Something beautiful happened last night

I met Sol, a 93 year old native lower east sider.

Sol's a tiny little man and I saw him walk along the street as I sat in the window of some hip lower east side bar. He walked incredibly slowly, leaning on a stick, and I began to write, sitting in the window. I looked up and he had moved a few feet. I looked up again, another few feet. Then I got on a roll of something and didn't look up for a while. I didn't see him. Ran out into the street, crossed the road, to the corner. Looked in all directions. No sign of the old man. Turned to go back to the bar. There was the old man. Propped up against a tiny windowsill, sitting on the bones of his arse.

He looks up.
I say, hello, sir.
He says, do you like humour?
I say, yes I do, sir.
He says, I got a joke for you. Listen to this.
And I sit down.

We chatted for a while. He told me some of the best ba-boom jokes heard since the glory days of radio. Here's one of them.

I met a woman in the launderette.
She says "you married?"
I says "no"
She says "you a bachelor?"
I says "yeah"
She says, "how comes a you don't ever get married?"
I says, "Because I believe marriage is a big step. And I don't wanna break my ankle."

Ninety three, and he sat there balanced on a five inch windowsill on Ludlow st.

He asked me what my hobbies were, and then he told me, "I got hobbies. I like to paint". I ask him, "what do you paint, Sol?" He says, "miniatures. I got these business cards.." and he's rooting in his pocket for his wallet. Out come these business card sized paintings, or rather, drawings, and he shows me one. There's a house, and some trees, and two little birds sitting watching the house on a fence. It's a simple scene, a bucolic vision executed with simple lines, and entirely unlike anywhere he would ever have been likely to have lived or maybe even been.

I ask him, "have you ever been out of New York, Sol?"
He says, "yes, I went on a cruise once. Ten days. The Virgin Islands. I had my own room, the meals were nice, there was music. You pay more the higher you go up the ship, you know. I had a nice room".

He asks if I like the little drawing. I say I do. "And see, I made a gilt frame and put it around it, too. I made that." he says, indicating the brassy border around the business card edges. "I like to keep busy. I'm interested in ceramics. There's a flea market on Avenue A I go to sometimes and if it's cheap enough, I buy somethin there and fix it up". He started to name the major ceramics houses in Ireland and Britain. He looks back at the drawing of the birds, says, "and that's the house the birds are going to get married in". I don't understand. He says, "see that's the punchline". It's all punchlines and any opportunity to see the funny side, for Sol.

He's been living alone almost all of his life and the only family he's got left are a niece in Brooklyn who bothers him about what he's eating, and a nephew in Yonkers. He talks to them on the phone, meets them rarely. The last time he met his niece, he was giving her a birthday gift. She wouldn't let him make a phone call. "I gave her a nice gift, thirty five dollars it's a lot of money.. it was just a local call.. she is mean!"

He went to the local old folks' community centre and got driven away because he didn't want to sit listening to people complain about their aches and pains.

So he meets people from time to time in the way that I met him, walking along the street, saying hello, and having a chat. He says he has always had a funny way with women: he prefers it when the woman makes the first move, so to speak, and approaches him, then he can open up and tell some jokes and share some life experiences. "Always been that way, I don't know why".

He was in McDonalds the other day, and somebody came up to him and gave him two bills, a ten and a five, just to be nice. He doesn't rely on people giving him money though, he's okay. He worked in the post office for a long time and they had good benefits there. That was the best job he had.

Back in the thirties he used to be a button salesman. He drove wholesale buttons to garment factories in the LES. Back then, the LES was a Jewish neighbourhood, a garment district. It was full of warehouses and sewing factories, with Jewish women working their fingers to the bone. Sol is a New York city native, a lower east side Jewish man who has lived through most of the last century and is still telling jokes in this one. And they want to push him out of his nice three room apartment. And he ain't goin' nowheres.

A taxi pulled up outside this pub I had left, before I found myself spending the evening chatting with Sol. The people I had gone to the bar to meet were standing by the cab. "I'd like to go over to these people and say hello, Sol. I've really enjoyed chatting with you", I say to him. And he says to me, "When you're looking for a husband, make sure he's not a drinker or a gambler or running around with women. Pick a good man, make sure of it. Do you hear me? I say this to you as a father to a daughter. You understand?"

I say yes, Sol, I do.
And turn to cross the street.