Lately, I have been watching an old series from the late 1950s, early 1960s, called Naked City. In the old days of black and white TV in Argentina, where there were 4 channels or so, my parents watched it every week in Buenos Aires, and they let me join them as a little girl. I remember being mesmerized because of the way the city was presented. All those tall buildings, the NY harbor, the lights. I knew there were strange police stories, what with the sirens and old-fashioned uniforms, but the crux of the weekly subject of the series was lost on me.

Today, I realize it depicts a New York that no longer exists: the cars, the grittiness, the fashion. Even the hoodlums wore nice suits and fedoras!

There are stereotypical characters galore, the police, the lawyers, the Italians, the Poles, the Mexicans, the Germans, the upper East Side types, the bohemians, the old, the young, the neurotics, the alcoholics, the betrayers, the blondes and the brunettes. The narrator always brings either humor, foreboding, or morality to the screen. In this day and age, it could be seen as a bit pedantic. However, it is a window to life as it was, at least in the naked city, a city that had captured my own parents’ imagination. How they loved New York and longed to return. They eventually did.

I grew up listening to their stories of what seemed like a magical world so far away up North, from where I lived way down South. The one thing that comes to mind, in a world pre-globalization, was my Mother’s depiction of what a New York Cheesecake was all about. Her description was mouth-watering, but there was no Philadelphia Cream Cheese at the time, when I was growing up. There wasn’t even a substitute. I just had to imagine, until the day when I returned to New York as a teenager and dug my fork into a slice of it at Chock-full-o’Nuts.

In my retrospection to a more innocent time, I came across an old slide. A most beautiful portrait of a handsome man and a beautiful lady, and a toddler. This is how I remember my parents. Forever. And this is how I envisioned New York and its harbor, because the moment captured in that photograph was a most memorable experience that we were embarking together.

My parents were 27 years old at the time! My Father was a self-made man, an autodidact, an entrepreneur, a man of vision, even at that young age. We were soon leaving on the Queen Elizabeth from NY Harbor to Southampton, England. And I got top billing as a passenger: Miss B.A. Dillon! At the tender age of 1.5 years.

To be continued…