from October 29, 2008
It was a dark and stormy night. But I slept through it so it isn’t really relevant to the story. I don’t know why Snoopy starts every story that way. It was, however, a dark and stormy ferry ride but I’ll get to that.
I had to go to the Tweed Courthouse to testify today. This is the building where the Department of Education (MOTTO: We’re no fun.) holds various meetings, cases, and arbitrations against teachers. After 6:00 they also roll out a bitchin’ buffet and wet bar but I was gone by noon.
The Tweed building is named after noted New York political figure Boss Hogg Tweed. Boss Tweed and his girlfriend, Tammany Hall, started their careers as bank robbers but soon laundered the cash in New York City municipal bonds and found themselves in the enviable position of owning a significant part of the city’s debt. In fact, when the bonds came due, Mayor William H. Wickham found it easier to simply give him control of the borough of Manhattan than it was to pay off the debt. So rich was boss Tweed that, according to legend, there is still almost $150,000,000 hidden in the courthouse. Late at night, Schools chancellor Joel Klein can often be seen roaming the halls by candlelight and tapping on walls for hidden panels.
The case I was there for was a mystery to me. My Principal knew why I was going. Many people in the school knew why I was going, and of course the litigants in the case knew why I was going but no one would tell me. Oh, they all wanted to tell me.. They’d look at me with a strange gleam in their eyes. Their mouths would tighten into taught lines. I could even see the words forming in their brains (a trick I learned after years of study in Tibet) but damn it, legally they couldn’t say a thing.
But I have no morals so I’ll tell you that the case is about a home instruction teacher who never did any home instruction and tried to pass of some forged work as the student’s work. You may be shocked to hear this, but his lawyer told him that the case was an easy acquittal and the teacher had nothing to worry about. Say what you want about lawyers, but this one knew he was going against the city so he may have a good grasp of things. This teacher could have showed up dripping with blood and carrying a severed head and he would still be acquitted. I was there to testify that a piece of classwork done in my class was in the actual student’s handwriting. I was asked tricky questions like “Is this the students handwriting?” and “Did you see him write it?” and “Are you sure this is his handwriting?” For the record, my answers were “yes,” “yes,” and “yes,”
However, I’m going to tell this story my way. Getting to the courthouse involved a lot of Island hopping. (Long to Staten to Manhattan, back to Staten, then Long.) Forgive me if I sound like a New Englander but I haven’t touched the mainland in over a year and I’m set in my small town island ways.
Getting to Manhattan from Brooklyn is easy if you aren’t a teacher. Teachers are bound by the rules set by the DOE way back during the Salem Teacher Trials. Back then, suspected teachers were tried in various torturous ways. If any townspeople were thought to be teachers, townsmen would tie them to a stake in the center of town and burn them. If they were not teachers, God would spare them from the fire. No one was spared. The Salem villagers had a perfect record of rooting out teachers. Today, the DOE cannot burn a teacher but they can send them to Manhattan from Brooklyn via Staten Island. I first had to report to school.
I left home at the beautiful hour of 6:45, but it was so dark that it may have been 3:00 in the morning. The clouds were dark and drizzle came down. I thought about wearing my trench coat (the black one without the lining that makes me feel like I’m wearing a cape) but it was also cold so I wore my raincoat with the lining. Dark, cold, and rainy. The day could only get better!
I got to work by 7:15 and put an assignment on the board. It is a quiz and they better do it. They also better not melt crayons on the radiator like they did last time because my room still stinks. When this whole farce was set up with the Principal, she made it clear that I was expected to return from Tweed. I expected to return too. What were they going to do, kill me? “You dunce,” she said. “I expect you to return here.” I was expected to return to work by noon so I could teach my last class.
The teacher center chief said to take my time in the city. My department AP said not to come back. My APO, with whom I traveled there, said not to worry, he covered me all day. Other teachers said to not come back. I saw a pigeon with one foot in the ferry terminal who told me not to go back, though I don’t speak bird so he might have said anything.
The ferry terminal was only one block from school. One very cold, windy, rainy block that seemed to go one for 2 blocks, which it was. I just exaggerated when I said it was only one block. The terminal is very nice, clean, and modern. It is a shock when you remember that the city runs it. It was also getting on my nerves in a very subliminal way. As I said, that day was pretty shitty, but the terminal pipped in, very low, strange background noise. At first I didn’t even notice it, but soon it just got to be too much. For some reason, maybe because it was meant to be soothing, the ferry terminal was playing bird sounds in the background. It was very unsoothing. I suppose on a nice day, with sun in sky, it would give you a nice sense of being outdoors. But on a day like this, it just made me scared that the rain had forced all the pigeons inside and every time I walked beneath a speaker and heard the chirps I was afraid that I’d get pooped on.
Then the ferry pulled in, under a dark cloud. Not a dark rain cloud, but one of its own making. With a chill, I looked up and saw the name on the hull, Andrew J. Barberi. From wikipedia:
On October 15th 2003, the Andrew J. Barberi was involved in fatal accident. Eleven people died, including one decapitation and 70 more were injured (including one man who lost his legs) as a result of the Barberi colliding with a pier on Staten Island.The Barberi was rebuilt in West Brighton, Staten Island and returned to service on July 1st, 2004.
The Department of Transportation didn’t even rename it. I was riding aboard the Death Ship! The waves were high, the wind was strong, and the rain was starting to really come down. I’m sure the Captain today was much better than the one who managed to crash into the pier on a nice sunny day. I’m sure it was the sun that got in his eyes and caused the crash.
