- Part One -

All stories © 2007 by H.W. Tony Hearn
Any part thereof may be shared with others through email for pleasure, not for profit

"That Garden Party"

I never shall forget that garden party! It was the night I first got stinking drunk. This happened while I was at a very high-class garden party just north of the Saw Mill River bridge north of the Borough of Manhattan in, let's see, oh, yeah, The Bronx. There are five boroughs in New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and The Bronx. The northern part of The Bronx has some very expensive spreads.

When I was a student in Austin at the University of Texas in the early '50s, my friends would marvel at how I became intoxicated drinking a lone bottle of Pearl. I never had to worry about getting drunk. I was out of it half way down the long neck. But this is the story of the night Tony Hearn had to be carried bodily up to his second-floor flat and placed into his bed at #55 Irving Place, across the street from Pete's Tavern, the famous watering hole frequented by another Texan, William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry. Actually, I lived exactly midway between Pete's Tavern and the home of Washington Irving of Icabod Crane and Sleepy Hollow and other Catskill Mountain tales fame.

Tony standing outside Pete's Tavern while on a visit to Manhattan in 1987. In 1956, Tony lived in a flat across the street midway down the block at #55 Irving Place, on the second floor, above the New Starlight Restaurant, which served aromatic Chinese food. William Sydney Porter, aka O. Henry, resided in a ground floor room five decades earlier.

The year I lived in Manhattan, I spent much of my leisure time in Pete's Tavern, hoping some of O. Henry's skill at spinning short stories might seep into my skull. He and I had a few other talents in common. I had also worked at the Houston Post back when it was located in that warehouse of a building on Leland Street. Though I had never worked for a bank or embezzled funds, I had been warned by the sheriff in Harris County to stop abusing checking accounts. No one had told me it was illegal "to borrow" money by kiting checks. I think I had one or two other things in common with Sydney, but I can't remember them right now.

But back to my story of the night I, frankly, don't remember. I do recall the prologue to that night, and I remember waking up two days later in the bathtub of my flat where I had sought to drown myself with cold running water as my brain suffered the worst aching endured in recent time since British troops were bombarded by cannon and were forced to evacuate New York, or New Amsterdam, in the run-up to American independence. Or, maybe it was the Dutch who got blown out of Gotham. I'm confused. New York has a long and vivid past. But my tale of being blasted is every bit as graphic.

(I might add that I was the driver around the mid-Hudson Valley in the middle '60s for Hamilton Fish, the grandson of the American Secretary of State of the same name during the administration of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. The "Colonel," as Fish was called, took me to several Army–Navy games at West Point. He was re-working political contacts from when he was the Congressman from that area of upstate New York for 25 years – until President Franklin D. Roosevelt gerrymanded his district – to help his son, another Hamilton Fish, gain the Republican nomination for Congress. Young Fish was in a primary battle with Gordon Liddy. I came up from Austin, Texas, that Spring and Summer, 1968, to help Ham win over the future "plumber of the Nixon White House." I would drive Ham to and from Manhattan to visit Brooks Brothers and other stores about town. Ham had many connections in Manhattan. After all, the Hamilton Fishes were all descendants of Peter Stuyvesant, one of the Dutch founders of what became New York City, and the many Fishes who swam in those waters.)

This all started as a blind date. NEVER, never, never NEVER! You hear! NEVER! Never go out on a blind date. I don't care if the girl is as rich, or her parents are, as Oprah Winfrey. I was set up! Never, never, never listen to anyone who tells you he or she knows a very sweet girl who would just love to go out with you. The operative word is "sweet." Sweet, in the lexicon of blind dating, means the girl is either as ugly as the front end of the horse upon which Lady Godiva rode nude or she is as broad in the beam as the rear end of that same stead. She might have a heart of gold, or a purse full of it, but expect to be startled when you first glimpse the babe. I truly wished I had been the blind date. I had to shut my eyes to close out the vision of the poor girl. But, true to my nature, I struggled to be kind about the shock.

My date happened to be the daughter of the owner of Van Cleef and Arpel, the famous and fabulous jeweler of New York's Fifth Avenue: Susanna Van Cleef. (Please, don't anyone go tell Susanna about this story. I'll deny it, and if you do tell her, I'll haunt you with endless spam email and send a worm into your computer. I don't want to hurt her fat feelings --- eerrrrr ---- I mean, I don't want to cause her any further pain. I have no idea of how I might have hurt her feelings that night at the garden party.)

Because I was a poor Texan living on a shoestring in Manhattan, I didn't have private transportation. I was upfront with the person who set me up with Susanna. (I might add that person was the stunningly beautiful daughter of a full admiral in the United States Navy. Damned if I can remember her name. She was one of the most gorgeous tall girls – young women – I ever looked up and down. Really! I really wanted to make time with her. But she set me up with "sweet" Susanna.) So, I received a telephone call telling me I would be picked up at my flat at six o'clock that Friday evening. I was instructed to be waiting at the curb in front of, as I said, #55 Irving Place, a respectable neighborhood, just south of Gramercy Park, the locked playground for the children of the very rich who lived on the park's perimeter.

