I spent most of my weekends in New York City, a short bus or train ride from Ft. Monmouth. I was fascinated by the city and found a variety of things to do. Servicemen in uniform were admitted free of charge to major league baseball games, and I went to many. I went to one Dodger game in Ebbets Field, four or five Giant games at the Polo Grounds, and many Yankee games in Yankee Stadium. The reason I went to mostly Yankee games was that I had become a big Mickey Mantle fan and 1955 and 1956 were his best years.
While I was getting a drink from the water fountain between games of a double header at Yankee Stadium, one of those "it's a small world" things happened. A guy I had known in high school, Orville Cook, was standing there waiting to get a drink of water. It was a real coincidence as at the time his mother, a widow, was dating my dad, a widower, back in our home town of Sioux City, Iowa.
I also went to a lot of movies in New York. Like the baseball games, servicemen in uniform were admitted to all the big theaters free of charge. Between New York, Red Bank, and the base, I probably saw more movies during those two years than I have in any five year block of time since. One of the theaters where I saw several movies was the Radio City Music Hall, where patrons were treated to a stage show that included the Rockettes dancers as well as the feature film, previews, cartoons, and newsreels.
As servicemen were also given priority admittance to some of the live television shows, I often went on Saturday nights at 8:00 PM to the Dorsey brothers show, which was later replaced by Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners". The Dorsey show was a variety show and I was there when Elvis Presley made his national television debut on that show. I had never heard of him and was startled when he appeared on stage and hundreds of girls began screaming.
On Sunday nights at 8:00 PM I often went to the Ed Sullivan show. It was at the same CBS studio where the Dorsey brothers were. There I saw up close and personal people like Kim Novak and Teresa Brewer. It was one of the top TV shows of the time and, unlike today, was live.
One Saturday I had plans to meet a friend from my home town of Sioux City, Iowa at Grand Central Station in New York and spend the day. My friend, Bob Kaiman, was a student at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and had come to Long Island with some classmates. We planned to meet early Saturday morning and spend the day. One problem. On Saturday morning, at the last moment before I got away, I was assigned to garbage detail, where I had to ride a garbage truck till about noon collecting garbage. I finally cleaned up and while waiting for the bus, an officer who was an instructor at the same school where I worked, drove up and offered me a ride to New York along with another guy who was going to New York to spend the weekend with his parents. This was a blessing, as we got there a lot faster, and I was dropped off right at Grand Central Station. Bob was still waiting and we spent the day seeing two movies, "The Bridges at Toko Ri" at the Radio City Music Hall and "Bad Day at Black Rock" at another theater on either Broadway or 7th Avenue. We also had dinner and a couple of drinks before he took the train back to Long Island.
The first Broadway play I saw starred MacDonald Carey, who was from my home town of Sioux City, Iowa and had gone to high school with my uncle. One Saturday night I waited around at the stage door of the theater and introduced myself to him. We briefly discussed my uncle and a Latin teacher that we all had. He told me that if I wanted to see the play, to come back on a week night and he would see that I got admitted. So the following Monday I went to New York and waited around at the stage door again. He arrived late and was in a hurry, but saw me and told the guard to see that I got a good seat. I wound up getting one of the best seats in the house. By the time I got seated, the play had started and MacDonald Carey was already on stage.
All of the other Broadway plays I saw were through the USO. As long as seats were available, servicemen could attend any Broadway play. The difference from movies and baseball games was that to attend a play, we had to dress in civilian clothes, preferably a business suit. The movies and baseball games, by contrast, required that uniforms be worn. I don't remember the names of all the plays I saw, but I did see the big hits of the time.
I did the usual sight seeing in New York City. I've been to the top of the Statue of Liberty a few times. I've also been to the top of the Empire State Building more that once. One time on the top of the Empire State Building a couple of tourists, two young women whom I believe were from China, gave me and my buddy their cameras and gestured that they would like us to take their pictures. They spoke no English but made it obvious what they wanted. We were happy to oblige. I've also been to the United Nations, but actually saw more of that, years later as a civilian on a business trip. I guess during my first few weekends in New York, I saw most if not all of the tourist attractions.
