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Kiwiwriter47's avatar

A great essay by someone -- like me -- who is a true New York Subway fan. I've been a member of the New York Transit Museum for 20 years...it's in my blood.

Grandpa rode the last horsecar line in Manhattan as a kid.

Dad closed the Third Avenue El in 1955 and swiped a train lantern. I still have it, over my desk. He put a light bulb in it and I put it on when I have serious work to do, letting folks know about that.

My father and I opened and closed subway lines in New York...I rode the first trains to Hudson Yards and the Second Avenue Subway.

I took my daughter on a Transit Museum fantrip in an antique subway train, lovingly restored. She wrote a college essay about the bonding experience with me. Got a fairly full ride to a good college in Maine.

I've had rides exactly like those described, with people exactly like those described.

However, I urge readers to visit the Transit Museum and take their fantrips.

The last place my father and I went together before he died WAS the Transit Museum. Sitting in a car he rode in as a boy during the 1930s, Dad shared with me his memories of growing up in New York.

I realized he was telling me that to hold and pass on those stories to my family.

Dad died five days after my wedding. He never met his daughter. But I told her the stories, took her to the museum, and she had a great time.

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Jodi Sh. Doff's avatar

"The thing about haunted trains is you never know who’s the ghost and who’s alive." I get that same feeling some days, especially grey days, walking through neighborhoods that were charged for me. Times Square. the West Village. The landscape has changed, but some internal compass knows exactly where I am, where I was 30 years ago. Forty. And today shimmers for just a second and it feels like if I was brave enough, I could step through and go back to then, whichever then is appearing to me. Ghosts huddle in doorways that don't exist anymore. It sounds poetic. It sounds nuts. It sounds especially crazy when I say I know that that is not actually happening, but part of me still believes, if I would just take that step...

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