Promptly at six, a gleaming black limousine pulled to the curb. Out popped a chauffeur in livery. He came around to the rear door to let me enter the inner sanctum of this elegant means of conveyance. And so this is how the night I got smashed at that garden party began. I lowered my six-foot plus frame and slid inward.

"Yikes!" I exclaimed. There was barely room for me upon the seat. "Sweet" Susanna exuded herself everywhere. But I was gallant! I hunted around to find her hand, and I kissed it, and said, "I'm Tony! So nice to meet all of you!" No! I didn't say that, but I was tempted.

The chauffeur drove off. He headed across town and to the drive that runs along the Hudson River. I felt very much like Washington Irving's Icabod Crane, seated as I was next to what made me think of the headless horseman, or the horse's backside. We soon arrived in The Bronx and the garden party which was in progress.

At the party, I was one among many, many guests, and I was, most definitely, the one dressed most shabbily. I had one suit to my name– a very little blue – sky blue – plain pipe rack sort of male garment made of something like a heavy felt material which quickly took on the aroma of human sweat. It was a very warm summer evening in that garden in The Bronx, and every man was wearing a white dinner jacket, except me.

It must have been quite a sight. This tall skinny Texan in the discount light blue felt suit guiding (or, better put, being dragged around by) probably the richest young woman present. She wore an outfit that reminded me of the tutus in which the waltzing female hippopotami were garbed in Walt Disney's original production of Fantasia. She was the epitomι of super abundance. And her father's jewels, liberally draped over a bosom which kept on giving and giving and jiggling to and fro, did nothing to redeem the spectacle. She was as wide as I was tall. Someone must have taken a photograph of us with one of those wide-angle lens, and I didn't make it in the shot.

Well, I could go on and on about the miserable situation into which I had blundered, but . . . I was nice . . . that is, until I discovered the punch that was being served. I had worked up a thirst.

I have a faint recollection of the name of the punch. I think it was something like a series of numerals . . . 777 or, maybe, 666. It escapes me. But it was a cold beverage. I, of course, knew nothing of what it contained beyond ice. I almost poured it over my head, I was so hot. I do remember Susanna asked me to pour some into the cleavage of her bountiful breasts. I complied. The dear girl let out such a shrill cry it called even greater attention to me and her. I sought a refill and disappeared for an interval to escape the public notice.

By the time I had consumed my third glass of this fortified punch, quite frankly, Susanna's size no longer concerned me. I was being led around like a monkey on a leash with a ring through my nose. I met I think some of the most influential personages in New York. By that time I was the blinded date. My vision had become impaired. I had to steady myself by leaning heavily upon Susanna. She was a pillar of stability. I was all over her. I was told much later than I drawled loudly some fairly substantial statements about the superiority of men bred in Texas over those weaned in the Empire State. I'm told I also challenged all comers to engage in a duel to defend their honor. I lost all recollection of what ensued beyond the fifth glass of punch. I was hopelessly drunk. I remember nothing, but what seems to me to be some sort of duel for my own honor in the backseat of that limousine on the way back to Irving Place.

I have the horrible notion that Susanna compromised my innocence as the chauffeur drove on to midtown Manhattan. I have no knowledge of whether I was inserted into my bed alone or coupled with the Van Cleef enfant chιri. That potent punch spared me any recollection of an extended terminal encounter with that all-encompassing bundle of blubber.

All I can muster in the way of commentary regarding that garden party and its aftermath is "How sweet it was that it ended."

Oh my aching head! Sweet, sweet, Susanna! Don't you cry for me! I'm so happy, so very happy, I have never again allowed a touch of Everclear – that 100 proof dose of alcohol –that made that punch so powerful that night – to suck the moisture out of my mouth.

That punch, whatever its name – was, truly, a disguised blessing. I don't think I could have endured cold sober the full dimensions of that blind date at that garden party just north of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City.

Postscript to That Garden Party

Someone has asked me: "Did you ever see Susanna again?"

Yes, I did see her again. In fact, after I recovered from the life-threatening hangover, I did receive another phone call from, I suppose, a woman who was some sort of secretary at Van Cleef and Arpel. She was the same lady who had told me to be at the curb that earlier Friday. This person told me I was invited to the Van Cleef home for dinner that coming weekend.

Susanna, apparently, didn't use the phone. I was told to be on the curb again to be picked up by the same limousine. Before I could think up a plausible excuse, I stammered out my acceptance. I was doomed, but I was resolute. No more punch and no more letting Susanna take advantage of me. I was ambivalent about being on the curb. Perhaps the admiral's daughter – who had started all this – might be at the dinner, too. No drinking, but I would risk the gamble. I lost!

My only recollection of that second encounter with Susanna, and her parents, concerned the dear girl's home. It was, let's see, how can I describe it: jaded and bejeweled. It took up the entire floor of a residential building on, I believe, 75th Street, on the East Side of Manhattan. I was led on a tour by Susanna.

But about Susanna and Mrs. Van Cleef. The daughter must have been suffering from some sort of malady of her glands, or something. The mother must have been suffering from cancer or some other cause of advancing morbidity. Mrs. Van Cleef was emaciated. And she could only speak in a whisper, a very cultured utterance, the extent of which seemed to be limited to what she spoke to the servants who appeared in various rooms of Susanna's spread.

