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City LifeCity life vs. country life: As a born-and-raised big city boy, having traveled the worked and USA widely and lived or visited just about everywhere in the USA, I now have adopted a country life in rural Georgia, and I think it is safe to say I have experienced the best (and possibly worst) of both worlds. They are two entirely different ways of life – each with their own advantages and disadvantages. As for me, I like beauty and nature, but also the convenience, diversity and open-minded people of the city who are also spoiling and have become a necessity to my happiness.So how about you? Do you prefer the silent peaceful tranquility of living in the country, or the loud crowded police siren in-the-distance city life? OK, I admit it the country life has fewer opportunities but think about it it’s much healthier. You know that people who live in the city are like bees. They are precipitous and bustling. Because most people live in cities, they have a lot more social and business activities: shopping malls and restaurants galore, thrift stores, libraries, and concert venues, just to name a few. Space is at a premium, housing is expensive, you need more money than living in the country. But city life is exciting and fun with tons of things to do with a huge variety of people. Obviously, to get the most out of city life, you need to be able to afford it.Meanwhile, life in the country differs greatly from life in the city. Country nights are quiet and the expansive sky bounteous with brilliant stars that seem brighter than those in the city. The clean, evening air is permeated with the sounds of katydids, crickets and birds. It all depends, then, on what your preference is on where you'd be happiest. If you thrive around lots of people, don't like being out in the Sun much, and aren't keen on driving through miles of cornfields just to get to the nearest shopping center, then city living would probably be ideal. But if you have anxiety attacks, consider yourself an outdoorsy person, or enjoy being around animals, your life may be complete in the heart of the country.I have lots of city and country experiences and I love them both. There are large collections of pros and cons when it comes to both living in the city and in the country. In the end, it is always your choice where you want to live. You could choose the loud, crowded police siren in-the-distance city. Or you could choose the other option. The peaceful, free, wide-open country. I love New York City, and as a place to work, I'd pick it over Upstate New York just about any day. It takes very wealthy people to live in NYC, so I would live in Upstate.My city experiences were being raised in 1940s Milwaukee, then stationed on a WW II destroyer for three years in 1950s Norfolk, traveling the western world to more than thirty ports and countries and eventually living/working there for seven more years as an IBM engineer at the Naval Base, attending main frame schools in upstate NY for three years, and doing extended assignments to Manhattan, Disney World, Cape Canaveral; then Washington DC for two years teaching computer technology, then Manhattan and Jamaica. Queens for two years teaching grad school in Greenwich Village; then East Orange, NJ for seven years while working in Manhattan as an engineer, and moving to Upstate for 28 years while working in Manhattan as an NY Area manager in sales and marketing, traveling the USA with extended stays in Boston, Washington, DC, Ft. Lauderdale, Atlanta, Colorado Springs, Chicago and Dallas. I traveled the USA extensively during my career, as an engineer, instructor, recruiter and consultant. I really loved old fashioned traditional Milwaukee and diverse, funky, exciting Manhattan and hated segregated, evil and socially backward Norfolk. Washington was in transition from a southern to northern culture. NJ was a rat hole but had very convenient commuting to NYC. I took a semi retirement in 1992 and worked in Upstate, New York for 15 years in Route sales selling to small towns. God . . . you will never know how beautiful upstate New York is . . . lakes, mountains, rivers! Then I moved to Georgia in the Atlanta metro area to a small town covered with shopping centers and churches. Love it here but it is difficult for me to connect with the southern culture so filled with Trump, judgmental religion, and ultra conservative politics. Let me add another couple ultras!The Case for Living in the CountryBig city glamor? Balderdash. Try big city cost. If you want to live like a king (or at least be your own landlord), move to the country. It's cheap. You have to actively try to spend more than $20 on a meal, even a good one. A movie still costs single digits. No one has a clue or cares what brand of clothing you're wearing, let alone whether your shoes, purse or belt are this year's season or last. And did I mention housing? You can live in a real house with multiple bedrooms, multiple bathrooms and a garage. And you can own itThere's space – for you, for your dog, for your kids, between you and your annoying neighbors. An ad on the NY subway sums up: "Raising a baby in an NYC apartment is like growing an oak tree in a thimble." In the city, you live on top of each other. Your kids and your dog barely know what grass is. In the country, you have something called a yard. You run around, kick a football and chase fireflies. You go sledding and build snowmen on fresh snow that hasn't been trodden by hundreds of others. You can actually identify constellations because you see lots of them each night. You are fascinated by a lot more interesting animals than squirrels, and your dog acts like a dog, you don't have to carry around bags for its poop.There are no billionaires. And frankly, few millionaires. To put it another way, there's a lot less income inequality. Since the cost of living is much lower, even those on the median family income (about $50,000 in the US) can have a decent life. You don't feel poor as you do in big cities where even those earning six-figures still believe they're "just getting by.” In the country, you aren't constantly aware of your socioeconomic status. You worry a lot more about the weather.People say hello and "how are you" and generally mean it. You go to the grocery store and have a decent chance of seeing at least someone you know. Your doctor actually calls you back the same day you call with a concern. People don't size you up constantly based upon your job, social status or income. Volunteer work isn't something you do for your resume. You feel a part of a genuine community, not just one peon out of millions.Privacy and tranquility. Cities and towns are packed with people and it is virtually impossible to step outside without being seen by or see other people. At the same time, most cities especially the large ones never sleep. And to be able to get some peace, most city dwellers drive as far from their homes as possible. In the country, people have no problems with privacy or constant noise from the traffic. You do not have to see anyone if you do not want to and often do not hear a car driving by for the entire day.Feeling closer to nature. In the country, you are woken up by the singing of the birds rather than by the noise from the traffic. Homes in the countryside are surrounded by nature which has a soothing effect on both the mind and the body. In the country, you do not have to leave your home to feel closer to nature because here, the nature comes to you and it is quite common to see wildlife such as birds, butterflies, hedgehogs, foxes, rabbits and even deer from your backyard.Open space. City dwellers chronically lack open spaces and children play computer games with less outdoor play. But in the country you could play real or play with a ball, learn to ride a bicycle or simply have some fun outdoors. In the country, children have as much space as they want and do not have to share it with tens of other children, like this is the case in most city parks and playgrounds.Friendlier people. In the country, everyone knows everyone and people actually say ‘hello’. Communities in the country are much smaller but they are more connected and open. People in the country are friendlier and are prepared to help without asking anything in return.Slow pace. Time runs more slowly in the country which takes away a great deal of stress that is experienced by the city dwellers who tend to be always in a hurry too somewhere.The Case for Living in the CityYou can get pretty much anything you want, at any time of the day or night. (Gosh, do I ever miss pizza and delis.)Public transportation (in some cities), or at least living close to amenities, saves the need – environmentally and financially – for a car.The variety of jobs and careers available is wide. Where else can you be a slinky repair technician AND be in demand?The variety of accommodation available is even wider. Urban lofts, flats, houses, skyscrapers, hovels, you name it.Walking. It's a thing. Forget about having to spend a quarter of your paycheck on a car. Forget about feeding your second-hand beater gallons of earth-destroying gas on a weekly basis. And (unless you live in LA or Atlanta) forget about spending two hours a day stuck in traffic.The entire world is (almost) on your doorstep. I don't know about you, but it would be a shame to die on the way to the hospital – or give birth on the side of a road. Which probably won't happen in the city. You can order anything from online stores and – miracle! – receive it the next day. Museums, galleries, libraries are easily accessible, a lot of them free. And food: enough said.Who likes to have the choice only between a grim pub serving dismal burgers or fish-and-chips and the local Subway branch at the back of a derelict mall? Not me.City life teaches you tolerance. The world is a diverse place – and in the city, you learn that fast. There's a reason New Yorkers are considered to be the most thick-skinned people on earth: nothing fazes them, because no one has time to be fazed and they've seen it all anyway.There is always a general interest course or class available for you to take, on any variety of topics. Belly Dancing? Wiggle away. How to Write a Romance Novel? Craft those prose. Poker Website Design? Please, just….don’t.Proximity to fire departments, police, and hospitals can make city living safer.You wouldn’t think twice about going out to see a movie or show. It’s all right there.You can streak through the city, completely naked, and chances are it will never get back to you. (Not that I’ve ever . . . never mind).Well, here is my story . . .Life in 1940s MilwaukeeIn the 1940s Milwaukee was like leave it to Beaver country, an innocent city filled up with the simple life and good times. Milwaukee was a unique among American cities and throughout the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Milwaukee was the quintessential American town, the best place in the world to call home. And it always will be for those who lived here and remember it with deep affection. Viewers of Happy Days and Lavern and Shirley can only imagine how much fun we had! I grew up in this all American 'Greatest Generation' city, 1930s - 1940s Milwaukee, Wisconsin into a primarily German partly Polish community made up of Catholics, Lutherans and a majority of Jews - and there were a few Irish/Scots and lots of refugees fleeing Nazi Germany too. Milwaukee was a heavy manufacturing, highly academic, European oriented city. When a Jewish holiday took place, my schools were emptied of many students and there would be only a few of us gentiles left attending. I found Jews to be just like anyone else, in fact, my first girl friends were Jewish. After World War II when Jewish refugees from European relocation camps immigrated to Milwaukee, we became intimately knowledgeable of the Holocaust. I gained first hand knowledge about the torture and genocide from survivors of Nazi-German extermination camps like Auschwitz and concentration camps such as Dachau and Belsen, in fact, my next door neighbor was a survivor forced into