Shadow Puppet Storyteller

The Crunch of Cold

This morning, in the normal 2 hour commute, I experienced the "new cruelty" moving from one transit agency to the other. My local line has plush, reclinable seats, (and more importantly, run a heater), while the express through the city, the long-standing MTA of the area has thinly upholstered metal seats with no heating being run. And because I slid into a window seat, the cold siding of the bus wall was also registering just how cold the difference was. Only because the morning temperatures have been frosty has this difference been that noticeable.

I am not even sure if the MTA buses have heat.

I equated it in my mind to the classic metal ice tray of my grandmother's, possibly great-grandmother's era. with its manual leverage for freeing the frozen assenblage.