The third level

THE presidents of the New York Central

and the New York, New Haven and

Hartford railroads will swear on a stack

of timetables that there are only two. But

I say there are three, because I’ve been

on the third level of the Grand Central

Station. Yes, I’ve taken the obvious step:

I talked to a psychiatrist friend of mine,

among others. I told him about the third

level at Grand Central Station, and he said it was a waking-

dream wish fulfillment. He said I was unhappy. That made

my wife kind of mad, but he explained that he meant the

modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and all

the rest of it, and that I just want to escape. Well, who

doesn’t? Everybody I know wants to escape, but they don’t

wander down into any third level at Grand Central Station.

But that’s the reason, he said, and my friends all

agreed. Everything points to it, they claimed. My stamp

collecting, for example; that’s a ‘temporary refuge from

reality.’ Well, maybe, but my grandfather didn’t need any

refuge from reality; things were pretty nice and peaceful in his day, from all I hear, and he started my collection.

It’s a nice collection too, blocks of four of practically every

U.S. issue, first-day covers, and so on. President Roosevelt

collected stamps too, you know.

Anyway, here’s what happened

at Grand Central. One night last

summer I worked late at the

office. I was in a hurry to get

uptown to my apartment

so I decided to take the

subway from Grand

Central because

it’s faster than

the bus.

Now, I don’t

know why this

should have

happened to

me. I’m just an

ordinary guy

named Charley,

thirty-one years

old, and I was wearing a tan gabardine suit and a straw

hat with a fancy band; I passed a dozen men who looked

just like me. And I wasn’t trying to escape from anything; I

just wanted to get home to Louisa, my wife.

I turned into Grand Central from Vanderbilt Avenue,

and went down the steps to the first level, where you take

trains like the Twentieth Century. Then I walked down

another flight to the second level, where the suburban trains

leave from, ducked into an arched doorway heading for the

subway — and got lost. That’s easy to do. I’ve been in and

out of Grand Central hundreds of times, but I’m always

bumping into new doorways and stairs and corridors. Once

I got into a tunnel about a mile long and came out in the

lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel. Another time I came up in an

office building on Forty-sixth Street, three blocks away.

Sometimes I think Grand Central is growing like a

tree, pushing out new corridors and staircases like roots.

There’s probably a

long tunnel that

nobody knows about

feeling its way under

the city right now, on its

way to Times Square, and

maybe another to Central Park.

And maybe — because for so many

people through the years Grand

Central has been an exit, a way of

escape — maybe that’s how the

tunnel I got into... But I never told

my psychiatrist friend about that

idea.

The corridor I was in began

angling left and slanting downward and

I thought that was wrong, but I kept on

walking. All I could hear was the empty

sound of my own footsteps and I didn’t pass

a soul. Then I heard that sort of hollow roar

ahead that means open space and people

talking. The tunnel turned sharp left; I went

down a short flight of stairs and came out

on the third level at Grand Central Station.

For just a moment I thought I was back on

the second level, but I saw the room was

smaller, there were fewer ticket windows

and train gates, and the information

booth in the centre was wood and old-

looking. And the man in the booth

wore a green eyeshade and

long black sleeve

protectors. The

lights were dim

and sort of

flickering. Then

I saw why; they

were open-flame

gaslights.

There were brass spittoons on the floor, and across

the station a glint of light caught my eye; a man was pulling

a gold watch from his vest pocket. He snapped open the

cover, glanced at his watch and frowned. He wore a derby

hat, a black four-button suit with tiny lapels, and he had

a big, black, handlebar mustache. Then I looked around

and saw that everyone in the station was dressed like

eighteen-ninety-something; I never saw so many beards,

sideburns and fancy mustaches in my life. A woman walked

in through the train gate; she wore a dress with leg-of-

mutton sleeves and skirts to the top of her high-buttoned

shoes. Back of her, out on the tracks, I caught a glimpse of

a locomotive, a very small Currier & Ives locomotive with a

funnel-shaped stack. And then I knew.

