Maria worked as a secretary in the Nurse Service Agency. We talked. It was such a pleasure to have some young adult companionship, especially female companionship. I wearied of Colin’s cloying cheeriness and ebullience.
Miss Harding and Mrs. Toby were not pleased with my flirting. Miss Harding was in her seventies. She was being paid as a secretary to do the work preciously done by a male with the title, Director, who had been paid accordingly. She had initially been hired as his secretary. When he left, the board took so long finding a replacement they discovered Miss Harding didn’t need a boss. So she became the de facto Director, without the title or the salary. She did not have a lot to say, but she made it clear she did not approve of my getting romantically involved with a Puerto Rican girl. Someone like me should stick to white girls.
Mrs. Toby’s concerns were more sophisticated. Maria was a moody, lonely woman with no particular educational or career goals. She just wanted a man in her life. A minister needed a different kind of woman in his life. I found her moodiness intriguing. Her neediness was attractive. I laughed Mrs. Toby’s concerns. After all Maria and I were just friends.
Maria invited me for a meal at her mother’s place in the Bronx. Her mother was very pleased to meet me. She spoke her slight English to me. I tried my meager Spanish on her. Then she disappeared into the back of the apartment leaving Maria and me to ourselves in the kitchen. I sat on the vinyl covered, cushion-topped chair while Maria set the Formica-topped table. The fried rice had bits of chicken in it. She apologized. I brushed off her concerns and ate it anyway, the first time in my life I knowingly ate meat.
When Mrs. Toby found out Maria had served me meat, she was indignant. Maria knew better. Whatever her own personal habits, she should not have fed a ministerial student meat! What was she thinking?
I didn’t know what she was thinking. I certainly suspected Maria was interested in more than mere friendship, but I was happy for her company. True, she was a bit older than I was, but not by much. I was just happy to have some young adult, especially female, companionship. It was good to escape the Center for an afternoon. But the next time she invited me to her place, I declined.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Chapter 23 Vegetarians
Colin was something of a health nut. We made our own yogurt using a culture he had obtained from friends. We grew our own sprouts–mostly alfalfa and mung beans–but occasionally we’d try lentils or some other vegetable Colin had heard about. He bought a Champion juicer and we experimented with all sorts of vegetable and fruit combinations. The juicing and yogurt making lasted for a few weeks respectively. The sprout-making we did off and on the whole time I lived with him.
I had grown up vegetarian, which in the sixties in Memphis, made me a real curiosity. Little purple people from Mars would have elicited less notice. Sometimes when people learned I was a vegetarian they would want to feel my arms to see if there was really anything substantial in them.
In tenth grade, our class took a trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas. Somewhere along the way we stopped by a huge sand dune to play. We ran up and down for several hours. That night around the campfire one of the men who had known our family for decades came over to me. “Well, Johnny, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. I didn’t think vegetarians could go all day like that. You were running up and down that dune like a mountain goat. I thought you had to have meat to build muscles like that.”
But vegetarianism in our home meant the standard American menu–something brown (meat), something white (potatoes) and something with color (vegetables). As vegetarians, the “brown” was fake meat instead of real meat–“steaks,” “nuggets” or patties made variously from wheat gluten, soy or peanuts. Mother also made “roasts,” combinations of grains, nuts and vegetables that were supposed to resemble meat loaf. The variety in our meals came from the vegetables–broccoli, asparagus, beets, okra, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, cabbage, “green English peas” (I hated peas), black eyed peas, crowder peas, string beans, eggplant, (another one I hated), turnip greens (yuk!), mustard greens, artichokes, purple hull beans, corn, yellow crook neck squash, spinach, carrots. Sometimes we had spaghetti and fake meat balls. My number one, all-time-favorite supper was macaroni and cheese, fried Choplets, and broccoli. (Choplets was the brand name a kind of gluten steaks.)
Following Colin around to vegetarian conferences and health fairs I was exposed to a whole new universe of vegetarianism. I met vegans and raw food enthusiasts. Of course, in New York City I experienced cuisine from cultures that had never built their meals on steak and potatoes.
