I once delivered telegrams. No, not in a snappy uniform with lots of shiny buttons and a little pillbox cap, they were not Western Union telegrams, but in the plain clothes of a 15 year-old working a summer job delivering RCA business telegrams.
What brought up this memory? I was thinking about my Uncle Jim, in poor health now and in some nursing/rehab home in Jersey for old guys with strokes and bad attitudes, and my thoughts brought me back to the mid-1960s and a summer job he got me in Manhattan.
He told me the job was basically walking around Midtown Manhattan from 14th Street to 34th Street, river-to-river, a sizable chunk of real estate filled with tall buildings, a bazillion people and endless traffic, delivering business telegrams to companies of all kinds, most of them located in the glass and steel skyscrapers dotting the landscape. I can do that, I figured, and figured right.
Technically they were not even telegrams, but something called a Telex, delivered to our dispatchers from the operators of Telex Machines. A Telex Machine is a combination typewriter, telephone, stock ticker and stenography machine. The operators were all men, most of them trained in this exact job by the military (which apparently had a telegraph service of their own), and the fastest and most accurate typists on the planet.
Telex Operator was a good-paying job, and they exuded a detached air of competency with a slight dash of superiority to us mere mortals who could never decipher what the heck it is they are doing, or how fast and accurate they were. Their machines were unique marvels considered the height of communication technology at the time.
There were dozens of Telex machines filling the room, each one on an elevated desk manned by an operator seated on a high stool, who transferred what he was hearing on the phone or reading from a tape with Morse Code dots to print in the form of a Telex, all at blinding speed.
Not even sure if RCA still exists or if telegrams and telexes still exist, but back then they were the apex in high speed business communication. I reported to Midtown every morning to an office, which was basically more of a corridor with benches next to the Dispatcher’s office.
We delivery people sat at the benches waiting our turn to be called and assigned our destinations, just outside the noisy teletype room which was behind a glass wall, as if the Telex men were so many furiously working mannequins in Macy’s window on display for all to marvel at their magnificence.
Macy’s 34th Street, by the way, was part of my turf and I delivered telexes to the business offices shoppers never see in what they called at the time “The Largest Department Store on Earth,” and still their flagship store. And it is huge, covering an entire city block, and was one of my more interesting stops.
Being the curious sort, I loved taking in the sights and sounds of Manhattan, but still had to deliver my telegrams on time, so I developed the habit of practically running to my destinations so I could leisurely walk back to the office and catch an eyeful of the goings-on in Skyscraper Park. Which is how I watched a Garden grow, Madison Square Garden to be specific.
That huge construction project was underway at 34th Street across from the main US Post Office, and like Macy’s, also taking up an entire city block. That summer, it was basically a 100-foot deep hole in the ground surrounded by plywood fencing that had viewing holes cut here and there so that passersby could do a little sidewalk superintending and watch the slow progress of digging a foundation through solid bedrock.
The hole was so deep that the construction cranes and gigantic drills looked like Tonka Toys, and the men operating them were as so many ants scurrying about doing who knows what. Prominently sticking out into the pit were several gigantic curved “pipes” supported by what looked like rickety planks of wood holding them up, looking like they might fall over any time.
Only thing is, those were not pipes, but multi-track train tunnels heading to New Jersey and in use, exposed by the construction project and just sort of hanging there in thin air, supported by relative toothpicks. They are still there, though, and still operating underneath the resulting building, so whoever designed the toothpick scaffolding knew what they were doing. It had to withstand a lot of explosions too.
The explosions were the best part of watching the Garden grow. The walls of the pit were solid granite, as is most of Manhattan once you scratch the surface, and the specialized drills spent their days drilling long holes parallel to the face of the wall. Once enough holes were drilled and packed with explosives, several cranes working together would lift up a gigantic woven steel blanket about 6 inches thick and an acre in area, and gently drape it over the area to be blasted away.
Whistles and sirens would sound to warn the workers to take cover, and also alert pedestrians it was showtime, and we would crowd the viewing windows to watch. There was a countdown, and then a great muted “whomp” that shook the ground a bit, with the steel blast blanket billowing out slightly, and, almost in slow motion, a huge piece of the underground mountain of granite the size of a small apartment building would slide into the pit, exposing the drill holes and a broad face of fresh rock that had not seen fresh air or the sun in millions of years.
Not a pebble escaped the construction site and landed on the surrounding streets after such explosions, not even the wisps of granite dust rising from the collapsing wall. Almost no one passing by even knew what happened, and those of us crowding the viewing panels felt like we were sharing a cool secret experience, which we most definitely were.
Of course Madison Square Garden was not completed that summer, but once that cubic city block of granite was removed, the building went up quickly, consisting of the fabled Madison Square Garden arena, a huge commuter train hub underground, and an office building towering above all of it. Just a few short years later I was rocking to concerts at the Garden, from Cream to Sly to Janis to Bangla Desh to the Stones.
I don’t often think of that Summer, but it was a real gas for a Brooklyn kid, earning some money, getting to know Midtown Manhattan and watching the silent explosions that go into building this metropolis. Thanks, Uncle Jim.