Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
WARSTORIES
If it happens, it happens in the subway.
Lionel Bostick, Assistant Station Supervisor
Transit workers have a name for their greatest tales: war
stories. When they tell these stories, they find meanings
in their jobs that transcend civil service titles or job
descriptions, becoming the stars of their own comedies and tragedies
as they present their particular vision of the most profound
and universal human experiences, from birth to rescue to death.
Joe Caracciolo, a maintenance supervisor, was riding a train
to check on his men when the train unexpectedly stopped on
the Broad Channel Bridge. He and the motorman walked to
the last car to investigate the trouble. On the way they passed a
woman and two teenage girls. The woman said: "Oh my God,
somebody help me. Oh my God, somebody help me."
I just turned around, I said, "What's the problem?"
So one of the girls said, "She's having a baby."
That's when I said, "Oh my God!"
So I went over, to just talk to her, be nice to her,
make her feel all right. And what had happened was she
had just started getting severe pains. I had one of the
girls time the pains, the other girl wiping her forehead
with a handkerchief, and we started doing Lamaze
method. ... And after that--she wouldn't lay down,
she was just breathing with me. She started punching
me because the pains were getting severe.
I started joking around with her. I said, "What are
you hitting me for? I didn't have nothing to do with it.
Hit your husband--he's the one that did this to you. I
wasn't even there to watch."
So after a while I said, "Come on, lay down, get
comfortable." She wouldn't lay down, she wouldn't do
any of this.
All of a sudden she said, "It's time. The baby's
coming. I got to lay down." It's the truth.
So she lays down on the seat ... pulled her pants
down, the bag came out, the baby's head came out, and
the baby flew out. It landed right in my shirt. That's
how the baby was born.
Then I lay the baby on top of the mother, make a
little joke, "Congratulations, you've got a beautiful
baby boy." I says, "Name him Charles from the C
Train."
She says, "No, what's your name?"
I says, "Joe."
She says, "My son's name is Joseph."
And we couldn't get the baby to cry. So after it took
a while for the baby to cry, then it started turning blue
on us, and I turned around to the conductor, I said, "I
don't care how you do it, or what you do, you've got
to get this train to the station, the baby's here. And I
want police and paramedics there."
And they uncoupled another car, they pushed us into
the station, they had the cops and the paramedics
waiting for us when the doors opened up, they came in
and they cut the cord, and they started breathing down
the baby's mouth with a tube and everything turned out
all right. Everybody worked. It was unbelievable. It was
like little Joe's lucky day--everybody did something to
bring that baby into the world.
I just happened to be there at the right place at the
right time. But as far as I'm concerned, everybody--the
two teenage girls, there was a Jamaican woman that
came out of nowhere, there was the cops, the paramedics,
the motorman who got the train going back in, the
conductor--everybody just worked together. It was
really nice. But when that baby was born and he started
crying and everybody started hugging and kissing
everybody--it was the greatest feeling in the world. I
mean after it was all over, it was, like, unbelievable. For
ten, fifteen minutes, I was on the train with the United
Nations! And everybody's friend! And everybody was
hugging and kissing everybody, it was unbelievable.
Then it was all over, and I wanted to kidnap the baby
back to New York.
Then I called up 116th Street, I called up the office
to tell them where I was and what had happened, and
nobody believed me, and I said, "I'm serious!" and they
finally started believing me. Then I turned around, and
the baby was gone, the mother was gone, they took
them all to the hospital. ... There were so many people
that helped out, but according to the mother and the
husband, I was the next best thing since sliced bread ...
To this day, she says I was the only one that made her
comfortable."
Roland E. Shelton Sr. was working a midnight tour as a
train master at Grand Central when he received a call that a
man was down underneath a train at 137th Street on the Number
1 Line. He went to 137th Street, and was asked to go to the
man's house and tell his kin, including his eighty-seven-year-old
mother, that he was dead. It was two in the morning. He
went with another man and a police officer.
And that was the hardest thing that I have ever
done in my life, and it's the worst feeling that I have
ever had, because you're there, you're helpless, you
can't do anything. The family is crying. You're trying
to help them out as much as you can. There's nothing
you can do. That was one of the things as a train master
that I hope that I'd never do again. In life, not as a train
master, but in life at all. I found that very hard.
If it is hard to explain a death to a stranger, it can also be hard
for a transit worker to explain death to the people closest to
him. Like police officers and fire fighters, transit workers sometimes
learn to bury their deepest emotions to spare loved ones
from stories of death and maiming on the job. Director of
Emergency Response Jeffrey Van Clief once took his wife to a
doctor's appointment at Eighty-sixth Street and Park Avenue.
On the way home, a young woman jumped in front of the
train. Her legs were cut off. Van Clief told his wife to go up to
the mezzanine of the station while he tended to business.
