STORY TEN

  THE LOFTY GOALS OF A GRADUATE OR STEALING THE VMD'S BETHROTHED

The Fifty-Twenty Club, was exclusively a veterans enterprise. It consisted of those returning Vets who had no assigned job to go back to, as was the case with me since I entered the Service directly from my third year of High School. It meant that you could line up at the State Office and draw fifty dollars for twenty weeks as long as you didn't have a job, or couldn't find one. Most Vets had trouble locating a job until their twenty weeks expired. It was kind of a wind-down period and being Ebbets Field, the home of the then Brooklyn Dodgers was within walking distance of my home, it made me a regular customer at the home games. I did find one job of a temporary nature, so it really didn't count at the State Office. That was as a filler-in mailman for the handling and delivery of X-Mas mail. It was an irregular job because you reported in to the assistant postmaster every day and he would select the hours of work for that day, or in some instances would indicate there was no work on that particular day. That job lasted for about eight weeks.

I had managed to save a little bit of money from the Service, who at that time paid a dollar a day, and from my part time job, so that I was in the market for a used car. Having learned how to drive in the Service, I thought the family as well as myself would benefit. Post war cars, like radios and other consumer goods were a hot commodity. Many people had savings and the conversion from war materials to civilian products took a little time, so naturally there was a lot of competition for consumer products that were on the market. Used cars were no exception, and inexperience was no excuse. My first car therefore was the result of looking at an advertisement in the newspaper. The ad was well written and it looked like that was just the type of car I wanted. Quickly I went to the business address listed, which was downtown Brooklyn. It was at a Singer sewing machine store, and the salesman was a middle aged gentleman with a little mustache and a friendly disposition. He showed me the car, which was a mid-forty Pontiac four door sedan. The car was in what seemed to be good condition and certainly the body was in good shape. He indicated some others also were coming to view the car, which was probably true, so that I quickly made up my mind and placed a deposit with him. The next day I got my first car and incidentally, the family's first car. Later I had some water cooling problems with the car since it was obviously used to haul sewing machines around, a fact that escaped my novice mind at the time of purchase. I also found out after the fact, that the price I paid was just about fifty dollars under what it had cost the previous owner when he first purchased the car, but that's how it was.

I went down to the Driver License Bureau, took my test and got my State driver's license. A car was not really a necessity for getting around the neighborhood, or even the City, but it made certain things a lot more convenient while, at the same time, there were bothersome aspects as well. For example, living in an apartment we had no garage, and car thefts being what they were in the neighborhood, it took a bit to find a garage to rent. It wasn't even located close by and I had to walk some six blocks to get to it. In the cold winter mornings or late winter evenings that made it hardly worthwhile, but when you're young and stupid and live in the jungle you just don't know any better. The pleasanter aspects luckily outweighed the burdensome ones of city car ownership, even the ritual of the ""score"outstretched hand" for the mechanic, the fellow who oiled and lubricated cars, the shop steward, the parking attendant and on and on. New Yorkers are crazy that way, perhaps more so than anywhere else.

The family began to relax on the weekends and enjoy a little of their leisure time. We were able to shop in some areas of Manhattan that were difficult to reach via public service, especially from Brooklyn, and by having a car, were able to transport items bought more easily. We also started to take a drive in the country every so often. The roads and highways were not nearly so clogged and impassable as now-a-days and one could enjoy a leisurely drive to nearby Connecticut or upstate New York and New Jersey. One time we found a farm family that took in weekend lodgers and were sort of forerunners of the Bed and Breakfast idea of today. The lady's name was Muriel and we were regular clients at Muriel's farm where we had room and board for a number of Saturday and sometimes even Sunday nights. She was a great cook and offered a farmer's table spread. We would go hiking in the woods on her farm and have a very relaxed time being away from the City. Other excursions took us up into the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where we always found some good Dutch eateries as well as enjoying the scenic drive. The same was true of driving up along the Hudson River to the Catskills, which were also very pastoral and scenic and had great ethnic restaurants. We had a distant aunt in Vineland, New Jersey and another one way out near the tip of Long Island both of whom we were now able to visit with the car. I taught my Dad to drive and eventually he too, got his license. Much later on, after I had left the house, he got his own car and was able to get a much better job in a defense plant out at Bethpage, Long Island. That summer, I answered an ad for a driver, with car. The ad was placed by a wife of a dentist who wanted to be driven to the Beach daily during the summer with her two small children. I got the job and an earful of gossip on each trip free of charge. Nevertheless it did afford me some pocket money and a lot of time on the beach generally given over to girl watching.

