The life of a crossing guard: a modicum of respect, a paddle, a hat. But when our main character is terminated, all he has left is his poncho and whistle... and a feeling that there might be another opportunity, a strange one, for guarding ahead.
Look both ways,
The Editors
There was a time when Crossing Guards were respected, but the regard for many things has diminished. Crossing Guards, male or female, were once treated like valuable members of the community. A child could go to a Crossing Guard for help for large emergencies like late parents or smaller ones like untied shoelaces. During budget cuts and belt tightening, the city began replacing Crossing Guards with speed bumps and investing in metal detectors. It was cheaper. It made sense.
The Crossing Guard loved the uniform he put on five mornings a week, the policeman's hat and black plastic poncho with orange fluorescent Xs on both sides. In winter or rain he wore a long yellow slicker with handsome metal closures and protected the hat with a plastic shower cap.
School Crossing Guards don’t carry guns or nightsticks. He had a wooden paddle with STOP stenciled in red on both sides. Using this paddle, blowing his whistle, he was able to hold back traffic in both directions. It was then his job to shepherd groups of children across two lanes of city traffic and check for stragglers. After he was sure every child was safely deposited on the sidewalk, he’d step back and wave his paddle in a motion he’d perfected like a ping-pong serve. He was a good ping-pong player. In the facilities he’d grown up in there was always a ping-pong table in the day room.
When his wife was alive she’d cut his hair. Now when he took off his police hat his hair stood up like a wild stalk. With his crooked black glasses he looked like a gawky science teacher. In winter he sat in the buses parked across from the school, engines illegally running for heat, over the 3-minute limit. The bus drivers placed bets, writing tips and information with pencils in the margins on racing forms. If his wife were still alive they might have gone out to the track together. It was something she would have enjoyed. He couldn’t understand the form even with his glasses. Looking out the window, he watched the blue exhaust from leaky oil in the engine spiraling out of the back of the bus.
A letter in his mailbox from the New York Police Department terminated his services. He was told to leave his paddle and policeman's hat in the office. He could keep his poncho and whistle.
To become a School Crossing Guard he’d met certain physical and medical requirements. He spoke English and passed the drug screening and background checks then completed six days of training at the police academy. The pay was $18.00 an hour. He had health insurance, could walk to work, and picked up extra hours in the summer.
The job had offered personal satisfaction. School Crossing Guard is an important job. Entrusted with the safety of the city's schoolchildren, safeguarding them across busy intersections on their way to and from school, Crossing Guards also oversee and control traffic flow around schools in the morning, lunch, and at closing time.
There was a cake in the Teachers’ Lounge. The cafeteria ladies sent it over. He was popular with the cafeteria ladies. The school nurse showed up. She was wearing her pink uniform with a zipper down the front. He wanted her phone number, but didn’t know how to ask for it, even though she’d indicated it would be all right. He’d gotten to know her after a boy with authority problems hit him in the head with a rock while he was blowing his whistle. She’d been kind when his wife died and was gentle and practiced while she tended to his bloody head wound. But he hesitated for too long. The vice-president came in, shook his hand, called him by name then led him by the elbow to the door, thanking him for his 22 years of service and wishing him luck.
He had no wife, no job, no health insurance, but he had a home and free laundry. He could stay in the room he’d shared with his wife in Hell’s Kitchen as long as he could pay the rent. He went to the Emerald Tavern on 10th Avenue, a hangout for Guards that was a network for job tips. He’d been here with his wife for a retirement party. They had a good time. There was a job as a daytime Security Guard in a retail store.
Sitting alone at a table, drinking a beer, looking up at the TV pretending to watch the football game, the thought of standing in the doorway of a retail store, under the fluorescent lights and having to appear both alert and unobtrusive for 8 hours a day was terrifying.
