Never say never

Never say never

“I’ve been around long enough to know that you never say never.” — American mixed martial artist Frank Mir (1979-)

As my airport shuttle crossed the East River toward LaGuardia last Wednesday morning and the Manhattan skyline began slipping away behind me, I found myself wondering if I would ever see New York City again.

At 61, it’s not an unreasonable question.

The years move a little faster now. Parents age. Responsibilities multiply. Calendar pages seem to turn with alarming efficiency.

For a few moments, I watched the skyline shrink in the distance and felt the familiar sadness that comes at the end of a good trip.

Then I laughed at myself.

Because if life has taught me anything, it’s that my predictions have an almost flawless record of being wrong.

After all, there was a time when it never even occurred to me that I would visit New York City once.

Growing up on Milwaukee’s northwest side, New York wasn’t a destination.

It was a place in movies.

A place on television.

A place where Nero Wolfe solved murders while Archie Goodwin prowled the streets of Manhattan in Rex Stout detective novels.

It was skyscrapers, Broadway, Wall Street, yellow cabs, Archie Bunker and a world that felt impossibly distant from Wisconsin.

Visiting New York someday wasn’t part of any life plan.

It wasn’t even on the radar.

Yet somehow I had just completed my fourth visit.

The first came in May 2014 when I accompanied my daughter on her Lakeland Union High School Model United Nations trip.

Then came visits in August 2018 and March 2019 while researching my book on the history of the old W.T. Grant Co. department store chain.

Now, in 2026, I was back again.

Only this time the story had come full circle.

I wasn’t visiting New York to research the book.

I was visiting New York to present it.

One of the interesting things about returning to a city four times over 12 years is that your experience becomes layered.

Most visitors simply see New York.

I now remember New York.

Every visit remains there somehow, stacked atop the others like transparent sheets in an old scrapbook.

The city accumulates stories.

Monday evening offered a perfect example.

I wandered into Bryant Park, “Midtown Manhattan’s Town Square,” where hundreds of people had gathered for an outdoor opera performance.

Some sat in folding chairs.

Others spread blankets across the expansive green lawn.

Around them, surrounded by skyscrapers, people ate dinner, drank wine, talked with family and friends, and enjoyed a warm Manhattan evening under the promenade of London Plane Trees lining the park’s outer perimeter.

An opera performance in a public park.

And somehow it felt completely normal.

The remarkable thing wasn’t the opera.

The remarkable thing was how effortlessly New York made it part of everyday life.

The news spends so much time showing us what’s broken that we sometimes forget how much still works.

Bryant Park felt like a reminder.

For a little while, it felt less like Manhattan and more like somebody had misplaced a piece of Europe.

The next morning I found myself in Times Square.

Walking through Times Square, I wasn’t just seeing Times Square in 2026.

I was also seeing traces of 2014.

And 2018.

And 2019.

Stepping off 42nd Street onto Broadway, there is probably no place in America more capable of overwhelming the senses.

Times Square feels like what would happen if someone crossed a county fair, a Broadway stage, a stock exchange, a carnival midway and six cups of espresso.

I found myself admiring the magnificent Art Deco and Beaux Arts styled Paramount Building towering above the crowds. Long before the giant LED screens and digital billboards, it stood as one of the great landmarks of old New York.

Looking up at it, I couldn’t help imagining the generations of visitors who had stood on those same sidewalks before me.

Then, because New York never allows anyone to remain serious for too long, I unexpectedly encountered the Naked Cowgirl.

Only in New York can a man spend his morning contemplating architecture and urban history while tourists line up to take selfies with a woman whose wardrobe appears to consist primarily of boots, a cowboy hat, a guitar and optimism.

Civilization and absurdity don’t merely coexist in New York.

They share the same sidewalk.

Only New York can make opera in Bryant Park and a nearly naked cowgirl in Times Square seem like equally legitimate cultural institutions.

