{"id":856,"date":"2015-05-03T13:47:52","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T20:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=856"},"modified":"2015-05-03T13:47:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T20:47:52","slug":"country-bumpkins-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=856","title":{"rendered":"Country bumpkins in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

View from the Empire State Building, 1962. Photo by Tony Eppstein.<\/p><\/div>\n

The friends we were traveling with chose the hotel, the cheapest they could find. It was on W. 46th<\/sup> Street, just off Times Square. Only one thin hand towel in the grungy bathroom. What to do? We called the desk. A maid appeared, to tell us the towels were not yet back from the laundry. In hindsight, a tip might have made towels magically appear. But we knew nothing about tipping; it wasn\u2019t a part of the culture we knew.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Breaking our 1962 journey from New Zealand to England as young married couple off to see the world, Tony and I had disembarked in New York to visit my sister Evelyn, who was completing her doctorate at Syracuse University in upstate New York. From there the three of us traveled by Greyhound bus to Baltimore to spend a few days with her friends Brian and Jennifer Wybourne and visit Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Driving with the Wybournes back to New York, where we were to board another ship bound for England, we were wide-eyed at our first glimpse of the New Jersey turnpike. In a letter to parents I wrote: \u201c\u2026one of the most famous of the turnpikes \u2013 150 miles of unhindered 6-lane highway. Then navigating the streets of the city \u2013 practically all are one-way, which makes it complicated, and you can imagine the traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The letter continues: \u201cThe next morning we went up to the top of the Empire State building \u2013 early, before the mist got up. The view from the top is terrific \u2013 you can see the whole extent of New York city \u2013 which is saying something.\u201d I look back in memory and see the young woman I was, neck stiff from craning upward at rows of skyscrapers that made deep canyons of the streets, mind agog at the level of luxury displayed in store windows. I remember wandering through several of the huge department stores, feeling lost and out of place.<\/p>\n

\"Map<\/a>

Map of Manhattan<\/p><\/div>\n

One day we walked to the tip of Manhattan and back, excited to see Wall St. and Greenwich Village, and to walk on Broadway. I wrote: \u201cWe were really footsore by the time we reached the hotel, but then we had the big experience of our trip \u2013 riding the New York subway during rush hour. That was some experience. We held each other tightly, and shoved with the rest. Sardines in a can had nothing on the train \u2013 but you had to make sure you weren\u2019t pulled out with the rush at each station.\u201d Evelyn, who was taking us out to the Bronx to dinner with the family she was staying with, wrote in her letter home: \u201cI deliberately engineered it to be at Grand Central Station about 5 past 5 at night. It was quite an eye-opener for them\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0On each of the other nights we had the new experience of dining in a restaurant of a different nationality, all quite cheap by New York standards, and all in the same block as the hotel \u2013 Greek, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, as well as American \u2013 hamburgers and doughnuts.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An automat<\/p><\/div>\n

For lunch Evelyn introduced us to automats<\/a>. I commented: \u201cWe found foreign food much more interesting than American \u2013 they process it and vitaminise it, and goodness knows what \u2013 the result is rather tasteless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0In future weeks I\u2019ll talk about other aspect of our first visit to New York: the art, the music, the experience of visiting the heart of the United Nations secretariat.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And yes, a few more threadbare towels did eventually show up in our hotel room.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The friends we were traveling with chose the hotel, the cheapest they could find. It was on W. 46th Street, just off Times Square. Only one thin hand towel in the grungy bathroom. What to do? We called the desk. A maid appeared, to tell us the towels were not yet back from the laundry. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,54,9,241,5],"tags":[258,257,256],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":887,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}