Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
When we were all in the car, we began the drive to our destination: 157th Street and Riverside Drive in Manhattan. During the Second World War, when Dad refused to own an automobile and use precious gasoline needed by the military, we made the long trip by subway.
Dad drove from Bay Ridge to downtown Brooklyn and, pre-war, over the Brooklyn Bridge. After the war, he used the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to reach the elevated West Side Highway, the elevated highway from the Battery to Fifty-seventh Street, which is now long gone.
New Year's Day 1946 was particularly grim. Dark, heavy clouds threatened to add more inches of snow on top of that already on the ground. We had a 1930s vintage LaSalle that Dad bought just after the war ended, before he bought a new 1946 Hudson from Papou Perna's relatives in Little Falls. The heating system in the La Salle was nearly non-existent. Nitsa and I were bundled in blankets in the back seat.
Dad drove the plowed city streets that day. Broadway, which north of Columbus Circle was lined with small shops, had very few pedestrians. Automobiles on the side streets and even on Broadway were buried under snow banks made by the city's plows. Decorations and blinking lights in store windows seemed gaudy and shabby in the grey light of a post-Christmas, snowy winter afternoon.
When we arrived at the building where my godparents and Uncle Louie lived, a doorman in formal dress opened the front door for my mother. She, Nitsa, and I went into the building's lobby while Dad drove the car to a nearby garage where Uncle Louie kept his Buick. Arrangements had been made for Dad to leave his car there for the afternoon.
The lobby had a tiled floor, with wide red carpet that was easily one hundred feet long and led from the front door to the three elevators that served the building. French doors to one side of the lobby opened onto a small garden that was deep in snow, and on the other side to a walkway that led towards Riverside Drive. We waited for Dad in a lounge close to the elevators where a Christmas tree twinkled and a crackling fireplace warmed our hands, faces, and spirits. The elevator operators greeted my mother as we waited, and made comments about how Nitsa and I had grown.
When Dad arrived, roses in hand, the doorman announced our arrival to my godparents by phone, and we entered an elevator for the ride to the twelfth floor. As Nouno answered the doorbell, Nitsa and I broke into our song: Aios Vasilis Airhaitai ("Saint Basil is Coming"), the hymn for St. Basil. It was Nouno's name day, which he celebrated every year with a New Year's Day open house.
[Skip the navigation links: Jump to the Citation Guidelines.]
[Skip the citation guidelines: Jump to the Bottom of the Page.]
(This is the bottom of the page.)