The Lark: Vol 2, Issue 10, September 2022 Special Edition

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

• SPOTLIGHT ON THE MEMOIR: Country Meets City by Ruth Mills
• FROM THE CURRICULUM COMMITTEE: I Wonder What People Say About... Science Courses?
• FOR MYSTERY LOVERS: Richard Osman
• A POEM BY DAVID BAKER: Neighbors in October

THE SPOTLIGHT: The Memoir

Country Meets City

By Ruth Mills

Back in the mid-seventies when I first moved here from New York State, my new acquaintances would invariably say, “Oh, big city!”  I would correct them.  Rhode Island is the big city.  They were sure I knew things about New York City and found it hard to believe that I had never even been there.  We lived about eight hours north of the city, and there were no interstates for the first four hours of the drive.  My new friends in RI had much more in common with the Big Apple than I did.  NYC is only three or four hours from RI, and you can take an interstate the whole way.

Rhode Island is also much more densely populated than the top of New York State.  I know.  I know.  Foster looks quite rural, but people in Foster can easily commute to a city job every day.  That’s not boondocks in my book.

In fact, I had a fear of cities.  I was about ten when Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death.  I heard that she called for help.  It was clear that people heard her cries, but no one came.  I told my mother that I could understand.  If they came to help, they might get stabbed too.  I would, of course, call the police.  My mother stopped what she was doing, turned to look me in the eyes, and said, “That’s the problem.  No one even called the police.”

I was so shocked.  I would never live in a big city.  In fact, when I finally did get to NYC for the first time, I could not figure out how all those people lived.  Yes, I understood that they were probably in the upper floors of those skyscrapers, living above the street level businesses.  That is a life style I find hard to imagine.

When my daughter Rachel first began to look for colleges, I tried to steer her away from anything that would make us have to drive near NYC.  I succeeded.  She got a wonderful education at Providence College.  When she started looking at law schools, however, I was not so successful.  She ended up going to Seton Hall School of Law in Newark, NJ.  That’s where she made career connections and met her husband Jeff.  He is a fourth generation resident of Hoboken, a NJ city just across the Hudson from mid-town Manhattan.  His grandfather was the mayor long ago.  He is quite proud of his city and wants his children to grow up there.  I realized I was going to have to face my fears and deal with that part of the world.

Before they had children, Rachel and Jeff liked to travel quite a bit.  Sometimes they found a cat sitter, but sometimes I was asked to help.  The plan was for me to visit them for a few days before they left.  For my birthday, Rachel, Jeff’s mother, and I would go into the city, have a nice meal, and watch a Broadway musical.  Jeff’s mother goes to Broadway frequently.  I had never been.  The following day I was going to drive back to RI with two tom cats.

To get to Broadway, we took a bus through the Lincoln Tunnel.  I had never been through that tunnel and was, in fact, quite sure that people disappeared into it and were never seen again.  To visit my daughter in NJ, I always drove around the city, over the Tappan Zee Bridge, and into Hoboken from the west.  I had recently started taking the GW Bridge by staying on I-95 and found that it was survivable.  It was a good thing, however, that we went to Broadway that day by going through the tunnel.  I now knew what to expect at the tunnel’s city portal.  The next day, with two unhappy, howling tomcats in carriers in the back seat, I got into the wrong lane and found I was going to go through the Lincoln Tunnel for the second time in my life.

I emerged around noon on a Saturday, in mid-town Manhattan, with no idea where to go next.  Pedestrians were stepping out into my path without looking, making it impossible for me to look around and try to get my bearings.  Cars were honking and careening around me.  Trembling, I found a place to pull over and tried to set my GPS.  I could not get a signal.  I looked at a map but was not sure I could keep referring to it and cope with the impatient drivers around me.  Of course, the boys in the back seat were shrieking.

I decided to just keep going east or north.  Eventually I had to come to something that would get me out of there.  I was shaking so hard that my foot was almost bouncing on the gas pedal and my stomach was churning.  A glance in my rearview mirror looked like the parting of the yellow sea as rivers of taxi cabs raced up behind me and then swerved to go around me on both sides.

I saw a sign for Roosevelt Drive.  Doesn’t that go up the east side of the island?  I got on it heading north.  I was poking in the right lane, trying to calm myself, when I saw a sign to the Bruckner Expressway.  I remembered seeing signs on I-95 for the Bruckner.  This might work except that it was a left exit.  Somehow I managed to get over just in time to grab the exit.  Soon I saw signs for I-95.  Waves of relief flooded through me.  The cries of the cats were starting to be my biggest concern, which is to say that I really did not have anything left to be concerned about.  I could deal with my “grandcats.”

I have always hated I-95 through NY and Connecticut, but that day I was so happy to be on it that I wanted to kiss the asphalt.

Since then I have made many trips through that tunnel and around the city.  I now understand how people can have a livable life in those buildings.  Good thing.  Rachel and Jeff are strongly encouraging me to move to Hoboken.  Not sure when, but it will probably happen.  I have learned to enjoy many aspects of city life and I will get to see my grandchildren every day!