Manhattan Transit
People are always surprised when I tell them I grew up in Manhattan; like there’s only a rare few of us who have ever done that. I’m amused by this, but I admit I enjoy the notoriety it confers on me, however dubious.
The follow-up question is usually “What was it like?” Quite extraordinary, to tell the truth, if you compare it to the hovering protectiveness of bringing up children today. Kids back in the 50’s and 60’s traveled all over the city, without their parents, by foot, bus, subway, even an occasional taxi.
When I was a first grader we lived on East 50th St. between 1st and 2nd Aves. I would walk with my siblings up to St. John the Evangelist grammar school on East 56th St. Weather — be it bitter cold, driving rain, wind, snow — was never a deterrent, unless a rare blizzard paralyzed the city.
When I was eight, we moved up to 79th and York Ave. (Yorkville), where we deposited ourselves on the 79th St. cross-town and Madison Ave. buses to get to our schools on 84th St. (St. Ignatius and St. Lawrence Academy). Kids traveling alone were typical. The only perceived danger was running into other more pugnacious kids. We had bus passes and cheap subway tokens that allowed us to go anywhere, and we did.
Remember, this was the era when mothers would leave babies in carriages outside stores while going in and shopping. If you did that today you’d be arrested for endangering the welfare of a child. But back then kids were never taken. This was the height of the baby boom. Who wanted more kids?
There was no such thing as play dates. If you wanted to play you just went out into the street, where you’d always find a bunch of other kids. Sidewalks and streets weren’t ideal playgrounds, but the dozens of games that were either handed down to us or we made up were expertly adapted to the physical layout. I remember once bolting between two parked cars after a ball and a cabbie screeching to a stop within inches of me. It frightened the hell out of me. The cabbie jumping out and screaming was just as terrifying. Only years later did I realize what I put him through.
We moved over to the West Side when I was ten, to a comparatively inexpensive six-room apartment on 96th St. between Columbus Ave. and Central Park West. It was a nice block, but an enclave in a mixed Irish/Hispanic neighborhood with street gangs, run-down tenements and sporadic crime. Since our schools and friends were still over on the East Side, we bussed through the park every day, the one-minute ride through the transverse like a brief spin in the country.
We often took the subway downtown to 34th St. and Herald Square to visit my mother who was a buyer at Macy’s. We loved that store. You could while away an entire day in the toys and games departments, which took up almost a complete floor. There was a magician who never failed to mesmerize us the many times we saw him, demonstrating and selling magic tricks, most of which we ended up buying over the years.
One time I took the train down to visit my great aunt who still lived in the crumbling brownstone on 50th St. Thinking I had another stop to go on the “E” train, I unwittingly ended up in Queens, a confused and scared ten-year-old wandering unknown streets, working my way toward the Chrysler Building, which I could see, but not realizing there was a body of water between us. A man came to my rescue and put me back on the train to Manhattan, convincing the token attendant I was lost and to let me back in.
When I was in high school, I took the #1 Broadway local from 96 St. up to 242 St. in the Riverdale section of the Bronx to Manhattan Prep, on the campus of Manhattan College. It was another welcome rustic break from city life. The train was a virtual school bus on rails, hauling kids up to the Prep, George Washington H.S., Fieldston, Riverdale and Horace Mann. The latter three were academically superior private schools and I wonder how many of today’s moguls, celebrities, poohbahs, and politicians shared that train ride with me in those crammed subway cars. (One time I sat across from Lew Alcindor, now known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, whose knees protruded so far into the aisle they almost touched mine.)
It wasn’t until the final days of my senior year, when I procured my driver’s license at age 17, that I was able to drive our new family car, a Corvair, to school. Cruising up the Henry Hudson Parkway along the river by myself, listening to “Help Me Rhonda” on the radio, dragging on a cigarette, gave me an inexpressible sense of freedom and possibility I can still feel today. (I have long since given up the cigarettes.)
It’s a different world now. I shudder to think of my kids trying to make their way around Manhattan at the age I did, unprotected, by themselves. But I’m glad I had the opportunity to freely explore without fear a fascinating city in a more innocent time.
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