In response to Solitaire’s post on the chaos of his basement, I was reminded of my New York loft.

In 1959, Jay and I found a 2,000 sq. ft. loft on the Lower East Side, dismantled our cluttered apartment and moved there. I thought, naively, that all this space would mean a traditional lifestyle could live next to the lifestyle that worked for Jay, i..e, electronics equipment, construction materials, minimal living furniture, etc. T’was not to be. So for years, more stuff came in to fill the extra space and we lived in the spaces in between.

Jay's work space



The young me posing for an article Jay was writing for one of the tech magazines



Some years later (can't you tell?) me at the piano. Note lumber.



When I got my “major” piano after years of playing on what I considered a toy, (where a key would jump out of the action if I played a big piece, and I had to clear off the top, open the lid and reach in and replace it) it lived next to lumber and I had to thread my way to it. But once there, I was not in the loft anymore, but on a mountaintop with a vast view. So I learned to block out the chaos and live in the moment.

I used to wonder what I would do if I lost Jay and he told me early on that I should contact one of his people on “Radio Row” in lower Manhattan and he would help me dispose of the equipment. Excepting the years went on, Radio Row became a casualty of development, I don’t know what happened to his contacts. So I spent the months following his loss, researching places. I learned that schools were not interested in “old” equipment because the little darlings needed up to date stuff. We are talking about inner city kids here who don’t have toilet paper, but they need state of the art electronics. I was not happy.

The Westinghouse museum in Baltimore, however, was interested. I spent a good deal of time unhooking equipment. It wasn't simple. I would move one item only to discover it was wired to something else across the room. Finally I unhooked and dusted everything down and spread it all out on our huge work table and fellows came from Baltimore, looked at it, and took it all away, giving me a receipt for tax purposes. They were going to make a display with credit but they, as far as I know, never did it because of budget considerations, so I never got to see it and see Jay’s name on the collection, which would have given me some sense of honoring him. I am thinking they stored it or traded parts to other museums. The Hammarlund radio receiver, that he had when he was radio officer on a merchant ship is sitting in a basement somewhere, its glory days in WW II, forgotten.

Jay on shipboard, during his days as a radio officer, WW II.
(Torpedoed, in a lifeboat for 15 days, but home safe eventually.)




Donating the equipment to the museum made me feel better. Jay used to keep the Hammarlund on all night. It was tuned, of course, to the ship channel and the Morse code would filter into my dreams and I would copy arrivals and departures and manifests in my head as I slept. Jay had taught me the code and to this day, I dit-dah things I see as I walk. And sometimes I use his ham call sign, W2WHM, and imagine he is hearing it somewhere. W2WHM. Jay’s ability to read Morse was phenomenal. He could listen to something that sounded like a sheet tearing, and translate as he did three other things. His captain on the S.S. Dorothy Luckenbach once called him, in admiration, “a long-eared mother-f….r.”

In addition to the electronics, there were several thousand technical magazines, dating back to the forties, books , novels and technical manuals, fiction and nonfiction, shellac records, several hundred, in cases, a Thorens turntable, heavy-duty, professional, that a buyer paid me too little for, taking advantage of my grief and ignorance. I would have kept the Thorens, but it needed repairs and I had no resources to figure out how to get that done.

There were also filing cabinets full of Jay’s work materials, schematics of projects in process, all in his neat handwriting. When the loft building was sold and I was bought out, it was up to me to finish the sorting. Ed by then was in my life and spent time with me on lower Second Avenue. But the process was too much for him, and he was inclined to rush me, and I needed emotional space to deal with things. So Ed went back to Queens and I continued to sort, and cry, and sort and cry.

Finally it was done, stuff was tossed or donated, and boxes of stuff to keep came to the apartment. Somehow space was found to stack them and they have come down to Florida with us. There is a Linhoff camera on a tripod that Ed wants to use but the film for it is rare and I have to call New York and find some. A pair of Zeiss binoculars, owned by a German officer, salvaged from the wreckage of the Graf Spee, and bought by Jay during a merchant ship stop in Argentina. These binoculars are fantastic. Jay’s instruments, of course, a D’Angelico guitar, made by the master himself, in his shop on Kenmare street, to Jay’s specifications in 1942, his pride and joy. Mandolin Brothers in Staten Island restored it and wanted to sell it for me – going price around $30,000 at the time, but I couldn’t part with it and Ed wants to learn how to play. A Gibson banjo, they also restored and wanted to sell. An Epiphone banjo, the same. I think we sold the Gibson.

I also have a file cabinet full of stuff , in Jay’s handwriting, carbons of typed letters to friends, etc., that are such a joyous chronicle of his mind, that I can’t bring myself to throw them out.

There were power tools, some kept, some given to friends.

I sold my Baldwin 7-foot grand piano. It was too big for the apartment. I placed an ad in the New York Times. I got one phone call. They bought it. Serendipity. I bought my Mason-Hamlin for $2,000 more than my Baldwin sale. It is 6’2” and we moved stuff around and fit it into the apartment. In Florida, we closed in an outdoor lanai under the roof, and expanded the living room. It sits next to a window and has room to breathe. It needs a rebuild now but it is still a fine sounding piano. I would love to hear it as it should sound. That has to wait.

For a while I rented the loft to Lila, my downstairs neighbor, and she re-rented it to several friends – an artist, a photographer for the Met Museum of Art, a dancer from upstate New York who periodically came to perform and hang out. She also had “antique fairs” – and periodically it would be filled with crystal and furniture. She would have a party – food and wine and a couple of hundred people would come. Her trade friends from ABC Carpet on Broadway around 21st Street (ever so much more than carpet) came and decorated the space. It looked really phenomenal when they had done their work. It was so stunning, I wanted to move back. But that was a dream.

The loft as it was during one of Lila's antique fairs.





Ed had considered living there but the building was old. He and Terry, Lila’s husband, toyed with the idea of buying it, but decided against because of all the work it needed.

So we stayed in Queens and I got cash for moving and “only in New York” do you get your rent back when they need you to GO.

Tempus and all that.

xx, Teal