A Day To Remember

A Day To Remember

In 1933, I was eleven years old, and I was growing up on a dairy farm in southern Connecticut. Although it was only 65 miles from New York City, it was very countrified as it was situated in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. There was still a great deal of open farmland there in those days. In the countryside around Bethel, my hometown, houses were widely spaced, and were often out of sight of each other. In our case, our house was set well back from the dirt road, with a double row of maple trees lining the driveway and a six bedroom house on ten acres right across the road from us.

The place went up for sale when the old couple that owned the farm became too old and sick to care for it. New Yorkers, Mr. and Mrs. Chapin Brown, who had two teenage sons, purchased it. From time to time, Mrs. Brown’s brother, two sisters, and their families would pay extended visits. Chapin Brown, a man in his fifties, was the very first manager of the brand new Empire State Building in New York City.

The Browns made it a custom to have cocktail hour every afternoon about 5 o’clock, and my father often left the milking to the hired men and joined them for one or two drinks. Mother didn’t drink, but she would visit for a short time, and then make excuses about having to go home to get supper. We all became quite good friends, although I suspect the Browns really looked upon us as quaint natives. There often was discussion about the wonders of the new Empire State Building, its high-speed elevators, and how it was built. Eventually my mother and father made a trip to New York to see it and had a personally guided tour by Mr. Brown. They were properly impressed, and after hearing about it in conversation at dinner, I was eager to see it, too.

I don’t remember how it came about, but some months later, Bob Reeves a nephew of the Browns, suggested he take me with him to New York when he was going to go in on business. I was ecstatic at the prospect of the trip, and my father agreed to let me go. We made the trip by train, since it was much easier than dealing with one’s personal car in the city, and the trip took only a little over an hour.

When we arrived at Grand Central Station, the first thing that struck us was that the lower Broadway area was a sea of sailors. It looked like the whole fleet had come in. As we rode by cab to the Empire State Building, the Navy white hats outnumbered civilians on the seething sidewalks by at least four to one, even in the lobby of the building we had come to see.

When we arrived at the Empire State Building, Bob found his uncle, Mr. Brown, the building manager, who gave us one of his famous tours on the lower floors, and then put us on the elevator. We rode up at a breathtaking pace that left my stomach behind on the ground floor. I think we got off at one floor, and entered another elevator that went even faster up to the 86^th floor; at least I think the observation deck is at about that level. Recently, I have watched both “A Night to Remember” and “Sleepless in Seattle”, both of which feature the observation deck of the Empire State Building.  That is what started me thinking of writing this article, and the observation deck I saw in those movies was not at all like it was in 1933. Back then there was no barrier beyond a four-foot wall between the observer and falling to one’s death far down below. There were no shops, either, just vending machines and two booths; one to take your own picture, and one to cut a small record of your own voice.

The visiting sailors were plentiful, even at this altitude, and some of them were pretty drunk. This was eight years before WWII and these guys were old hands, career men who had probably had been to Hong Kong and had China duty. Drunk for them was drunker than any sailors I met later in the Navy. One such old salt of about 30 became noticeable when he casually flipped his rear end onto that four-foot protective wall, and dangled his legs over the edge. We all looked at him in alarm, but nobody told him not to do it. When he tired of looking down at all the little ant-people and tiny taxicabs, he flipped his legs back over the wall, and staggered to the booths. He took his own picture successfully, but couldn’t enunciate his words clearly enough to suit himself for the record. I don’t think it would have done much for his mother or other family members if he had finished it and mailed it to them. I know, because I slipped it out of the wastebasket where he had thrown it, listened to it at home on our Victrola, and kept it for a few years as a souvenir

From the same deck high up in the Empire State Building, we could see the Navy ships anchored as far as we could see up and down the Hudson River. It was a glorious sight that stayed with me all my life. I think it was one of the reasons that, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, I chose to join the Waves in the US Navy Reserve when I was 20 years old. But that is another story.