Organically Anachronistic

The magnificent sanctuary pipe organ at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth.
Mom and I were attending a mid-day recital during Holy Week, 2022 (I left her cane in the photo to lend visual scope).
Broadway's instrument was donated by the internationally-renowned concert pianist Van Cliburn. With over 10,000 pipes, it's the largest organ in Texas, and the world's largest organ of French aesthetics.

  

Sometimes, music is about more than the music.

Perhaps that's one reason I like pipe organs.

"... pipe organs..?" you may ask...  "Seriously?"  

A lot of folks may be surprised they're even still around.  Hasn't post-modern society already deemed those instruments to be obsolete religious contraptions?  They're anachronistic and totally antithetical to our contemporary Western aesthetic.

Right?

Well, no; they're not obsolete.  But yes, they could be considered anachronistic.  And for those of us who still enjoy them today, maybe that's part of their appeal.  Pipe organs are special precisely because they're not ordinary or conventional.

Indeed, they literally celebrate the extraordinary.  The way they sound, the way they look, and the way they make you feel - not just emotionally, but physically - can run the gamut, from soothing to thrilling.

Granted, many different types of musical instruments can also do those things, to varying degrees.  And often with much less investment in effort, skill, and money.  But pipe organs do it all, all the time, every time.

They still don't impress everybody, of course.  Some people simply don't like the way pipe organs sound.  And personal preference goes a long way when it comes to any kind of music and musical instrument.  I'd suggest it's possible that folks who don't like pipe organs might not have ever heard a really good one played really well.  But I'm willing to concede that even among those who have, that doesn't guarantee they'll like it.  So for them, I say y'all are entitled to your opinion.

Even I will admit I've heard mediocre instruments played by mediocre organists, and that's no fun.  However, I'd still invite anybody to at least give some credit to everything else that goes into the pipe organ experience.  Because unlike some other instruments, pipe organs represent a lot more than their visual and aural aesthetics.

For example, simply consider how they're played.  An organist doesn't just deploy both of their hands and all ten fingers on a keyboard, but they do so across multiple keyboards.  Plus their two feet, across 32 pedal keys.  The sheer intensity of physical coordination required of an organist is compelling.  They keep all four of their limbs going - and half of their digits - in perfect synchronization throughout an entire piece of music.

I've seen the skits and sketches attempting to humorously - or derisively - depict a mad scientist wildly churning away while performing some terrifying organ piece on an intimidating Gothic console.  And yes, I've seen eminent organists whose physical exertions come close to mirroring those exaggerated spoofs of their craft.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I was watching a highly-respected, youngish organist literally skootching himself back and forth along a console's bench seat with his buttocks.  His legs flew up and down across the pedals; his arms simultaneously stretched to and fro over multiple keyboards.  That alone was a spectacle!  But such virtuosity isn't so much a madness as it is proof of what's required to play grand music on a grand organ properly.

And then there are those pipes.  Obviously, they're the defining characteristics of any pipe organ.  Most instruments feature some tall metal ones, displayed prominently in artistically-arranged patterns across an instrument's facade.  But are you aware that the pipes you see, no matter how impressively they appear, represent only a fraction of the total number of pipes comprising that instrument?  Behind those visible ones exist hundreds - even thousands - more pipes of varying height and fabrication, from wood to various metals, each providing a specific sound or effect.

Considering all this complexity, would it surprise you to learn that the origins of today's pipe organs represent a mixture of ancient technologies that began evolving approximately three hundred years before the birth of Christ?  First in northern Africa, and then in Greece.  

While all the historical facts remain unclear, researchers credit ancient Egyptians with using water to discover principles of creating and manipulating forced air.  Those principles serve as the basis for today's pipe organ.  Not that early Egyptians were aiming to invent a musical instrument, but they discovered an interesting dividend to their original experiments generating and regulating wind:  the development of rudimentary bellows, which yielded sounds like those made when blowing a hand-held pipe.

Various types of acoustic pipes can be traced to almost every known culture, making forced-air musical instruments virtually universal in their provenance.  Precursors to today's pipe organ are known to have existed in Greece, Persia, and then northern Europe.  So while today, the pipe organ may be most commonly associated with Western cultures generally, and Judeo-Christian worship especially, its roots come from across diverse people groups from millennia ago.

And yes, for better or worse, most people today equate pipe organs with religion.  That's because throughout the instrument's history, most of them have indeed been built for and housed in religious communities, particularly those from Christian traditions.  Some Reformed Jewish synagogues have them also.

Not that pipe organs don't have a secular legacy as prized fixtures in town halls, concert halls, and other non-sectarian buildings.  In fact, the world's largest organs, as measured by number of pipes, are currently in civic buildings, such as Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  

Unfortunately, about thirty percent of Boardwalk Hall's 33,000 pipes are currently non-functional.  But those that still work have generated some of the loudest sounds ever recorded.

Meanwhile, an hour's drive from the Jersey Shore takes us to the world's largest fully-functional organ, all 28,750 pipes of it.  And it's not in a church, either, but - surprise! - a department store, of all places.  The downtown Philadelphia Macy's used to be called Wanamaker's, but although its ownership has changed, the retailer still offers its shoppers a unique alternative to benign background music, with concerts twice a day, six days a week.  

Australia, Hungary, Canada, England, and Taiwan also boast impressively-sized civic organs.  Meanwhile, the Western Hemisphere's largest concert hall organ is located not in New York or Toronto, but at Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City, Mexico.

¡Olé!

As secular concert venues continue to be built, the pipe organ still has persistent relevance, even if the newer they get, the more they defy convention.  For example, Disney Hall's organ in Los Angeles was inaugurated in 2004 and has been whimsically dubbed "Hurricane Mama".  It features towering wood pipes arranged like French fries in a fast-food carton.  Finland's Helsinki Music Center (Musiikkitalo) inaugurated its instrument in 2024, with its pipes encased behind a stunningly abstract array of mechanical silver tubes literally delivering the instrument's air.  

Nevertheless, the pipe organ's widest frame of reference today is religion generally, and Christianity specifically.  And frankly, that makes sense, at least in terms of form following function.  While I can't speak for all organ aficionados, one of the characteristics that intrigues me most regarding pipe organs is how successfully they paint images of the Divine.  They have an innate ability to depict a type of transcendence that finds even its superlatives corroborated when relating to God, Christianity's deity. 

Divinity within Christianity exists as distinctly separate, yet paradoxically intimate; elevated, yet humble; sometimes obscure, and for the devout, often visceral and complex.  We are encouraged to marvel in awe at His splendor as Father, Son, and Spirit.  And music is an obvious way of doing that.  As history evolved, much of this instrument's venerable repertoire has been crafted to illustrate Judeo-Christian interpretations of God's tripartite characteristics.

It's not that the organ is intrinsically religious, or Hebraic, Roman Catholic, or Protestant.  It does seem, however, that divinities in other religions and traditions possess different characteristics that aren't as obviously demonstrated by the organ - or at least by the organ's generally-accessible repertoire.  Perhaps in coming generations, artists from other religions will craft pieces for the organ that have an intentionality relative to a deity other than the God of the Bible or the Tanakh.

Meanwhile, if all this is true, perhaps now you're wondering why so many churches today not only don't have a pipe organ, but they don't even want one.  

For many of them, their reasons start with the practical.  Despite new technologies, pipe organs remain labor-intensive to build, with intensely specialized labor at that.  In terms of price and cost, depending on project scope, expect to talk dollar amounts approaching and often surpassing a million, which right there poses a major deterrent.  

Each one is designed for the room in which they'll be played; there is no such thing as a standard-issue, off-the-shelf pipe organ.  And they're utterly non-portable.  After they're constructed, they continue to represent a significant financial commitment.  For a charity-driven non-profit to get their money's worth out of one, they need to employ a well-trained organist, ensure rigid temperature and humidity controls 24/7/365, perpetuate a robust schedule of maintenance, and use it regularly, since its complex components actually benefit from getting exercised.  

But even if they could afford to buy and maintain one, most churches still don't want to use pipe organs.  And I suspect that's due to society's changing perceptions and preferences, much of which, as I've already acknowledged, relates to the anachronism with which many people both inside and outside religion currently view the organ.

So, what's up with this anachronism?  I doubt anyone knows for sure, but I'll risk broaching one possibility:  As our world has become more complex and immediate, with innovation and technology and diversity, all now fueled by incessant social media, most of us have become tired with and even intimidated by enormity.  Size does matter, however negatively, and the more dissonance we perceive from the world around us, the less we feel able to control it the way we think it should be controlled.  Meanwhile, the pipe organ's most prominent traits involve grandeur and enormity.  Maybe those characteristics have come to work against the instrument's broader acceptance among fatigued humans.

Speaking of fatigue, I have to admit that even my own infatuation with the pipe organ has been strained by excess.

Pipe organs generate the type of sound that can be visceral - almost as if it's permeating your flesh and bones, while acoustically it shakes the floor underneath your feet or even makes your tummy feel funny.  Again, other instruments do that also, but not necessarily to the degree a powerful organ can.

