Author: James B. Olcott

1940s/Horatio Alger/My Dad's 5 Wives/Nostalgic New York/Wife No. 1

THE LOST LINE, PART 1

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Built in the 1870s, the Third Avenue IRT was the above ground cousin of the Lexington Avenue IRT subway that runs completely underneath the sidewalks in Manhattan.  Towards the end of its days in the 1960s, the remnant of the Third Avenue line in the Bronx was finally designated as the 8 train.  However, back in the 1950s, the last decade of service on Third Avenue in Manhattan, the trains were only marked by destination – southbound to City Hall, northbound to The Bronx (Bronx Park or 241th Street).

Vintage elevated lines are a disappearing breed of mass transit.  The Third Avenue El was derided as a noisy eye-sore and was hurriedly demolished to placate real estate developers who were eager to rebuild Midtown East.  The stated intention was to replace it with the new Second Avenue subway which, unfortunately, was delayed more than 60 years and is still not yet in service today!

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1940s/Early/Family/History of Patent Annuities/Horatio Alger/Nostalgic New York

THE LOST WEEKEND

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The Bernard Olcott Story starts off 2016 with a rewrite of my post “THE LOST WEEKEND” (the original of which I have just removed from this site).  When I wrote “THE LOST WEEKEND” last June, I reminisced about a picture of my Dad hamming it up with several friends in a photo booth heavy laden with cultural significance – see above picture.  All of which was lost to me since I did not grow up in the 1940s.  I shrugged off that photo booth picture, effectively asking if anyone recognized anything about it.  Nobody did.

That photo, it turns out, is a window into the New York City of yesteryear. This essay, and the next three will use the above image as a departure point into a black and white world.  I’ll take you back to New York City of the 1940s, my Father’s formative years as a newly minted Cooper Union graduate, and you’ll:

  • Read about the biggest movie of 1945,
  • Ride the El,
  • Hear old style New Yorkers interact,
  • Learn a valuable lesson at Cooper Union (a venerable institution dating back to the Lincoln Administration),
  • Review a mysterious death in 1943 with what little facts are available, and
  • Come back to a colorfilled present with a shared activity across time.

Why should you care?  Well, somehow you found this blog.  Perhaps in riding the El with my Dad, you may see some of yours in him.  Maybe you like nostalgic stories about Gotham City which was, in some ways, a completely different city from today’s Big Apple.

It could be that you are intrigued with the backstory of the founding of a business or how the tremendous loss of a parent could leave so little trace behind.  I still haven’t been able to figure out what happened to my paternal Grandmother, who passed away during this era.

Welcome back!

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Status

10,000 VIEWS!

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This past week, just before I posted “GLORIA RATES MY T & A,” a quiet threshold was reached on The Bernard Olcott Story blog.  Since putting the page up late Saturday afternoon, February 14, 2015, from my ski loft at Hunter Mountain, New York – someone made the 10,000th view or click onto the site.

To the unknown clicker and to the entire readership, I say, a big THANK YOU is in order!

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1970s/My Dad's 5 Wives/Wife No. 4

GLORIA RATES MY T & A!

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Above photo by Bernard Olcott

As explained in my post SURPRISE!!!, gosh was I ever!  A new step-mom.  I didn’t really get too anxious about meeting my new step-mom because I didn’t have time – it was to be in 3 days!  Her clothes were in the closet.  She had already traveled with Dad to Brazil and Japan.  Silk wedding gowns adorned the walls.

So Gloria joined our small Olcott nuclear family.  This meant that whenever we went out for a road trip, which was often – and something I continue to do to this day between Québec and North Carolina – I had the pleasure of her company in the car.  Gloria was an excellent conversationalist.  And we tested each other right away.

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1960s/1970s/Nostalgic New York/Wife No. 4

THE HEIGHTS OF THE HELIPORT

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Today, we’ll set the way-back machine to 1965 when I was 7 years old.  My Dad had recently moved into the brand new Pan Am building (today the MetLife Building), his first year sharing space with the Taylor, Scholl, Ferencz, & Simon Law Firm in Suite 3219.  He would move to his own suite the following year.

I have written previously how I marveled at the modernity of the Pan Am building – to me, it was a vision of the future, please see my post DAD’S REAL WIFE.

Feast your peepers on the opening picture above.  Today’s story is about helicopters.

One of the most notable aspects of this building was the roof, which was completely flat except for a small enclosure housing the staircase down to the access gate and lounge.  As Pan Am was the owner, they had an innovative use for that real estate – a working heliport to ferry first-class passengers from midtown to JFK Airport!  Is that completely cool or what?  More lubricating than the switch downstairs from the Lexington IRT Express to the Local, right?

