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.