SUMMERTIME

Most of our loyal readers must by now know my distaste for city living and my preference for the windswept vistas of the high plains and the fecund beauty of Western Ohio.

What you may not know is that I sometimes find myself in the heart of Manhattan and even sometimes find myself enjoying it. Just such an occasion presented itself a few days ago.

One of the most dramatic neighborhood transitions anywhere is that between Manhattan's silk-stocking district of the upper east side and Spanish Harlem. East 97th street is like a national border in that the difference between the area south of it and that north of it could be in two different countries. Park Avenue is a broad boulevard which runs north from Grand Central Station and is divided by a wide, park-like median below which run the tracks that lead into and out of Grand Central. It is lined, for the most part by office buildings and further north, apartment buildings boasting doormen attended entrance awnings, gilded entrance hardware, marble floored lobbies leading to some high ceilinged, duplex (and more) apartments peopled by  New York's monied citizens.

At 97th street, all that changes. The tracks, cleverly hidden beneath decorative greenery, emerge from the depths to form an ugly ribbon of impassable steel bordered by dirt blackened granite block stone walls which probably haven't been washed for over 125 years. The tracks essentially divide Park Avenue into 2 separate streets and for the first five blocks north of 97th street you cannot get from one side of the tracks to the other. The neighborhood along this stretch of the avenue reflects the general squalor and industrial quality imparted to it by the tracks.

I mention all this to set the scene for my latest city experience. I visited the city one lovely summer morning a few days ago. I crossed over from the Henry Hudson Drive on 96th street, through the park via the transverse and onto East 96th street, enjoying the freshness of the morning in a beautiful neighborhood while searching for a place to park, either on the street or in a garage. I turned onto Madison avenue and encountered a Manhattan traffic jam which can test the nerves and skill of any driver attempting to negotiate a street littered with construction vehicles, double parked trucks,  blocked lanes, and taxis making a bee line to the curb across several lanes of moving truck, taxi, limousine and passenger car traffic. This was all compounded by a hospital entrance which was in the process of being renovated. I safely survived this gauntlet and came up to Fifth avenue where sunlight stippled the pavement poking through the thick canopy of leaves from large street trees on both sides.

As I moved down the avenue, I saw a sight which delighted my senses. Walking towards us, a woman pushing a carriage appeared, accompanied by a bevy of little children, maybe 7 years old, dressed neatly in summer pinafores and outfits, each wheeling an identical scooter except for the colors which included pinks, greens and yellows. They came to the light at 98th street and formed up in a neat group to cross Fifth avenue. What especially caught my attention was the eager happy expression on each of their faces as they waited patiently for the light to change.

All the tensions of the last 10 minutes slipped away and stayed away the rest of the day. My one regret was that I didn't think of photographing them until it was too late.