The Saga of the White 1-Inch Binder OR Why I Love (Love!!) the New York Transit Authority

Today the most amazing thing happened. Amazing!

But it starts with yesterday...

I.
First thing in the morning I went all the way up to 103rd St & 5th Avenue to the Museum of the City of New York, armed with a signed, blank company check and $200 petty cash, all tucked neatly into a white 1-inch binder also containing some blank envelopes, stamps, and a bunch of photocopied pictures.

For the last week I've been doing some work for this documentary about Greek immigration to the U.S. My boss is currently in Greece finishing the edit for the film, so I am her point-woman in New York, wrapping up all the last minute rights and clearances for photographs and music and things like that. I met with her last Wednesday to go over all the details before she left -- I literally saw her into her cab to the airport -- and she left me with that white 1-inch binder and all its essential goodies.

My task on this lovely Monday was to pick up two photo reproductions that the museum made for us, give the check, with the appropriate amount filled in, to Margueurite, the apparently difficult but nice woman in the rights and reproductions department there, and then FedEx the photos to my boss, in Greece, so she could cut them into the film right away. Since the Museum of the City of New York (wouldn't the New York City Museum have been easier?) is closed to the public on Mondays, I called Marguerite to ask how to get inside. But she informed me that:
"The photographs won't be ready until the afternoon, dear. And then I'll have to put labels on them."

Oh yes, labels.
She said she would call me when they were ready but that it would be around 3pm. So it was my fault for assuming that pickup on Monday meant Monday morning, but it was only about 10AM, and I didn't want to wait around all day so I took the 6 train homeward. Ordinarily I would switch to the F at Bleecker Street, but by the time we got to Union Square I felt an irresistible urge to use "the facilities," as my husband would say. So I got off the subway, clutching my white 1-inch binder, and ran into Whole Foods to use their "For Customers Only" bathroom.

[Though I did not buy anything on that particular trip, I have bought things at Whole Foods in the past and I plan to do so in the future, so I think I qualify as a customer. And I think a decent manager would agree, don't you?]

After leaving Whole Foods, I didn't feel like going right home, so I wandered around shopping: Shoe Mania was having a sale so I looked around there for a while, but nothing called out to me; I strolled through the outdoor holiday market set up at Union Square and contemplated getting some hot apple cider and a ginger bread cookie, but didn't, and then thought about buying a gorgeous, fleece-lined (so as not to itch), wool Nepalese hooded sweater for my 3-year-old niece, but didn't. Then I started to walk home, but passing Trader Joe's I decided to step in, and I put my white 1-inch binder in the shopping basket, feeling so relieved to not be clutching it against my side as I'd been doing for the last few hours. To my basket I added some cereal, granola bars (why are they so much cheaper at Trader Joe's?), mozarella cheese, apples, and salad vegetables, and as I was checking out. I pulled my white 1-inch binder out of the basket and said, "That's mine," as if the cashier was going to get confused and ring it up along with my organic granola bars and bagged arugula.

I was now carrying a sizable bag of groceries and a sizable binder, plus a perishable dairy product, so I was on the fence about walking home. Instead I started walking the route of the M14 bus and caught it around 2nd Avenue, riding it to my stop, my parcels in the seat next to me. Before heading to my apartment I stopped in the 99 cent store on the corner. Then I settled in at home and eventually got back to work.

About 2:30 in the afternoon Marguerite called me. The photograph package would be ready and labeled and waiting at the museum's service entrace for me in about an hour. "Great, and I have a check for you," I said.

II.
But hanging up the phone I started thinking, wait a minute, where is that white 1-inch binder? With the check in it? I remembered putting the groceries away but couldn't recall doing anything in particular with that binder. I thought about where I might have put it and checked all those spots. Nothing. I even looked in the refrigerator, freezer and kitchen cabinets in case I had accidentally put the white 1-inch binder in with the groceries (don't laugh I saw it on an episode of The Cosby Show). Then I had a flash: The 99 cent store! It must be there.

