"Welcome to Manhattan, John Bull...would you like to see my borough?!?!?"

An English friend and I went on the ride of our lives in mid-October after being out dancing with friends in a few clubs. Having taken a cab back home to Brooklyn, we were shocked when our cab's American flag was removed (at a stoplight on the Brooklyn side of the Bridge) by someone in dark Chrysler mini-van (with Jersey plates) who had begun shouting at us.

The cabbie -- pissed at this point and in a state of road rage, I can only suspect -- shouts, "They took my American flag! Hey, give me my flag back!" and then, steam almost venting from his ears, turns the steering wheel of his cab all the way to the right toward the mini-van, GUNS IT and RAMS the other vehicle HARD!!! The mini-van driver in utter disbelief yells back at our cabbie. So, our cabbie DOES IT AGAIN!!! BOOM!! The whole cab is rocking to the screeching sound of crushed aluminum.

THEN, began the fun!!!!

The mini-van driver pulls away while screaming incoherently and the two vehicles commence what seems like a 10-minute long and winding ram-and-run chase which took us down various dark Brooklyn side streets. (We didn't have our seatbelts on so my friend and I were hunkered down low and braced against the seats and sides of the vehicle -- and I was doing the old Mrs. Hartig-thing of putting my hand across my buddy's chest to hold him back every time we were about to ram the mini-van again.) Every time the vehicle that we're chasing slows to take a turn, it gets another ram in the rear by our cab's front bumper. (I must admit. I was smiling like a 7 year-old boy, whose ultimate bumper-car ride had come true in the back seat of a New York City cab! As we sped down those streets I secretly hoped that the ride would not end soon.)

Finally, after what seemed like a wonderful eternity, the mini-van stops and there are a few seconds of silence. But it was the calm before the storm, because then out from the mini-van jumps these two body-builder types who run back at our vehicle with all malice intended in their eyes -- one of the two proceeds to punch in our cabbie's window, showering him and us with glass and cutting the cabbie's face up. Everyone, including the assailants, seemed to momentarily be in a state of shock, as though we were not certain what had just happened. So, feeling as though I were the only one ahold of his senses, I urge the cabbie calmly to pull away to safety, which, eventually, he does.

The cabbie, an Irishman (could you guess?), pulls out in front of the end of the street so that he blocks the mini-van's possibility to exit the street -- vigilant Irishman to the end! Problem was, we're now parked sideways with a vehicle that we must have already rammed ten or so times facing us head-on with a perfect opportunity to deal a full-force flanking assault. And who is right there to take the blow on that side? Not Sgt. Rock, our cabbie! No! It is my friend and I! So, I ask Sarge' to pull back a bit to a point that his vehicle (and, more importantly, its passengers) is safe and he can still keep an eye on things.

Then, after making sure that the cabbie is not in shock or bleeding profusely, I usher my friend out of the cab to one corner next to a fence and walk through the sputtering radiator steam of the cab over to the opposite corner to call "911", requesting police assistance and an ambulance for The Rock.

When the cops made it -- and they were there pretty quickly -- the assailants had been long gone leaving assorted plastic bumper pieces and lamp parts in their wake. Rock hadn't figured on a retreat of the enemy's forces. (But what Irishman ever does think that retreat is even an option?)

My friend, a History student at East London University and in the States for the first time (with a week more to go), also had his first trip to a borough (Brooklyn). After all of the rumors and stories he had heard about such places as Brooklyn and The Bronx, the nite could only have ended in one way.

So, to cement it in his mind for good, I walk over to the police -- who had been questioning me and laughing with me for the better part of the last half-hour -- and asked New York's Finest to give us a ride back to my place -- which, admirably, after considering our nite, they did. So, in the back of a NYPD vehicle we rode the rest of the way to my Garden Apartment in sleepy little Brooklyn. And there the Epic tale ended.

Or did it? =)

Stay tuned for Part II of "Welcome to Manhattan, John Bull....would you like to visit my borough?!?!?"


On An Old Clipping I Recently Dis-Covered (in a Collection of Verse by Kipling) Concerning the Pensions of World War (I) Veterans
by B. J. P. Hartig

Within an old dusty work of Rudyard Kipling's that I had lying about the apartment I found an equally aged newspaper clipping from the 1920s. I knew it was from the 'twenties without the benefit of a date attached because of the Studebaker Commander advertisement on its back and its continued reference to "The World War."

The browned aging article was lodged at page 17 of"Departmental Ditties: Barrack-Room Ballads and OtherVerses" and was titled "Why Pensions and Aid to Veterans Are Impossible: Representative Treadway Shows from the Record How Walsh and Harrison Prevented".

The article, which was composed mostly of quotes from Congressman A.T. Treadway of Massachusetts -- probably from an interview or press release from Treadway's offices in Washington -- went on to show how "the result (of the non-passage of a bill to pay war veterans) will be that all war pensioners will be deprived of their payments during the months of May and June."

