The UN building in NYC, the place where I worked as a busboy in 1967
Dishwashing I did for almost two months, and a lot of it, for which I was being paid a salary of $50/week. In the meantime, I had been almost obsessively preparing myself with my own English books from school trying to uncover my hidden English which I learned throughout high school and college. At the end of February 1967, I was feeling less uncomfortable moving around in NYC, I was beginning to understand the NYC English and to make myself understood with short and heavily accented short sentences taken from my books. At this point, I decided to visit The New School for Social Research in the lower Manhattan area, near Union Square, and registered there for evening classes for the spring semester of 1967. After an admission test to determine the level of my English, I was admitted to the 3rd level, of a six level program, and started classes at the beginning of March.
After a week of classes, a school officer came one day and interrupted our class and called me to her office. I was kind of scared as I did not know what was the reason for this call, however, after a few minutes of tense waiting, the lady started apologizing for a mistake they had made when evaluating the level of my English, and told me they were relocating me to the 5th level class, to which I was directly led after the meeting. The teacher in the new class welcomed me with an accent that was not familiar to me, and which I later learned was a British accent. The classes were tough, very tough for me now, and included a lot of homework plus listening and comprehension lab classes on Saturday mornings. No one was allowed to speak any other language but English in the classroom, and for me it would have been almost impossible to do so anyway, because all my classmates but one, did not speak Spanish, as they were all Europeans from France, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Greece plus two Israelis. One of my classmates, the only one who spoke Spanish was from Argentina and he was a member of the Argentine diplomatic delegation to the UN.
My English classes started to pay off very soon. By the end of March I was already having a lot better communication with people around me, at work and in school. A proof of my improved English came one day in a much unexpected way, as I was arriving to work one morning and said “hi” to a young African American who was my team mate at the dishwasher machine in IHOP. In answering my “hi”, he said to me “what’s up Rafael?” and I answered back with a clear, noticeable British English accent, “nothing in particular, Joe”. Joe´s reaction was instantaneous and unexpected, he started to laugh his heart out repeating, “ha, ha, ha, nothing in particular, ha, ha, ha”; “nothing in particular, ha, ha, ha”, and he added, “where in hell did you learn that Rafael?, ha, ha, ha”., “you´re not supposed to use that kind ‘a English here, Rafael!”, “that´s fancy English you are not supposed to talk!. I laughed my heart out too, but deep inside my mind, I knew it was a compliment to my improved English.
A week after that, I said good bye to Joe the dishwasher and to the old ladies who waited on the tables at the IHOP in Roosevelt Ave, Queens, as my friend Jorge Alberto Terreros had helped me getting a new job as a busboy at The Playboy Club of New York, near the corner of Park Ave. at 59th St. Believe it or not, I was going to work helping the famous Playboy bunnies in their work waiting tables to club members ordering cocktails. The playboy Club consisted of seven floors of fancy bars in the heart of NYC, right across the General Motors Building and very close to the Plaza Hotel and Central Park. It catered only to members who had a special key, and their guests, who were given a provisional paper key as they came in.
I loved my job, I had to work at night from 5 PM to 1 AM, and as a result, I switched my English classes to day time classes. I loved my job for several obvious reasons, but mainly because I interrelated with better English speaking people and therefore I was practicing at night what I was learning during the day; I was making now about $75/week as a base salary and, in addition, we got a 90 bucks "tips check" on a biweekly basis, I had a good dinner at work, and, last, but not least, I was interrelating with the good looking bunnies at the club and other interesting people, including captains, bartenders, bar boys and other busboys. As a special bonus, I was able to watch the great midnight shows intermittently, as played by the bunnies.
In mid May, as classes at the U came to a recess, my friend Jorge Alberto Terreros got a part time job for him and one for me at the main restaurant of the United Nations building on First Ave. at 42nd St. It catered to the official delegates to the UN from all over the world, as well as to officers of the many UN agencies headquartered in the same building.
At the beginning of June, 1967, the six day war broke out. Egypt, Jordan and Syria, supported by all the Arab countries which helped them with cash, supplies and logistics, suddenly invaded Israel from the North, South and East, and in the first three days of war, they were about to render Israel to its knees. Israel was able to call its reserve army and by the third day of the war, it strongly reacted. In the three following days, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) commanded by Moshe Dayan, smashed the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies, and left Israel in control of the entire Sinai Peninsula, Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights in what is historically known to be one of the most sweeping military victories of all times. The results of this war have affected the geopolitics of the region to this date.
Union Square in NYC, near The New School for Social Research
By the sixth day of the war, the Arab countries and their main ally, the Soviet Union, were desperately asking for a cease fire as the Israelis were just about to obliterate the three enemy armies and penetrate deeper into their enemies’ territories. The Soviet Union and its diplomatic allies called for very urgent meetings of the UN Security Council in NYC, to have an immediate Cease fire put in place. This brought the cream of the cream of the world’s diplomatic corps to NYC and to the UN. The Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution No. 242, which mandated “the immediate cessation of hostilities, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, in which every State in the area can live in security”. This resolution and its almost total disobedience by the states involved, has been the basis for any and almost all discussions about peace in the Middle East ever since
In my next posting: BACK TO SCHOOL
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