prostitution at one of the camps.Back then, Milwaukee was all about good union jobs in heavy industries, parks everywhere, beer, Harley Davidson motor cycles, mass transit on electric Trolleys, corner bars, sports - the Braves and The Packers, bowling, poodle skirts and saddle shoes for the girls, leather jackets, spade shoes and pompadour hair for the boys, swing and jitter bug dancing, drive in movies, cruising on Wisconsin Avenue, getting married right out of high school for the girls, getting a skilled apprenticeship union job or the military for the boys - a few went to college. Milwaukee was an immigrant driven city, mostly German, then Polish, the rest were Scandinavian, English, Scots, and my beloved Irish where I got my crazies from. My engineering and warrior side came from my German side. Religion was mostly Catholic, then liberal Congregational types and Jewish. Lots of Jews came from the German concentration work and death camps as refugees after WW II. Milwaukee is a buffet food city, you'll find a lot of beer, sausage, sauerkraut, cheese, and generally carb heavy fried foods and all kinds of fish. By the way, everyone learns to dance the Jewish Horah and Hava Nagila. Being on Lake Michigan and in the center of the country, Milwaukee is an International Sea Port and Transportation Depot for trains with connections to every city in the USA. You can even sail from Milwaukee onto the Mississippi down to New Orleans.Milwaukee was neat and clean, full of parks with lagoons and trees, and huge playgrounds filled with swings and organized activities surrounded every elementary or middle school. Since there were very few apartment buildings, everyone lived in a house and everyone kept their property up. We walked to school or took a city bus, rode our bikes everywhere, spent the week in Washington Park, went on week end camping trips, saw ten-cent movies and bought ten cent comic books. It’s easy enough to see why a lifestyle that embraces cheap beer, hot cars and motorcycles would speak to Milwaukeeans, but there’s also a blue-collar pragmatism inherent in a lifestyle that between drinks allows participants to hold down a job, raise a kid and maybe even pay down a mortgage. Times were so much better then, people were friendly, things were so much more innocent, there was very little crime and neighborhoods raised children. Things were just simpler and easier, back then, the movies were simple and had no fancy special effects. You could go to sleep with your doors unlocked. We didn't have all the technology then, no TV and only radio with Edward R Murrow and Gabriel Heater and JC Kaltenborn interspersed between the Longer Ranger and Shadow programs. It was family type movies with Dan Daily and Betty Gable musical time with Hopalong Cassidy matinees on Saturday afternoons. Children were raised with values and neighborhoods also raised children . . . and we lived in a village where everyone watched out for your kids.Milwaukee has so many memories for me: I remember riding downtown with my mother on the bus. My favorite place to go was Gimbals. They were always busy! They had the huge (it seemed to me) deli and bakery departments. I loved the large lunch counter on the first floor. We always had to wait in line. They had the best hot dogs on an unusual split hamburger bun. But Gimbals was the best right before Christmas. The huge windows outside were all filled with the greatest displays of elves, Santa's, reindeers, etc. They were even better than the window of the movie "A Christmas Story!” The toy department had a room off to the side with Santa and a toy village. Does anyone remember the Christmas train that rode on a track on the ceiling? I only got to ride it once or twice, but it was really different! The large restaurant on the 8th floor was always special, too, and always very busy. We ate in a room that overlooked the river. I loved the old-fashioned elevators with the operator that had to stop it at just the right level. When we went to Gimbals and saw where they made their chocolates. I remember watching a lady making each piece of chocolate by hand. We would also go to Boston Store and that was fun, too. The block west of Boston Store had a really neat Chinese store that always smelled so good and had the most interesting gifts. My mom would let me get a box of the rice candy where you could eat the paper around the candy!I grew up on 49th Street directly across the street from Hi Mount Elementary School and with its playground which covered half the block. My house was located between Garfield and Lloyd, and two blocks from North Avenue, the main thoroughfare for the area. Everything, all kinds of stores, were all there to live a great life and the memories are strong, I went to the Uptown Theater, took accordion lessons from Beihoff’s music store, ate delicious hamburgers at George Webb and later in Jr. High School at the Yankee Doodle, cooled off at the Petroff’s Frozen Custard and ate spicy pepperoni Pizza at Vito’s, the place with the good-looking real Italian waitresses.Our basement had my dad’s work shop, a laundry with two wash tubs and shelves for my mother’s canned jars of fruit, a wood stove incinerator and two coal bins with an old iron coal furnace used for heat. In my section of the works shop, my dad had hung a heavy bag and a speed bag for my boxing work outs. Our kitchen had an ice box, a pantry and a milk chute. Later mom got a small green Kelvenator refrigerator. In the laundry, the washing machine had a manual ringer and my mom used the agitator to churn ice cream and butter. My dad made less than $20 per week and my allowance was a whopping 25 cents for cleaning my room, the bathroom, and washing dishes every day, but that went far. My brother and I went every Saturday to the Uptown Movie Theater for the matinee, featuring two films and cartoons. It was cheap, five cent to get in, five cents for popcorn and 10 cents for a 24-oz coke, so 25 cents went a long way on a Saturday afternoon.Week nights we sat around the radio and listened to all kinds of great stuff from Gun Smoke to the Bob Hope Show. My family had a big floor radio and I grew up with listening to the Grand Old Opry (the show that made country music famous), professional boxing (all of Joe Louis Fights) and "MY PROGRAM; Fibber McGee & Mollie, Lil Abner and the Shadow with the family, on Saturday nights it was Our Hit Parade with Giselle McKenzie, Snookie Lanson, Russell Arms and Dorothy Collins, TV did not quite exist in our neighborhood until the late 50s. Most of the music on AM being pop - quiet and slow but that was our entertainment. Using actors before a microphone, sound effects people, soloists, ensembles, stage band and choir, nightly entertainment consisted of listening to the radio, then playing Canasta or Monopoly until 9:00 P.M. when everyone went to bed. Radio and the movies provided all the outside entertainment we needed. Every night, I would pack my pillow against the living room console radio and lay back to listen to my programs, which included The Shadow, Inner Sanctum, The Long Ranger, Super man and one my favorites, Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Who can forget the famous line, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, the Shadow knows” followed by a hideous laugh, or the creaking door of Inner Sanctum. Other program favorites were Amos and Andy, Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello and the Adventures of Sam Spade. The war news was delivered by the pontificating tones of J. Gabriel Heater and clipped Germanic voice of H.V. Kaltenborn. It seemed all my friends lived very similar lives. We all went to church, participated in sports, belonged to the Boy Scouts, and bought a car when we were 16. During the summer, we all hung our at the State Fair Grounds in West Allis that had a farmers livestock market and lots of amusement rides.I still remember the big Ferris Wheel and electric cars that we would spend all day riding. The Fair Grounds were not far from the big city Hoyt Park swimming pool that we spent hot summer days to cool off. Not far from the Hoyt Park pool was a city dump that we scavenged for useable throwaways that we converted to our goodies. It was interesting the stuff that peoples would throw out that we found useful. I still have the 18-inch saw tooth nose bill from a Saw Fish someone threw away. Milwaukee had big city parks every few blocks with type recreational activity including a world famous Zoo (Washington Park was one and 1/2 blocks from my house). At night, we could hear the lions roar and elephants trumpet. Washington Park was a place you could spend weeks fishing in the lagoons, hiking the wooded trails, listening to music at the Band Shell, or walking around the huge zoo. In the winter, the lagoons were good for ice skating and the hill for sledding, tobogganing and skiing. When I had my Soap Box Derby Racer, my brother and I would ride the hills of Washington Park all day.In the 40s, things were done on a friendly and neighborly basis. It was like a village, everyone one knew everyone else and their kids and they watched out for one another. You even made friends with the tradesmen, Mom was friends with the milkman who would deliver milk to our milk shoot, the mail man, the rag and knife sharpening man and the coal men. She would take off the milk cap and pour the cream that collected at the top and I would drink it and she'd put it in her coffee. We would walk to the dime store at 35th and North with my red wagon, buy things and put them in the wagon, then stop at the A&P on North Avenue, leave the wagon outside and buy food, and no one touched the wagon! The street lights would go on when there was a storm warning. My phone number began with “Hilltop” and all we had was a party line but no one listened in . . . well, hardly. P.S. There was nothing juicy to say or hear anyway back in the 1940s . . .You worked hard in the 1940s. My mother had a hand-operated wringer washer with an agitator motor and using the agitator as a churn, she used the cream from the top of our - home delivered - milk jugs to make ice cream and butter. Washing clothes on this slow machine was an all-day-chore. There was no television in the 40's and the movies were censored, but they only cost five cents for Saturday matinees. Life was simpler and less complicated "back then." There seemed to me to be a lot more respect for others, especially parents, politicians, and teachers. As kids, we had to work for what we got, but girls were definitely second class citizens.Cold and winter’s snows in Milwaukee were a constant thing, and great piles of the white stuff would stay for the entire winter, but lots of snow was great for tobogganing sledding and skiing at Washington Park while farmers brought in their horse drawn sleighs to provide neighborhood transportation for the city folk. Every snow fall left tons of drifts, often more than thirty feet high, especially when the City street snow blowers blew snow onto existing mounds of compacted snow laying about on playgrounds and front yards. We built huge snow forts and connecting tunnels with passageways that led to rooms we used as hiding places. But we never thought about getting a big snow collapse in one of our tunnels that could threaten our lives.I remember the 1940's and sitting in the kitchen while my mom cooked dinner squeezing the bag of margarine with the red dot to make it yellow. Drawing with my crayons and putting my PJ's on before dinner, so I could be read too after dinner. Listening for Santa Claus on the roof on Christmas Eve. Parents always read "The Night Before Christmas" to me and my brother. A swing on a big oak tree in our back yard. The first movie I ever saw was "The Wizard of Oz", and getting a red-haired doll for my seventh birthday. We had no TV then. Oh, and my brother and I believed in Santa Claus. On Saturdays, we went to a movies, had a box of popcorn, a drink all for 25 cents, Of course the movie was Roy Rogers and Dale Evens or Hopalong Cassidy westerns. I have fond memories of my parents taking us to the movies on Friday nights and