College, Cars and Creeps. Part 11

During our sophomore and junior years, the commuter woes continued, though we were not alone. Rides to the city then were a hot commodity. Many working people and certainly very many students did not own cars. In today's economic climate, certainly conditions are bad, but in earlier times there was not today's sense of entitlement. If you didn't own a car, or couldn't find a ride to work or school, you had no one to blame but yourself. And that's why Dorothy and I, and I'm sure countless others, tried so hard to make the most of whatever opportunities came our way: in other words, why we didn't quit college in the face of such adverse circumstances. So for those last 2 years, we took whatever rides we could finangle, short of actual hitch-hiking. Ruth had taken an apartment on Madison Avenue for some of that time, finding roommates to split the rent. (At one time, Snookie lived with her, but that's another story.) Dorothy and I,and sometimes Joe, rode with Marge Leibert and her husband, though I don't think we could always count on a ride both ways. They would sometimes stop to grocery shop on the way home, leaving us to sit in the cold and darkened car. Anne Kelly rode with us then sometimes too, to Mildred Elley I believe. At various other times over the years, we rode with Dr, Littlefield, a professor at Albany State who lived in Valley Falls. That too is another story. We sometimes rode home with Fred Fisk; that's if we were standing at the end of the Watervliet Bridge,his having made it clear that he would never wait or go out of his way to give us a ride. I think he only charged us each $2 a week, pretty cheap even then for weekly one-way ride. He, though a seemingly conservative husband and father, drove like a madman, passing everything in sight all the way on Route 40. Bob Bott, former Marine and later manager of the Parkside, would sometimes give us a ride. (I remember one time, maybe during exam week, only Dorothy rode with him, and she told me on the way home, they stopped for coffee and a cigarette. I think she was 17 or so at the time. She started college at 16 and graduated when she was 20.) Of course, we always supplemented our rides with the train rides and countless bus rides. The train did not go through to Albany, so we had to transfer to busses and in the mornings, that would not have gotten us to our classes in time. All our classes had to be scheduled around the hours we could attend, so no early morning or late afternoon classes were possible. Many times in the evening hours, Dorothy and I and Ruth would be waiting at Mancinelli's to take the 5th Avenue bus ride home. On rare occasions, people would see us there and offer us a ride home---IN A CAR! We would leap at the opportunity, would have ridden with Satan, and so we came to accept rides from........

Watty!!! (TBC)