Glimpses of a Vanishing NYC

DESERTED HOUSES

DESERTED HOUSES

On McDonald Road,

In Lovington, on the dusty

Road under the blue sky

There is an old wooden 

House that is deserted. 

There's nothing left of the roof,

Or the porch, or the doors. 

I traveled down that lonesome road

And saw another house, also deserted. 

And then another, set far back and 

Looking all broken and empty, too.

I suppose at some time people

Played here, and danced here

Maybe they even sang here

In these now empty rooms.

But, they are all gone now

And nothing is left to hear.

Not the songs they sang or 

Even the sound of the wind

That once was, once was

Right there and heard

On days long gone.

© Marjorie Levine 2010

Summer Memories... with Margaret Bourke-White

In August 1961, for three nights, I slept next to Margaret Bourke-White. I was right there, sleeping right next to her, in a small wooden cabin on Martha's Vineyard that actually could only fit two cots and a small dresser. She had the bed on the left side of that cabin next to the trees and I slept in the bed closer to the water on the other side. The cabin was just to the right of this photo, which I took that summer.

The cabin was in Vineyard Haven on the grounds of The School of Creative Arts, a summer camp owned and managed by Kathleen Hinni, who was the dance instructor at The Chapin School in NYC.

Miss Bourke-White had Parkinson's Disease and she chose to spend quiet summers at the camp on Martha's Vineyard with her friend, Miss Hinni. A few of her photos hung in the main house's living room.

I slept in Miss Bourke-White's cabin for three nights because I was sick. The procedure was for campers who fell ill to pack up and go to stay with Miss Bourke-White, on that cabin's designated "sick bed." So, for three nights, I lay there sick as a dog and rather unaware of her presence or the magnitude of the great accomplishments of the remarkable woman who slept next to me.

I have packed away in a corner of my mind my memories of the four summers I spent at that camp. So many days were filled with a longing to go home. The sounds of faraway foghorns made so many of us feel so lonely in sometimes crowded rooms. In some ways, it seems like this all happened yesterday but in other ways it was a lifetime ago.

SCENES FROM LONG AGO

SCENES FROM LONG AGO

On Beard Street,

In Kernersville, there are colorful 

Wall murals which give glimpses 

Into what was, long ago. 

I saw ladies in billowing long 

Red and white dresses standing 

With gentlemen wearing tall hats

All waiting at the railroad station 

For family arriving from faraway places.

Soon, they would all step into a horse 

Drawn carriage to take a short ride home.

Nobody looked up to see the child

Perched high above who on bleak days 

After school would climb to the flat roof

To wait for the trains to pass.

The trains were carrying weary passengers

Traveling to faraway places, and they were 

Also going home.

Many years later, she would remember 

The sound of the whistle as the trains 

Passed and she would speak of the sound 

As both sad and mournful,

Perhaps because it always 

Strangely reminded 

Her of all times past.

© Marjorie Levine 2010

THIS PENTIMENTO

THIS PENTIMENTO

Via Comandante Simone Guli, 

In Palermo, a street so old that 

High above wives still hang the wash 

Out over the black iron balcony gates

Next to green leaves and blue and white 

Striped curtains falling out of windows.

Once children stood there with mothers, 

Waiting for fathers to return home. 

The red flowers now sit high over sad 

Graffiti and a tobacco shop which 

Serves as some reminder not 

To obscure the view.

© Marjorie Levine 2010

WHAT REMAINS

WHAT REMAINS

On Merrimack Street,

In Lowell, there's a signpost 

That says: Detour.

Maybe he never should have 

Taken the other road,

Maybe he should have gone 

Back, gone the other way

And stayed on these roads.

The air at the end of these 

Roads becomes thick and 

Dense and there is fog.

Here, on lonely low bleak cloudy days 

There are quiet somber and grey 

Places: big old several storied houses 

With many front steps and slanted roofs

And lots of windows for eye prints. 

