Reminiscing the Big Apple
Fresh out of high school, long before digital media, meeting a pen pal for the first time in person, decades later, the memories of New York City can’t be erased.
I was 20 years old and still lived at home in northeast Edmonton. We were not a well-traveled Canadian family. The furthest I had been at that time was Seattle, Washington.
It was a year before the Oilers would join the National Hockey League. Edmonton was not on the American map, except for the name Wayne Gretzky. Nobody I met in New York had ever heard of Edmonton (even the ticket agents at LaGuardia Airport), let alone knew where the province of Alberta was.
“Is that anywhere near Montreal?”
My pen pal and I had been writing each other for about four years. Our friendship developed through another pen pal I met from a community page in a hockey magazine.
This trip wasn’t really planned. In fact, I originally signed up for a three-week tour to Israel, which included three days in Rome, Italy, and a cruise around the Greek Islands. That tour was cancelled because of a bombing in the Gaza Strip. My response was, isn’t there always a bombing in the Gaza Strip? I couldn’t talk the tour organizer into reconsidering.
As soon as I hung up the phone, I immediately called my pen pal in New York.
“Well, it looks like I’m coming to New York.”
Our plan was that we would spend the first leg of our vacation in Edmonton and Alberta and the second half in New York, with a three-day excursion to Boston to see the pen pal who made our friendship possible.
I picked up my friend at the Calgary, Alberta airport, where we took in a few sights, then drove west into the mountains. We stayed in Banff and Lake Louise. My friend had never seen a mountain before. She was in awe. She said she kept tripping because she was always looking up. She also commented on how big and blue the sky was.
We were on the milk run to Kennedy Airport in New York. There was a four-hour delay in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where in those days, the airport had one lonely coffee shop and not much else. Not knowing anyone at the time in Winnipeg, we waited it out at the airport. Not much to see there.
New York was like being in a country of its own.
My pen pal’s apartment, where she lived with her sister and mother, stood on Shore Road, just off the Belt Parkway. You could see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from her front window.
The humidity was the first thing I noticed. After spending ten minutes in the shower, five minutes later, it’s as if you hadn’t toweled off. I’ve never felt such humidity before. In the west, it’s very dry. The air conditioners hanging over shop doorways, dripping down towards the entrance, was a new experience for me. It was tough to get used to being sweaty all the time.
Soot was something new, too. I couldn’t believe how black the bottom of my shoes were. And the pigeons! Fortunately, I had not acquired the hatred of them that was seemingly felt by the native New Yorkers. Never have. Never will. But they were everywhere.
From day one, the view from train from Brooklyn into Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge is something that gives me an ache of longing whenever I hear the theme and intro video from the television series “Taxi” or watch the opening credits scenes at the beginning of “Welcome Back Kotter.” The “Taxi” train scene was my view on the B train.
I found New York to be fascinating, exhilarating, and unique.
It was my first day out and about, after having arrived the night before. My friend and I took the train into Manhattan. While we rode over the Brooklyn Bridge, I took a disappointed look at the Statue of Liberty. On television, it looked large in proportion to the city. In reality, it could easily be missed amongst the activity of the harbor with the towering skyscrapers nearby.
We had tickets for “A Chorus Line” at Shubert Theater, and because I was told that cameras were not allowed in the theater, regretfully, I left it at the apartment. Being without my camera that day will forever haunt me. Unfortunately, I have to resort to my memory to relive the magnificent scene which was about to come.
We took in several places that afternoon: the Burlington House Mill, J. Chuckles store, the Magic Pan restaurant, Rockefeller Center, but nothing prepared me for the majesty of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was incredible. And the gold! Its beauty was beyond belief.
After we headed back to Brooklyn for a stop at Snookers Pub, my pen pal and I were escorted by some of her friends to an area where we parked the car. We walked for a couple of blocks to an area they called The Promenade. It took my breath away. It still does when I think of it. It was The View — the one everyone sees of Manhattan in all the movies and photographs. A view so familiar, you can recall every building.
Seeing it in the movies and being there were quite a contrast. I think I must have stood there in awe for the longest time. I could have stood there for the rest of the trip. Swallowed by the view, I wanted to drink every inch of it. If only I had my camera.
The United Nations was impressive, and I enjoyed Lincoln Center, Coney Island, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the World Trade Center showed me a glimpse of how big the city really was. As far as my eye could see was New York. Having come from a city of 600,000, I figured I could live there for two years and still not see all of it.
My friend introduced me to bagels for breakfast, just one of the many food fixations I acquired from my trip. They weren’t as popular in Alberta as they are today. I loved the ices and pretzels, and just about every restaurant I entered. Everywhere you turned your head, there was food. I’m sorry to say though, Canada made better pizza. My New York-born host agreed after her visit to my home first.
Greenwich Village had an atmosphere that could only be described as youthful and trendy. Restaurants with sidewalk tables was something I hadn’t seen before. It was too cold in Alberta. (Although most downtown restaurants have them now.) There was so much activity on the street. People walked everywhere. Kiosks sold jewelry, paintings, and handicrafts. I was delighted to find a photograph of my favorite actor at the time: Al Pacino as Serpico.
In 1978 in Edmonton, if you weren’t in the bar by nine p.m., you might not get in. In Greenwich Village, things didn’t start to happen until ten or eleven.
I was impressed by the flavor of New York. The sights, smells, and sounds were unique unto themselves, like the rushing, screetching sounds of the subway below the streets, feeling the air pass up through the grates.
The carriage rides at the entrance to Central Park, the Children’s Zoo seen along its outskirts, the benches around its retaining walls, the high class stores facing the Park with black dresses in their windows. Complementing my Central Park experience was seeing Chicago and Peter, Paul and Mary perform at the Dr. Pepper Music Festival. I found the park to be quite beautiful with all its hills.
I loved the openness of New York. While lined up outside the concert gate in Central Park, people came through selling beer out of a garbage can and marijuana cigarettes in their hands. You would have been arrested on the spot if you did this in Canada.
It was the first time I sat on a waterfront pier to see a concert. The artist couldn’t have been a better fit for the venue. Don McLean performed on Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport. As it got darker, you could see the lights lit on the Watchtower building, which shone from the Brooklyn coastline across the East River. At one point during the concert, the lights on the Watchtower building went out. We might have all laughed on the pier, taking it as a sign that the religious community did not approve.
Day and night I saw the traffic flow at virtually the same pace. With all the lights from each street lamp and building, and with all the air conditioners working overtime, the city’s power bill must have equaled the net worth of many small countries.
It’s funny. I heard many stories prior to my visit. I didn’t see any of them come true. I didn’t get mugged, and I received a smile or hello from most of the people I encountered as strangers. Still, absolutely no one knew where Edmonton or Alberta was. They only knew Toronto and Montreal.
While there was a strange man dancing on the subway, counting his greenies, and I did see an arrest in Washington Square Park, my overall New York experience was positive. I miss those sights and sounds, and yes, even the smells. I long to go back. Next time, I will absorb its surroundings with more fervor — and have a bloody camera.
