More Manhattan Moj0

Memory Lane seems to be a New York side street this week. I shared fond thoughts about Raquel Welch, the taxi cab, and the skinheads. Now I want to try to tell the story about the little dogs.

I took my son on his first trip to New York when he was 10 years old. Our base of operations was a friend’s empty apartment on 2^nd Avenue. We wandered every day from Kip’s Bay to the Battery without any kind of schedule, happy to discover whatever the streets had to offer.

As we walked down Lexington Avenue toward Grammercy Park, Brendan took my elbow to stop me in the middle of the block. He said confidentially, “We’re going to pass a lady pushing a big baby stroller. Take a good look.”

The stroller was one of those wide-body, balloon-tire jobs propelled by time-efficient trail joggers. It looked like a stroller on steroids. Its operator wasn’t exactly a bag lady, but she looked frazzled.

Inside the stroller I saw triplets in matching sweaters. Wet noses, long snouts, beady eyes. Dachshunds. Three of them. They looked at me with a wary curiosity that mirrored my own.

I hope I smiled then at their mom, if I can call her that. Hell, I hope I beamed. I should have asked her for their names. In such situations I never think of the right thing to say until a day later. That’s why I’m a writer.

We passed silently like ships in the night. At the end of the block I asked Brendan, “Did I really see what I think I saw?”

“You did,” he said. “You did.”

We zig-zagged around Grammercy Park and proceeded down Waverly Place toward lunch at Pete’s Tavern. As luck would have it, we got the table with the plaque where O Henry wrote his Christmas story, “The Gift of the Magi.” We speculated about the back stories and future scenarios for the scene we just saw.

I forget what we said and what we ate. All I remember are three sweaters, three snouts, and six beady eyes.

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