METROPOLITAN DIARY
A happy sight at dusk, an introduction to a street-fair staple and more reader tales of New York City in this week’s Metropolitan Diary.
Neighbors
Dear Diary:
I was waiting for the elevator when I encountered my neighbor on her way to the trash room. Despite living two doors away from each other for four and a half years, we had only spoken once before.
“Can I bake you a cake?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I have four little ones. Anyone who feeds my kids is a friend of mine!”
A few weeks later, I knocked on her door and presented her with a glazed poppy seed almond cake.
“It’s warm!” she said as she cradled the foil-wrapped loaf delicately with both hands.
The next day, I heard a knock on my door. It was my neighbor.
“Thank you so much for the cake,” she said. “It was delicious! I’m so sorry but I don’t know how to bake. I’m terrible at that stuff, but we just picked up dinner from Shake Shack.”
She handed me a burger.
We have shared many takeout meals and homemade desserts since then.
— Belal Al-Rawi
Saturday Matinee
Dear Diary:
It was the mid-1960s, and I was an acting student at the High School of Performing Arts. I had an after-school job at Bond clothing store, and sometimes before going to work I would stop at a luncheonette nearby.
Once, when I was at the counter having toast and coffee, a somewhat scruffy-looking older man came in, sat on the stool next to mine and ordered coffee.
Feeling sorry for him, I asked if I could pay for his coffee. He smiled and thanked me. For the next little while, we talked, or, more accurately, he asked questions and I talked, thrilled to be telling someone about my plans for a future on Broadway.
When it was time to leave, he smiled kindly and asked whether I had seen “Man of La Mancha.”
When I said that I hadn’t, he said there would be a ticket waiting for me at the box office for the matinee that Saturday and that I should come backstage after the show.
Excited, and a bit puzzled, I left the diner figuring that he must work at the theater.
True to his word, there was a ticket in my name when I arrived at the box office on Saturday. And not in the upper balcony as I had expected, but a house seat close enough to the stage for me to recognize that scruffy older man as Robert Rounseville, who was playing the role of the Padre.
I did indeed go backstage after the show, where this gracious actor introduced me to the other cast members and gave me what, all these years later, is still one of my sweetest memories.
— Susan Hopkins
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/07/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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