3. Have ironing board, will travel

We both agree here that public transport in Noo Yoik is very good. It may not always be comfortable, the available maps in the subway or on the buses are not easy to consult or to follow, but public transport is inexpensive, always available and a never-ending source of interest.

We went to Brooklyn on Saturday and to Staten Island on Sunday – using public transport travel cards – 20 dollars for 12 journeys on subway or bus. We got a subway from Lexington and 51st direct to Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, five minutes walk from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The BAM, the guide books tell us, is the oldest performing arts centre in New York, nay, in America (1859) and has kept a reputation as an avant-garde venue. We went to see a matinee of Vanessa Redgrave in Hecuba, an RSC production, directed and translated from the Greek by Tony Harrison, who in his time has been called worse things than avant-garde. We got back-row seats in the orchestra stalls and enjoyed it, if that is the right word for a play with so much blood and (off-stage) violence recounted in gory detail. Just as well we had eaten in the café before rather than after – highly recommended for its food and service, by the way – quite swanky.

By chance, we ended up in mid-afternoon in Fort Green park where Walt Whitman Day was being celebrated – we caught the end of a poetry ‘slam’, as I think they are called, then went on a ‘Jazz’-themed walk around Brooklyn’s older, once posh avenues (Clinton, Vanderbilt, Washington, etc.), seeing little of the promised jazz venues, even from the outside, but got a good idea of the big 3-4 storey ‘brown stone’ terraces and detached houses where nineteenth century industrialists and other upper middle-class New Yorkers settled. Now the area is a bit run-down and one of the most ethnically diverse in Noo Yoik. Did you know, by the way, that there are more named cats (13, including Pumpkin) living on the Pratt University campus than there are Starbucks in the whole of Brooklyn (10)? Not middle class enough, I guess. It’s amazing the trivia you can pick up. Pratt was the wealthiest benefactor living in the area in late 19th century, having made his money, I think, from kerosene. I also got very wet trousers from an unexpected grass sprinkler that strayed onto the pavement as we emerged from the campus.

We saw inside a beautiful Baptist Church which the minister happened to be leaving as our group passed – it has, by repute, one of the best black choirs in Brooklyn. Ironically, the Church had originally been built by Pratt and his friends as an in-yer-face gesture to the church across the road where they never set foot again after a sermon had been preached that to be a real Christian an employer had to ensure good housing, good wages and good pensions to his workers.

Back home by subway, which seems pretty safe, when we take it. In the ‘city that never sleeps’, it runs all night. We prefer the bus, since you see more. On Sunday, going to Staten Island, we therefore took the M15 bus down 1st Avenue all the way to the Ferry Terminal on the southern tip of Manhattan, through the bright red and yellow shop-fronted avenues of Chinatown. The ferry, which also runs all night, takes about 20 minutes, enough time to down a very drinkable (I have to admit) Starbucks coffee, while watching the Statue of Liberty glide past (or were we gliding past the statue of Liberty?). Free views of the islands in Upper New York Bay, and the Jersey City and Brooklyn waterfronts, and on the way back the Manhattan skyline, you certainly get your money’s worth! Just before docking on Staten Island you see the elegant single span of the 1964 Verrazano Narrows Bridge against the sun and the Atlantic beyond – in its day the longest in the world – of course.

An easy change onto the SIR (Staten Island Railway, or was it 'Railroad'?), whatever, but more importantly the Travel Card not only works but registers a transfer fare from the bus journey and costs nothing more. Another 20 minutes or so through leafy small-town American suburbia – Grasmere is one of the stops – and we alight at Great Kills. The guide book says either a short walk or a Number 54 bus ride will bring us to Historic Richmond Town – a partly authentic, partly reconstructed village offering ‘an opportunity for all visitors to experience the domestic, commercial and civic activities that supported families and community for more than 300 years’. We opt for the walk in the warm sunshine.

