New York City Street Scenes, 1980s, 1990s

1980s: On East 11th off Second one day, I'm sitting in the car waiting for a friend who's gone into the Russian luncheonette -- doubt it's there anymore -- for finest-kind potato soup. Up the street from behind me comes a gigantic black guy with a huge salt-and-pepper beard, wearing a colorful dashiki and a matching kofia hat, both looking a bit bedraggled, his black rubber boots flopping open, their metal clasps clattering with each step. In his his massive hands he holds a pair of tiny white rubber little-girl boots. "Freshly stolen boots for sale," he's bellowing. A young white female cop approaches from the other direction, and he breaks off. "Hello, Helen," he says. "Hiya, George, howareya?" she replies. They pass each other, keep walking. "Freshly stolen boots for sale!" he roars. "Freshly stolen just this morning! Get 'em while they're hot, ha ha ha!"

1990s: Across from Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica one day I see two old alkies. They're carefully inspecting a little diamond-shaped black-on-yellow plastic sign that's dangling on the inside of the back passenger window of a huge gleaming black Mercedes. MD plates. One of them looks up at me with rheumy, bloodshot eyes. "Poor basset," he says, gesturing at the Mercedes, "Can't even 'ford a goddam radio."

Driving Mrs. Schtipke

Ed McDevitt (again; he's like totally my muse or something) posted on Facebook about 68-year-old Cha, a South Korean woman who "this week signed up to take her driving test once again – after failing to earn a license the first 771 times." Cha reminded me of Mrs. Schtipke, and I'll tell you why. You see, I was the last driving teacher ever to try to teach Mrs. Schtipke – yes, the legendary Mrs. Gertrude Penska Schtipke of Yonkers, New York – how to drive, thus earning myself at least a footnote in the annals of Yonkers driving-instruction history. The Man Who Retired Mrs. Schtipke. You may wonder how the callow youth that I was at that time could ever have stumbled upon such distinction.

I was a part-timer at Bronx-Yonkers Auto School, a college student finishing up some credits so that I could graduate, having handily lost a battle of wills with the administration of Manhattan College, who would NOT give me my diploma unless and until I completed their goddam theology credits. Papist fanatics, of course, with no sympathy for my nascent agnostic leanings.

Bronx-Yonkers Auto School was owned by Bill Hudson, a guy of forty or so who was generally acknowledged to be the best driving instructor in the city. He was patient, and smiled easily, and had a generous way about him that put people at ease. He was also a trove of technical skill and advice; I found that he always had what he called a “trick” to suggest when I needed to help a student get past some driving hangup. And the Bill Hudson parallel-parking method, absolutely foolproof if the car you were driving was roughly the same size as the car you wanted to park behind, as was almost always the case in 1969, was a signature of his students, and known and admired – even recommended! – by DMV examiners throughout the region.

Bill and I got along pretty well. I respected him, and he came to trust me as a promising protégée, I think, because I shared his enjoyment of teaching, and because I was a willing learner myself, never afraid to seek his advice. It helped that Trudy, the self-described Office Gal, liked me, too. Trudy was in her fifties, a plain woman with a whiskey voice and a cigarette perpetually hanging from the corner of her mouth. She had a ready sense of humor and a big laugh, and she kept the office and lesson schedules so well organized that it’s only now, looking back on it, that I truly appreciate how competent she was. If Trudy didn’t like you, you were meat. Your lessons, always fifteen minutes apart, would be at opposite sides of town; you would have no lunch break but long down times in mid-afternoon or mid-morning, and your students – well, let’s just say that you wouldn’t be teaching many pretty young girls. But Trudy liked me.

Mrs. Schtipke was a late-sixty-ish widow with a pleasant but caved-in face and the absolutely worst-fitting dentures seen in Yonkers since Washington slept at Phillipse Manor during the late unpleasantness with the British. Everything she said was accompanied by a sibilant whistle and a loud clack. I'm not kidding. Strange dogs would stop what they were doing and look up to see what she wanted. Slight of stature and cadaverously thin, she was always bundled up in a cloth coat, a scarf, and a hat, carried a huge purse, and wore sensible shoes with laces and clunky heels that today's teenagers would love but in those days – 1969, remember – only added to the impression of her as a woman who had stopped noticing fashion some time before World War II. It turned out that she had one leg shorter than the other, her right, so the sole and heel of her right shoe were built up by maybe an inch and a half. This may have accounted for the style of the shoes she wore, but I don’t think so. I think she would have worn that style anyway. Neither did this disparity add to her apparent equilibrium; the facts that the shoes seemed just a little too big for her, and that her ankles were thin and weak, made her feet wobble treacherously when she did certain things – like step on the pedals of a car. She smelled of lavender and moth balls.