I have no memory of Mr. Van Cleef. He sat at the head of the elongated dinner table and I really couldn't see him, and, besides, Susanne kept up such a flood of verbiage directed at me that contact with her parents was impossible. Susanne told me in vivid detail about how I was the talk of the garden party, all that I had said and done. She told me, too, that all of her friends wanted to see and listen to me again and how she was planning a huge affair in the ballroom of some Manhattan hotel. I think she was planning the announcement of our engagement! "What a wonderful successor to my father in running the jewelry store!" she seemed to be saying to me! "Yikes! Double yikes!"

One other recollection of the experience in the Van Cleef home: the contrast between the rooms occupied as living space by the family and those used by the servants. Luxury and what might be termed "deprivation." For the family: the finest rugs, the most opulent furnishings, etc., etc. massive gilded mirrors and frames of gold for costly works of art. For the servants: sparsity. I was struck dumb by the condition of the kitchen and pantry. The appliances must have been taken from some medieval castle. I recall the sink and the stove: most primitive. And a lone straight chair and table fit for a Quaker.

I could go on and on about that last encounter with Susanna! I left the Van Cleef home later that evening cold sober and with sentiments of sincerest sympathy for the servants. I identified with them. Mentally, I was disassociating myself from Susanna and her family and their class.

I did receive subsequent calls from the lady at Van Cleef and Arpel's inviting me again to other events. I was polite. I said: "Please tell Susanna I apologize. Unfortunately," I said, "My social calendar is full!" I didn't tell the lady to inform Susanna I was soon leaving Manhattan for the simple life. I was destined to enter the monastery of the Order of the Holy Cross up the Hudson River from New York City. Like the rich young ruler of the Gospel account, I had decided to leave all and to follow Jesus. I didn't tell her to let Susanna know I had found the one pearl of great price. To this day, I would not exchange that priceless jewel for all the sparkling diamonds and other baubles traded for enormous sums by the rich and famous at Van Cleef and Arpel's.

I have no way of finding out what happened to Susanna. Perhaps she found a cure for obesity. I prayed for her when I was in the monastery. Perhaps she lost her super abundance. I hope she did! She really was a very, very sweet girl.

Tony in 1956 while visiting in The Bronx.

In those days I wore bow ties. Why? I haven't the foggiest idea. I got rid of my five-gallon Stetson hat, however. I think I actually bought a black Homberg. This was, of course, before John F. Kennedy ruined the hat industry by going bare-headed in the snow for his Inauguration.

"Now, Y'all Have a Nice Time!"

Reminds me of the time, back in 1957, I went to a dive in deep Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York.

The place had a sign outside that read: "Cafe Swing Rendezvous." I could hear dance music from the sidewalk. The cafe was on a street named "McDougall's Alley."

I was a lone male – a long, tall, lean, very green, – an incredibly inexperienced Texan – more or less innocently looking for a woman who might be interested in having a date.

I watched as several females entered the cafe. I decided to go in, too!

From the front door, I spotted a chair at an empty table. I took it quickly. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the cafe, looking around, I noticed I was the only man in the place. I thought I was lucky! "No competition," I reckoned to myself.

The place had one or, maybe, two persons waiting on tables. No one, however, came to take my order. I thought the waitresses were just busy. I decided to be patient. I continued to check out the cafe's clientele. It was a rocking place. Women were dancing with other women out in the middle of the floor.

"What a shame!" I thought. "They're having to dance with each other!" I muttered. "What luck! I've really come to the right place! Just wait till I start cutting in on these women who are having to dance without a man! They are gonna love I've come to this place!"

The song came to an end and when a new one started, I got up and stepped toward a particularly attractive blonde who was dancing with a rather hefty, tough-looking brunette.

Like I had learned to do back in Miss Fathom's dancing class in my native Houston, I tapped the brunette on her shoulder and said, "May I cut in?"

Turning to me, the brunette looked me up and down! "What in the shit do you want?" she barked.

"I'd like to cut in. I'd like to dance with your partner!" I croaked, somewhat taken aback by her fierce visage.

"And I'd like for you to get the fuck out of here!" she growled.

"Ehhhhhhh!" I gasped! Back in those days, I had heard the f-word maybe twice in my life! We didn't use that language where I came from. I retreated back to my table.

I looked around for another candidate to dance. That blonde was really the only good-looking woman in the place. While I was checking out the crowd, I noticed women going in and out of a restroom off the dance floor. I felt the urge to go relieve myself. I got up and headed in that direction.

The sign said, "Restroom!" It didn't say, "Men's" or "Women's." "How strange!" I thought.

I had no more looked around than the brunette who had growled at me earlier was in my face. "Are you stupid?" she barked at me again.

"No," I replied, trying to force my face into a compliant smile. "I'm just looking for the men's room!" I said without a trace of disrespect in my voice. "I need to go, too!"

The brunette gathered up the brute force of an Army drill sergeant and bellowed at me, "You bet the shit you need to go! You need to get your ass right out of here. This is a lesbian bar!"