sometimes for a Saturday matinee and my being there by myself with no danger, walking around at night was safe, we had real food and milk in bottles. Life was more interesting without electronics and communication and was limited to your neighborhood not the world.Horse-drawn wagons served the area. There was a Rag man who drove through the allies with his horse and wagon, one yelling out "rrragggs" next day "straaaw berrrries.” There was a peddler with his wagon selling vegetables, and the old man with his wagon, who sharpened knives for you, and they were all pulled by horses. In the 1940s we had milk delivered by Sealtest with a horse drawn wagon. The milkman always shared a free bottle of chocolate milk with my brother and me. There were ice delivery trucks where we grabbed slivers of ice grabbed off the back on summer days and sucked on, and horse drawn garbage/ash wagons going down the alleys. My mother made ice cream, cottage cheese and butter from the cream in the milk.There was almost no traffic then, and groups of neighbors would walk together right down the middle of the streets to get free or un rationed loaves of bread and cheese downtown. It was a very long walk for us little kids from 49th and North, but we did it with our mom and neighbors and my little red wagon. There were constant neighborhood drives for collecting old anything made out of steel, paper, rubber, and any kind of thing that could be made into something the troops needed. Air Raid Wardens ran about making sure everyone had lights out at night and people knew we were on a war footing and there were rules that had to be followed.We saved and reused all grease from the frying pan and butter was replaced with a tasteless margarine that had to have yellow color mixed into it. We saved tin foil and flattened tin cans for the war effort and of course had a victory garden in the back yard. Small as we were, we were given cardboard sheets showing the silhouettes of different kinds of airplanes so we could identify an enemy plane if it flew overhead. (We never saw one, but we always looked.) Our games included frequent shouts of "Bombs over Tokyo!" We had blackout curtains in all the windows and had to practice air raid drills, when we'd pull the curtains and turn out all the lights in an attempt to make Milwaukee invisible to enemy bombers.One of our neighbors, Jack Karowski, decided to enlist in the Marines after Pearl Harbor. We knew Jack well. He played Bridge at our house every Saturday night along with other neighbors. On his last Saturday night with us, Dad was in the front room when Jack rang the bell – right on time as always. Jack had gotten a letter from his brother who was stationed in Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese attack on December 7. Of the four combat-ready B-17's that survived the attack, his brother and one other Flying Fortress took off from Hickam Field to search for the Japanese invasion force. His brother was the radio operator in the first one off the ground on what was considered a suicide mission. The plane had been strafed on the ground and the wing tanks were leaking and other hits damaged other vital components. Had they found the flattops, they most likely would have been attacked and shot down while attempting to bomb the fleet.Jack's brother's plane, due to leaking fuel had to head back after three hours in the air, while the other plane swung back to the south searching for seven hours before landing. Jack told us he enlisted in the Marines and would be leaving for Boot Camp soon. My neighbors talked about the war. Everyone knew Hitler was after the Jews. We knew, for example, that the Jews were fleeing Germany and Europe and coming to England or the United States. Choosing to be separated while awaiting passage out of Nazi Germany for their entire family, German Jews placed their children on the kinder transport, a train taking Jewish children to Britain to stay with foster families until Germany becomes safe again. For a short time in 1939, for example trainloads of Jewish children under the age of 17 were sent from Germany to Great Britain for safety.The war affected food at home. The government rationed supplies of staples such as sugar, coffee, meat, fish, butter, eggs and cheese. Planting a Victory Garden was seen as patriotic. The war affected where many worked. Soon after Pearl Harbor, new plants to make bombs, tanks or other materiel were built in Milwaukee. The war, obviously, affected who lived and died, who married whom, and where people lived. Many men and women married quickly in the early years of the war. Other couples waited. Some soldiers got "Dear John" letters when the woman couldn't wait any longer. Many families made the ultimate sacrifice when their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands were killed during World War II. Others found their loved ones had been forever changed by what they had endured.With WW II, rationing for food, gas and money curtailed a lot of our running around until the war ended in 1945. There were scrap (metal) drives, war bond drives and stamps for food or shoes and victory gardens on the home front. Young boys with their wagons and teenagers would go from house-to-house collecting aluminum of any sort or any other metals. The average gasoline ration was three gallons a week; the yearly butter ration was 12 lbs. per person 26% less than normal the yearly limit for canned goods 33 lbs., 13 lbs. under usual consumption levels; and people could buy only three new pairs of shoes a year. At school, we had "duck and cover" Civil Defense drills, when we ducked under our desks. We saved and reused all grease from the frying pan and butter was replaced with a tasteless margarine that had to have yellow color mixed into it. We saved tin foil and flattened tin cans for the war effort and of course had a victory garden in the back yard. Small as we were, we were given cardboard sheets showing the silhouettes of different kinds of airplanes so we could identify an enemy plane if it flew overhead. We never saw one, but we always looked. Our games included frequent shouts of "Bombs over Tokyo!" We had blackout curtains in all the windows and had to practice air raid drills, when we'd pull the curtains and turn out all the lights in an attempt to make Milwaukee invisible to enemy bombers.During the War, households often bought their annual supply of coal in April, May and June. If more was required, another half ton was taken toward the end of the season. After the war, and during the winter, the coalman came once a month to deliver coal to our house. They would back the coal truck into our driveway and my dad would watch so they didn’t hit the eves of the house. One time they did and my dad had to fix the broken wood. I can always remember my mom saying to the coalman "Mind the washing!" Coal was delivered by big burly men who hauled it from the truck to your basement window in canvas "buckets" they carried on their shoulder. They dumped it onto a metal chute they put in our basement window and the coal went into one of our two "Coal Bins ” and from there we shoveled it into the furnace. The hard coal went into one bin and the soft coal went into the other. We would get 500 pounds and up to a ton of coal at one time.I remember the coal delivery men, coming round the back of the truck, bent under their hundred pound coal bags, as they walked to our coal chute on the side of the house. The coal men were on piece work and had to deliver at least 15 tons of coal a day, all for just a few dollars per week. My father would offer them a cold beer if he was home and they always accepted. My neighbors were factory workers and all of them were thinking about enlisting. What with the war news, they knew that war is not a game or something to just joke and speak casually about. It was literally hell on earth. Bob Hawkins, a British immigrant, told us about his brother. He was a prisoner of war, and was captured by the Germans in Dunkirk. Bob got a letter from his brother about his march to the prisoner of war camp after he had been captured with the Germans. On his way during the grueling journey, a fellow countrymen fell to the ground no longer able to walk. The Germans not caring about the prisoner’s need for survival un holstered their guns with the intentions to shoot that man on the spot. Bob's brother stepped in the middle of them, and convinced them to allow him to carry the man the remainder of the distance, that distance being three miles. Jack came home on leave. He was dressed in his starched summer Marine uniform and he looked like a recruiting poster and he would soon be off to battle. I knew from that moment that I would enlist too when I grew up. I wanted to wear that proud outfit myself someday. I would have gone down and enlisted right away but there was one big problem standing in my way. I was only eight years old. I never felt so left out in my life. I would just have to wait until I was eighteen to enlist, and that would be in 1955.Kids playing Guns, during WW II was a huge activity, after all, Hitler was bombing London in the Blitz, food shortages, rationing, poverty, family members and neighbors in the military fighting the Germans or Japanese, war news on the radio every night — a hard life for us Milwaukee kids playing in the streets. In the early 40s toys were getting more advanced, but they all had sort of a war slant to them. Guns and military type toys were in every little boy’s hands. My dad made me a wooden Thompson machine gun I used to play 'Guns' with other kids. If there were enough kids out in the street, you could play football. My dad had the football he gave us to play with. It was a beat up old ball he had when he played college ball.After the War the troops came home. Refugees too! We heard all the combat stories after the war when the soldiers and sailors came home with their personal horrors of war. Starting in 1947 refugees from European relocation camps immigrated to Milwaukee and we became intimately knowledgeable of the Holocaust. We learned all about the torture and genocide of Nazi-German extermination camps like Auschwitz and concentration camps such as Dachau and Belsen, in fact, my next door neighbor was a survivor forced into prostitution at one of the camps. Most refugees were Jews, some were Catholics, a few were Gypsies and eastern European types. The Nazis murdered six million Jews gathered from Europe in the gas ovens, millions more were shot down in the fields all over Eurasia - Poland, Russia and anywhere the German army advanced in the Balkans. They murdered anyone they didn't like or felt were a threat to them like college professors, Masons and the academic class. We heard all about this in school, talked to survivors in or classrooms or with our neighbors next door. We all got a greater appreciation of life, morality, a man's ability for brutality and search for justice.At the end of WW II, millions of people were dead and millions homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and much of the European industrial infrastructure had been destroyed. The Soviet Union suffered enormous losses in the war against Germany. The Soviet population decreased by about 27 million during the war; of these, 8.7 million were combat deaths. The 19 million non-combat deaths had a variety of causes: starvation in the siege of Leningrad; conditions in German prisons and concentration camps; mass shootings of civilians; harsh labor in German industry; famine and disease; conditions in Soviet camps; and service in German or German-controlled military units fighting the Soviet Union.What young Milwaukeean did not get his first taste of brown mustard on a County Stadium hot dog sold by a vendor? Was there any better peach ice cream than that sold by Sealtest run by the Luick Dairy on Capitol Drive? Was there any better bottled root beer than Grandpa Graf's Creamy Top? Was there any better cookie than the Twilight Dessert made by Robert A. Johnston? Were there any better candy bars than Ziegler's Giant Bar or Sperry Candy's Denver Sandwich or Chicken Dinner? Was there any