every day americana.

“This is my sister, back in the fifties–doesn’t she look just like Audrey Hepburn?” said the elderly man behind me at Kinkos in Columbus Circle.

I looked at the faded black and white photograph he held in his hand; and then I looked at his white handle bar mustache–the kind that employs wax to make it curl up at the ends–and I took in his blue eyes sparkling with love and pride for his sister.

And was head over heels enchanted.

“She does look like Audrey Hepburn,” I said, the two of us gazing at her together now. “What an absolute beauty.”

“I know–wasn’t she, though?” he agreed, still clutching the photo, now yellowed with age. “I have to hold onto this sister, you see–I lost two of them within three months of each other last year.”

And it never ceases to amaze me how we can casually mention death like that. I mean, we do it–we have to–it’s a part of our world here. But it feels terribly wrong, tempered only by eternity and the fact that we will see each other again. Dear God, there is hope in that. Let us all rest our tired hearts right there.

I told him how sorry I was to hear about his sisters, and then I listened to his story. Or at least some of it. I learned about the house that his two remaining sisters own in Brooklyn. How the Duane-Reade family (yes, Duane-Reade. Aka the Rite-aid of New York City) has offered to buy that house many times, but I get the feeling that, whether or not your last name is Duane-Reade or even Obama, these sisters are no respecters of persons when it comes to giving up their home, thankyouverymuch.

The mustachioed man leaned in, lowered his voice in such a way that alerts the listener that you are about to hear something VERY! EXCITING! and VERY! SECRET!, and said in a sort of stage whisper right into my ear, “They offered my sisters one million dollars!”

And, forgive me, but I thought about that scene in Austin Powers, when the outdated terrorist threatens to destroy the whole world–or something like that, I don’t remember the details–unless they give him ONE MILLION DOLLARS. And the negotiators start laughing because–well, because that just isn’t very much to ask for these days. And I wondered aloud if maybe the house in Brooklyn is worth more than that now, but the man just dismissed such a notion as wrong and insisted on helping me with my polka-dotted suitcase.

Just like a perfect gentleman.

“What is your name?” I finally asked him, right before I left Kinkos.

“William,” he said, extending his hand to me. I shook it and told him my name and didn’t walk away until I said, “Well William, you’re wonderful.”

Any man who loves his sisters and waxes his mustache and helps me with my suitcase and has sparkling blue eyes and shares his story generously is more than wonderful, actually.

And this.
This is the bits and pieces of Americana that I relish. That I stand raptly before, happy to be here and now. Happy to witness it.

Another part of Americana is when I got called an idiot on the subway today. Not so adorable, that part. I told the lady that wasn’t very nice, which didn’t seem to make her think I was any less of an idiot, but oh well. Americana is a lot of things–good and bad–but always, always interesting, at least.