METROPOLITAN DIARY
Help on Wheels
Dear Diary:
I was meeting my children for dinner in Manhattan.
As the taxi I was in neared the restaurant, rain began to fall. I had forgotten to bring an umbrella and was worried about getting soaked.
Opening the taxi door gingerly, I began to step out.
Just then, a young man riding past on a skateboard produced an umbrella, led me to the restaurant’s entrance without saying a word and then continued on his way.
— Holly Schwartztol
On the B.Q.E.
Dear Diary:
My father was buried in Queens under a cloudless September sky. The whole family gathered to celebrate his life.
A bon vivant and World War II veteran, he worked for the Sanitation Department for 25 years and was always quick to arrive at the scene of New York City catastrophes.
The steady din of traffic on the day he was buried made it impossible to hear the service at the cemetery, but we stayed until the end. When it was over, a 45-car caravan headed for the B.Q.E. and a family dinner in Coney Island.
We hadn’t gone far when traffic came to a dead stop. After a half-hour of waiting, members of our group got out of their cars to try to find out what the holdup was.
My nephew did some reconnaissance and reported back: A garbage truck had overturned and was wheels up on the road, leaving a pileup of cars in its wake. Had the service ended a few minutes earlier, we realized, some of us would surely have been caught in the crash.
We started laughing and hugging. It might have seemed strange to others who were stuck there, but one total stranger who was on his way to a birthday party started passing out cupcakes that he realized would not reach their destination on time.
It was my father’s kind of day.
— JoAnna DeCamp
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Thanks. 