Widdershins
The gantry above the vehicle ramp advertises the short route to New Jersey. A dubious claim—leaving aside the question of why one would want to go to New Jersey—but it stirs a memory of an epic bike ride.
New York City
1962
It was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis and then of the Profumo affair, of Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler—the hot topic of conversation at the trucking company, largely because my fellow rate clerk happened to be an expatriate Brit.
Countdown
It begins with a joke. The Yiddish phrase ‘Ikh hob fargessen’—I forgot!—uttered in panic to an immigration official, turns the hapless Isaac Reznikoff into Ichabod Ferguson.