Monday, September 11, 2006
October, 1987
1987 was a long time ago. I was a first year law student, loving every minute of it. I lived a beautiful room in the law quad with Whit Cobb, and at the start of October the maple trees caught fire and turned New Haven and most of Connecticut red and yellow, a bronzing carpet over the sidewalks. I walked out to football games at the Yale bowl with Jon Nuechterlein and Mike Schwartz, and I got in a brief dispute with the Yale mascot, Handsome Dan, when he overheard my comment that he "looks like a squirrel."
For some reason, my friend Greg Tishar got me involved with the presidential campaign of Paul Simon, a Democrat Senator from Illinois. One Friday night late in October I took the train down to New York, arriving into the buzz of Grand Central Station, which was a wonderful feeling. I walked south on Park Ave. to the Simon HQ on 19th and met up with the usual suspects; Greg, who remains my most-cultured friend, Jake the Insane Paralegal, another guy who called NPR "National Pretentious Radio," and an attractive blonde schoolteacher. I don't remember much about the meeting, other than that it dissolved into most of us heading over to the Old Town, a bar on 19th Street with good hamburgers and a crowd of real people.
We spent some significant time at the Old Town, until they closed it up. Jake told me about why a person should only own one pair of shoes, and I met a woman who claimed to be a toll collector on the Tri-Borough Bridge. Drinking may have been involved. As they moved us out, we wandered into the street with the others, a chattering huddle on the curb reluctant to leave a warm place.
Greg and the schoolteacher and I headed out into the night. It was 2 am in New York, and there were lots of people out doing the same thing we were. It was easy to make new friends. We walked past a fire station with a bench full of firemen sitting there. They called out to us as we passed (well, they called out to the blonde), and we sat on the stoop next door and talked for a while. They made fun of Michigan, and I made fun of New York, and they tried to convince the schoolteacher to come back for a tour. They were young guys, mostly, our age at the time. They laughed a lot, and every once in a while more people would come and sit with us, swapping stories. An hour or so later we went on our way, and I remember thinking "Those guys, they have a great job."
When I woke up this morning, it was those guys I thought of.
For some reason, my friend Greg Tishar got me involved with the presidential campaign of Paul Simon, a Democrat Senator from Illinois. One Friday night late in October I took the train down to New York, arriving into the buzz of Grand Central Station, which was a wonderful feeling. I walked south on Park Ave. to the Simon HQ on 19th and met up with the usual suspects; Greg, who remains my most-cultured friend, Jake the Insane Paralegal, another guy who called NPR "National Pretentious Radio," and an attractive blonde schoolteacher. I don't remember much about the meeting, other than that it dissolved into most of us heading over to the Old Town, a bar on 19th Street with good hamburgers and a crowd of real people.
We spent some significant time at the Old Town, until they closed it up. Jake told me about why a person should only own one pair of shoes, and I met a woman who claimed to be a toll collector on the Tri-Borough Bridge. Drinking may have been involved. As they moved us out, we wandered into the street with the others, a chattering huddle on the curb reluctant to leave a warm place.
Greg and the schoolteacher and I headed out into the night. It was 2 am in New York, and there were lots of people out doing the same thing we were. It was easy to make new friends. We walked past a fire station with a bench full of firemen sitting there. They called out to us as we passed (well, they called out to the blonde), and we sat on the stoop next door and talked for a while. They made fun of Michigan, and I made fun of New York, and they tried to convince the schoolteacher to come back for a tour. They were young guys, mostly, our age at the time. They laughed a lot, and every once in a while more people would come and sit with us, swapping stories. An hour or so later we went on our way, and I remember thinking "Those guys, they have a great job."
When I woke up this morning, it was those guys I thought of.