"Ohhhhhhhh!" I gasped. "I didn't know! Really! I didn't know! You all! I'm sorry! Ya'll have a nice time, you hear! Really! I didn't know!"

I never shall forget the Cafe Swing Rendezvous. I have prayed for that blonde, though! She was a good-looking girl! I sure hope that brunette treated her well!

"Eating at the Automat"

Well, those little shiny & tantalizing windows at the Automats of which you inquire were a pain in my back.

The windows are placed at the level of vision of a normal-sized New Yorker – or, in other words, knee-high to a normal-sized native Texan. "Oh, my aching back!"

I was clearly outside my turf, but that didn't diminish my hunger. So I ate often in an Automat near Grand Central Station. It was a safe place, and I could see what I was getting for my money even if I had to assume a humbling position.

I was grateful for the Automat. Which brings to mind two epicurean experiences I shall not soon forget. They involving seeking out simply a tamale or an enchilada. "My kingdom for a little Tex-Mex food back in the late 50s in New York City.

One night I had a gnawing hunger for Mexican food. I went searching to satisfy my stomach's urge and growl. Being totally inexperienced concerning the mysteries of properly satiating a patrician's palate, I wandered widely in Manhattan – up street and down avenue for a place to dine.

Finally, almost dropping from exhaustion, I spied a sign: "Spanish Village."

"Eureka!" I shouted in Greek! I should have cried "‘Excelente!" Or I probably vocalized in Texan, "Awe, shit! At last!"

My gastric juices began to perform. My salivary glands produced liquefaction to make Pavlov and his dogs foam at the mouth. I made haste to the door of this oasis of guacamole or frijoles. I entered with gusto, eager to breathe in deeply the aroma of frying tortillas.

"Hmmmmmm!" No such smell filled the place. But there were classy upholstered chairs and tables covered with fine, white tablecloths. There were no mariachis strumming guitars and tooting coronets. "Strange!" I murmured to myself. "Well, these New Yorkers are different," I surveyed with a willingness to forgive the locals their habit of adaptation.

I was seated and handed a menu. What does a Texan do in the way of adaptation? Well, this is one Texan who struggled mightily not to make a common scene.

A waiter approached. "What is this stuff?" I exclaimed. "Where's the carne guisado?' Where's the Enchilada plate? This isn't Mexican food!" I whined.

The waiter looked at me as if I were some sort of drunken hobo who had stumbled in and fallen full on his face and raised it dripping from the effluence of a spittoon:

"You are in Manhattan's premiere Spanish restaurant. We serve the finest food from Spain."

"Oh!" I uttered in stupefaction. "Oh, of course! "Then bring me one of those plates on that table over there. The plate with the mound of white rice and the stewed chicken. And I don't suppose you have a bowl of picante sauce? I'm just in from Texas and I'm hungry!"

And the second experience: I finally found an authentic Mexican restaurant over off the Franklin Delano Roosevelt expressway on Manhattan's far east side. This place, too, I never shall forget. I ordered a tamale plate with arroz, frijoles, and a flour tortilla. The meal consisted of one lean tamale. In 1957 money, the price was $12.00.

I could hardly wait to eat again at the Automat on Park Avenue and 40th Street across from New York's Grand Central Station. I was happy to bend over to see in the shiny little windows.

"Sweet Eileen at the Champagne Gallery"

Oh! I just remembered something nice that did happen to me on McDougall Alley in Greenwich Village in New York City down the street from the Cafe Swing Rendezvous.

This story didn't involve a true blonde, though. It involved the prettiest Irish girl I ever met. She was a strawberry blonde, and she was an acting student at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, the famous school for acting.

It seems the night I left the Swing Rendezvous totally disheartened and humbled by the lesbian bully I wandered wanly down McDougall Alley toward the New York Law School and Washington Square, I saw a bright neon sign up ahead with a more upscale name: Champagne Gallery. Definitely not a lesbian bar, I decided! I studied the place carefully, not wanting another negative experience. This was going to cost me! I counted the contents of my wallet. As usual, I would have to check the menu for low-budget fare. I entered.

Immediately, I could tell this was NOT the Swing Rendezvous! I scanned the faces. No brunette in leather with a chain hanging from a pocket on her buttocks. The Champagne Gallery appeared to be safe. It was not a dive! I noticed complementary restrooms. "Ladies" and "Gentlemen." This place had class. I felt at home.

Shortly, a very pretty young lady came up to me as I stood in a little entry. She greeted me warmly and asked if I would like a table.

I followed her as she led me to a table very near a piano with a young man at the keyboard. He was accompanying another pretty young lady who was singing an aria from some opera I did not know. I could tell it was something classical, though. High brow! When I was younger, my mother required that I go with her to classical music events in my native Houston. My father always feigned illness.

So I settled into my chair. I was mesmerized by the young lady who left me with a menu. I was soon startled when I saw the prices. I seem to recall a whole bunch of zeros following the double digits. A single glass of wine cost five dollars. That's 1957 dollars. I ordered a glass.

The pretty young lady brought the wine. I swooned! Never in my life had I seen such a beautiful girl. Without even touching the glass of wine, I became intoxicated. She paused to say a few words to me. I was enthralled!