I once attended a prestigious pipe organ event at the Meyerson Symphony Center in downtown Dallas that I literally felt forced to leave.  It wasn't a concert, but a juried competition among international finalists.  For the last part of it, we paying audience members sat through multiple contestants playing the same piece of music.  Ostensibly, along with a panel of judges, we were supposed to compare nuances each performer brought to that same work.

This particular music, however, proved to be an unusually elite and sophisticated affair featuring edgy, contemporary sounds.  It was intentionally discordant and shrill.  I quickly came to profoundly dislike the piece, especially having to endure it more than once in the same sitting!  But I tried to at least appreciate the overall experience anyway.

Meanwhile, the music was doing something to my body.  But before I realized it, I noticed something else:  Other audience members were getting up and leaving the hall.  Not just one or two over the program's timespan, but one or two at a time, every few moments.  That rarely happens at ticketed events.

At first I thought they were being rude or impatient - we knew this wasn't a typical concert.  But as we heard the same shrill piece of music over and over again, my own gut began to react!  I tried to ignore it, and force myself to endure.  But it got to the point where I had to actually get up and leave the concert hall myself, because I felt as though the music was making me sick to my stomach.  I joined dozens of other audience members making our way to the lobby, past ushers and event staff actually whispering their apologies to us.  Their sympathy confirmed to me that what I was feeling wasn't all in my imagination.

I can't tell you the physiology of how sound can impact our body, but the chaotic, forceful noises emanating from the Meyerson's otherwise splendid Lay Concert Organ (donated by the Frito-Lay snack food family) began to literally turn my stomach... like greasy snacks sometimes do.

Talk about irony!

If you're not a pipe organ fan, maybe I shouldn't have told you about getting ill from Dallas' competition debacle!  But I can also say it only happened that one time.  I've been to many, many concerts and recitals before and after that one event, in symphony halls and in various churches, and every other program I've attended has been pain-free and worthwhile.

Then again, if you've read this far, your interest in this instrument can probably withstand its risks.

_____

If you're an organ neophyte, consider these tips:

• Many sizable North American cities have religious communities offering an unofficial season of organ concerts and recitals.  These are the most accessible and lowest-commitment entry points into the pipe organ realm.  Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Anglican, Methodist, Unitarian, United Church of Christ, and maybe Jewish-Reformed, for example.  You may need to check individual church websites for performance information.  They're usually "free" and unticketed, and compared to a concert hall event, quite casual and even educational.
• There is a professional association called the American Guild of Organists with chapters across the country made up of local organists who may organize your region's pipe organ music season.  They probably have a website with event listings.  These seasons generally run from September to May.
• In my experience, organ events in a house of worship generally are "free".  However, be aware of the possibility that your host may pass a collection plate.  Protocol says it's your option whether to contribute anything as it passes.
• Classical organ music generally presented in recitals and concerts does not incorporate congregational singing.  If you don't like hymns, you can still like classical organs.  Most of what you'll hear in a good recital or concert is not singable, but thematic and rarely in stanzas.  You'll hear music from various composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach - history's most celebrated organist to date - plus others as varied as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles-Marie Vidor, Alexandre Guilmant, and contemporary Dutch composer Ad Wammes.  (Wammes' 1989 piece, "Miroir", is exquisitely ethereal while also unexpectedly perky.)
• Large cities with grand concert halls can have a civic organ, such as Dallas' Meyerson.  They are often played in conjunction with an orchestra.  Virtually all of these performances will be ticketed events, with prices starting at approximately $30.
• Any organ's sound depends on much more than loudness, but on tone and texture regardless of volume.  Don't expect to always get blasted out of your seat - although that can happen.  If you need to cover your ears during a performance because of the volume, that's OK.  If you need to cover your ears because the organist is so bad, well, I'm sorry about that...
• And a thing about volume:  Every now and then, a young parent brings an infant to a pipe organ event.  And while it's good parents want to expose their children to live, sophisticated music, the tonal range and complex repertoire of pipe organs doesn't make this instrument an ideal one for undeveloped human ears (and temperaments).  Sudden sounds at high decibels or pitches are likely, but those are not things infants enjoy.  Even though an organ event may be held in a church, a parent shouldn't expect a concert or recital to be all about the soft hymns they hear during a religious service.
• It's OK to close your eyes during an organ performance - and if the music is any good, you probably won't fall asleep if you do.  To reduce distractions, I often close my eyes to savor nuances in softly-played music.  On the other hand, I've seen audience members burst into tears during particularly poignant music, and that's OK too.
• Dress code these days is anything goes.  Most organists will be thrilled if you simply show up!  Organ audiences are generally rather small.  We're an individualistic - and even odd - bunch, and you'll see all sorts of people wearing all sorts of stuff.
• What's the difference between a "recital" and a "concert"?  The distinctions seem to have evaporated.  When I was a teenaged piano student, a recital was either an academic performance or a performance by an amateur.  A concert was a performance by a professional.  These days, the terms seem to have become far more interchangeable.
• At the end of a performance (whether recital or concert), no matter the instrument or medium, tradition used to hold that a standing ovation was reserved only for a celebrity artist, or for a particularly virtuosic program.  These days, however, what used to be reserved for "exceptional" is now ordinary, with audiences rising to their feet regardless of a performance's quality (or maybe they're just glad the whole thing is finally over?).  Nevertheless, it's still your call whether you want to join in a "standing-O" or not.  Just don't start clapping immediately after "last notes" are played.  Instead, savor the effect of letting the room absorb any remaining sounds emitted by those pipes, a process which usually only takes several seconds.
• Artists used to also give a perfunctory encore, but that practice has largely fallen by the wayside.  I have to admit, since most organ events I attend are free, there's little reason for audiences to expect anything else from an organist beyond their stated program.  Occasionally, however, an appreciative audience will still be rewarded with some extra music, usually of a light-hearted variety.  Those organists want to ensure they're sending you back out into our frazzled world with a smile on your face!

Snow as Winter's Content

 

Snow almost up to our kitchen window in upstate NY during a typical winter. 
The red object is a bird feeder, about 4 feet off the ground.

In 1591, William Shakespeare coined the phrase "winter of discontent" for his play, Richard III.  But while the bard waxes metaphorically on sociopolitical drama, I tend to take his phrase more literally.

Wintertime does not make me content!  Shakespeare and I may be from different continents, but we're both of the same hemisphere - the Northern Hemisphere - where wintertimes are chillier and snowier the farther north one goes.  And Shakespeare obviously played on those climate tensions.

Snow, ice, frigid air, shorter and darker days, bare trees - the longer I live, the more I'm finding them to be acquired tastes... that I've apparently lost!

I know most people begrudgingly tolerate Northern winters, and some actually enjoy them.  My cousins in Finland send me postcard-perfect photographs of Scandinavian snowfalls and pine trees laden in fluffy stoles of sparkling whiteness.  And while it's good that those who must annually endure snowy seasons can find beauty in them, I confess that increasingly, I find their beauty to be even less than skin-deep... because my skin gets chilled simply looking at those wintry scenes!

Besides, I've already put in my own snow time.

During most of my growing-up years, my family lived on the north shore of Oneida Lake, in rural upstate New York, smack in the middle of lake-effect snow country.  If you've ever lived on the eastern or southern sides of any of the Great Lakes, you know about lake-effect snow.  The term refers to the meteorological phenomenon of abundant, prolific precipitation resulting from super-cold air passing over warmer open water.  That dynamic tends to create starkly uneven bands of snow as the air continues to move further east and south.

Lake-effect snow isn't just flurries, or even a blizzard, but a snowstorm that can distribute drastically different amounts of snowfall within a relatively limited area.  I once saw a video online taken by a police officer in Buffalo - a notorious recipient of the phenomenon - who was standing at an intersection, with a blizzard consuming one half of his video screen, and as he panned a full 360 degrees, sunshine and dry ground appeared.  The visuals aren't usually that stark, but you get the idea.

During exceptionally cold winters, the fresh water of the Great Lakes cools so much that ice can cover much of their surface.  That usually reduces the chances of dramatic lake-effect snow.  But during winters when the Great Lakes don't freeze much, the chances of lake-effect snow increase.  This winter has been one of the latter, and the region of New York State where we used to live has been hammered with a couple of abnormally heavy snow events, thanks to lake-effect precipitation off of Lake Ontario.

Our little village of Cleveland, for example, received over two feet of snow just last weekend, and much of the region endured blizzard conditions for almost five days straight this past week.  Upwards of seven feet fell in bands across the far northern reaches of exurban Syracuse, from Oswego to Camden to Rome.  Some roofs are caving in from the snow, particularly since this has been the second massive snowfall in about a month.  Meanwhile, from Syracuse southward, snowfall has been far more manageable.

