New York.

  Just saying the words evokes iconic images:  skyscrapers, the Statue of Liberty, Broadway plays  … It’s our biggest city, one of the most diverse and beautiful and one of the top U.S. tourist destinations:  number four, according to AAA, after Orlando, Anaheim and Las Vegas.

  My wife and I have been to most of Western Europe, a couple of countries in Eastern Europe, Mexico, Canada and most of the U.S., but we’d never been to New York.

  Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I’d been there a total of one day, while in the Navy. It was winter, bitterly cold, windy. My only memories of it are of going to the top of the Empire State Building, searching in vain for a deli that served great New York pastrami sandwiches, and being painfully cold.

  Last month, we saw New York in a different light. Our oldest daughter had planned to visit her best friend, who lives in Connecticut now, and casually asked if we’d like to go along. Not having been on a trip in ages, we said yes in a heartbeat.

 Her friend Stephanie and her husband, Jason, live an hour’s train ride from the city. We stayed with them all but one of the the six nights of our visit and spent three days and one night in New York.

  The temperature was roughly 60 degrees warmer than my previous visit so it was possible to see and enjoy the sights without worrying about hypothermia or frostbite. To a significant extent, the sights consisted of buildings. Scores of them, skyscrapers everywhere, some so tall their upper stories were lost in the clouds.

  The tallest building at the time of my Navy visit was the Empire State Building. Now it’s not even close; it’s the seventh tallest. The tallest, One World Trade Center, is some 500 feet taller. We had to be careful not to bump into people on the sidewalks while gawking up at the skyscrapers.

  Impressive as the tall buildings are, the one that impressed us most was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We spent most of one of our three days in New York on a city tour. Our guide said that in its early days, the the Irish were at the absolute bottom of the city’s social structure. They responded by building the cathedral, and what a job they did!

  The largest Gothic cathedral in the U.S., St. Patrick’s covers an entire city block and is absolutely stunning, inside and out. The only thing in my experience that compares is Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which it resembles.

  The cathedral is a bit over a mile from the Dakota, where John Lennon lived and was infamously murdered. (Other celebrities who lived there through the years included Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland and Leonard Bernstein.)

   A one-mile walk from the Dakota takes you to Central Park, the most visited city park in the U.S., one of the most beautiful, and home to Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial. Visiting that is a meaningful experience for any Beatles fan, this one included.

  Jason and Stephanie, our exemplary hosts, took us to a concert at a club called The Village Vanguard, the oldest continuously operated jazz club in the world. The featured act that evening was a guitarist named Kurt Rosenwinkel.

  Jason is a jazz musician and graduate of one of the best music conservatories in the country. He’s primarily a saxophonist, but also plays guitar; he owns some 30 of them. I’ve been playing guitar most of my life. And neither of us recognized a single one of the many chords Rosenwinkel played that night. My guess is that he invented a lot of them. After the show, I looked him up. He’s considered one of the greatest guitarists ever to have played the instrument.

  We emerged from the club to an entirely different kind of sound. Honking your horn is illegal in New York City, but you’d never know it. New Yorkers honk constantly. It’s annoying at first, but you get so used to it that eventually you don’t even notice. It’s just background noise. 

  New York, according to Google, is “one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, with dozens of enclaves and neighborhoods, and hundreds of different cultures, cuisines and languages.”

  Which would explain why almost everyone we spoke with there had an accent. Not a New York accent, but accents from all those languages. Our daughter asked a man for directions, listening intently  while he spoke and gestured for several minutes.

  “What did he say?” I asked her.

  “I have no idea.”

  So many accents, so many people.

  “You will never be alone here,” our tour guide said. “There will always be somebody around you.”

  True. And it can be a bit overwhelming.The sidewalks are human rivers, hundreds upon hundreds of people – people moving in front of you, behind you, beside you. People If you lived there, you’d get used to it. I didn’t, and in time it started to bother me. I vowed that upon returning home I’d drive to the desert east of town with a book and a lawn chair, take a dirt road to nowhere and enjoy a quiet read without another soul within miles.

  Our daughter was crazy about New York.

  “Wasn’t it great, Dad?” she said. “Didn’t you love it?”

  “It was great. I liked it. But can’t honestly say I loved it.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “So many people. You can hardly take a step without walking into someone. That got to me after a while.”

  I told her about my desert-drive idea.