After wandering Broadway in Times Square, I made my way to Sardi’s, perhaps the most famous theatrical restaurant in America.

If you’ve never visited, imagine stepping into a time machine.

Jacketed waiters in bow ties.

Music from another era.

More than 1,200 celebrity caricatures covering the walls.

The sort of place where you half expect Archie Goodwin and Lily Rowan to stroll in after a matinee at the Shubert Theatre across West 44th Street.

As a lifelong Nero Wolfe fan, I was completely charmed.

Some places don’t merely preserve history.

They inhabit it.

After lunch, I returned to Bryant Park.

Office workers ate lunch beneath the trees. People read books, played bocce and table tennis, rode the carousel and simply enjoyed being outdoors.

Nobody seemed in a hurry.

Nobody seemed eager to leave.

For a little while, the city slowed down.

And later that afternoon came the reason for the trip.

The presentation to the William T. Grant Foundation.

For years, the W.T. Grant project had occupied a corner of my life — research trips, archives, photographs, interviews, questions, dead ends, discoveries, drafts and revisions.

The seemingly endless process of turning widely scattered fragments of information about retailer-philanthropist William T. Grant, the Grants department store chain and the William T. Grant Foundation into a coherent story.

And suddenly there I was presenting the finished work.

When it ended, the overwhelming emotions weren’t relief or exhaustion.

They were pride and gratitude.

Pride that the project had reached this point.

Gratitude that people cared.

What struck me most afterward were the comments from board members and foundation employees.

Many told me the presentation had significantly expanded their understanding of the organization’s history.

They knew the foundation well.

Some had devoted years, even decades, to it.

Yet many knew only a little about founder William T. Grant himself and virtually nothing about the nationwide department store chain that made the foundation possible.

For a historian, that’s deeply satisfying.

You spend years assembling a puzzle and then watch people discover the completed picture for the first time.

As I looked back at the skyline Wednesday morning, I realized something.

The presentation had been the purpose of the trip.

But New York had once again become part of the story.

The city had given me another layer.

Another chapter.

Another collection of memories to stack atop the others.

And perhaps that’s the larger lesson I’ve been learning these last few years.

A few weeks ago, I was wandering U.S. Highway 51 through Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, passing through places like Cairo, Fulton, Dyersburg, McComb and New Orleans.

Walking Beale Street in Memphis.

Admiring old courthouse squares in rural Kentucky.

Eating at vintage diners.

Photographing old motor courts.

Exploring charming downtowns that most Americans speed past without a second thought on the bypassing interstates.

Growing up in Milwaukee, I never imagined any of those journeys either.

Life, thankfully, rarely consults our plans.

Somewhere along the way, I’ve discovered that the best stories, the best adventures and the most meaningful destinations are often the ones we never expected to reach.

New York was one of those places.

So was New Orleans.

So was standing before the William T. Grant Foundation board discussing a book that years ago existed only as a vague idea in the back of my mind.

The older I get, the less confidence I have in my ability to predict where the road leads next.

And honestly, that’s probably a good thing.

Will I ever return?

Honestly, I don’t know.

At 61, I’ve learned that certainty is usually a fool’s game.

I was certain I’d probably never visit New York.

Then I came four times.

I was certain this book would remain little more than an interesting research project.

Then I found myself presenting it to the foundation board in Manhattan.

Life has repeatedly demonstrated a complete disregard for my predictions.

So perhaps I’ve finally learned the lesson.

Don’t say never.

Not about New York.

Not about books.

Not about roads still waiting to be traveled.

Not about chapters still waiting to be written.

Because somewhere out there may be a future version of me once again sitting beneath the trees in Bryant Park, lingering over lunch at Sardi’s, gazing up at the old Paramount Building, and smiling at the delightful absurdity of the Naked Cowgirl of Times Square.

And if that day comes, I suspect I’ll be just as surprised as I was the first four times.

Vilas County News-Review columnist Eric A. Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.