A Permanent Arrangement
By A.C. Katt
Sean, Comments on 1952
Gramps said that the city smelled and felt different in 1952. Sausage and peppers, pineapple, and papaya, cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes blended with wet newspapers and garbage, creating a unique odor that was New York. The end of the war brought about the era of white flight. In the fifties, families fled Manhattan to the Jersey Shore, unlike their pre-war counterparts who’d headed into Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island. The trip to Manhattan from the Jersey was a sixty-minute commute, but the consensus was it was better “for the children.” Gramps lived in Chelsea on Sixteenth between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. It was a four-story double-sided walkup. He and Grandma had a front-facing apartment on the second floor and Gre