I had to check the train, help take her out. Unfortunately
she passed away on the way to the hospital.
Made sure no damage was done to the train. ...
Sometimes a body can do a lot of damage to a train. It
will rip your pipes out, rip your wires down. ...
I got everybody's name, I got her age, where she
lived at, the cop on the scene, the motorman, the
conductor, emergency medical people, what hospital
she was going to. It's a big process you're going
through. Then you check the car and make sure that
everything is okay ... and then you call all this in. Like
I say, I was on my way home when this thing happened.
I went upstairs, told my wife to give me a
towelette, cleaned my hands up.
I went home and I sit down and I eat. And my wife
is staring at me. I say, "What's the matter?"
She says, "How can you sit there and eat?"
I say, "Why, what's the matter?"
She says, "I don't know if you realize what
happened."
"What do you mean? What happened?"
She says, "A woman got run over, got her legs taken
off and you're under the car with her and helping
everybody down in the car and you come home and
you eat a big meal like that."
She says, "I think about it and I can't even eat."
I say, "I'm hungry."
She says, "Well, is this what you feel?"
I say, "No, this is part of the job. The first time that
this happened if you can remember it was a man that
got electrocuted and how I felt when I came home. I
felt terrible when I came home."
Second time I felt a little bit bad but not as worse as
the first time. As it went on I got used to it. If you're in
the scene, if you're in the area, then it becomes an
everyday job. It's part of this job. If you can't take this
type of work, leave it.
The only one that affected me was I had a little boy
about twelve years old fall between the cars and take his
leg off. That bothered me because I felt that that could
have been one of my grandchildren.
Out of attempts to make sense of death can come the knowledge
that makes for safety. Paul Prinzivalli, an instructor in safety
and general track duties, uses the story of an accident to remind
his workers of the need for constant caution around the trains.
Once, he relates, he saw a man rushing for one train bump a
man into the path of another train.
As he nudged him, the train came, he nudged him
far enough for the side of the train to hit his head.
Boom! It hit his head, he cracked it, blood splattered.
He [the man who nudged him] made the local just
before the doors closed up, he worked his way in, it
pulled out. He didn't even realize he'd killed a man.
That man was a DOA. On the platform dead.
Some of the most memorable stories that transit workers tell
are about lives saved--a reminder of the interdependence of
total strangers that makes city life civilized. Joseph Tesoriero, a
maintenance supervisor, recalls that once he was replacing
wooden flooring at a station in Brownsville, Brooklyn, near
the end of the New Lots Avenue line, when a train pulled in.
At that point on the line, the last car is usually empty, but there
were two passengers in the last car: a seated woman and a man
standing in front of her. A mugging was in progress.
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted us, and
she started yelling for help. Just as that happened, the
doors of the train were closing. We tried to hold the
doors--you know, you can't pull the doors back, you
can only pull them back so far--and I'm screaming to
the conductor, "Open the doors!"
So this fella that was in the car, he didn't know who
we were, whether we were the police, so he just stood,
he froze. Because she already had her pocketbook out,
and you could see her wallet was open. She was reaching
in when she saw us. So she got up, we [got in and]
finally grabbed him. We squeezed her out between the
doors. And this poor woman, she was scared to death.
She was hugging the three of us, like we knew her for
life. She was petrified. She told us she was a social
worker and she was going to visit somebody. We
brought her downstairs, we hailed a cab, and we sent
her back to Manhattan.
Paul Prinzivalli tells of a rescue, performed one night after
work, when he convinced a troubled woman that she was not
alone in the world.
I left my office at twelve o'clock midnight. I was
on the four-to-twelve shift that time. And I always ride
the head car going toward South Ferry because I live in
Staten Island. So I'm right in the head car, and we're
coming into Franklin Street and I see a shadow leaving
the platform limits, like looking out.
Well, sometimes people do that, and sometimes
jumpers do that, you know? All of a sudden, we're only
maybe about a hundred feet from the station platform,
she just jumps right out in front of us. A woman
jumped right in front of us--and I'm there, because I
could see it point blank--[the operator] dumped the
train [applied the emergency brake]. ... He was very
fast, thank God.
And I'm listening, and I don't hear no noise. See, if
the train goes over any objects that are sitting on the
rail, you'll hear a little "thp"--like a thump, the vibrations
come though--I don't hear nothing, I says,
"Thank God."
So now we're in the station about over three and a
half car lengths, so I knocked at the [operator's] door
real heavy. ... So I identify myself: "Look, I'm a
foreman, stay calm, secure your train." Meaning that
he's got to put the hand brakes on. I know he's going
to be there a while. I ran over and pulled the emergency
alarm. When I did that, I got on the phone,
called up and said, "This is Prinzivalli on my way home.