Of course, as a kid who didn't have to drive or go to work, lake-effect snow was great!  Due to the fickle nature of lake-effect snowfalls, our school district wouldn't necessarily be forced to close, but when it did, my brother and I played all day out in the stuff.  We had thick, bulky, hooded snow suits and chunky snow boots, plus ski masks and hats and mittens and scarves... I remember going through several pairs of mittens a day, dashing inside to get a new pair after getting my previous pair soaking wet, or clumped with marble-sized balls of ice.  Even with clean, dry mittens, my hands would be bright red and numb from the cold.

Mom would bake cookies or brownies and serve them to us with hot chocolate, with fresh-made soups for lunch.  I don't know which made my nose run more - the steaming warm food inside, or the biting cold and wind outside!

We lived in the country, so there were no immediate neighbors with which to play.  But I don't know that my brother and I knew enough to miss having playmates.  We built snow forts, we skidded around on our bikes in the slippery mess, we slid down a little hill on one side of our property, we "tested" the ice atop nearby brooks, we threw sticks into the snow for our collie to eagerly retrieve.  I especially remember snuggling down into drifts softly accumulating around the massive pine trees flanking the front of our century-old farmhouse, reveling in a silence so pure that it was almost like I could hear each flake settle on top of each other.

Have you ever noticed how a calm snowfall can help muffle many other sounds?  It creates almost a cocoon-type escape from the harshness noises normally inflict.  Later, when I lived in New York, I would marvel how the city was never more soft or placid or intimate as during a steady, wind-less snowfall, when even boisterous buses and clattering cabs were reduced in decibels by the enveloping snow.

Unfortunately, there's only a brief window of time during which snow's aesthetics were ever enjoyable, at least in urbanity.  Not long after the last flakes fell, that snow would become dirty, and troublesome, and annoying.

And that's only as a pedestrian, trying to navigate it!  Thankfully, I've never had to drive in a northern winter, since I didn't have a car while adulting up there.

Well, except for one time.

My brother got married during my NYC years, and one January, my aunt and I flew from Brooklyn to Detroit for their wedding, which was being held in my sister-in-law's native Canada.  We met my parents and my maternal grandmother - who'd all flown up from Texas - at the Detroit airport, and got the rental car Dad had reserved for our drive into Ontario.  

We'd landed right before a blizzard swept through the region.  Plus, older snow was already everyplace.  I didn't think anything of it until Dad announced that I would be doing the driving.  He caught me completely by surprise.

We'd all assumed he'd do the driving.  But no.  At the car rental place, perhaps after being confronted by all the snow in real time, he turned to me and said, "You live in Brooklyn now, but it's been decades since I've driven in this!"

His logic would have been fine, except for the fact that I didn't own a car in New York.  As for the rest of us, my aunt was a native New Yorker who'd never gotten her driver's license.  Mom never liked driving, and like my aunt, my maternal grandmother hadn't ever learned to drive, either.

But Dad no longer trusted himself in snow, and I guess he figured the fact that I lived in snow country meant I'd acquired the driving skills for it by osmosis.  Or something.

So we piled into that light-blue four-door Chrysler New Yorker (aptly named, I thought, all things considered), and I slowly freaked out as we crossed Detroit's towering Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, and then down through miles and miles of blustery snow that created something of a moonscape out of the dormant farmland.  The freeway we were ostensibly traveling hadn't yet been plowed, and Canadian drivers - obviously used to such grim conditions - were plowing along themselves, speeding past us on either side.  Meanwhile, here I was, with most of our little family in one vehicle, all depending on me for safety as we trekked into what seemed like the Canadian wilderness.  When we got to our hotel a couple of hours later, its parking lot had already been plowed out, with snowbanks on either side higher than our Chrysler.

We drove back to Detroit the next evening after the wedding, and all the roads had been scraped clean of any snow or ice, so Dad wasn't interested in anybody else driving but him.

When we lived upstate, Dad always seemed perfectly at ease driving in snow, ice, blizzards... whatever the weather.  I don't recall one instance of him fretting over precipitation or road conditions when he was behind the wheel.  

Our country farmhouse graced the top of a small hill, with a long gravel driveway that snaked up from the road on one side, around to our back door, and then along down the other side of our lawn to the road.  Dad normally kept both sides mostly clear with his snow-blower.  But when snowstorms hit while we were away, that driveway could get tricky.

While returning home during a blizzard, Dad and Mom sometimes calmly discussed options for whichever side of our driveway might offer the easiest trek up that hill, depending on conditions.  After making their selection, Dad would then accelerate as we'd drive up the road towards our house, which was safe to do because there was hardly any other traffic.  When he'd reach either part of our driveway, there would be no braking - he'd simply point our vehicle up the hill and keep accelerating!  Most times, we'd zip up there and around to the back of the house in several thrilling seconds' worth of spinning tires, fishtailing, and snow flying from our vehicle's wheelwells.

Dad developed such a knack for navigating that driveway, only rarely would our car ever get mired in the snow.

Oh, that snow.  Even as a kid, that snow eventually got old.  I remember a springtime or two when snowstorms kept moving through to the point where my brother and I would get a shovel and dig down through all the whiteness to check and make sure our grassy lawn was still there.

How liberating would seem the first spring day when we no longer had to wear those heavy, clunky winter boots!  My feet, back in their sneakers and shoes, felt so lightweight and carefree!  And Mom would clean our snow boots one final time and put them in storage for the next few months... until the cycle of snow would start all over again.  

Because summers up north always seemed so short, and winters seemed so long.

Maybe the best thing about winter is that it makes one so glad when it's over.  Or... maybe I'm just never content with the weather.  Down here in Texas, I'm always glad when our blistering summers are over, too!

Happy mediums are often elusive, aren't they?  

Maybe it's why reality and facts often get described as "cold".

_____

My History By My Cars

Plodding through downtown Dallas traffic last week in my Honda Accord...
(Yes, my car was fully stopped at the time!)

 

What drives you?  In terms of automobiles, at least?

Is it a sports car?  Or pickup trucks?  

Some people don't seem to care what they drive; they simply drive whatever they can afford.  

Finances aside, however, many of us DO care what we drive.  Maybe more than we should.  To us, our vehicles aren't simply a utility for geographic mobility.  Our vehicles exist as an extension of our personality, or what we aspire to be, or how we want others to think about us.  

In other words, our vehicles aren't just for geographic mobility, but social mobility, perhaps?  However feigned it may be?

I'll admit that my personal history as a vehicle owner has been a mix of pretension and practicality.  In terms of practicality, I've always driven what I could reasonably afford.  But while I've been able to afford a two-seater, for example, I haven't ever considered those practical.  Meanwhile, a pickup truck is indeed practical, but it's really only practical if you have to haul stuff, which I don't.

It will bore people who love exotic cars, but my vehicular expression has been through conventional two-door coupes and four-door sedans.  So no exotics, alas - or family-hauler station wagons or SUVs, either!  Or convertibles, although now that I'm bald, those concerns about my hair when I was younger no longer apply!  And since I'm tall, no sub-compacts.

Yet in terms of pretension, I'm not innocent.  I've always purchased each of my vehicles based on what I wanted it to say about me.  And yes, what I wanted each automobile to say about myself was always just a little bit more than who I really was.

Except for maybe my current vehicle, a 2009 Honda Accord EX four-cylinder sedan, which I bought brand-new.  I wanted a vehicle that was modest but not prudish, and comfortable without being ostentatious.  Which has kinda become the whole Honda ethos anyway, right?

This Accord has been my second Honda, and frankly, it has served me very well over these 16 years.  Even if today, I could afford to trade it in on something else - anything else! - this car gives me no practical reason to do so.  It's been remarkably reliable, and all I have to do is change the oil and rotate its tires.

It's not luxurious or prestigious or collectible, although I keep it relatively clean.  Somebody at my local Kroger supermarket thought it needed a dent from their shopping cart, but other than that, its body is still in great shape.

Considering my history of cars, and what I thought they did for me and my image, sometimes now I marvel at how I have no desire to trade in my current Honda.  I don't feel ashamed when I walk up to that aging sedan while parked in a trendy or affluent Dallas neighborhood.  I still take pride in how clean its interior remains, all these years later.  I'm content with it, and considering how discontented I've been throughout my vehicular history, that surprises me today.

You see, my Honda represents not just basic transportation to me, but also something of my own maturation process, as I've transitioned from a person who used to derive considerable gratification, affirmation, and identity from his vehicles, but now views them mostly as appliances for transportation.

I learned to drive using my Mom's 1978 Ford Fairmont coupe, which was an underwhelming car in every respect.  It looked okay, for a car of its era:  Silver with a red vinyl roof and red fabric interior.  Mechanically, it was utterly functional, and fairly reliable when new, but hardly fun or impressive.  The older it got, the more it broke down, stranding me at least twice, which is something none of my subsequent cars have done.  Surprisingly, Mom and Dad kept that coupe until the early 1990s, when one of my father's co-workers bought it despite knowing its provenance.

