Footloose Scot (19 page)

In September 1961 I disembarked from a ship in Montreal and was met by some Oxford friends. I had just graduated from Oxford University and was about to start a new life in the USA; they were in Canada for the summer and would return shortly to Oxford. They told me they had fixed up for us to deliver a car from Toronto to Vancouver, and this was the chance for a cheap transcontinental journey.

Before leaving Oxford I asked my Economics tutor if he had any advice about becoming a small business entrepreneur. He looked astonished at the question and had nothing to suggest. I suspected few of his students had asked him a question like that before since they were mainly destined for big business or government work; and I wasn't interested in either. Seeing nothing to inspire me in the U.K. so I decided to emigrate to the USA, which was easy in those days if you were born in the U.K. If you passed a basic medical exam, had some funds in the bank to pay for a ticket home if necessary, and had no Communist affiliation, you were accepted.

We drove across Canada without incident in six days camping at roadside parks, and dropped off the car in Vancouver. Everything was bigger here, from the size of the car to the distances travelled. In Seattle we parted company. The three others in our group wanted to head down the coast to California and I needed to get to New York and find a job. I stayed two days in Seattle, which was getting ready for the World's Fair due to open a few months later, before hitchhiking east on Interstate 90. I didn't realize as I travelled in a van over Snoqualmie Pass 45 miles east of Seattle that 30 years later I would be there on foot having hiked through Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail.

I must have had beginner's luck, since hitchhiking was relatively easy. Six days later I arrived in New York City in an eighteen wheeler truck which had picked me up in the mid­West. The driver was captivated by my curious accent and showed me off like an exotic species at the warehouse where we unloaded. He was also generous and helpful. He paid me twenty dollars to help him unload and then drove me in his empty truck to East 6
^th
street.

We arrived at a somewhat run-down town house, needing paint. This was a student hostel I had heard about, and it was to be my accommodation for the next few days - a quiet, safe haven in an area which might to dangerous for the unwary, I thought. The lower East Side was then a poor part of Manhattan. The streets were cluttered with parked cars and the sidewalks teeming with people, mainly Puerto Rican, many sitting on the steps outside their apartments. Pungent cooking odors escaped from open windows. The noise from the honking of horns and the voices of people talking and shouting were trapped in the narrow streets by the buildings on each side. Even in late September the heat was oppressive. Here was the melting pot in action.

I started looking for a job the next day. The people running the student hostel suggested hotel work. At the Commodore Hotel next to Grand Central Station I was hired as a porter. This was a large and always busy establishment with over 2,000 rooms. One of my duties entailed walking around the lobby hitting a gong to announce meal times in the restaurant, a lightweight public role in contrast to my maintenance job. I soon moved, this time to the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South where I was hired as room clerk. While not so large as the Commodore, the St. Moritz projected a tony European image and the English-born manager thought my accent would be suitable. The job involved handing out keys and mail, and answering general questions from guests.

Taking the subway to work, and beginning to find my way around the city, I felt the energy of the city and was energized by it. Noise and movement were constant. The variety of faces, the different skin colors and accents resembled a circus. It was fun, and it was exciting but you had to think quickly to keep up with what was going on around you.

I settled in to my job and got quite comfortable - perhaps too comfortable. One day I answered an enquiry from a hotel guest on the house phone in a way I thought appropriate. Apparently, because the same man called back ten minutes later, my information was wrong. Not only that, but my attitude upset him. He proceeded to berate me over the phone for several minutes. I apologized, hoping he would hang up, but the tone of my voice somehow got him madder. On and on he went, wishing to make sure that this Limey newcomer understood that there was an American way of doing things, of getting answers right, and I had failed. I cringed mentally and was thankful that the irate guest was not telling me off in public in the hotel lobby. I didn't dare hang up - besides he was right. I learned an early lesson - and that was that my attitude needed to change if I was to deliver the sort of service of that St. Moritz guests expected.

One day there was a stir just outside of the entrance door. The Kingston Trio was checking in. The doorman escorted them in a stately way to the check-in desk, while the bell hops dealt with a large number of bags. The three young men looked tired and ready to get settled into their rooms. Well mannered and tipping generously to the hotel staff, they looked and behaved just like they sounded when performing - wholesome and generally acceptable in a bland sort of way.

I registered with an agency as a supply teacher, hoping to get a temporary job teaching French. To my surprise I got a call telling me to go to the Calhoun School on the Upper West Side. I went there at the first chance and had a chat with the headmistress, a tall woman with a commanding manner. She told me the school needed someone to teach French three hours a day for several weeks.

I said that I had just graduated from Oxford University, and had studied French up to university level and had worked in France. These facts and my appearance apparently satisfied this stern person although she kept frowning as she looked at me. I agreed to start the following week: teaching during the morning and doing my hotel job in the afternoon and evening.

There were not many male teachers at The Calhoun School, and certainly none of my age. I found myself facing a class of sixteen year olds, and I understood the concerns of the headmistress. The girls had a new teacher, male, early twenties with a British accent; this was something unusual. I started to work through the French grammar book the class was using, but maintaining discipline and keeping the girls quiet was proving difficult and frankly I thought the teaching might go better with some fun in the classroom.