I ran down and asked if they'd found a white 1-inch binder. No. I searched around by the rice cakes and the counter. It was nowhere to be found. Part of me thought perhaps the cashier had found the money inside it and didn't want to give it back. But that seemed doubtful considering how busy that store is. She wouldn't have had time to look that closely. The money was in an unmarked envelope amongst other unmarked envelopes.

I went back home and ransacked my apartment again. It obviously wasn't there. I called Trader Joe's. They hadn't found it either, and anyway, I distinctly remembered carrying the binder out of there. That left one other possbile location of loss:

THE NEW YORK CITY BUS....

FF*****&&&&&KKKKKK!!!!

If I could think of the worst place to lose something in New York, besides the sidewalk, it would be on public transportation. All those people, near anonymity, it could be picked uo by anyone, or just overlooked and forgotten.

In desperation, I waited for the M14A bus, hoping that miraculously it would be the same bus I had taken and the driver would have it. The bus stopped and the driver, a friendly looking, middle-aged man with a bushy mustache, opened the door, but I had no idea if it was the same one, how often does one actually look at the bus driver? I told him what happened, asking what the protocol was in such a situation. He didn't have my white 1-inch binder, but offered, "Well, you could ride to the end of the line with me and see if anyone turned it in." That wasn't an option, and I must have looked pitiful, becaude he tried to be reassuring. "If they turned it in, it should be in the lost and found tomorrow. And they usually turn it in... 100% they turn it in. Don't give up!"

Even though they were just words, they made me feel a little better.

But I still wasn't going to get that binder, or that check, back until the next day, if at all, and I had to pick up those photographs. So I went uptown and picked them up and just didn't leave the check with the security guard as I was supposed to do. And I put out my own money for the $45 FedEx, hoping I would be able to reimburse myself. When I got home I sent Marguerite a quick email saying thanking her for the photographs and claoming that I had stupidly "forgotten" to bring the check but would put it in the mail tomorrow, hoping that I would, and prepared to send a check of my own if necessary.

I went to bed forlorn, but not without the spark of hope that the bus driver had given me.

III.
This morning I woke up and called the MTA's Lost and Found. 212-712-4500. Busy. I called again. Busy. I called again. Busy.
I waited a while. I called again. Busy.

I missed a call on my cell phone. Checked my message. Margeurite. Angry. "Rebecca, you picked up the photographs but you didn't leave the check as we discussed?!?!"

I called right back. "I'm sorry it was so stupid of me, I forgot the check, I sent you an email." She had just gotten my email. "So you'll send it quickly in the mail?" "Yes, right away."

Shit. I called the Lost and Found again. This time it actually rang!

"Lost and Found."

"Yes, I lost a white 1-inch binder on the M14A. I'm wondering if it has been found?"

"Call the West Side Bust Depot, 212-675-7353."

"Thanks." Click.

I called the number. "West Side Bust Depot."

"Yes, I lost something on the M14A bus, a white 1-inch binder?"

"Hmm, hold on, let me see..." Holding, holding. "What's in it?"

"Some photocopies of pictures, and some blank envelopes."

"Hmm, hold on... uh, yeah, yeah, we've got it."

You've got it?

HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUHAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLEY-LUJA!!!!!

I am the luckiest girl in the world. The luckiest.

"Oh my God, you've saved my life," I said.

"You can come pick it up. We're on W. 40th St, between 11th and 12th Avenue. Only building on the block, you can't miss it."

"Great, thank you so much, you've saved my life," I couldn't help saying again, hyperbolic though it was.

"Ok," he replied, nonchalantly, as though he was in the business of saving lives regularly. Maybe he is.

And so I set off for the West Side Bus Depot. It's a trek along 40th Street from the closest subway, several avenue blocks of massive, old buildings and ugly, industrial lots filled with buses and trucks, and stretches of highway exit ramps. Approaching the corner of 11th Avenue, I knew I was in the right place because there were several men in bus driver attire, a uniform I never quite realized consists of a crisp dress shirt, jacket and tie, and of course a dark cap. They're very professional looking, those NYC bus drivers.