We have a person under the train. I don't know if she's
living, I don't know if she's dead. Get emergency here
right away. And I'll take care of matters until they
come." I told the Command Center that. ...
So, I asked the train operator again, "Control yourself."
The train is secured--and I told the Command
Center, "Keep the power off on the southbound local
and southbound express," because you see when they
jump, they keep crawling, if they don't get killed, and
touch the third rail. ...
So I ended up crawling--in my dress clothes, I'll
never forget it--I banged my head, I've got blood
coming down, crawling underneath, and finally I see
this lady, well-dressed, laying in the trough. Now the
trough is a drainage area of a type-2 track. She's laying
in the middle of the trough, her eyes closed.
So I went, "Madam, open your eyes please."
She opened her eyes. ...
I says, "Madam, do you understand me? Nod your
head."
What I was doing there is to find out if there's any
spinal problems. So she nodded her head. Thank God,
that means no damage to the neck.
I says, "Can you move your right hand?" She moved it.
"Move your left hand." Moved it.
"Can you raise your right knee?" She raised her right
knee. "Raise your left knee."
"Ahh," I said to myself, "this is a miracle." She
landed but didn't get hurt. She got a little dirty and all
that. I says, "How do you feel?"
She says, "Oh, I wish I was dead."
I says, "Why did you do this?"
She says, "No one loves me."
I says, "I love you. Why would I crawl under all
these cars? I tell you what: remain where you are. If
you have any ideas, discard them from your mind. I'm
going to have you removed and you're going to be all
right. It was God's fate that you shouldn't go this way.
Don't worry."
So I came back to the station, crawling underneath, I
ripped my pants, the train operator told me, "Hey, you
got blood."
I said, "Don't worry about the blood." I look around
and the train operator is still a little nervous, and I see
the transit cop, a newly appointed transit cop, nice
brand-new uniform. I says, "Officer, see the pocketbook
laying up against the wall? All right. Train operator,
make sure nobody touches that pocketbook. And
make sure nobody gets out of the cars. Just tell the
passengers to stay calm and everything will be straightened
out." There weren't too many people in the train
at that hour.
So I looked at the cop, I says, "Officer, come on
down here. Assist me to remove a live human being
from the tracks."
"Who? Me?"
"Officer, I'm not asking you, I'm telling you: get
down here. Give your hat to the train operator and
come down here."
So we crawled under ... and we got in there. I says,
"She's OK. You know what we're going to do? You
get her under the arms, and I'll get her by the legs, and
nice and easy, we'll put her on the ties and then over
the rail and then we'll just go along nice and easy,
crawling." Three car lengths we were--till we get to
the station limits, and then with the assistance of the
train operator we get her on the platform, nice and safe,
before the ambulance crew came. That's how fast I
worked it.
So we got her on the platform, and when the
ambulance crew came, I informed them that ... she did
not faint. See, sometimes, people faint and then they
misjudge it as a jump. She actually observed the train
coming and jumped. "I saw her. I'm a witness, take my
name, because she needs medical attention. She needs a
lot of help because she's very depressed and she'll do it
again if you let her out." I had heard stories about
where people were removed from the track and then
discharged from the hospital and then two hours later
we found out the same party committed suicide, that
nobody gave a truthful report on the condition. ...
So it ended up I gave the train master a full report,
everything's back to normal, and I'd missed my boat. I
felt raggedy, like I was a homeless person. I was full of
grease, my face--I didn't realize how dirty I was
because there were no mirrors, you know. My God,
when I got home, my face, I had grease here, grease
underneath my arm, my pants were ripped, good
gabardine.
My wife said, "What happened?" Because she used
to wait up for me when I come home, she was worried:
she thought something happened. I didn't get home
until after 3:30 in the morning. So I told her the story,
we had coffee, I calmed down--I started cooling down
a little bit.... The next day I didn't say nothing about
it.... Several months went by, and I happened to meet
the train master that I dealt with that particular tour. He
said, "You, you did a great thing. You got a commendation,
didn't you?"
I said, "No, I didn't get no commendation."
"That was beyond the scope of duty. You could
have ignored it. You were going home."
"Listen, I don't know about a commendation. I
didn't get one."
"Well," he says, "you know, I got a report that the
transit cop got a day off with pay and a citation for
being a hero."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What
did the transit patrolman say?"
He said, "Well, he was the one that got assistance
and removed the person."
"Well, that's nice," I says. "That's a good morale
builder for the transit police. I'm not against that. But to
be honest with you, I ordered him to come down and
assist me. I'm Supervision, not him.
So, it's OK. Another couple weeks went by, and I
got a commendation, beautiful write-up--with the
truth in it.
