The Bramson Archive Gets Larger & Larger Part IV

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By Seth H. Bramson

It was, indeed, an exciting time for the Bramson brothers, with me leaving for Cornell early in September of ’66, Bennett preparing for his last year at Nautilus and me in love with “a nice Italian girl from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn” who turned out not to be so nice.

Leaving Miami Beach I was very excited for I, “a noble-faired, long haired, leaping gnome” (from a great rock and roll song of the time, but I don’t remember the title!) was about to embark on one of the great adventures of a life that had seen some pretty interesting stuff already but with the best and most interesting yet to come, in no small way thanks to a stunningly beautiful woman by the name of Myrna and the greatest sibling of all time, joined later by his daughter, my niece, Dara Bramson, Myrna’s son and daughter, Ben and Saralyn, and my two magnificent grandsons, Joshua Nemser and Harrison Seeman.

It was an exciting trip to Ithaca because it took me about a week as I stopped at every railroad station, antique shop and flea market along the way to photograph and buy, and in doing so came across some great “stuff.” However, upon arrival in Ithaca, it would get even better!

I will never forget my absolute excitement at seeing Statler Hall (the School of Hotel Administration) and walking up those steps for the first time as a full time student, still almost in a state of disbelief. Several of my Beach High classmates had gone to Cornell and had graduated in June of ’66 but here I was in September of that year, showing up there for the first time. I had something like 102 credits (remember, I had been in school at 1/2SU, PU and D C J C for four years before I went to Cornell) of which the University accepted 39, but, “frankly my dear, I didn’t give a damn!” I wanted to be there, wanted a Cornell degree, knew that I could do it, and, sure enough, I did. But it took three more years for me to get my bachelor’s degree! (What is it “they” say? “All good things take time”?)

Sometime during that first year (my fifth in college) I somehow made the acquaintance of a law school student who became not only a lifetime friend, but who was a railroad buff who mainly collected tickets and fare forms and who would go on to a fine career as a federal judge.
Because I lived in an upper class transfer dorm my first year I met a lot of terrific guys, one of whom I remain in touch with but two of whom, sadly and unhappily to report, smoked themselves to death at young ages as Dad and Mom had done.

Occasionally, maybe once a month, we’d get up relatively early and one of the guys would yell “NATHAN’S!” and we’d all hop into one or two cars, drive the 240 miles to Coney Island and scoff down Nathan’s hot dogs, French fries and probably Cokes or iced teas, standing there on Surf Avenue marveling at the famous amusement parks and the huge numbers of people and “watching all the girls go by,” as the words from the famous song went. After the joy of the real Nathan’s we would head back to Ithaca, another 240 miles and 4 ½ hours in each direction. We were young and happy and “full of piss and vinegar.”

Besides there was so much to talk about and the conversations of and about so many topics, from women to school, to where we were from never ended. But that was only occasionally, because on most Saturdays Cornell law student Mel Rosenberg and I were off on our grand adventures of another sort.

Those adventures involved a regular routine: almost every Saturday we would plan a trip to a place on the map from which we knew we could get back before dark because in those days the directional signs on the roads in upper New York State made the unbelievably poor signage in the Sunshine State look like the best in the country. In many, if not most cases, we would be looking for the state road at which we wanted to turn left or right in order to get to (for example) Geneva or Horseheads (near Elmira) or Canastota or Auburn or Van Etten Junction or some such place and as we would go whizzing past a particular road we would look in one direction or the other and sure enough there was the sign with the road’s number on it which we had been looking for but it was always up or down and on the state road which we had been looking for and had just blown by but the sign was never on the road that we were on which would have allowed us to make the right or left turn before we got to said junction!

We had some gloriously good times rollicking around all over central New York state, going into antique shops, stopping at railroad stations, taking pictures of the buildings and the trains and dropping in at quaint little coffee shops or roadside grills for lunch. Of course, from time to time, I did find it necessary to study, particularly for chemistry, which was then required in the Hotel School and which was a horror for many of us. I got by in that brutal course by the proverbial skin of my teeth, the requirement being that each “Hotelie” had to take two-five hour courses in the hotel school which involved three one-hour lectures and two-two and one-half hour labs every week each semester. As the expression goes, “don’t ask.”

And while you’re not asking I will be continuing the clean-up here at The Bramson Archive which the truly great love of my life (Myrna was only the second woman in my life who I ever wanted to marry and I was not going to let her get away, but more on that on our next visit) has mandated with a forbidding expression and a compelling set of words, so, as is our wont to say (write), “see you shortness,” take care of yourselves and each other, stay well, and, unlike a certain low grade sub-human putz on Miami Beach who wouldn’t know how to do that (and this) if his life depended on it, be good to each other and make your friends and families proud of you.

PS: As with Miami’s walking fountain of MISinformation and the queen bee, “no names, please. We’re British!”

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