better hamburger than the one you could get at the Butter Bun on Wisconsin Avenue? And how about that almost sweet aroma emanating from the Red Star Yeast plant? Or the nose-holding stench coming from the Pfister Vogel tannery or the Milwaukee Road Shops in the Valley? Or the unforgettable odor of the Monkey House at the Washington Park Zoo? Or the sound of a bat hitting a hardball at the Eddie Matthews Bat-a-Way on South 27th?The 1950sIf you stepped into a late 1940s Milwaukee classroom you'd see teachers fostering 'critical thinking' in the classroom on a daily basis. This includes thinker’s guides which focus on the foundations of conceptualizing existential concepts and principles. It was all 'College Prep' education. If a student wasn't gaining anything from a college-prep curriculum they were given "life adjustment education." Basically, that was a 'technical education.' Girls making dresses, hats, learning to do laundry in the correct way and beauty culture and boys trained hard in physical education (football as well) which really kept the boys in shape for war. Growing numbers of young people soon filled technical schools. Schools taught lessons in family life, hygiene and health.The focus at Stueben JR and Washington SR high was academics, with nothing but college prep classes in Math, Science, English, History, Social Studies, and with elective courses in music, shop, sewing, and health. Being smart was the norm and the only standard accepted among us kids in those days. Flunk a course and you would be made fun of. You were always surrounded by creative people from all different ethnic types. It changed my life for the better. There were "sock hops" and the dancing style was "Jitter Bug" similar to the Jive dances of the 1950s. It was also the big band era and the likes of Benny Goodman would get the teenagers up and jitter bugging. Teenagers also learned to ballroom dance! Some girls went nuts over Frank Sinatra -- which I personally could not understand. My music hero was Frankie Lane.The NavyAfter graduating from high school, working 80 hours a week at two different jobs, with restless feet, needing adventure and wanting to see the world, I joined the regular Navy. This proved to be an exciting life, whereupon I experienced thousands of thrills, sailed many seas and oceans, including the waters of the north and south the Atlantic, Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Red, Arabian Seas, and Mexican and Persian Gulfs. I have been to countless exotic ports, and sailed thru hurricanes, severe storms and experienced many high seas’ adventures. My ship was a warship, a Destroyer, the fighting backbone of the US Navy and my shipmates were from all over the United States, particularly the South. I loved the Navy life and still revere those wonderful years to this day. Being at sea for three years gave me the opportunity to indulge in one special pursuit; I collect destinations. I’ve always had wanderlust. It started as a child when I developed a keen interest in the Roman Empire and the mythology of the Knights of the Round Table. Now after many years of traveling, I still experience the excitement of discovery whenever I visit a new place.Life in 1950s NorfolkIt was 1956 and I was in the South now assigned to a Navy Destroyer in Norfolk which was an ugly and mean city. Was this what the south was like I asked? I found every day social life was very different from my home of Milwaukee. While Milwaukee was an open minded working man's society, liberal and socially generous, with thousands of things to do, the South was backward and low brow nasty, with nothing to do and racially legally segregated. If you had to make a comparison between good and evil, the south was definitely evil. Us northerners wondered how anyone could live here in this colorless and dull-witted society, hypocrites - full of Bible Belt evangelical religion but hateful to the core. Whereas in Milwaukee segregation between the races was social and very much class oriented, here in the South the races were separated by law which was vigorously enforced by the police and they seemed to relish harassing Blacks, military or civilian. By civilized Milwaukee standards, these southern police were psychopaths, escaped guards from Nazi Germany prison camps. Any type of non whites, including Asians, Puerto Ricans, Caribbean's, etc., didn’t get any respect and were treated terribly. If your skin was darker, you were legally separated into a lower class and discriminated against. Even the Jews, just like my childhood buddies from my old neighborhood, were held in low esteem and treated like garbage.The week I arrived in Norfolk, the State of Virginia closed down most of its public schools to avoid racial integration, and they remained closed for the next two years. Based on Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court had ruled that the South had to integrate its schools. Virginia refused to comply, instead, they set up private schools for whites across the state and established "Massive Resistance" to any integration plans from the Federal Government whom they hated. What are these Southerners? Evil incarnate or just misguided and stupid? I would never understand them! Aboard ship, I had made friends with many sailors, including Blacks, and when we went to Norfolk, we would experience a totally segregated society. On the ship regardless of race we all got along fine but we could not hang together on shore. There were many Blacks living in Norfolk, and they were cordoned off into very poor areas of town. Norfolk’s main downtown, ‘Granby Street’ and the entire city, with all of its parks and beaches, was available only for Whites. Blacks were allowed only in designated ‘Colored’ - run down - sections and a downtown area called ‘Church Street’ which actually had the character of a New York City street, colorful and full of itself. Even the rowdy East Main Street sailor Bars, known infamously throughout the world, were for Whites only. Bus stations, water fountains, hotels, taxi cabs, movie theaters, restaurants, city parks, swimming beaches, everything and everything were separated by race. The whites had all the best, the blacks - by law - all the worst. What fool invented this madness?! What a sick bunch of idiots thought this one up. This can't be the USA! But it was and I would have to learn to deal with it!USS Soley DD 707 - USS Borie DD 704 - My home for three yearsI waited on the Tidewater for my ship, the USS Soley to return from the 1956 Suez War. Finally the day arrived, and with the 2nd fleet band playing Stars and Stripes Forever, destroyer squadron 22, the Carrier Battle Group, and my ship, the USS Soley, returned from Middle East deployment to a great fanfare from thousands of people gathered on the pier. There were dignitaries, military bands, and even the Navy Norfolk city band and wild cheering from ships’ families as their heroes returned home. The ship saw action in the 1956 Arab/Israeli War and the ship’s crew approached the pier wearing Arab Bisht (robes), Keffiyeh (head dresses) and carrying curved swords. With my heart in my throat, and wishing I had been with them in the Middle East, I couldn’t wait for my turn at world adventure. Standing there on the pier, dressed in my class A uniform, shoes spit shined, and looking shiny like a mirror (it would be a long time before I looked that good again what with the limited sea storage for uniforms), my first impression of the Soley is that it's not too big, then you realize it's not that small either. Her lines are sleek, close to the water and five and three inch guns projected everywhere. Towering above were the torpedo tubes and above that 3 inch gun mounts and above that was the bridge and above that the main battery gun director and the halliards for the signal flags. There wasn’t a square inch on the ship that didn’t have some thing to do with weapons or how it was operated at sea. On the stern, nearly level with the pier, were the K guns and depth charges; from there you would have no trouble diving into the water during swim calls. On closer inspection of the hull there is evidence of scrapes and scuffles of days gone by; small collisions, tugboats marked, welded old repairs, and warped plating from the relentless pounding of the waves. There were umbilical cords being attached to the ship for electric power, water, steam, phones, the necessities of life.I smelled the salt air, but a few other things too, like fresh haze gray paint, diesel oil and the ever-present odor of heavy black navy coffee drifting off the Soley. I heard the ships’ ventilation systems running, which supplied fresh air to the interior of the ship and the clanking of hatches being closed. I was just about there. I hoisted my sea bag over my shoulder and walked smartly over to the USS Soley gang plank and stared at the main deck awash in rivets of rust, guns and tough looking sailors dressed in Arab robes. In my best military manner, with my chest swelling with pride and apprehension, I climbed the gangplank, saluted smartly and beaming with pride, asked permission to come aboard this magnificent warship. I stood at rigid attention while the Quarterdeck watch checked over my orders and called the Lead Petty Officer for Fox Division, A.C. Smith, to square me away. I had finally arrived and I was quickly learning the diesel smell and constant noise of my ship. Smith was dressed in blue dungarees’ and chambray shirt, smelled of sweat and oil, told me to relax and as I carried my Sea Bag, he escorted me aft to the Second Division compartment, a place where I would call home for the next six months; down the Fantail Hatch ladder I went, dragging my gear behind, trying to be US Navy squared away and regulation composed. The berthing compartment smelled of diesel oil and the rancid stink of a hundred men. I entered an unfamiliar looking place with sparkling steel floors, and shiny small lockers and gray canvas bunks stacked three high and side by side. I managed to find an empty bunk that was on the bottom and close to the ladder I had just descended. There was barely room for all my gear as I finished cramming my sea bag into the small 12-inch space called a locker beneath my bunk. I was finally home!“Stand the watch,” “Mail call,” “Jack of the Dust to the Bridge,” “Dignitary on the pier,” belay here, belay there, the messages blared on and kept the ship’s crew informed. The ship smelled strongly of diesel oil and softly vibrated with various diesel engines running, sailors scampered about onto their duties, and the ship felt alive, it felt like I was crawling up the spine of a steel monster covered with big guns. I scrambled up the ladder that I would soon learn to maneuver so well, managed to find my way to the Aft Head on the main deck inside passageway and relieved myself. Not too bad, a stainless steel bowl was the toilet with stainless steel sinks for washing up.My New Guy InitiationAs a 19-year-old fresh from Bainbridge Fire Control School, I had heard about and was well prepared for the standard shipboard initiations such as 50 feet of Chow line, Bucket of Relative Bearing Grease, Snipe Hunt, etc . . . I was the new guy and was not prepared when the leading Petty Office of Fox Division, A.C. Smith, calmly asked me to get a water hammer from the No. 1 engine room. It sounded fishy, but he convinced me that in civilian life they used air hammers because of the abundance of fresh air and power. At sea, we had plenty of water, so a water hammer was used instead of an air hammer. Based on his sincerity, and he was my boss, I was convinced that he was telling me the truth, so off I went, up the starboard hatch across the amidships passageway and forward to the inboard hatch to the No.1 engine room. I can't remember the Petty Officers from that hole, but they of course had been told by A.C. Smith that I was coming to get the water hammer. Well it seems that they had lent it to the crew in the aft fire room. So I went back there and Sidney Magoon Boiler Technician first was the Top Watch. He gave me some static of how the hammer had really been a big help to