From Bowling Green to New York by Bus (Cont.)
Screen 5 of 6It worked easily, and we stepped inside. The room was rather dark, partly because it was now late afternoon which in New York City is made darker because of the very high building, but also because the apartment had no outside windows. Its only window opened into an interior skylight area which reached from the ground floor up to the roof of the building far above.
We finally found the light switch and after turning on the ceiling fixture, we began looking around. The apartment was small -- very small. In fact, it was really just one medium-size room, perhaps ten feet by twelve, with a tiny adjoining bath, a scant three by five feet. The bed, where is the bed? I wondered as I quickly surveyed the room; but I did not ask.
We put our things down and started opening doors -- four of them, in addition to the front door opening into the hall. Too many, I thought, for such a small apartment, but I soon found that each door served an important purpose. The first one was to a closet so shallow that clothes could be hung in it only from hooks on its back wall. The second door seemed much heavier when I opened it. No wonder. Attached to its inside by two large hooks and hanging about waist high was a miniature two-burner electric stove. It was clean and well secured to the back of the door. Also on the door -- two of them above the stove and one below -- were some very narrow shelves holding dishes, pans, and a few pieces of everyday table silver. But on the bottom shelf was something special that quickly caught our attention: an un-opened bottle of wine with a bright red ribbon tied around its long neck. When Carol saw the wine, she exclaimed with delight, "Oh, I'll bet Daddy put it there for me as a house-warming present. He's such a dear -- always pulling some surprise like that." What a nice thing for her father to do, I thought, as I began to wonder when I would meet him.
There were two other pieces of built-in equipment in this compact space which I now realized was the apartment's "kitchen": a small sink with running water on the opposite wall; and an electric refrigerator hung on that same wall just under the sink. When I leaned over and opened this toy-like cooling unit, I found it to be spotlessly clean, both inside and out. Moreover, it was turned on and ready for use.
Behind the next door, I found the answer to my question about a bed. Hanging by a huge swinging hinge secured to the inside of the metal door frame was a let-down bed. When not in use, it could be lifted up with the help of strong springs and then swung around through the doorway into the closet, thus freeing up much of the floor space for other uses. Carol said it was called a "Murphy" bed. I had never seen one before and the idea fascinated me. Of course, I just had to try it out. When I had it down close to the floor ready to test its mattress, it suddenly flew up to its vertical position, almost taking me with it. Seeing I was not hurt, Carol laughed heartily and then showed me a safety catch I should have used to hold it down. Once over the initial shock of it all, I too began to laugh.
When I pulled this unusual bed down again to examine it further, I made use of the catch and it stayed in place on the floor. While Carol was exploring the closet area behind the bed, I lay down on the mattress and found it very comfortable, but its width seemed to be something less than full-size --even though I saw the words "Double bed" stamped on the iron frame holding it. Satisfied with the examination, I carefully let the bed up, swung it around into its closet, and closed the door without further comment.
By this time, I had just about decided not to stay with Carol; or it might be more accurate to say she had decided I shouldn't stay, since she was already referring to my coming over "tomorrow" to help "fix up the place." In any case, it seemed to be settled we would go our separate ways that night, even though neither of us said exactly that.
It was now almost seven o'clock in the evening, and we were both famished. So we hurriedly washed our faces and hands, dried them with paper towels we found near the basin, and left the building on foot in search of food.
We found a place to eat close by -- just a few blocks north of Carol's apartment and a short distance east of Fifth Avenue. It was a Horn and Hardart "Automat." Later we learned it was only one of a large chain of "automatic" restaurants known by the same name in New York City and Philadelphia.
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