My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

Management. I left Lages Field on a military propeller plane and
arrived at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey about 10 hours
later. From there, I took a bus to New York City where I arrived at
the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I was hauling three pieces of
luggage with me, and I had to go down to a lower level to get out
onto the street. I encountered something I had never used before –
an escalator! -- I grabbed my luggage and jumped on. As I was
going down the escalator, one of my suitcases got away from me.
It barreled down the stairs and hit a person at the bottom. He was
furious! He called me all kinds of names, from A to Z. I
apologized, saying that I had just arrived in the U.S. and that it was
my first time using an escalator. He looked at me very strangely
and I proceeded out onto the street. I took a taxi cab to the nearest
YMCA and stayed there a couple of nights so I could tour the Big
Apple.
It was fascinating to see that huge city with all its lights, Time
Square, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the
skyscrapers that many people only dream about. I remember going
to a night club called Latino Quarter where I spent a very
lonesome evening feeling so small in such a monstrous city. Two
days later, I took a Greyhound bus to Montgomery, Alabama, and
then changed buses to go to Birmingham, where the university was
located. When I boarded this bus, I took a seat in the back, at
which point the driver told me, “You are white, so you must sit in
the front of the bus.” Although I knew there was considerable
prejudice in the United States - especially in the south - I was
shocked!
The University was enormous with thousands of students. It was
difficult at first to be totally immersed in the English language, but
from what I had already learned in secondary school in Portugal
and the courses I took at the University of Maryland, I was able to
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