The houses on University Avenue 

From long ago are comforting with

Stubborn intoxicating attics whispering

Secrets obsessed with what 

Was, so returning to this street 

Reveals air like a strange pentimento.

Old stores with faded signs, corner

Places that never ever yielded or 

Changed and they don't bend, they

Remain strong, proud, and solid.

If he stayed for more than a short 

Time he always heard the swing 

Music; drizzling so he could remember.

At night, in dreams, when 

The way became lost, he

Soon realized he never left. 

All that time, all those years 

His eyes were just closed.

The boarded up windows gave 

Him reasons to cry. 

Now, this is the end of the seductive 

Road, his forever destination: 

A place that always surfaced

When sad dreams and deep 

Longing finally fell away...

And he had to return to this place

Like a traveler who finally uses his 

Return trip ticket. 

Home.

© Marjorie Levine 2010 

The Wall

I remember an air raid drill. I was walking with my mother on 20th Street in Brooklyn and we heard the loud siren.  My mother knew what to do. She guided me to a nearby wall, where we stood and waited for the drill to end. 

The wall where we stood is still there. It is still there. And in a corner of my mind I can still see my mother standing there next to me and waiting and not talking. I still can feel that wall against the left side of my little body through my brown tweed coat. Then it was over, and we walked to my Grandmother's house.

That wall, that wall....

PUNCHLINES

coming soon!

Porches

Somewhere in America on a summer evening at 7PM... somebody must be sitting on a front porch inhaling the sweet smells of a time long ago.

on a quiet porch
the stillness of the night air
calmly whispers hope

© Marjorie Levine July 22, 2019

Saturdays 10 to 1

In about 1963, I traveled from Long Island to NYC to take modern dance classes with Kathleen Hinni. She lived in a huge third floor studio apartment on 8th Avenue at about 56th Street and it was there that we danced for three hours every Saturday. We danced to Bloch's Concerto Grosso and to Dmitry Kabalevsky's The Comedians.

Then, at 1PM we went downstairs to have lunch. I ate with my friends, Amy and Roberta, at Whelan's which was on the corner of 57th Street. I can still hear the waitress calling to the cook: "BLT down, mayo, hold the lett." She had that job on point! There is a T.J.Maxx at that location now.

The building in which KT lived is still there. The door through which I entered that building so long ago is still there. And the entrance to the subway where I went to start the trip home is still there. It has a soft golden glow now. 

Windows

It was so so long ago.... but I still remember how I sat with my grandmother on a grey sofa on the other side of that large picture window at the bottom level of this house. 

My parents were away and to pass the time we invented "games." So... we sat for hours and had "contests." We each would choose a color, black or blue, and then sit staring out the window and record the colors of the cars that passed. Would there be more black cars or blue cars? Who would win this game?

Life was so simple back then. Cars were only black or blue. The ways to pass the hours were so plain. 

It was over 70 years ago that I sat inside that house and watched the cars passing on that street and time seemed to move so slowly. The sofa was grey, the sky was grey, and I think inside I felt sort of grey.... 

I walked through that door to have my tonsils removed, I went back inside that door after a day at the playground, and we all walked out that door on a last day when we got in our car to drive to Long Island and move into our brand new house. 

My shiny bright pink bedroom was waiting. And it was on the other side of a rear window that I had so many imaginative dreams. Life seemed filled with wonderful possibilities. 

Time passes so quickly as we age, life moves at a rapid speed... but somehow memories sort of make all time stand still.

© text, July 19, 2019 Marjorie Levine

The Growing Green

Helen Weaver met Jack Kerouac in November 1956, when at 7:00 on a Sunday morning he arrived with Allen Ginsberg at her apartment. Helen told me that from her window she had a view of The White Horse Tavern.

This is the building in which she lived and this is that building as it changed in recent years. What secrets are hiding behind all that growing green moss? And as time passes, what gets lost and remains forever forgotten?

Naked in April on Seventh