My Life as a Boy — Chapter 2

Diane Wolfe just after separation from the US Army, at our apartment in NYC 1964.
Diane Wolfe just after separation from the US Army, at our apartment in NYC 1964.

Wolfie and I arrived at the Trailways — or was it Greyhound??? — bus terminal and found an apartment almost instantly — we had no money — we were both waiting for our service paychecks to catch up with us, so I called a sci-fi writer friend, Mary Kornbluth, and she said she had an extra room if we didn’t mind 250 cats all around us, so we went there and bedded down for the night. This cat was our first visitor, and I snapped the shot and it survived the years, and here it is.

The next day we walked down Broadway, looking for work. Both of us were limited in wardrobe — everything we had on we’d acquired the day before, at Gettysburg, which is kinda near where we’d worked our last three weeks of service, Valley Forge Hospital, in the TB wards.

Dangerous, but it beats guard duty with a .12 gauge with orders to shoot any prisoner who attempts an escape. I never knew whether the weapon was loaded, but I got out of there fast when I got the offer of spending the last few weeks at Valley Forge in spite of the danger of TB, and it’s fortunate I did go there, or I’d never have met Wolfie.

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