  She mulled that over for a bit before responding.

  “I guess you’re just a true Idahoan, Dad.”

  No argument.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.

  You never know when or where you might encounter people you haven’t seen in years. It can happen anytime, sometimes in unexpected places. 

  A cemetery, for example.

  A few days before Memorial Day, I made my annual pilgrimage to Morris Hill Cemetery to lay flowers on the graves of my parents. It was a nice afternoon, but the cemetery was all but deserted. A good time to take a stroll and check out the neighborhood.

  The first stop was at the grave of Terry Blake Reilly. Terry was an Idaho state senator and the founder of Terry Reilly Health Services. He was killed in a plane crash while campaigning for lieutenant governor, a life lost far too soon. He was only 39. 

  I knew Terry from grade school. He was a year behind me, but it was one of those small schools where everybody knew everybody. He was tall for his age, and fearless. One day on my way home from school, three bullies had me backed up against a fence in an alley when Terry happened by and sent them packing. It probably saved  me from a beating. I will always be grateful to him for that.

  The inscription on his grave:  “I’d Rather be Fishing.”

  Thanking him once again for saving my bacon, I bid him farewell and went to see what other figures from the past might be in the area.

  A few steps from Terry’s grave led to the final resting place of Harold and Ellyn Gates. They were the parents of more people I’d known in grade school. One was in my class. Kevin Gates was the tallest boy in the class, and one of the nicest. My father once suggested that I could do worse than to use him as a role model.

  It would be great to know what became of him. A Google search yielded enough people named Kevin Gates to start a football team. One, in Meridian, seemed to fit except for the names of his relatives.  None of the names of his brothers or sister appeared in the search. If you read this, Kevin, I’d love to hear from you.

  Next on my walking tour were Don and Narcy Anchustegui. It’s impossible for me to be certain, but it’s a pretty good bet that they were the parents of John Anchustegui, who lived in the neighborhood where I grew up and was one of just two people in my life with whom I’ve had a fistfight. 

  No idea after so many years what started it, but what ended it is vividly remembered. It was John’s fist coming to a hard landing on my nose. We’re talking serious pain here. Stars and planets.

  The other fight happened years later, in high school. Armed with liquid courage, I picked a fight with a boy who was known for being exceptionally good at them. He also was bigger and stronger. Same result:  stars and planets, copious bleeding. And a lesson learned. No fights since then. We won’t get into how many years that’s been.

  Not far away were Ed Groff and Audrey Arregui. Audrey was my sister’s best friend when they were young. Though they hadn’t seen each other in some time, she came to my sister’s funeral. A nice lady.

  Encouraged by finding so many people from the past in such a short distance, I ventured farther and came to the memorial for Sen. Frank Church and his wife, Bethine.

  The Woodwards were snake-bit when it came to interacting with Sen. Church. Arriving at the Idaho Press Club’s New Year’s Eve party not long after we got married my wife and I ran squarely into the Churches.

  “I know you!” my wife said. “You’re Bud Davis.” 

  New to the state, she had confused a congressional candidate with the state’s senior senator. Church couldn’t have been nicer about it.

  Five years later, Church unsuccessfully ran for president. I was an editorial writer then and part of a group that interviewed him in the aftermath of his campaign.

  “Tim, you know the senator,” the newspaper’s publisher said by way of introduction.

  “Of course!” I said, reaching to shake the famous hand.

  And spilling the senator’s cup of scalding hot coffee in the process!

  Some of it ended up in his shoe. He hopped around on one foot, grimacing while trying to take the shoe off. It’s fair to say I was mortified. But, once again, he couldn’t have been nicer.

  Walking farther still, I reached the singular headstone for Paul Revere.

  For newcomers unfamiliar with him, Revere was the leader of Paul Revere and the Raiders, the most successful rock group ever to have come from Idaho. I was fortunate to have known him fairly well. He was a force of nature.

  Paul’s headstone is unique. It features an engraving of a three-cornered hat like those the Raiders wore as part of their Revolutionary War costumes, and an inscription:

  “He came. He rocked. He left.”

  Seeing the graves of all these people, once so full of life but now gone, made me realize with a start that I now have more friends and relatives who are dead than living. A sobering thought.

  They were good people. I miss them.

  That said, I’m in no hurry to join them. My headstone can wait a while.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.