On New Year's Eve, after I had been at Ft. Monmouth a little less than two weeks, I was in New York. I met a Lieutenant from Hawarden, Iowa at a USO and, although officers and enlisted men aren't supposed to fraternize, we decided to watch the New Year come in at Times Square. We stood there and watched Faye Wray toast the New Year in her customary manner with the ball of light counting off the final seconds. We were visiting with a woman, who I guess was around 40, and her 16 year old daughter. The Lieutenant was around 22, and I was just shy of my 20th birthday. At the stroke of midnight he planted a long, hard kiss on the 16 year old who obviously enjoyed it. I just stood there like a dodo, and the mother just smiled. I should have kissed her. Later I said to the Lieutenant that he should have kissed the older woman, since he was older, and left the 16 year old for me. He laughed and said that I wouldn't have done anything anyway, because I was too shy. Anyway, I enjoyed the evening and at 1:00 AM (Midnight in Iowa), I called a home in Sioux City, where many of my friends were at a New Years party, and talked with several of them.
Servicemen's clubs were a great place to have fun and to meet people. Many were affiliated with the USO and others were not. My favorite was a place called the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines' & Airmen's Club on Lexington Avenue. It included a hotel, a place to eat, and had various forms of entertainment. Actually the hotel was more like a rooming house and we slept in big dorms, much like college. Meals were served at a very reasonable cost and were very good. One of my favorites was a home style roast beef dinner with all the trimmings for only $1.75. The rooming was also inexpensive and was a blessing in that we were all in a branch of the military and compatible. New York Hotels were expensive and staying at the YMCA was not a good option because the clientele was not screened and you never knew with whom you would be sharing a shower room.
The Soldiers', Sailors', Marines' & Airmen's Club had dances on Saturday nights and a lot of young women attended. Unlike the USO, these women were free to date a serviceman if they so chose. They were screened so that only young women who were "respectable" were allowed to attend. I met a lot of real nice women there and dated one or two. Although they were permitted to date the servicemen, most merely liked to attend the dances and for the most part were not interested in seeing anyone away from the club.
One gal I remember was very nice and I was attracted to her. After all these years, I don't remember her name, but we usually spent most of the evenings together at these dances. For a long time she said she enjoyed spending time with me at the dances but didn't want to go out other than meeting at the dances. One evening, I had talked her into going out for a drink and a bite to eat, and we were just leaving when up the stairs came a high school classmate of mine from Sioux City, Iowa, Jim Fellwock, whom I hadn't seen since high school. We were both surprised to see each other and started to catch up on old times. Meanwhile, the gal said I should spend some time with my friend and we could have the drink and bite to eat some other time. She kissed me on the cheek, and I never saw her again.
Jim and I talked for a while at the dance and agreed to meet for breakfast the next morning at the USO a few blocks away. We had coffee and donuts at this USO and chatted with one of the gals who was a volunteer. I particularly remember one of the things she said. When we told her we were from Sioux City, Iowa, she asked if they still have hitching posts for the horses out there. That was my first experience of the perception that some New Yorkers think everything West of the Hudson River is the Wild West. Since I later married a girl from New York, I know this perception is exaggerated, but it does exist.
Another gal that I met at the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines' & Airmen's Club was named Irene and was the only one I dated more than once. We went out a few times, and she was a very nice gal. One evening we had dinner at Jack Dempsey's restaurant and wound up having our picture taken with Jack Dempsey himself. Eventually, I did one of the dumber and more immature things I've ever done. A couple of years after getting out of the Army I cut Irene's picture from the photo, leaving only myself, Jack Dempsey (who had stood between us), and the words that Dempsey had written. After cutting the photo it looked so bad I threw the whole thing away.
