|
In Moving Out, a 1960 article for Esquire,
John Cheever writes about his last walks through the
city before leaving for the suburbs.
After the party I walked around the city, beginning
my farewells. The customary tinder lights beat up from the
streets onto the low clouds overhead. On a sidewalk somewhere
in the Eighties I saw a Cuban going through the steps of a
rhumba, holding a baby in his arms. A dinner party in the
Sixties was breaking up and men and women were standing in
a lighted doorway calling good-by and good-night. In the Fifties
I saw a scavenger pushing an enormous English perambulatora
carriage for a princessfrom ash can to ash can. It was
part of the citys imprimatur. It was in the spring and
there was a heady, vernal fragrance from Central Park, for
in New York the advance of the seasons is not forgotten but
intensified. Autumn thunderstorms, leaf fires, the primeval
stillness that comes after a heavy snowfall and the randy
smells of April all seem magnified by the pavings of the greatest
city in the world.
Back to the main story
|