Promises to Keep

Since I didn’t have access to my computer or family photos during my stay with the grandchildren, I had to save them for today. Here are the promised New York shots of us German immigrants.

Our New Daddy

 Mr. Woelk was a gentle giant. We needed a Daddy, and he became our best protector and provider for five years. My brother Guy still bears his name, since he adopted us to give us security.  Sadly we left him in Florida when we returned to New York.

Apartment at 452 E. 187th Street looking toward L

New York Central Rail Line--View from our Apartment

Our apartment was wedged between the Third Avenue L (elevated train) and the New York Central railway

http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&q=452+E+187th+St.,+Bronx,+New+York&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x89c2f47efbeddc77:0x174497e4d91cc6f7,452+E+187th+St,+Bronx,+NY+10458&gl=us&ei=cBa7T-_CM-qXiALlxKGmDg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ8gEwAA

The link is long, but it's just as easy to key in our home address above and the actual location of our apartment house will come up on google maps. Today there are trees up front. There weren't any in the 1960's.

Mom loved taking us on adventure trips. This one was a boat trip up the Hudson River on the Alexander Hamilton Ferry. We went to West Point.

Alexander Hamilton, seen here aground on a sandbar in Highlands, circa 1975

The Alexander Hamilton was the last of the steam powered side-wheel river boats of the Hudson River Day Line. Built in 1924, she ceased operations in 1971. A well-meaning group pulled the Hamilton  from the mud in 1977 and moved her to a temporary berth along the east side of the Navy pier, planning to restore her as a museum. Unfortunately, at the new more-exposed location, the old vessel was sunk and reduced to scrap by a sudden storm in November of that year. The last records indicate that the wreck is still there.(From the link:http://njscuba.net/artifacts/ship_ferry.html)

The photos below show my brother with Mutti on a park bench in the Bronx, 1960's.

 Guy and I are sitting in front of our apartment building on 452 E. 187th Street, Bronx, New York.

Though everyone has views about big city life, for us New York was home and fun. We often walked up Fordham Road past Fordham University http://www.fordham.edu/

to the Bronx Zoo http://www.bronxzoo.com/ on the days we could get in for free.

We liked to hike up the 187th Street stairway to the Grand Concourse to meet Mutti at the subway station (and I don't mean sandwich shop) when she came home from work at Gimbels in downtown Manhattan. Mutti disembarked at the Grand Concourse, and we would walk home with her when she came up from the bowels of the earth, stopping only at the fruit stand on the corner for bargain priced overripe fruit.

We spent summers at the New York Metropolitan Opera, at the Hayden Planetarium, or just horsed around at Van Courtland Park http://vcpark.org/

In winter we would ice skate in Central Park, take a bus to Bear Mountain for skiing, or just watch a movie at the "Dumps" (the Savoy Theater)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU63XQghLMY

It was a busy 1960's era that gave way to first jobs, marriage, and new homes in other far away, or not so far away places.