"...Yawk"

This is rather long,...it got out of hand.

Well for me "Old New York" were the immediate post-war years. I was born in 1950 so remember the city from the early 50's. The town still looked much as it did in the 1930's.

It didn't radically change till the 60's, and then again in the 1980's. It's doing it again now.

However I have a personal memory of how things were then, and I miss it. Not the crap awfulness, and Jim Crow. Yeah we had plenty of that. I never learned to swim because many public pools were locally segregated.

That I don't miss. Rather a sense of the better things as they were. ..or at least as I remember them.

The city was historically interesting then. We've since lost so many of the late 19th, and early 20 century places, and things. Places taken for granted for generations.

For example my Mom, when we went shopping, would take me to lunch at the "Auto-Mat", ...yeah that one like you saw in 1930's, and 40's movies..

Many streets were still cobblestone. This from the era of horse drawn wagons, and carriages. Some of which were still running around loose to my childhood joy.

Also people dressed better.

There was more consciousness of appearance. One that had nothing to do with fashion dementia as today. It had to do with self respect.

Well-to-do middle or working class all dressed as best as they could when they went out. I remember my Dad taking me, and my sister Sylvia to our neighborhood park.

We dressed up!

He wore a tie, jacket, and fedora, and we wore clean play clothes. I don't have to tell you what it's like now.

There were no glass, and steel clad skyscrapers yet.

Everything was granite, limestone, and marble. I used to think that the buildings were made from Graham crackers, and cookies. This because in the afternoon sun that's exactly what they looked like.

A whole city made from cookies or biscuits...for you folks in the Commonwealth.

You could tell the cars apart as well. This because each manufacturer had radically different designs. Our cars are now made of plastic, and look like melted sneakers.

The subways system still had rolling old stock in service. Everything from the AB Standard 1914 model to the 1948 Red Bird were banging around our tunnels.

Also while standing on the platform you could get a five cent Coke out of them classic old machines. From news stands,...news agents candy was five cents, and a comic book 10. cents!

I remember on one birthday my Ma gave me $2 bucks! A vast fortune in kid currency. I bought five comics down there.

Best of times the worst,...blah, blah you get the deal.

It's just that things seemed to matter more then.

As I say I think we were all more connected to our person-hoods back in that day. Stuff mattered, had value all that.

Mind you maybe them that was adults then might think all this is a load of baloney. Hey I was a kid, and this is what it looked like to me.

Anyway I was just thinking about them times is all.