The Big Black Dog Climbing Out of the Ground

I hate November in New York. Always have. Skies are various shades of grey - all month. This day, 10 years ago was no exception. For me, nasty means three elements hitting you at once. Wind, sleet and extreme cold fits the bill. I was walking west on 40th street between 8th and 9th avenues towards the Portof Authority bus terminal. I usually rented a car to go see my mother in New Jersey. Not today.

The bus was the most direct and convenient transportation. At 8am I could see throngs of people flowing out of the terminal, heads down, not wanting to speak or acknowledge anyone they might bump into. I gingerly walked on the ice-free foot trodden path that was at most two-feet wide that was bordered on each side by a mound of ice. The wind was so strong, that I could barely make out the head of a big black dog appearing to come up out of the ground. When it reached the sidewalk, it just stood there. Three-seconds later, a woman wearing sun glasses appearing up from the ground stood next to the dog and fitted her gloves tightly on her hands, reached down to the dogs back, and picked up the handle of her seeing-eye dog. They were coming out of the subway. I hesitated, allowing her to go ahead of me, although she was unaware of my action. She proceeded to walk towards the corner when a man shoving a clothing cart in front of her came careening around the corner directly into her path. His head was down, pushing and balancing the cart on the ice mounds, not watching where he was going. I started to Scream at him, attempting to calm my shrill voice and chocked on foul language before it escaped my mouth. He stopped when he looked up briefly to see my waving hands. The blind woman, was black and appeared to be in her early thirties. She stopped in her tracks, and screamed “What’s Happening - What’s Happening?”  I placed my hand on her shoulder, and in a firm but calm voice said, “Everything is Ok…there is just a cart in front of us that is going to move soon.” I looked up at the man who had stopped the cart right in front of us, and in mime, I told him to get the cart out-of-the-way. This time, I cursed in mime also. He looked me right in the eye, and lifted his hand to his ear and moved it side-to-side, then to his mouth and repeated the same motion with his hand. He was deaf and voiceless! He leaned down again behind his cart and came straight at us, pushing the cart with the empty clothing rack forcefully up on the ice mound and tried to go past us on the street side. As he did so, the cart slipped from the mound and started to fall directly onto me and the woman. I screamed for her to duck down, and with my hand on her back she guided herself to the ground, her seeing-eye dog laying right beside her. The cart was stopped by the empty clothing rack hitting the subway exit guard rail. The cart was tall enough to makeeverything I was looking at appear quite dark. I promised her that everything would be all-right, and on my knees, backed my way out of the lean-to enclosure and then stood straight up looking at a mass of people stopped in the street looking right at me and the cart. Standing ten-feet away, stairing straight at me were three black men appearing to be in their late 20s to early 30s. If looks could talk, I was about to get my head ripped-off!

“Hey You Guys” I screamed at them, “I’ve got a blind black girl with her dog underneath the cart!”  “COME ON, HELP ME GET IT OFF!”

In a split second they picked it up and removed it to the street. I saw the deaf man immediately get behind his cart, and go on his way.

I reached down to the woman, petted her dog, picked her up, and we walked together to bustling 9th avenue which was now only twenty-yards away. We stopped at the corner, and she profusely thanked me, and said that she would be OK, and said goodbye. I insisted on walking her across 9th avenue, and she repeatedly refused, which befuddled me. She relented and then told me that she just got the job two-months ago and wanted to prove to them that she needed no help in getting to work. It was Ok for me to walk with her, but not all the way down the block, lest her supervisors see us.

As we were mid-way across the avenue, she said to me “see that gas station on the corner? Do you see how that man has not cleared the snow and ice from his sidewalk?” I acknowledged. “We have requested that he clear it up three-times, but he hasn’t done it. But we’re not going to let him get us down!”

I kissed her on the cheek and said goodbye, as I watched her and her dog proceed to the non-profit agency for the blind, where she now worked.

My initial reaction was to go and find the three black men who helped us and tell them about the gas station guy…but relaxed and realized that the woman that I had just spent a slice-of-life with, was the strongest of us all!

Mike McCurdy, Founder/Publisher - HealthNewsDigest.com