The other day I was reviewing subway routes with my granddaughter Marisa, and noticed that, when I spoke of the IRT, she had no idea what I was talking about. New York’s remarkable urban transit system began as three private companies, which is why it’s still occasionally problematic to transfer from one line to another. By the time I got to the city they were all part of one municipally-owned system, but they were still designated IRT (for Interborough Rapid Transit), BMT (for Brooklyn Manhattan Transit) and IND (for, duh, Independent Subway System). I don’t know when, let alone why, the three monograms disappeared from subway signage, but they’ve been gone awhile.
But they live on—in this beautiful bit of art in the stairwell of the Grand Army Plaza station, and on YouTube, in this haunting folk ballad sung by my old friend Dave Van Ronk, and written back in 1957 by, um, me.
Notes: (1) The second guitarist, and the second vocal, is by the late Dick Rosmini. (2) The hashtag #TOFR is for This Old Fart Remembers. I suspect there’ll be further uses thereof.
As a dedicated subway rider most of my life I happily remember all three company names. Thanks for bringing the memory back to me!
Deb, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I guess you’re not quite young enough to be my granddaughter.
Fascinating, as always, LB.
That song, though. I don’t know whether to laugh or feel sad or just be amazed. All of the above. Thanks for sharing that.
Thanks, Jaye. It’s a modern classic, innit?
Ha, LB! Van Ronk & Rosmini, two of my favorite 60s folk musicians, had a connection with one of my favorite authors! Who woulda suspected? Of course death and dismemberment had to be involved somehow…
Dismemberment? No, Howard, bad idea to write a funny song about dismemberment. There’s nothing amusing about dismemberment. Decapitation, OTOH, is another story…DVR used to sing a ballad I’ve been unable to track down about a girl slain and topped by a cruel lover. The payoff line, when they finally locate the corpse, is “They found poor Pearlie’s body / But where in the hell is her head?” As Oscar Wilde said of the death of Little Nell, only a man with a heart of stone could hear that song without laughing.
There is a YouTube bit with a fellow singing this in his living room. Van Ronk does it better, obviously. It really is a fun song.