Along the golden path of youth
The best job I ever had was at
”
The New York Times.
”
It was not only because it was one of the world’s great
newspapers, or even that the wonders of that city were so many and
diverse. I was 19, and life was a golden path stretching out
endlessly before me.
Along the golden path of youth
The best job I ever had was at “The New York Times.”
It was not only because it was one of the world’s great newspapers, or even that the wonders of that city were so many and diverse. I was 19, and life was a golden path stretching out endlessly before me.
I worked on the main editors’ floor where each was a recognized expert in his field. I carried messages back and forth and took requests to the Reference Library and returned with information for editorials.
And 15 minutes before every hour, I carried the news script that came in double-spaced pages to the communications room down one flight to Station WQXR for broadcast at the top of the hour. It was a heady feeling to read of events before the world knew them.
Occasionally I went to the editorial room where hundreds of reporters in banked rows of desks typed their stories in a soaring hymn for that day’s edition.
Many celebrities passed through our offices, writer William Saroyan, the French Ambassador, and once, Orson Welles, who lordly nodded at us on his way to the Drama Critic’s office.
For most of that spring of 1953, I lived on West 112th Street near Columbia University. My roommate, John Hart, a veteran of World War II, was learning to be a television cameraman. He left every Friday afternoon for his home in Connecticut and wife and toddler son.
I became acquainted with a number of Columbia students, and thereby gained another personality. One shared my first name, so rather than the awkwardness of calling us “One” or “Two,” someone dubbed me “Harry.”
As Harry, I put away much of my Toledo character, and became bolder and surer of myself. At dances, rather than working up nerve to approach a pretty young woman, I said, “This dance is mine,” and whirled her away.
I also shamelessly used my connection to the newspaper. If asked, “What do you do for a living?” I said, “I’m with the Times” and did not elaborate. I was an actor who played his role to the hilt.
Nights and weekends were magic: Rockefeller Center, Greenwich Village, Harlem, Brooklyn, Central Park and Chinatown. Times Square was a riot of light and Broadway beckoned with productions of “Picnic,” “Wish You Were Here” and “John Brown’s Body.”
The nation and world were changing. Dwight D. Eisenhower had just become President, and the Korean War was winding down. On a March night with hundreds of others, I watched the lighted letters streaming by on the Times Building that said Joseph Stalin had died.
I was young, the great city was impregnable and the nation was respected throughout the world. I sometimes recall that glad, always hurrying young man, and he seems almost like another person.
But I am not cynical. Change is the driving force of life, and it warms me to know that no matter what struggles involve us, whatever is different from what it had been, there will always be young people hurrying gladly to unknown destinations along a golden path that stretches before them forever.