The summer was rapidly coming to a close and it was time to pursue my academic goals in earnest. Earlier I had taken a series of entrance exams for Brooklyn College, a free, or scholarship school for the small percentage of the total student population that could get the "score" that would qualify them for admission. The competition for the less than two percent opening of the entire student population was fierce. I missed by a quarter of a point. My sister who had been admitted, pleaded my case with her counselor and after considering I had been in Service, the Board waived the fraction of a point and I was admitted for the fall semester. My program was a full one with eighteen credits. I studied hard, burned the midnight oil, met some fellow students who were to become friends, fell for Erika, and got a Christmas job at Warnemakers department store in downtown Manhattan, selling men's shirts, socks and sweaters. I also bought my first desk and chair at the store (which I still have in our present home) with my employee discount. Erika was in some of my classes throughout the first two years of college. She was of Viennese descent and her family too had to take it on the lamb during the Austrian occupancy. She lived up in the Bronx with a sister and her Dad, who was in the restaurant line. She was a well built, good looking young lady and we began to date every so often. It didn't take us long to realize that we made good friends and that was all, and that's the way we kept it.

I had applied for and gotten a part-time job while going to college at the New York Public Library. It was the big one, on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street with its well known trade mark of the two large lions in front. The job was well suited for my study schedule. Since the Library had long hours and was open seven days a week, I was able to select a block of time that allowed me to work daily after school and on the weekends as well. I started out as a page in the large main reading room on the third floor. It was interesting work and the hundreds of different titles that I shelved each day including many unusual reference books, made the time fly by. After six months or so, I started to notice certain patterns in some of the more frequent users. There were scholars who used very specialized materials, researchers and writers who would concentrate on a select topic, students doing their term papers or doctoral dissertations and many others including the general public. There were also a few eccentric persons. One of these was a middle aged gentleman who always elected to sit directly across a pretty young lady, at the very large and long solid wood reading tables. He would read some materials and make himself gently obnoxious in a very subtle way, so that the person sitting opposite, would pack up her reading materials and move to another table, usually far removed. The man would then rather quickly change his seat and sit in the vacated chair of the young lady. I guess he got his kicks that way. Well it was a somewhat quiet winter weekday evening when the same scenario was almost to be repeated, but there was one hitch, namely I was on duty and waiting. This time, before the man could get around the table to occupy the chair of the lady that just vacated it, I went over and physically lifted the rather heavy wooden arm chair and carried it to a service center which divided the main reading room in half and was for library staff only. The man was furious and the next day lodged a vociferous complaint. My supervisor, an understanding younger librarian, gave me a lecture and told me the next time would be my last time if I ever pulled a stunt like that again - but I really think he thought the whole thing was kind of funny.

I stayed with the Library for a number of years and every so often would get a promotion which meant more pay per hour, so that eventually I got to the highest level of the non professional librarian series. This slow but steady progression also meant working in different parts of the Library. My experience included work in the Photostatic Division where many commercial enterprises wanted large glossy prints of varying subject, such as Broadway shows, or subjects dealing with transportation and so on. I also worked in the Science Room where scientific material was kept and in the Genealogy Section, a popular place for checking on one's ancestry, as well as in the many levels of stacks as a searcher, looking for mis-shelved or lost items that were out of place or dislocated. It was most fascinating work and would unbeknown to me at the time, lead to my lifelong vocation. There was however, one more incident which almost totaled my career with the Library. This was the time that I was working inside "the cage" in the center of the reference room. Library patrons would make out book request slips at the large information desk adjoining the reading room and hand them in to a technician. This person would make certain that all the information was noted so that the proper book or document could be found in the stacks and would also assign a number to the patron which would later flash on a screen in the reading room and the patron could call for his books at "the cage." Meanwhile the information desk technician would send a pack of "call slips" to the technician inside the reading room cage via a pneumatic tube system. There the technician would again break out the call slips" into various library location patterns, and send these down to the stacks where other pages would ferret out the needed items, place them in wire mesh baskets and send them to the third floor reading room for dispersal to the waiting patron. The pneumatic tube board that faced" the cage" technician was a marvel all by itself. Because of the many varied locations that materials were shelved in the large library, a large tube communication system was used. There were at least twenty different tube drops that "the cage" technician had to use after sorting call slips, literally by the hundreds on most busy days. But then there were also the quiet moments, especially late in the evenings, or on a slow Sunday afternoon. It was during these times that I as a technician monitoring the tubes in "the cage" escaped boredom through several different means. For one thing I didn't know who the pages were that were manning the stacks. Many were college students, and quite a number were female. So naturally one could write notes and send these instead of "call slips". The recipients would usually return the favor in kind and a regular pattern of silly note exchanges would take place, often with a person neither one knew. Then there were just slightly more dramatic means of doing the same thing, namely avoiding boredom. If I felt especially mischievous, I would ask one of my assistants to fill the tube with hot or cold water and we would send those through the system. We would be repaid in kind. Then one day, the coup de grace, one of the pages found a mouse in "the cage", a live one. There was only one thing to do. Place the live mouse in a tube and send it down to the girls in the stacks. That is just what I did. It was also just about the last thing I did. Yes, the girl opened the tube in the stacks, and as the story was told when they and their supervisor confronted me and my supervisor, she opened the tube, the frightened mouse jumped out at her, a lengthy screaming session ensued causing total panic in the stacks, after which the girl fainted and was out for ten minutes. All that, because of one little mouse. Well, they debated if I should be canned right then and there, but as luck would have it, due to my otherwise splendid record, or whatever, they determined to forget this event and life went peacefully on for me, at least for a little while.

Meanwhile my old Pontiac was starting to act up and it was taking more and more effort just to keep it running. My father decided it was time to look for another car. I told him of a new car dealership which had just recently opened in a nearby area. We went down the next afternoon to take a look. As it turned out, it was a Kaiser-Frazer dealership, the same Henry J. Kaiser, whose shipyards we had worked at some years back. No wonder we landed up with a new Frazer. What!, you never heard of it. Goodness, it was a style leader in its day, and had numerous other features which would later become standard on other brand models. My younger sister had a friend named, Molly, and they were both on the way to graduate from the same High School I went to, Franklin K. Lane. They both also needed a Prom date. My sister had a brother, namely me; Molly also had a brother, even a little older than me. The girls talked each of us into being their blind date, after all I was using an almost brand new car, the Frazer. The Prom was standard fare and nothing unusual happened other than Molly. Seems like she was quite a girl. We decided to start dating and we did. Every other week. It took me that long to save enough extra cash for the date. Molly wasn't asking for dinner out, nor fancy Broadway plays, but I always tried to give her the best, and even in our time that took a little extra. Sometimes we would double date and after a play or movie have dessert with hot chocolate milk, which was one of her favorites, and then take the subway back home. Since it was usually two or three in the morning we also bought the early edition of the newspaper to bring home. This went on for a year or so, when it suddenly dawned on me that I was serious. I stopped dating with Molly, dwelling on my studies instead. Besides, my sisters occasionally would invite her to our home and we would fondly talk together. Once, Molly even managed to wash my hair for me, need I say more. Further, she knew through my sisters that I didn't have any other dates.

With my loaded school schedule, my part-time job which often went to the limit of what the Library allowed in number of hours worked, and other activities, I lost track of Molly for a few months. Unfortunately, she must have thought differently for the next thing I knew, Rusty, as I called her because of her naturally reddish tinged hair, was ready to announce her engagement and subsequent marriage to a veterinarian, one whom she had always mentioned as taking care of her family pet, which the whole family just adored.

Upon hearing this disastrous news, I started to quickly make plans to ask Molly for a date so that we could talk things over. Later, I was told that her mother was dead set against her seeing me, even one more time because she already had her "ring" and it wasn't nice. Molly apparently asked her fiancee and although he didn't like the idea as well, he probably knew that there wasn't much anyone could do once Molly made up her mind to something, so he acceded. Molly, apparently wanted nothing more than to have my hide for seemingly dropping her without any notice or explanation and she was willing to date me one last time to "tell me off". As it turned out however, when she opened the door to admit me and we took a look at each other we intuitively knew the jig was up and it was "the real thing". A few days later I sent her a poem:

  TO MOLLY  

embrace me with your everlasting warmth my love,
for my thoughts are homeward bound.
to you alone I shall soon return
like a flower drawn to the sun.
thrilled am I to love my love
her love for me so true;
I love my love and my love loves me
two in love as one.
now come and join my heart my love,
no longer do refrain,
for our tomorrow too soon will come
and life yet take a fateful turn.

But that is left to another story, and yes, dear reader, this heart rendering drama, should either have left you deeply asleep long ago or dying in stitches for laughing so long at all the absurdities encountered. I truly trust you have had some soothing benefits from plowing your way laboriously through these STORIES, and if the effect was benign to you, that you may possibly want to continue with the next series of STORIES. Thank you for your patience and forbearance. The author.

  ©1990 Herbert Holzbauer published

@1996 edition S.p.N.LAUB  

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