New York
April 11, 2011
They say our sense of smell triggers our memory more than the other four sense, and I believe it. There’s a place in New York where this comes into play very dramatically: The subway.
When I go down into the subway each morning to make my way down to Midtown from the northern reaches of Yorkville on the Upper East Side, the weird gumbo funk of smells that hit my nose take me instantly back to 1979, when I first moved here as a 19 year old.
Growing up in a small town in Texas . . . and HATING being in a small town in Texas . . . you can imagine the impact that the City of New York had on my unformed brain and spirit. I was truly in another world. Riding to work and school on an underground train, the crowds, the buildings, the history, the accents, the speed, the energy, the famous landmarks, Broadway . . . . I walked around in a daze for what seemed like months. The post cards I sent my sister (yeah, remember post cards?) almost had her worried, I sounded so entranced.
Most Memorable Sites From My Early Days in New York
- Tiny coffee shops that served you a full breakfast for 55 cents
- The Statue of Liberty, and how freaking foam green it was
- The insides of Broadway theaters (I couldn’t believe how SMALL most of them were)
- The Flatiron Building
- The Empire State Building’s Observation Deck
- Central Park
- Madison Square Park
- The crumbling mess that was Times Square in 1979
