Our Visit to the Big Apple (2)

 The next day was Friday, and we were determined to see the Manhattan sights in the daylight.  We found a parking garage on Park Avenue, and we split up from the Newtons.  They were going to a quiz show, but we couldn’t take Elliott because he was under 5.   By this time it had begun to rain quite hard.   We decided to tour the United Nations building.   We knew that it was at the end of Broadway, but we didn’t know which way to go on Broadway.  A native New Yorker asked, “Do you want to up uptown or downtown.”  We didn’t know the difference.  We told him that we were trying to get to the United Nations building, so he told us which bus to take.

Our visit to the Big Apple took place on the day after Thanksgiving.  We later learned that it was the busiest day of the year.  It was about six blocks to the United Nations.  We walked down there while I carried Elliott.  Ann was screaming at me to take a taxi, but I was afraid to ride with a New York City taxi driver.  We did manage to see the United Nations, although Ann and I had to take separate tours since children under five weren’t allowed.  I agreed for us to get on the bus for the return trip.   Then I had a horrible feeling, I didn’t know where to get off, so I asked the riders around me.  One lady said, “I don’t know I’m from Detroit.”  As it turned out everyone around me was from out of town.  Out of desperation I asked the driver where I needed to get off to go to Park Avenue.  My Texanese and his Brooklynese caused some communication difficulties.  Just because we all profess to speak English doesn’t mean we speak the same language.  I finally understood him to say, “Get off right here.”   We did, but I still didn’t see anything that looked familiar. It was raining so hard, I thought we had to get somewhere out to the rain in order to figure this thing out. We opened the door to a building and walked in.  I recognized it immediately from pictures.  We were in Grand Central Station. As it turned out the Park Avenue Parking Garage was right next to Grand Central Station.

Ann was furious with me.  She said, “We’re going to get in the Newton’s car and we’re so wet we’re going to ruin the interior.”  Within a few minutes the Newtons showed up. They were wetter than we were.  By this time we just wanted to get into the car and head for Albany.

Perry got directions to the Brooklyn Bridge, which would take us to the New York State Thruway. By this time it was rush hour, and we were there on the busiest day of the year.  We had the lights on; the windshield wipers were going and so was the defroster.  It took us three hours to get to the Brooklyn Bridge.  Remember this was a 1960’s car.  Perry’s car didn’t have an alternator.  It had a generator and the generator couldn’t keep up.  By the time we got out of the city, we didn’t have headlights.  We drove most of the way back to Albany without headlights.  The speed limit on the Thruway as 65.  I slept through it, but Ann was wide awake, not believing that Perry was driving 65 miles an hour in the dark.  It took us three hours to get to the Brooklyn Bridge, and only three hours to get from there to Albany.

That was my first and last trip to Manhattan, although we did attend the World’s Fair in 1964.

Our Visit to the Big Apple (1)

For some time we had anticipated a trip to New York City.   A couple we had known in Houston had moved to Long Island and invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them.  They had moved to West Islip, Long Island as a part of the “Exodus Bay Shore” project, which was an effort to encourage people from various areas of the South to move to the New York City area and plant a church.

To get to Long Island, we had to go through New York City.  We passed the old Polo Grounds, where the Giants used to play.  The stadium was in the process of demolition.  Then we passed Yankee Stadium. I was wishing I could go inside and see “the house that Ruth built.”   We shared Thanksgiving with the West Islip church, and then spent a couple of days with our friends.   Somehow, Ann developed an ulcer on her tongue.  The lady of the house was into “alternative medicine,” so she gave Ann some yeast and apple cider vinegar.  It made Ann sick, but we had all planned to take a trip into Manhattan that evening.   So she was a good trooper and went along. 

She finally persuaded us to stop at a drug store, where she bought some alka seltzer, and asked for a glass of water.  The pharmacist probably thought she was inebriated, but he cooperated.  We drove into the Queens and parked our car near the subway station.   Thing were much safer in New York during those days.

We rode the subway, and Ann nearly panicked when she was told that we were riding underneath the Hudson River.   In time we reached 42^nd Street.   It was about eleven o’clock in the evening, but you would have thought it was the middle of the day.  As we came out of the subway station, we saw an old man with a blood spurting from the top of his head.  He was a street preacher.  Some thugs didn’t like his message, so they beaned him on the head with a rock.  That was our introduction to Manhattan.  The lights were dazzling even though many of the buildings were darkened, and the windows were draped in black.   The national was mourning the loss of the president.   

We saw Central Park, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and several other well known Manhattan landmarks.   Ann was disappointed with Times Square.  It was nothing more than a marker in the middle of the street.  When people think of Times Square as the crossroads of the world, they are actually thinking about the buildings at that intersection.  We stopped in a little Pizza place, and we enjoyed it very much.  The guy who made the pizza did it with a flair.  He apparently considered himself and entertainer.  We applauded and he bowed when he got through.   By this time it was past midnight.  We then rode the subway back to the Queens, and drove to back Long Island.

