Halloween was quite a day.
I heard, about 9:20 in the morning, that there'd been a fire in the subway. Leaving my apartment three hours later, I naturally assumed that mess would have been cleared up.
It hadn't been.
All sorts of people were waiting for buses, but Broadway looked prohibitively crowded. My only hope was take the crosstown bus to Central Park West, where there's a completely different subway line than the one that was down.
But that bus didn't seem to be coming.
Then there appeared a brand new bus, one that runs on some cleaner-burning fuel. I got on, and it was so crowded, I crouched over the driver, hoping to give him a view of the sidewalk.
But what he was trying to get was a view of his rearview mirror. A light was telling him the rear door wasn't closed, and the bus doesn't move until that light goes out. He made an announcement that someone should pull the door closed. But this didn't help. He then asked me to close the door from the outside, but, when I got there, that door looked as closed as closed can be.
Knowing that his bus was about to go out of service, I didn't get back on.
Now to snag a cab. It was quite a battle, as so many people were trying to get a cab. The one I got the driver immediately said, nastily "I'm only going as far as 72nd Street and Broadway. I'm taking medication and I need to eat NOW."
"72nd and Broadway will be fine," I said cheerily. I figured I could catch the 2 or the 3 train from there. Two stops, and I'd be at Penn Station. The driver flipped on the radio, and the news confirmed that the 2 and the 3 were once again running. The hungry driver took Broadway, which was extremely crowded. His lunch was not coming quickly.
At 72nd and Broadway, a transit worker blocked the door to the still-smoldering subway. He suggested we walk two long blocks east to get the Central Park West train.
I tried to hail a cab as I took this walk. They're two rather long blocks, and there were no cabs to be had. At least not until my driver had eaten his lunch. So, I took the subway, which came pretty fast. It was the Sixth Avenue subway, so I needed to switch to the Eighth Avenue subway at Columbus Circle. That one was a long time coming.
At Penn Station I ran through the crowds to find my train had already left.
Now began a long process of trying to call the office of the theatre department. All I had on me was an 800 number for the school's admissions office. I asked for the office in many different ways, and many different operators were confused by my request. What I wanted was the theatre department in Madison, but there's also one in Teaneck, and there's really something called a Visual and Performing Arts Department. All my calls led me to answering machines. I wondered if Halloween is some sort of a school holiday. Nobody was answering the phone.
My phone messages were clear: I'd missed my train, there'd be another one in an hour, tell my students I'd be late, and please try to call the student who'd be picking me up at the train. But would these messages be received in time to matter?
With no one to discuss it with, I had to make a decision: Do I take the hour-long train ride in hopes that there'd be a class waiting for me, or give up. Well, I'm not a quitter, and I'm committed to that class, so off I went on the next train.
For some reason the train stopped a little behind the station, so, when I got off the train, I wasn't landing on pavement, but rather those hillside pebbles that so often lead up to train tracks. But I survived this "jump" - it wasn't as if the train was moving.
My faithful courier wasn't there at the station, so I now set off on my walk to the theatre where my class is held. All along, I've assumed that there's some shortcut one can take if one's on foot. First, I made a diagonal across a big church lawn that a car couldn't do. Soon, the road had no sidewalk, but I entered the campus next to a soccer field. Now, I was pretty sure there were athletic fields near the building, but I couldn't see the building, so I went all the way around the field, just as a car would do. All of this was eating up a lot of time, and I knew if I didn't hurry, my students would give up on me.
So, after going through a tunnel, I made my most fatal error of all. I decided to leave the road and cut across a grassless area where some construction steel had been dumped. I figured if the dirt was strong enough to hold all that steel, it could hold me.
Boy, was I wrong. After a few wayward steps, I found my foot sinking deeper and deeper into the earth. And when I pulled up my foot, my shoe was still deep underneath the ground. "Help!" I yelled, but there was nobody within remote hearing distance. Then I dug my hand a foot or two underground to retrieve my shoe. My next step produced a similar amount of suction from the imploding mud, but I was able to extract my foot with the shoe still on it. All along I've my canvas bag around my arm - the one containing my wife's computer. It's an open bag, so nothing was protected from the element (mud).
Now, looking like the creature from the muddy lagoon, I entered the building and went to the theatre office. Nobody was there. Someone's coat was on a chair, but nobody. I left my shoes and bag outside the door, so as not to muddy the carpet. I looked in the theatre; no one was there. I headed for the bathroom.
Washing my hands, it was clear that this mug was going to clog the drain. I decided to retrieve the shoes and emerge them completely in hot water. I had to keep cleaning the sinks with paper towels, because the mud was so thick. I threw away my dress socks. This was my first day of wearing socks, by the way. I don't like to wear socks between St. Patrick's Day and Halloween.
Once clean, I took another look in the theatre office. It was still empty. So I took a pad of paper and quickly scrawled the events of the day. Then, walking in those very wet shoes, I again searched for a shortcut back to the train station. I must have been out of my mind at that point, but I wanted to catch the next train back. This would give me extra time to wash up before that night's activity: going to the opera.
Yes, the opera tickets were my wedding present to my bride, and I was determined to avoid letting my misfortunes impact all the romance of a night at the opera. Eventually I took that normal car route back to the train station, crossing the church parking lot. There, two Little Leaguers were tossing a ball. One looked me over and said "You work in construction?" "Yep," I said, concentrating on the problem ahead. Would the conductor let me on the train in this condition?
I turned my muddy sweater inside-out and tied it around my waste, thus covering some of the mud on my pants. I slipped on the train, and, at subsequent stops, the train got pretty crowded pretty fast. People kept sitting next to me and then, thinking better of it, sat somewhere else. God knows what I smelled like. Eventually, it was so crowded, some poor soul stayed in the seat next to mine. Laptop computer out (to mask the bottom of my pants), the ticket-taker didn't notice the mess I was. On such a crowded train, he didn't have time to.
The subway line I take to get home WAS working, but the original line that had the fire was still out. As a result, the subway I was on was as crowded as I've ever seen a subway. And I was the guy who was covered with mud. Some others, at this point, were dressed in costumes, but they didn't smell so bad.
I took a hot bath, and getting the mud out of my feet has taken a great deal of effort. But we made it to the opera, and had a lovely time.
