Dear Diary:
Two beat-up New York City subway tokens sit on my windowsill in western Colorado between a euro coin from a Mediterranean vacation and a tube of Blistex for chapped lips.
My old worn coins, roughly the size of a nickel, no longer have a purpose since MetroCards replaced tokens about 10 years ago. But I don’t consider them worthless. Far from it. They will not get me from Brooklyn, where I once lived, to Grand Central, which was once my daily destination when I worked as a back-order clerk on the ninth floor of Brooks Brothers.
These tokens will take me back, way back, to 1973. Nixon was still holed up in the White House, the Mets were playing in the World Series, and I was resh out of college ready to become the next Jimmy Breslin.
Life is full of surprises.
Oakland beat the Mets. Nixon and I both resigned, though for different reasons. I fell in love with a woman in Ohio, and she had no immediate plans to move to New York. We’ve been married for almost 40 years. I worked at newspapers in many states, though nobody ever confused me with Jimmy Breslin.
Still, I keep these subway tokens as a reminder that it’s a long way from Brooklyn to wherever. It’s been a good ride.
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