Inside the depot was like a big, dark parking lot. I knocked on the door of the security booth and the guard let me in. He, too, was clad in dress shirt and tie, with the addition of an orange security vest, I guess so he could be easily seen by drivers in the dark? I explained my business, and he got up to escort me to the Lost and Found, putting on the jacket that hung on the back of his chair. I must have given him a strange look because he said, "I don't need the jacket to escort you, I'm just a bit chilly."

He took me a few doors down and lead me through a hallway with a seventies, bureaucratic office feel, like the DMV, and through a door, and suddenly before me lay what I can only describe as a bus driver's paradise! Turns out the depot is not only for buses but for drivers, too. It make sense, of course, they need somewhere to hang out on breaks, but it never occurred to me that such a place would exist, or that I would get to see it! There was a snack bar/cafe with long tables laid out school-cafeteria style. Uniformed drivers sat around drinking coffees and playing cards, just shooting the shit, and playing pool on the two (two!) pool tables that sat behind the cafeteria. It was delightful!

I didn't have much time to survey the place, though, because the security guard lead me straight past all of this driverly fun, directly to the back of the room and the Lost and Found, where the man who had saved my life on the phone had my white 1-inch binder waiting for me. "You know there's some blank checks in there, too," he said. To which I replied, "I know!" He didn't mention the cash, though. He made me sign a claim ticket, and handed me my beautiful, shiny, white 1-inch binder. I held it to my breast with glee, and had to restrain myself from kissing it.

"All good?" the security guard asked as he hurried me out of the secret drivers' den, but not before I glimpsed what looked to be a TV lounge for drivers to the left of the Lost and Found station. Sweet. I rifled through the binder, making sure the check and the cash were still there. Miraculously, oh so miraculously, they were! Saying goodbye to the security guard, and the dark bus depot, I headed out into the sunshine, the light glinting off of my sweet, wonderful, white 1-inch binder.

I made sure to hold it tightly all the way home.

How to Survive New York City Transportation, Part 2

This happened a couple weeks ago.

In a rush to get home from work, and thinking the subway would take too long, I decided to splurge and take a cab. I found one without too much of a problem, but we quickly hit traffic cutting crosstown on Bleecker Street. Tapping my feet and biting my gums, I wondered if I had made the wrong decision and whether I shouldn't perhaps get out and take the subway after all. We were nearing 6th Avenue and the West 4th Street subway stop, in a cramped narrow section of Bleecker St, and I was about to ask the cab driver to let me out, when I heard a screeching noise, as the cab drove right up against the driver's side of a shiny black BMW in the right-hand lane.

Oh God, I thought. The driver is going to be angry no matter what, but the question is, will he be angry and also have a gun?

As soon as the light changed, the injured car pulled up violently in front of the cab, so as to prevent it from escaping. Both of the front doors opened and two young, less than clean-cut looking guys came out and surrounded the car, one on the driver's side and one on the paseenger's side.

The first thing I noticed when I saw them was they did not look like BMW types, which meant that this was probably a purchase that had been hard-earned (through legal or illegal means I can't say) and probably much cherished. Not good.

The drive of the BMW, a skinny guy with a shaven head and baggy pants, started cursing out the driver, "You bleepin bleep, what the bleep is bleeping wrong with you? etc etc."

Just as I'm wondering if this isn't the perfect time to jump ship, the BMW driver turned his head toward the backseat and said to me, "Get out of the car, sweetheart. This guy's gonna get you hurt."

Seeing me hesitate, he said, "Don't even pay him, just get out of the car, just get out of the car."

I felt bad for the cab driver, and even a little guilty for leaving him to be possibly beaten, plus I didn't like that this lowlife called me 'sweetheart' so I threw a five dollar bill at the driver -- approximately the amount of the fare -- as I hastened out of the cab and toward the subway. But as I was all but running away the cab driver called after me. I turned around and he was extending his arm out the driver's side window toward me, handing me my back my money. "I'm so sorry," he said. And I really did feel bad for him. Partly I think he was just scared of what those guys would do to him if he kept my money.

I took it back, and dashed into the subway.

