Chapter Twenty - Spanish Harlem and Slick Air Lines

Chapter Twenty
Spanish Harlem and Slick Air Lines

We had enough time at Manhattan Air Force Station before shipping out for Germany for a group of us to go downtown New York. We wondered around the streets for a while doing the typical tourist things. I don’t remember much about what we saw, but I do remember thinking that everything in New York was too expensive. What stands out in my memory is how we got back to the air force station. I’m not sure if we thought a taxi would costs more than we had or what, but some how we got this young couple to agree to take us back to base. Here’s the catch though, they wanted to go to Spanish Harlem first. I couldn’t help thinking what have we got ourselves into. Were they going to rob us or would we end up on the news – “Airmen found dead in Harlem!” But the worry was all for naught. When we got there they invited up to there home which was very family oriented. They offered us a drink and then took us back out to the base turning out to be a very nice experience.

Slick Air Lines – not TWA or United Air Lines, no, we were going to fly across the Atlantic to Europe in an airplane that the air force had chartered from Slick Air Lines. Actually it was OK – not fancy with a lot of frills but it got us there safe and sound.

Potpourri
While in the air flying to Europe let’s take a memory detour. As I write down these memories sometimes memories come to mind that I should have written about in earlier chapters. So, for the remainder of this chapter I’ll relate different memories out of chronological order but seemed to me worth telling.

In our two story home on Fillmore street in Topeka we not only had a basement but also an attic. I don’t remember if Dad and Mom were motivated to turn the attic into an apartment because when Gary married Pat they needed a place to live or that they just wanted make the attic into an apartment. I remember putting a lot of hours into that remodel and it came out quite well. The number of hours and the value of my work is probably greater in my mind than Dad would ever had placed on it. I bring all this up just to tell of an incident that came about in that apartment. Gary and Pat had lived up there for a while, in fact long enough to have had their first son, Gary Lee. I’m not sure how old he was but being the generous uncle that I was I got him a drum set which he greatly enjoyed. I can’t say the same for Gary and Pat. Gary has always said he would get even with me. I’m still waiting.

Before we remodeled the attic I remember we had our home built xylophone up there. On a wooden frame we hung several different size bottles with different levels of water in them. When you struck the bottles with a mallet you’d get different notes. Kind of cool actually.

It’s interesting how some very simple activities can generate such pleasurable memories. Bobo’s Drive In was one of those pleasurable experiences. It was a real treat to go there for a slice of home-made like apple pie with a scoop of a soft-serve satin freeze type of topping. Hmmmm- mmm! Also, in that category of simple pleasures in our early days, about once a week Dad would get a quart brick of ice cream from the local ice cream store. It wasn’t that we were poor it just wasn’t an every day thing to have ice cream. Fresh corn on the cob was a special treat to me.

We had egg laying chickens. A portion of our garage was set up as a chicken coop and a small area adjoining the garage was fenced in for the chickens. Remember the cleaning business Dad was involved with in Abilene. Well, one of the things that came with us to Topeka was a cash register. Gary and I would play store in the garage. As I’ve been told one time Dad couldn’t figure out why the hens were not laying as many eggs as they usually did. Apparently in playing store, Gary and I had hung some of the chickens upside down by their legs like they did in the stores. I guess chickens don’t like to hang upside down. Later on the outside fenced in chicken area became a great little vegetable garden.

Speaking of stores, during the time of World War II the small, family store was the norm. There were no supermarkets in Topeka at that time. The family store we shopped at extended monthly credit to families. We would charge our groceries to the account and then Dad and Mom would pay the bill off at the end of month. The store was just a one room facility with shelves around the walls some stand-alone shelves in the middle of the floor. They had a small fresh meat area. It was literally a mom & pop store. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the Hartzell’s who owned the store and they knew everyone in the neighborhood. Oleomargarine was just beginning to take the place of real butter in many a home during that time. The early version would come in a plastic bag with a capsule attached inside which had food color in it and you would press it to break capsule releasing the coloring. Then you would have to knead the bag of margarine until you had it yellow instead of white, looking more like butter.

I guess that’s enough detour for this chapter – next chapter Germany.