Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [41]
Money doesn’t go as far in New York but it doesn’t come as far, either. All the numbers for all the money in American are handled in Wall Street on lower Manhattan. The banks, the businesses and even the government do most of their money shuffling and dealing there.
If a civilization can be judged on its ability not only to survive but to thrive in the face of natural obstacles, New York’s civilization would have to be called among the most successful. For example, for what’s supposed to be a temperate climate, New York has some of the most intemperate weather in the world. It’s too hot in the summer, too cold in winter. During all its seasons, the wind has a way of whipping the weather at you and the rain is always coming from an angle that umbrella makers never considered.
The funny thing about it is that Nature and New York City have a lot in common. Both are absolutely indifferent to the human condition. To the New Yorker, accustomed to inconvenience of every kind, the weather is simply one more inconvenience.
New Yorkers learn young to proceed against all odds. If something’s in the way, they move it or go under it or over it or around it, but they keep going. There’s no sad resignation to defeat. New Yorkers assume they can win. They have this feeling that they’re not going to be defeated.
People talk as though they don’t like crowds, but the crowd in New York bestows on the people it comprises a blessed anonymity. New Yorkers are protected from the necessity of being individuals when being one serves no purpose. This blending together that takes place in a crowd is a great time-saver for them.
New York can be a very private place too. There’s none of the neighborliness based solely on proximity that dominates the lives you share your life with in a small town. It’s quite possible to be not merely private but lonely in a crowd in New York. Loneliness seldom lasts, though. For one thing, troubles produce a warmth and comradeship like nothing else, and New York has so many troubles shared by so many people that there’s a kind of common knowingness, even in evil, that brings them together. There is no one with troubles so special in New York that there aren’t others in the same kind of trouble.
There are five thousand blind people making their way around the city. They’re so much a part of the mix, so typical as New Yorkers, that they’re treated with much the same hostile disregard as everyone else. Many of the blind walk through the city with the same fierce independence that moves other New Yorkers. They feel the same obligation to be all right. “I’m okay. I’m all right.”
It might appear to any casual visitor who may have taken a few rides about town in a taxicab that all New Yorkers are filled with a loudmouthed ill will toward each other. The fact of the matter is, though, that however cold and cruel things seem on the surface, there has never been a society of people in all history with so much compassion for its fellowman. It clothes, feeds, and houses 15 percent of its own because 1.26 million people in New York are unable to do it for themselves. You couldn’t call that cold or cruel.
Everyone must have seen pictures at least of the great number of poor people who live in New York. And it seems strange, in view of this, that so many people still come here seeking their fortune or maybe someone else’s. But if anything about the city’s population is more impressive than the great number of poor people, it’s the great number of rich people. There’s no need to search for buried treasure in New York. The great American dream is out in the open for everyone to see and to reach for. No one seems to resent the very rich. It must be because even those people who can never realistically believe they’ll get rich themselves can still dream about it. And they respond to the hope of getting what