Nutmegger

. . . I disembarked at JFK with my life in one suitcase. Where have the years gone? Outside the TWA terminal the cars were still monsters with fins and it was truly a different world from all I knew. I had my four favourite albums on the bottom of the case, two books I couldn’t bear to leave behind, and -- amazing though it seems to me now -- my entire wardrobe crammed in there! I was wearing an aged fur coat, at least two sizes too big, that a friend’s mother had given me to ward off the NYC winters, with a poppy pinned to my lapel as it was Remembrance Sunday. I lived in a dingy apartment in the Bronx and started on the road that has somehow brought me to this day in rural Connecticut, two marriages and all manner of jobs later. As I always say -- que sera, sera!

WEBlue

Really, 1972? Wow, such a different time! Real turmoil in America then, with all the protests of the Vietnam War, the Kent State students killed by the National Guard, the Watergate scandal that led to the impeachment of Pres Nixon. In fact, wasn't 1972 the year the Watergate scandal first broke?

It must have taken guts to come to such a chaotic place. Had you visited the US previously? Were you terrified? I started doing a bit of foreign travel in the early 70s, but didn't leave home and become a true expat till 1980. It was exciting but also nerve-wracking, so that year is sort of a cloudy blur to me now.

Nutmegger

I had spent two weeks in NY! I think at the time I was too oblivious of the immense step I was taking to be as scared as I should have been. Crossing the Atlantic at that time meant really losing touch, with none of the instant communications methods we enjoy now. Within a year most of my friends from London were scattered and that was that. The ramifications of what the move would mean to the rest of my life were lost in . . . well, in actually just doing it! And yes, it was a crazy time for young people in the States -- I went with friends who were waiting for their numbers to come up for draft counseling at the American Friends Service Committee and well remember the hatred for the war. I also remember all the staff clustering around a TV in the office I worked in high above Manhattan as Nixon's resignation was announced!

paddingtongreen

My firstborn daughter arrived on Lincolns birthday that year. It was a good year from our point of view.

robin1234

I first arrived in JFK just a little later -May 1973 and went to stay at my (now) wife's apartment in the Bronx. The Senate Watergate Hearings were in progress; she knew all the players, had attended demonstrations, etc. and was glued to the TV. It was all a bit foreign to me! I didn't know Senator Inouye from a hole in the head! (as they say here.)

Anyway after a few weeks we went out to the west coast and washed up in Haight-Ashbury and were there for a while I think..

Nutmegger

Which area were you in? I was in the Bronx until 1976 -- off Fordham Road, east of the Concourse.

robin1234

Spuyten Duyvil. These were just visits, when we actually moved to the US in 1976 we moved to Boston. My wife went to Walton HS then Lehman College, you probably know where they are..

Rete

I'm not all that far from there at the moment although in the City of Yonkers.

Grand Concourse was the place to live back in those days. The city is trying to renovate that area and many of those buildings that are pre-war are being upgraded and sold as co-ops and condos. Large rooms from what I hear.

Congratulations on celebrating your 40th anniversary. Quite a milestone.

Nutmegger

Indeed -- west of the Concourse, but not too far away. And closer to the Stella D'oro biscuit factory!

Nutmegger

Thanks, Rete. Yes, those buildings weren't looking too good back in the seventies, but you could tell how nice they had once been, when the Grand Concourse was a very fashionable address. I also remember the Loews Paradise Cinema, which had the most amazing decor inside, like a beautiful sky at night. I'd never seen anything like it!

Rete

I miss the smell of the Stella D'oro factory when you passed it on the Major Deegan. When I was a kid back in the dinosaur days we would go ice skating not far from there. Believe Loehman's is there now.

robin1234

Yes I remember that great smell from the Deegan! It closed down, then?

robin1234

My wife and I visited the Lower East Side a couple of years ago, doing family history research (we found some addresses her grandparents and great grandparents had lived in back in the day.) We were eating lunch in a kosher restaurant and got talking to a lady in her nineties. My wife told her she was from the Bronx; the old lady said she remembered when all the Jews moved up to the Bronx, 1930s to 1950s I suppose. She said she'd stayed put and had never regretted it. She lived in Stuyvesant Town so I was thinking about her when they lost power after the hurricane..

Rete

Several areas of the Bronx are noted as Jewish neighborhoods or at least were back in the 50's, 60's and 70's. The Grand Concourse and Riverdale sections were just two of them. Grand Concourse was great because of the large pre-war apartments and Fordham Rd for shopping at Alexander's and all the mom and pop stores. Riverdale was more upscale and newer apartments commanding views of the Hudson River and the Palisades. In fact that area is where the Hebrew Home for the Aged is located on the Bronx/Yonkers border.


Yes they closed the place although the workers and union put up a good fight to have them remain.

Nutmegger

And there was a Loehmann's a bit further up Fordham -- my introduction to discount clothes shopping! I used to love walking up Fordham on a Saturday evening to get the early edition of the Sunday NY Times from the stall by the subway station. And I was within walking distance of the Botanical Garden, which I enjoyed as I had lived close to Kensington Palace Gardens in London and liked having a big green "back yard"!