The Pittsburgh Press (May 9, 1945)
By Florence Fisher Parry
NEW YORK (Monday) – I was writing by my window. It was about 9:40 this morning. I looked out toward Grand Central and at first, I thought it was snowing. It could have been – we’ve had every sample of weather here. Then I heard the noise… must have been going on for minutes. A shrill, far roar, unidentifiable, peculiar, but charged with a funny high excitement.
“This is it!” I cried to Mama, and we dove into our coats. We were hailing a taxi in a few minutes after.
I told the driver:
Just cruise around. Up Park to 42nd, over to Fifth, on up to one of the Fifties and then over to Broadway. Go down Broadway till you’re stopped.
In a minute we were in the midst of an ocean of people. The newspapers had not yet made the street, but ribboned streamers were floating from the windows, and any kind of scrap of paper was being thrown from the buildings.
We were stopped on our way down Broadway at about 48th Street. Times Square was already a sea of celebrators. We detoured and raced down to Macy’s. Then we began to walk up toward Times Square.
Broadway
By this time the newspapers were on the street – great full-page streamers – and nothing official. The President hadn’t made the announcement. It wasn’t official.
But now it was too late. V-E Day was here, damn it, and let him who dared deny it! That was the mood of the crowds. If THIS was a false alarm then Heaven help someone! The bars along Broadway filled to bursting.
We jammed into a restaurant and tried to eat something. Everyone was talking to everyone else. They simply IGNORED the delay of the President’s statement. The wholesale places had already declared a holiday and the workers were on the street. The other stores were still open, but the little shopkeepers stood in their doorways, uncertain what to do.
Now the people were grabbing the papers in a kind of desperation. What? No President’s statement YET? Okay, it was V-E Day ANYWAY! You can’t be fooled twice!
We got into a taxi that had a loud radio. “Cruise and turn up the radio,” we asked the driver. George Hicks was talking from inside Germany somewhere. Surrender had come there, all right.
Overhead some planes tore madly. The headlines on the papers grew blacker, bigger. The cops looked very sober and important, standing like rocks, human eddies whirling around them.
Presently, the white confetti began to thin… the crowds grew a little less boisterous. The shopkeepers who had locked their doors returned. Broadway showed a widening channel.
The painter
We came back to our hotel. I sat down here to write. A sudden white apparition filled the window, made me jump out of my skin. Just a white-overalled painter dropping down outside to paint the frame of my window, smoking nonchalantly, heedless of the noisy hum beneath him, the excited planes, the slow-drifting “snow” from other windows…
“The thing is to take it easy!” he remarks with a grin, lowering himself and swinging gently 12 stories above the street. “We’re suckers for excitement, wear ourselves out. Nobody can tell us nothin’ if we’re set to hear what we want to hear. We’re told not to throw confetti or wastepaper, and look what we done arready and the President not even told us it’s time to let out yet! Solves us right if we’re fooled again. Me, I fastens my belt and makes sure I’m all set, before I starts paintin’ the town!”
“But suppose it IS true. Won’t you celebrate?”
“Yep. In doo time. In doo time. But this is a swell afternoon for to paint, lady after all this rain we’ve been having.”
…Now he’s swung over to the other window. I feel quieter watching him. The noise below has quieted down, too. And the snow isn’t falling at all, anymore, from the high windows around Grand Central, yonder…
