by Alex Twersky

In the old days, they might have settled their feud with pistols at 10 paces, or a chariot race in front of the emperor a la Ben Hur. But in an age of the Internet, a time when subways have computer-assisted hydraulic brakes and robotic voices announcing the next stop, Zeb and Morton ultimately realized that the only way to set things right involved the third rail and pushing their machines to their natural limits.

Since he crashed his first Lionel locomotive into a plastic tree, Zeb knew he wanted to be a train operator. When he graduated from high school, he skipped the senior trip to Panama City and sat by the 125^th Street rail yards day and night watching them shuttle subway trains in and out of service. Now, at age 36, Zeb was an MTA veteran and knew everything there was to know about the workings of a train. But a life spent fixing electric rail generators and sliding doors meant that when it came to women, Zeb was all thumbs.

Morton had never really known love outside of trains either. Married at 17 to a girl he met on the old El train because he liked the way she observed the admonition to ‘watch the closing doors’, he was as apathetic a lover as he was about most things without diesel engines. But there was something the passive Morty (his friends called him Morty, and he didn’t have many) would never forsake. He loved the way trains moved, their undulating grace and power, their steely coats masking a beating mechanical heart within. It was no surprise that out of over 45,000 MTA employees Morty’s passion for trains earned him a plumb assignment as one of the first subway operators to helm one of the gleaming new R-160 trains, making their maiden voyage on the #6 IRT line.

Zeb and Morty had no reason to lock horns. They both respected the order of their subterranean universe. They were both deferential to their responsibilities to get their human cargo safely from point A to B. But everything changed when 7:47 came into the picture.

7:47, all 6 leggy feet of her, wouldn’t just take any old train to work. Every morning, she would wait for Morty’s 7:47 chariot to pull into the station, and then she would alight as if she were the Queen of England stepping on to a gilded carriage.

She must have lived in one of those chic high-rises that stand at attention along 86^th St. on the East Side of Manhattan. She probably worked at one of those big nameless corporations that the MTA ferries people to every morning. 7:47 relied on the 6 train to get her Prada-clad self to work every day, so she could market something or other to an anxious America.

As she made her way to the opening doors, Morty would tip his wrap-around protective goggles and absorb the subtle suggestive glance that she would throw to the chauffeur of her MTA Rolls. When 7:47 arrived at the 86^th Street station early, she would be there to witness the dejected look on Zeb’s face as he gently docked his 7:43 R-153. (The R-153 not old enough to be labeled a classic, but in limbo nonetheless thanks to the arrival of the R-160s). Zeb couldn’t stomach the fact that his muse had rejected his train in order to wait an extra 4 minutes for Morty’s flavor-of-the-month. While she stood there staring ahead benignly, as if her Blahniks were fastened to the platform by chewing gum, the rest of the commuters rushed to board the long line of cars. Zeb had one recurring thought every morning he saw her: I’d give it all up to take her from Bowling Green to Pelham Bay just once!

In the shower one day Zeb came up with an idea to make his dream come true. His idea was deceptively simple enough to work. Zeb would approach Morty and ask him to swap train assignments. Surely Morty, a man of the rails, would appreciate the nostalgia of the situation, remembering the days when subway conductors were known as underground Casanovas. The only thing worse than Morty’s response to Zeb’s proposition – ‘Noooah’, complete with Queens-inflection - was the belly laugh that accompanied it.

Undeterred, Zeb came back the next day with Mets tickets. Morty puckered his fat lips, deep in thought, and accepted Zeb’s gesture. The Mets lost that game to the Dodgers; when Zeb showed up at Shea with the paperwork for the train transfer, Morty, a die-hard fan of the Amazin’s since ’66, was so distraught he said ‘no deal’ and told Zeb that he could take his complaints back home with him on the 7 train (also an R-153 line, mind you). Morty could not have known that rejection inspired Zeb to greater flights of creativity, like the time when he was 9 years old, and kicked off the little league team for missing too many practices, he conspired to buy all of the baseballs in the neighborhood to end his team’s season prematurely.

The next morning, Zeb, in full MTA dress uniform, burst into the conductor locker room and stood in front of Morty, leather gloves in hand. Not even a split second went by, less time than it took for a bead of sweat to slide down the seated Morty’s brow, before Zeb sent those stiff gloves across Morty’s cheek and issued the following challenge:

‘The first one to Union Square station from 42^nd Street gets the glory train. The loser puts his uniform in mothballs and takes early retirement to Clearwater Beach. In or out, Morty?’

Morty, still smarting from the slap, wasn’t one to back down from a contest of train mastery. He accepted, but not before squeezing Zeb’s gonads until his pale face turned cherry red. The rules were set: they would race in adjoining tunnels starting at 42^nd Street; the first man to reach Union Square would win. Zeb showed up with bags under his eyes, evidence of a sleepless night that Morty’s taunts on race morning attributed to unbridled fear of a superior trainman.

To this day no one is sure why Morty’s train went full speed in reverse after the starting whistle blew. Some folks in the know suspected Zeb’s sleepless night was spent reprogramming the R-160 to only go backwards. Others thought it was a design flaw that led to the subsequent MTA review of the R-160 contract. The result was the same: Zeb coasted into Union Square the undisputed winner; and Morty ended up rear-ending a downtown 6 on its way into the 42^nd Street station from 51^st Street. No one on board was hurt, not counting Morty’s ego at the mercy of the ultimate calamity that can befall a train operator – the revolt of his train.

Zeb never did collect his prize. After the NY1 cover story exposing the dangers of riding the new R-160 subways, 7:47 decided to slip out of the gym a little earlier to catch Zeb’s dependable 7:43. A few months later, while Morty was spending his mandated respite at the Shady Pines Sanatorium making locomotives out of Popsicle sticks, Zeb would get to know 7:43 nee 7:47 as Helen. A year after that, he knew her as Mrs. Zeb Polkowski.

Generations later, in a world where people levitate to work, subway trains are bits of nostalgia. But Zeb enjoys telling this story to his grandchildren, because to them braving the dangers of the third rail is just something grandpa did because he loved grandma.

Alex Twersky