Word: station
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...explosion sounded like a belated, booming finale to the fireworks display at the Palace of Versailles. Thus, when an agitated watchman telephoned the local police station one night last week, the flics at first assumed that his report of a bomb blast was just another complaint by an angry Versailles resident about the racket over at the chateau. Earlier that evening, 50,000 people had trekked out to the magnificent 17th century palace-home of France's royal court until the revolution of 1789-for a fireworks festival celebrating the arrival of summer. While Roman candles and rockets cannonaded...
...mostly just broken windows and jaws, and really, who cares? because it happens every damn week. In South Jamaica every biological and social function is depressing--eating, breathing, getting up in the morning to look for a job, not finding it, rolling the drunks outside the railroad station...
...wino as he staggers his way into the local pawn shop to barter away his past for a pint of skull-buster. How the other half lives, and all that, and you turn back to your newspaper. But then you realize that it's not what's outside the station that is so depressing...
Looking around the station you see the usual weekend crowd, multiplied by a special Fourth of July factor, streaming across the platforms to the Manhattan-bound trains. It is a white, albeit well-tanned crowd: Jamaica Station is the terminal stop for all the trains coming in from the Hamptons and the other smoking-jacket resorts on Long Island, and affluence hangs heavy in the air on a holiday weekend. Young couples, sleek tans glistening under alligator shirts and Gucci shorts, tote their tennis rackets on top of their other luggage; a slightly older woman, just beginning to lose...
...trash it, fight off the little chill that runs up your spine as you sense the cold stares that follow your back across the lobby, and head out into the street to look for a cab. There are none, of course--South Jamaica, despite the presence of the railroad station, is not a smart place to cruise around looking for fares--so you prop yourself, more than a bit self-consciously, against the wall of the Rip-Off Bar and Grille, and wait...