1.  1977 Buick Riviera; purchased used in 1984

When I graduated from high school, I purchased a 1977 Buick Riviera as my first vehicle.  I'd seen it sitting in the corner of a used-car lot here in town, and at first, the dealer didn't take me seriously when I inquired about it.  What did a tall, thin, red-blooded American teenager want with an old person's luxury barge like that Riviera?  Two-tone light blue, with a padded vinyl landau top and crushed velour seats.  Opera lamps, sport wheels, all the bells and whistles from Buick's options list, except for a sunroof.  A real chick-magnet, right?

If it all sounds ostentatious, that's because its unabashed luxury and size were intentionally disproportionate to the diminutive simplicity of that Fairmont.  Under its long hood, my Buick boasted GM's legendary 350 V8 engine, which when I floored it, provided a rush of not just power to the engine, but adrenaline to myself and my passengers, as that huge mass of steel could suddenly out-maneuver many lesser-powered cars.

Granted, there were times where I could actually watch my dashboard's gas gauge literally sink in real time as I accelerated.  Yes, it was made before Detroit's "gas-guzzling" era came to an end.  With a powerful engine like that, you'd probably think I'd end up getting into a wreck while joyriding and exploiting its surprising performance.  Alas, its end came quite ironically - innocently parked in a mall parking lot while I was at work, one of two parked cars totaled by a drunk driver in a Dodge.

2.  1981 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham sedan; purchased used in 1986

My next car was as large as the Buick, but with two more doors - a 1981 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham.  It featured an all-white exterior with a white padded vinyl top and plush burgundy velour interior.  Plus those gaudy wire hubcaps which we all thought were so fashionable then.  And no, it wasn't a chick-magnet either.  I was mid-way through college, but fancied myself as an up-and-coming professional businessperson, and believed this car would help set that tone to onlookers.  Turns out, I was wrong on both counts!

3.  1989 Mercury Sable LS sedan; purchased new

When I entered grad school, I figured I needed to up the ante in terms of driving around like a professional person, and my Oldsmobile was experiencing some costly mechanical issues.  So I traded it in for a 1989 Mercury Sable LS, which offered my first (and, I decided, last) experience with leather seats.  

I liked the ease with which leather allows passengers to glide into and alight from seating surfaces, but here in Texas summertimes, leather gets incredibly hot.  And it also still gets frigid in winter.  I just didn't see what was so great about that, with my backside either soaked in perspiration or chilled from the cold.  Eventually, the leather on my back seat's headrests literally began to fry from Texas' sunlight (this was right before after-market tinted windows became popular).  And all that leather conditioner I massaged into those seats only seemed to exacerbate its scorching.  I tried covering up the leather with a blanket, but that looked silly.  So ever since then, I've steered clear of leather and/or "pleather" (although I admit some of those materials today seem more resilient).

4.  1997 Mercury Grand Marquis LS sedan; purchased new

In 1997, I began my fourth job, with a company owned by a prominent family.  Apparently, I thought maybe a bigger car would befit what I presumed would be an increase in my socioeconomic status.  Looking back, I can't remember any other rationale for choosing one of the largest American sedans ever made, but I signed the papers on a humongous, 4-door Mercury Grand Marquis LS V8.  White, with tan leather, just like my Sable, and with those leather seats I'd already told myself I wouldn't buy again.

Even before I drove away from the dealership, my salesperson could tell I wasn't convinced I'd purchased the right vehicle.  I remember it was the Fourth of July weekend, so he told me to tool around town for the holiday since they were closed anyway, and I would almost certainly fall in love with it.

I drove home, and immediately discovered the Grand Marquis was so grand, it literally didn't fit in our garage!  And our house was built during another era of huge Detroit cars, the 1950s.  It barely squeezed through the single-car garage door frame, but it was several inches too long, and I couldn't close the garage door!  Ours is a two-car garage, and I literally had to open the other garage door to get out.  I parked my brand-new car in our driveway.  How embarrassing, since our neighbors could see my white elephant with its paper dealer tags sitting outside of our empty garage.

Technically, we had a washing machine and dryer in the garage that I could move to free up some space for that Grand Marquis, but I'd have to call a plumber and electrician to have it done correctly.  Back then, Mom and Dad were spending their summers at Mom's childhood home in coastal Maine, which she'd inherited after my grandmother died.  I called them up and told them, and they were perplexed over why I needed such a large car to begin with.  Sure, we guess you can move the washing machine and dryer, but to what part of the garage?  Tell us again why you need a Grand Marquis?

I took it out onto a local freeway, and its floaty ride almost made me sick.  Not sick from its actual buoyancy, you understand, but because that sensation made me realize I'd purchased a senior citizen's cream puff!  

On the one hand, it was cool to see potholes coming and only hearing a murmur from the suspension while gliding over them.  On the other hand, I had to turn my steering wheel forever to make the slightest turn, and I felt like I needed to schedule an appointment to begin any braking process.  I was piloting an oil tanker, not a passenger car!  My new boss and his family were out of town for the holiday, but they'd invited me to use their luxurious home's swimming pool, so some friends came over and I took them for a short ride in that barge.  And while they were polite, I could tell they didn't know why I'd bought it.

Ohmygoodness.  Not only did I not like the car, I realized it would send all the wrong signals about who I thought I was, and portray me in an even worse light than simply being pretentious.

I mean, for most of my life, I've known I'm weird.  But I certainly didn't need to pay good money for my car to broadcast that fact!

So after the holiday, I humbly drove back over to the dealership.  My salesperson wasn't surprised at all, but he had to work hard to convince his managers that they really should take the car back.  In retrospect, I have no idea why the salesperson advocated on my behalf, instead of simply shrugging his shoulders and pointing to my signatures on their ream of purchase documents.  But the dealership's leadership eventually consented.  I'd kept the car in pristine condition, and I'd only put a minimal amount of miles on it.  I'd driven it off the lot with practically none, meaning it still had fewer miles on the odometer than many of their other cars (do some people take test drives to Houston and back, I wondered).  However, they would take it back only if I purchased something else from their stock.

5.  1997 Mercury Cougar XR-7 coupe; purchased new

Fair enough, right?  Fortunately, they had sitting right by the showroom a gleaming light blue metallic Mercury Cougar XR-7 V8.  It was a two-door coupe, but it was much more reasonably sized, plus its price was quite a bit lower than the Grand Marquis.  And the dealership was even willing to transfer the same discounted financing package they'd given me for the Grand Marquis.  Frankly, even though I wasn't crazy about a sports car, I couldn't refuse their willingness to work with me.  

And hey - that Cougar has been the sportiest car I've ever owned!  It's probably been the most appropriate one for me, at least when I was still relatively young.  It had a spoiler, huge rally wheels, wide tires, deep (cloth) bucket seats in front, and contoured seating for only two people in the back - not three.  Thanks to that V8, its performance was smile-inducing.  I also learned that its body style was Ford's last mid-sized design for its Thunderbird/Cougar pairing; the next year, Ford would drop the Thunderbird completely, and only offer a compact, ugly little Cougar.

I didn't think any more about Ford's model change until about a year later, when I read where my larger Cougar wasn't depreciating as much as would otherwise be expected.  In fact, my car's body style was in demand from customers who'd been caught off-guard by Ford's decision to downsize the model.  Sure enough, on a whim, I half-heartedly put it up for sale, and quickly got what I'd thought had been an ambitious asking price!  The middle-aged couple who bought it told me their banker was dubious about the price they were willing to pay for it, until the banker did some research to learn why the car's value was surprisingly high.  Before I realized it, I was in the market for yet another car.

6.  1998 Chevrolet Malibu LS sedan; purchased new

You'll notice that up until now, I'd been a staunchly patriotic American car buyer.  Nothing but Detroit steel for me.  However, my allegiance to Detroit began to waver with my next vehicle, a tidy-looking but atrociously-built Chevy Malibu LS.  It was peppy and comfortable and roomy, for a smallish mid-sized sedan.  But almost immediately, it started falling apart.

Let me see if I can remember all of its flaws.  The first time I washed it, water seeped down the inside of its driver's door window.  So I made sure the window was completely closed, and washed it again.  Same seepage.  

As I'd drive about, I noticed a lot of breezy wind noise coming from that door, and after several trips to the dealership, their mechanics determined the door had been constructed improperly.  It literally didn't fit into the car's frame, which also explained why the window wouldn't close completely.  

By now, it had developed an oil leak that the dealership couldn't manage to fix.  Sometimes, it simply wouldn't start.  Eventually, the dealership told me my only option was to file for a buy-back from Chevrolet through Texas' lemon laws.

After a stressful hearing moderated at the Better Business Bureau's Fort Worth office, Chevrolet was forced to refund my money, less depreciation.  But the representative from Chevrolet on that conference call was so ugly and condescending to me, I vowed to never purchase another new Chevy ever again.

7.  1999 Buick Regal LS sedan; purchased new

I did return to the same GM dealership, however, since they weren't at fault, and purchased a new 1999 Buick Regal LS.  It was the right size for me, it had lots of comfort and luxury for the price, and I liked how it looked, even when an acquaintance told me obliquely that what he considered to be its dowdy appearance befitted my personality!

