Henry had been working in the information booth of the Grand Central Terminal for 10 years. He’d taken the job in 1920, after he’d lost his job at a factory, intending on staying at the booth for only a few months to save up some money for his wife’s medications that never seemed to do much good. Instead, the cancer had killed her before he knew it, and he’d stayed on at the Grand Central. It seemed to him that working long hours here was a hell of a lot better than sitting at home, missing his dead wife. Each working day he stood in the booth, watching people. Some hurried past, while others stood around in groups and chatted. There were always couples parting; women and men, who couldn’t stand being apart but for whatever reason, had to say goodbye. Smartly dressed children traveled with their parents and Grand Central employees scurried back and forth. Many travelers remembered him and stopped to say hello. Eventually someone would ask about the history of the place and Henry never tired of reciting the script. In October of 1871 the Grand Central, then called the Grand Central Depot, had opened. It had cost the enormous sum of 6.4 million dollars to build and was designed by architect John B. Snook. By the time Henry started to describe the 1902 train collision that had killed 17 people and injured 38 more, his audience was usually leaning in closely; Henry was a very engaging speaker. His days off were also spent at the Grand Central, doing very much what he did while he was at work. Henry stuck close to the information booth, in case the young woman who worked for him on his free days could not answer questions that the patrons had. He swept when the floor became dirty and picked up discarded tickets and cigarette butts. Henry’s son, a grown man living six blocks from Henry’s apartment, would often ask him why he didn’t just stop working at the Grand Central and enjoy the rest of his years at home. He surely didn’t need the money. His son was, like many young men, preoccupied with leisure. He spent very few hours at work but was somehow still wealthy. Henry didn’t bother to explain to his son what the Grand meant to him since his son did not understand that you could love something so much that it seemed to capture and hold you to it. Still, everyday his son would come and bring Henry a sandwich in a brown paper sack. When Henry became ill, his son complained to him that the long hours at Grand Central, inhaling all of those fumes and smoke, was to blame. Henry worked at Grand Central Terminal until his death because, as he’d always said, when the sunlight streamed through the Grand’s windows, it was like coming home.