To make sure, I walked

over to a newsboy and

glanced at the stack of papers

at his feet. It was The World;

and The World hasn’t been

published for years. The lead story

said something about President

Cleveland. I’ve found that front page

since, in the Public Library files, and

it was printed June 11, 1894.

I turned toward the ticket

windows knowing that here — on the third level at Grand

Central — I could buy tickets that would take Louisa and

me anywhere in the United States we wanted to go. In the

year 1894. And I wanted two tickets to Galesburg, Illinois.

Have you ever been there? It’s a wonderful town still,

with big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous

trees whose branches meet overhead and roof the streets.

And in 1894, summer evenings were twice as long, and

people sat out on their lawns, the men smoking cigars and

talking quietly, the women waving palm-leaf fans, with

the fire-flies all around, in a peaceful world. To be back

there with the First World War still twenty years off, and

World War II over forty years in the future... I wanted two

tickets for that.

The clerk figured the fare — he glanced at my fancy

hatband, but he figured the fare — and I had enough for

two coach tickets, one way. But when I counted out the

money and looked up, the clerk was staring at me. He

nodded at the bills. ‘‘That ain’t money, mister,’’ he said,

‘‘and if you’re trying to skin me, you won’t get very far,’’

and he glanced at the cash drawer beside him. Of course

the money was old-style bills, half again as big as the

money we use nowadays, and different-looking. I turned

away and got out fast. There’s nothing nice about jail, even

in 1894.

And that was that. I left the same

way I came, I suppose. Next day, during

lunch hour, I drew three hundred dollars

out of the bank, nearly all we had, and

bought old-style currency (that really

worried my psychiatrist friend). You can

buy old money at almost any coin

dealer’s, but you have to pay a premium.

My three hundred dollars bought less

than two hundred in old-style bills, but I

didn’t care; eggs were thirteen cents a

dozen in 1894.

But I’ve never again found the

corridor that leads to the third level at

Grand Central Station, although I’ve tried often enough.

Louisa was pretty worried when I told her all this, and

didn’t want me to look for the third level any more, and

after a while I stopped; I went back to my stamps. But now

we’re both looking, every weekend, because now we have

proof that the third level is still there. My friend Sam Weiner

disappeared! Nobody knew where, but I sort of suspected

because Sam’s a city boy, and I used to tell him about

Galesburg — I went to school there — and he always said

he liked the sound of the place. And that’s where he is, all

right. In 1894.

Because one night, fussing with my stamp collection,

I found — Well, do you know what a first-day cover is?

When a new stamp is issued, stamp collectors buy some and use them to mail envelopes to themselves on the very

first day of sale; and the postmark proves the date. The

envelope is called a first-day cover. They’re never opened;

you just put blank paper in the envelope.

That night, among my oldest first-day covers, I found

one that shouldn’t have been there. But there it was. It

was there because someone had mailed it to my grandfather

at his home in Galesburg; that’s what the address on the

envelope said. And it had been there since July 18, 1894

— the postmark showed that — yet I didn’t remember it at

all. The stamp was a six-cent, dull brown, with a picture

of President Garfield. Naturally, when the envelope came

to Granddad in the mail, it went right into his collection

and stayed there — till I took it out and opened it.

The paper inside wasn’t blank. It read:

942 Willard Street

Galesburg, Illinois

July 18, 1894

Charley

I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing

you were right. And, Charley, it’s true; I found the third level!

I’ve been here two weeks, and right now, down the street at the

Daly’s, someone is playing a piano, and they’re all out on the front

porch singing ‘Seeing Nelly Home.’ And I’m invited over for

lemonade. Come on back, Charley and Louisa. Keep looking till you

find the third level! It’s worth it, believe me!

The note is signed Sam.

At the stamp and coin store I go to, I found out that

Sam bought eight hundred dollars’ worth of old-style

currency. That ought to set him up in a nice little hay,

feed and grain business; he always said that’s what he

really wished he could do, and he certainly can’t go back

to his old business. Not in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1894. His

old business? Why, Sam was my psychiatrist.

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