"You're so tall!" this goddess of a wait person said to me. Her voice was pure heavenly air, so soft, so gentle – the epitome of grace – diametrically opposite the bark and bellow of that brunette at the Rendezvous.

It soon came out that I was from Texas. I was, after all, wearing a five-gallon Stetson hat, unobtrusively as I could manage. It was the only hat I had and it was chilly at night in Manhattan. I did not have the good sense to obtain a modest cap. I stood out! But, apparently, my beautiful waitress was taken with me. She kept checking back to see if I needed another glass of wine. I had to sip it, very slowly if I was going to prolong the "experience" of being waited upon by this apparition from the highest reaches of the realm of glory.

The waitress left a check on my table and told me she had to disappear. "I have to perform next!" she told me. "Then I have to leave." I was surprised, and I was destroyed! "Leave?" I cried. "But what is your name?" I begged. "Mine is Tony. I must see you again!" "Then come back tomorrow night!" she said. "My name is Eileen!" She disappeared.

I waited for Eileen's performance to begin. What I soon witnessed captured my absolute attention and stole my heart! Eileen came out to sing in the most gorgeous dress imaginable. Whereas I had thought she was beautiful before, with stage make-up she was stunning. I was back in the same chair the next night. I hocked a portable typewriter to buy more wine. Ah! Yes! The memory of Eileen, now that I think of her, becomes clearer. She was, indeed, a strawberry blonde! An Irish strawberry blonde with the complexion of purest milk. I think she possessed endearing eyes of blue. Whatever color they were, those marvelous irises enveloped me when I appeared every night for my one glass of Cabernet Sauvignon at the Champagne Gallery.

I became a regular, seated always at the table by the piano. Eileen became Tony's wait person. While she was waiting tables nearby, she would come by mine to drop little comments about herself. Some nights she would complain, "These shoes are killing me. My little toes are being brutalized!" And the temptation to bend down to kiss her feet drove me near to shedding tears. Eileen would roll her eyes in mock agony and I would feel her pain to the marrow of my bones. And then she would comment on the various tips she had received from this or that client. She would predict who would leave what amount. She was good at sizing up a man and his money. She told me I was definitely a twenty-percent kind of man. "I knew that the moment I saw you, Tony!" And she would smile at me, so sweetly.

"You're the type of guy a girl can trust!" she told me after several nights. I became Eileen's escort from the Champagne Gallery to her flat blocks away when she had completed her performance at the end of her shift.

"I'll let you walk me home!" Eileen whispered in my ear. "I'll feel very safe with such a strong, tall man at my side." I began to stand straighter, sucking more air into my lungs. If that brunette with the blonde at the Rendezvous could see me know!

Eileen was auditioning for a part in an off-Broadway show. Her classes at the acting school were coming to a close. I knew my nights as her personal guard – I was the original walkman – were coming to an end. Eileen knew I was planning to enter a monastery. Our relationship was certainly chaste – though she would hug me closely in the cold night air as we made our way to the front door of her apartment building. "I'd invite you in, but I have a roommate! We don't permit guests to come in!" At her door, she always tilted her head upward to allow me to bestow a tender kiss upon her brow before I turned to brave the long, solitary trudge homeward at least a mile away on Irving Place, the far side of Park Avenue at 17th Street.

Well . . . the night came when the magic ended. A few days earlier Eileen had won the part in the off-Broadway show. She was given the lead in the troupe to take the musical "Little Mary Sunshine" on the road.

"This is my last performance at the Gallery, Toneeeeeee!" Eileen whispered to me as she set the glass of wine on the white tablecloth in front of me. It seemed to be bitter that night. "I don't need an escort home tonight, Toneeeee! The company is going out to celebrate. I'm afraid I have to give them my full attention. I really will miss you, Toneeeee! You're been so sweet! Really! I'll always remember you!"

Eileen was beaming in her beauty. Truly, I was so very proud of her. It was my last night, too, at the Champagne Gallery. All things must pass. Co-incidentally, I was leaving Manhattan, too, in a few days. I knew my relationship with lovely Eileen was platonic. I was philosophic about it and her. As she closed her performance that last evening, she came over to my table as the crowd at the Gallery were giving her a standing ovation. As the clapping continued, Eileen took my hand and led me to share her closing bow. She embraced me and tilted her head upward a final time. I planted one closing kiss upon her Irish forehead! "Sweet Eileen." She went on to fame and stardom in Hollywood. I headed to the monastery in West Park, New York, and, ultimately, to oblivion.

She was Eileen Brennan, who later starred in the television series "Private Benjamin" with Goldie Hawn. My destiny has always been to play bit, supportive parts. Ahhhhh! How sweet it has been!

Eileen Brennan in "Little Mary Sunshine"

"Green Jelly"

This story occurred a decade later up the Hudson River in Dutchess County. It is about a famous humorist who did call Manhattan his home.

The green jelly caught my notice the moment it was placed upon the table. I was seated with six or seven other persons in a banquet hall at Bennett College in Millbrook, New York, in the Spring, 1963. Several hundred were also attending a dinner commemorating some event to mark a significant anniversary in the history of the school which, among other notables, was the alma mater of film star Betty Davis. She may have been at the head table. All I clearly remember is that newspaper columnist Art Buckwald was the keynote speaker, and the green jelly.