Anyway, the next time I saw Irene, she had taken her copy of the picture to the office where she worked. She told me that her coworkers liked the picture but thought I looked awfully young. (I was only 20 and probably looked about 16 at the time). I eventually tired of Irene and didn't ask her out again, although I saw her a few times at the dances. After a few weeks she started going out with a friend of mine from Ft. Monmouth, Warren Evans whom I mentioned in Chapter 2, and they seemed to get along well. They even invited me to have dinner with them one evening, and it was enjoyable.
The gal I remember the most from the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines' & Airmen's Club never went to the dances. Her name was June and she only showed up on Sunday evenings, when very few people were there and the activities consisted of quiet things such as watching TV, playing Ping Pong or Pool, and just sitting around talking. June was a very pretty gal, but was extremely quiet. We got along great, and she recommended things for me to do, such as going to Jones Beach on Long Island. I hadn't heard of Jones Beach, only Coney Island. We spent many Sunday evenings playing Chinese Checkers and just talking. When I finally got the nerve to ask her out, she declined but felt she owed me an explanation.
June had been married to a guy in the Navy. He had been killed in the Korean War at sea off the Aleutian Islands and she was devastated. After a while she decided to come to the club and do her part in helping make it easier for servicemen, many of whom were away from home for the first time and some who may never go home again. She said she wasn't ready to date yet and that she doubted that she would ever date a serviceman again because she didn't want to endure the possibility of history repeating itself. As she told me about herself, tears were rolling down her cheeks. She told me that I was the only person at the club that she had told about this and that she hoped I would still come on Sunday evenings to play Chinese Checkers and talk. So I did keep seeing her there afterwards and we never talked about the subject again.
One of the tragedies of war came upon one of the guys that was a regular at the dances. A sergeant who had been in Korea was more or less a regular. Then one morning in the newspapers a story was written about how this guy was being charged with murder. Apparently he had been a prisoner of war in Korea, and he was being accused of stealing food from another POW until the man starved to death. Apparently they all were starving and it was survival of the fittest.
I also made a few friends at the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines' & Airmen's Club. I got to know a few guys from other branches of the service, some of whom were from the Midwest, as I was. The one I remember most was in the Navy, and he introduced me to some local girls he had met outside the club. Mostly, they were from Queens. I double dated with him a couple of times. This same guy introduced me to the bar at the Markwell Hotel, which was on 49th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue. The Markwell Bar became more or less of a hangout.
The Markwell Bar was much like a neighborhood bar, notwithstanding the fact that it was in the middle of Manhattan. Dave, the bartender was a nice guy, who would let us put drinks on a tab if we were short of money. He was tough though, and if a fight broke out, he was over the bar to break it up. Pete, the waiter would even loan us money if we were short over a particular weekend. He was also capable of mixing it up if necessary. But for the most part, it was a peaceful, friendly bar.
There was a bowling machine at the bar, one of those things where you slid a disk about the size of a hockey puck toward electronic pins on a shuffleboard-like surface. I became quite good and actually won some money playing it. I played the machine left handed, but once in a while I would play right handed just for a change of pace, and I wasn't as good right handed. People would challenge me to play for five bucks or so, and I would play right handed and maybe win and maybe lose. Then they would hustle me for a higher amount and I would play left handed and usually win. I never hustled anybody, but if they hustled me, I knew how to respond. Maybe by playing right handed, I was sandbagging a little bit.
The Markwell was not a pickup type bar. Most of the women that came in were with men, and those that came in stag weren't usually very appealing. That having been said, there were a few times that interesting things happened at the bar regarding women.
One was the time I met a gal there who looked like Betty Page, a well known model at the time. After seeing her a couple of weekends at the bar, I asked her if she wanted to see a movie the following weekend. She accepted and the following weekend we met at the Markwell and attended "Oklahoma" at the Criterion Theater. That's when I first saw Shirley Jones, who has ever since been one of my favorite singers. After the movie we had a drink and a bite to eat and I took her home by the subway. She lived in the South Bronx, about half a mile from the subway station. I later learned that it was dangerous to be on a subway or walking in that area late at night. I guess I've gone to all the places in New York that are considered dangerous now, but the 50s were less violent times and maybe someone watches over the young and naive.