If it weren’t for the all-wooden detached houses we could have been in a bit of English suburbia: people were washing their cars in the drive, tending their lawns and shrubs, taking dogs for a walk. Well, OK, there were a lot more stars-and-stripes flags up flagpoles in the gardens and a lot more ‘God-Bless-America’ and ‘Support-our-Troops’ bumper stickers than we are used to in Jesmond.

The walk, along the bus route, began to feel very long, with no sign of Richmond, so just before the houses ran out we asked a lady polishing her car whether we were on the right road for Richmond. Yes, we were. ‘It can’t be more than half-a mile. Just follow Arthur Kills Road as far as you can go and take a right. It’s a pity the sidewalk runs out, be careful. Hey, you guys look pretty hot, can I get you a glass of water.’ How kind of her, but with very (misplaced) British stiff upper lips, we (or rather I) politely declined.

We plodded on, crossing the road when possible to get onto a grass verge, where a bus passed us! Arthur Kills Road could easily have been ‘Road kills Arthur’. Eventually, on the right a few wooden buildings, painted in unusually dull colours from what we had seen earlier, emerged through the trees and we saw those welcome words ‘Visitors Center’. On our way in we noticed a trailer selling drinks and eats, but on paying our $5 entry fee, we were encouraged to rush to join a guided tour that had just started.

We were taken round various houses, a general store, with a 19th century Bloomingdales mail order catalogue and all sorts of old merchandise, the Historical Museum, with a good exhibition on local life, a carpenter making a wooden hammer, a basket weaver’s home, a farmhouse kitchen where a girl was making a pear-and-raisin cake which was to go into a wood-fired oven (she did not have one she had made earlier), and, the pride of the village, the 1695 Dutch Church and schoolhouse. We were hissed at by free-range geese, talked at by various guides, and chatted to by a bearded American liberal whose little daughter was engaged to stir in the goose (?) eggs to the butter, flour, sugar, raisin-and-pear mix, while we answered questions such as “did we too think Blair was Bush’s lapdog?” Is the Pope catholic?

We eventually found our way back to where we had come in to see the trailer had closed its hatch. We spotted a ‘Tavern’, pushed open a door to find an animated costumed inn-keeper halfway through an explanation of the origins of the word ‘bar’ – don’t ask. We learned the tavern had offered, in addition to beer, a bed for the night to tired travellers or drunken locals, with rules such as ‘no more than five in a bed’ and ‘organ grinders must sleep in the wash house’ (presumably on account of the monkey). What we could not get in this tavern was anything to drink.

But succour was at hand, the Visitors Center had a shop that sold bottled water, for one dollar, bottled in Ohio but named after the website www.historicrichmondtown.org. If only we had looked it up before setting out.

We asked for precise directions about a bus back to St George and the ferry terminal. The bus was pretty full, standing room only. But our travel cards worked again.

Standing up in country bus on a late Sunday afternoon is not the most comfortable way to travel. Was the driver in a hurry to get home for his tea? Were the brake pads very worn? The one might explain the jerky use of the accelerator, the other the harsh braking. You needed both hands to stay on your feet, and Americans being generally taller than us the rail down the centre of the bus ceiling was uncomfortably high.

There seemed more space at the back of the bus. We squeezed past, Americans also being generally wider than us. We found at least three empty seats, but it was pointed out they were soggy from continuing drips from the ceiling lights – a curious effect of the conjuncture of air-conditioning, open windows and condensation.

Despite the erratic driving and the frequent and deep potholes, two or three small children and one adult were fast asleep and had to be woken at the terminus. We waited ten minutes, used the toilets or rest rooms, I mean,– as always very clean – and puzzled over the large sign on the wall between the Men’s and Women’s rest rooms that declared: “Occupancy by more than 3,530 persons is unlawful and dangerous.” A very precise and large figure for admittedly fairly commodious facilities, but hey, who's counting?

