Change of Pace?

I've been aware in the last weeks that something is missing. I'm going through the motions, trapped in the doldrums, becalmed in the horse latitudes of life and really don't have the time or the money, in either order, to remedy the situation.

And then I saw this image on line.  And I started thinking about a day-trip.

For a Jersey boy, hitting The City is never visiting Philadelphia, even if you're living in Cherry Hill-it's North, not to Alaska but the island of Manhattan. For decades, for me that was riding the Pennsylvania, then Penn-Central and now God only knows what it's called trains into Penn Station, or have they changed the name of that, too? 

I was a child when they moved Madison Square Garden on 49th Street and Eighth Avenue south to sit atop Penn Station. My dad, a New York sports fan when no one was a New York sports fan loved it since it meant he could see the Knicks and the Rangers upstairs and then go downstairs to take the train home. 

The big treat as a kid was watching the CHSAA, Catholic High School Athletic Association, basketball tournament every spring with teams from Power Memorial (Lew Alcindor before he became Kareem Abdul Jabber), LaSalle,  Archbishop Malloy and more-everyone spectacular.

Archbishop Malloy had changed its name and I only knew this because my father had gone to school there in its old days but he never told me that. I knew because we played them one year on their court and got slaughtered but before the game, wandering their hallways and examining their trophy cases I found awards in track and field, baseball and basketball and all the individual trophies had my father's name on them. I see them now as I saw them forty-five years ago. I never asked him about them. He never said a word.

A day trip now would be from Connecticut and Metro North to Grand Central. I would take the woman I will love for the rest of my life and we would do nothing in particular-okay, maybe the zoo (either Central Park or the Bronx) and maybe not. Perhaps Strawberry Fields in Central Park? 

We could just idle the day away heading into the city at mid morning and coming on after the lights came on. Just to feel the heartbeat of the city through the pavement, because we, too, can be the change we believe in.
-bill kenny