At any rate, it was good to be asea. I’ve always loved the sea. I was born with seawater in my veins. After a series of painful transfusions the doctors declared me fit to be taken out of the incubator and join life on land. My family has a rich naval tradition and on that day I felt a part of it. As I inhaled the salty air and thought back on my family, one thing came to mind. “The sea was angry that day, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.”
Despite being cleaner, the ferry is really a lot like the subway. It is full of commuters, all scrambling for a seat. It sways back and forth. It has funny smells. Once you’re on you can’t get off until the next stop. The only real difference is that the ferry has a snack bar. Imagine if the subway had a snack bar, Would you eat a hotdog from an underground Morlock boiling franks in subway water? I think not.
The more I looked around the ferry the less comfortable I felt. Here and there were well armed police officers in bullet-proof vests. In the terminal I saw signs informing me that I was in a level 2 (orange) security environment. It all reminded me of The Dark Knight. Remember the part where The Joker put bombs on the ferries and left it up to the riders which one would blow up? That was what I was thinking about. That and how fast I could commandeer a life boat.
We docked at South Ferry and I went downstairs to get the 1 train. It was the most crowded subway platform I was ever on. It reminded me of nothing less than Great Adventure. When you get on a ride there you have to line up in front of the spot where the car will stop. This platform was roped off the same way and even had those extending platforms that jutted out to meet the train when it pulled in. These were developed after a train stopped approximately nineteen feet from the platform and two boy scouts and a blind woman fell into the gap.
The train pulled in and I was sure I was not going to get in. I didn’t see a speck of room. My AP was already in and I said “I don’t think I can get on” when two very large black men behind me pushed me on and I somehow compressed everyone ahead of me so there was not only room for me but for the two brick shithouses behind me. (That is how they do it in Japan. They have big guys push people in.) It was on the subway that I came face to face with a quaint piece of Americana- a smelly filthy bum in a wheelchair asleep in the middle of the car.
Thank God I only had to go two stops. I got off on Chambers Street and the rain had increased so I put on my hood. Bad move. Whatever bad stink was pervading lower Manhattan today welled up and collected in my hood. It stunk, like you’d expect it to stink in Baghdad on any average morning. I whipped off the hood and let my damp baseball hat protect me.
As I neared Center Street, a man, an ordinary man with a briefcase and suit, passed me going in the other direction, muttering to himself, “this is where I was standing when the Towers fell.” That is all too true and I have no comment.
Soon I got to the Tweed Courthouse, the aforementioned tribute to the political machine. (If you are interested, Political Machine would be a great band name.) It is a great example of classic architecture, covered in gold (paint, I guess) with ornate inlays and intricate designs, full of classic architecture outside, bland white drywall paneling inside. If you can think of a better metaphor for the Department of Education let me know.
It was here that the AP and I discovered that our DOE issued ID cards are not considered proper ID to get into the DOE. The security guard asked for our DOE ID cards and looked at us as if they came from Mars. He said that those aren’t the cards he was looking for. I waved my hands in a mystic manner (Mystic Manner would be a good name for an album) and said “these are the ID cards you are looking for.” He said “these are the ID cards I’m looking for.” I said “you can go about your business.” He said “you can go about your business.” I said “move along.” He said “move along.” In reality, he sent us back out into the rain to the general public entrance.
We got up to the proper floor where we were put in a private room to wait. After some small talk (my forte!) we turned on the TV and watched a chef with a Brooklyn accent make some kind of dish mainly out of butter on public access.
Soon I was called to testify and I passed a woman who was dressed in a business suit, wearing what I assume is proper DOE ID that looked just like mine, and who reeked of alcohol.
My conference room was occupied by the DOE rep, the arbitrator, the defendant, his lawyer, and a phone hookup to a service that would transcribe the proceedings. All of them looked normal, you wouldn’t give them a second glance, except the defendant. He may as well have had screw you tattooed on his forehead.
He was doing a bad DeNiro impression the whole time I was there. I had to stop looking at him or I’d burst out laughing. He wore a sharp, dark suit, slicked back hair, and a DeNiro sneer. The whole time I was in the room he had an exaggerated sneer, like DeNiro in Goodfellas just before he whacked Maury. He nodded his head the whole time, to nothing in particular. He sized up everyone who came into the room and it was all just silly looking. At one point in my testimony he tapped his lawyer on the arm and whispered something and they requested a one minute private conference. The went outside and when they came in, his lawyer had this follow up: “Are you sure that was the student’s work?”
After my testimony, and after I managed to keep from screaming “You can’t handle the truth!” I left. It was a little before 11:00.
I went back, through the monsoon, to the train and back to the ferry and back to S.I. I was wet and cold. I had a chill that wouldn’t leave me. The parts of me that the raincoat didn’t cover were all damp. I felt like shit. It was just noon and I said “fuck this I’m going home.” That was almost easier said than done. My car was an uphill walk. The hills around McKee are steep and I had to walk from the ferry to the hill to the car up an angle anywhere from 45 to 360 degrees. The whole time the wind was against me, I had rain in my face, and I was exhausted, so when I got to my car there was now way I’d ever walk past it to the school. I got in, turned on the heat, dried myself out (like a piece of jerky) and went home like everyone said I should. Will I hear about it tomorrow? I don’t care.
I’ll be back in Manhattan on Thursday for professional development. I plan to take the subway from home and back. Sure, I’ll miss the sea, and yes, I’ll miss the stink, but maybe I’ll get lucky and see the wheelchair bum again. Ah, memories.
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