Old E Train

The chunky old E trains are relics of early 1980’s design. All silvery metal dulled from pollution and teenage scratchings, ribbed horizontally on the outside and dimly lit on the inside. They clunk along making that nostalgic sound you can’t get anymore, especially not on computerized trains like the 4/5/6 or the L, which make more that clean whizzing sound. The E train is rickety and dirty.

On the E on my way home Sunday afternoon I sat next to an older lady who promptly turned to me and asked if the train was headed to Kew Gardens. Indeed it was. And she went on to explain that it’s been 10 years since she’d taken the E. She used to take it more often—every day, twice a day. Her job was at the hospital doing intake paperwork for patients and she had to take the E to get into Manhattan from her home in Queens. Ten years ago the E ran to and from Kew Gardens, but she wasn’t sure it did anymore. And at 78, she wasn’t sure if she was even remembering correctly in the first place. Her confession came with a nervous laugh.

I assured her her memory was tip top and the clopping train would make the same stop it did last decade. Her smile and thanks were grandmotherly—full of love. And she exchanged the help I gave for bits of her long life. Disconncted memories. The move up to New York from her hometown of Mobile, Alabama at the age of 20. A friend of hers was traveling to Daytona that week. Spring break, I wondered. Another friend was to fly down too but her bones aren’t what they used to be. And we laughed at people who think New York is full of rudeness because we’d found kindness on a rolling Sunday train.