I had grown up vegetarian, which in the sixties in Memphis, made me a real curiosity. Little purple people from Mars would have elicited less notice. Sometimes when people learned I was a vegetarian they would want to feel my arms to see if there was really anything substantial in them.
In tenth grade, our class took a trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas. Somewhere along the way we stopped by a huge sand dune to play. We ran up and down for several hours. That night around the campfire one of the men who had known our family for decades came over to me. “Well, Johnny, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. I didn’t think vegetarians could go all day like that. You were running up and down that dune like a mountain goat. I thought you had to have meat to build muscles like that.”
But vegetarianism in our home meant the standard American menu–something brown (meat), something white (potatoes) and something with color (vegetables). As vegetarians, the “brown” was fake meat instead of real meat–“steaks,” “nuggets” or patties made variously from wheat gluten, soy or peanuts. Mother also made “roasts,” combinations of grains, nuts and vegetables that were supposed to resemble meat loaf. The variety in our meals came from the vegetables–broccoli, asparagus, beets, okra, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, cabbage, “green English peas” (I hated peas), black eyed peas, crowder peas, string beans, eggplant, (another one I hated), turnip greens (yuk!), mustard greens, artichokes, purple hull beans, corn, yellow crook neck squash, spinach, carrots. Sometimes we had spaghetti and fake meat balls. My number one, all-time-favorite supper was macaroni and cheese, fried Choplets, and broccoli. (Choplets was the brand name a kind of gluten steaks.)
Following Colin around to vegetarian conferences and health fairs I was exposed to a whole new universe of vegetarianism. I met vegans and raw food enthusiasts. Of course, in New York City I experienced cuisine from cultures that had never built their meals on steak and potatoes.
Chapter 22 Colin, the Preacher
Occasionally, Colin preached. He was a fiery orator. His sermons were exegetical–that is he expounded at length on a particular Bible passage. His tone was Calvinist. He strongly emphasized the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man. He did not hesitate to make very explicit applications of his preaching to social and political life.
Once, he preached on Isaiah’s vision regarding Babylon. According to the prophet, even though Babylon was a cruel and wicked nation, it was God’s chosen agent to punish Israel for their idolatry and apostasy. In the same way, Colin argued, God was using the evil Soviet Empire to rein in the pride and arrogance of the United States. Sure the Soviets were guilty of all kinds of evil. But the United States had its own deeply rooted sins. And without the opposition of the Soviet Union, there would be no check on American egotism, greed and self-confidence. Colin did not dispute the idea that God had raised up America. God raised up every nation that came to power. But if God raised us up, he could take us down. And the check on American power provided by the Soviet Union was clearly an act of God.
For someone reared in a church environment that emphasized individual choice and character, this notion of God’s involvement with the political and social order was a new concept. For someone who had grown up in the South, the idea that God was somehow involved positively with the godless Russians was a startling novelty. But I could see that Colin had not invented the Bible passages he was expounding. It was there in black and white.
I’m sure it was easier for Colin to imagine God checking American pride since he was British. It may have helped that he was preaching to a congregation comprised largely of people who were originally from the Carribean where American arrogance had repeatedly demonstrated itself over the last hundred years. The congregation also included Filipinos who would have remembered the brutal atrocities committed by American soldiers in the Filipino war for independence in the early 1900s.
In another sermon, Colin offered a withering critique of homosexuality based on his exegesis of the First Chapter of Romans. According to Paul (and thus according to God and in reality), same sex desire arose from the deliberate inner suppression of what a person knew of God. It was not that these people were ignorant of God and his will. They knew God or at least they knew about God. They had encountered God through his self-revelation in the Bible or, at the very least, through the more ambiguous testimony of nature. But being in possession of this revelation–and understanding it–they squelched its witness. They “pressed it down,” Colin quoted Paul as saying. They refused to acknowledge what they knew. They suppressed the knowledge God had given them. So God gave them over to depraved passions. And the most depraved passion was the introversion of normal sexual desire, the lust of women for women and men for men.