On the ferry we enjoyed the view of Liberty and Manhattan, ran for a M15 bus, and yes the transfer fare worked again. Four dollars each in total for an hour and half journey each way from Midtown Manhattan to the midddle of Staten Island. We now know that buses in New York are flexible enough to allow travel card payment (a fixed sum for so many rides, or a weekly or monthly pass card, or a return ticket). It appears you have to buy travel cards at subway stations, not on the bus. You can pay for a single ticket on the bus, but with cash only. Or to be more precise coins only, dropped into an automatic ticket dispenser.

We noticed this particularly on the way back to Midtown from the Ferry. One passenger – they don’t seem to call them customers here – tested the system to its limits. The lady was not herself of small stature shall we say, 40-ish, looking generally at ease and quite content with life. She got onto the bus with some difficulty, since not only did she have a full and heavy-looking rucksack on her back, a sizable one, but was also carrying a full-size ironing board with her. It was attached to a set of wheels of the type that you can use more commonly to drag a case. The attachments were the gaudily coloured elastic straps with silver hooks on the end, as you might use on a car roof-rack. Getting herself and her accoutrements safely onto the bus without knocking anyone over was negotiated successfully, if slowly, and involved, once inside, re-attaching a strap around the board and to the set of wheels. She then turned to the question of payment of the fare. A brief conversation with the driver, then she balanced the ironing board against the driver’s cab, holding it with one foot while extracting a large purse from one of the several pockets about her person. Pause, she apparently had not foreseen the need for change. Another brief exchange with the driver, and she extracted two dollar bills from her purse. The driver indicated the coin slot. Undismayed, she waved the notes at a nearby passenger of similar age and gender, who happened at an earlier stop to have got on with a large case (now between her legs) and a heavy travelling bag (on her knee). If you need a favour always ask someone who appears likely to understand at least one of your problems.

The sitting lady scrabbles for a purse and counts out, laboriously, a number of quarters, nickels and dimes, and possibly even some pennies (as they seem to call cents), and hands them over to the ironing board lady, taking the two dollars in return. The ironing board lady recounts it and obviously feels the need for another coin. Scrabble, scrabble, another nickel is handed over. The ironing board lady, in order to get back safely to the coin slot, hands over her ironing board, on its wheels, to the seated lady with the case between her legs and the bag on her knees, who steadies the ironing board with her free arm. The ironing board lady, still with her bulging rucksack on her back, turns though 180 degrees, missing the ironing board by the thickness of the dollar notes she has handed over. She drops the handful of coins into the slot. The light flashes on behind the driver’s cab to say ‘Adult’; the payment had been accepted. Was there an audible sigh of relief throughout the bus or did I just imagine it? A ticket emerges from the machine. The driver has to gesture for her to take it. She turns another 180 degrees forcing a mounting passenger to take evasive action from the backpack. The rest of the bus is still watching, transfixed. The ironing board lady collects her ironing board and moves slowly down the bus and out of our sight.

But not out of our mind. For what explanation can we put upon this rare and compelling apparition? Why the ironing board? and what was in the rucksack? Had she simply been shopping? The ironing board could have been new – but there was no sign of packaging on it. Was she a backpacker whose one concession to creature comforts was to have the wherewithal to iron her clothes properly? That would explain the heavy rucksack, which would contain her clothes. Plus an iron. But there were no obvious signs of sharp creases on her shift or trousers. Did she make a living by making home visits to iron people’s clothes? What about the full rucksack? Perhaps she also took washing home? She would have been better prepared with the change. Cathy noticed she had got on at a stop close to an accident-and-emergency hospital. Was she a nurse leaving the profession after her final shift and taking all her worldly goods with her. She did not get off at Grand Central. Following the hospital connection, she might just have been to the hospital for some treatment for a bad back. By day she has taken to carrying a heavy rucksack over her shoulders to keep the spine straight. By night she needs a flat board to sleep on. Fearing she might need to stay in overnight she had brought the ironing board with her. That she did not have to stay the night, explains her happy mien. But on a Sunday? Perhaps not.

We may never know the truth. But what we do know is that whatever the passing, unusual needs of the Noo Yoik city dwellers, the Metropolitan Transport Authority and its staff will not be fazed.