Metropolitan Diary
A Dave’s Egg Cream
Dear Diary:
Dave’s Luncheonette was an all-night diner at the corner of Canal Street and Broadway. Everything about the place was old school. After leaving work one hot night in 1983, I stopped there for a chocolate egg cream, a frothy concoction served in a substantial glass.
My thirst satisfied, I stood on the corner dreading the long, humid wait for the subway.
“Hey, you need a ride to Brooklyn?” an idling cabby said. “You can be my last fare home.”
As I got in, he asked, “You just have an egg cream?”
How did he know?
“You smell like egg cream,” he said.
“Dave’s makes the best,” I said.
“Dave?” he snorted. “Ha! That Dave ain’t nothing but a two-loaf crybaby.”
“A what?” I asked.
“A two-loaf crybaby,” the cabby said. “If he’s got a nice fresh loaf of bread under his arm, he’s cryin’ ’cause he ain’t got one under the other.”
I doubt the cabby actually knew Dave. He was just using an odd line on a fare.
Dave’s closed years ago, and I never heard “two-loaf crybaby” again until I watched the movie “Casino” recently.
There is one scene with some wiseguys playing cards and making chitchat. At one point, one of them asks another: “Why you cryin’ with two loaves of bread under your arm?”
Maybe Martin Scorsese got a ride with that same cabby once.
— Paul Karasik
Central Park, 9 a.m.
Dear Diary:
In the green of spring
and the rain
(of a sudden)
the watercolor walkers running
for cover
one man lay down
his green brief-
case
stretched
on a bench
his tongue thrust
out now
and tasted the rain
— Rolli Anderson
Cab to Penn Station
Dear Diary:
It was January 1962. I was on my first leave from the Air Force. After three days on trains from Biloxi, Miss., I arrived at Grand Central with no idea what to do next.
I asked a police officer where I could get a train to Boston. He told me to go to Penn Station and directed me to the cab stand outside.
The first cabby in the line saw me, got out, grabbed my huge duffel bag and smaller bag full of the books I was planning to read and threw them into the trunk.
“Penn Station, right?” he said.
“Umm, yeah,” I replied.
“How long you been in, buddy?”
“Since July.”
“After a while, you’ll learn to travel light.”
This was probably the first cab I had ever been in, but even I noticed right away that he hadn’t pushed the arm of the meter down.
“Drafted?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “You have to enlist to get into the Air Force.”
He turned around toward me at the next light.
“You did the right thing, kid,” he said. “I didn’t wait to get drafted; I joined when the war started. My old man was so proud of me, he left me the house.”
I didn’t know what to so say, so I just nodded.
When we got to Penn Station, he pulled my bags out of the trunk.
“The ride’s on me, kid,” he said. “Behave yourself, get promoted, marry a nice girl and have lots of kids.”
He shook my hand, and I watched as a traveler just a few yards away hailed him and got in.
— Stephen Patten
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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