O.O. McIntyre
Wilmington Morning News/September 16, 1920
NEW YORK, Sept. 15—Paddy was born a stone’s throw from McGuirk’s Suicide Hall—that dank beer palace that counted a night drab without a helpless wanton mixing a death potion in her beer. At 20 he was husky and he earned a living as a chucker-out in East Side resorts.
It was the same story of the average East Side boy. Environment lighted him with ambitions to be a boxer and he fought two or three times a week from his “ham and beans” and a silver dollar. He became a barroom hanger-on who boasted throatily of his conquests when fired with liquor.
And then came the great war and Paddy was caught in the draft. He was in one of the regiments to go across and he learned to know the hell of trench life at the front. In the Argonne he was twice wounded. He has a silver plate in his head and as he puts it “the hinge in me leg is rusted.”
He came limping back to his East Side haunts. The barroom was gone. Ice-cream parlors were the meeting places of the old soaks he knew in the old days. He mingled with them for awhile and they listened to his stories of adventure in Europe—but it was “old stuff” and Paddy soon saw that he was becoming a nuisance.
A few weeks ago he moved uptown—way above Fourteenth Street—and got a job along the docks. He worked hard but his stiff limb prevented him from doing an ordinary man’s work. So he became one of those pitiful over-aged messengers that one sees along New York streets.
He told his landlady that there was a buzzing in his head. “I think,” he sald, “that German bullet is making me go off my nut, lady. I’m about cuckoo.” But he worked on until the other night. Shortly before sunrise a policeman heard a splash along a pier. Later he found a note. It was from Paddy and it read: “I left ten bucks in my Sunday kicks at the roomin’ house. If who find this is a good guy, he’ll give it to some tough kid over on the East Side who, like me, never had a chanst. I’m off to stop this buzzin’ in my conk.”
________________________
The Rialto is engulfed with a flood of musical shows. They are all of the revue type and follow the same groove. They are shallow imitations of the Zlegfeld type of light entertainment. Except they are not Ziegfeldian. Imitations are never worthwhile, but because there are very few other types of show all seem to be making money. It is a boom to the song writers however. No matter how poor the show, the songs will have a sale.
__________________________
Back home the seamstress in our family was Miss Jennie Smith and she lived across the railroad tracks. As I remember folk referred to her as “Jen Smith.” In New York she would be known merely as “Mlle. Jenny” and never as a seamstress. Always she would be a modiste. There are very few really French dressmakers in New York, but unless one acquires a French accent business passes by. Fifth avenue is lined with dressmaking establishments with high sounding names—and most of them are run by young foreign girls who were reared on the East Side. One of the most fashionable milliners in town used to sell chewing gum in the lobby of Miner’s Bowery Theater 18 years ago. Now she is known as Baroness Something or Other—and she carries a lorgnette to work. Just think of that.
____________________________
One of the loneliest jobs in New York is the caretaker of a public fountain far up on Riverside Drive. He is away from the highway and few knew about his fountain. He goes for days and days without seeing a soul. But he has plenty to drink and plenty of time for thought.
The Archive 