Yeah, I've had some good friends over the years...

Thankfully, my Regal ownership was only marred by four other drivers rear-ending me, scuffing up my back bumper until I finally stopped getting it fixed.  Every incident happened when my car was either stopped or parked.  One Sunday I was parallel-parked on a side street near my Dallas church; I came out after services to find a Ford Explorer wedged into my back bumper.  I left a polite note with my e-mail address on its windshield, only to receive a curt response from the owner who had also attended my church that morning and suggested I take the sermon to heart and be gracious and forgiving.

I kid you not.

Another Ford Explorer driver was even more impertinent.  While on our way home from dinner one evening, before Mom and Dad were again leaving for Maine that summer, we got rear-ended hard.  We were stuck in traffic and I watched in my rear-view mirror as a woman piloted her Explorer into my trunk at normal speed without ever looking straight ahead or braking.  I yelled to Mom and Dad to brace for impact, which we all did by leaning forward and cradling our heads in our hands.

Thankfully, none of us were injured at all.  

Have you ever heard of "crumple zones"?  They're engineered sheets of aluminum and steel that are designed to fold together - to "crumple" - and thereby absorb significant amounts of energy from certain types of crashes.  Well, my Buick's crumple zones worked just like they were supposed to.  Its sheetmetal, from its undamaged rear window to the bumper, including fenders and trunk, was all crunched together like a metal accordion.

My dealership's body shop was able to fix everything and deliver my Buick without a trace of twisted metal.  However, not long after that, a friend of mine was rear-ended in her Toyota, and her insurance agent warned her that while her car was fixed to industry standards, it would never provide exactly the same amount of protection in another crash as it had provided with factory-installed crumple zones.  So after getting her Toyota back from her body shop, she promptly traded it in for a brand-new one.

I called my insurance agent and asked her about re-manufactured crumple zones, since obviously, she knew all about my wreck.  And she corroborated what my friend's insurance agent had told her.  So I went ahead and traded-in my Buick, and took something of a hit on its value because I told my new dealership's salesperson about the accident.

8.  2002 Volkswagen Passat GLS sedan; purchased new

Actually, the salesperson for my new Volkswagen admitted that they could run a Carfax on the vehicle, and besides, their in-house estimators would likely have discovered the re-manufactured crumple zones anyway, before they gave me an official trade-in offer.  However, the fact that I offered that information up-front made them willing to be more generous in their valuation.

Simply put, my next ride, a 2002 VW Passat GLS, proved to be my favorite car overall.  It hasn't been my fastest, or most expensive.  It's been one of my smaller cars, although its aesthetics and proportions were appealing and satisfying.  Closing its doors sounded reassuringly solid, and I felt safer inside its passenger cabin than I have in larger vehicles.  Interior surfaces felt sumptuous to the touch, especially for its price, and ergonomics were impressively calculated.  It held the road well, boasting a nimbleness I'd never experienced in my previous cars.  Plus, it had my first sunroof - a feature I enjoyed more that I thought I would, and have sought in my successive vehicles.

As much as I liked my Passat, however, I can't say it was perfect.  Its passenger cabin proved to be quite soundproof, which I liked.  But that also meant I could hear incessant rattles and rustling from the vehicle itself, no matter how smooth the road was.  The dealer finally determined that my interior headliner, of all things, had been installed improperly in the factory in Germany.  It was a one-piece unit housing various sensors for airbags and other electronics, and couldn't simply be re-installed.  They told me VW flew a specially-trained mechanic down to Texas from New Jersey to remove the original headliner and install a brand-new one from Germany.  

The whole process took a month, and VW provided me with loaner cars the whole time, and they paid my car note for that month!  One of the loaner cars I drove had VW's expensive, optional rubber floor mats, and when I commented to the dealership about how much I liked them, they gave me a new set for my car at no cost, since they thought I was being patient as they fixed my headliner.

For people who usually have nothing good to say about car dealers, my personal experience, as proven with my two Mercurys, my Passat, and even my Malibu/Regal fiasco, indicates that if you treat them the way you'd like to be treated, there's a good chance they just might reciprocate!

During my Passat ownership, I ended up also experiencing an extended period of under-employment, working part-time at a popular Tex-Mex restaurant between full-time jobs.  When I eventually got a better job, I decided to pay off the credit card debt I'd accrued.  My Passat hadn't depreciated as much as other cars its age, I'd maintained it well, and as much as I liked it, I decided my financial needs were more important.  I sold it to a local business owner who wanted an extraordinarily safe vehicle for his accident-prone daughter.

9.  2006 Honda Accord EX sedan; purchased new

Despite that bizarre headliner issue, my experience with a non-American brand had gone so well, I decided to continue with imports, selecting the highly-reviewed 2006 Honda Accord EX.  Unlike my Passat, it was a boring car inside and out, and although it measured slightly larger than my Passat, it felt smaller inside.  Its performance was anemic, but it gave me no mechanical problems of any kind whatsoever.  Utter functionality with zero personality which, admittedly, matched the Honda experience I'd heard about from all the consumers and experts who rate it so highly.

10.  2009 Honda Accord EX sedan; purchased new

I didn't need to get rid of my first Accord, but after three years, I received a notice from my Honda dealer basically saying they needed used cars for their inventory, so they wanted my current car.  To make it work for both of us, their incentives were quite generous.  Plus, the Accord had graduated to a larger body style, which really got my attention.  So I checked it out, and sure enough... my 2009 Honda Accord EX was larger in every way, I felt far more comfortable inside, I liked its looks, and I talked them into giving me rubber floor mats, similar to my Passat's!

When I got home from the dealership, I discovered that my father wasn't thrilled with me owning another import.  He hadn't said much about my previous Honda, and he'd even congratulated me when I purchased the Passat.  But that was because the Passat was a Volkswagen, and he and Mom had themselves owned two VWs when we were still living in upstate New York.  So he didn't really consider them an "import".  But to him, Hondas were imports, even though both of mine were made in Marysville, Ohio.

The sadly ironic part of his disapproval came from the reality that he'd just begun his long journey into dementia.  However, despite the first-phase short-term memory loss he was then exhibiting, he clearly remembered he didn't care for Japanese cars!  So I didn't make a big deal about my new Accord.  Never bothered to talk about it with him, or point out any of its features.  I figured reminding him less about it would be better in the long run.  And sure enough, after a while, Dad was quietly complimenting me on how comfortable it was every time he got into it - apparently never remembering he'd ridden in it before.

And would you believe it - I soon felt some deja-vu all over again:  An annoying rattle underneath my new Honda was driving me nuts.  My first Accord had been trouble-free, and I was frustrated that I couldn't replicate that success.  My dealership eventually discovered the problem - my gas tank had been installed improperly!  It was rubbing against my muffler, which struck me as being something of a danger risk.  For whatever reason, the dealership had to remove (and eventually replace) my entire back seat in the process of fixing my car outside of the factory, but ever since then, my Accord has been problem-free.

Ten and Holding

Looking back over my personal history as reflected in the cars I've owned, I can make some obvious conclusions.

First, let me reiterate that I CHOSE to purchase each and every one of these vehicles.  Nobody gave any of them to me, I didn't inherit any of them, and I wasn't obligated to choose any of them.  There were options in every purchase decision, and with the exception of my second car, after the totaled Riviera, I had the option of not buying another car, but keeping the one I had.

I never seemed to be satisfied.  At least a couple of my purchases reflected some pretty bad decision-making.  I could have waited to make a better decision at another time with different options in play. 

Suffice it to say that my car-buying history proves I don't always act in my own best interest.

Nevertheless, let's focus on the apparent reality that over time, I've come to assign less importance to the status I used to expect my vehicles to convey about me.  When friends of mine purchase new vehicles for themselves, my younger self would get smitten by the "gotta-buy-a-new-car" bug.  But these days, while I'm happy for my friends and their updated rides, I don't feel chagrin that my own car is as dated as it's become.

That's a sign of progress, right?

Not that I wouldn't enjoy having a new, flashier vehicle myself.  But being content with what one has and/or can afford can be something of an unusual character trait in and of itself.  And that's a trait I haven't had during most of my life.

I guess like my aging Honda, we'll see how long it lasts!

_____

Water Tower Wow

My job was part of the maritime industry regulated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (a bi-state agency which owns the World Trade Center), and that came with Port Authority perks. One of them was getting to show a visiting client from Brazil around Manhattan Island by way of a Port Authority helicopter. It's from that helicopter that I took this photo, featuring the Twin Towers and Lower Manhattan (and the Empire State Building in the distance) from above New York Bay. This was probably taken in 1993. Tower One, home to Windows on the World, was the building with the antenna.

This photo was taken in one of the tower's elevator lobbies in December 1975 by Finnish friend Henry Karna. The orange-red banner to the right reads "Hauskaa Joulua", or "Merry Christmas" in Finnish, part of the World Trade Center's international theme.

Does your workplace throw a holiday party?  

