Seen Through Black Eyes

Hello, and welcome to episode 1 of Seen Through Black Eyes. In this episode, I’m going to tell you about two stories that got me on my path towards travel as an evocation. One is a trip through my mind, now that can be a scary place, but not in this case. And it will make more sense once I articulate the vignette. And the second is a family trip to Miami Florida.

Enjoy…

I grew up in East Harlem, in a housing project known as Taft. I always thought the projects were named after the 27th president, William Howard Taft but I was wrong. It was named after his son, Robert A. Taft, a senator from Ohio from 1938 to 1955. But for this story, that’s not important.

What is, is that I grew up in one of the buildings on the top floor of a high-rise in a three bedroom apartment with my four brothers, and my mother. From the livingroom window, I could see the off ramps of the George Washington Bridge, and what intrigued me about that was I could see the vehicles going on and off, heading somewhere, doing something; something that was more exciting than whatever I was doing.

From the bedroom window, which has a view that was sort of Southwest, I could see the on and off ramps of the Tri-Borough Bridge. Not wanting to be outdone by the George Washington Bridge, its on and off ramps were equally as brilliant with vehicles’, lights heading to and from. I always thought that whatever they were doing was more exciting than whatever it was that I was doing.

After school I would come home, start my homework, argue with my brothers, argue with my mother, a little bit of fighting, get back to my homework and then I would perch myself on whichever window was available at the time and would just gaze at it and imagine what these people were doing. Where they were going, and imagining what was going on.

These were the primordial seeds of my Wanderlust.

So, back in 1970, I keep saying it’s 1969, my family took a bus trip from New York City to Miami Florida. Three days on the bus with my brothers, one younger, two older from New York City to Miami, Florida. It was not a good experience. Insofaras start off with the fact that, I guess somebody should do some research (I guess I should have), there was a taxi strike in New York.

So somebody can do some research to see what year was the taxi strike… was it in ‘69 or ‘70 - I say, I would tell family members that it was 1969 that we went to Florida and my brother would say, “No, it was 1970”. I say 69, December of 1969, and we came back, it was January 1970 but apparently my brother is saying that it was December of ‘70 and came back in ‘71.

But we can check that by seeing what year was the taxi strike in New York… anyway so I can remember that we were standing out waiting for a taxi forever. I don’t know if my mother knew if there was a taxi strike, or she knew it and just assumed that would be some, like the taxi strike consisted of the yellow taxis, and people from New York would know what I am talking about the yellow taxis.. and she just assumed that we would be able to get a ride from one of the off brand taxis, but it didn’t happen.

So we were out there forever, and as a youngster I just remembered me being frustrated for standing out here forever. As I got older, I looked at things from other than my own perspective, and realized how traumatized my mother was. Again, it was her and three of her young sons. Ultimately, a family friend saw her standing out there waiting forever for a taxi and offered to give us a ride to the bus depot. I don’t even remember if it was Penn station…Grand Central…. probably Penn Station. Anyway, once we got there, it was an absolute zoo, it was a mess. It was…it was just crazy. Especially for… what was I…five or six-year-old.

So we had to manage that where, once they started letting people on the bus, my mother said for us to get on the bus and hold enough seats for us together. They sell seats on the bus, so you have your ticket and you know you will have a seat on the bus, however it’s not assigned.

With three boys and her, she wanted us all together, so that was the idea. To get four seats together while she… and I guess one of my brothers would secure, making sure that our luggage got tagged properly, because the bus made like 100 stops, from New York to Miami.

So to make sure that we got our luggage on the bus, and we got four seats together and the oldest, you know my mother is obviously is the oldest… but she was outside so securing that our luggage got on…and the rest of us: If I’m 5 my youngest brother is 3, next older than me is 7, and then older than that might be…9 or 10, maybe even 11, I don’t even know…

Is now on the top side trying to secure four seats together when there’s a mob of people rushing on, with absolutely no regard or care for what the hell we’re trying to do…it was an orideal from the very beginning.

So that’s how the trip starts, so the four of us are seated together, and my mother did a pretty good job of preparing us for the journey, I think was a 3-day or 2 ½ day or something like that journey on Greyhound from New York City to Miami Florida.

We had sandwiches, we had snacks, we had chips and pretzels and… make shift stuff that my mother had made.

Just like a lot of individuals that grew up in the 70’s, our mothers….were like MacGyver For individuals of our age know the original MacGyver, where he could make an explosive with chewing gum, a bobby pin, and some sugar…and he could make an explosive that can blow a door off his hinges….

So my mother was no different from any other parent, or any other individual that I grew up with in that era. I saw here make ice cream with no ice cream maker. How is that even possible? Anyway…She prepared sandwiches, snacks and we had of course the Kool-Aid (who could travel without Kool-Aid ?) and sodas… anyway…. so that was that situation and everything went fairly well. We probably made about I don’t know 30… 20-30 stops in between New York and Southern Virginia, Northern North Carolina or something like that.

And at that point we had to change buses so….chaos ensued. At that point, we had to get all of our luggage off, we had to get all of us off, and get it on to another bus that would continue the journey down to Miami. And surprisingly enough… While it was chaos, it was not the bedlam that it was in New York City, because of the strike, everyone showing up at the last minute and there was yelling, screaming, cussing, biting and all kinds of different things going on in New York. The chaos was somewhat controlled in that stop… as I said, I don’t know if it was southern Virginia or Northern North Carolina.

Somehow or another, we were able to transition not only all of our luggage, but more surprisingly enough, all of my siblings from one bus to the other. We didn’t lose anybody, I was quite surprised!

So, we did make it on to the second bus, and then we made our way down to Miami. I don’t know, it might have been a day and a half or so on a bus, and we arrived in Miami. F, family members were there to pick us up. And just as you were probably a suspect, they showed up with a vehicle that probably could not carry everyone in one fell swoop, because of course, when they arrived, the vehicle was already full.

So....we made it back to were going to stay, we were staying with family and friends and so the vacation begin….and I’m not 100% sure how long we stayed in Miami, because it was such a long time ago, and there’s no real records of it, I imagine…I believe that we missed a week of school, so if we can imagine that we got out of school in December, and had to return back to school in January, that was about the time that we were down there, so…

I mention all of this because this was actually my first journey, my first travel, my first travel experience, first time leaving New York City, and I think that it was the primordial seeds of wanderlust that was planted… in me in particular. So now we’re talking about early ‘70s my first experience traveling, and it was the springboard for what and who I would become.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Really appreciate it, consider subscribing so you will be notified the next time and episode drops.

The next episode is going to be about a trip that I took up to the Catskills mountains in New York with the family…See you there.

END.