My amazing evening in Annapolis

The Column: 07.14.23

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Last week was a good one, especially Wednesday, a wild ride in a cab through mid-Manhattan, threading through backed-up traffic, cutting across lanes and into narrow corridors to the Moynihan Train Hall leaving no casualties behind, and I marched into the train station and made a historic decision: I was pulling a big suitcase and a small one and carrying a cup of coffee and looking around for the Departures board, but I saw a sign Red Cap and an arrow and I followed the arrow.

I’ve never done this before. I’m 80, close to 81. I’ve never before asked someone to carry my baggage —I’m a Democrat and the idea of baggage assistance reeks of privilege, not to mention unmanliness, but the cup of hot coffee was the persuader, the dread of spillage, the sympathetic looks from other passengers (“I hope I don’t get that way when I’m that old”), and I exchanged glances with a uniformed Red Cap with a badge that said “Cliff” and I let him pile my bags on a towering load on his dolly and he led me down to Track 10 and I felt like Cary Grant. It was very elegant. He loaded me aboard the Silver Star, I tipped him generously and he thanked me. It was a profound moment: a man of 80 accepting his own eightiness.

Accepting help: this is my new policy. I’ve been resisting assistance long enough, thinking it is offensive to my masculinity, but manhood is not really my concern. My young wife is an independent feminist and tries to conceal her affection by issuing curt suggestions in an authoritative tone, but when she sits in my lap, I can feel her heart rate increase dramatically. So I can now afford to walk down the train platform behind Cliff to preboard the Silver Star.

We pull out of the station and under the Hudson River and I sip my coffee as the woods of New Jersey go sweeping past and I wish my love were with me, but she doesn’t love trains, she feels cooped up in them.

I love trains. The Lakeshore Limited route up the Hudson, the City of New Orleans along the Mississippi, the Southwest’s winding run through the Rockies — this is a balm for the soul. A person can cure his anxieties about the future of our democracy, the banking system, the education of the young, by taking a good long look at American geography. It is a great country and don’t doubt it for a minute. A real-estate con man isn’t going to make it greater. Talk to Brits sometime about the corruption of the Tories and the sad state of schoolteachers in the U.K. — it makes me grateful that Thomas Keillor left Yorkshire back in 1774 and came to the New World. It was hard on him, he died soon after, but it’s been very generous to his descendants.

Meanwhile my new motto is “Accept assistance.” I accepted it that night in Annapolis — I did a stand-up show solo in a bar, something I’d not done previously, having worked churches and colleges and civic auditoriums for decades, staying out of barrooms in deference to my evangelical upbringing (even though Jesus patronized such places and drank with Republicans and sinners), but here I was on stage looking at people holding mixed drinks, exotic cocktails, and it was wonderful, the assistance provided by alcohol. I was overwhelmed by the warmth of the crowd thanks to imbibement and I got confused and did 90 minutes of stream-of-consciousness veering across lanes of jokes and through narrow corridors of reminiscence and the crowd, steadily lubricating themselves, loved the spontaneity of it, not knowing the panic behind it, and when in desperation I started a sing-along, they liked it even better. I’ve been a performer most of my life and worked hard at it and now I find out that chaos works better. Just keep changing the subject and never betray panic.

I’ve been a loner long enough, due to the pandemic. Dinner parties disappeared because you can’t eat while wearing a mask. We all got used to working at home in our pajamas and the camaraderie of the office went up in smoke. COVID was a ready excuse to stay home and watch a ball game on TV. But now, thanks to the liquidity of that evening in Annapolis, I’m ready to rejoin civil society. Shoulder to shoulder, folks. We’re all in this together. You need assistance, I’m here.

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