My first real job as a teenager was with an upscale menswear retailer.  Our corporate office hosted annual "holiday" breakfasts for us salespeople, usually on a Saturday morning in early November.  They were held at various posh hotels or country clubs in Dallas, and weren't really parties as much as they were the official launch for that year's Christmas selling season.

After college, my first conventional office job was with a freight forwarding brokerage firm in New York City.  And even though those previous retail breakfasts were rather fancy, with plenty of good food in a luxurious setting, I was now in Manhattan.  The Big City.  And approaching my first Christmas there, I expected a more cosmopolitan type of company holiday party than those working breakfasts.

I was living with my aunt, a lifelong Brooklynite, and a legal secretary for a Park Avenue law firm.  Her employers regularly threw their holiday parties at Central Park's glamorous Tavern on the Green.  So yeah, I kinda expected most Big Apple office parties to be grand affairs, even if my office was nowhere near Park Avenue, and my employers weren't prestigious lawyers.

Imagine my initial disappointment when I discovered that sure, my officemates kinda held a dinner for themselves to mark the occasion.  But theirs was extremely low-key, at a faded restaurant along a dingy street between the shadows of a parking garage and the World Trade Center.  

I'd seen the place while scurrying around our office's Lower Manhattan neighborhood, running errands for our employer.  Our firm processed documentation for international freight, and in those pre-Internet days, while we had our own in-house messenger and contracts with other messenger services, sometimes it was just easier to hand-deliver urgent paperwork myself.  And while I know one shouldn't judge a book by its cover (as the old saying goes), this particular restaurant's exterior offered no reason to expect its menu and interior to be Christmas-party-worthy.

Meanwhile, yes... just a couple of blocks further north, New York's incredible World Trade Center commanded the skies.  I'm talking about the Trade Center's original version, before 9-11, when it was known for its iconic Twin Towers.  And atop Tower One was the city's dazzling two-story destination restaurant called Windows on the World.  I'm calling it "WOW" for short, because that's no understatement.  

WOW sprawled across floors 106 and 107 of the North Tower, offering wrap-around, floor-to-ceiling views of the entire city, New Jersey, upstate New York, Long Island, and the Atlantic Ocean.  Its dining tables were situated on two different levels so every diner could enjoy the scenery.  Special high-speed elevators whisked us up from the tower's main lobby in a matter of seconds, meaning we had to intentionally pop our ears during a very quick trip if we didn't want an earache to spoil our expensive meal.

Indeed, talk about a "wow-factor"!  Dining way up high, sleek and serene, seemingly above everything.  Shucks, back down on the ground, that Tavern on the Green may be a Victorian Gothic bauble, but it used to be Central Park's sheep barn.

Although I'd never before been to WOW, I'd heard a lot about it.  Most New Yorkers had, including all of my co-workers.  But here's the thing:  We were paying for our Christmas party out of our own pockets.  While our employers did give Christmas bonuses, they did not host an office Christmas party.  I recall that their option to us consisted of a monetary bonus OR a party, but not both.  

So ours was the obvious choice, right?  We didn't work to party; we worked to get paid.  And we understood we were not a fancy law firm or huge corporate conglomerate.  There were only ten of us.

Still, to native New Yorkers, WOW seemed more like a tourist trap than anything else.  I'll admit my idea didn't go over well at first with my co-workers:  "WOW is too fancy, too pricey, too touristy!  Yes, the views are probably epic, but they're part of the overpriced gimmick."

I was naive enough to counter all of those facts - and yes, they were mostly true - with, "so what?  We're in New York City, and it's Christmas."

The more they thought about it, the faster my co-workers warmed up to the idea of WOW for our little party.  So we booked a large table for several of us and any significant others that wanted to come along.  Our employers let us leave the office a little early, so we could get home at a decent hour.  Posh multi-course dinners take time, and in those days, Lower Manhattan after dark grew more unsafe the later one stayed.

I'm no foodie, and I don't remember anything about WOW's food.  However, the fact that I don't remember their food likely means it was neither horrible nor spectacular.  I've since learned that throughout its history, WOW never managed to rack up consistently high praise from the city's demanding food critics, many of whom admittedly rated the venue for its views as much as its menu.

Hey - those views were undeniably WOW's best feature.

So the food was at least edible.  I'm sure the service was fine.  Its decor was unfussy and muted in the best (if that's possible) 1970's aesthetic.  Lots of chrome and grays and beige.  But what I distinctly remember about WOW was its bathroom!  Not because I got sick or anything, but fancy meals tend to drag on and on through salads and entrées and desserts and libations (caffeinated for me, otherwise for my co-workers).  Usually, I can get in and out of a conventional restaurant without ever having to visit their restroom, but WOW was no conventional restaurant.  And eventually, water in my body was finding its own level, if you get my drift.

I found the men's room, went inside, and immediately, I noticed a faint sloshing sound.

And it wasn't what you're probably thinking.

The second thing I noticed was the tall, thin man in a uniform standing silently over in a corner, looking at me with a soft smile.  Just standing there next to a counter as I entered the little foyer of the men's room.

Um... what was he doing there?  He was in uniform, so he wasn't a janitor.  Was he a waiter on break?  Don't they have a break room for their staff?  I don't think he said anything.  He just stood there, with that soft smile.  It unnerved me, which reminded me of my primary purpose for being in that room in the first place.  So I turned to a bank of urinals and... was reminded of the sloshing sound.  And I saw what it was.

The water in the base of each urinal was sloshing around within their basin, ever so subtly!  I turned to look into one of the toilet stalls behind me, and sure enough, the water was doing the same thing in them as well!

Talk about water finding its level!  Because it dawned on me:  I knew each of the Trade Center's towers had been designed to sway upwards of 1 foot in each direction at their tops, and here I was, at the top of Tower One.  The building was undoubtedly moving in the night's breezes, which 106 floors up was probably more like a gale.  And the bathroom's fixtures were moving with the building, of course.  While all the while, the water they used was constantly seeking its level.

How cool is that?!  When I realized what was happening, it made my entire evening!  Not the warp-speed elevator, or the meal, or the views - the very fact we were so high up into the sky that the water in bathroom fixtures was sloshing about!  So impressive. 

Yes, I'm weird.

The water wasn't moving enough to spill out onto the floor or anything.  After all, this was a luxury restaurant.  We men were forced to wear jackets (the restaurant had a ready supply of them if some poor schlep showed up without one).  Who would consent to being ordered to wear a jacket while the venue's bathrooms were a sloppy, slippery mess?  Engineers obviously calculated how much the water could move in those fixtures without spilling.  Even today, that's cool to me!

Eventually, I realized I was starting to gawk at those urinals like a Texas hillbilly on his first venture into town, so I went over to wash my hands.  And that tall, uniformed gentleman quietly handed me a towel.  Not a crisp paper thing, but a clean, fluffy fabric towel.  

"Uh, thanks...?" I found the whole thing awkward.  I was trying not to look at him or stare.  Surely that guy wasn't passing his time in the men's room by handing out towels?  Would it be rude of me to give it back to him?  So I patted my hands briefly.  I quickly placed the towel on the countertop, and hurriedly left.  I got back to our table with wet hands, which I discreetly dried on my fabric dinner napkin.

Later that evening, I got back to my aunt's apartment in Brooklyn and boy, did she get a good laugh out of my recounting to her the weird story about that uniformed guy in the men's room.

"That's the men's room STEWARD!" I remember her practically howling, she was laughing so hard.  Shaking her head too, as I recall, marveling at my hickness.  "That's a high-class restaurant!  Its restrooms have stewards!  He hands you a towel, you dry your hands, you hand it back to him.  There's probably a woman who does the same thing in the ladies' room, too."

"  oh.  "  I was genuinely embarrassed.  I felt like I'd flunked Luxury 101.

"How much did you tip him?" my aunt asked.

"TIP?"  

"You didn't tip him?"  My aunt's bemusement turned to chagrin, realizing how unsophisticated her eldest nephew was.  "Anything?"

The next year my co-workers and I again went to WOW for our Christmas dinner, and I made sure I had a small wad of dollar bills in my front pocket to hand out to anybody in a uniform.  I didn't want to risk breaching any elitist protocols.

And the water was still sloshing about in those urinals.  It probably hadn't stopped since my last visit.

Not that my New York City Christmases were all about urinal water, but WOW, that's one of my strongest memories of them.

Peace, y'all!

_____

Historical Heisman Trophy Talk

When I worked at the freight forwarding brokerage in New York, we each had our personal coffee mug. Here's mine - complete with a nautical motif! - that I found at Zabar's, of all places, on the Upper West Side. I still have it.

Vinnie and Maria, two of my co-workers at the freight forwarding brokerage in Lower Manhattan. Taken on one of my birthdays, at a TGI Fridays on Broadway.

Would you believe I've touched the Heisman Trophy?

No, I've never played sports - football or otherwise.  And the college from which I graduated, the University of Texas at Arlington, shuttered its football program during my undergraduate years.  Shucks, I'm not even sure I fully understood what the Heisman was when I first saw it.  

