Cynicism?... pshaw!
By James Parsons

This actually happened. In real life, I saw this today, not even in some dusty old news reel footage but on 11th St. in Brooklyn. Where does this come from?

OK, because I don’t have a job I am out doing errands on foot around 4 in the afternoon on a Monday. I’ve walked around the park and am heading down 11th St. just for the change of pace from 12th St or 14th or whichever one it is that I always seem to end up on when I’m walking to 7th Ave. Halfway down the block ahead I see that a sparkling red fire truck is being backed into its little house. A couple of firemen are in the street helping guide the driver past the parked station wagons and whatnot. They’re in their blue “Ladder Co. 222” t-shirts, and through the gap the driveway cuts between the trees the afternoon sun is shining up the gear and paint and chrome on the truck just as pretty as you please. It’s Septemper 9, so there’s a kneejerk urge to shake hands and pat backs and thank the living daylights out of these guys, ask ‘em how they’re doing if there’s anything they need, like a pie or a bushel of apples or a six pack or a shoeshine or something. The closest one, with his back to me, is wearing suspenders for heaven’s sakes.

The brownstones are looking all Cosby Show trim and neat, and I quickly mentally reconstruct the layout of the Huxtable home, trying to determine if the floor plan of the first floor could accomodate bedrooms and baths for all those kids upstairs. I interrupt myself as I’m getting closer and notice that the firefighters are all built like trucks. Would it be my patriotic duty to enlist in the FDNY or even as a cop? I don’t know if I even could, if I’d pass the physical requirements. I wonder what the physical requirements are? Fighting fires is Manual labor; you can’t outsmart the fire. Ya gotta tote them bales and haul them weights as it were -- all the gear and the hoses and the axe and what all else, and then with those tools you got to beat that bad boy down. And climbing up that ladder to do all that -- I breathe a little hard just walking upstairs to my apartment.

I’m right up on it now, the long ladder truck is slipping into its berth as smooth as Excalibur into Arthur’s scabbard. As it clears the view I can see into the next garage where Engine Co. 220 resides, the grille and lights on that machine just as shiny. There’s an empty beat, I take a step around Suspenders, and suddenly I’m in Pleasantville. Out of the garage for Engine 220 spill a half-dozen child extras from central casting. Boys, maybe 12 years old, in baggy denim shorts and sporty, oversized shirts, a rainbow coalition of rascally little scamps. “Hey, Joe!” says the first one out, waving at Suspenders and hopping over a hose with joie de vie. Third feller in line, a stout lad halfway between babyfat and junior varsity offensive linesman, has a long black broom handle which he swings casually over his shoulder. Right behind him, in a crew cut and gangles, a fine American youth is lightly tossing a half a rubber ball to himself. “Found it under the door!” he calls, “Who’s up?”

As God is my witness, they spread out in the street and start playing stickball.

In Brooklyn, in front of a row of immacualte brownstone homes, in front of a spit-shined pair of fire trucks and a crew of certfiable heroes named Joe in suspenders and rippling t-shirts, irrepressible youngsters are playing a game of stickball, two days before the anniversary of September 11 for pity’s sake. If Jackie Robinson had come out to sit on a stoop and offered to hit a home run for someone’s dying kid brother, I wouldn’t have felt any more hallucinatory.

So, this is your home neighborhood of expertise, right? Do I just put my cynicism in my pipe and smoke it now, or what?