Notes from an Ill-Seasoned Traveller

NOTES FROM AN ILL-SEASONED TRAVELER

or

THOMAS WOLFE WAS RIGHT

by

Cynthia MacGregor

It's true. You can't go home again. Every summer, for years, when New York's weather became tolerable for a dyed-in-the-wool Floridian like me, I would make my annual pilgrimage back to New York. I refuse to call it The Rotten Apple. But I no longer call it home.

It's the little things that clue me in to the fact that I've not only put down roots—strong roots—in Florida, but I've also had my New York roots…uprooted. It's not the big things, like the time when Kathleen said, “Let's meet someplace near my office—how about the entrance to Lord & Taylor,” and I had to say, “Remind me: Where is Lord & Taylor?” No, it's driving up Amsterdam Avenue, hitting the granddaddy of all potholes, and realizing that I no longer know where all the major ones are and when to change lanes to avoid them. As has been said before, it's the little things that count. Though I'm not sure “little things” is applicable to the pothole I encountered on Columbus Circle.

Of course, my being made to feel like a tourist is not entirely the fault of receding memories. They did move the old Chinese restaurant around the corner from where it used to be on Columbus Avenue. How dare they? And speaking of restaurants, I didn't call ahead the night I was to take an editor to dinner at at Los Panchos, because I clearly remembered that they had never taken reservations. So we simply showed up…only to find that since I’d last been there, on a previous trip, they'd closed.

Cafe La Fortuna was still there. So was George, a former neighbor, seated right at the door. I didn't recognize him at first. He's gotten older. Much older. And it's safe to assume he's not the only one. If he looks that much older to me, how must I look to him?! Maybe I shouldn't have revisited my old haunts. Next time I get a yen for cannoli, I’ll get it at my local supermarket.

The former site of a corner bank is now a Gap. When did that happen? High finance replaced with jeans—does this say something about the state of the New York economy, or just about New York priorities?

Obviously crime is still a problem in New York. Two notes I saw in car windows gave me a sad laugh. The first note read: NO RADIO - NO TAPE RECORDER - DON'T BOTHER, and the second read: TOO LATE. RADIO ALREADY STOLEN.

I bought my Florida Lottery tickets in advance before going north, and then I bought New York State Lottery tickets while up there, enabling me to be unlucky in two states simultaneously.

Every afternoon in the hotel I opened a fresh tiny bar of soap, and every morning the hotel maid disposed of it and replaced it with several fresh, sanitarily wrapped new soaplets. The first night I removed the opened bar of soap from the soapdish by the sink and took it into the tub with me. No sense in wasting soap any worse than the hotel already was doing. But then I got to thinking: Finding only one unwrapped bar of soap, the one in the soapdish by the sink, and none in the tub, would the maid conclude I hadn't taken a bath? In fear of being thought lacking in personal hygeine, I quickly unwrapped another bar of soap.

The hotel where I stayed every year for about 10 years is very comfortable, conveniently located, neat and clean, and as reasonably priced as you're likely to find in New York. But despite all that, it still isn't home. And, more to the point, neither is New York City anymore.

I'm the emotional type, I admit it, and I used to cry a few tears when the plane got within sight of LaGuardia and the New York City skyline. But last trip, I shed my tears on arrival on the return flight. Ahh—Palm Beach International Airport. I'm home!