High Noon
By Peter G Mladinic
PROMPT—The story I told myself ...
When I walked out of my grandparents’
apartment building in the Bronx
for the last time, I didn’t know
it was the last time, nor was I as aware
as now, everything has a last time.
I can’t remember that day, nor an elevator
there, but I distinctly associate them
with an elevator, maybe in the building
before the last one. Both were in the Bronx.
Their last one consisted of five stories,
they lived on the fifth floor, the stairwell
stark but solid. I recall going up,
more than going down, being out on the roof
with my grandmother, but not why
we were there. The lobby had lots of corners,
otherwise, nothing special. By contrast,
the lobby of the building with “the lift”
was magical with its carpets, mirrors,
and two-to-three step tiered sections,
a lobby I loved as only a child, their senses
ultra-aware, could love. Going to the Bronx
one Saturday (the Bronx with its many
five-story red brick tenements, and some,
brown brick), we crossed the GW Bridge,
my dad and I. We got my grandmother,
and rode back over the GW into New Jersey.
In the late morning, in the back of our
yellow-brown ‘58 Chevy Bel Air, parked
in the driveway of our suburban home,
I looked down at the face of the actor Gary
Cooper; it took up the whole front page
of the Daily News. His string tie
came to a bow at the collar, a western tie
you wouldn’t see anyone wearing
in the Bronx. The front page was all white,
and black like our macadam driveway.
The picture of Cooper was from High Noon,
a western film for which he’d won
an Academy Award. The headline may
well have been, just bluntly, “Gary Cooper
Dead.” He was only 59. I read
about his last days spent watching TV.
The sun was shining. I don’t remember us
stopping for the paper, only Coop’s
picture plastered all over its front page.
Peter G Mladinic was raised in New Milford, New Jersey. He considers where he is from an essential part of who he is. Peter writes from Hobbs, New Mexico.
