First trips to Manhattan

---My first trip to Manhattan was to attend the Columbia University's high school journalism awards in the spring of 1967.  The group included senior students from the school newspaper, yearbook, and literary magazine.  We stayed at a modest old hotel on West 48th Street near 7th Avenue. Four to a room, my roommates were Vic, Jim, and Clyde.  There were faculty advisors with us but we were given complete autonomy at times, at others the advisors accompanied us.  I have no memory whatsoever of Columbia University.

Did several of us go to a hockey game at the Old Madison Square Garden which would have been a few blocks from the hotel?  We did walk around the Times Square area which was astounding seen from Danville eyes.  Seven or eight of us went to a Chinese restaurant on West 43rd Street, first ever for most of us.  Not the first for classmate Martha who helped us order from the English menu.  Did we go to the Empire State Building, no memory of that.  Did a group of us go to Greenwich Village led Mr. Miller?  I think yes.  In any event, it speaks to the relative prosperity of hometown Danville at that time.

During college, there were several trips to New York.  One was to meet hometown friend John and others to go to the Fillmore East to see B.B. King, the John Mayall Band, and Taj Mahal in 1969.  Before the concert we went to the 2nd Avenue Deli at 13th Street and forgot to leave a tip, and the waiter came out on the street to emphatically remind us. Another was to see Georgetown play in the 1970 NIT basketball tournament, a much more important event than today.  Georgetown played Pete Maravich's LSU in the first round and lost in the final minutes, 83 to 82.  It would have been a major upset, to say the least.

Another visit to the City was after a two and a half month vagabonding trip to Europe with two college friends, Ken and Dickie.  After we returned on our Icelandic Air flight to New York, they went on to their homes in New Jersey while I decided to stay in New York for a few days.  Calling my college friend Scott, he invited me to stay at a small sub-basement apartment that his family owned in addition to their expansive apartment in their high rise near Gracie Mansion.  The main memory on that visit is going to Slug's, a famous jazz bar in a sketchy part of the Lower East Side, East 3rd Street between Avenue B and C.

---To be continued at another time.  All of the above may not be precisely correct!!!