Page 202 - People & Places In Time

New York City
That first week my priority became a hat a must when walking about in the snow this I found at Macys department store on 3rd avenue, famous for the thanksgiving parade. Next was rubber shoe protectors due to salt used on the sidewalks to melt the ice.
Weekends and evenings provided ample opportunity to explore, but first, another need came about quickly . . . eating which isn’t a problem in New York. Not in San Francisco or in any place else I’m familiar can be found the choices and variety of eating places this city offers. One of my first finds is so typical in this city. Daly’s Dandelion was a small tavern at 61st and 3rd Street, with perhaps ten tables and a bar with a small TV mounted on a wall at one end. This became a frequent stop in the evenings for a hamburger and beer at the bar. On one particular evening I was watching a SF Warriors and NY Nix game while eating. A man sitting next to me was watching as well and from my reactions to the game he asked if I were from California; he was in advertising and lived nearby. We continued watching and talked for at least an hour until the game was over, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company until we each went our own way.
New Yorkers can be blunt at times which unfortunately becomes a cari- cature in some people’s minds of a rude and off-putting cab driver, construction worker or whatever. Not afraid to express themselves, I non the less find them more friendly and outgoing than most I’ve come to experience in California.
I found it not at all uncommon to spend time in conversation with a stranger while at the same time aware that most likely you would never speak with or see them again.
At least once a week the Carnegie Deli was another favorite; only a cou- ple of blocks from where I lived, an easy walk walking is a big part of living in New York. Since then it hasn’t been possible to find better pastrami anywhere
that I’ve tried. There could be, somewhere, I’m still looking. The unpretentious Jewish deli seems to be on the way to extinction
I know there are plenty of Jewish Delis out there with pastrami and matzo balls and all the necessary trimmings, but there’re not the same now the Carnegie Deli has closed.
Saturday morning became a favorite time for one reason. Only two blocks over from the Bar- bazon, on 57th street, just down from Carnegie Hall was the Rizzoli
bookstore. If you don’t know the pleasure of walking into a beautiful old build- ing surrounded by books and classical music playing, in company with others that share your love for these things, then nothing I can say to describe this place will help to understand.
The newly relocated Rizzoli is at 1133 Broadway. I’ll be disappointed to not return in my lifetime, but I know that it will not be the same. I have seen photographs of the new store, nice, but as I said, not the same. Of course, there is still the New York public library, one of the best libraries in the world, the huge reading room is unmatched. Sadly, I was there but twice; there’s so much to explore I should have taken my one opportunity to have spent more time.
New York City library reading room
Judith Shampaine and I became friends quickly as our training group be- came more familiar. She had been hired in the flagship office for Drexel Burnham on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan; while I had been hired into a three-man office on the fifth floor of the T.W. Patterson building overlooking the Fulton Mall in Fresno. She was a Jewish woman living in New York City and I was a ‘near farm boy’ from the San Joaquín Valley. Still our friendship began to extend be- yond a conference room in the heart of “Wall Street” . . . into our own time away from work, into Manhattan, her home.
Judith lived in a spacious two-story apartment on Madison Avenue, in an apartment building located across the street from The Madison Library. Her father owned Shampaine Medical; a national corporation in Houston Texas. He could afford to cover her lifestyle in company with her two young daughters. She had come to New York as a dancer with the New York City Ballet. Now, not unlike my own situation, she was embarking on a new direction in her life.
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