It’s hard to imagine that I grew up here in the Bronx.  I’m standing on Gun Hill Road, with slush from the passing cars on my trousers.  It’s still quite cold, but I am hoping that LaGuardia will be open today.  Yesterday they cancelled my flight.

Surveying the aftermath of the carnage here on Gun Hill Road, I probably shouldn’t be too hard on the airport. I’m looking at what appears to be a severely disabled garbage truck that has been plowed in just like so many cars I’ve seen this morning.  (I can’t imagine how I ever saw this as normal.)     

I wondered what happened to the driver. 

Did he call for another Sanitation Salvage truck to pick him up?  Did he call for a taxi?  Neither scenario seemed very likely given the intensity of last night’s storm.  Did he get out and walk up the street to the subway station? (I wonder if the New York City subway system fared better than LaGuardia Airport yesterday?  As I recall, a little snow never stopped the trains when I was growing up here… but if you had to walk through a snow storm from the train station to your destination at the other end… it always seemed like the coldest place on earth. There was something about coming up out of the heated lower levels of New York and into a biting, icy wind that simply destroyed a positive outlook.)  

I looked behind the abandoned truck, to see the tops of the Eastchester Projects about two blocks away.  Perhaps the driver had deliberately chosen this spot to lose his battle with the storm.  Perhaps this street was simply too attractive, knowing he had a friend in The Projects within walking distance who would gladly open his doors to him.  (More likely, the friend would gladly open her doors to him.  Given the prospect of driving for several hours through a cold and unforgiving winter storm… and conceding to the ferocity of the weather so that I could warm up in the arms of a willing female companion, I know what I would have done.) 

The more I looked at the stranded, broken vehicle… the more it began to resemble some great mortally wounded beast.  I envisioned coming back to Gun Hill Road in August to find the metal carcass of this once proud vehicle, still lying here alongside the street.  It would be covered with road filth and stripped bare by local scavengers.  Amazingly it would be up on huge blocks, with the tires long since stolen away.   The glass and mirrors and all of the chrome would be gone, along with all engine parts and what might have been left of the hydraulic lift system.  Inside, the seat cushions and radio would, of course, be used in someone’s apartment on the lower East Side.   

The side panel would now read “Anita Savage” where some clever graffiti artist had blocked out several letters on the side of the truck that previously read “Sanitation Salvage.”  (Had there ever actually been someone named Anita?  Was she purely someone’s imagination, or was there another story to be told on top of the stories strewn within the remnants of the once green goliath?)  In my day dream, I had already given the stricken truck the name, Anita Savage.  The late Anita Savage.

I stared at the truck for long minutes as the cold wind tried to infiltrate my coat.  Then a car drove by much faster than conditions warranted, waking me from my day dream.  

Then I took a picture and called the airport for the third time that morning.