In Dec., 1945, I was discharged from the Army Air Force, after nearly 5 years of service. Shortly after, now that I was no longer GI, my wife asked for a divorce and that I leave town. I left her all my discharge pay and hitchhiked to New York City. I arrived just after midnight, Jan. 1, 1946, with a dime in my pocket, a homeless veteran on the streets of NYC. (But now I was to begin the most intense period of my education and miseducation that I had so far known.)

Still in uniform, I removed my "Ruptured Duck" -- the comic label applied by X-GIs to the eagle on the "discharge lapel pin". Thus I was able to visit all of the "canteens" for Service Personnel, as if still in the Service. I could get sandwiches, cookies and coffee there, and free tickets for movies and a lot of plays on Broadway. I saw "Oklahoma", "Carrousel", "Bloomer Girl", "Up in Central Park", "Around the World in Eighty Days", and many other shows. And I spent many happy hours, reading at the Main Library. I napped in the easy chairs of the canteens in the afternoon or evening, but I didn't try to get a ticket for sleeping, because I saw a GI being checked for "papers" at one canteen when he asked for sleeping accomodations. So I usually slept, sitting up on a bench, in Pennsylvania Station, Grand Central Station, or at the Bus Terminal.

After a month of this, a woman volunteer at one of the canteens realized I'd been returning for a long time and reported me. An MP checked my discharge papers and kindly advised me to restore "The Ruptured Duck" to my lapel and to stay away from the canteens. Fortunately, by this time, I'd learned about "The Twenty-Twenty Club".

Any discharged Serviceperson, with papers, was eligible for 20 weeks of "unemployment" pay at $20 a week, while looking for a job. So, at last with a few dollars in my pocket, I was able to check into the Chelsea YMCA, where they maintained "dormitory" rooms with double-deck beds and lockers for $7 a week. And I had nickels and dimes to feed into the slots at the Automat, across the street, for sandwiches, pots of baked beans, rolls, pie, coffee, and such.

(However, during next year, when I would be locked out, for nonpayment of rent, of the furnished room I moved into when the Chelsea YMCA closed its "dormitory" rooms, I was frequently homeless. For a mere nickel, I could ride all over the New York subway system, napping for short periods, before having to transfer.)