Trudy communicated with the instructors by leaving messages for us with our upcoming students. One day I got a message to come into the office during my next free slot, because Bill had a new student he wanted to introduce to me. This was odd, since we were usually just dispatched out to a new student’s home, and we introduced ourselves. I was curious but not apprehensive. Nothing could have prepared me for Mrs. Schtipke, anyway.

She was seated in front of Trudy’s desk when I came in, clutching her large purse to herself with what looked like desperation, and Bill was half-sitting on the front edge of his own desk. Trudy wore the kind of fixed, unfocused smile that people fall into when they know that soon they will be tempted to laugh, but must not. Bill was his own genial self. Mrs. Schtipke clacked and whistled that it was a pleasure to meet me.

Bill was blunt. He told us that Mrs. Schtipke had had lessons from every instructor who had ever worked at the school, including himself, but had never succeeded in passing her road test. He said that she had then gone on to seek lessons at every other school in the area, but had continued to fail the road test – how many times was it, now, Mrs. Schtipke? – seven times, yes. He said that she had begged him to give her one more chance, she was sure that she had been improving, and that the last thing she had promised her beloved Mr. Schtipke before his untimely demise was that she would get her license and be that much more self-sufficient. She had not wanted him to worry about her.

So Bill had agreed to give her this one more chance. She would take a course of lessons from me, and then try the road test again. If she passed, well and good. If she failed, she in her turn had to promise that she would give up the quest. Bill promised her that Mr. Schtipke would understand that she had tried her best. Was this clear to everyone? We all solemnly agreed that it was, Trudy only nodding slowly once in a kind of formal way, her smile rigid on her face and a slight twitch appearing beside one eye.

So Bill wished us godspeed and sent us on our way for Mrs. Schtipke’s first lesson. As she preceded me out the door he took my arm and held me back for a moment. “Give it your best shot,” he said, looking directly into my eyes, “but she will never learn to drive. Just be nice to her, and for God’s sake – be careful.” He waited until I nodded understanding before he released my arm.

In the pitiful arrogance of my youth I felt obscurely that what was set before me was a challenge. Without forming the idea into words, even in my own mind, I realized that if I succeeded with this woman where all others had failed – even Bill! – well, I would be something, now, wouldn’t I? In the few moments between the office and the car, I resolved myself that Mrs. Schtipke was going to learn to drive at last.

I decided to start from scratch, as though she was a perfect beginner who had never sat in the driver’s seat before. I took her to a quiet, one-way street and parked and we exchanged places and then we went through the checklist Bill had taught me to use. We determined that she knew where the steering wheel was, what each pedal was for, what each gear did, where the ignition key was, how to adjust her mirrors, what steps to take to start the car (parking brake on, transmission in park, move foot from accelerator to brake as soon as engine starts and before releasing parking brake or shifting into Drive), what to look for before pulling away from the curb, what to look at while motoring along – everything. And she knew it all.

“Not that it’s ever done me much good before, (whistle) sad to (whistle) say (clack),” she muttered to herself, reaching to turn the key.

The problem immediately became apparent. Mrs. Schtipke could identify exactly what she should do at any given moment in any given situation. But she couldn’t, somehow, make her body actually do any of it. She got the car started, got it into gear with parking brake off and her foot on the brake pedal, she checked her mirrors and then spun around to give a quick visual check that nothing was coming – and froze in that position. As her pressure on the brake gradually faded, and the car began to roll slowly out into the street, I had to tell her to turn around to face front again. She nodded agreement, but she didn’t actually turn until I tapped her shoulder. That released a spring somewhere inside her, and she snapped back to the front. Now it was time to straighten the wheel, I reminded her, and again she agreed, but we were facing the opposite curb square on when I finally reached across and straightened it myself.

“Okay, Mrs. Schtipke, it’s natural to be little nervous the first time out with a new instructor,” I said. “As soon as you’re able to relax a little bit, we’ll be fine. Now remember, keep your eyes on the center of the street, and look as far down the street as you can, and the car will just naturally go where you want. Remember, the car goes where you look – so always look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go.” We were coming up on a parked car, on the right, the only one on the block. Mrs. Schtipke stared at it like a rabbit at a snake, and drove slowly, inexorably toward it.