He and his wife had no children. How did this happen? After he moved into her room in Hell’s Kitchen there was never a night when they’d sat across from each other at the kitchen table and decided not to have children. He always thought his wife didn’t want them. How could they afford children? Children were expensive. As a School Crossing Guard his job involved children. He’d held many trembling hands on the first day of kindergarten and kept a large white cotton handkerchief available for runny noses or tears. His wife worked in a laundry and her only contact with children had been washing and folding their clothes.
He turns on the TV. Without his wife the room is too lonely. He walks the city streets. When his wife was alive, she begged him to go window-shopping. It was something she liked to do. At the time he didn’t get it. Why look at things you’d never be able to afford? Why tempt and taunt yourself this way? He thought it could only lead to dissatisfaction. Now he saw why his wife enjoyed looking in store windows. His wife spent her days washing dirty clothes. To her the displays of crisp clean tops and bottoms were beautiful and uplifting. His wife had taken all the beauty with her. He was hungry for beauty.
It starts to rain. He goes into the department store. Walking up and down the carpeted aisles he soaks up the glittery beauty of the cosmetics counters and gets misted with perfume. He takes the escalator up to Lingerie. His wife loved underwear. As a laundry worker who spent her days loading washing machines with dirty socks and underpants, she coveted these lacy bras and panties in pastels and bright colors.
He’d liked living with a woman. It was strange at first, he’d grown up in all-boy facilities, but he liked her tights and bras hanging from the shower rod. Her bathrobe was still hanging on the door in the room they shared. If his wife were still alive what would he buy to surprise her? Assuming he still had a job, he reminds himself, but gives way to fantasy and searches through the racks, pushing back the hangers of camisoles. There are so many colors. Touching the silky fabric is comforting until a security guard taps him on the shoulder.
Is this his lowest point? Ushered out of the store like a thief or a pervert by another guard.
—
The Crossing Guard sits in front of the TV. The faces aren’t a substitute for his wife’s face, but they are better than nothing. There are reports of skirmishes at local schools. Contraband discovered by metal detectors on The Nightly News.
He misses the children. He adds personal satisfaction to the list of things he’s lost. He starts standing on the sidewalk outside the school at 3:15, waiting for the first bell to ring and the doors of the two-story yellow cinderblock building to open and the children to come bursting out yelling and with high-pitched shrieks of freedom.
One day four teenage boys surround him. They push him back and forth, bouncing him like a ball. Running off, they turn and yell back, “Perv!”
His glasses fall off and get twisted.
—
After a few days it no longer feels safe to stay at home. The TV is frightening. He returns to the Emerald Tavern determined to find a job. There’s one as a Night Guard in Brooklyn that requires a subway ride, bus-transfer and long walk. He likes the idea of this long commute. It could fill up many empty hours every day.
To apply for the job he takes the subway, waits for a bus then walks the half mile through a zone of used car dealers and auto salvage yards until he finds Boro Auto. The job turns out to be the kind of Guard that requires wearing a costume. A German Shepherd-suit with a latex head modeled with a life-like snout and dark muzzle attached to a brown fake fur suit with a zipper up the back.
On the wall behind the desk in the Boro Auto’s office is a photo of Rocky, the junkyard dog, who’d previously guarded the yard. Pregnant with her second litter, she’d been anonymously reported to SNIP, an organization that spayed and neutered working dogs in New York City funded by retired game show host Bob Barker. Animal rights activists were now protecting these dogs.
After Rocky was gone, Boro Auto tried installing cameras in all four corners of the chained-link fenced lot and blasted it with 300-watt LEDs to deter theft. The globes looked like small spaceships hovering above the chain link fence and the commercial electric rate in Brooklyn made this too expensive. Other car lots and salvage yards were having the same problem.
There were already Dancing Bananas and Pizza Slices who wore costumes to distribute leaflets. Hot dogs zigzagged with mustard handing out flyers and clowns promoting venues and events. Smokey the Bear and Santa Claus were longstanding paying jobs. Now there were Elmos, Mickey Mouses, SpongeBobs and Statues of Liberties posing for photos and making tips.
