SOLSC 31: Moving, Part 2

            I've lived in my current apartment for more than 46 years, and I sincerely hope to stay here for the rest of my life. But in the 10 years between leaving home and settling in on Riverside Drive, in New York City, I lived at

• Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio (Sept. 1960-March 1961)

• a shared apartment on West 87th Street, between Columbus & Central Park West, in Manhattan (April-June 1961) (Antioch College had a co-op work-study curriculum, in which we studied on campus for half the year and worked at jobs anywhere in the U.S. the other half)

• back to Yellow Springs (July-Sept. 1961)

• a very brief stay in Los Angeles (a couple of weeks; too long a story for this slice)

• so a few months at home in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania (Oct.-Dec.1961)

• back to Yellow Springs (Jan.-March 1962)

• living at NIH (it was a co-op job; I wasn't a patient) (April-June. 1962)

• Irving Place, N.W., in Washington, D.C. (July-Aug. 1962) (I used to remember this address)

• 1612 19th Street, N.W. (Sept.1962-Aug.1963) (here's when I dropped out of Antioch the first time)

• 1835 19th Street, N.W. (a couple of weeks)

• 1833 19th Street, N.W. (Sept. 1963-March 1964)

• back to Yellow Springs (April-Sept. 1964) (here's when I went back to college)

• 70 West 82nd Street (Oct.1965-Dec. 1965) (here's when I got married, and dropped out of Antioch the second time)

• 134 West 82nd Street (Jan.1966-Sept. 1967) (here's when I started back to college, at City College, at night...)

• 101 West 85th Street (Sept.1967-Nov. 1970) (and here’s when I went to City College full-time; rent here was almost half what it was at the previous place)

            After I graduated from City College and got a real job, I started agitating for a real apartment. The kitchen on 85th Street had no counter space, and its sink was half the size of a normal one and just attached to a pipe under the window, with a piece of wood nailed to the wall for the drainboard.

            When we found the apartment on Riverside Drive, it seemed huge. Two good-sized bedrooms. A kitchen with counters and still big enough for a dining table.

           And a childhood dream come true. When we lived in West Haven, we would drive into New York a few times a year to visit my grandparents in Brooklyn. Riding down the West Side Highway, I saw these impressive apartment buildings towering above the hillsides of Riverside Park and thought, I want to live there some day. This apartment was in one of those buildings. It missed the river view, but otherwise... I feel happy every time I leave my building: the park, when I look left, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine when I look right. No other street in New York has this view.

SOLSC 30: Moving, Part 1

            I got this idea for a slice from Girl Griot, who wrote about all the places she’d lived since leaving home. Since I’ve moved a lot since I was born, I’ll do this in two parts, before I left home, and after.

            My first eight months were spent in Newport News, Virginia. My father had been hired at Langley Field by the National American Committee on Aeronautics (what later became NASA and was featured in the movie, and book, Hidden Figures) as an engineer right out of college in 1939. By 1943, he was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland. My brother was born while we lived in war housing until World War II was over. In the summer of 1945 we move to Silver Spring, Maryland, while my father works at the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins, until he’s fired as a security risk a year later. After my sister is born in Washington, D.C., we move into that city to live with my father’s parents.

            In the spring of 1947, we move up to Brooklyn to live with my mother’s parents, on Avenue P. (Yes, Avenue P, just like the song on the Really Rosie album, lyrics by Maurice Sendak, music by Carole King.) My father is still unable to get a job in his field because of McCarthyism. A month after I start school in 1947, we move, along with my grandparents, to another apartment in Brooklyn, in Bensonhoist, excuse me, Bensonhurst (my mother constantly corrected any trace of Brooklyn accent creeping into my childish speech).

            Leases in New York always ran out in October (why? did landlords not have any children? did they not realize how hard it is for kids to change schools a month after school starts?). In October 1950, my nuclear family moved out of the city, leaving my grandparents in another apartment in Brooklyn. My father always said he hated cities, so he moved us to the country in West Haven, Connecticut.

            The longest I lived anywhere growing up was in West Haven, five and a half years. In the spring of 1956, my father got a job at a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia, and in May, six weeks before I would have graduated from eighth grade into high school, we moved again, to Levittown, Pennsylvania. (I did manage to persuade my parents to let me take the train, alone, back to West Haven so I could attend my class’s graduation.)

            And at the end of my junior year in high school, my parents were perverse once again and moved me around the Philly suburbs, from north to west, to Gladwyne, forcing me to change schools once again at an awkward moment.

To be continued.

SOLTuesday: Forty-six Years Ago Today

Forty-six years ago today, Jack and I moved into our current apartment. It was our third move in New York, and our first where we hired professional movers -- after all, we were 28, time to start acting like grownups. Of course, that was the day the city decided to do some repairs on the pavement of our block; I think the movers were able to park in front of our corner building on 85th Street and Columbus, but then had to back out.
   We were nervous about entrusting our sacred stereo system to unknown movers, so we took the turntable to the new apartment ourselves a couple of days earlier -- and were shocked to find it missing when we arrived on moving day. Complaints to the super were fruitless. Clearly, someone in the building had stolen it. He was also supposed to give us our copy of the lease, which he never did. (Which turned out to be moot when the building went co-op 12 years later, but I was nervous about it for years before the co-op process.) I learned only recently that super was hated by everyone in the building as incompetent, and he was gone a few years after we moved in.
   Our new apartment felt so spacious compared to the one we were leaving. There were two, 2(!) bedrooms, each one big enough for a bed and more than one bureau. There was a long, long hallway, perfect for lining with the bookcases I hadn't bought yet. The kitchen had full-size appliances and was big enough for a real table -- our previous apartment's kitchen was as wide as the narrow stove at one end, the sink's drainboard was a piece of wood nailed to the wall, and there was no, zero, zilch counter space. Wheee!
   Now that we have been here for quite a while, and redone the kitchen, I can see more places for improvement, like a second bathroom, which was more necessary when there were two of us here, and getting elderly. But I love the view out of the front door of the building: Riverside Park to the left, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine two blocks away to the right. Moving is such an ordeal, and I don't intend to do it ever again.

Poem a Day, #3: Departures

Departures

I have departed many places.

The first seven were involuntary.

My parents decided we would leave

Virginia;

Havre de Grace and Silver Spring, Md.;

Washington, D.C.;

Avenue P and 20th Avenue in Brooklyn;

West Haven, Conn.;

Levittown, Pa.

Each new place a new possibility,

but each new place had new rules and customs,

new ways to pronounce common words,

new ways for me to be a newcomer, alone.

Does anyone remember my name?

I departed Gladwyne, Pa., voluntarily and with glee,

to leave home and be on my own was my goal.

I departed college twice, voluntarily.

Settled in New York City, again my goal.

I departed many jobs, voluntarily.

Here I've lived, in the same apartment,

for 45 years. I will live here, I hope, until,

involuntarily, I depart this world.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png