Cool Buildings, Chester and New York, and My Transport Nightmare

I was in New York this last week to record the "Introduction" and "Acknowledgments" for the audiobook version of The Mayor. My publisher, St. Martin's, wisely would not let me within a hundred miles of recording the body of the book. Another guy, actor William DeMeritt, will perform it. He's really good.

Even so, it was a fun experience, thanks in no small part of Chloe and Ashley, the recording crew, whose job it was to make me sound like I knew what I was doing. The funny thing was that Ashley grew up in Ohio, as I did. She was raised in Mansfield, which I visited often, riding with my dad, the salesman, when he called on Westinghouse, which had a big appliance factory there.

At one point, I read the word "measure."

"Brian?" Chloe said into my headphones, interrupting me from her chair in the control booth. I stopped.

"MAYzhur?"

Ashley laughed. "Oh my god, I haven't heard that since I left Ohio! That's so Ohio."

You can take the boy out of south-central Ohio, but you can't, even after decades, take south-central Ohio out of the boy. This led to a somewhat lengthy discussion about fried bologna sandwiches and the rules surrounding fried bologna (always baLONEY, by the way) sandwiches, and whether Hellmann's mayonnaise could ever be a legal substitute for Miracle Whip.

There were other boyhood "isms," but I've embarrassed myself enough. What I really want to talk about is the building where all this took place. You can see the lobby in the photo at the top.

I wanted to be an architect when I was little. I am not an architect, and so have only an architect nerd knowledge of architecture – I have been known to take people into the lobby of the Chrysler building in New York and make them watch the elevator doors in the lobby open and close. If I ever fall into a big vat of money, I am going to recreate those doors in my house.

I've been in a lot of office buildings in my time. Many modern ones remind me of walking into a sterile, dehumanized landscape. They leave little doubt that their design purpose is to project power, money, domination. Of course, that's partly what the designers of the Chrysler building, and the Equitable Life building, and many other iconic buildings wanted to do back then, too. But they called upon the vernecular of humanist thought, and human values, and beauty. It has always seemed to me that they were trying to join profit making with human aspiration. Many modern buildings make me think that humans are serving the profit machine at the price of anything humane.

This is why I love the United States Post Office in Chester, Pennsylvania, where The Mayor is mostly set. There are a lot of run down buildings in Chester. Blight is a problem.

But the post office, built during the New Deal, is a testament. New Deal post office nerd-dom is a subset of my architecture nerd-dom. There are a lot of them around, and I still think they are some of America's best public buildings. They are at once grand, but welcoming. They communicate a democratic ideal, that our government works for us, and that each one of us, whatever our individual aspirations, private religious beliefs, or race, is a part of national community based not on real estate – land and borders – but on belief in the dignity of every human.

Which brings me to my transport nightmare. I was supposed to be in Chester this week. On Saturday, Chester signed a sister city agreement with Kukumbo, Ivory Coast. The Elephants, Ivory Coast's soccer team, is using Chester's Subaru Park, where the Philadelphia Union play, as the team's base camp this summer during the World Cup. There was the signing ceremony, a brief fashion show, music, and a game watch party.

At 6:15 in the morning, I stood on a subway platform waiting for a 6:24 train to Penn Station, where I was to catch an Amtrack train to Philadelphia, then a SEPTA train to Chester.

There was no 6:24 subway train. One came at about 6:40 which, once it arrived at Penn Station gave me exactly five minutes to catch my train to Philadelphia. I sprinted, arrived at the escalators down to the train platform with a minute to spare, asked an Amtrack employee if I was in the right place, was assured I was, was hustled onto a waiting train by more Amtrack employees, walked to a seat while passing Scotsmen in full kilt regalia (thought of my Scottish grandfather), wondered why they were going to Philadelphia since their team was playing in Boston, sat down, and was soon being whisked to...Boston.

On the advice of a sympathetic seatmate, I got out at New Rochelle. There, the conductor said I could catch another train south to Philly. In an hour and a half. I can now tell you a lot about the New Rochelle train station. I passed the time by imagining Rob Petrie, the character played by Dick Van Dyke, commuting home to New Rochelle and Laura picking him up in her capri pants.

This train was also late. I boarded it after my lovely sojourn in New Rochelle, and a nice codnuctor said he was aware of eight or so other people who were also in my position, and we'd be reticketed, but would have to get off this train back in New York, go to a ticket office, and find another train with seats available, because, well, World Cup. I gave up. I'd miss my friends in Chester. Instead I caught a subway train to return to where I was staying. The train did not stop at my stop for any discernable reason. I wound up walking for a long way.

The walk gave me a chance to think about the investments America chooses to make and the ones it doesn't and how we used to invest a lot into our country so the people could be served, and how, over the past several generations, we've invested a lot into profit-making so people could serve corporations.

It can be different.

P.S. The train I would have caught to return from Philadelphia ran four hours late.