Did it sound crazy? Maybe. But it made sense. It was cheaper to pay a clown in a dog suit with a phone to protect against theft. Instead of attracting customers it was a costume designed to repel thieves. Different types of junkyard dogs were considered as the model for the suit. Pitbulls or Dobermans? But it was widely known that German Shepherds commanded the most fear. Trained to scare potential oppressors and instantly defend their owners. German Shepherds, not just large, fierce and powerful, also projected a military image and were used as bomb sniffers in public places and as Police Search Dogs.
As a Guard Dog he had to wear a costume. He’d have a flashlight and a phone to use to call 911 in case of an emergency and programmed with a Vicious Dog Noises app. He was stationed in the bushes on a chair near the gate. Would he fool anyone? A German Shepherd with a phone and a flashlight?
He liked the job. He slept through the days, got his laundry done for free. The commute was an hour and a half each way. His shift began at 10 pm. Taking first the subway, then the bus, followed by the long walk past other used car lots and salvage shops. Joining the underground economy, he received $300 in cash in an envelope off the books every Friday but no health insurance. He worked 10 hours, seven days a week.
Sonny greeted him in the office, “Howdy, Skipper,” handing him the phone and flashlight. In winter he zipped the dog suit over his parka. Sonny didn’t care if he wore his glasses over the eye-holes cut out of the latex mask with its realistic snout.
What happened to Rocky? He wondered. Was she adopted by a family? Looking at her snarling photo on the office wall, this seemed unlikely. Now that she was neutered, was she still vicious? Would she be able to get another job?
He liked dogs. When he was a Crossing Guard there was an apricot poodle named Missy he frequently petted. There was a black and white cat in The WashTub, Oreo that his wife loved. But pets were expensive to feed and needed to be taken to the vet. They couldn’t afford a pet. At Boro Auto, he sat in the dark playing with the Vicious Dog Noises app on the phone. Creating random barks to see if there were other Guard Dogs out there in a nearby lot. Sometimes one answered.
One night he noticed a cat. He saw its eyes under the fence, but scared it away with his flashlight.
In the morning Maria unlocked the office door. She made coffee. He’d hang up his dog suit, turn over his phone and flashlight. They drank coffee and talked about the weather until her boss arrived.
He enjoyed the long walk home to the bus in the mornings, the same faces on the crowded bus on their way to work in Manhattan while he was finishing his day. Sunday mornings the bus was full of families on their way to churches.
He made enough money to pay the rent on the room in Hell’s Kitchen and had a lifetime of free laundry at The WashTub. When he got home he took off all his clothes, put on his wife’s robe and slept all day.
He tried each night to wait until 1:00 to eat his lunch. He stopped at Al-Yemeni Market after he got off the bus each night on his way to work and always ordered the same Swiss and mayo on white. When his wife was alive they ate the foods they’d grown up with in the facilities they’d lived in. Cereal, tea, milk, bananas, hot dogs, pudding and applesauce.
The cat started to arrive earlier. It took all winter for him to coax the cat to slink under the fence. He’d started buying cans of tuna fish. He took his time selecting a can opener and now carried the tuna can and the opener in a food sack, but still went to the Yemeni store to order his Swiss on white with mayo. Ahmed started putting lettuce on it. He discovered he liked lettuce. They called him Sammy. Was this a generic name for a male in their country, like Bud, Guy or Dude?
In summer it was too hot to wear clothes under the dog suit. He took off his shirt and pants and wore his boxers, undershirt and no socks. When it got really hot he rolled up the pant leg of the fake fur dog costume. The cat came over and licked his ankle with her tuna fish breath. It wasn’t his wife but he named her Alma.
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Sarah McElwain teaches at Pulitzer prize-winning poet Philip Schultz’s Writers Studio. For ten years, she co-hosted Writers Read NYC, providing performance venues for writers in Greenwich Village. Her essay, “Fingertips Part 3, With Thanks to Stevie Wonder,” about teaching yoga to the blind is in The Art of Touch, University of Georgia Press (November 2023).