The car was equipped with an instructor’s brake pedal that allowed me to stop it when necessary. Since Mrs. Schtipke had a death grip on the wheel and I judged that I couldn’t at that time steer the car straight without flipping her out the window, the brake was necessary.

The brake was often necessary in the days that followed. Mrs. Schtipke did seem to relax a trifle, and was eventually able to drive down an empty one-way street without mishap, but she continued to tend to stare at things and freeze in place – trees, traffic signals, oncoming traffic, and the like – and my confidence wavered.

It was with Mrs. Schtipke at the wheel that I invented one of my best ice breakers, a “trick” of my own that I was to use to great effect to defuse the nervousness of subsequent students. We had stopped at a stop sign, but Mrs. Schtipke betrayed no notion of ever starting up again. “Okay,” I said to her. “When the stop sign turns green, you can go.” Whereas others would process this for a few seconds, then laugh and begin to relax, Mrs. Schtipke nodded in grim determination and stared at that sign until I thought it might melt. I finally said, “Okay, Mrs. Schtipke, you can go, now,” and she did. I never tried my patented gentle ironic humor on her again.

And it was with Mrs. Schtipke at the wheel, on what was scheduled to be her last lesson before the road test, that I had the single most terrifying experience of my instructing career. We were proceeding slowly along a quiet, tree-lined street that ended in a T-intersection. At the capital of the T was a grammar school. On the sidewalk in front of the school was a gathering of young matrons, most with toddlers or baby carriages or both in tow, waiting to pick up their kindergartners after the morning session.

“I really don’t like it when there are people,” Mrs. Schtipke said apprehensively.

“No problem,” I said. “Just ease off the accelerator and slowly press down on the brake, same as you’ve been doing...”

She yanked her foot abruptly off the gas pedal, and stretched out spasmodically with her leg to jam on the brake. Her wobbly, built-up shoe turned under her foot, slipped off the brake, and mashed the accelerator to the firewall.

The cars we used were full-sized, four-door Dodge sedans, but they had the old straight-six Chrysler engines and I had often bemoaned, when driving them myself, their insipid performance. Not this day, however. That little six-cylinder plant under Mrs. Schtipke’s urging began to run up a full head of steam, and we took off with great enthusiasm, heading straight for the mothers and children. Over the sound of the engine, my foot hovering over my brake, I said calmly, “No, Mrs. Schtipke, that’s the gas pedal. Lift your foot and the car will slow down, and then we can try for the brake again.” She turned slightly toward me and gave me a wild look, her one visible eye rolling like that of a panicked horse. She pushed down even harder on the accelerator. Some of the women on the sidewalk seemed to become aware of our approach. I put some pressure on my brake, and kept my voice calm as I repeated my instructions. No effect. Mrs. Schtipke was now staring in open-mouthed horror at the little crowd of innocents. I couldn’t seem to slow the car. The engine roared. The women began to shout to each other and grab for their children. I got both feet on the brake pedal and put some leg muscle into it. Mrs. Schtipke was white-knuckled, rigid, her eyes bulging. The women in front of us had gathered up their kids and carriages and begun to scatter, but it would be too late for some of them. I stood on the brake pedal and felt it bend and give. My God, I thought, what if it breaks? The engine was screaming now but the brakes began to take hold. We slowed in fits and starts, rear tires screeching and whirling intermittently, then grabbing again, front tires scraping smoking rubber along the street. When our forward movement halted we were halfway across the top of the T, ten feet or so from the desperately scrambling mothers, the car bellowing and straining like a live thing under us, straining up, up and forward, seeming eager to launch itself again, to crush our victims against the white iron spikes of the fence. I reached across and banged the gear shift lever up into neutral, and, as the engine’s note cycled up to an unbearable pitch, I managed to get hold of the key and shut it down. It dieseled on for a few seconds, snorting and beginning to miss, then it backfired loudly twice, emitted a vast belch of black smoke, and died.

In the sudden silence Mrs. Schtipke sat unmoving, hands still gripping the wheel, foot still pressed to the accelerator.

“Oh, heavens (whistle-clack),” she said.

That car was never much good after that.

----------

I was not inclined to let her take the road test, nor was Bill when I told him what had happened. But she begged us, said she had paid for it already, we had had a deal, she would never have another chance, please, please let her try. In the end it was easier to let her try, though I drove all the way to the test site, unwilling to be her passenger again under any circumstances. And the examiners knew her, we told ourselves, and would be careful.