I didn’t know any homosexuals personally. All I knew about it was what I had picked up from casual reading and conversation. Well, and there were a couple of guys who had moved in next door to my parents’ house in Memphis a couple of years previously. They were nice enough neighbors. They had fixed up the house and yard until their place was the most attractive on the block. What I had seen of the inside looking in through the front door looked pretty fancy. That didn’t seem bad. But I had heard homosexual men did really weird stuff. And Colin’s preaching was persuasive.
Once, he preached on Isaiah’s vision regarding Babylon. According to the prophet, even though Babylon was a cruel and wicked nation, it was God’s chosen agent to punish Israel for their idolatry and apostasy. In the same way, Colin argued, God was using the evil Soviet Empire to rein in the pride and arrogance of the United States. Sure the Soviets were guilty of all kinds of evil. But the United States had its own deeply rooted sins. And without the opposition of the Soviet Union, there would be no check on American egotism, greed and self-confidence. Colin did not dispute the idea that God had raised up America. God raised up every nation that came to power. But if God raised us up, he could take us down. And the check on American power provided by the Soviet Union was clearly an act of God.
For someone reared in a church environment that emphasized individual choice and character, this notion of God’s involvement with the political and social order was a new concept. For someone who had grown up in the South, the idea that God was somehow involved positively with the godless Russians was a startling novelty. But I could see that Colin had not invented the Bible passages he was expounding. It was there in black and white.
I’m sure it was easier for Colin to imagine God checking American pride since he was British. It may have helped that he was preaching to a congregation comprised largely of people who were originally from the Carribean where American arrogance had repeatedly demonstrated itself over the last hundred years. The congregation also included Filipinos who would have remembered the brutal atrocities committed by American soldiers in the Filipino war for independence in the early 1900s.
In another sermon, Colin offered a withering critique of homosexuality based on his exegesis of the First Chapter of Romans. According to Paul (and thus according to God and in reality), same sex desire arose from the deliberate inner suppression of what a person knew of God. It was not that these people were ignorant of God and his will. They knew God or at least they knew about God. They had encountered God through his self-revelation in the Bible or, at the very least, through the more ambiguous testimony of nature. But being in possession of this revelation–and understanding it–they squelched its witness. They “pressed it down,” Colin quoted Paul as saying. They refused to acknowledge what they knew. They suppressed the knowledge God had given them. So God gave them over to depraved passions. And the most depraved passion was the introversion of normal sexual desire, the lust of women for women and men for men.
I didn’t know any homosexuals personally. All I knew about it was what I had picked up from casual reading and conversation. Well, and there were a couple of guys who had moved in next door to my parents’ house in Memphis a couple of years previously. They were nice enough neighbors. They had fixed up the house and yard until their place was the most attractive on the block. What I had seen of the inside looking in through the front door looked pretty fancy. That didn’t seem bad. But I had heard homosexual men did really weird stuff. And Colin’s preaching was persuasive.
Chapter 21 The New York Center
In the morning I met the rest of the people who worked at the Center. Miss Harding, the Center administrator, had been the secretary for two previous administrators. After the second one left, Miss Harding ran the Center while the church spent months looking for a replacement. Finally, after a year, they gave up and left the operation of the Center to her. It saved them money, since she was a woman who worked for a secretary’s wages.
When Colin introduced me to Elder Grieve, the head of the Spanish radio and TV ministry, I responded to his greeting with “Mucho gusto.” He immediately launched into animated Spanish with a broad smile on his face.
I spread my hands apologetically. “Lo siento. No comprendo. Hablo muy poquito.”
He laughed and switched back to heavily-accented English.
In the offices of the Nurse’s Registry, I met June Croft. She had gone to nursing school with my aunt decades earlier. She was a curious combination of friendliness and some kind of class arrogance. Because of who I was, I was included. I had the distinct sense of being invited into a separate world, a privileged society quite distinct from the society of her office staff and employees.