AUTHOR IN RED SQUARE, 1965

I felt little responsibility towards these girls passing their exams since I was only a stand-in teacher but equally I didn't want to lose the job. At the same time I really wanted them to gain some understanding of France so that the language would come alive. So I started telling them about the summer I spent in France working at a chateau. My description of the place and the details of the family I lived with in the chateau got their attention, and for there was once complete silence in the classroom.

This was fortunate because it was at this moment that the headmistress happened to pass the door, as she told me later, and heard nothing but my earnest voice talking about French country life - in complete silence. I suspect she was snooping, but it didn't matter. She called me into her office later the same day and complimented me. My job was safe, and I continued to use stories of my time in France regularly as a teaching tool.

I moved out of the student hostel and into an apartment on the East Side around 14
^th
Street sharing with an old friend from my Oxford days, Peter Skinner. We shared with a middle aged mid-level office worker called Ralph who had his own room. This was as well, since he sometimes brought sailors home for the night. He was an amiable man and a good cook, and this set-up worked without embarrassment for some months.

After work, Peter and I sometimes splurged and went out for a meal. This might be a steak at Tad's Steakhouse, for $1.19. At other times I would eat on my own at Horn & Hardart's on my way to work. In this self-service restaurant customers selected their food, which was visible in a large display unit with small glass-fronted compartments. When the customer put coins into a slot, the door opened and the plate could be removed.

Peter Skinner met another new arrival in New York, an aspiring author from Poland called Jerzy Kosinski, whom we knew as Jurek. Peter went on to edit some of Kosinski's books including the first,
The Painted Bird
(1965), which had an initial big impact in the literary world and sold very well. Kosinski seemed to like the social company of two young Brits and he entertained us to meals and social events in the evening. We were not to know at that time that he would later become famous, and controversial due to doubts about the authenticity of his book. In 1991, in ill health and beset by the literary criticism. he wrapped a plastic bag around his head and wrote a suicide note: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity." To me he was simply an engaging, somewhat quirky benefactor - and I wasn't turning down a free meal with interesting company.

What with teaching the French class and standing behind a counter for eight hours, during my time off I was usually resting. Just being in New York was entertainment enough. It roared with life, 24 hours a day. As the season changed, it also became bitingly cold outside, another new experience: a real winter. Everything was larger than life in comparison with my previously quieter and duller life in Britain. There was sometimes a scary edge to being in the city, a feeling that violence might occur. That feeling was exciting in itself.

In early 1962 I noticed a newspaper ad looking for someone to run a student travel office in Berkeley, California. That sounded intriguing and I found myself interviewing with a student travel agency called Educational Travel Inc., the travel department of the U.S. National Student Association. They needed someone to run their Berkeley office. I fitted the bill: Oxford degree, a decent suit, had travelled around Europe and even sold student charter flight tickets while at Oxford. I duly found myself on the cheapest flight my new bosses could find, heading for Oakland on a prop plane with intermediate stops.

On the West Coast, every day felt like spring. I roomed with some easy-going Cal students in Berkeley, sleeping on a couch. My job was to promote student travel at colleges on the West Coast - a salesman's job - and run the office with a girl assistant. We sold tours, including study abroad trips, student ship tickets across the Atlantic and charter flight tickets within Europe.

My responsibility was primarily to visit colleges and drum up business, and it seemed like a paid vacation to me.

I drove around in a blue Sunbeam Alpine sports car with British plates, and created quite a dash at some sororities when I visited. Sometimes I showed a travel movie and gave a talk, or I tried to contact a teacher interested in getting a group together for a custom tour of Europe. Other times I simply put up posters, or talked to the student government to act as agents for us. Everyone wanted to hear about how to get to Europe on the cheap.

The 1960s saw an explosion in travel to Europe by Americans. Arthur Frommer had pioneered the way in 1959 with "Europe on $5 a day", showing how the dollar could go further if the smart tourist picked European-type pensions and local eateries

Also, the dollar was strong. In those days, Europe was in fashion, particularly France. Who hadn't seen Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in "
Breathless".
Every student wanted to go there, with a copy of the student guidebook Let's Go, and an International Student ID Card, good for discounts, which we issued.

In the early 1960s transatlantic passenger sailings were still in full swing from student ships to the famous liners: SS France, Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth and the fastest, the SS United States. Less than ten years later some of these same ships were being laid up, casualties of economics and changing tastes. By 1970 Boeing 707's were superseded by 747's, carrying more than 400 passengers. But for now a transatlantic crossing by ship was the way to go in style.

After six months of selling student travel, I was told by the head office I was needed as a tour leader for one of our trips, a Politics & Economics Tour of Europe, offering credit. I told them I was scarcely older than the students. They said I had a degree from Oxford in Politics & Economics and besides, the tour leader they had picked was ill. I had ten days to get ready.

The Politics & Economics tour went off without incident. We visited various political institutions like NATO and OECD, and were given a tour and lecture. The students took notes, and I thanked our hosts. We ate well, stayed in nice hotels and did some ordinary sightseeing as well. The students were well behaved and motivated; they were earning college credit. My job was mainly to see we arrived at places on time, introduce speakers and keep the group of fifteen persons together. For this I was being paid, and it seemed like an easy job.