She failed the test, of course. She stopped and then froze in the middle of the first intersection she came to. Waiting there at the test line, I heard horns blowing in the distance and guessed what had happened, even before I saw the car coming back with the examiner driving and Mrs. Schtipke in the passenger seat, looking small and defeated. And that was that. I took her home and we said goodbye and she thanked me for giving her one last chance. I felt terrible; not, I am glad to say, because I had failed the challenge of teaching Mrs. Schtipke to drive, but because I had failed poor, plucky Mrs. Schtipke herself. I had come to really like her.

There is a postscript to the story, though. Mrs. Schtipke’s once-a-week grocery shopping always took her past the office, and often she would stop in to rest and pass a few minutes with Trudy. One day she brought up the subject of her failure to learn to drive. She had come to terms with it, she said, and she hoped her husband, rest his soul, would forgive her. But she would never understand why it had been so difficult for her. She had done simply everything she could think of to succeed.

Why, when she realized after her very first lesson so long ago that driving made her so terribly nervous, she decided that she had to do something to help calm herself down. So from that day forward she had made it a habit never to go driving without first drinking at least four small glasses of vodka.

Vodka. You know – so her breath wouldn’t give her away, and no one would know how nervous she really was.

Cussing and Swearing Up a Blue Streak

In a Facebook exchange this week, friend Ed McDevitt (http://www.edmcdevitt.com/ ) and his daughter had a back-and-forth about cursing, and I got to remembering that...

One of my father's best friends was Artie Getzler; they met at work and really hit it off. The old man was still driving gasoline delivery trucks for Gulf Oil, and Art -- powerfully built, rugged-looking, square-faced and sandy-haired, with big, hard, freckled hands -- worked, inconguously, as an accountant. Getzler was the kind of guy who was smart and competent and well read and witty, and interested in everything; a good man, and a good friend.

He and his wife Ann vacationed with our family many summers at Lake George; they had no kids in those days, and seemed to enjoy being with my brothers and me almost as much as with our parents. One day Art and my father were working on one of the cars in the driveway of the summer place, and Art accidentally touched the battery with his ring, which formed a circuit to the frame through his watch and gave him a shock and two nasty burns. "SON of a bitch bastard," he said, shaking the hand and hop-stepping in a circle, "Son of a BITCH bastard. Son of a bitch BASTARD."

He went inside to wash and ice the burns. As he stood at the sink, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table with the Reader's Digest. She looked up at him owlishly over the tops of her reading glasses. "It says here that, 'profanity is the last refuge of the inarticulate and weak minded; it is the unimaginative use of rote language to mask an incapacity for true creative expression.' " Art shut off the water and stared at her for a few beats.

"Bullshit," he said, and walked back outside, whistling.

But Art had a bad ticker, and when a heart attack sidelined him at 40-something, he was advised to get a hobby to help him relax as he recuperated. He decided to take up woodworking, and after a few early successes, he launched on an ambitious project to build a new set of kitchen cabinets. He measured and planned and measured again; he bought expensive hardwood and cut it with precision; he prepped and stained and varnished the pieces preparatory to assembly. My father and I arrived early on installation Saturday to be his helpers. Annie answered the door with an uncharacteristically grave expression that -- also uncharacteristically -- did not respond to my father's cheerful greeting. He asked, "Uh, where's Art?" In the brief silence that followed, we heard a repeated crack-splintering noise from not too far away.

"He's in the back yard," she said, and stood aside to usher us through. We passed through the bare-walled kitchen and out onto the raised back deck. Below us we could see Art swinging his axe, getting his back and shoulders into it and with a good rhythm going. He was breaking up the pieces of the new cabinet with application and precision, reducing each to flinders before moving on to the next. My father called down to him, "Art?" Art didn't answer, didn't turn around, didn't pause in his efforts. We looked at Annie.

"When he went to assemble them last night," she said, "he realized that he had made everything sort of, well, inside out. The finish and the detail work was all on the inside. The rough wood and the framing and everything were all on the outside. He hasn't said a word since. He just went to bed, and then he got up early this morning and... " She trailed off and gestured to the yard. "I'm worried about his heart," she said at length.

But Artie didn't seem to be in any danger. He was not sweating, not red in the face; he was breathing easily. We watched him work for a while, and then we went back into the kitchen for coffee. After what seemed like a long time, the chopping stopped, and then we heard Art in the basement, and my father went downstairs. Annie and I could hear them talking calmly, but not what they said. My father came back up. "He's going to start over," he said. "He won't need our help today."

As we left, we heard the sound of the radial arm saw biting into hard wood. "He'll be okay," my father told Annie. "Stop worrying." And he was okay, too, for a few more years anyway, until lung cancer took him away too soon at 49.