It was just getting bright again. Another New York morning began. We had spent the night with an old man, with whom we had walked for hours through Manhattan to experience how birdsongs from two loudspeakers outside an old nursing home was supposed to make the residents think they were living in the countryside. Take a peek into my previous article.
After saying goodbye to the old man, we looked for the nearest metro station, so we could go home. We found it and went down the stairs to the platform. To the right was the ticket machine, then the small waist-high barrier that opens when the ticket is inserted into the slot provided. For whatever reason, there were five or six African-Americans standing bored in front of the barrier, young men, around our age.
We thought: “Well, so early in the morning and there’s no one at the tracks, we'll just save money and jump over that ridiculous small barrier.”
We stood at the tracks for a while, nothing happened, no display, no-one on the platform. No train. Maybe there's no metro this early? We got bored and decided to go back up to the street.
But there was nothing going on there either. After a short while we turned around and went back to the metro station. While we were leisurely going down the steps, four policemen passed us by and rushed onto the platform. They looked left and right, then turned around again and finally went back upstairs. Intuitively, we then joined the young men that were waiting there. A little later, an underground train rolled in, and then the young men jumped over the barrier and sat down in the underground train. We did the same. Sitting on the train, they slapped their thighs, laughing, and asked us how stupid we were to jump over the barrier so early. We then realised what we had already suspected. The police had been looking for us. Apparently, they had seen us on camera jumping over the barrier without putting a ticket in the slot.
Learning from the locals is always a good idea!!!
Eventually, it was time to say good bye to New York. The old man we met that night had a good idea. “Go to Woodstock and plant vegetables for the big revival festival. They need help and you can stay there for free. Go to the village called Bethel and search for Little Shit. He will help you and be your host.”
Next time you will find out if we met Little Shit.
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