Ricky and Alice, Sept.,1947, New Orleans

My mother dropped me at the doorstep of her sister and family so that she could accompany my father to New York and keep an eye on him while he was in rehearsal for a play in which he'd been cast. The play closed after only two weeks but they stayed on in the city for several months and had interesting adventures before their money completely ran out, not the least of which was sharing an apartment with a woman who earned her living as a prostitute. After the war housing was in critically short supply, especially for church-mice poor newlyweds. My father, not surprisingly, learned from a bartender of a woman who was interested in renting a couple of rooms in her spacious Manhattan apartment while her husband was away. Dad followed up with the woman and agreed to take the rooms. Only later did they discover that her husband was "away" at federal prison for forging war bonds and that she was making ends meet entertaining gentlemen from the garment trade. As mom describes her, their landlord was a true Damon Runyon character, Kitty by name, who was the stereotype tough city dame with a heart of gold. It was a real education for my naive mother but the source of several funny stories. The first of them was when Dad showed up to move in with his belongings and his wife and Kitty, seeing mom, intoned in Mae West deadpan, "Well, you didn't tell me you was married." Sadly, there are no photos from this period of their lives.