seemed to be down.
A construction worker came bounding down the stairs. He was smiling and went straight to the booth.
I stepped over to stand behind him. He was covered head to toe in concrete dust. A line began to form behind me.
“Fill it up,” he said to the woman in the booth, handing her a MetroCard and a crisp $50 bill lightly coated with the same dust.
“Sorry, I’m a little dirty,” he said, still smiling. “But I guess that means I’m doing all right, you know? If I’m clean, that means I’m broke. But if I’m dirty, I’m doing all right.”
— Carey K. Mott
Stranded in the ’70s
Dear Diary:
It was a beautiful spring Saturday in the 1970s. I had driven into the city from New Jersey for the day and was on the Upper West Side when my car started to sputter.
I stopped at a gas station, and the guy there said they could look at it, but not until Monday. So now I had to get back to New Jersey, but I had spent almost all the money I’d brought with me for the day. I only had 75 cents left — not even enough for a bus home.
I decided to call a friend who could, hopefully, come and get me. I saw a green phone booth outside a bar at the corner of 78th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
Picking up the receiver, I noticed that it was unusually big and heavy. This is one really old phone, I thought to myself.
I dropped my last three quarters into the phone, but I didn’t get a dial tone. The phone was dead and now I had no money left.
I went into the bar, where the bartender chuckled and said the phone outside was a prop. It was for a scene in “The Goodbye Girl,” which was being filmed on the block.
He gave me a few quarters. I dropped them into the bar’s pay phone and called my friend. Then I settled in to wait, and watched Marsha Mason do about a dozen takes on the street outside.
— Doug Joswick
Churros for Sale
Dear Diary:
It was a hot day in Brooklyn, and I was at the park with my two children.
Standing just outside the park was a woman with a metal cart covered in plastic wrap. Inside it were dozens of churros. She was also with two young children. They were sitting next to her quietly.
I watched as the woman sold a few churros, and then dark clouds began to fill the sky. As my children and I gathered our things to head home, I wished I had brought some money with me so I could buy something from her.
Just then, a man approached her.
How much for the rest of the churros, he asked.
Eighty-eight dollars, she said.
He pulled out his wallet, handed her $100, took every churro she had and walked away, just as the rain started to fall.
— Jennifer Dale
Nasturtiums
Dear Diary:
I was getting my morning coffee as usual at my regular coffee shop. I was expecting to make the usual chitchat with Patrick, the barista. He seemed particularly cheery.
“Do you know what nasturtiums are?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
Patrick said the chef from a restaurant around the corner often stopped in for coffee on his way to work after picking up things at the Union Square Greenmarket. On a recent day, he had a wagon of orange blossoms in tow.
He had explained to Patrick that the blossoms were edible flowers called nasturtiums and that you could get them at the market if you were there super early, before he and other chefs snatched them all up.
“And then today,” Patrick said, “he brought me a box!”
He retrieved a clamshell container from behind the counter. It was filled with bright yellow and orange flowers.
“You can try one if you want,” he said.
“Of course I do,” I said, lifting one by its petals and popping it into my mouth.
It was peppery and explicitly sweet in the center. It felt like eating a flower.
— Molly Keene
Spare Tissue
Dear Diary:
My wife and I were on an escalator at the Port Authority Terminal, on our way home from the theater. I asked my wife, who was two steps ahead of me, if she had a tissue.
She said yes and that she would give me one when we reached the top.
Suddenly, a hand holding a small pack of tissues reached over my shoulder. I turned to see a woman standing behind me with a smile on her face.
“Here you go,” she said, “and keep the package.”
— Stuart Schwartz
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