"Congressman Luce of Massachusetts," Treadway continued, "a member of the Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, indicated exactly the result so far as the World War Veterans are concerned and called attention to the fact that as the result of the senatorial filibuster four thousand additional hospital beds for disabled veterans of the World War could not be provided."

Treadway lamented the possibility that "these four thousand pitiable victims of the World War...will go without comfort...will lack proper medical care...(and) whose lives may perchance be shortened" because of a bill that would have preempted such, had it been allowed to become law.

It must seem rather inconsequential in this day and age to think about something that happened so long ago -- particularly a piece of failed legislation that affected people whom we've never met or known and who have long since perished from this earth. I suppose to many it is. I must admit that there might be little reason that events and people of other generations long past and particular situations that affected people so long ago, should affect anyone here in the 21st century; people have their own problems in this day and age; they have their own worries to concerns themselves with.

The story, though, drew me in, and wrapping me in its nostalgia, caused me to think about the saying: "the more things change the more they stay the same." And I took a closer look at the piece of Kipling's verse on page 17 where the article was lodged and grew conscious then of the fact that this old dusty tome had at one time had an owner and that its owner had probably been a war veteran who had returned from a war he had not wished to be involved in, and, indeed, that that veteran had probably been affected by the very nature of the article that he had placed in the book, possibly as a book-mark.

As I read the first few lines, I felt a certain sense of Brevity of Time within myself; I was a person who would someday pass from this Earth to be forgotten in the days, months, years, decades and centuries to come.

And on page 17, the words of "The Story of Uriah", which reflected the hardship of a soldier who went to a war because he was told to go, not because he wanted to go, caused me to reflect on Treadway's words about soldiers who might lose their very lives due to the loss of a few months pay -- "whose lives may perchance be shortened":

"Jack Barrett went to Quetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw.
Jack Barrett died in Quetta
Ere the next month's pay he drew."

Maybe, I concluded, the owner of the book had at one time been a "World War Veteran", but I think now, that perhaps it was not that veteran who placed the article at this worn and dog-eared page of verse. I think now it was someone else -- this War Veteran's Widow.


An April Letter From Bulgaria
by B.J.P. Hartig

I was getting ready to teach one of my kindergarten classes to-day and as I walked over to the teaching area, carrying my teacher's chair, I noticed that my kids were stripping.

I wasn't sure what they were doing because sometimes they do strange things -- for my benefit. I watched and waited. As they got down to their Tom & Jerry and Mickey & Minnie Mouse kiddie underwear I saw that they were casually, as though this were the most natural thing in the world, sitting down, one by one, to wait for me, smiling patiently up at me from their little red plastic chairs. I shivered. After putting my chair down I went over to consult with the other teacher about this interesting latest quirk. Thoughts of some newly adopted new-age teaching methods flashed (no pun intended here) through my head.

I eventually discovered, to my amusement, that it WAS the most natural thing in the world -- for them. Since I had arrived later than usual to-day due to a schedule change, my kids were simply getting ready to take their after-lunch naps -- which they take (yep, you guessed it) in their underwear.

An excerpt from "Mother Titanic"
by B.J.P. Hartig

The stairs squeaked in reprimand at each step. The walls of the stairwell and second floor were pasted from the wainscoting to the high ceilings with thin flowery wallpaper which peeled in places too difficult to reach. The gas fixtures, blackened at their tips, sat like sentinels protruding in even spaces from the walls, guarding their individual patches of papered plaster.

As they reached the top, they entered an open area which curved around back to the left and was lined with doors with numbers on them. Rushton looked to his left through the balusters and spotted a door with a number 3 painted on it.

"That'll be it."

"Let's hope he's in, Rush."

"He should be, Tommy. He told us to meet 'im here today at this time."

Rushton approached the wooden door and knocked on it lightly as Tomas climbed the last step, noticing with an animated twitch of the nose, the strange acrid odor which floated about in the air.

"Do you smell that?" Tomas asked Rushton, placing his head at an angle so as to better gauge it. His brows lowered in a "V" toward his nose as his nose raised toward his brows into his face, the skin gathering between them in wrinkles. "That's a funny smell."

Rushton knocked again, looking further down the hall, as if he may have knocked on the wrong door.

Strains of "You'll Be Sorry When I'm Gone" came from behind a wall down the passageway, and Tomas wondered how difficult it must have been to get a piano up these stairs. He noticed the balustrade was crooked and leaned outward, rationalizing that the Steinway must have fallen over onto it and balanced itself perilously against the edge, like an overwrought heart ready to burst through so many ribs, as the moving men watched, mouths agape, not daring to move or breathe lest it break through and drop to the floor below.