L.A.'s Grand Central Station

J.S. Bach celebrates his 331st birthday on March 21 and musicians around the world will perform in subways and public places. A Bach marathon will feature his music, and at noon time, the Los Angeles Organ company will feature his music.
  Since I ride the rails out of Buena Park twice a week to either Los Angeles or Oceanside it is no miracle that I love the Grand Union Station-finished  by three railroads in 1939.  I do research in the downtown library and enjoy visiting my 94 year old friend Connie Goldstein once a week.
   Connie had been a witness to the Miracle at the Coliseum at the 1939 Rose Bowl that pitted Duke against the Trojans of U.S.C. She sat in Murrays old Plymouth on their way to Wave Crest off the Roosevelt Highway-now called the P.C.H. She heard the end of the game when Doyle Nave threw four straight for the winning touchdown for U.S.C. A few years earlier this Freemont grad performed at the Melrose Comedy Club.
    She will be a featured speaker at my book signings after the book is released. She will speak about the four straight  completions from a kid from downtown Manual Arts High School that sent the boys from Durham back on the Santa Fe at Central Station.
   Earlier at the Union Station the day before, I took advantage of a piano set up in front of the waiting area and across from the Amtrak ticket window. I played a few ditties but this time only about eleven dollars filled my Bruin hat but received a large ovation from the tired patrons.
   Pico Blvd no longer represented the city I knew in the forties. English no longer was the first language-at least on the bus. Inside the Ralph's bus stop, a lady began to get up. Her belongings sat next to her inside a Ralph's shopping car. Next to her, Fagan, a character out of Dicken's Oliver Twist sat up eating fruit loops. His beard had grown a few inches. His sleeping bag stood up by itself. But for contrast, Pico now wore a prayer hat. Hasidic rabbis made up a large number of its occupants.
The Big Rapid Purple bus had earlier picked me up on Pico and returned me to the Subway on Western and Wilshire. I paid a dollar fifty and took the Purple Line into the Union Station.  A bit tired, I heard the piano sing. A professional played the hits of yesteryear. '
   Mr. Shaw was dressed to the hilt. He wore a leather hat and a chest warmer. His fingers, yes his fingers jumped every-which way on the piano. I envied him and made him play a few more. I will paraphrase our chance meeting.
   "I grew up in the Beverly Hills area and played the piano in several churches. Whenever I see a piano I love to play it. In no way could I have stayed married with my talkative wife without the piano.
   I only hope that one day I can have my fingers play as effortlessly as his. His piano fingers played the piano as fast as Secretariat ran its races: Poetry in motion."
   I decided to take advantage of Olvera Street and its host of Mexican restaurants. The perfect day had no clouds in the sky. I bought two tacos with beans and  rice and enjoyed the day. A volunteer handed me two post cards celebrating Bach's birthday.

Nuts and bolts for today: It is not just perchance that I hear music everyday. I discarded the T.V. and turned to the U.S.C. station 91.5 FM. Music does wonders for my mind inside an unsettling world.