Another time, two or three gals from Philadelphia came to New York for a weekend out on the town and came into the Markwell. I hit it off with one of them and we wrote each other for several months afterward.
The most bizarre thing happened one weekend at the Markwell when I was having a glass of beer with a friend of mine who was in the Navy. A couple of girls started talking with us and subsequently wanted to leave. I was hesitant, but the Navy guy talked me into it. We wound up in a shoe store, and these girls were asking us to buy them shoes. I said no way and returned to the bar. My friend came back later, and I asked him what had happened. He said he bought an expensive pair of shoes for one of the girls and then they dumped him. I felt sorry for him, but what did he expect. Later that night I walked into a bar about two blocks away and saw these same two girls talking with a couple of Airmen. They saw me and seemed annoyed, but I didn't break up their routine. If these guys weren't smart enough to see through the scam, they had to live with the consequences.
Another of those "it's a small world" experiences happened one night about 2:00 AM as I was walking from the Markwell bar to the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines' & Airmen's Club, where I was staying. It was a good two or three mile walk and I went by Times Square, where Broadway and 7th Avenue intersect with 42nd St. I heard someone shout "Hey, Ryal" and turned to see sitting in a coffee shop the first friend I had as a little boy. My neighbor from Sioux City, Jim Moran, who was in the Navy at the time, was sitting there with his parents, who were visiting. I later spent a weekend in Philadelphia visiting Jim, who was stationed there.
An embarrassing thing happened to me one Saturday night in Yorktown, a section of Manhattan, also called Germantown, where German hofbraus and dance clubs were in abundance. One of my friends at Fort Monmouth, Victor Krueger, had grown up in Germany and immigrated to the United States in his late teens. He was drafted into the Army and was assigned to the same Signal Corps school where I worked. Of course, when I made my plans to go to Yorktown, I asked Vic how to ask a girl to dance in German, wanting to impress. He told me what to say. So at this dance club in Yorktown, I approached a table full of women and asked one of them to dance (so I thought). She got up and we began dancing, and she asked me if I knew what I had said to her. I said I thought I'd asked her to dance. She replied that I asked her in German "will you sleep with me?". She figured out that a prank had been played on me and said that this happens all the time. When I returned to Ft. Monmouth, I got even with Vic. When he "innocently" asked me how my weekend went, I made up a wild story about using the phrase he gave me and the girl replying "Ya" and that we went to her apartment. I had Vic going for a while.
When I wanted to spend some family time on the weekend, an alternative to staying on the base or going to New York, I had that opportunity. My dad had a cousin who lived in Ridgewood, New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge from New York. Arnold Canfield worked as a corporate attorney in New York and lived with his wife Marian, and three small daughters in Ridgewood. I had a standing invitation to spend a quiet weekend with them anytime I wanted. I took advantage of their generous offer several times, usually going there Friday evening or Saturday morning and returning to Ft. Monmouth on Sunday evening. It was a nice change of pace, spending some time with a family and having home cooked meals. Usually it worked out fine, but one weekend I arrived to find them gone (they had gone to the New Jersey shore for the weekend). I spent the night sleeping in their garage and the next day watching a baseball game on television with their next door neighbor's daughter, who was a baseball fan.
I got another taste of family life in New York thanks to a USO program, where volunteer families would ask the USO to send two servicemen to their home for dinner. It was a very nice gesture from New York families and showed me that there are caring people in New York, a contrast to the sometimes harsh image New York has. I took advantage of this one time and enjoyed myself.
All in all, I enjoyed my weekends in New York and have many fond memories of them, which made the two years I spent in the Army more tolerable.
