In the mid '80's, I want to say '87, an author in New York wrote a book about all the landmarks that had quietly disappeared from the Big Apple..The billboard of the guy who blew 10 foot smoke rings over 5th Avenue, the nightclubs, starting with the Copa where you knew you were "A-list" if Jules Podell wanted you to headline. The Latin Quarter, The Empire room at the Waldorf. There were other landmarks that were gone. Palisades Park which was immortalized in song but was really just a traditional amusement park that had a great view of Manhattan, especially at night. And Freedomland which was to be the Disney of the east but fell victim to location, (Pelham Bay, a long way from midtown) and money. It closed after only 2 years. There were others, many others..New York landmarks that were no more. There were two things not included because the book was written before 9/11..The twin towers.
I first saw the towers in June of 1964. I spent the summer with my aunt who taught at Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn and we took the Staten Island ferry for all of 5 cents. Coming back you could see the construction zone and the beginnings of the towers, at that time the framework for maybe 20 stories at most. New Yorkers weren't happy about the destruction of the New York Skyline. I always saw the skyline as a beautiful woman lying down. As you viewed it from the Jersey side of the Hudson, you'd know what I mean. The towers were not loved by New Yorkers..Most actually hated them, but up they went and eventually they'd accept them.
I had been at the base of the towers many times and never really noticed them. I never went to the top, preferring instead the RCA building. I still have a picture of my wife standing on the observation deck a couple of days after we got married with the Empire State Building and the twin towers in the distance. They are a haunting memory of innocence lost.
When I read the book, I realized any author in Anytown, USA could have written for their own local audience. In my case, they didn't compare to the guy blowing smoke rings, but just as important to me. The theater where Patty Syrylo shared our first kiss while watching "Farenheit 451", a movie I avoid when it comes to TMC or AMC. Last I knew, the building was still there except turned into a hardware store. The Drive-in's where we never watched the show are gone. One was torn down and turned into a Chrysler dealership but the woe's of the auto industry turned that into a vacant lot. The other was in a former pasture field that was reclaimed by mother Nature.
The two amusement parks are gone. San Souci Park, where Niel Diamond performed at the very beginning of his career, arriving in a beat up Ford station wagon. Rocky Glen Park gave it's share of memories. Over 50,000 people would turn out on "Warm Day" for "Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars" featuring the top 10 artists of the day. Bobby Vinton's first appearance as a recording artist was at Rocky Glenn when "Roses are Red" entered the top 10. The last name artist to perform there was Rick Nelson the summer the park closed, and the summer before he died. Now, instead of lovers holding hands in the sunshine, the park has been mostly reclaimed by nature and "suspicious" fires. An old roller coaster car buried in brush, the foundation of the "Tunnel of Love" and a few other artifacts are all that remain.
In Scranton, the Hotel Casey was THE place to be on New Years Eve in the 30's and 40's. The rich and famous of the area would gather there for a gala like no other in Northeast Pennsylvania. But as the city plunged into a near permanent recession, the fortunes of the hotel plunged as well. I was one of the last people to actually have a drink in it's ornate bar. Just me and the bartender..The hotel portion had been closed for some time, and the bar due to close the next week. It sat vacant as the city tried to figure out what to do with it, while it became a patient on life support that flatlined. It was home for pigeons and vagrants who kept finding ways to get in out of the cold, until it was past the point of rehabilitation and came down in a pile of rubble.
The Globe store was the upper end department store in Scranton and I did a fair number of remotes there. It was a beautiful store but too up-scale for a city suffering from economic uncertainty and it too fell to the ages.
The old YWCA on Linden street was an odd place to have the memories of my youth, but it was the dorm for the women going to Lackawanna Junior College. They had a very large rec room where the boys and girls could sit and talk and listen to music. Boys were only allowed there and in the refreshment room. They had a booth at the entrance with a woman who had to be 80 as their security guard. I remember her yelling at me because when I would write Patty during the week, I'd address her room as "Closet 4 whatever". I remember thinking prisoners on death row had more living space than she did. The Y is still there, just bought by the University of Scranton as a dorm. Don't know if they kept the closet's..uh, rooms the same..
When I came back to the area after my over 11 year absence, I used to drive down the Central Scranton Expressway, as I turned right, my eyes were immediately drawn to "closet 4 whatever", and the memories of yelling "goodnight" to the girl in the window, reflected by the moon. I would pass by the parking lot and still hear her echo, "I'll never forget you", and my reply "nor I, you."
When I read the New York book, I opened the phones, something we seldom did as we were still a music station and I didn't like listeners controlling the content. But the phones lit up and for the next 3 hours, I listened to caller after caller, some older than I, tell what was missing from long ago and why those "landmarks" meant so much. Some were the things I mentioned, others were things I had never heard of because they were before my time. But each one was a piece of somebody's life, something to cherish in memory.
I had wanted to write my own book on the loss of so much that used to be but was now nevermore to be again but I wasn't a priority and I had too much on my plate so it got put on the back burner. Now that I have the time, I am no longer able to hit the library for research. I keep asking friends still in the area to pick up the baton and carry it forward but so far no takers. They too have their priorities.
The bottom line was nothing is forever, not the girl nor the building. Each has a life-cycle and eventually will have an end. Most will outlive us unless a developer has other ideas of building a better building. And with the girl, somebody better at the time came along. But all are relegated to memory and at least, in my mind, I can still see the girl, beautiful in the moonlight and the bilboard of the guy blowing smoke rings over 5th Avenue.
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