New York Day from motionkicker on Vimeo.
It contrasts with these reminiscences about life at the turn of the 20th century, written in 1971 by my late grandfather, Mefford, to his sister, Frances. They grew up not far from New York City, and he later worked in midtown from the 1920s to 1960s.
"Frances was born on September 18, 1899 on the family farm in Stelton, New Jersey. There she joined me who had preceded her on this earth by a little over two years. She has tried but has never been able to quite catch up in wisdom and experience. At least that is my point of view, though I am sure many will disagree. The farm was a large one of 165 acres. There our parents, Franklin and Amanda, lived with our grandfather. The farm house had no running water, nor central heating, electricity or plumbing. It did have a wonderfully air conditioned outside Chick Sale, stoves to provide heat and kerosene lamps for light. We loved it.
"We walked to school in a one-room building about three-quarters of a mile away in the village of Stelton. It boasted a railway station, a post office and a sort of store in the Van Horne's house where you could buy baker's bread and nothing else on one or two days a week. To buy food we drove the horse and buggy three miles to the city of New Brunswick, or used the peddlers who came around irregularly and sold various edibles from the tail boards of their wagons.
"We saw our first aeroplane in flight from the school. Lincoln Beachy was trying to fly non-stop from Philadelphia to New York. Not to get lost, he was to follow the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. We were all very excited and our teacher, Miss Fillips, who was a modernist and believed in simplified spelling and never used a letter that was silent in pronunciation, let us outside to see Beachy come over. He came, flying a one-man biplane at about 500 feet, and that was our introduction to aviation.
"Uncle Jeph, father's oldest brother, lived in Newark and manufactured bed springs. He had what I suppose was a stroke and came with Aunt Lucy to the farm in Stelton for a time. They thought it would be nice to have one of those new fangled contraptions called a horseless buggy. Of course we kids cheered. After all, none of our friends had such a thing. Father was persuaded to learn to drive it and we had some very nice rides around. Sometimes we went as far as 25 miles from home and every once in a while we would get back without having to fix a puncture on the road. The car was a red six-cylinder Ford, and not very powerful. The farm house was at the top of a short but steep hill which came up from where the road ran under the railroad tracks. Father could not get the car to climb the hill going forward. So he had always to turn around and back up the hill and into the yard. Just part of the fun of our first experience with an internal combustion engine.
"Aunt Mattie and Uncle Arthur lived in the fabulous city of New York and it was the height of our youthful enjoyment to go there for a visit once in a while. They lived in an apartment where we could ride up and down the elevator. And they took us to the Colonial and Palace Theatres where we saw wonderful vaudeville shows - comedians, jugglers, sleight-of-hand, artists, tumblers and so on and on; and to see animals at the Bronx Zoo, and to Coney Island where we rode on the Shoot the Chutes, the ferris wheel and so many other things. We were very much aware of the noise of the new subway which went right past the apartment at 92nd Street and Broadway. It never bothered Uncle Arth's sleeping but when he visited us on the farm he used to tell us that the noise of the leaves rustling in the breeze kept him awake."
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