Forty years ago, on election night 1984, Personal Effects opened for John Cale at Scorgie’s. Ronald Reagan was running for his second term. Americans loved that guy, an old, former movie actor. John Cale behaved as if it was the end of the world. He was drinking a bottle of cognac that Scorgie provided, and he had a TV set on stage with him, tuned to live election night coverage. He bounded on stage, maniacally shouting “Four More Years, Four More Years, Four More Years.” It was sensational. Eight years ago, the night after Election Day, Margaret Explosion played the Little Theatre Café. Another old actor had won the presidency. This time it was like a morgue but I remember it being good musically.
On the A train to JFK we noticed a heavy set man with a big suitcase asking directions with a German accent. Not all the A trains go as far as Howard Beach where we were to pick up the Airtrain and we shared his concern. We decided to get off at the next stop and re-board a later A train. The German fellow did the same. He immediately struck up a conversation with a Jamaican woman and we listened in. She told him she too was going to Howard Beach so we followed her lead.
I took a closer look at the guys’ suitcase. It was one of those bulbous aluminum fortresses on wheels, maybe three feet high, with the Statue of Liberty and American flag printed on it. We told him we were going to JFK as well. He said he had come over on the Queen Mary and had spent a few days in Boston, Washington DC and New York City. He unfolded a paper map and showed us where his hotel was in lower Manhattan. And he traced the route he had walked in the city with his finger. Across town and up to 59th Street where he took the – and here he couldn’t come up with the word, he pinched his fingers together, looked up and moved his hand across the sky. “Tram,” we said in unison.
With delight he told us he had walked over to Trump Tower in midtown. We both groaned but he was beaming. We were impressed by the amount of walking he did and I wondered if he could have possibly walked more than we had. I looked down at his shoes and they were a worn pair of real walking shoes.
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