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1970s/1980s/Foreign Adventure/History of Patent Annuities/Wife No. 4

WORKING BIRDS AND THE MASTER FISHERMAN

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For your Thanksgiving feast today, let me regale you with a story about working birds, not the ones you eat, but the ones that bring you food.  My Dad liked it when people were working.  This apparently applied to birds, too.

He often described to me his visits to Japan and the marvels that he was privileged to witness there.  Obviously, these trips reached him on some deep level.  Looking back, I can piece together several of these sojourns to the land of the rising sun, based on memory and souvenirs.  In my post last week HE WAS RICHLY STUNNED, I recounted how the currency exchange clerk followed him back to his hotel to refund him 50¢ in overcharges.  Dad was not the only one who was touched by his experiences in Japan – Gloria was too, and I will circle back to her at the end of this post.

The Japanese have a custom where they give each other small presents or keepsakes on the occasion of significant meet-ups.  It denotes respect and dignity for the relationship in a culture that is not outwardly expressive of such emotions.  Once, for example, while I was working at Mitsubishi International, my boss’ boss took a personal vacation to Mexico.  On his return, he presented every member of the entire department staff – including me – with a small bottle of Mexican hot sauce.  In fact, the verb in the Japanese language “to give” is hardwired to imply that one gives upwards to the receiver (ie., the giver is small).  Likewise, when you receive a gift, it is understood that you are receiving down (ie., the opposite, the receiver is small).  Harmony and grace are the operative assumptions of a culture where the population is crowded together in large cities and personal space is minimal.

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1970s/Foreign Adventure/My Dad's 5 Wives/Wife No. 4

HE WAS RICHLY STUNNED!

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There was a knock on the door of a guestroom at the New Otani Hotel in the Kiocho district of Tokyo.  It was early 1971 and Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Olcott were relaxing on their first full day after arriving the day before from JFK.  Dad had just come back to the room.  He had gone downstairs to exchange $80 into yen, the local currency.

“Were you expecting anyone?”  Gloria whispered to Dad.  He shook his head and wandered over to the door.  He had brought Gloria with him to Japan as part of his 1971-72 world tour to roll out his new wife (number 4).  See my post THE BALLAD OF BERN AND GLORIA as to exactly how I had been informed of the new marriage.

There was another quick rapping on the door.  Dad hastened his pace and opened it to see a diminutive bespectacled middle aged woman, bowing profusely.  “Yes?”

She rattled away in Japanese, and with more bowing, gave him a receipt and 60 yen in coins (worth less than 50 cents).  Dad recognized her as the lady at the counter at the Bureau de Change, where he just been not more than 20 minutes ago. 

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1970s/My Dad's 5 Wives

BALLAD OF BERN AND GLORIA

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Remember that scene from “The Wizard of Oz” where, after the tornado, Dorothy gets out of her black and white bed, walks over to the front door, opens it to find the technicolor scene of Munchkin land?

Opening the Door

The moment when Dad and Gloria opened the door was kind of like that for me.  As Gloria walked in to say hi, it was very much a wild segue in my life from “On The Waterfront” to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” complete with sitars playing.  Today, I think of that door opening as the transition in my life from ancient to modern times.  All memories before, stained in sepia tones.  And everything afterwards, vibrating colors!  My modern era.  After all, I was 13 in 1971.  On with the show!

I have written earlier that I knew wife no. 2 best because she was my Mom.  Gloria and Rosemary, wives nos. 4 and 5, were modern era experiences for me and I got to know them both very well.  Graciela, at no. 3, was way before, owing to both the shortness of their marriage and to my tender years (though I got to know her better later on).  But wife no. 1 was always shrouded in mystery to me, until I finally met her on Dad’s 95th birthday.

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1970s/My Dad's 5 Wives/Nostalgic New York/Wife No. 4

SURPRISE!!!

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It was early summer 1971.  School was out.  Time for my annual flight from Orlando to New York, uh, I mean New Jersey.  I rode the plane up North like a nice person (as usual).  Disembarked at the brand new terminal at Newark Airport.  Ran into my Dad’s arms.  We got into the car.  Everything normal.

“How was your flight?” Dad asked as he tried to merge into the right lane, some angry driver honking furiously.  I looked to my right to see a cobra-faced man spewing venom in the car next to me.  Reflexively, I turned my gaze away, out the front.  A flock of New Jersey state birds let loose and took to the skies.

“Great,” I lied.  Seventh grade had been a tough year at Trinity Prep School, my new school that year.  What exactly had been “great” was that it was summer vacation and it was over.  On the last day of class, everybody had tossed their books to Hoe Brown, the class beast, who manually tore up each one into several strips of paper.

“How are things with you?” I asked.

Dad grinned.

He ignored my question and said, “I have something to tell you.” He looked at me for a moment.  We had survived the merge okay and were headed northbound on the New Jersey Turnpike, toward the glistening swamps and after that Weehawken.

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