Urban adventures

Having decided to retire from work, I considered what I would do with my time. I have never forgotten a cautionary tale once told me by a man I met in an unemployment office after becoming a statistic in a corporate downsizing: he told me of his own retirement, how he took it easy after decades of getting up early to go to work and putting in long hours; one day he found himself sitting in his pajamas at the kitchen table having coffee at noon —no, he said, this is not what I'm going to do in retirement, and went out and found a part-time job in a State Unemployment Office giving advice and help as best he could.

I knew I would not just sit around and read the newspaper once I retired, though I did look forward to a leisurely daily pace. Gone would be some of those quotidian annoyances I had long wished I could excise, such as driving home late at night after working until 9 and not finding a parking spot within blocks of home, or driving in thick traffic on Friday evenings. Worse had disappeared from my life when I stopped working in Manhattan and commuting by train: thick crowds filled with inconsiderate louts; overcrowded trains crawling along the tracks, stopping in between stations, or being taken out of service; people reeking of tobacco or weed or perfume; manspreading. Commuting life had improved greatly when I began driving to work and listening to music of my choice via routes I devised to reduce thick traffic and boring drives. But I was still working.

I have turned an age, and reached a stage in life, when I can start a new chapter. In Spanish it is called la tercera edad, the third age, which I think is an apt description. I needed a plan. I didn't have to think about it much before realizing there were things I wanted to do. I knew of places I wanted to visit, food I wanted to try, rides I wanted to take. I would now have the time to do so, and thus a plan emerged: I would go, visit, and eat as I wanted to, and my initial focus would be my hometown, New York City.

From Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington (isbn: 978-1-59420-266-7; Dewey; 973.4 — though some libraries put it in a separate Biography section), I learned that GW's first Executive Mansion was at 3 Cherry Street (in Manhattan, one of, as my Queens, five boroughs of the City of New York). That became one of the destinations of my future travels, or, as I came to think of them, urban explorations.

Before actually retiring, I began my adventures. I decided to walk or take public transportation, buses and trains, as much as possible, and drive as little; if need be, I would drive to a place, but then explore it on foot.

One November day I went shopping for groceries and sundries in my favorite retailers in College Point; after, I parked a few blocks away, and set out on foot. I know this area fairly well, or so I thought, having driven through it dozens, many dozens, if not hundreds, of times. Yet I forgot to remember that driving through a neighborhood is not a good way to get to really know it. I knew the street names and numbers, but there is more to a neighborhood, as I quickly found out.

As I walked I ruminated on the name College Point; that's a whole other story, as the saying has it. What I do know is that it is geographically isolated from the rest of this part of Queens, cut off by the Whitestone Expressway, and served very poorly by New York City Transit bus service. It is quite a fascinating neighborhood of exceedingly narrow streets with a good dollop of history thrown in: Conrad Poppenhusen, the benefactor of College Point itself, who founded the first free kindergarten in the United States, made quite a fortune, if memory serves me, producing buttons for Union troops during the United States Civil War (also known as the War of Rebellion by some, itself a topic with much surrounding passion even a century and a half after its conclusion).

At any rate, leaving the Civil War aside, for now, as I walked along 14th Avenue I thought of how true it is that, as in my neighborhood of East Flushing, too, here, houses were being knocked down and replaced by what I call, without any affection whatsoever, MacMansions (why? they are produced with the imagination and artistry of fast food, namely, none). I saw them, here and there and there, too. It happens in the streets near my home with sickening frequency: an old gem with a side yard is demolished, replaced by a monstrosity built of ostentatious lack of imagination, with no yard at all, and, if so, with what becomes a series of parking spaces. It is an abhorrent social trend.

Then, quite suddenly, I happened upon a house I had never seen before. Of course, knowing 14th Avenue as I did, or thought I did, I had driven by it many dozens of times. But I had never seen it before. There it stood in its glory.

House on 14th Avenue in College Point, Queens, dates from 1915

This beauty was constructed in 1915, a century before I happened upon it. When I learned that (later, at home, using a very useful website), I was astounded. No, not every house is recently built; I would see that more and more as I walked other neighborhoods, took notes of other houses, then researched them. There are many houses I have seen which were constructed in the 1920s, 1950s, 1960s; even many which look modern, or recently built, often turn out to be 70 years old houses which have been refurbished. It has been a fascinating process, and a learning — dare I say it? If I do will the goddesses smite me? yes, I shall say it —a learning experience.

Yet this house is unique. I have not seen anything quite like it.