LEAVING THE NEST 1936

It is time for a change of pace. I will continue to post more about my days in the practice of medicine, especially conditions in the 50-60s. Although probably more intimate, yet very indicative of life before WWII, is a section I named "UVA DAYS" the last chapter in my "Age of Naivete"

On a very hot muggy 1936 September day I boarded the B&O train at the Plainfield station to start, at the age of 16, life's great adventure. This was the first time I had been away from home alone. Several days earlier,the Railway Express man had carried my wardrobe trunk, on his back, down the stairs to his truck. To have missed the next seven years would have been to miss life.

In Washington D.C., at Union Station I had to change trains to a Southern Railroad train for Charlottesville. The Southern Railroad’s coaches which lacked air-conditioning were completely packed by college students predominantly freshmen bound for the University of Virginia. Some were going further south. Unlike today’s students, very few had ever visited the University. We were venturing into an unknown world but determined not to exhibit any apprehension.

The open coach windows did not lower the heat or humidity and frequently admitted clouds of smoke from the steam engine. The red velour covered coach seats were very susceptible to the moisture from the sweating students, who found their shirt backs dyed red. In 1993 at a 50th medical school class reunion I could still remnissed about that trip with boys I met on that train.

On subsequent trips to Charlottesville,I always managed to make connections for the C&O’s George Washington, which left D.C. at 6 p.m. It was air-conditioned and had a both a dinning and a lounge car where we met and occupied on the 21/2 hour trip.

The two railroads used the same tracks to Orange Va. where the C&O had a divergent branch eastward to its main line at Gordonsville, Va. In Charlottesville the train made two stops,the main C&O station being further down town. The second station where the C&O crossed the Southern tracks was a mile nearer the University.

Unfortunately, when going home the only train, other than a few very early (before 7 a.m.) morning trains, that I could catch was a one passenger car Southern local that left at 1 p.m. That train seemed to stop at every crossing and hamlet taking 3 to 4 hours to reach Washington just in time for the last B&O train to Plainfield.

If I missed that train, I would have to catch a Pennsy train to Elizabeth, and hope that there would be a CRRNJ train to Plainfield.

Arriving in Charlottesville, several of us collectively piled into a cab for the trip to the mandatory freshmen only dormitories. They were almost new, having been built several years previously. Mine, Gildersleeve Hall, was the end unit of four “Halls”. A central stairwell led to each of the three floors. Each floor contained four suites that consisted of a day room and a bedroom with two beds and dressers. In the end buildings, the two outside suites shared a bathroom. Each two adjacent inside suites had a common bathroom with the two suites from the adjoining Hall, creating a node of eight students. A student in the suite next to us was very homesick. For the first week or so, we could hear him crying all night long. He did not stay long in school.

My roommate Joe Jaffe was a very industrious and brilliant engineering student on scholarship from Norfolk Virginia. The engineering school curriculum was hard and required a strong commitment for studying. Although I lost touch with Joe during the war I later learned that he had been involved in the Manhatten Atomic Bomb project.

Despite the differences in our life styles and study habits we got along well and the next year requested adjoining connecting rooms in Randall Hall. Neither one of us had expressed any desire to go the fraternity route. Our extracurricular life was broad and satisfying. The year after that I obtained my room on the Range which I returned to until my last semester in Medical School. There will be more about life in Randall Hall subsequently.