'We agreed to meet near her apartment on Second Avenue'
Slow start
Dear Diary:
I bought the book 'Lessons in Chemistry' and gave it to my daughter. A week later she called and we agreed to meet near her apartment on Second Avenue in the 1970s so she could give the book to me.
As she handed it over, she told me why she was returning it so quickly.
“I just couldn't get into it,” she said. “The beginning was too slow.”
Just then a woman came by and intervened.
“Wait,” she said. “It's very slow at first, but as you get into it, it gets better.”
— Ethel Bass
Flooded
Dear Diary:
It was 1961 and I was standing on the shoreline of Bergen Beach with my friend Ricky. We were two 13-year-old boys from Brooklyn, peering over the waves of Jamaica Bay looking for a canoe.
We were the fourth leg of a cross-bay relay race from the John Rueger Sea Explorer Base in Sheepshead Bay. The other teams had long ago handed over their canoes, which were heading for the finish.
Ricky and I waited, wondering where our team was. Then we saw no canoe, but two heads bobbing in the waves.
As they got closer we realized the canoe had become submerged. It was filled to the side rails with water, but still floating. Our teammates went ashore and together we tipped the canoe to dump the water out.
Ricky and I jumped in and paddled away furiously. We hadn't gone far when the water started filling the canoe again. There were holes in the bottom.
Soon a Sea Explorer escort boat pulled up next to us, and we were told to climb aboard. The other teams were at the base and the race was over. We were an hour, maybe an hour and a half behind everyone else.
As we rode back in the escort boat, I was furious and ready to give the organizers a piece of my mind. I never got the chance.
We arrived just as the awards ceremony was ending. Our team was called to the stage, where we were introduced as winners of the Good Sportsmanship Award: a coffee cup decorated with a sailboat and the words John Rueger Sea Explorer Base.
Sixty-two years later, I still have it
– Bob Berlan
Sheep pasture
Dear Diary:
One day
I saw him cutting a purple lilac
Straight from a bush
At Sheep Meadow
At the end of a spring rain,
In the 60s
When the grass was still green,
And maybe he worked there,
Or was just a tourist
Who pulled a small red vase
Out of his jacket,
So I asked him what it was for,
But he just smiled,
An old man who said nothing,
He must have known
That's the contrast
Of purple lilacs
And red glass
It sounded like music
In Central Park
– Kathryn Anne Sweeney-James
Bowling shirt
Dear Diary:
I was in graduate school in Manhattan and had a student job as a costume store manager in the basement of a building in Washington Square.
The same guard was at the reception every day and sometimes we had a chat. Finally, I explained that I worked in the costume shop, and he told me that he lived alone, took a long bus ride every morning, and liked to go bowling with his team on Tuesdays.
One day he came to the store in his bowling shirt with a decorative patch in his hand. He asked rather shyly if I could help him. He usually applied the band-aids, but they always came off when the glue got too old.
I told him I would like to help him. I sewed the new patch on, neatly taped the other one in place, and brought the shirt back to him at the end of the day. He thanked me profusely and I said it had been no problem.
A few weeks later, I came to work on a raw, cold day, as the wind blew cold rain through the streets. As usual, I said hello to my security guard friend.
A few hours later he came to my basement workshop with a cup of chili and a bowl of rice. They were both burning hot.
“You looked so cold this morning,” he said. “And it's one of my favorite lunches. I go to the Chinese restaurant next door especially for the rice.”
I left after that semester and never learned his name. But now it's also one of my favorite lunches.
— Claire Dawson
The monster
Dear Diary:
I visited New York City from France. I stupidly rented a car that was too big for my purposes.
One night I could only find one empty spot in Greenwich Village and I carefully placed this monster in it. Then I heard a woman's voice and turned around.
“Is it a new car,” she said, pointing to the fire hydrant where I had parked, “a new driver, or both?”
— François Lonchamp
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee