The Harrison Path....

Here is a little clip of a story that I've been working on for a bit....... “Ceasar is turning thirty! We have to go out and celebrate!” his wife Heather said. So we did. We were going to Madison’s in Hoboken. It’s a nice bar filled with “yuppies” all dressed in their khakis and polo’s. The bar has an old feel to it with thick wood panel flooring and a worn, sturdy bar with a brass railing. They have twenty beers, no one’s ever heard of, on tap and shots of Grappa that’s been fermenting with peaches in this huge glass container you would expect to find at Buckingham Palace but instead it’s behind this bar in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Since it was Ceasar’s birthday we decided to do open bar for two hours at $30 bucks a head. Now with open bar there is always one certainty, you’re going to get drunk! And not just “I had six martinis” drunk; I’m talking piss drunk. More like “I just had five Lemon Drops, three Irish Car Bombs and two Alabama Slammers in the matter of two hours” drunk. Knowing that we were going to be the latter of the fore mentioned possibilities we decided to do the responsible thing and take the Path Train in to Hoboken. No one wants to get a D.U.I. so why run the risk, right?
My sister Norah lives with her husband Sam, Ceasar’s brother, in Nutley which just so happens to be a very short distance from the Harrison Path Station. So we pile into our cars and head to the station. Of stations especially since it’s in the middle of the nastiest part of the Harrison ghetto. It’s an old, rusty, dilapidated platform with nothing adorning its walls, walkways of stairwells except for illegible graffiti. When you first arrive at the station, you reluctantly park your car in the parking lot that resembles a junkyard. You’re sure that every car that has ever parked there has been vandalized, broken into or stolen but you park your car anyway.
Then you carefully make your way up the steep stairwell avoiding all the cement stairs that are now starting to crumble from the years of passengers stomping up and down all day night. When you arrive at the top of the steps you are convinced that a bum is about to jump out from the blind spot, hold you at knife point and make off with your purse and jewelry but it never happens.
As we stand atop the platform waiting for our train to come we admire the view. Nothing like the dim lights of Harrison, the aggression of the cars on Route 280 and the sound of the bells of Sacred Heart Cathedral in the distance to really set mood of the Harrison Path Station. After about fifteen minutes we see the train barreling down the tracks, screeching toward us with all its might, like a bull with a rubber band around his nuts that was just let out of the gate and finally the comes to a halt.
“Train to Hoboken. All aboard,” the conductor bellows. We pile into the train with the rest of the passengers and bam! We’re in Hoboken in ten minutes. We exit the train and head straight to Madison’s to take advantage of the open bar.