Nevertheless, I think my little Heisman experience is a cool irony; another unexpected story from my New York City days.

Not just because a sports-averse person like myself got so close to such an iconic athletic touchstone, but because of the Heisman's own provenance.  In a way, it's its own irony, starting with its home being a city known for many things - except college sports! 

New York boasts several prestigious universities, yet only Columbia and Fordham continue to field NCAA football programs.  And while Ivy-League Columbia has placed in the Heismans, it's been for runners-up.  And those were ages ago... in 1938, and 1942.

Before I go any farther, let me assure sports purists I now know how important the Heisman is.  First called the Downtown Athletic Club Award, the Heisman signifies college football's most prestigious trophy.  It's been awarded annually since 1935 and is named for John W. Heisman, the first athletic director of New York City's now-defunct Downtown Athletic Club.  Heisman, the person, is credited with helping to develop not only the way collegiate football is played today in North America, but also how colleges administer their extremely popular and lucrative football programs.  

He was kind of a really big deal.

So was the DAC, back in the day.  Its home was a distinctive, proportionally-massed 35-story Art Deco tower clad in dark orange brick with chevron embellishments.  That tower still commands a choice location near the tip of southern Manhattan, a mere three blocks west of Wall Street, and four blocks south of the World Trade Center.  And the trophy which became bigger than the club itself enjoyed a place of prominence in the tower's lobby, near the main bank of elevators, where everybody could see it coming and going.  

My Heisman experience happened when I lived in Gotham and worked next-door to the DAC.  My employers were long-time club members who lunched there almost daily.

Occasionally they'd invite me to join them in the DAC's bar, which to my knowledge was the club's only venue still offering daily food service.  This was the early 1990's, and at that time, in terms of membership, the DAC was "on the ropes", to borrow a sporting term from boxing.  And yes, the club did have its own regulation boxing ring further upstairs.  

To put it frankly, those were years of decline not just for the DAC specifically, but for Lower Manhattan generally.  That was because two major economic engines for the southern tip of Manhattan Island - Wall Street and maritime commerce - were experiencing serious transitional phases.  Leaders from both industries used to be well-represented in the DAC's membership roster, but not any longer.  

Tourists likely weren't aware of it, but big banks and brokerage firms had been fleeing Manhattan's famous Financial District for decades.  Not only to Midtown and the suburbs, but also Florida, Brooklyn, and even Utah - of all places.  Inflated rents for outmoded buildings were two major problems, as was suburbanization.  

While the New York metropolitan area continued to be Manhattan-centric during the surge to the 'burbs, it was Midtown that benefited after World War II because it boasts two major commuter terminals - Grand Central and Penn Station.  The Financial District, meanwhile, had only one, and it went bankrupt during the 1950s.  And it only serviced New Jersey.  

That transit line under the Hudson River would eventually become the PATH train, whose conversion led New Jersey to help fund the World Trade Center.

It was the Hudson River itself, however, that helped make Manhattan.  After the first European ships sailed into what became New York Harbor 400 years ago, Manhattan Island quickly became our country's epicenter of maritime commerce.  Initially, the city imported goods from around the world to support the "New World's" exploding population.  Then, while our country actually made stuff, New York was our export capital, sending goods around the rest of our planet.  Now that we manufacture only a fraction of the goods we consume, we're back to importing; not from Europe this time, but Asia.  Which means America's West Coast ports are our busiest.

Indeed, New York's waterfront had been incessantly evolving, up until the time excavation began for the Trade Center's deep basement in 1966.  By then, the metropolitan region's shipping logistics had nearly deserted Manhattan Island for New Jersey's sprawling container ports and direct access to Interstate highways.  During development of the World Trade Center, most of the dirt dug up for its 7-level basement was simply trucked across the street to the Hudson River, and used as fill where abandoned piers once stretched out into the water.  Today, a huge master-planned neighborhood called Battery Park City exists where oceangoing vessels used to dock.  

The only ships docking along Manhattan anymore are cruise ships, up in Midtown. 

As my employers would explain to me over our lunches in its bar, the DAC existed in three parts:  Its legendary trophy, its dwindling yet still influential membership, and its aging yet impressive building which, in addition to its boxing ring, still held banquet halls, a bowling alley, indoor tennis courts, and - up on the 12th floor - a swimming pool that when built, was billed as the world's highest.  It's upper floors offered guest rooms where celebrities such as Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and Muhammad Ali would stay when they were in town.

Ultimately, its building's location became the deciding factor for everything else.  On 9-11, a poignant total of 11 club members perished up the street in the World Trade Center during that infamous attack.  While the DAC's tower wasn't physically damaged, it was close enough to the disaster site to be included in its security/rubble/recovery lockdown zone, which knocked it "down for the count".

Yeah, another boxing metaphor.

The DAC, whose building dates from 1930, never reopened.  Its membership, having struggled for years and now shaken by the terrorism, disbanded.  Their building was sold for conversion to market-rate condominiums.  And the club's prized trophy, the Heisman, was spun off as its own separate foundation, whose trust still awards the statue every December.

I never saw the club's hallowed Heisman Room, but if the lobby and the bar where we had lunch were representative of the rest of the building, I'd describe the facility as being traditionally, conservatively decorated.  If "decorated" is even the right word.  While its exterior remains unmistakably Art Deco, everything I saw inside was, um, uninspired.  Not cheap, but not creative, either.  Thick carpeting, most of it red.  Dim lighting, mostly from fixtures that were either original or very dated.  Lots of dark wood paneling.  And the dull scent of liquor permeating everything... or was that stale body odor from decades of sweaty athletic activities?

During lunch hours, at least, the bar rarely saw more than half its tables occupied.  The actual bar - which my employers said used to be packed three to four people deep, all raucous and boisterous back in the day - was always deserted now.  Partly because modern business practices frown on prolific public alcohol consumption, but mostly because the DAC's membership was so scant.

I can recall how silence pervaded the entire club.  Down in its lobby, curt nods of recognition from doormen and desk clerks would greet us, but no voices.  Upstairs in its bar, everybody talked in hushed tones.  Servers spoke softly, with reserve, and barely any chit-chat, but they'd obviously waited on my bosses for years.  Long-time regulars would smile at acquaintances as they passed.  Everyone was polite, but hardly effusive.

These members were affluent people, to be sure, but not from Manhattan's highest echelon.  And they weren't all male, although most of them were.  I never saw anybody famous, or even athletic, frankly.  These were New York's working wealthy; people who could afford a bit of panache but still knew how much effort it took to pay for it.  I got the impression most of us were noshing on a corporate account, not a personal one.  At the end of a meal, my bosses would discreetly sign off on a check without even looking at it, the protocol being only to approve its addition to their monthly tab.  No cash or credit cards ever appeared.

I'd never been to such a place, and its signature trophy aside, the club's novelty intrigued me.  It oozed a faded gravitas.  Of course, having that Heisman in the lobby made it all the more compelling.  I remember my employers expecting me to be quite impressed when I first walked up to the actual trophy on my inaugural trip to the DAC's elevators.  And I likely disappointed them by being underwhelmed at the experience, while most folks would have been either giddy or reverential.

On my subsequent visits, I made a point of casting an appreciative gaze at the statue while we waited for our elevator.  I was savvy enough to respect the uniqueness of that opportunity.

The company that hired me was still run by its founder, who when I worked there was a spry octogenarian.  He came into the city only a couple of days a week from his home out on Long Island.  My direct boss was his son, who endured a two-hour commute each way to and from his place in suburban Connecticut.  There was a third partner who lived in Brooklyn, but I didn't report to him.  Although the three of them were tenured members, none of them used the club's sports or fitness facilities.  Their membership was mostly for hosting clients, and visiting with fellow industry executives.  It was a business expense, with a very famous perk.

Our company's founder started his firm back when New York City had those piers and docks spiking out from all over Manhattan Island.  We were a freight forwarder, meaning we processed all of the documentation required for commodities being shipped out of the United States to buyers located in countries around the globe.  And our company was located for decades on the 25th floor of another Art Deco tower at 21 West Street, literally wall-to-wall with the DAC.

Both of these towers are today landmarked.  They were designed by the same architectural firm at approximately the same time.  Yet aside from their age and attractive aesthetics, their more obscure significance involves their shared economic and geographic historicity, since when they were built, the Hudson River and its piers were literally across the street.  Through their respective purposes (officing and recreation), they participated in servicing ocean freighting, one of the key industries that made New York what it is today.  Maybe that's not exciting to tourists and sports fans, but it still counts in terms of how the Heisman's reality has come about.

By the time I worked next-door to the DAC, the Hudson River had been pushed more than two blocks further west.  Luxury apartment buildings were rising across the street, on that infill from the Trade Center.  Even our office building, as well as the DAC, had been built on infill; the Hudson used to run where our towers exist.  It's all part of Manhattan Island's incredible transformation over the centuries.

Fortunately, since our office was on the 25th floor, we still had commanding views up the Hudson and across New York Harbor, including Ellis and Liberty Islands.