him and his crew. Howard Singletary, a busted Fireman apprentice agreed with him and the more realistic this hammer became. Finally they confessed that they had lent it to the snipes of the No.2 engine room. So back aft I went where Roy Batts Machinist Mate second told me that in fact that they had borrowed the water hammer from the snipes in the aft fire room. However they had finished the job and had returned it to the Chief Engineer, (LTJG) Jerry Mead. This happened on the 20-2400 watch. I didn’t want to get A.C. Smith angry at me for not returning with the water hammer, so using a little initiative, I went looking for the Chief Engineer.He was in one of the staterooms aft on the main deck. It was after taps and sure enough he was asleep, but he asked me in and listened to my story of how hard I had been searching half the night for the water hammer. He agreed that it was an important tool and a very expensive tool and he could not turn it over to a new guy like me. I was instructed to go back to the hole and have A.C. Smith come to his stateroom for the water hammer, only a First Class Petty Officer could be entrusted with it. I told A.C. Smith the Chief Engineer wanted him in his stateroom to turn the Water Hammer over to him and that was the last time I was ever ask to chase a navy tale including the famous midnight snipe hunt.As a scared duty of being the Leading Petty Officer, AC Smith took me to the Mark 37 Gun Director and showed me a wooden stick with different marks on it, he said this was the Fire Control Gang ‘Dick Stick,’ and I was to lay “Himself” on the stick and mark off the length, with a ‘Hard On’ of course. This would be used for “King Neptune” awards when we became ‘Shell Backs’ when crossing the Equator. Getting a ‘Hard On’ when you are 19 years old was like eating ice cream! “Nothing to it!”After that, a Bosun’s whistle sounded and a whiskey voice announced over the 1MC intercom announcing chow call. Hungry and anxious, I followed other sailors and found a long chow line port side forward near the gunwale break in the Foc'cle. The line inched slowly forward and down a ladder into the mess deck below where Mess Cooks lathered my steel tray with food while I picked up some coffee and bread. After eating some tasty ( I was really hungry) ‘Shit on a Shingle’ [chipped beef] with white cream sauce, peas and carrots on the side, I had a little free time so I decided to do some exploring and descended the fantail ladder that led to my second division sleeping compartment and the machine shop, which was a repair facility ‘par excellence’ full of huge machine tools. I was taken by the sight of all the enormous machinery. Not as big as on the Tidewater, but just like any decent machine shop in Milwaukee machine shops. I was so proud and happy I started whistling. It was then I heard "hey boot, stand fast" as the Chief Master of Arms came up to me. He said “Square that rig” in other words, square your hat and button up that shirt. I said “yes sir,” he came right back with the correct reply is “aye aye and do not call me sir this is not boot camp, call me chief.” By the way there are only two people who whistle in the Navy, one is a boatswain mate and the other is a dam fool and I know you are not a boatswain mate, so carry on and be more aware of proper Navy Regs.Getting Settled on the SoleyMy sleeping compartment was in the rear of the ship below the fantail, it accommodated more than a hundred men in a small space, our racks were stacked three high with small lockers on the floor, bigger standup lockers were available for Petty Officers only. Each rack had a two inch thick cotton mattress which we tilted during rough weather to keep ourselves in the rack and not falling out on the deck. If you were next to the hull, you could tilt your rack toward the hull, other wise you tilted it toward another rack in what was called ‘honeymoon racks.’ Above the sleeping compartment was a large hatch that opened to the fantail. There was an entry from the sleeping compartment to the Aft Steering compartment and to the Machine Shop. The machine shop is really nice. They have three lathes, a milling machine, drill press, and a power hack saw. The shop is about as big as the dining room of my house, and there are 13 machinery repairmen aboard. It was noisy back there, we could hear the whump, whump of the screws all day, and at night, it kind of put you to sleep. The sea could get noisy, and the wind ferocious, screaming like a banshee, and during stormy weather, we prayed and held on tight, but I don’t think anyone was really afraid. After a while, we didn’t even to that, having got used to being thrown around inside a steel bucket with horrible sounds outside and the seas pounding the hull. The Head was one deck up on the main deck in the indoor passageway, it was fancy, it had sit down stainless steel toilets and a separate compartments for the showers and wash basins.A Bosun’s whistle sounded and a whiskey voice announced over the 1MC intercom announcing chow call. Hungry and anxious, I followed other sailors and found a long chow line port side forward near the gunwale break in the Foc'cle. The line inched slowly forward and down a ladder into the mess deck below where Mess Cooks lathered my steel tray with food while I picked up some coffee and bread. After eating some tasty ( I was really hungry) ‘Shit on a Shingle’ [chipped beef] with white cream sauce, peas and carrots on the side, I had a little free time so I decided to do some exploring and descended the fantail ladder that led to my second division sleeping compartment and the machine shop, which was a repair facility ‘par excellence’ full of huge machine tools. I was taken by the sight of all the enormous machinery just like any decent machine shop in Milwaukee machine shops.Like the crew of every ship afloat today, the compliment of a destroyer is a cross section of America itself. A bosun's mate is a soda jerk from Detroit, and a machinist mate is a former factory worker from Pittsburgh and a fire control man, like me, from Milwaukee. There's a farm hand from Kansas who hadn't been more than twenty-three miles from home until he enlisted. There are Blacks from Southern cotton fields, and wheat farmers from North Dakota. There's a milkman from California and a dental student, a policeman and a night club operator from New York City. The destroyer life has made ex-civilians real sailors. It was soon after World War II and we had many veterans on the ship. Phil was a career Navy man who was a first class gunner’s mate. He had served during World War II in the Pacific on heavy cruisers and had been in many major battles, including Guadalcanal, the Saipan Turkey Shoot, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa. Phil had several cruisers sunk beneath him one being the Indianapolis, just after they delivered the atomic bomb to a B29 Squadron. I would listen for hours to Phil war recounts in detail, what it was like to live thorough horrific sea battles and the carnage from fires and explosions as your ship takes hits from bombs and torpedoes. Especially horrifying was trying to survive in the water as your ship sinks and you have to battle oil fires and man-eating sharks. His stories of the Indianapolis sinking and resulting long stay in the water with sharks eating survivors was brutally terrorizing. Like all other Tin Can sailors, I always thought the Cans were the best Navy duty a man could want. However, Tin Cans were a rough life, full of thrills and spills and anyone whoever rode Destroyers has earned my everlasting respect as to what navy duty is all about. Ike was a Squid sailor next to the bulkhead, he was a tattooed, well-built ladies man who looked really good in his uniform. Across from him was ‘Boston Bob’ ( a sailor) and guess what, yeah, he came from Boston and was a blue blood from the rich section of town ands he worried about his appearance. His claim to fame was that he got sea sick even when we were tied up to the pier, and at sea he would throw up into a bucket he carried around with him.My rack was next to Boston Bob’s, and all around me were sailors jammed together, but we were all young teenagers and it didn’t bother us to be living so close to one another. My best buddy was in second division along with another friend, John King, a burly (Squid) Damage Control man who worked in the Machine Shop. Ted would get packages from home filled with pepperoni and summer sausage and he would share with us the goodies. All sailors shared their goodies, it was the thing to do, after all, we backed up each other in combat situations and with packages from home.When I made Third Class and started standing Shore Patrol, I got beat up very bad on East Main Street on my first patrol in an alcoholic bar fight. My friend, Ike, was a great fighter, almost professional, then taught me how to handle myself in Street and Bar fights. I thought I was a good fighter before I entered the Navy, but compared to the men on board ship, I was nothing, and I learned a lot from Ike. We would go to the base gym and practice maneuvers and holds and I got quite good. Once in a while a thief would start stealing things out of our lockers and the Master of Arms was called to investigate. If they caught him, it was the brig, if we caught him, it was a Code Red and a blanket party, Navy justice was swift and sure either way. With more than 370 men squeezed into a small destroyer, life was good and crime free and that is what we wanted it to be. But malcontents, thieves, and malingers were not tolerated, they could get us killed. The biggest problem we had was with lazy sailors, they just didn’t do their jobs, and often were the cause of disciplinary problems. Southern Whites sometime had racial problems with Blacks, especially the smart - take no shit - ones from the North.Black and WhiteThere didn't seem to be much distinction between blacks and whites on the ship. It was during the Cold War and we were in it together, our guns being manned and ready by both black and white. Heck, James, the best bar room brawler I ever met, who saved my ass many times when I was on Military Police trying to break up Bar Fights in Europe, was black as the ace of spades, small but tough as a Red Oak, and scarier than a grinning Godzilla with gold teeth! Another friend of mine was a homicidal maniac dark colored Puerto Rican from Brooklyn who tipped the scales at around 5'3", had muscles in his breath and who I'm sure stayed up at night thinking of ways to dismember anyone who looked cross eyed at him and make it look like an accident. Other blacks were Cousins, he and I manned the Main Battle Gun Director together and Jack Hawkins who was the best three-inch gunner we had. We had tough blacks in Naval Infantry and when I was on desert patrol in the Persian Gulf, Eddie Duncan from Boston was my best friend and fearless war fighter, he was a great gunner and could handle himself in hand to hand. I felt safe with him by my side.NOB to NorfolkAfter my first liberty in Norfolk while I was on the Tidewater, I learned that I didn’t like this broken down dirty segregated city. But I went on Liberty again with some sailors off the Soley. The bus ride on Hampton Blvd. to downtown Norfolk took about 45 minutes and we would get off at Granby and City Hall Avenue which back in the 50's was a busy area of Norfolk. The skimpy night life, basically several dingy restaurants and Pizza Parlors, were open until well after midnight and downtown Granby Street was reasonably safe. Within a few blocks of this same area was the YMCA which also served as the USO (for Whites only) and which provided shelter to many a sailor. There was a large wide tunnel with stores on each side that connected City Hall Avenue with East Main Street, often our nefarious objective. At the end of the tunnel, there was usually an older gentleman who played a guitar for money and he usually made most of his money as the evening wore on.Liberty in Norfolk involved three streets. The Whites went to Granby and the World’s most infamous East Main, and the Blacks went to Church Street.First Norfolk