40 Years Ago Today, Girls, I Moved To New York!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                        That is right, darlings, I have been a New Yorker for 40 years.  Back in 1983, I was a fresh-faced ingenue; you know, like Barbara Cook, and I was hoping to hit similar heights as she did.  I hit some things, let me tell you, but what I have learned most is that the Kander and Ebb song is wrong.  Oh, it is a great song, but it is not true that "If I can make it there,I'll make it anywhere."  New York City is actually for those who feel they cannot make it anywhere else.  Those who flee their suburban enclaves to meet people with like-minded tastes and interests.  For those like me, the whole small-town scene, lovely as it was, just did not cut it.

                                         When I moved into my apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, back in 1983, I thought I would stay there for 50 years, and then end up in a nursing home.  I only stayed in Bay Ridge then for fourteen years, due to a slatternly landlady whom I refused to tolerate.  I was so terrified of her owning any other building I might move to in Bay Ridge that I ditched the place I loved and spent the next 15 years in Woodside, Queens.  I did all right there, but I never stopped pining for Bay Ridge.  Thirteen years later, I met David, in 2010, and we moved back to our current Bay Ridge residence, only eight blocks from where I originally lived!  But a much better experience, especially with David.

                                            What will the next 40 years bring?  I don't think I will become BARBRA, but if I get to do one more show anywhere, I will be satisfied.  

                                              One thing I cannot forget.  My first night alone in that apartment, I was watching, on network television, "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer," and, of course, I cried REAL tears.  What I did not realize, till much later, was that my father, alone in the HP apartment, we lived in before he moved to Florida after me, was that he was shedding tears also, because, much as he wanted me to get on my own, it meant I was finally gone.  How poignant.

                                                    Wish he were here today, to see things, now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                    Here's to another 40, dolls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!