I was a general assignment reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal. I was new on the job, having recently departed a monastery in the Hudson River valley. I had not been reading newspapers while I was in the religious life. I didn't know Art Buckwald from Art Linklater. I just knew he was supposed to be funny.

Earlier in the day, the editor of the Pougkeepsie Journal, a stern man named Ed Rozell, had called me over to his desk. "Here's a ticket to a dinner out in Millbrook this evening. You look like you could use a free meal," he sneered. He was a cruel but highly observant man. I took the ticket.

I was usually hungry! My weekly pay envelope contained $90, less deductions.

So when the waiter placed the dish of green jelly upon the banquet table that night, I took notice. Soon thereafter another waiter placed a basket of dinner rolls in the middle of the table right in front of me. They also did not escape my eyes. I looked around. No dishes appeared to be headed in the direction of our table. The serving had started at the other end of the hall. It was going to be some time before anything substantial was available.

"Would you care for a dinner roll?" I inquired of the lady seated next to me. She declined. I asked the gentleman on my other side. "No, thank you," he responded. I took one. And then I reached for the green jelly.

It was the first time I had seen jelly colored green. I helped myself. "Hmmmm! Very tasty!" I murmured.

On stage whoever was in charge began the introductions at the head table. I reached for another roll. I also brought out my reporter's notebook. I scribbled in one or two details of what was going on. I helped myself to yet another roll and the green jelly. No one else seemed to be interested in the rolls and the green jelly. I thought, "Well, if they don't want any, I'll just kill off the bread and jam!"

I kept listening to Mr. Buckwald, but I couldn't catch on to the topic of his talk. All he seemed to be saying were one liners. Everyone was laughing, but I was frantic to come up with a news peg for the story I would have to turn in early the next morning to Mr. Rozell. And then they began to place the main course on our table. It was roast lamb! Egads! I hate lamb. In Texas, we sheared our sheep. And then someone asked for the green jelly. I was embarrassed. I had eaten it all. I signaled for a wait person. "No more!" I was told in broken English. I was the social pariah of the evening. And I finally gave up trying to discover Mr. Buckwald's principal topic. I said to myself, "This man is nothing but a clown. I can't make heads or tales of what he's trying to say!"

Next morning, I had to face editor Ed Rozell's grilling. "Sorry, sir!" I apologized. "I listened to every word that man said. I couldn't find anything he said that made sense!"

Mr. Rozell looked at me. Then he frowned. "Or you crazy? That man is the most famous humorist in all of New York, maybe even America! I didn't expect a story! I just thought you could use the meal! And I hear you were quite the sensation at the dinner. Your tongue is still green!"

"Slaving at a Manhattan Vanity Press"

To finance my farting around in Manhattan – now that's not a very nice way to begin a story. Let me begin again more appropriately. Hmmmmm!

To put money in my pocket, I did work while I was exploring the many facets of life in America's then largest city. I arrived in New York City on a Greyhound Bus from Austin, Texas, in mid-November 1956. I think I was the first – certainly among the first – midnight cowboys to check out the town. I left for Poughkeepsie – up the Hudson River about 90 miles – onboard New York Central's Twentieth Century Limited sometime around the first week of September one year later. (No, I never "Picked my toes in Poughkeepsie," but I did become a casual friend of Dr. Timothy Leary, the high priest of pot, a number of years later when I was the editor of that award-winning weekly newspaper, the prestigious Millbrook Roundtable.)

So, while I was checking out Manhattan (and getting lost countless times trying to figure out the subway system), I did get a job – working in the publishing business. Okay! I became the male secretary for the vice president of a vanity press of sorts. The man had an honorary doctor of letters degree from some bible college in one of the Carolinas. In the months I took dictation from a "Doctor" Downs (I believe his full name and degree was Winfield Scott Downs, LITT.D., who, according to a Google search, was part of the executive leadership of the Lewis Historical Publishing Co. at the time I was employed there.), he impressed upon me the crucial importance of using punctuation precisely in the letters I transcribed for his signature. He would go over each letter, using his fingertip to guide his eyes in examination of every comma, semi-colon, and period mark. I learned quickly to omit one so he could pounce on my oversight, feel he has set me straight, and send me back to make that correction. He signed the other letters without comment. I became a master of the possibilities of committing a comma fault.

But I tend to digress. So many memories of my months in Manhattan keep occurring in my mind. For instance, this publishing house – the Lewis Historical Publishing Company – paid the rent on its offices on the entire eleventh floor of the building at Eighth Avenue and, hmmm, I think, 15th Street, from revenue it obtained for publishing genealogical research for the E.I. duPont de Nemours family. The duPonts had a fetish about giving their friends buckram-bound volumes detailing trees of ancestry. The researchers spent hours upon hours looking up this dribble. I know. My desk was in an office I shared with the chief investigator of each family tree. He was a very strange person.

