| Welcome to the Cooperstown Crier |
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|
2-28-2007 Jim Atwell The two stories got paired at a long-ago dinner party given by Ted and Sarah Sumner at their Hyde Bay home. Eight of us had finished a fine meal and were leaning back from the candlelit table, trading tales. Somehow, talked turned to subway riding, and Sam Wilcox got us laughing to tears at a story he told on himself - about the only time, he said, he'd ever been physically attacked. I hope Sam won't mind my retelling his story, too. Much of Cooperstown knows Sam as the kindest of men, a gentleman in the word's most literal sense, one constantly attentive to the needs of others. Well, many years ago, Sam and Hilda were rattling along under New York City late at night, returning, I imagine, from a play or the opera. The only other passenger in their car was an elderly woman at the far end. She'd fallen asleep, surrounded by shopping bags. When the train reached the Wilcoxes' stop, Sam became worried that it might be the woman's stop, too. Ever the good Samaritan, he walked down the car's length and shook her gently by the elbow. Bad mistake, said Sam. The bag lady - for so she was - leaped up in a shrieking fury and began pummeling him. She pursued Sam down the length of the car, stilling pounding on his shoulders and head, and even reached out the door after him to land a final wallop. No good deed, as they say, goes unpunished. Anyway, after we'd dried our eyes from Sam's story, I found myself recounting a subway story of my own. More properly, it's a London Underground story, since it occurred on what all the Brits call "the tube" (pronounced "chube.") About a quarter century ago, I was staying in a London hotel during an absolute rarity: a winter snowstorm that stopped the great city dead. A foot of snow had paralyzed all forms of ground transportation. I was heading home that day and realized that, if I were to make my plane at Heathrow Airport, my only option was the tube. So I bounced my two suitcases down flights of cement steps to Piccadilly Circus Station and squeezed onto a packed train heading out of the city. After still more people crowded on at the next stop, the car was stuffed to the doors. I stood, arms pinioned to my body, my stacked bags crushed against my one side, and a well-dressed Englishman, similarly straitened, wedged against the other. Though his nose was almost in my ear, he maintained proper British psychic distance - until I revealed an American accent. "Well," I said, "I won't be told again that all the British are distant." He smiled, almost chuckled, and said, "Special rules for special circumstances, Yank. We adjust, you see, to hard times." There it was, I thought. Shared discomfort can gather people as readily as does shared happiness. And for older Brits, for whom wartime bombing is a living memory, a special sort of community emerges when even mildly hard times must be faced together. Even young British share in this cultural tie. My intimate acquaintance and I rode along under the flickering lamps, leaning into the turns, listening to the wheels grind and screech, until the train finally came above ground and into gray light. At the first two suburban stations, the platform scenes look straight out of "Dr. Zhivago": masses of, cold, snow-covered people who didn't make a move to board because the cars were obviously packed. Then, at the third such stop came a perfect example of stiff-upper-lip spirit, couched in cool English irony. Behind still another frozen and stoic crowd, the platform address system crackled to life. From the speakers echoed a dispatcher's voice dripping with affected BBC plumminess: "Persons who cannot be crushed onto this train," said the calm voice, "may wait eight minutes and be crushed onto the next." The snow-covered people smiled wanly, the doors closed with a pneumatic sigh, and off we lurched, toward Heathrow. I'm glad to say that we made it all the way there without my close companion having to sneeze. Read about Jim Atwell's book, "From Fly Creek - Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at JimAtwell. com. |
Copyright 2007, Cooperstown Crier, Cooperstown, NY All rights reserved