Liberty - yuck - pugh - ugh! America's Hell HoleNorfolk is segregated, so liberty in Norfolk involved three streets. The Whites went to Granby and the World’s most infamous East Main, and the Blacks went to Church Street. Norfolk has that dark dismal look of poverty and of a dismal stagnating prison about it. I didn’t think anyone raised in the North would want to live here. It definitely didn’t have that highly technicolor warming appeal of the North. In the South, it was cheerless, where African Americans walk around stooped and looking depressed, as they were held down by Jim Crow segregation laws and rampant racial prejudices enforced by a psychotic police force.Norfolk’s claim to fame was not its military bases but its seedy and infamous water front. A hell hole called East Main Street. In days long ago, you weren't allowed to call yourself an East Coast sailor until you had treated yourself to a wallow or two on East Main . . . And old timers hauled around sea bag-loads of stories about the place. As long as there are American blue jackets, there will probably be a market for sex and beer, whores, barmaids, taxi drivers, and shoeshine boys . . . Besides being a first class hell hole of debauchery and racial segregation, Norfolk was a bustling stink water harbor town back then. If the world was looking for the point of insertion for an enema, Norfolk would be it. But it had the largest naval base in the world, and nearby in Portsmouth was the largest Shipyard in the USA, a Naval Air Base in Virginia Beach, a Frog Man base in Damneck and a host of other military bases.So here we go . . . "Liberty Call” in dismal segregated Norfolk. Ugh! But that is a sailor's two favorite words. I was going to see what this Southern Navy town had to offer and planned hitting the infamous East Main Street and drink 25 cent lean draft beers and see if there are any girls out there. Maybe it's like Milwaukee - lonely heart girls everywhere. The ole salts say you aren't a real sailor until you tie one on the "Street!" So, when I got my first liberty card, I figured the best way to see Norfolk was to just have one beer in each bar on the world’s most infamous Street of sin. After all, how many bars can there be. Little did I know how many bars could be packed into three blocks!East Main StreetIn the annuals of bad ass sailor towns, they wrote books about it and Norfolk's East Main Street was famous all over the world. You could find every sin covered in every religion in the world, in three or four blocks. It was a place established simply for the purpose of selling beer to stupid teenager white sailors, who passed it from mouth to kidney, to bladder, to urinal and finally into the Elisabeth River. All the while enjoying the convivial company of fat tattooed women with hairy upper lips. Fleet sailors warned us recruits that sooner or later, we would be rolled on East Main Street. Just hope that she was kind enough to stick your ID and liberty card in your sock before she vanished with what was left of seventy bucks and your wallet? If Guinness had a record for the most sleazy bars per square inch, it would read. 'East Main, Norfolk'. They sold enough draft beer on a Saturday night to fill the New London diving tank, and most of it got pissed away in the adjacent alleys on the way to the bus stop up on Granby Street. Good-ole boys loved it and we civilized sailors hated it. Drunk as a skunk on 3 per cent lean beer, I ended up in the "Tradewinds" where the SPs' (Shore Patrol) told one of my new found drinking buddies to walk me around the block a couple of times - after which I threw up on his shoulder. Soon, I was in the men's room puking my guts out, thinking I was going to die, and promising God if I didn't die I will never drink again. Welcome to Norfolk, Va. . . . Ugh!But what the hell, those of us who were a part of it . . . Who survived . . . Who left a large part of their meager earnings stuffed in bra cups and cash registers there . . . It brings back a few good sea stories, and after all, are what God gives sailors to keep them smiling in old age. It was the best place to enjoy lean beer and the convivial company of fat women with hairy upper lips and tattooed arms. But if you were once nineteen and wanted to grow old one day and be able to tell stories on a balmy summer night about jumping into an alligator-loaded septic tank and surviving it, East Main can return a few smiles.The Main GateThe Main Gate on Hampton Blvd was the Naval Tailor and Naval Jeweler center. Most radio stations blasted ads of "Sea Farer" blues and whites all on easy credit. A few no-band bars were on the corners including the famous "Crazy Cat" bar with it's animated neon sign. A huge near-beer bar operated upstairs on one of them where the famous Tel-Stars played. The unbelievable waitresses and some independents wore tailor made very low-rider navy whites that had been tailored. To say that they "fit" is an extreme understatement. The navy white shirts were shortened until they were little more than a halter with the navy flap on the back. These girls made a good living getting sailors to buy them non-alcoholic Champaign cocktails and keeping half the money collected. The money a sailor got for a six-month Mediterranean cruise went through his fingers quickly there.Bell's Locker ClubThe Navy of the 50's did have some unusual restrictions; we were not allowed to have a vehicle on the base, not that I could afford one making only $78 a month, nor were we allowed to have civilian clothing on the base. We had to keep our "civvies" off-base at one of Norfolk's well-known locker clubs located just outside the NOB main gate. What did you get in Bell's Locker Club? You got an upright locker and access to a shower that steamed up the entire locker area and what may have very well been the world's largest collection of sour and tattered towels. There was a Black shoeshine boy and we called him 'buff 'em up, muthafuck' because that's all he ever said. He had a coffee can on a string around his neck which held two rolled up buffing rags, several wadded up polish application rags and three cans of black Lincoln shoe polish. Besides being a hard worker that little kid was one helluva businessman, and he probably owns a couple of hotels now or a major fast food chain. Towel fighting of epic proportions took place, not Girl Scout camp terry cloth flipping love taps, no, we're talking towel gladiatorial combat that took triangular butt divots the size of the little pieces of meat in pork fried rice. I don't think anyone ever actually died in a Bell's Locker Club towel fight but several became Olympic champions and one poor fellow, if the unlucky sonuvabitch is still alive, probably still has an identifiable scar near the business end of his tally whacker. The clientele of Bell's Locker club had absolutely no taste in clothing and Esquire Magazine never held male fashion photo shoots in Bells' Locker Club. Tribal Chieftains in Ping-Pong, New Guinea, blind Gypsies and Chinese homosexual fire dancers dressed more conservatively than the Battery Rats off diesel submarines or deck ape gunners off destroyers. Guys coming in from a long time at sea or a north Atlantic ALFA Group run would still be in the throes of heaving decks and channel fever. Euphoric sailors returning from duty free ports would come in hauling their 'duty-free' jugs and pass 'em around. Sailors you had never seen before in your life would yell, "Hey Buddy - have a snort."Famous EateriesOne of the eateries we frequented on East Main Street was Eddie's Texas Chili. We usually wound up there or at a pizza pallor on Granby Street after a drinking spree on East Main Street. Since everyone like different strengths of hot chili, it offered me a chance to taste all kinds on my trips to Eddies, we would order several varieties of chili, all from mild too hot. I usually ate chili somewhat on the mild side. My first time eating the mild chili, I said Holy Shit, what the hell is in this stuff, as a fire burned my mouth out? You could remove dried paint from your driveway and it took me two beers to put the flames out. Actually, it didn’t take me long to get used that mild stuff and soon I tried the next hotter chili which made my nose feel like it was snorting Drano. Well, everyone knows the routine by now, get me more beer before I ignite. Laughing, the Barmaid pounded me on the back, now, and my backbone is in the front part of my chest. I'm getting frog-faced from all of the beer. I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it. Is it possible to burn out taste buds? Sally, the barmaid, was standing behind me with fresh refills. That 300-lb. woman is starting to look HOT . . . just like this nuclear waste I'm eating! Is chili an aphrodisiac?Bar Fighting"Bar fights" are the most stupid sort of fights between angry people as they are liquored up and fight for the most lame reason or even perceiving the worse. Once I watched my loud-mouth drunken destroyer sailor get beat up by a Coast Guard sailor he was making fun of, taunting him and saying the "Shallow Water Sailor" should give his bar stool to a real sailor. The smaller man cleaned his destroyer ass clock. After I got beat up badly trying to break up a bar fight in the Golden Palomino Bar on Norfolk's infamous East main Street while on my first Shore Patrol. Back in Second Division my friend, Ike, would teach me how to handle myself in Street and Bar fights. Ike was a Squid sailor, tattooed, well-built ladies man who looked Hollywood good in his uniform. You wouldn't know he was almost a professional fighter. I was in shape and did regular workouts, thought I was a tough guy, what with winning Milwaukee street fights and defeating school bullies. I even did a little Golden Gloves - wasn't any good and got eliminated fast - my style was to attack fast and furious which against anyone good got you killed. Ike taught me that my brain was the best attribute in a fight, not my physical skills, and I was skinny and weighed only 150 pounds, He said outsmarting the other guy and counter punching was the skill I needed to develop; it was all about the ability to think and having a sense of timing and distance. I learned first it’s better to talk my opponent down, if that fails, wait for him to attack me, then counter punch. It's all about brains over brawn. He told me not to get in the middle of a bar fight, "Let the bar fight winner go to the brig and the loser to the hospital. It worked . . . I still had my teeth after hundreds of bar fights. The bus ride back varied in quality depending on the time you left, a late return meant ridding with a large group of sailors in various states of drunkenness with random puking. If you missed the last bus back to NOB which left around 2:00 A.M. in the morning, you had to wait three hours before bus service resumed again at 5:00 A.M. It would get you back to your ship just in time for morning Quarters.Leo’s Bar & GrillThe bus back to the naval base would stop right outside Leos’ First and Last Stop Bar which was just outside the Destroyer Submarine pier gate and it was usually our first stop after an exciting week of sea duty. Leo’s older son was an amateur boxer and one night brought Archie Moore into the place and introduced him around. Archie was light heavyweight world boxing champion between 1952 and 1959 and had one of the longest professional careers in the history of his sport. One of the most popular shooters was the "Tidy Bowl.” A Tidy Bowl is made with Blue Curacao and a splash of Pineapple juice, chilled, strained and poured into a shot glass. Mixed, then the bartender floated a raisin on the top. Sometimes the raisin floats and sometimes it would sink. Got so bad that the Navy guys were making bets on whether they would be a floater or a sinker. The little hole in the wall greasy spoon restaurant across the street from Leo's where I frequently finished up the night with a bacon and egg sandwich.Liberty in 1950s ManhattanWe were all young men looking for love; go to sea for a weeks and come back to Norfolk looking to find the elusive femme fatale that must be somewhere nearby