To continue about this strange man – he had a handle bar mustache which he would twirl around his index fingers when he was not banging away with one hand or the other on his Underwood typewriter. It was very quiet in our office. Everyone was supposed to be concentrating upon his or her work. (There were two or three women in this enterprise.) It WAS supposed to be quiet in the office. It was, except for a peculiar noise which defied my comprehension. The noise – suuuSP! – or more like seeeipppfff! – occurred at irregular intervals. It was also made clandestinely. There was no predicting the sound. And it had something to do with this strange man who was in charge of supervising the genealogical research. Having gone on for months, I finally took advantage of his becoming ill one day. I searched the top drawer of his office desk, and I found the most repulsive evidence. This freak was addicted to fried grasshoppers. He would suck the innards of the varmint and leave behind the shells. Eeeiiiaaaaa! I almost vomited in the drawer. I forget his name. Something like Snivel or Bugger or Phlegm!

The Lewis Historical Publishing Company had a venerable past and it made money publishing the past of others, principally in this nation's southland. I know, because my main job was writing collection letters, for Doctor Downs' signature. "Get the money!" I was told. "Use words creatively to persuade our clients, or their next of kin, to remit what we are due!" Doctor Downs told me. "I give you free rein with your Underwood, Tony!" He would always add, "Just watch the punctuation. We always write our letters properly!" "Certainly!" I would respond. "Most certainly!" My months under the tutelage of this master of "belles lettres" marked me indelibly. I am, to this late point in the span of mortality, never careless about where I place my punctuation. (Would that always how I let my morals fall I had exhibited such concern and caution!)

Doctor Downs was not timid in letting me know that I would be let go if I could not manage the proper disposition of correspondence for the Lewis Historical Publishing Company. I was, after all, upholding the legacy of a prestigious house! The comma, as with one's chastity, must be protected! I have no doubt Doctor Downs considered me a prostitute of prose when I submitted to him my first writing samples. But I was a willing pupil and I needed to keep the job – to fund my misadventures around the island of Manhattan.

The Lewis Historical Publishing Company had problems with ethics, it seems to me now, as I look back upon its practices. Beyond ornamenting the ancestral family trees of clients with distant and dubious notables, this press created huge volumes including the biographies of willing pillars of southern society. The scam went like this: representatives of the Lewis Historical Publishing Company combed the South for aged veterans of the war between the states. It was NEVER the Civil War! These old warriors were best when found in their dotage. Each was told he had been selected for inclusion in a volume depicting the merits of truly southern gentlemen. Participants would told a copperplate portrait would be placed in conjunction with the text describing the glorious record of what he had accomplished to defend the South. The representative provided a contract authorizing the Lewis Historical Publishing Company to research each client's past and to publish the account in a biographical sketch of appropriate length, including, of course, a photograph. The representative scheduled an appointment at a local photographer to obtain a suitable portrait. A letter of congratulations was sent to each client. Months later, after a hundred or so subjects had been recruited for a particular volume of biographical sketches, an expensively-bound book, with copperplate portraits, was produced, a complimentary copy for each participant, and additional copies available for purchase by the aged personage, by his relatives, and, of course, a copy given gratis to the local library or museum. It helped if the client had died in the interim between the signing of the contract and the book's publication. In the fine print of the contract was notice that if a copperplate portrait was provided and authorized for use by the client, an appropriate sum was due and payable to the Lewis Historical Publishing Company. The company had incurred considerable additional cost for printing the portrait, and, of course, the local photographer had to be paid.

The task of the company correspondent (the person in charge of collections – my job) was to persuade the person who had signed the contract authorizing the portrait, or his survivors, to pay what was due the Lewis Historical Publishing Company. The cost depended upon the size of the portrait, usually a full page for persons who had been in positions of leadership in the southern cause. I recall sending out statements of "account due" exceeding sums of a thousand dollars or more.

There was considerable resistance among most who received the bill for being lauded pictorially and literarily. Some, a very few, remitted immediately. My agenda was to dun the many who didn't. My letters waxed with phrases poetic and, regretfully, successive ones, if necessary, became punitive. One ultimate sentence might warn: "We would certainly want you to pay the balance due to prevent having to request the return of the complimentary volume presented to the local library! Such a blemish upon the distinguished reputation of such and so would be most unfortunate! Would you agree?" I shiver to consider the consequences to my soul for having composed such intimidations upon the disarmed veterans of such a noble effort, particularly seeing as how the envelopes containing such letters bore the postmark of that city of the victorious Yankee state, New York.

My position at the Lewis Historical Publishing Company remained firm and would, no doubt, have endured had not a most unfortunate occurrence transpired in a relationship between myself and the person who would be regarded in current terms the vice president in charge of human resources.

It's intriguing the psychology governing remembrance. Deeds often persist in the memory; the names of those who do them don't. Such is the case of the reason for my departure. I turned my task over to an attractive young lady selected by Doctor Downs, he told me, for her gift of penning poems. I can imagine how she and ole Downs got on, correctly, I am so very certain. I left because a man, whose name totally escapes me, got too close. I chose to sever myself from the company.