The Registry did not place many nurses. Its specialty was home health aides, West Indian immigrants trained right there in the Center by Mrs. Croft and her staff. Mrs. Croft told me “her girls” were the most highly sought-after home health aides in the city. She credited this to her training program and their deep religious faith.
In the basement, I met the staff of the Adventist Book Store and Peter Vandulek and Igor Yanovich who did the maintenance. Peter spoke understandable English. Igor communicated mostly by smiling and nodding.
Mrs. Toby was the receptionist. A tiny, bird-like woman with laughing, bright eyes. She was from Arizona, had been working at the center for six years and loved it. She was working for Jesus. Every person who walked in the front door was an opportunity to share Jesus. She was also fiercely protective of God’s Center. No one got past the lobby without passing her scrutiny.
That evening Colin and I took the subway to Greenwich Village to see my brother. He and his friends had set up a coffee house in the basement of an old Adventist Church on 11th Street. The space occupied by the Catacombs had been a coalery seventy-five years earlier. The entrance was a steep, improvised stairway down the coal chute that opened onto the sidewalk. The floor was dirt. The ceiling was very low. There were tables set helter skelter with candles burning in jars. A bar provided juice and ersatz coffee for people who could afford it.
Arthur introduced me around–couples and individuals, all in long hair, jeans, long dresses, smiling, laid back. Arthur described a conversation he had had just the previous evening. A guy he had met earlier in the day in Washington Square Park dropped in. An agnostic. He and Arthur talked till two in the morning. By the time the visitor left his doubt was diminished; his openness to faith increased. Arthur expected him back this evening.
I was amazed. I couldn’t believe the space. Who would think you could operate a coffee house in the unfinished basement of a church? The fascination of talking every day with hippies about God, spiritual life, the Bible, faith! The romance of doing this together with a group of friends who had all renounced middle class mediocrity and stifling convention.
Since we lived and worked in the Center, it was natural that we attended the Crossroads Church which met in the auditorium there. What a let down! Everyone was pleasant and welcoming. Colin introduced me to three couples, people he had told me about earlier, who were committed to working with him in ministry. But where I had envisioned a street ministry that reached hippies and other young people, Crossroads Church was mostly middle-aged immigrants from the West Indies. The auditorium was dark and oppressive. The pastor was a white man in his fifties, British. When he became intense, his preaching sounded shrill and petulant.
After church that first Sabbath we were invited to Miss Harding’s apartment for lunch. Besides Colin and me, guests included Mrs. Toby and two older White couples who had helped to found the church twenty years earlier. They talked of the original vision behind the name of the church, a congregation at the Crossroads of the world that would communicate the special message of Adventism to thought leaders and influential people. It would be a high-status church that would impress high status people. Now, it was a church of Jamaican immigrants. All of the people around the table lamented the failure of the original dream. They resented the Jamaican take over of the church. If only the Jamaicans would understand that once they comprised a majority of the congregation, White people who visited would feel uncomfortable. It was fine to have some Black people in the congregation, but the immigrant membership grew so much faster than the White membership. Now, it was very difficult to draw White people into the congregation.
In my high school years, I had prided myself on my progressive views on race. I had looked down on my parents for their racism. (And they were far more respectful of Blacks than most other adults I knew in my home town.) Now I had to deal with my own racism. It was not difficult to like the individuals at Crossroads, but I resented having the ethos of my church determined by people stuck in the religious culture of 1950s Adventism–a religious culture taught them by missionaries from the United States, a culture I thought we had outgrown. I wondered how my emotions were colored by the fact that this alien culture belonged to Black people.
When Colin introduced me to Elder Grieve, the head of the Spanish radio and TV ministry, I responded to his greeting with “Mucho gusto.” He immediately launched into animated Spanish with a broad smile on his face.
I spread my hands apologetically. “Lo siento. No comprendo. Hablo muy poquito.”
He laughed and switched back to heavily-accented English.
