Ziggy

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio

  Good morning!  Here's another New York story for you:
   I shouldered the guitar, and the backpack, and hoisted the broom guitar
up the grimy subway stairs, emerging into a cool Sunday afternoon, deliciously overcast in New York City.  Fishing a box of granola bars out of the pack, I settled on a Central Park bench and let the "the sounds of the city settle like dust" as Simon and Garfunkle would sing.  Not outputting my usual roar of blues on a broom guitar let me hear, watch, and observe.  The cyclists rolled by, horses trotted, pulling carriages of rich tourists, and the breeze personally congratulated everyone who had chosen to spend the afternoon outside.

  Ziggy sat down on the bench a little ways down.  His face matched his worker's hands, and he leaned forward with a slightly confused look when I said "Come here often?"  My rat-a-tat-tat English was just a bit too fast for him, so I slowed it down, learned his name, mentioned the David Bowie reference to his name (to no avail), and we begin to converse.  I thought he might have had enough, but then he told me he welcomed the opportunity to practice his English, so we kept talking, and he grew more animated and confident in his words.  He was born in Poland, and moved to Iran as a younger man to work for a chemical company.  He had a choice of learning Arabic or English, and he chose the latter.  Then the war came.  He eventually ended up in America, and he learned how to do auto body work.  He doesn't have any family here, black cars are harder to paint as the bondo has to be right, but white cars can be tricky with the color matching. He might get a new job in Jersey.  I offered him my last granola bar, thanked him for the chat, and wandered off, as the stories biked by on that Sunday afternoon.