New York Noir

I recently took a trip to New York in the late 1940’s. 

It was not virtual but happened live on Christmas day.

The sidewalks were all but empty and held a reasonable number of itinerant weekend strollers, most of them taking their sweet time amidst an almost complete absence of tourists walking five abreast and being generally annoying. There was no jostling, and since it was a holiday, no rush hour either. Most strikingly there were no alternate side rules, a system of driver torture that did not begin in earnest until around 1950. The wind up was a sudden abundance of parking spots in Gotham. Well, perhaps not an overflowing cornucopia , but more than just a scarce few here and there. And so there was an unusual bounty of free hitching posts on which to tie your horse, making it seem an average day in an earlier part of the last century. Not everyone had a car or two or three and people took their time.  

The panhandlers were few and the streets fairly clean. Men wore fedoras at rakish angles and women teetered along the sidewalk in wedgies. In keeping with the colors and hues of a foggy December day-  three quarters of a century back- everything appeared subtly lit,  variations of muted blacks, whites and grays, whispery greens. It all seemed so peaceful and carefree and optimistic and post WWII, that just for a moment I began to believe this was not simply an illusion but a sign! Perhaps with a little imagination one could do it all over again- with not so great expectations a second time around but still a chance to start anew. I am born. My life begins modestly. Alas, there is no Dickensian benefactor to bail me out, but knowingly, I plan. 

And then it dawns on me. The complete horror of being young and having to cope once more with all those terrible, wrenching decisions! No, I just can’t do it. I’ll confront my mortality and make the best of it. 

But wait- maybe there is another way. . . .

Naaah. . . who am I kidding??? And what’s more, to make matters worse I have no idea where this story is going, or possibly could go, short of some weird sci fi thing about time travel in the year 2801.

So with all this in mind (and a brief nod to those alluring fantasies of times gone by), for my New Year’s resolution I vow the following: not to romanticize the past, to be appropriately optimistic, clear-eyed and forward thinking, to continue faithfully, unflinchingly and adoringly with Downton Abbey, and suggest you do same. Honestly, at various moments of particular poignancy in the characters' lives last Sunday night, I almost wept with sadness or joy, depending. 

Episode One of what will be the last season promises much more of this to come. Who can ask for better?

Cheers.