You’re Not From Da’Hill

 Sometimes someone can just tell, “You’re not from here!”

Here in New York, if someone asks how to get to “Hew-stun” street, we know that person is a tourist, or just moved here. That downtown thoroughfare shares a name with Texas’ largest city. Or so it appears. Actually, it’s named for William Houstoun, a member of the Continental Congress and 1787 Constitutional Convention. He was the son-in-law of Nicholas Bayard III, who owned a farm (!) that covered much of what is now SoHo and the Lower East Side and has a street named for him. At some point, the second “u” was dropped from “Houstoun.” 

So how does a real New Yorker intone it? HOW-stun. Apparently, that’s how the family pronounced it.

So why am I giving you a pronunciation guide to a downtown street? Well, during a ride the other day, I got a similar lesson.  

The Bronx is full of short, but sometimes surprisingly steep, climbs. One winds up West Tremont Avenue just south and west of Bronx Community College. It was just enough to make me glad I “wimped out” and took one of my geared bikes instead of my fixed-gear.  I wasn’t out of breath but, for a moment, I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating when I saw this:

I grew up at 573 Dahill Road in Brooklyn until I was 12. What, I wondered, was this barbershop 35 kilometers (22 miles), and even more years, away doing with the name of my childhood stomping grounds?

Oh, and I hope not to sound racist—and I mean no disrespect to the skills of the clippers I saw the other day—in saying this, but nobody in my old milieu (where they didn’t use words like “milieu”) would ever have gone to such a place because, well, no such place would have existed there. Our barbers were middle-aged or older Italian men who cropped the locks of men like them and their sons. 

I brought my bike into the shop. Haircutters and patrons alike looked at me quizzically: I obviously wasn’t there for a “fade” or cornrow. “Can I help you?” a slender man with a trim beard queried.

“Mamí, man’s haircut here,” one patron admonished me.

“Yo lo sabe.” Señora Provine, my old profesora, surely would have been appalled. Then again, I’m not sure anybody in the Bronx speaks the way she or, for that matter, any of my English teachers, taught us. And those guys, I’m sure, knew “I’m not from here” even before I opened my mouth. I even could’ve understood if they didn’t believe that I’ve been living in the Bronx, albeit in a different neighborhood, for 2.5 years.

To explain why the sign on the shop caught my attention, I pulled up images of my childhood home and the street sign on my phone.  “¡Mira! Yo vivida allí. La Calle Dahill. 

I pronounced it Day-hill. Just as anyone in my old milieu, where they didn’t use words like “milieu,” would have said it.

A customer overheard. “This place. It’s Duh-hill.” 

I should have known. Duh-hill. Da’hill. I missed the apostrophe implied by the space in that sign.  Just like Da’Bronx, not The Bronx.

Just 5 kilometers (3 miles) from my apartment. But I definitely wasn’t from there. At least we had a good laugh.

“Just” A Ride To Randall’s Island

 

Near the end of my afternoon ride, I heard my name. I turned: someone I hadn’t seen in a while. I’d asked about him at a neighborhood diner, where he was a regular and I occasionally get take-out. Turns out, he’d had a series of medical issues that turned out to be less serious than he’d thought.

We’re the same age: only a few weeks separate us. He knew that I am a cyclist but, until today, he had never seen me on my bicycle. “Where are you coming from?” 

“Oh, not far. Just Randall’s Island.”

“Just” Randall’s Island?”

Depending on which route I take to and from, and where I ride on the island, I cover about 25 kilometers. That, to me, is “just getting some fresh air.” To him, however, it seemed like an excursion. Mind you, he joined the Navy out of high school and, after a couple of tours and an honorable discharge, kept his fitness with weight and marital arts training.

One of the great things about midlife, at least for me, is that I have lost any desire to impress anyone. The people I tried to impress, which I confused with gaining respect, either couldn’t be impressed, at least by me (usually for reasons that had little nothing to do with my or their actual accomplishments) or, I would realize, weren’t worth the effort. 

What I haven’t expected is something I experienced today with that man: I was surprised that he actually saw something I did as out-of-the-ordinary, let alone worthy of praise. He, and others I’ve met during the past couple of years, like “Sam” and “Carrie,” have life experiences very different from mine and have done things that, while they don’t confer status, are things I’m not sure I could have done.

I pedaled “only” to Randall’s Island today. But it turned out to be just the right ride.

Cycling In Color

 We haven’t reached peak foliage in this part of the world. Still, there are plenty of vibrant, vivid colors flickering through leaves under a smoldering autumn sun. (It’s kind of odd, isn’t it, to use words like “vivid” and “vibrant” to describe leaves that are dying.) I feel as if I’d witnessed the entire season in this tree on Randall’s Island:

Red, orange, yellow, maroon and still some green. For the past couple of days, I’ve been taking rides, not to go any place in particular or to accumulate miles, but to fill myself with those hues and crisp autumn air. I’m

I guess that’s a perk of midlife: I can get on my bike for sensory experiences. I don’t need to justify what I’m doing or impress anybody. If my bike and body feel right, my ride will reward me. As it did today, and has so many days before.