On Sunday, February 29, 1976, I flew back to New York on Trans-World Airlines and checked into the Hotel Excelsior on West 79th Street. In the following years I would hang my hat at the far more pleasant Olcott Hotel on West 72nd Street, which became my “home away from home” in Gotham. The Olcott was an old-fashioned hostelry probably dating back to the 1920s, a little on the “worn” side, but it provided spacious suites with kitchenettes that enabled comfortable living in a part of town removed from the usual tourist crush. Its prices were modest, around $1,000 a week in the 1980’a, Within a few blocks of the hotel were dozens of convenient restaurants, several of them Chinese (the best was one on Columbus Avenue which had framed celebrities decorating its entrance, including one of Mayor Koch), a coffee shop on the corner of Columbus, several luncheonettes, a Greek diner on Amsterdam Avenue and 72nd Street where, sitting in booths you could dip into pea or chicken noodle soups with crackers on the side, roast turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and cranberry jelly, and for dessert apple or blueberry pie and coffee. On the corner, across 72nd Street, oppoiste the Sherman Square subway station was the time-honored Gray’s Papaya stand, famous for its hot dogs (50 cents at that time).Nearby were shops that rented home video (Blockbuster and Tower), a large Barnes & Noble on Mitchel Square at the intersection of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, two Loew’s theatres within walking distance and Central Park, a half block away from the hotel, where the Boat House restaurant, with outdoor seating, beckoned. On special occasions, the Tavern on the Green in the park, with its delightful Crystal Room that in later years became a favorite  venue to celebrate Christmas Eve.

On Tuesday, March 30, early in the morning, I took the commuter train from Grand Central Station to Valley Stream, Long Island. The station was abustle, as it was every working day, with what one writer termed the “wage slaves” arriving from throughout the Metropolitan area to put in their eight hours of labor in the offices and skyscrapers of the great city. As the eternal outsider, I observed how most of the men were well-dressed, with suits and ties, leather shoes, the femmes in skirts and high-heels. The snack bars and newsstands were doing a lively business and there were always one or two people hovering around the Information booth in the center of the vast ground floor, as well as lines in front of the row of counters selling tickets to the outlying stations. There was a pleasant hum of purposeful, businesslike bustle, a tiny sliver of the daily weekday routine that embraced the working years and lives of millions who had not escaped from what some considered to be the “rat race”, the eternal striving for wealth and security. The scene at Grand Central brought to mind several old films in which the Station was used as a key scenario, such as The Clock with Judy Garland and Robert Walker, The House on Carroll Street and by extension, even the 1953 Italian classic, Vittorio de Sica’s Stazione Termini with Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Cliff. There was even for me a distant filmic whiff of that great British classic, Brief Encounter, most of which is set in a provincial station in England.