| This is a very well known route that we used to take to and from the Garment District in NYC when we owned our women's apparel store, Gillman's West Hartford, Inc. For us, buying was never glamorous, au contraire! It meant getting up early in the AM, and I mean early, leaving by 5:00AM +/- to get to NYC, park, and meet with Mr Porte for coffee (or we'd go ourselves) and then, off to the races with the other buyers, going up express eleveators to the house we are going to check out their line, and /or to pick up special orders for our customers. There would be lunch, in between munching on the candies or nuts, or some houses had nothing to nosh on, as they presented their new line. Some places that we went to still had a model come out and show a garment off for us, but that was the exception rather than the norm. A taste of "high end" and a gentler time. We'd try to get our work done and get onto the highway out of the city by 4:30, to just miss the greatest part of the traffic, but sometimes magic worked...sometimes not.
When I was young, Dad would take a cab to the train station in Hartford, and get to NYC that way. Late at night he's take the cab home, unless Mom picked him up, with us in tow. That was very exciting for me. But, despite the oh, so long day for Dad, I remember that as a young'n, I'd hear him shaving in our only full bathroom (he used to turn the water on as he needed it, then off, on, off so as not to waste it, nor raise the water bill).
If he heard me stirring, or sometimes I'd even croak out a "Daddy", when he went downstairs for a quick bite of toast and jam, and coffee, he'd come back up with cinamon toast, as he kissed me good bye and tuck me in. What a special Dad. All that leads up to this news item I saw yesterday, and the photo of a landmark highway we took frequently to NYC on our buying trips. There were alternate routes, but this was on of them.
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Wall Collapses Onto a Busy Manhattan Highway
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: May 13, 2005
A 75-foot-high stone retaining wall built in 1908 collapsed in a roaring avalanche onto the Henry Hudson Parkway in Upper Manhattan yesterday afternoon. No one was believed killed or hurt, but parked cars were buried and traffic in the region was thrown into bedlam for the evening rush.The retaining wall, an ominously vertical landmark to drivers passing under its bulk just north of the George Washington Bridge at 183rd Street in Washington Heights, shuddered and rumbled and fell in two stages that terrified nearby residents and drivers who saw landslides falling on the road ahead.
read more For Some Taking In the View, a Close Call
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: May 13, 2005 They were drawn from their apartment by the wonder and roar of falling rock and trees. But standing on a footbridge outside their apartment building at 1380 Riverside, Elizabeth Umpierre and her cousin had only a moment to gaze at the landslide that buried the roadway below. A minute or two later, a firefighter grabbed them by the hair, and yelled at them to run as fast as they could. Suddenly, a second cascade of stone and trees washed down the hillside over cars and onto the Henry Hudson Parkway beneath their feet. "We did not have time to think," said Ms. Umpierre, 24. "We were like, 'Oh my God, what is happening?' " read more...
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