In the offices of the Nurse’s Registry, I met June Croft. She had gone to nursing school with my aunt decades earlier. She was a curious combination of friendliness and some kind of class arrogance. Because of who I was, I was included. I had the distinct sense of being invited into a separate world, a privileged society quite distinct from the society of her office staff and employees.
The Registry did not place many nurses. Its specialty was home health aides, West Indian immigrants trained right there in the Center by Mrs. Croft and her staff. Mrs. Croft told me “her girls” were the most highly sought-after home health aides in the city. She credited this to her training program and their deep religious faith.
In the basement, I met the staff of the Adventist Book Store and Peter Vandulek and Igor Yanovich who did the maintenance. Peter spoke understandable English. Igor communicated mostly by smiling and nodding.
Mrs. Toby was the receptionist. A tiny, bird-like woman with laughing, bright eyes. She was from Arizona, had been working at the center for six years and loved it. She was working for Jesus. Every person who walked in the front door was an opportunity to share Jesus. She was also fiercely protective of God’s Center. No one got past the lobby without passing her scrutiny.
That evening Colin and I took the subway to Greenwich Village to see my brother. He and his friends had set up a coffee house in the basement of an old Adventist Church on 11th Street. The space occupied by the Catacombs had been a coalery seventy-five years earlier. The entrance was a steep, improvised stairway down the coal chute that opened onto the sidewalk. The floor was dirt. The ceiling was very low. There were tables set helter skelter with candles burning in jars. A bar provided juice and ersatz coffee for people who could afford it.
Arthur introduced me around–couples and individuals, all in long hair, jeans, long dresses, smiling, laid back. Arthur described a conversation he had had just the previous evening. A guy he had met earlier in the day in Washington Square Park dropped in. An agnostic. He and Arthur talked till two in the morning. By the time the visitor left his doubt was diminished; his openness to faith increased. Arthur expected him back this evening.
I was amazed. I couldn’t believe the space. Who would think you could operate a coffee house in the unfinished basement of a church? The fascination of talking every day with hippies about God, spiritual life, the Bible, faith! The romance of doing this together with a group of friends who had all renounced middle class mediocrity and stifling convention.
Since we lived and worked in the Center, it was natural that we attended the Crossroads Church which met in the auditorium there. What a let down! Everyone was pleasant and welcoming. Colin introduced me to three couples, people he had told me about earlier, who were committed to working with him in ministry. But where I had envisioned a street ministry that reached hippies and other young people, Crossroads Church was mostly middle-aged immigrants from the West Indies. The auditorium was dark and oppressive. The pastor was a white man in his fifties, British. When he became intense, his preaching sounded shrill and petulant.
After church that first Sabbath we were invited to Miss Harding’s apartment for lunch. Besides Colin and me, guests included Mrs. Toby and two older White couples who had helped to found the church twenty years earlier. They talked of the original vision behind the name of the church, a congregation at the Crossroads of the world that would communicate the special message of Adventism to thought leaders and influential people. It would be a high-status church that would impress high status people. Now, it was a church of Jamaican immigrants. All of the people around the table lamented the failure of the original dream. They resented the Jamaican take over of the church. If only the Jamaicans would understand that once they comprised a majority of the congregation, White people who visited would feel uncomfortable. It was fine to have some Black people in the congregation, but the immigrant membership grew so much faster than the White membership. Now, it was very difficult to draw White people into the congregation.
In my high school years, I had prided myself on my progressive views on race. I had looked down on my parents for their racism. (And they were far more respectful of Blacks than most other adults I knew in my home town.) Now I had to deal with my own racism. It was not difficult to like the individuals at Crossroads, but I resented having the ethos of my church determined by people stuck in the religious culture of 1950s Adventism–a religious culture taught them by missionaries from the United States, a culture I thought we had outgrown. I wondered how my emotions were colored by the fact that this alien culture belonged to Black people.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Chapter 20. Manhattan
New York City. I had seen pictures, of course. But New York was not a place that lived in my imagination. Up until I read about Arthur’s project in Greenwich Village, New York was just “the big city.” And in Adventist culture, “big city” was synonymous with crime, air pollution, crowds, muggers, prostitution, litter. Our prophet had advised people to “leave the cities.” Big city in Adventist parlance was “wicked place.”
