Bronx Detour

My first five years my family lived in the Bronx, where my father worked his entire career.   I remember nothing of living there, a little of visiting my paternal family through the 1950's, and staying a few weeks on school breaks with my maternal grandparents so that my mother could tend to my infant sister with less interference.  As I reached my teens, trips to NYC began near Yankee Stadium, as I mooched a ride from my father,  practices that continued through college.  Since then it has been a relic of my past, a drive through to get to New England on I-95 or into Westchester on the Major Deegan Expressway, which I think is numbered I-87.

On a long anticipated short holiday in Rhode Island recently, the route again took me over the George Washington Bridge through the Bronx into Westchester and Connecticut.  Traffic came to a virtual standstill along the Cross Bronx Expressway, far more severe than in any previous venture there.  As I passed under the overpasses, familiar names appeared on the signs.  Jerome Avenue, Nelson Avenue, Webster Avenue, Arthur Avenue, all places that my father used to travel nearly daily or when we visited relatives, typically with me riding shotgun.  I grumbled but endured the traffic which eased as we approached Coop City where another set of relatives settled, the northern limits of New York City and the onset of smooth sailing until another major tie-up in eastern Connecticut.  Pleasant few days in Newport visiting white elephant mansions, wineries and an historic synagogue's outside.  At least my synagogue lets me inside.  Then home.

By then I had gotten some experience with Google Maps to detour me through traffic standstills.  Mostly smooth sailing until that same spot on the Cross Bronx Expressway.  I decided to detour myself but getting from the left lane, which was not even free of semi's, to a right exit lane took two potential exits but I eventually succeeded.  It turned out to bring me to my old neighborhood with familiar street names but totally unfamiliar traffic patterns.  Thirty or more years must have elapsed since my father drove me there as his passenger and it was my first encounter as the driver.  The local streets moved about as well as the Expressway and basically directed me in a semi-circle to the next Expressway exit where I had little choice but to get back on. Yet for a few minutes, maybe more minutes than I liked, I got to see sidewalks with people on them, storefronts that now offered Halal Goat in place of Kosher Neck & Tenderloin, an electrical repair firm with small trucks that may still be owned and operated by direct descendants of the original Jewish owners, a deteriorating elevated transit line above me, the street where my mother. z"l, attended high school, some Hispanic owned businesses with Spanish signage, and less litter than had been imprinted in my mind from previous visits.  Superettes are now bodegas.  If you need clothing appropriate to a white collar job, that requires transfer to a different neighborhood. 

Being a suburbanite except for my university and residency years, we had no neighborhoods.  I had forgotten that they still exist.  Living there probably has its indignities but it has its identification as well.  And I got to immerse myself in a brief refresher.