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eredienI just realized these passages made me destined to love cities, and the things and people in them:
...She couldn't see it from there, how it looked, like a little toy train; but she could hear it, saying, "Hello, Connie. Good-by, Connie!"
"The little train saved my life," she thought. "The Myrtle Avenue El."
"The Myrtle Avenue El," Papa said when they moved here, "is the very last elevated train in New York City! It will soon be torn down too, I hear." But it was still up, it had not been torn down yet, and maybe it never would be. Maye it would be kept as a souvenir of bygone days of old New York. "Save? For a souvenir? New York save anything? Why, they are talking of tearing down the house where Walt Whitman printed 'Leaves of Grass'! That's how they save in New York City!" shouted Papa.
Well, luckily the El was still up when the Ives moved here. Every day for the first few weeks, the minute Connie came home from school, she and Mama used to get on the little train and ride to the end of the line. Raining or shining, windy or what, it did not matter. The thought of the little train helped Connie to get through the long day in her new, big, strange Brooklyn school. She and Mama would climb the steep stairs up to the platform, and, no matter what the weather, they would stand outside rather than in the stale-smelling waiting room. They could see through the cracks of the wooden platform to the cars and people below; and looking way down the straight, silvery tracks, they could see the train come rollicking and swaying along--making their platform tremble, shudder, and steel itself for the swift onrush of the train--here now, at last, cheerful, inviting, and calm.
- The Alley, Eleanor Estes
How odd it is to realize something fifteen years later when, really, you knew it all along from the moment you started reading the sentence.
...She couldn't see it from there, how it looked, like a little toy train; but she could hear it, saying, "Hello, Connie. Good-by, Connie!"
"The little train saved my life," she thought. "The Myrtle Avenue El."
"The Myrtle Avenue El," Papa said when they moved here, "is the very last elevated train in New York City! It will soon be torn down too, I hear." But it was still up, it had not been torn down yet, and maybe it never would be. Maye it would be kept as a souvenir of bygone days of old New York. "Save? For a souvenir? New York save anything? Why, they are talking of tearing down the house where Walt Whitman printed 'Leaves of Grass'! That's how they save in New York City!" shouted Papa.
Well, luckily the El was still up when the Ives moved here. Every day for the first few weeks, the minute Connie came home from school, she and Mama used to get on the little train and ride to the end of the line. Raining or shining, windy or what, it did not matter. The thought of the little train helped Connie to get through the long day in her new, big, strange Brooklyn school. She and Mama would climb the steep stairs up to the platform, and, no matter what the weather, they would stand outside rather than in the stale-smelling waiting room. They could see through the cracks of the wooden platform to the cars and people below; and looking way down the straight, silvery tracks, they could see the train come rollicking and swaying along--making their platform tremble, shudder, and steel itself for the swift onrush of the train--here now, at last, cheerful, inviting, and calm.
- The Alley, Eleanor Estes
How odd it is to realize something fifteen years later when, really, you knew it all along from the moment you started reading the sentence.