MY TIMELINE: NEW YORK

A business-relation of my father's was a man named S. Toom. He was from the Dutch town Apeldoorn and was acquainted with members of the royal family and he had relations with other important people. Mr. Toom put in a good word for me so I would have a temporary job on a passenger ship of the Holland America Line.

I had to get shots against odd and rare diseases, and I travelled to Rotterdam to be checked well in advance by the medical service of the Holland America Line.

When I had passed my school exam early in July 1962, I was signed on. My ship was steam ship "Groote Beer". I finally got on board on July 12th. You can see some pictures on the previous page.

At the end of the journey to New York, the luggage of the passengers was piled up on deck so it could be lifted by a crane without trouble the next morning. I volunteered to guard the luggage the night before passing the Statue of Liberty and entering Hoboken harbour. It was an easy task. I was supplied with food and drinks during the night, and I was entertained by a group of students from various countries. They were sitting in a wide circle in the middle of the deck and playing all sorts of games. Despite language barriers they understood each other perfectly well and were having a great time.

As I did not have to work the following day, I was free to explore Manhattan. And that is what I did. I took a bus on Washington Street in Hoboken (Line 162). It brought me into the busiest bus terminal I had ever seen: New York Port Authority, located between 40th and 41st Street.

As soon as I was out in the street I had this odd feeling that I was coming home. Some people do sense this when coming to a place, a city or a region. Well, New York felt as if I had been there before.
I thought that this was because of the cultural diversity, of the fact that New York has a great European influence, but at the same time is also a melting pot of negro, latin, and jewish culture. New York is the center of art, of music and business. My sense of awareness was probably also brought about by the knowledge that we, the Dutch, had owned it centuries ago. The influences and names witness this fact: Brooklyn, Flushing, Stuyvesant, Wall Street, Broadway. I definitely had the feeling that I had been here before, the famous "déja vu" experience.

Now don't you laugh! It was many years later that I got the confirmation for this perception when in Amsterdam, in 1980, I met astrologer Jim Lewis, a man who ran a small astrological enterprise. He had devised a method of establishing a relation between the aspects of a birthday chart and the map of the world. He talked about it with excitement. He named it Astro*Carto*Graphy.

Being sort of a medium myself, but very realistic in practice, I found out that I had 4 strong lines going over the region New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, etc. Reading the explanation in the accompanying book, it all became clear: Here I could rise to fame by hard working and exploiting my artistic talents. But it is also a milieu that tells me to fight and to maintain onseself. The survival of the fittest is the main rule.

I had three days in New York. Discovering a city all by oneself is great, especially in the exciting case of NY. I bought records at Sam Goody's and more specifically in the shop accross Goody's on Broadway. It was more a simple store room stocking thousands of records. And if they did not have the ones you wanted, they would order them for you and an hour later you came back to pick up your selection.
I was lifted up to the 83d floor of the Empire State building. I met a family with kids and we had a meal together. I had a hair cut in the barbershop in the basement of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The hairdresser explained that American English was quite different from the King's English. Americans had enriched the language with various words and sayings. As an example he used the adjective "lousy". That was typical American language!

St. Patrick's Cathedral is something of an anomaly placed in between these tall buildings. But it is a beautiful church.

When I drank coffee in a cafetaria, people I was talking to asked me: Where are you from? I said: From Holland. Holland Michigan? they asked. I had been reading American literature from age 14 on: Erskine Caldwell, John O'Hara, Tennessee Williams. So there were other shops to visit. DoubleDay for insance.

One evening a young man took this picture of me at West 42nd Street. He was wearing jeans, t-shirt and sneakers and could have been a Jet or a Shark, as this was the era of West Side Story. No flash was used so I had to manipulate the picture in Photoshop to retrieve at least something of a memory.

The pictures from Radio City Music Hall and the Rockettes parading for Macy's annual parade were taken from a Radio City Music Hall brochure.

At Radio City Music Hall they played That Touch of Mink, a rather insignificant holiday film, with Doris Day and Gary Grant. Later it appeared to be "the Music Hall's all-time box office champ".

Radio City Music Hall has a large orchestra playing on the large stage. The hall was quite impressive. So was the heavy, sonorous, Wurlitzer pipe organ. It can be played from two consoles.

Famous are The Rockettes, the girls dancing and parading in a military like choreography.
The picture above was taken at Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

From an old postcard.
Wall Street in 1962. At the right is the Federal Memorial Museum. At the left is the New York Stock Exchange, and looking down Wall Street is Trinity Church.
Below a panoramic view of Manhattan. Also from 1962.