Since I told you about the soaking with a lukewarm 16oz. latte, and this in giant Penn Station with scores of people at little tables catching a snack. Anyway I was rescued by the janitor lady from Guatamala, who brought towels, cloths, and a sponge mop. She was considerate and yet she thought the whole thing funny–“It doesn’t happen often this much, but -eh- it can relieve the monotony and it is after all funny!” I had sullied myself by all indications. Kind of like the man in a top hat and monocle slipping on the banana skin. When I, the teller, can be the personal brunt of the mishap or story, people handle it better. Perhaps because I put them in the superior observant perspective and I humble. Perhaps naïve.
One act of freedom I can yarn about that I dared do—by being daring and unafraid—not to say compulsive and unthinking. Even mad—insanely craving–to be free today. On holiday, freedom is sought by getting in and out of fixes in one piece. Getting lost in something strange, as a huge foreign metropolitan city can be strange. It can be an irresponsible, impetuous, irrational and insane action or reaction, and when the experience is endured, there is a big lesson. So this is what happened:
On Granville Street in Vancouver B.C. on a drizzly Thursday, 20th February, 2025, the night Canada beat the U.S. in the North American ice hockey final, score 3-2 in sudden-death overtime, my friends, Steve and Kristi Nebel, and I were marching past the cannabis and vape shops, past the locked-door hotel entries and who knows what’s going on in the neon-art tattoo parlor, where the smoke is green and magenta. The streets were merry, the lounges were bellowing. Victory over the Yanks. We were happy for the Canadians to have something to cheer about. We stopped at the intersection for the light to change, but all the rush-hour traffic was stopped and commenced impatiently honking from both sides. The glare of headlights was high since it was dusk to dark.
What is it now? There, a man in a wheelchair was foot-shuffling across the crosswalk but so slowly he only made it half way. On impulse, I ran into the intersection and pushed the man across the street against the green light and up the yellow ramp to the street level .I asked him to lift his feet so we could run smoothly. He may have grunted or even said “Thanks yo’.” I don’t know, we were pressing on to look for a restaurant for our first foreign dinner. Japanese fare fit our moods. Nice place. Good food nicely served. All the good stuff. Our vacation was off to a good start.
Next morning we planned to go out early, first, for breakfast, then before boarding time, a ride down to the Vancouver Art Gallery for at least two hours, and after that we head for afternoon train embarkation by 4:00pm at the glorious cream plaster-ceiling cathedral of Vancouver’s VIA RAIL station. Its version of New York’s Grand Central or even Pennsylvania St. Station, no shabby decor.
We walked on the Granville end where the bums and drug addicts hang out and find dry places to sleep in their clothes. Laughter, coughing and skunk smoke effects typified the morning celebrants. Two blocks down was the Flamingo Cafe which I had known from my 2017 visit with Susan. Good Turkish coffee if you want it; lattes and Americanos if you so choose, and good, simple, fluffy, scrambled-egg breakfast sandwiches. Raining and lightly drizzling, the sidewalk wet through the night rains.
On the opposite side of the crossing street from the night before, the wheelchair man had fallen on his face, on his nose it would seem, having fallen forward or rolled out of his chair, which had rolled away from him. He folded scrunched as a balled-up figure, stopped on his face to pitted concrete. As with the night before, I hoped he was helpable and easily so. Unfortunately, I came by him, down on one knee to take a look at any injury. And before I knew it, I was taking firmly his arm under his armpit and shoulder, but he was too heavy to reach anywhere close to the chair. “Please bring the chair closer, Steve.” Steve did so and still I alone could not raise the heavy weight who was refusing to help me and himself. “Take his other arm, Steve, I can’t do this by myself.” We managed to get the man by the dry wall, in a threshold of a hotel, the glass door opened by a code. One man hit the buttons and the door opened for him. Before the door closed, the ailing bum caught the door with his free left hand, and I asked for help inside. “Hey, does anyone know this man? Does he live here?”
A head came through an opening in the plexiglass wall, and shouted to me, “He doesn’t live here, you’ve no business helping him; he just stays out there sometimes, but not in here. Take him out!” A couple came down the hotel stairs into the hall and saw me holding up the disabled bum: the man said, “You’ve got no use for him, he can’t be helped.” The woman: “Silly fool, trying to play social worker! You have no right!”
OK. So I let the man slump onto the dry pavement by the wall, pulled his chair close to him, and we left for our Turkish omelettes and coffee. I went freely. No regrets, no guilt, nothing real good accomplished, no suit did I fear, no pick-up and take-away to the luny bin. I acted in freedom, not struggling against anything but struggling in my mind for someone, to help, to wish to help and to work at it in the very moment of emergency. Was I right? “No!” said all the sane ones around me. Thought it didn’t matter a whit to me at the time, I must have looked absurdly naive. A naive free person. — David
Pertinent Voices 