Chapter 33 - Railroads and Cemeteries

According to Boy: Early on in our New York adventure, Evie’s brother Tim called us and asked if he and a few of his friends could come out and visit us. We were immediately excited at the prospect. The only problem was, we did not have any idea where we should take them. We were very familiar with the city, but our interests were not tourist-type interests. Evie and I could have a good time just knocking around the Village; we didn’t have any interest in taking sight-seeing trips. So, we decided to ask our landlords, the Robinsons.

Charlie Robinson Sr. suggested a number of places of interest to visitors. These included the old standbys such as the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, Wall Street, and Times Square. One of his most interesting suggestions was the Staten Island Ferry. "Hey, for a nickel you can take a really nice ride out to Staten Island. You can see the Statue of Liberty, and get a good view of the New York skyline."

The nickel part sounded good to me. I asked Charlie how much the Statue of Liberty tour cost, and he told me he didn’t know. He called his wife, and asked her. She said she didn’t know either. So I asked them how much it cost the last time they went. I was shocked to learn that neither of them had ever gone out to the island to see the Statue of Liberty.

"We’ve never seen the Statue, except from a distance," Charlie told me. "In fact, no one I know from the neighborhood has ever been out to the Statue."

"How about the Empire State Building?" I asked.

"Never."

"Times Square?"

"Yeah, we went there when we were dating."

That’s when I realized that no one who lived in that part of Queens ever left Queens. Maybe, while dating, some might venture out. But, once they married and settled down, they found everything they wanted and needed right in their little German neighborhood.

The neighborhood had hospitals, schools, grocery stores, movie theaters, banks and restaurants. What else could a person want? A person could be born in the local hospital, live his whole life without having to travel more than a few blocks, then die. And when he died, in Glendale, Queens, he could be buried in one of the many nearby cemeteries.

When I suggest that there were many cemeteries in the area, I mean there were many. For instance, within a casual "dog walk" from our apartment, there were at least the following final resting place choices: Mount Olivet, Lutheran (which is one of the places we liked to run), Linden Hill, Mount Lebanon, Mount Carmel, New Union Field, Mount Neboh, Evergreen, St. Johns, Mount Zion, Calvary, and Cypress Hills. All those cemeteries were within a dozen or so blocks.

If that list did not satisfy a person’s final wishes, there was always the cremation option.

After scrutinizing maps of the city, I came to the conclusion that it would make a lot of sense to bury people vertically. You could squeeze two or three times the number of bodies into the same real estate—and we all know that real estate in New York is at a premium.

I had another good idea. Why not bury the dead along the railroad tracks? There are, after all, railroad tracks running throughout New York City. And if you stop and think about it, railroad tracks are almost as permanent as cemeteries. It’s a simple fact, once you build a railroad, you leave it there. All you would have to do is plant the corpses (vertically, of course), in two or three rows, on each side of the railroad tracks. Noise would not be a concern. You would just have to schedule the funerals according to the train schedule, and those don’t change much either.

There would be other benefits, especially for commuters. All you would have to do to pay respects to dear Aunt Hilda would be to select a seat on her side of the train, and when you passed her stone you could remove your hat and observe a moment of silence.

Then, on Memorial Day, you could open the window, and toss a wreath. If you had a little imagination, and a lot of finesse, you could try for a ringer on her stone.

I love New York.