Sure, New York had the Statue of Liberty, but the Statue wasn’t really part of the city. And there was Carnegie Hall and its famous concerts. But for an Adventist, the most important fact about Carnegie Hall was the church had rented it in the fifties a major series of evangelistic meetings. This was designed to give our work “stature” in the city. It showed we had something to say to people of culture and influence.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was simply not part of my awareness. And Adventists didn’t go to theaters so Broadway held no appeal. Greenwich Village had slipped into my consciousness, but somehow as a separate category from the city of skyscrapers and subways. So I landed at LaGuardia curious and excited but with no clear picture of the place I was coming to.
The first shock came at the airport. Colin was there to meet me at the gate. A bright-eyed, small, almost elfish, Britisher. He walked with a painful-looking limp caused by childhood polio. He shook my hand like with great vigor.
“Great to see you, ole chap. Welcome to New York.” We picked up my suitcases from baggage claim, then headed out to the curb. I figured we would pile into Colin’s car for the drive to the New York Center. But Colin explained he had been unable to borrow a car that evening. His friends had something going on and needed their car. He himself didn’t have a car because a car would just be a hassle living in Times Square.
I had never met an adult who didn’t have a car. Well, when I was a kid, our Black maid didn’t have her own car, but her husband did. And one or two of the Black men who did our lawn had been without cars. But an adult white male without a car?
The bus dropped us off at the Eastside Airline Terminal, a fancy name for a bus depot at 35th and First Avenue in Manhattan. We took the R subway from 34th up to 49th. Coming up the stairs out of the subway we were deep in the canyons of midtown three long blocks from Colin’s apartment. The side street was dark. We dodged other pedestrians and garbage cans. I shifted the aching weight of my suitcases from hand to hand. Taxis passed, making a peculiar thunk as they hit potholes and irregularities in the pavement. I stared up at the buildings that seemed to vanish overhead in the misty rain. The street wasn’t crowded, just populated. I imagined people passing were noticing my astonished wonder as I craned my neck staring up with wide-mouthed amazement at the towering buildings. At street level there were metal roll-up doors and old, worn massive stones that formed stoops and the foundations for loading docks. It was an alien world, full of magical enchantment.
We crossed Times Square, then walked the half block down 46th Street to the glass doors of the Center. There, we hauled my suitcases up a flight of stairs to the elevator, then rode to the sixth floor. I would be sharing a bed room with Calvin, a student from California.
“Here you are, Ole Boy. Calvin has the bed next to the door. This is your dresser here. Why don’t you unpack, then I’ll show you the building.”
After Colin left the room, I opened the window and stuck my head out. Three stories down was a roof. Ten or fifteen feet across from me were the windows of the rooms in the other wing of our building. Looking up I could see the giant red sign on top the twenty-eight-storey Hotel Edison behind us.
Inside the room itself, the building’s age was obvious. The paint on the molding around the doors and windows was dozens of layers thick. Crack patterns in the walls suggested plaster over lathe instead of sheet rock. The ceiling was nine feet high rather than the conventional eight. There was a small closet stuck out into the room in one corner, obviously added as a concession to more modern habits.
We toured the building. It had been built as a hotel and theater. The denomination purchased it in the fifties for use as an evangelistic center. The theater which took up the first two floors served as home to an Adventist congregation. The third floor was offices for various church organizations. The fourth floor housed two small congregations–a Ukranian group and a Hungarian congregation and included apartments for the families of two men who did the maintenance on the building. The top two floors were apartments and guest rooms. Colin showed me how to set the alarm. Told me what to do if the alarm went off and he wasn’t around. (Call Peter, the maintenance guy.)
Back in the apartment, Colin told me about my roommate. (Calvin was out of town visiting friends in Pennsylvania.) He talked about his work and his dream of a center that would draw young people from all across the country to study theology and engage in active ministry in the heart of the city. I was thrilled to be part of something so audacious and grand.