looking for a nice man like me. I soon found that not only was she elusive, but was probably non existent. Hell, we were in Norfolk, and they had signs around town that said “sailors keep off the grass," so where does a sailor go to meet women in a dry and segregated place where there are no dance clubs or night clubs and only a few dingy fast food restaurants. I joined several of my brethren and we decided to go to New York for weekend liberty from now on and go searching for feminine companionship in Times Square. P.S. Which we found in spades . . . New York was alive with women and adventures. In my early Navy days in Norfolk, when I didn’t have a car or a ride for weekend liberty, I would take a Greyhound or Trailways interstate bus North to my destination, usually New York City for fun in Times Square, dancing at Roseland Ball Room, or hanging out with my buddies in nightclubs. I found that while traveling in the South the buses and all the bus stations were segregated, including restrooms and water fountains.If you were pissed off at Jim Crow and thwarted the segregationist pattern, like entering a “colored” rest room, you could be arrested and put in the local jails, where you would be treated horribly, being crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In the South, the police didn’t take kindly to whites who sympathized with the blacks. Southern politicians and White Citizens Console controlled the police, and secretly directed and/or approved the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its violent actions against any type of integration, or Civil Rights sympathizers, and the KKK set upon their chores of ensuring segregation enforcement gleefully and with gusto. On my interstate bus trips, I met many Blacks, either sailors like myself, or just travelers, and we would become friends. When the bus stopped for bathroom or food in the South, we left the bus and parted company into separate facilities, but when in the North we shared all facilities together.I had some friends from New York and they took me to their homes for weekends, one, my Jewish friend Ted Strauss, lived in Mount Vernon and I went there many times. His dad, a German immigrant with one leg thanks to Hitler’s Jewish concentration camps, escaped anti Semitic Germany and opened an 8 X 15 foot newspaper and candy stall on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx; he put his children through college on his earning and bought a big house in Mount Vernon. New York is the land of opportunity and anyone who works can make a decent living and that is why so many immigrants land there, more than anywhere else in the world. Ted and his family loved the performing arts and they took to many performances at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera. We attended works by Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, The New York Philharmonic, The New York Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera. It was all a great a great education for me since I had never been exposed to such entertainment before. Besides being the center of the American music industry, and by extension, one of the major centers for popular music worldwide, New York City was the intellectual and artistic center of the United States and it was home to the worlds best performing arts centers.Sometimes I stayed at the decrepit and worn out Lincoln Hotel on Eighth Avenue and 44th Street. It was perfect for sailors looking for a cheap room on weekend liberty in the Big Apple. A few blocks away was the heart of Times Square, the really decrepit part of town - well, raunchous anyway and then maybe decrepit, the exotic raunchy part taking precedence. What with all night Movie Theaters, Bars, Strip Clubs, Dance Emporiums, and Night Clubs filled with celebrities and beautiful women all over the place, Times Square was a sailor’s delight. And sailors like to dance . . . Most clubs have swing-based, while in others it was Ballroom dancing. When Dick Clark broadcast his show nationally in 1957, becoming American Bandstand, New York City and Philadelphia became the dance capitals of the USA. People dressed up, the girls were fabulous, you meet every kind, and you could dance with the black beauties from Harlem. The unwritten rule of these dance parties is to say yes to anyone and to smile regardless of what your partner does.On one of my trips to New York I had a guy in my car, Herb Watchel, who grew up on Coney Island and he said if I drove him home to Coney Island in Brooklyn he would treat me to a weekend on Mermaid Avenue and all carnival stuff that go with it. So I did and what a blast did we have. Herb told me about growing up on Coney Island. “I grew up in Coney Island and it was the place to shop, and hang out, it was simply the best place in the world for a kid to grow up . . . Every thing was there on Mermaid Avenue; the Coney Island rides, The Cyclone Roller Coaster, Nathan’s, Steeplechase, the beach, the fishing pier, the Lowe’s on Surf Avenue, the Parachute Jump, the Wonder Wheel, Cotton Candy, Jelly Apples, Buttered Corn, Shatzkin’s Knishes, Faber’s, Playland, The Magic Carpet Fun House. We had Delis, Pizza Joints, Diners, Italian Bakeries, Chinese restaurants, luncheonettes, Ice Cream shops and department stores.” Herb took me there and we did it all. We ate at Greek Diners most of the time, there was almost a classic quality to the New York diner experience - sing waitresses en all - and they are all over the City offering burgers, eggs and full meals at cheap prices.They all feature all-day breakfast specials, steaks, pork chops, southern fried chicken and of course, a bottomless cup of coffee, the real surprise about the menu here is that they offer every demographic - Jewish, Italian, Irish and everything else under the sun, including enormous desserts, all baked fresh on the premises daily.There were three main nationalities in the 50's: Italians, Irish and Jewish with lots of Puerto Ricans and Blacks immigrating from the south too; "the city" everyone knew meant, Manhattan, the subway, bus and the trolley were only a thin dime to ride; a great day was going to the beach at Coney Island, where Tuesday night was fireworks, there was no better hot dog then Nathan's in Coney Island and no better French fries than there thick ripple cuts; NYC streets were safe, there was almost no violence; people made a living and, rich or poor, everyone knew how to have a good time no matter of status; there were no divorces and few "one parent" families; there were no drugs or drug problems in the lives of most people; You bought sour pickles right out of the barrel - for a nickel - and they were delicious; for a nickel, you got into Ebbet's Field and saw the Dodgers play; Everyone went to a Bar Mitzvah even if you weren't Jewish and everyone took their date to Plum Beach for the submarine races.Available girls were everywhere . . . every color, shape and type, all hungering for a young sailor to pay them some attention. Nothing like evil, segregated, dry, violent and ugly Norfolk . . . which was just like the South everywhere, but not in the north where social freedoms still reined. Northern culture is very diverse and it made us all more tolerant. We could see how things can improve, and we know that most people are decent and good. Young girls crowed the streets and clubs all over Manhattan. They represented the last generation of innocence before it is "lost" in the sixties. When asked to imagine this lost group, images of bobbysoxers, letterman jackets, malt shops and sock hops come instantly to mind. Images like these are so classic, they, for a number of people, are "as American as apple pie."There also was a vibrant diversity in those days. The mom and pop stores. The bodegas, the Latin conga players in Central Park. The different colored faces that passed me by every day. Urban renewal that began in the 1950s gradually removed the poorest Puerto Rican residents and replaced them with brownstone revivalists and glitzy towers. The hippie movement — the disparate and diffuse outpouring of cultural and political dissent that rocked the 1960s and ’70s is starting here in the Village. Hippies celebrated disorder, mayhem and the whole Dionysian personal agenda. But there seemed to be something in hippies’ world view about solving social and cultural problems that grew the movement.Life in 1960s - 1990s ManhattanI moved to Manhattan in 1968 to teach Grad School in Greenwich Village. I wanted to escape the segregated South and all its evil racial hatred and social primitiveness. The Ku Klux Klan was running about lynching people and no one got arrested. No southern Sheriff would arrest a white murder, no white jury would convict, it was utter mayhem and chaos - the south was barbaric and lawless, they had became a pariah in the world and didn't care. They were defending their confederate flag and all it stood for, hate and white supremacy. What I found in New York was much more than freedom, a wonderful city with lots of grand life styles, a chance to be all I could be and have international friends. The melting pot begins here. I found NYC is an ever evolving City with rich history and a richer future and if I wanted to feel the true New Yorker experience I had to see the heart of the city, I needed to find it by exploring by walking around, after all, Manhattan is really a ‘walking city.’. My state of mind changed from being a tourist to being a New Yorker, and my heart to beat for New York, my soul to feel part of it.Now I live and work in Manhattan. The 1960s were social revolutionary times. Civil Rights and the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement, fast-rising crime rates, angry white cops, and increasingly harsh, racially charged vitriol in black as well as in white communities across the city came to dominate the times. It seemed that the city had slipped out of control. Racist blacks and whites infuriated each other, student radicals held Columbia University hostage, and liberals like Lindsay tolerated the intolerant and failed to challenge extremism forcefully? White flight was epidemic, by 1960, more than 1.7 million whites moved out of New York City and were replaced by very poor blacks from the American South and Hispanics from Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, urban-renewal projects destroyed hundreds of city blocks, uprooting and destabilizing countless families.Yes, it was a rough environment and not for pussies, but I had been around the block a few times (African and Middle East 3rd world, Islamic and communist countries filled with insurgencies and the violent Civil Rights battles in the south) and could handle myself well in any situation. It was a time when sex shops were legalized and compounded by Times Square’s accessibility and central location and the world's most infamous Port Authority bus terminal at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. In the 1960s, Times Square was a breeding ground for crime, prostitution, drug addiction, and plenty of X-rated peep shows. Yes, back in the day, Times Square was fun for a voyeur like me! I was enamored with it and it touched parts of my soul. I am a writer and there were thousands of stories to tell. It had everything and every type of person you could imagine. I like weird and got along so well there. I loved the Big Apple. It was all about freedom, opportunity, acceptance of everyone emboldened within never ending exciting adventures.Midtown Manhattan, where I had stood Military Police while in the Navy, had many hundreds of bars, dance clubs and restaurants. There was a lot of hustle and bustle here and policing the area was a busy and exciting but rarely dangerous. Life there was a different from the protected one of the middle-class neighborhoods we had back home. The best part of going out in midtown was getting to pick a kosher dill pickle straight from the barrel, or a trip to Katz’s Deli for a hot pastrami sandwich with sauerkraut and mustard and an order of their crispy French Fries. Between the bars, dance clubs and restaurants, people came out in droves to party