We will get picked up tomorrow at 4:30am and spend the next eleven hours or so doing our best to go from our little hilltop here in San Diego to the paved and gloriously lighted streets of midtown Manhattan. This trip has become a holiday ritual for the past five years and the seasonal pre-Christmas gathering has been a family tradition now for seventeen years (since I sold the last of my Park City ski houses). It all revolves around the commitment I made to myself to be sure that my two oldest children, Roger and Carolyn, should be allowed to spend Christmas Eve and Day with their mother (who has always had a strong and deep abide for the holiday) ever since we separated 35 years ago. I have taken up the position of the pre-Christmas father, who is willing to awake on Christmas morning without necessarily enjoying the squeals of childhood delight around the Christmas tree. I don’t know why, but I have always been a bit more pragmatic about that specific day even though I deeply enjoy the overall holiday season. I think it is the product of my very pragmatic mother, who allowed, neigh encouraged, me to take up an opportunity in 1969 to go skiing over Christmas with a Dutch family we knew in the ski town of San Martino de Castrozza in the Dolomites, only a few miles from where my largely estranged father had spent his youth in in the 1930’s.
I remember waking up that Christmas morning 55 years ago to the bluest mountain sky that I had ever seen, as we strapped on our leather ski boots and snapped into our Kneissel White Star 215cm skis with heavy steel Look Nevada bindings (I probably couldn’t even lift those monster skis and bindings these days). We ventured to the sunny alpine slopes and skied ourselves silly that fine Christmas morning. As much as I remember the exacting details of that morning, I cannot, for the life of me, remember the name of that nice Dutch family or exactly how we ended up celebrating the birth of Christ on that glorious Italian day. I just recall that not being at home for Christmas did not make me in the least bit maudlin or homesick. Don’t get me wrong, I am as sentimental as they come about Christmas and tear-up at the end of White Christmas, when Bing & Rosemary and Danny & Vera embrace in the snowy wonder of Pine Tree, Vermont, as much as anyone. It’s just that I have allowed Christmas Day, itself, to remain a concept in my soul rather than an exacting calendar moment.
So, I will arrive with Kim at JFK’s Delta Terminal 4 at a scheduled 3:29pm. After a 2 mile hike to the baggage claim area (always a cause for grousing), we will seek out our chauffeur with my name sign to pick up our bags at carousel whatever and bury ourselves in the luxury of the backseat of a black Mercedes sedan for the ride into Midtown. I have adopted this added luxury of a black car pickup since construction at JFK has rendered even Uber cars, much less yellow cabs, a distant and unpredictable transit affair and we do have a dinner to get to at The Strip House (strip as in steak, not as in hootchie cootchie) at 44th and 5th Avenue. Almost everything I must see and do on this trip is within easy walking distance of our Manhattan home away from home of the Cornell Club, nestled on 44th between Madison and 5th, That’s the way I like to do Manhattan these days, surgically and conveniently.
I first visited Midtown Manhattan in 1964 at the age of ten as my mother and sisters and I went to see the World’s Fair out in Flushing Meadow. I went back numerous times over the ensuing decade and then landed there permanently in 1976 to spend the next 45 years working and living at various places on the island. While I mostly lived downtown, Midtown (the 6 block radius around Grand Central Station) holds many of my New York City memories. In fact, there isn’t a street corner in that area that doesn’t remind me of one anecdote or another from my business and/or personal life. I remember buying my first business shirts at Wallach’s on Madison Avenue after finding out how much they cost at Brooks brothers and J.Press across the street. I remember getting my shoes spit-shined in the walkway through the Helmsley building at Park and 45th/46th. I remember having my first banking promotion drinks gathering at The Dallas Cowboy on 49th and Park. I remember parking my bank car on 49th and Lexington. I remember staying in the bank condo on 48th and Lexington/3rd. Nick used to cut my hair at 47th and Vanderbilt. And I discovered my hatred of sushi on 48th and Madison/5th and my love of Yakisoba on Madison and just off 49th. All my work shoes came from Tom Austin on 44th and Madison. I often wondered about the Spy Gear store on Madison and 50th, but never ventured in, but I did go into countless discount electronics stores that constantly popped up and then moved from one storefront to another on Madison…and 5th…and Lexington. The stores change. The buildings sometimes change, but Midtown is Midtown and it feels today more or less like it felt 60 years ago and 50 years ago and 5 years ago.
Our activities for this visit consist of an opening night dinner that’s a mere half block from the Club, a likely visit (yet again) to the Bryant Park Christmas Market, probably an attempt to get close enough to Rockefeller Plaza to be able to see the skating rink and the Christmas Tree, a 16-person extended family gathering to include all the kids and grandkids and their respective parents on our side in addition to Pete & Nancy our ever-present and ever-popular Ithaca country mice cousins. That gala will happen in one of the private meeting rooms at the Club so it is an elevator stop away from our room. On Wednesday there’s lunch at the Club with some old banking pals and then down to Gramercy Park for Kim’s Singnasium Annual Gala, at which she will perform and we will say hello to all her cabaret friends. Our last day in town will be a midday memorial service way down in Tribeca, paying tribute to one of my recently lost banking brethren and family friends. That will be an opportunity to gather and commiserate with a whole other group of friends that will include my banking pals and my venture capital pals, all of whom remember our lost comrade quite warmly. The finishing evening will be with my old friend Michael and his wife Leslie. Michael is godfather to my youngest son, Tom and I am godfather to his youngest daughter, Emily, who will be getting married in Tuscany next May and will give Kim and I the excuse for another European vacation we hadn’t otherwise planned to do so soon after our Cape Horn cruise in March. So much for another year of traveling less. We are even now planning a December trip for next year that will take us to the Christmas Markets of Edinburgh, Prague and, yes, back once again to Bryant Park Christmas Market for our 2025 Holiday pre-Christmas family gala gathering in Midtown. It seems that the Midtown Express just keeps chugging along.