Living in a city of surprises

Just a block-and-a-half from where Cory Lidle's plane smashed into the centre of a 42-storey building in New York last Wednesday, there is a small, almost-forgotten reminder of what it means to be in a city of surprises.

On 71st Street, between First and York avenues, there is a tree in a line of trees, about 20 foot tall, arcing out over the street, branches drooping with vibrant green leaves. The tree looks anonymous at first, a little mis-shapen by the wind, but at its core it holds a secret of old New York: inside the bark there is the broken base of an old religious statue.

The base of the statue -- cream-coloured, half an inch wide and embedded six feet high in the tree – is almost as surprising as the sad sight of the gaping hole that showed in the Upper East building where the plane fuselage was held for a single moment before it dropped to the street below.

Each a testimony to the strange territory of chance.

On Thursday morning, while around the corner the New York media had set up a long garland of cameras and lights, and while reporters searched for something new to say about the plane tragedy, 76-year-old John Patrick Cmar stood on the stoop of his home and looked across at the tree on the north side of 71st Street.

"Used to be an antique shop there, you see," said Cmar, pointing across at a medical complex and a parking garage. "The guy who owned the shop used to hang religious icons in the trees so customers would see them as they went past. Well, he must have forgotten about one of the icons, a small replica of the Virgin Mary. And the tree grew up and around the statue."

The antique shop was closed down and the swallowed statue was forgotten until – 15 years ago, according to Cmar – a construction truck was backing up on the street and it knocked off one of the branches. The branch fell to the street but the statue protruded like a small miracle.

"The next day someone broke off the statue and stole it," says Cmar, who has lived on the street for 54 years. "That's what happens in this city. Things come and go."

But the base of the statue still remains and last Thursday morning, as countless curious onlookers, police officers and rescue vehicles crowded the Upper East Side neighbourhood, the old man, Cmar, looked out from his stoop.

"Used to be that people came here to look at the tree," he said with a wistful look in his eye. "They hung prayer beads and cloths and even put money in the crook of the branches. It was like a shrine. There was a lady who used to live here, Anne Urban, who collected the money. And she got some railings built around the tree, marked it off, but the railings are gone now too, they kept getting run over. Nobody hangs any beads from it any more. That stopped after 9/11. Just plain stopped. Gave in. Don't ask me why. And Anne is in a nursing home down the road."

And so, in some ways, the tree is a testimony to what this city has become. No more shrines. No more prayer beads.

And yet, at the same time, the tree – fairly anonymous along a fairly anonymous sidewalk – also seems, in a curious way, a testimony to the endurance of the magical, even in a city that can be rocked back on its toes by the threat of terror.

When the plane slammed into the building last week most New Yorkers took it quietly enough. It brought back bad memories and there was a momentary shock that there might be chemical weapons in the plane. But when the truth emerged – it was an accident, with a baseball pitcher at the helm – the city got back to normal. People shrugged. Some held vigils. Others cursed the late subways. Others, like Cmar, went back to their stoops.

On Thursday morning, Cmar crossed the road and reached up into the crook of the branches and touched the base of the statue.

"One of these days the bark will swallow up the base too," he said. "But I'll be gone by then. I won't see that. Everything comes, everything goes. That's the way it is in this town."

He looked down towards York Avenue, where the spinning lights of police vehicles still patrolled, and then he crossed the street once again to stand on his stoop, casting a half-glance at the tree, and then the emergency vehicles, as if to say that our surprises are not quite what they used to be.