Travel, Nostalgia and the Summer of 1969 (USA)

Join me on a journey across time and space, back to North America in 1969, seen through the eyes of an innocent young student from England. I can't believe it was 40 years ago.

The trip, soundtracked to the newly released Honky Tonk Woman and the ballads of Simon and Garfunkel, begins in Spanish Harlem in July with me trying and failing to selling magazine subscriptions door to door.

From being homeless at midnight on Broadway, to working in a Boston Diner frequented by mailmen, cops and mobsters and with a historical backdrop of Woodstock, the first Moon Landing and the Kennedy Chappaquiddick incident. Plus, for good measure, a murder in Boston and a flight to Montreal.

I’d planned to visit America for the summer with a friend on an student exchange visa. The friend pulled out so I decided to go alone.

So travel with me as I leave for Heathrow with the track, Leaving on a jet plane by Peter, Paul and Mary, playing in my head. Leaving my home in a mining village on the Notts/Derby border in England in order to find myself and encounter America.

I was 20 years old and all at sea in angst and uncertainty, afraid of people and lacking in confidence.

I arrived in New York City by bus from Kennedy on a stifling hot July evening. The city was shadowy and airless. New York: a strange adrenaline fuelled movie-dream, yet more real than reality itself, alive with the sound of constant police sirens and the just released Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones.

In New York I had to attend a 2 day induction with guided tours of the city and presentations at the hotel in order to earn my student work visa for the summer. At the end of the induction, there was an announcement about some marketing jobs so I went along, clutching my newly aquired work visa.

I got the job but it was commission only, door to door selling. I turned up around 7.00am at the tiny Broadway office, with my suitcase, dressed in a smart suit, ready to sell. My colleagues were virtually all Black or Hispanic, casually dressed and more importantly very local.

I left my suitcase with the proprietor having been told he would fix me up with somewhere to stay. "You did what!" I hear you say. Anyway I got into a big black Cadillac with twelve cool coworkers and we hit the city.

I quickly realised I might not fit in, particularly in Harlem. I did my best for the first six hours or so and one or two people asked me in more because they felt sorry for me but no one wanted to buy magazine subscriptions.

I was more than a little discouraged when, in Spanish Harlem, close to where much of West Side Story had been filmed, a six foot six ex-marine told me on the door step, "I'm a Korean War Veteran but I would never walk these streets alone." That made me think as I was around five feet five inches and not in the least tough or mean.

That was probably one of the worst days of my life as well as potentially my last. Fortunately, having returned to the Broadway office at midnight, it was quickly decided by my coworkers that I was not The Right Stuff and rather than killing me the boss shook my hand and gave me my case.

I was so excited to be still alive with my case, I walked happy up Broadway and booked into the nearest hotel. Now I knew how a turkey felt when it wakes up on January 1st!

On waking the next morning, I knew the Big Apple was too big for me and I packed my bag and headed for the NY Greyhound Bus Station (then and probably still is the biggest bus station in the world).

The America I came seeking was defined by Simon and Garfunkel's song, America. A world of teenage angst connected by highways, freeways, turnpikes and Greyhound buses.

I decided to head for Boston. It sounded like somewhere an English boy might feel more at home (as long as I didn't mention the Tea Party or Wars of Independence).

Greyhound buses were not as romantic as I had imagioned. I had no Kathy to keep me company and the windows were heavily tinted and the air conditioning was set too high, making everything seem drab and cold.

By now my cash was running low. Because of the dire state of the British economy we Brits were only allowed to take £50 (then worth around $100) out of the UK.

Once in Boston I checked into the YMCA and started looking for a job. Finally I moved into a really cheap lodging house in a rundown ghetto in order to save money. I said 'Hi' to my neighbours sitting out on the front steps but their stares were not friendly. I was now surviving on cornflakes, bread and jam when I finally found a job.

Waldorfs Diner

I wandered into a Waldorf's Diner looking out across Boston Common and casually asked if they had any jobs. The boss sat me down and while we chatted asked if I wanted anything to eat. Did my hunger show? Anyway I tucked into a decent meal and got the job of short order chef even although my cooking experience was nil.

Cooking diner-style in the US in 1969 was very different to doing the same job in the UK. The UK had only one type of fried egg and toast meant white bread. Another issue was language. Not just different ways of pronouncing words like tomato, but chips were fries, crisps were chips and porridge was oatmeal.

We didn't even have hash browns in the UK back then. At Waldorf's we did eggs boiled, poached, scrambled, sunny side up, easy, over light and over well done.

'John the Greek' was my mentor. He was stern but a really good teacher. The counter staff seemed rude. They shouted orders at me which I didn't understand.

"Give me 2 breakfasts, bacon well done, sausage, 2 eggs over easy, 1 with rye, 1 with raisin!"

Sometimes two of them would shout at once. After a few minutes they'd start to yell, "Hey where's my breakfasts, one with wheat, one with rye?" It was a nightmare at first but after a week I began to enjoy it. People began to tell me unconvincingly they were British and cited some relative 6 generations back that came from England or Scotland.

As well as the food orders we also had our own coded messages. "Check the ice!" meant an attractive woman had just entered the diner. It was fun when I was on my break, if these words were uttered, to watch every hetrosexual male employee appear at the counter and stare hungrily at the door.

Cops, Mailmen and Gangsters

We had around 4 types of customer; tourists, cops, mailmen and the local gangsters. The cops were probably the nicest and they seemed to get on OK with the mob. The cops use to tell me how much they admired the British bobbies who walked down the street without a firearm.

I was shocked by the level of violence in Boston. The local cops often got involved in shootouts and three people were gunned down at the Playboy Club Down the road. One day a guy came in the diner and threatened the counter staff with a knife. The staff disarmed him and threw him out. The plainclothes cop eating his breakfast was too engossed in his food to bother to intervene.

One morning I woke to heavy pounding on the door of my room. It was the cops. Another chef from Wadorfs was sleeping on my floor. They asked us about a woman. Her body had been found in the lobby.

We got up and headed off for work. The body was still there in the hallway. The cop watching the body said Hi. No one had covered her. The cop pointed out various features of the body that suggested it 'didn't look good'. He wished us a good day and let us go.

My room mate, a Judo Black Belt and Korean War Veteran, suggested we find somewhere else to stay and we moved out the same day. That day, someone living in the building was charged with murder. It was one of nine killings in Boston that week.

Funny looking back to think I had so many adventures when I was only in the States about 9 weeks. After 6 weeks working at 2 Waldorf restaurants and being sexually harassed at the second by the gay manager (I was a good looking boy), I used my earnings to fly to Montreal.

This was a welcome contrast to East Coast USA. I came back to Boston by Greyhound, was briefly held by US immigration on the boarder, and then travelled back for a few days to New York before flying home.

All in all 1969 was one hell of a year. Everything seemed possible in the late sixties. Bob Dylan had sung, The Times they are a Changin' and he was right. Woodstock, not far from Boston, happened while I was working at the diner. The local media made it sound squalid but in truth it was part of a much bigger cultural change not only in America but across the whole Western World.

I think I had more adventures in those 9 weeks than the rest of my life put together. A real rite of passage. The thing that pleased me most (because I'm a mean bastard) was that I broke even. The whole trip cost me nothing and I did what I set out to do. just like Paul Simon sang, I went off to look for America and I lived to tell the tale!