Picnic at the Bronx Zoo

It is the fall of 1964 or the spring of 1965. I was still in the U.S. Naval reserve on active duty at Dahlgren, Virginia and the U.S. Naval Weapons Test Laboratory... Strange place for a peacenik to be but that was in a different life.

I had come up to New York to visit your mother whom I was dating at the time. We were not yet married. She suggested a picnic and I wanted to see the Bronx Zoo because I had heard it was a good place as zoos go, so we combined the two and went to the Bronx Zoo. I spent a lot of time as a youngster at the Buffalo zoo (ergo my elephant history). I remember the giraffes at the Bronx zoo and I remember winding pathways but then I may be confusing it with the Washington Zoo which I remember as having a hilly pathway through the animal enclosures.

The green car behind me is a Pugeot. I bought it second hand in Buffalo after I totalled my 1963 plymouth valiant in an accident. My accident was in July 1964, the car was just a year old. That is why I think the picnic was early 65 because I can't see any noticable signs of the accident on my forehead.

About that weekend (or the end of it). I was headed back to the base driving the New Jersey Turnpike. When I got to New York on Friday evening, I noticed that my idiot light for the generator was coming on. That meant that the battery was not charging but since I wasn't planning a lot of driving before I got back, I thought that I could make it alright. However I waited until late to leave New York and I had to use the headlights and they of course drained the battery faster than the generator could replenish it. The car started bucking and stalling and I was forced to pull off on the turnpike near the end. I shut the car off and hoped that it would start again. A tow truck working the turnpike came by and offered to tow me back to the privious exit. That I fugured would be an arm and a leg so I turned it down, waited about half and hour and the battery recovered enough by that time to start again.

I headed down the road with the lights off to conserve battery power. My plan was to get over the Deleware Memorial bridge (memorial of what I'm not sure)and then head off to a gas station and have the battery charged full. The Deleware Memorial bridge is a long steep up and a long steep down, not much level. More like MacDonald than the other Halifax bridge but much higher in my memory. I was about half way up when the engine died. At the time it was a three lane bridge with the center lane for the brave of heart. Traffic was moving at 60-70 mph and all of a sudden I was dead in the water. I pushed on the four-way flashers and bolted from the car and went ten feet or so down so as to be away and below when some nut ran into me. I didn't want to be above because then the car would be rammed into me. Smart huh??? Cars were whizzing by, and my very weak flashers were not visible too far away, I'm sure, because some people were braking sharply when they realized that I wasn't moving at all. Then to my rescue was a bridge tow truck with emergency lights flashing which pushed me off the bridge, allowing me to stop in a toll booth and then off the highway to a nearby garage. I slept for a few hours in the gas station while the battery was charged and continued home safely. End of story.

Not much about the Zoo except the giraffes... I still had that sweater when we moved to Grand River because I remember a picture of me in it I think when my Mother and Father visited and we had a family picture outside the house???

Enough for today and hopefully by the time you read this the picture will be a part of it.