A Royal Flush

Yesterday, I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge. It was cold and beautiful. On Gold Street, I recorded three stories in a studio. Nine of my published stories are being professionally engineered and will be available for you to listen on the Internet in late February through a link on this blog. Back in Manhattan, I headed for the Surrogate Courthouse on Chambers Street. On the first floor of this splendid building is the New York City Library and it's open to the public. They have every book you can imagine on the city, old maps and land books.

I love 31 Chambers Street, I worked there for the Comptroller's Office while I was in Hunter College in the mid 1970s. There was no security, me and a bunch of Pace accounting majors ran the building. Our job involved many visits to the spooky basement where every voucher for every check cut by the city was stored. My job was to reconcile vouchers to checks right after President Ford told the city to "Drop Dead," per the New York Daily News (He never used those words, no surprise). It was so dark in the basement we bumped into each other, and played wicked games of hide and seek.

When it was time to go the bathroom I used the Judges private chambers bathrooms on the sixth floor, quite easy to sneak in. Fixtures were brass, wood paneling to kill for, enough room in each stall for a card game. They were thrones. Each stall had a pull chain with the water box over the toilet bowl. Every time I yanked that chain it was a royal flush.

Going to the bathroom at home was never the same.