What happened started innocently. I was, after all, a poor young man who needed to make every cent I earned count, to permit a certain sum to purchase distraction in leisure moments from my burden of bringing to bear upon debtors to my employer their moral responsibility. Though the company could not afford to offer me increments to my salary, the person in charge of personnel suggested I could increase my real income by accepting his offer of using a spare room in his apartment in Peter Cooper Village, an expansive residential community on Manhattan's more or less lower west side. He told me the room had remained unused, and that having such space uncommitted rested upon his conscience. He was a practicing Christian Scientist who believed in the using all things with moral purpose. I could have the use of the room for free, provided I lived there, in the spirit of Doctor Downs, correctly. No guests should be invited home, however. I accepted the offer and I was freed from shelling out for shelter. I have more money for my wallet and to spend evenings at sites like the Champagne Gallery and the elegant dining facility at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – with the gleaming metallic water nymphs who danced upon the waters of the central reflection pond. All went well at Peter Cooper Village until . . . one night when Manhattan – and the entire northeastern coast of the United States – became coated with driven snow. It was cold, very cold, outside, and I had the habit of walking much upon the pavement of the city. My feet became nearly frozen.

What happened on that cold night remains vivid in my mind. I trudged home to the Village late, and I entered my allotted space to nestle in my bed. I planned to sleep late the next morning, a Saturday – free of writing collection letters. Before sleep came, I heard a gentle knocking upon my door – a tapping, a constant rapping, rapping, gently upon my chamber door. I raised from my pillow and I called out: "Please enter, I'm still awake."

The door opened and it was the vice president of human resources for the Lewis Historical Publishing Company, wearing his pajamas and his slippers, and, in his hand, he carried a steaming cup, a hot toddy, he said. "This will warm you!" he said with caring. "You must be frozen solid!" he said.

I sat up in my bed and received the cup of toddy. "Thanks!" I said, taking the elixir to warm my body. I was still cold. "I almost froze my feet off!" I said, immediately regretting I had let a dangling preposition fall from my lips.

Suddenly my landlord reached for the blanket that covered the bottom of my bed. "I'll massage your feet!" this man volunteered. I could not decline the favor sufficiently fast to avoid this man griping the first of my bipeds. His hands were, indeed, warm. They seemed, in fact, quite hot.

"Oh, well, if you like," I said. My feet did begin to thaw. I sipped the hot toddy. I felt a bit foolish, but what was I to do? Kick the man in the face? He had begun to lower his face to within inches of the soles of my feet. And then I felt his lips encompass the big toe of my left foot. I was shocked. My god, I thought, this man is coming on too strongly for my comfort and my sense of right and wrong. I walked the straight and narrow with my fellow man. Maybe not with women, but certainly, I was straight with men.

"Yikes!" I exclaimed. "My feet are quite alright, now!" I said. I felt his teeth quench onto my toe. And then he proceeded to kiss my feet, many, many kisses anointed them, as I struggled to free them from his dedicated attempts to maintain his grasp. "I'm sorry!" I said. "I can't stand anyone touching my toes. I'm ticklish and I may spill this toddy all over myself!" I jerked my knees up, almost sending the cup toward the ceiling. "I've got to go to sleep. Thank you very much!"

The man stood at the foot of my bed, broken, and, I suppose, ashamed. I could tell he was shaking. He wiped his mouth, and then he turned and left the room. I put down the cup and pulled the covers over my head. "What the devil?" I thought. "Can I believe what just occurred?" I fell asleep, pondering the meaning of it all.

I saw nothing of my housing benefactor that weekend. On Monday, early in the morning, I saw him sitting in his stuffed chair in the living room of his apartment. He was reading "Guide to Science and Health" by Mary Baker Eddy. It was his custom to devote time to spiritual reading daily. He did not look up as I tiptoed through the room to the door leading to the elevators. I had breakfast at the Horn and Hordat automat on the corner before I reached my office building. I was the first employee to the company that morning. I typed collection letters, distracted by the memory of what had transpired at Peter Cooper Village. I didn't see the manager of human resources at the office that day.

Toward the end of the day, I had resolved that I would have to vacate the man's apartment. I contrived the excuse that a dear friend from Texas was arriving unexpectedly for an extended visit to Manhattan and I needed to be his guide. He and I would live at his hotel. I understood that no guests were welcome in the apartment. I thanked him very kindly for providing me shelter previously. I also explained that my visiting friend and I would be needing time to see the sights. (I had yet to check out the Statue of Liberty or ride the Staten Island ferry.) I, therefore, need to resign from my position as correspondent for the Lewis Historical Publishing Company, effective immediately.

Because I possessed little beyond what I wore on my back and upon my feet, I did not return to Peter Cooper Village that evening. I checked into the Young Men's Christian Association on, I think it was, West 34th Street, where I lived with less in my pocket. I sought other employment, which, with luck, I found at the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America. I became a male secretary again. Wouldn't you know. My new boss, I discovered, was a celibate priest, an Anglican high churchman of the Oxford Movement! We never talked about matters of the soul, at least, NEVER about my toes or the soles of my feet. Some things are wholly personal!

Go To Memories of Manhattan, Part Two

Tony at his keyboard opposite his bunk calling up stories from his recollections of his time in Manhattan, New York, circa 1956-7. The building behind the blinds is the renovated Alamo National Bank, the new home of the Drury Hotel on the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio.

Go To Memories of Manhattan, Part Two

Return to Tony's Journal