Although there were no more freighters plying their way past our building, we'd see cruise ships along the river, including the elegant Queen Elizabeth II - or QE2 for short - whenever she graced New York.  Even our firm's founder - who after decades with that view, barely ever glanced out our windows anymore - would come out of his office and stand with the rest of us as we'd silently watch the QE2 glide past.  She was a distinctive ship, and we all recognized her, lithe and stately, just like one might expect from a fairy tale form of royalty.

My most memorable conversation with our company's founder took place during my first week there.  He hosted the firm's two other executives and me for lunch at the DAC.  I'd already learned that since he was partially retired, he spent most of his time at Long Island's various country clubs.

Our server had courteously seated us around a table in the DAC's venerable bar, and almost immediately, our company's founder turned to me and asked not about my education, or my professional background, or even my hopes and dreams... 

Nope.  In his forthright style, looking me square in my eyes:  "So, how's your golf game?"

It's all about priorities, right?

You already know that sports and I do not share an intimate familiarity.  So I balked, unsure of how to proceed.  I knew we were in a venue with "Athletic" in its name, but in my case that word was utterly relative!  Plus, I barely knew the guy.  How negatively would he receive my reply?  In awkward honesty, I told him as politely as I could muster that I don't golf.

He turned to his son - my direct boss - and in a tone of disgust that even now I suspect was only partially feigned, complained, "He doesn't golf?!  Why'd you hire him?"

For his part, my boss reacted as though he'd been expecting just such an exchange between his father and me.  He dispassionately dismissed his father's query, which suggested to me that I'd passed a key test.  Anyway, in retrospect, considering how we were ensconced in such a sports sanctum like the Downtown Athletic Club bar, that whole golf thing seemed apropos.  Eventually I think the founder came to like me, even if his casual office banter with me was limited by my lack of golfing expertise.

And the Heisman?  That hunk of cast bronze has outlived its club, its building, and the entire complex just up the street that used to be the original World Trade Center.  And it's morphed into far more than a trophy.  Today, the multi-million-dollar trust created by the DAC's disbanding membership funds a number of sports initiatives for urban youth and the physically-challenged, including figure skating, chess (some people consider it something of a sport!), marathons for differently-abled athletes, sailing, and sports journalism.

Even youth golf.

So when it's awarded again this coming December, just remember that the Heisman represents more than simply college football.

There's a lot of history, some good architecture, the QE2, and... golf.

_____

Curios-ity

At first glance, nothing curious here... right...?

Do you have a china cabinet in your home?

Probably not, right?  Even if you're used to calling that piece of furniture a curio cabinet, or a hutch, you probably still don't have one.  At least, not one made of wood in a traditional style with mirrors and stuff.

For decades, they were all the rage in fashionable homes.  Yet I had no idea how far out of fashion they've fallen until I received a set of them for free.

A long-time neighbor had passed away and her heirs sold her house.  Their mother's home had five bedrooms and three living areas traditionally decorated with big furniture, most of which had been selected by an actual interior decorator.  Between close family members and friends, heirs parceled out nearly all of that furniture - with the exception of an enormous three-piece china cabinet set.  

Before the house hit the market, heirs scheduled a large local charity to come and take what nobody'd wanted.  Yet even the charity - which gladly took even a chair that was in pieces - passed on the solid china cabinet set!  

That's when you know something really is unwanted.

The heirs' Realtor showed the house with this set still in its place in the family room, near the fireplace.  The home's new owners bought it with the set in place, but they didn't want it either.  And the day before their contractors were to begin an extensive remodeling project, the new matron of the house texted me:  Did I know anybody who wants this china cabinet set?  It's so heavy and well-made, she hated to simply have her workers haul it to the dumpster being delivered to their driveway tomorrow.

Yeah, each piece is oversized, extremely heavy, and still in excellent condition.  But I'm not an interior design wonk, and I don't really know what's stylish these days, so I had no idea that the whole china cabinet thing was currently so far out of style.  While our new neighbors told me their previous home had featured similarly traditional furniture, they weren't bringing any of it over to their new place, planning instead to pivot towards a more streamlined minimalism.  And glass-door, glass-shelved wood china cabinets with carved flowers really didn't fit their target aesthetic.

Apparently, units like these don't really fit anybody's aesthetic anymore.  I've looked online and discovered people can't even give away unwanted china cabinets!  Decades ago, these behemoths often sold for four figures.  But that was then.

And that's the thing, right?  Most conventional, traditional china cabinets scream 1980's and 1990's.  Hey - I admit it:  They just look dated.  I'm guessing these free ones from across the street were purchased during the 1980's.  And frankly, I'm not crazy about them.  

But my mother loves them!

Which works, because I got them for her anyway.  I didn't realize she'd always wanted a china cabinet until I mentioned to her about our new neighbors trying to unload a set.  It caught me off-guard when Mom jumped at the chance.  So with the help of another neighbor and his teenaged son, I went and lugged the three units over here, and two of them fit exactly along a wall between our dining area and kitchen.

Back in 1965, after they'd gotten married, Mom and Dad were setting up housekeeping in their small apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.  They found a furniture store along the neighborhood's long-time shopping district, 86th Street, and purchased - among other things - a tall, colonial-style hutch.  We still have it - a high shelving unit without doors sitting above a cabinet with doors.  It's all solid wood. 

I think Mom once kept her Readers Digest books (talk about transient fads!) on that doorless hutch, but for most of its life, it has displayed her curios.  The problem with that has been... dust, right?  Curios generally are the most valuable when one purchases them, or are gifted them.  After that, they sit about collecting dust, and without glass doors to help minimize the dust accumulation, the whole thing pretty much becomes a housekeeping issue.

As they almost always do, Mom's curios represent her generation, and what her generation prized or considered collectible or nostalgic.  But younger people today are literally a different generation, and while they may bristle at the notion, they accumulate curios as well... but ones that relate to their experience.  And on the flip side, Mom's curios are probably unlike what previous American generations would have valued and collected.

Cups and saucers, for instance.  For much of the 20th Century, when couples got married, one of the big things was picking out a china pattern that would represent a certain aesthetic dignity for the newly-created family unit.  Stemware, silver flatware, linen tablecloths:  Brides-to-be used to agonize over their choices of those prized entertainment accoutrements.  And then after being gifted them as wedding presents, what ended up happening?  All that fancy table livery that wasn't damaged in automatic dishwashers was relegated "for best" to china cabinets, or even closets.

Mom's wedding china is still in several kitchen cabinets.  And for decades, she also had in her kitchen cabinets a number of old serving dishes, pitchers, and platters from her mother and grandmothers.  Although I have no particular emotional attachment to them, I knew Mom did, and I wanted her to be able to see them on a daily basis.  What's the point of having sentimental pieces if they sit behind opaque cupboard doors all the time?

So I got them out and stocked Mom's new china cabinets with them, and today they bring back happy memories for her every time she gazes at them from our dining table.

You may recall me mentioning earlier about there originally being three large pieces over at our neighbors' place.  One features glass doors, glass shelving, a mirrored back, and built-in lights at the top.  The second has glass shelves and lights, but no doors or mirrored back.  I was amazed we didn't crack the mirror or damage any of the glass in our move.  Those are the two pieces I kept to display Mom's stuff, as seen in the photo above.

The third unit was strictly an entertainment center, but it was designed ages ago for cathode-ray television sets, meaning its opening was square, not rectangular.  So I immediately decided we couldn't use it, and I didn't even bother to offer it for free on an Internet give-away app.  I disassembled it, and its parts are stacked in the garage, since they're big pieces of genuine and engineered wood that I keep telling myself some woodworker might be able to creatively repurpose.

And yeah, talking about the evolution of transience:  That boxy TV armoire was positively obsolete!  Imagine all the towering entertainment centers from the 1970's through the early 2000's which became forever outmoded with the arrival of flat-screen TVs.  That's why I disassembled the one we were gifted - which, for the record, my late neighbor had retrofitted.  She'd hired a carpenter and Best Buy's Geek Squad to accommodate her large flat-screen, which stretched awkwardly from the unit's cavernous hole intended for cathode-ray sets.

In fact, retrofitting old furniture has become something of a thing for some people.  We have neighbors who enjoy repurposing second-hand and otherwise dated furniture with new paint and hardware.  But they didn't want that old entertainment center, either.

Meanwhile, there's only a few pieces of china in Mom's pre-owned china cabinet, and they're not her wedding china, but custom tea sets friends gifted her while she was in college.  There are some Finnish glass art pieces, and some crystal vases, but the rest are from Mom's maternal kinfolk.

Mom's mother and grandmothers were not wealthy, and the pieces Mom has of theirs probably have no financial value.  But those were remarkable women who lived hard lives and made a lot out of not very much for their families.  What their remaining artifacts represent to Mom is worth considerably more than whatever these china cabinets ever cost new.  

And when it comes to value, perhaps the fact that they're now displayed in these almost entirely unwanted curio cabinets completes the motif:

Old relics being displayed in newer old relics.

Isn't that curio-us...!

____