and enjoy and 8th Avenue was the epitome of having a good time. But it’s the outlandish colors of 1950s Times Square that capture something magical and luminous. he world and the city were very different then. Neighborhoods had a more definite ethnic definition to them. Many of the areas that are filled with poor Black, Latino and Asian minorities today were filled with poor European whites in the 1950s, kind of like my hometown, Milwaukee.Since I enjoy the weird and unusual and while walking 8th Avenue at 42nd Street, poked my head into the Terminal Bar, its notoriety drew artists and punks and the curious. I found that straights like businessmen in pin striped suits and high class women in furs and high heels went there to experience the 'other world' once in while, to get dirty and hang out around 3 a.m. after working or nightclubbing all night and having double eggs and bacon breakfast around the corner at the 11th Avenue Diner with its sing waitresses and where Mickey Spillane and Jimmy Breslin got their story book characters from. But, it wasn’t really welcoming to slumming business engineering hipsters like me or bush league adventures looking to make nice with Terminal bums. You needed tattoos, earring, being unshaven with long hair, having a worn out - been through a war and barely survived look - to enter without provocations coming back at you. It was still an enclosed society with it’s own brutal code, not easily cracked by the voyeuristic aesthete.Some times I took a subway to explore somewhere and then walk around. I remember seeing horse-drawn carts with the last of the rag-pickers and the gradual shift of the area south of us from Italian to Puerto Rican. I passed a an Italian butcher shop, carcasses hanging in the window, and the fish monger, the dead bodies of fish, heads and tails intact staring up at me from their bed of ice; a little daunting to a six year old. The Italian grocer on the corner, narrow and dark, redolent of those smells only an Italian grocery has: Parmesan cheese, olives, prosciuto and more; funky smelling to a young, untrained nose. I remember the bodega where the Puerto Rican owner spoke no English full of newspapers and candy, Smarties, miniature wax Coke bottles filled with dark syrup, red wax lips, candy cigarettes and those NERCO Wafers. Oh the Delis . . . I love the Delis! It was hot and I was sweaty and wanted something sour, I stood with a dime in my hand to buy a big sour pickle. I picked on from the barrel on the street then, task complete, walked out into the sunshine, extra bright after the darkness of the store, hands full of candy and a smile on my face. Across the avenue, Lanza's, an Italian restaurant, occupied the same spot since the 1920s. It seemed so old: small white octagonal tiles on the floor, wainscoting and mirrors and pictures of Italy on the wall, bent-wood chairs at the tables. It was a little more expensive than the other Italian places I went to. It was the first place I ate Veal Marcela and I remember the sensation of the buttery meat melting in my mouth. The Italian ice place next-door was an important stop after dinner at Lanza’s on a hot day. The soothing lemon ices, smooth and tart, were served in a pleated paper cup. You’d squish it to get the ices to come up where they could be licked, I can still feel and taste them on my tongue.Walking Harlem on Sundays was very uplifting as you could hear singing in the air from all the churches. There are dozens of them in Harlem, some large, some as small as a one-door garage. One time when I had gotten off the train at 125th street, I stopped outside the station to stretch my legs before beginning a long walk downtown. A man in a wheelchair rolled over to me and asked if I was O.K.. When I told him I was just stretching my legs, he said, "O.K, as long as you're alright," and rolled away! On another occasion, a young African-American was sitting in front of a brownstone next to it and as I passed him he asked me if I was going to buy the house. I told him I wasn't but that if I were his age, I would seriously consider it. Manhattan has so many kinds of people experiences I wondered what kept me so long from enjoying them.When walking around Manhattan, you learn the city's quirks and niches, the things that make New York what it is. This is great if you have never been to NYC, or if you have been to an area and never truly explored it. I learned this my first day out: Why do Brownstones have tall stairways? To avoid the smell of manure before the car was invented of course! I've lived in Manhattan for about four months now, and I was surprised by just about everything I saw. If you really want to get to know the city, not just which building is the Empire State Building, walk around. Learning New York by walking around was the New York way. A few days ago I walked down to the Wall Street area. Leaving the West Village, heading south along Greenwich Street, I could see a change in architecture. The pretty brownstone streets were soon replaced with rows and rows of old warehouses. Really old ones, the kinds that are begging to be restored into vibrant, new loft spaces young people would inhabit. I’ve always wanted to restore an old warehouse. On I walked as the landscape transitioned again. Taller, newer buildings sprung up amidst the old ones.It all started the day when I was in Bryant Park on 42nd Street, I noticed plaques embedded in the sidewalk on East 41st Street near the New York Public Library. They had quotes from Shakespeare, Mark Twain, E.B. White and others on them. At that moment, I had an epiphany of sorts and decided then and there to walk every street in Manhattan. I thought it would be an interesting adventure and it was, and so much more. There was no preconceived idea of what I wanted to see but I knew from my first walk that I was focusing on the unusual, offbeat, and ordinary things that are part of the essence of New York but seldom seen. I was definitely not going to focus on the tourist attractions that had been seen a zillion times before. I have a bad habit of trying to cram all I can into my days, not just on this trip, but in my life in general. The more I can do, the more I can mark off the list. The more lists I can make, the less time I have to delve deep into my soul. As a new person to Manhattan, I performed the obligatory Staten Island Ferry ride and then caught the subway to Clark St Brooklyn, as advised by others, to walk toward the Manhattan skyline across the Brooklyn bridge. The first time I walked across was with friends from the job. We caught a cab to the other side and had Grimaldi's Pizza first, hmm mm yum. Then we began our walk. The bridge is monumental. I loved every second of it and my photos turned out amazing.I just finished walking the Brooklyn Bridge going from east to west and saw the City Hall of New York, and my tourist map said Chinatown was nearby. You can’t come to NY without visiting Chinatown. Gucci and Coach bags. Channel sunglasses and perfume. Burberry scarves and Rolex watches. Honey, you can be decked out, flat head to toe, for no more than $50. Such a deal, but I find more interest in visiting the fruit stands and the fish markets. I could have gone on for another two hours but was tired and hungry and was looking for a restaurant. I asked two Chinese ladies sitting on a park bench the direction and they said just follow "Central St." True enough, before me were several Chinese restaurants and bargain stores after a short walk. Shirts were being sold for just $2, and great caps for three for $5, but I came here for the food! I wanted to eat some beef Chop Suey like my dad got from the Chinese restaurant in Milwaukee every Friday night. It was notable that there were also lots other Asian restaurants, like Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese. New York is an ethnic smorgasbord anywhere you go in the City. I walked for a while in the small streets and barely met with anyone other than Chinese people. I drunk something at Hon Café where nobody could understand in English that I just wanted a milkshake so I drunk something else!I stopped for lunch in Tribeca and had my first real street meal today from a Halal vendor. For $3.00, which include a soda, I had one of the most delicious meals I’ve had in a long time. REALLY! It included something that resembled a hush puppy, but it was seasoned totally differently. I was enjoying my meal until the pigeons arrived, and let me tell you, these New York pigeons are REALLY aggressive. That bird came within six inches of my lunch and would not back off at all. Something told me I was nearing the financial district because of all the starched white shirts in vests in pin striped suits were walking down the street. Girls in high heels and dark suits, men with ties and their hair all in place. No tattoos and dread locks on this side of town. There were a lot of voices that sounded angry, so I followed the sounds. I sure didn’t want to miss a good story. It was a group of New York Telephone employees picketing in favor of some new work rules. My next encounter was probably the most interesting of the day. Six or eight protesters were camped out on the sidewalk by City Hall. They were angry about the upcoming budgets cuts against the have-nots, the poor, the sick, the elderly and of course they cited the budget surplus and the wealth just down the way on Wall Street. It’s an age-old problem, and I wonder if we’ll ever solve it, the ethical debate over the makers and takers.I bought beef jerky sticks from a street cart, an Amish man, in Union Square park on a gorgeous sunny day in Gotham after a business meeting. There were hundreds of people milling about enjoying the day as I was. As IO sat eating my jerky sticks, I saw an attractive big busted woman wearing absolutely nothing above her low-cut jeans; her beautiful breasts on full display. It made my day. What a delightful vision of splendor! All the New Yorkers pretended not to notice but, I like to smile and luxuriate in spiritual feelings so, I was most happy she walked by, breaking up the routine of another day chasing a buck in New York.Something told me I was nearing the financial district because of all the starched white shirts walking down the street. Girls in high heels and dark suits, men with ties and their hair all in place. No tattoos and dread locks on this side of town. There were a lots of voices that sounded angry, so I followed the sounds. I sure didn’t want to miss a good story, it was a group of New York Telephone employees picketing in favor of some new work rules. I met a young lady at Trader Joe's, a sweet eyed, brown skinned vixen from Tunisia. She flirted with me and wanted to go dancing. New York City is full of immigrants, who left their nation(s) and culture to pursue a better life in the Big Apple.There was always a show to see in Manhattan whether it was the sidewalk stores in Washington Heights, the quaintness of Greenwich Village, the "busyness" of Chinatown and the lower East Side, or the multitude of activities going on at Harold Square, Columbus Circle, Union Square, or Madison Square Park.Commuting to Manhattan in the 1960s - 1990sWhen I lived in Jamaica, Queens, I took the F or E train to work in Greenwich Village. When I lived in New Jersey, from East Orange, I walked ½ block from my house to the corner to catch a city bus to Penn Station in Newark where upon I could take a subway, train or express bus to Manhattan. I commuted from New Jersey to Manhattan (20 mile trip) for seven years and from upstate New York to Manhattan (80 mile trip) for twenty years. In both cases, there was plenty of mass transportation available. When I lived in upstate, New York, I drove five minutes to the train station in Middletown and took a Metro North train to Hoboken and either a Path subway or a Ferry across the Hudson River to Manhattan’s World Trade Center or Midtown; or I could take an express bus from Middletown to Port Authority in Manhattan; or I could drive to Newark and take the subway, train or bus to Manhattan. There were literally dozens of options and combinations available.