Scene and heard

I first arrived here to live on January 7th, 1980, having never lived away from home. I had been here twice before – for 2 months as a 17 year old and 3 weeks in the summer preceding the big move.

The company that brought me here put me up in the Wellington Hotel on 57th and 7th, very close to Carnegie Hall. The evening of my arrival, I took a random walk and ended up at Wolf’s Delicatessen. The next day, for lunch, my random walking took me to the huge Nathan’s that used to be a block from the Port Authority. I found out later that these are two of the most famous restaurants in New York.

On my way back to the Hotel, I saw a Fire Truck turn the wrong way onto a one way street. Cars were coming towards it and parked on both sides of the road. The Fire Truck horn was constantly booming and quite deafening, but there didn’t appear to be anywhere for the cars to go. To this day, that was the only time I have ever seen an emergency vehicle do this, but at the time, I had little reason to suspect that this was anything other than a regular occurrence! I wondered what kind of a madhouse I had moved to!! Had I made a big mistake? I banished the thought almost immediately and went back to my hotel looking forward to a visit to where I would be working, missing my family and about to embark on the most exciting year of my life.