EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE 03/14/00

Subj: WOMEN: Mindwalkers - East Side, West Side
Date: 3/14/00 9:00:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Mim spent the summer of 1965 doing a residential theater workshop at Greenwich Village's renown Circle in the Square Theater. Peter (her brother) and I went up to see her in a workshop production of, as I remember, Edward Albee's "Two for the Seesaw." She had one line - someone asked her how her plants were doing and she replied, "They're blooming." Not much of a line, but she delivered it perfectly and bagged a laugh. I was (and am) very proud.

She had to be out of her NYU dorm by Labor Day, so Pete, Elsa and I trooped up to the Village in the van to bring her and her stuff back to BA. We were startled to find every street around Washington Square packed with artists - it was the annual Greenwich Village Art Show. We were delighted, especially when we discovered that Val Sigsted, a Bryn Athyn friend, was there with his beautiful wood carvings.

Pete seemed especially proud to stroll about with his three womenfolk. The four of us went to The Cookery, where Alberta Hunter sang, for brunch - my first taste of chilled strawberry soup.

Looking back, I am so pleased that Mim gave us the opportunity to experience the Village in its hippie heyday.

That was the start of NYC as a Lockhart playground. For years, we went up for the Village Art Show. I remember one year - 1967 or 1968 - when the art show had pretty slim pickings. It was the first time I saw oil paintings on black velvet. To salvage the trip, Pete did the unexpected - driving us over each of the bridges connecting Manhattan to its opposite shores. The Triborough, the Queensboro, the Williamsburg, the Manhattan, the Brooklyn, and we headed home via the George Washington (my apologies if I left one out ~ it was a while ago).

Walking around the Village, I never imagined that Elsa and I would be sitting in that Square in the early 1980s as Mim received her bachelor's degree from New York University. Never one for doing things the standard way, she commuted from BA to night classes. She’s occasionally turned to Elsa for a lift to class; Elsa got so comfortable driving around the Big Apple, she’s always up for a meander up to NYC for weekend rambles along what she calls Manhattan's "back roads." Elsa’s blessed to have gotten Pete’s sense of direction and not mine. (Pete seemed practically clairvoyant to this directions-impaired woman. When the two of us visited London for a week in the early '70s, people would come up to Pete for directions and he could set them right on their way!)

For a small town gal, I get a charge out of visiting the "Big City" whether it be New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, London, Chicago, San Francisco or my beloved Sydney.

Love to all - Nan

reposted with sweet memories of its author, KATHARINE REYNOLDS LOCKHART, by her scribe/daughter, Elsa Lockhart Murphy, aka DEEV