Viewing page 8 of 11

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

2. 

I departed for the station to fetch my wardrobe trunk, two bags, 40 pound portable Victrola and Beethoven symphonies and concerts. I left [[strikethrough]] w [[/strikethrough]] them with the porter and took a bus up Fifth Avenue to Brentono's. 

At the book store I explained that I had had a charge account at Brentano's while in college and would like to work for them. Naturally with such a recommendation I was hired on the spot. 

New York was really very simple. My father was wrong. 

But the next day when I reported for work I discovered that I was not in books but stationery. There was another new employee, a girl with no charge account who didn't read books. She modeled dresses at Garment Center, but as this was their off-season she took this stop-gap job selling Christmas cards for December.

Another surprise was that $18. a week, minus rent, did not pay for much food and transportation. It had never occurred to me that food was something you paid for. However, I augmented my income by working an extra hour four evenings a week for fifty cents an hour. None of this went on food. 

At eight o'clock, the half dollar in m y hand, I streaked out of the place and headed for Gray's cut-rate theatre ticket agency at Times Square about six blocks away. The price of tickets was reduced at eight o'clock. I bought one with the fifty cents and ran to the theatre. I always made it by curtain time.