In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 by Asimov Isaac 1920-1992

Author:Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992, Authors, American
Publisher: New York, NY : Avon
Published: 1980-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

May 14, I made my way through an incredible gauntlet of security and showed up at the chemical laboratory of the Naval Air Experimental Station.

My immediate superior was Bernard Zitin, a very thin fellow, taller than I, with crisply curled black hair, an asymmetric nose, and a stammer. He was very bright and very helpful. He drove me to West Philadelphia so that I might examine possible rooms and I finally chose to move into 4707 Sansom Avenue.

It was not really an independent apartment, but a room in someone else's house. It was the only time in my life I ever lived with strangers, although I must admit the people who owned the house were reasonably good to me during the time I stayed there.

It being wartime, the Navy Yard was on a six-day week, but it was my plan to leave the Navy Yard each Saturday just as soon as the workday ended (at 4:00 p.m., for work began at 8:00 a.m.) and make my way to Broad Street Station. There I would take the train to New York, go straight to my parents', wash, shave, dash over to Gertrude's place, then return and sleep in my own bed. Sunday, I would visit Gertrude again and then take an evening train to Philadelphia to start the week again. (Of course, I would bring my laundry to New York for my mother to take care of and head out to Philadelphia with fresh clothing-)

It was a dreadful routine, but I kept it up for week after week. Because I was in New York only for the twenty-four-hour period centered about Saturday night I could never see Campbell, but that didn't matter. I didn't want to see anybody but Gertrude, and writing, which had been at a halt since February, continued to be nonexistent.

I was under the impression, after all, that the purpose of my writing had been to pay my way through school. Now there was no school to be paid. Indeed, the work I was doing was paying me. Why should I write, therefore? I even stopped reading science-fiction magazines, for the first time in thirteen years (I think because reading science fiction activated guilt feelings over my failure to write it.)

I tried to take advantage of my newfound independence. After all, what was to follow was the longest stretch in my life—the very longest —in which I was completely alone and not beholden to anyone; in which no one might tell me yea or nay in my personal life.

I seized the opportunity to do as I wished, therefore. Here is one example I remember. I loved soda pop, as who does not. Occasionally my mother would take a large-size soda-pop bottle, containing four glasses worth, into the house and dispense it to us. I usually got the equivalent of one glass worth.

Well, on one of my first days in Philadelphia, I bought a large-size

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