(A Novella) it Was a Very Good Year

Age 19

The City College of New York is situated in Harlem and I traveled there from the Bronx on the D subway train and walked the rest of the way past side by side brownstone houses on neat tree lined streets. That was several years before the riots that took place in and around 125th St. which was another alternative train stop on the IND line. Fortunately, my wife , whom I met there as students in a graduate research class, and I, had long since graduated.

Being a college student at CCNY caught me completely by surprise. No one in my family had gotten beyond high school. I myself had quit high school to take a job offered me one summer after working part time with General Foods Corp. on Park Ave in Manhattan. I was a so-so student but definitely not motivated by high school. Luckily, I took some night courses and graduated.

I liked making money and was saving to buy a car. The Export Dept. in which I worked as a mail clerk was stocked with all these tall, shape ly, single secretaries who worked for the big honchos who headed up the different international divisions, For the most part those guys were married and unavailable, Besides they were too ambitiously busy. I on the other hand, was the most unambitious character you can imagine. I was available and non-threatening.

I was there for them. When 23 year old Sonia had tickets for a Yankee Red Sox baseball games I was always free. When 22 year old Marilyn needed someone to listen as she read her recently typed correspondence for errors I was there concentrating as she stood over me rubbing her knee on my thigh. They all seemed to like telling me stuff about their personal lives.

Back home in the Bronx on a Friday after work my friend Jerry and I were playing handball in the local schoolyard surrounded by the five story tenement apartment buildings and their zig zagging fire escapes. He asked me to go with him downtown the next morning on the train. He said something about filling out an application. We talked about heading over to Broadway after wards and it sounded like fun. As it turned out the place he was to go was Hunter College and he didn't realize it was more than just an application process, it was a six hour test to get into City College. The woman behind the desk assumed I was there for the same purpose. So, because there was nothing better for me to do alone, I signed up. The following September I found myself at the CCNY orientation for new students. Jerry hadn't gotten in.