How to Survive New York City Tranportation, Part 1

F is for Foreigner Train

Last night, after having a lovely dinner with a friend at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Carrol Gardens and feeling in a generally good mood, I boarded the F train at Carrol Street only to step directly into a shower of nut shells (peanut, or possibly walnut). What a welcome!

The showerer was none other than an old Chinese woman seated directly to the left of the door, who had taken the opening of the subway door to casually throw out her trash, like when you toss garbage out your speeding car window on the open road, only this was a resting subway car in a closed station, and I became the equivalent of the windshield of the car behind you, which your refuse sticks to. (For the record, throwing trash out your car window is also wrong!)

The look on my face must have been one of absolute horror, because she immediately apologized profusely, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." Indeed, I was horrified, and I ignored her apologies, and indignantly marched past her to a seat at the other end of the car, picked out the few shells that had fallen into my purse, and put on my Ipod headphones as if to say, "I must retreat into my music so as to escape this disgusting world, full of people like YOU."

But I have to admit, after a second's reflection, I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Interestingly, the day before I had witnessed a teenage hispanic boy doing the same thing with a candy rapper, and I was disgusted by that, too, but had chalked it up to the immature and disrespectful behavior typical of teenagers in general, and though I hate to admit it, particularly teenagers of a particular socieconomic status. But here it took on a wholly different cultural meaning. It became a Chinese thing. Living near Chinatown, I know that throwing your garbage, or phlegm, on the street, is normal in urban Chinese culture. But I wanted to yell at the woman, "You're not in China anymore." Of course if she lives in Chinatown, or in another of New York City's Chinese enclaves, it doesn't really matter.

I don't mean to sounds like a xenophone or a bigot. Like I said, I had a sense of humor about it. I felt like I at least understood why she would do that, even if I thought it was gross. I come from immigrant stock myself, and my grandmother, who grew up in Poland and then lived in Cuba for many years before moving to New York's Lower East Side, still cannot speak English in any fluent sense. She never had to do so; she lived in a community of Yiddish speakers, and now, even her home aides are Spanish speakers, so she can communicate with them. But, sadly, not so much with me. I can understand some Yiddish, but can't speak it really, and I took French in high school.

In a sense, living in New York, I think it's wrong that I never learned Spanish. One can say that is excluding myself from a portion of my own community. Now who's un-American?

Dear God, It's Me, Rivky...

The other day I read a news item about a bunch of letters written to God that were found washed up on the Jersey Shore. (You can read about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/02/unanswered.prayers.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories).

The letters had been sent to a New Jersey minister to be placed on an altar at his church and prayed over. The minister died two years ago and no one knows exactly how the letters, some of which go back more than twenty years, ended up in the ocean; they were in a bag with some of his other stuff, so apparently someone was cleaning out his home or office and decided to toss things in the ocean rather than a garbage can. The letters were found by an insurance adjustor who was fishing with his son.

There's something very poignant about this story. So many people's wishes and prayers all grouped together in physical form. The fact that they were tossed out to see, and then found (miraculous, in a sense). And found by an insurance adjustor, of all people! Fishing with his son, no less. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting.

But the thing that struck me most about the incident was the insuracne adjustor's reaction to it: "This is just a hint of what really happens. How many letters like this all over the world aren't being opened or answered?" he said.

I repeat, "How many letters like this aren't being opened or answered?"

Um, excuse me, but isn't that the point? We're not talking about little kids writing to Santa Claus. These are grown men and women writing in desperation to God. GOD! They're not meant to be opened or answered. Not in the form of a written response, anyway. Can you imagine?

Letter:
Dear God, I cheated on my boyfriend and got pregnant and had an abortion. He doesn't know about it, and he wants to marry me. I feel terrible. Please help me. -Cindy

Reponse:
Dear Cindy, This is God. Thanks for your letter. So good of you to share your anguish with me. You're a ho, but I love you, even if your boyfriend won't after you tell him what you did. Love, God

I, for one, would be more than a little unnnerved to get such a response.

But the insurance adjustor feels differently: "Lacovara said he is sad that most of the writers never had their letters read. But he hopes to change that soon: He is putting the collection up for sale on eBay."

EBAY???

I'm speechless.