I moved to NYC in 1960. I was 20 years old. My first Christmas I was working at Lord&Taylor and was put in charge of the Christmas wrap store on the 8th. floor. On Christmas Eve the store closed early. It was then my job to pack and move the wrap to the first floor for the after-Christmas sale. I was assigned two stock boys both of of whom were drunk. I moved the shop by myself. I hurried because I was going to dinner at my aunt's home in Manhattan.
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Regards the Senior reimbursing the MTA fare:
A friend used to pass by a panhandler most days on the way to work. He never reached into his pocket to proffer a handout. However on the day he retired he opened his wallet and gave the guy a fiver. The guy looked down at his hat and said, "Hey buddy, ya know how much a sandwich is these days?!?!?"
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My office was at 38th and Madison. I had an account at Lord and Taylor and used it frequently. After a few years my office moved to Rockefeller Plaza. Lord and Taylor was too far away. Six months later I got a letter from Lord and Taylor. They noticed my absence and they said they missed me they hoped I would come back. No other store did that.
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Regarding this in Meg Taylor's story:"We’re taking you straight to Bellevue.”
I was in the Seattle area this summer (in Redmond) and an associate producer on my project lived in the next city, Bellevue, Washington, a mostly stunning suburb of Seattle. She had no idea what "Bellevue" implied when someone said "you should go to Bellevue" in the New York area. (The cabs had Bellevue magazine in the seat pockets for reading by the riders in the back seat.)
info on that really nice Bellevue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellevue,_Washington
23
The story about the two women and Elder Avenue is meaningful to me. My father had lived with his family on Elder Avenue until he married. I knew that my grandfather had built a stoop or a small landing at the front of the house.
A number of years ago my father drove me and my mother to Elder Avenue to see the house. The three of us got out of the car and stood looking at the house. The door opened and the man who opened the door asked if he could help us which is a normal reaction when three strangers are staring at your house.
I told him that this is the house that my father grown up in. I continued and told him that my grandfather had built the stoop. The man was thrilled. He had always appreciated that his house had the stoop which made it special in comparison to all the other identical semi-detached houses on the block. The man very genuinely told us that he was so very happy to meet someone connected to whoever made his house special.
My father was beyond happy. He had very fond memories of his house and his time on Elder Avenue. He was so pleased that his house was loved by its current occupants, and in particular, because of his father’s handiwork. I, in turn, was delighted by my father’s joy and satisfaction.
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Dear Mr. Herman,
Thank you for a wonderful Diary entry about Dorothy
Shaver, Lord & Taylor, and yourself.
For many years my favorite Christmas-themed store windows were those of Lord & Taylor and B. Altman & Company. I worked at B. Altman as a stock clerk while in high school. I will never forget the sadness I felt in December 1989 knowing that B. Altman’s would soon be, as a big sign in the window stated, “closing our doors forever.”
When I looked up Dorothy Shaver I found out how influential and fascinating a career she had. I discovered that Sandra Lee Braun wrote a doctoral dissertation about her life, career, and influence at the University of Alabama in 2009 entitled “Forgotten First Lady: The Life, Rise, and Success of Dorothy Shaver, President of Lord & Taylor Department Store, and America’s ‘First Lady of Retailing.’”
I will look for that plaque from now on and will clean it a bit if needed.
Wishing you and all who frequent and love the Metropolitan Diary a happy and healthy new year.
Allen
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@Allen, you might also like this Lord and Taylor plaque story
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/nyregion/lord-taylor-closing.html
(This was yesterday, Dec. 30, but linked this morning in NY Today.)
11
Thank you Freddie, for the link and for all your always interesting comments and delightful song lyrics. Have a wonderful new year. Allen
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@Allen J. Share, thank you so much. Seeing recently how people either enjoyed the verse by Larry Eisenberg (who left us last week, but wow - 99 years old!) for over ten years, or if they found verse out of place just ignored verse since verse is so easy to just pass over. In this two year, i'm bewildered by readers like "Jen96th" (which I understand is Jennifer Tepper's account, a celebrated rising Broadway producer who I've long admired from her writing and 54 Below work, or at least it's someone who're udr of her account she approved) and folks like "Kathath" and "gruntled" who seemed to sign up especially to cause havoc with lyrics, flagging lyrics over two weeks asking the Times to revise its very open comment policy, and then it started again this July (under the great Book Choy story about harmony among diverse people, of all stories!) when Id thought it was over.
It had been totally bliss and joy for so many years first until June 2017, and then I felt like I (and others here, who I thank) had to fight and argue for a right to do what other verse-commenters were doing all around the comments, for some reason. The very simple joy, of getting a few folks to maybe sing when they might not have otherwise, became after 7 years, having to argue for a right to express myself. That it started again July 2018 was strange, even weirder that it started in the gorgeous Bok Choy story where there hadn't been any lyric was even more odd.
Hope for a 2019 of expression.
20
When I read the story about the ginkgo tree and Dorothy Shaver it made me wonder just how many plaque's were around the city that now few people know what they mean. They show the cycle of things, how they rise and fall and are replaces by something else.
32
The story about the senior citizen and reimbursing his benefactor for a Metrocard 'swipe' reminds me of a personal experience.
When I was a teenager, working near Bowling Green for my father, there was an old, disabled man selling shoelaces on the steps of the US Customs House. We'd occasionally give him some money but never pick up any shoelaces. One day, when we dropped in 50 cents and not expecting to buy a pair, he said, quite annoyed: "They've gone up to $1."
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