The Day Camelot Ended

The day was November 22. 1963.    On the next Friday after my wreck, Perry Newton drove me to the salvage yard, and I exchanged the snow tires for my regular tires which had been stored in the basement.  I had just bought snow tires for our new car, and I wanted to get them off before the car was sold for salvage. When we drove up to the salvage yard, the man who ran the place told us that President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas.  Both events were reminders of how fragile life can be.

There’s no way I can describe the emotional impact of that event.  Of course it dominated the news for days.  Then it seemed like things were spiraling out of control a few days later when we switched on the black and white television set that someone had given us upon arriving in New York.   There we saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on national television.  To this day people are still debating as to whether Oswald was a lone assassin, if he was the assassin at all, or if there was a conspiracy.  I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.   The Kennedys like to compare their time in the White House as Camelot.  Unfortunately Camelot came to an abrupt end, and with it came much of the innocence that we had known throughout our lives.

Wrecking Our New Car

We bought our first new car just before we moved to Albany.  It was a 1963 Rambler. Shortly before we arrived Russell Gleaves had resigned as the preacher for the Schenectady church.   Since we had three preachers at Albany, the Schenectady elders asked if I would come and fill their pulpit on occasion.  One Sunday in November, I drove to Schenectady by myself to preach.  Ann and Elliott rode with Perry, Lillian and Elliott to the church in Albany because Ann was teaching a Bible class.   I had been invited to go home with one of the Schenectady elders.  Ann, Elliott and the Newtons were supposed to meet us there after the church service was dismissed in Albany.

I followed the elder’s car.   We passed through a traffic light and made a left hand turn.   I had gone less than a block when I felt a hard jolt from behind.   My car careened out of control.  I remember seeing a utility pole staring me in the face.   The next thing I remembered, my car was headed in the opposite direction, and it was a tangled mess.  I still have no memory of the actual impact. A drunken driver had run the light and rear-ended me.

I wasn’t bleeding anywhere, and I was still alive.  I was able to climb out of the car, and walk away.   When I bought the car, public service announcements on television were advocating the use of seat belts.   Vehicles were not required to have them, but I was convinced I needed them and ordered them with the car.   I immediately realized the seat belt had probably saved my life.   Ann and Elliott didn’t wear seat belts and so I considered the fact that they weren’t in the car to be a gift from God.   Before I left the scene of the accident Ann showed up, and when she saw the car, her heart sunk. They had told her that I was not injured, but after seeing the car she wasn’t buying it.  Actually I wasn’t seriously hurt, but by mid-afternoon I began to feel all kinds of aches and pains.  They were mostly bumps and bruises.  After that I consider every day I live as a blessing from God. It was also a blessing from God that Ann and Elliott weren’t in the car.  They hadn’t been using the seat belt.   They have used them ever since.

Getting Settled in Albany

Language Lessons

When we decided to involve ourselves in US Missions, we didn't think we would have to learn a new language.   That wasn't totally true.

After leaving Western New York, we drove to the home of Perry and Lillian Newton in Albany. I had met them in Tomball, Texas some years prior to that time, but our friendship with Perry and Lillian really started that night, and it lasted until Perry and Lillian both went to be the Lord.  Perry enjoyed a career with Humble Oil and Refining (now known as Exxon) in Houston.   He was at the top of his earning potential and on the way up the corporate ladder, when he suddenly took early retirement and moved to Albany to work full time with the newly planted church.  He and Lillian would spend the rest of their lives in Albany.   We had no idea about where we might live, but the next day we looked at a duplex in the Albany suburb of Colonie.

Bob and Berniece Scott lived in the other end of the duplex.  We struck a deal with the owner, and moved in shortly thereafter.  The day after that I attended business meeting of the church. During the meeting Perry mentioned the fact that a poor lady in the church needed a new roof before the onset of winter.  He said that a lumber yard was offering a special price on roofing and suggested the church buy roofing for the house.  

He and I were selected to put on the roof.  Fortunately, Perry knew something about roofing. I didn’t.   The next morning, we went to the lumber yard to purchase the composition shingles and other supplies.   That’s when I realized I didn’t know how to speak the language.  I asked the sales clerk, “Do you have any nail sacks?”  He said “What?”  I said “nayal sacks?”  I had always thought there were two syllables in "nail."  He said, “What’s that.”  I said, “Well, it’s a thing you tie around your waist to put your nails in when you’re roofing a house.”   He said, “Oh, you mean a “nell” apron.”   Not only did the people sound funny, they had different names for things.  Women didn’t carry purses.  They carried pocketbooks.  You didn’t put your groceries in a sack; you put them in a “beg.” A stream of water was not a creek. It was a crick.  I even learned that my last name doesn’t have two syllables, even though I’m been known to pronounce it with three. New Yorkers needed only one.

Perry and I got our supplies and drove to the lady’s house.  She was in her eighties, but she ran a kennel.  Many of her dogs were in the house.  When she invited us to have lunch with her at noon time, we enjoyed it along with a couple of Irish Wolfhounds.  By the end of the day, Perry and I had the house about half roofed.   As we were driving home, Perry said, “You can write to your supporting elders and tell them you preached the gospel with a hammer in your hand today.”