Snapshots of Old New York

The Picture

It all started back in 1949. I was still working my way through college, but it was summer vacation time and I happened to have the weekend off. All of my local buddies were busy. Thus, I went off to Jones Beach (Long Island) on the subway by myself; I knew I could probably join up with some familiar beach buddies. It was no big deal….at least until I got in the middle of the filming of a movie called “The Girl from Jones Beach.”

I was listening to the ball game with my two-ton portable radio when the next thing I knew some guy taps me on the back of my neck and says, “Hey kid! You strong enough to carry one of these girls out of the water on your shoulders?” I whispered to myself, “If I ain’t…. I will be.” “Yes sir,” I said.

The conclusion of the scene led to a few more chores off camera and a mutually warm conversation with the stars of the movie, Ronald Reagan and Virginia Mayo. Note: It would be too long a story to talk about the frolicking with the swim suit extras.

A few years later I went to the Republican National Convention in New York City and shook hands with the future president, who remembered me and with dignity passed me off to his staff. I ingratiated myself in my own small way and worked to help him win that election for which I received a photo and his personal thanks. Unfortunately, in his later years his memory faded into the fountain blue of the sky.

It was a wonderful relationship while it lasted…

The Ride

Penn Station at 34th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue is where Macy’s, Gimbel’s and the Empire State Building were located. From there you could get free transfers to various places like Queens or The Bronx. The subway was my fifty-minute ride to high school. I’d get on at the beginning of the line in upper Manhattan, find an inside seat and then catch up on homework or read the back of someone else’s newspaper for the duration.

The Fifth Avenue bus was a double-decker that cost ten cents. It was great for open air riding during warm summer days. The Madison Avenue bus was a total zoo. Luckily I didn’t need its services too often. This bus line was the most hectic route of all of the transportation systems in New York City. Back in the late forties, right after World War II, New York City entered a new phase of growing pains. As the economy started to perk up, people were working their way out of the Depression. New York City had horrendous traffic problems that no one seemed to be able to solve. During hectic daytime hours, the trucks, taxicabs, and public surface transportation caused uncontrollable gridlock. Even though the streets were a one-way grid system, it was still a mess. I avoided driving in Manhattan. For the few times I was forced to, I learned how to be as good as, if not better than, any New York taxi driver.

Regardless, you have to picture the aggravation that a bus driver encountered each and every day of the week. Not just with the traffic. He had to make change for the passengers, while watching for those people trying to ride without paying. He had to stack them into the back of the bus like sardines, then let them on and off at the prescribed stops. Then there were the obnoxious body odors and the stupid questions: “do you go to New Jersey?” The incessant noise really got to those drivers. And the worst part was once they arrived at their final destination they had to turn around, start over again and go back in the opposite direction.

One gray, overcast, snow-threatening morning a driver for the Madison Avenue line pulled his assigned vehicle out of the bus terminal, and instead of showing his route number and destination on the top front of the bus, he put up the “chartered” sign. He headed for the Lincoln tunnel and got on the New Jersey Turnpike….and disappeared. Three days later the authorities located the bus in sunny Florida. Where else but Miami Beach? The driver was not trying to hide. He was just casually using the bus as his transportation to and from the beach. He told both the police and the New York City transit department that he had had a nervous breakdown. He needed some rest and recreation, commonly known as R&R. I remember this episode taking the city by storm, but not the eventual outcome. I do know, that upon his return to New York to face the charges brought upon him, the populace of the City embraced him as a local hero. There was no ticker-tape parade, but he was the envy of all of the Ralph Kramdens in the world.

You remember old Ralph….a bus driver….portrayed by Jackie Gleason…in…The Honeymooners.

Bruce Zimmerman was born and raised in New York City during the depression years. After graduating from the University of Rhode Island, he served in the Korean War. In 1957 he and his family moved to Tampa, where he started his own construction company that remains in existence. Bruce began taking OLLI writing classes with “Writing your Life Story” and is a current member of the Imaginative Writing “crew.”