The Sightseers

The Sightseers

Ben Bova

                My heart almost went into fibrillation when i saw the browncloud off on the horizon that marked New York City. Dad smiled his wiser-than-thou smile as I pressed my nose against the plane’s windows in an effort to see more. By the time we got out of the stack over LaGuardia Airport and actually landed, my neck hurt.

                The city’s fantastic! People were crowding all over selling things, buying, hurrying across the streets,gawking. And the noise, the smells, all those old gasoline burning taxis rattling around and blasting horns. Not likeSylvan Dell, Michigan!

                “It’s vacation time,” Dad told me as we shouldered our way through the crowds along Broadway. “It’s always crowded during vacation time.”

                And the girls! They looked back at you, right straight at you, and smiled. They knew what it was all about and they liked it! You could tell, just the way they looked back at you. I guess they really weren’t any pretier than the girls at home, but they dressed . . . wow!

                “Dad, what’s a bedicab?”

                He thought it over for a minute as one of them, long and low, with the back window curtained, edged through tarffic right in front of the curb where we were standing.

                “You can probably figure it out for yourself,” he said uncomfortably. “They’re not very sanitary.”

                Okay, I’m just a kid from the north woods. It took me a couple of minutes. In fact, it wasn’t until we crossed the street in front of one—stopped for a red light—and I saw the girl’s picture set up on the windshield, that I relized what it was all about. Sure enough, there was a meter beside the driver.

                But that’s teh just one of the things about the city. There were old movie houses where we saw real murder films. Blood and beatings and low-cut blondes. I think Dad watched me more than the screen. He claims he thinks I’m old enough to be treated like a man, but he acts awfully scared about it.

                We had dinner in some really crummy place, down in a cellar under an old hotel. With live people taking our orders and bringing the food!

                “It’s sanitary,” Dad said, laughing even I hesitated about digging into it. “It’s all been inspected and approved. They didn’t put their feet in it.”

                Well, it didn’t hurt me. It was pretty good, I guess . . . too spicy, though.

                We stayed three days altogether. I managed to meet a couple of girls from Maryland at the Hotel where we stayed. They were okay, properly dressed and giggly and always whispering to each other. The New York girls were just out of my league, I guess. Dad was pretty careful about keeping me away from them . . . or them away from me. He made sure I was in the hotel room every night, right after dinner. There were plenty of really horrible old movies to watch on the closed circuit TV; I stayed up past midnight each night. Once I was just drifting off sleep when Dad came in and flopped on his bed with all his clothes on. By the time I woke up in the morning, though, he was in his pajamas and sound asleep.

                Finally we had to go. We rented a sanitary car and decontaminated ourselves on the way out to the airport. I didn’t like the lung-cleansing machine. You had to work a tube down one of your nostrils.

  “it’s just as important as brushing your teeth,” Dad said firmly.

                If i didn’t do it for myself, he was going to do for me.     

            “You wouldn’t want to bring billions of bacteriaand viruses back home, would you?” he asked.

                Our plane took off an hour and half late. The holiday traffic was heavy.

                “Dad, is New York open every years . . . just like it is now.

                He nodded. “Yes, all during the vacation months. A lot of public health doctors think it’s very risky to keep a city open for more than two weeks out of the year, but the tourist industry has fought to keep New York going all summer. They shut it down right after Labor Day.”

                As the plane circled the brown cloud that humped over the city, I made up my mind that I’d come back again next summer. Alone, maybe. That’d be greet!

                My last glimpse of the city wa the big sign painted across wwhat used to be the Bronx :

NEW YORK IS A SUMMER FESTIVAL OF FUN!