Sure, New York had the Statue of Liberty, but the Statue wasn’t really part of the city. And there was Carnegie Hall and its famous concerts. But for an Adventist, the most important fact about Carnegie Hall was the church had rented it in the fifties a major series of evangelistic meetings. This was designed to give our work “stature” in the city. It showed we had something to say to people of culture and influence.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was simply not part of my awareness. And Adventists didn’t go to theaters so Broadway held no appeal. Greenwich Village had slipped into my consciousness, but somehow as a separate category from the city of skyscrapers and subways. So I landed at LaGuardia curious and excited but with no clear picture of the place I was coming to.
The first shock came at the airport. Colin was there to meet me at the gate. A bright-eyed, small, almost elfish, Britisher. He walked with a painful-looking limp caused by childhood polio. He shook my hand like with great vigor.
“Great to see you, ole chap. Welcome to New York.” We picked up my suitcases from baggage claim, then headed out to the curb. I figured we would pile into Colin’s car for the drive to the New York Center. But Colin explained he had been unable to borrow a car that evening. His friends had something going on and needed their car. He himself didn’t have a car because a car would just be a hassle living in Times Square.
I had never met an adult who didn’t have a car. Well, when I was a kid, our Black maid didn’t have her own car, but her husband did. And one or two of the Black men who did our lawn had been without cars. But an adult white male without a car?
The bus dropped us off at the Eastside Airline Terminal, a fancy name for a bus depot at 35th and First Avenue in Manhattan. We took the R subway from 34th up to 49th. Coming up the stairs out of the subway we were deep in the canyons of midtown three long blocks from Colin’s apartment. The side street was dark. We dodged other pedestrians and garbage cans. I shifted the aching weight of my suitcases from hand to hand. Taxis passed, making a peculiar thunk as they hit potholes and irregularities in the pavement. I stared up at the buildings that seemed to vanish overhead in the misty rain. The street wasn’t crowded, just populated. I imagined people passing were noticing my astonished wonder as I craned my neck staring up with wide-mouthed amazement at the towering buildings. At street level there were metal roll-up doors and old, worn massive stones that formed stoops and the foundations for loading docks. It was an alien world, full of magical enchantment.
We crossed Times Square, then walked the half block down 46th Street to the glass doors of the Center. There, we hauled my suitcases up a flight of stairs to the elevator, then rode to the sixth floor. I would be sharing a bed room with Calvin, a student from California.
“Here you are, Ole Boy. Calvin has the bed next to the door. This is your dresser here. Why don’t you unpack, then I’ll show you the building.”
After Colin left the room, I opened the window and stuck my head out. Three stories down was a roof. Ten or fifteen feet across from me were the windows of the rooms in the other wing of our building. Looking up I could see the giant red sign on top the twenty-eight-storey Hotel Edison behind us.
Inside the room itself, the building’s age was obvious. The paint on the molding around the doors and windows was dozens of layers thick. Crack patterns in the walls suggested plaster over lathe instead of sheet rock. The ceiling was nine feet high rather than the conventional eight. There was a small closet stuck out into the room in one corner, obviously added as a concession to more modern habits.
We toured the building. It had been built as a hotel and theater. The denomination purchased it in the fifties for use as an evangelistic center. The theater which took up the first two floors served as home to an Adventist congregation. The third floor was offices for various church organizations. The fourth floor housed two small congregations–a Ukranian group and a Hungarian congregation and included apartments for the families of two men who did the maintenance on the building. The top two floors were apartments and guest rooms. Colin showed me how to set the alarm. Told me what to do if the alarm went off and he wasn’t around. (Call Peter, the maintenance guy.)
Back in the apartment, Colin told me about my roommate. (Calvin was out of town visiting friends in Pennsylvania.) He talked about his work and his dream of a center that would draw young people from all across the country to study theology and engage in active ministry in the heart of the city. I was thrilled to be part of something so audacious and grand.
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