O.O. McIntyre
Palladium-Item/January 5, 1928
NEW YORK, Jan. 5—Thoughts while strolling: The pleasant cop at 5th avenue and 56th Street. Mauve lights in velvet-draped windows. The golden cock on the Hecksher building. Nan Brltton, who wrote “The President’s Daughter” and not a head turns.
Those women who smoke cigarettes waiting for autos in front of dressmaking parlors. More buildings resembling wedding cakes. Jessie Crawford, the movie organist. A crowd before a daguerreotype of Barnum and Tom Thumb in a photographer’s cabinet.
The Ship Grill—where patrons may take dogs. An ex-jockey driving a taxi. Whatever became of the Glidden tours? The apartment house where Peggy Joyce used to live. Jack Curley. Sullen looking men who loaf about garage entrances.
The glitter of Viennese bakeries. Wedding costumes for rent. Palmistry parlors. A mumbling hag crosses herself in front of a church and stumbles on. The eerie quiet of a hospital street. And those garrulous orderlies hanging about the ambulance gate.
East Side children with baskets of chips. Old people who seem to sit at upstairs windows throughout the long winter. Corner loafers with pulled-down caps. Barber colleges. The eerie choral chant from a Russian church. A little white coffin followed by a single cab.
A woman smacks a spindly child. A hatless drunk shadow-boxes in front of an undertaking parlor. Unkempt silent crowds around labor bulletin boards. Advertising doctors who stress social ills. Flip talking girls chewing gum and making the best of poverty.
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A group of those imported dancing girls who flash in and out of the musical comedies with such mechanical precision recently quit a hit show on 48 hours’ notice and sailed to their native land. It is said that during their eight months’ stay not one had the pleasure of masculine companionship. Front row enthusiasts, on the lookout for dancing girls for supper after the show, were not interested. And the stage manager is authority for the opinion the girls worked so fast they became a mere bright blur and were as quickly forgotten.
***
There is the story of a rich young collegiate who has missed classes several mornings to frolic about Broadway with a lady with a penchant for blackmailing ideas and a decadent taste for clear white gin. He was warned the lady was strictly Nietzscheian, living hard and dangerously. But that wasn’t what cured him. The other evening, when good college boys should be in dormitories, he answered her phone and inquired who was speaking. The voice replied to tell her it was “Dad-dums.” The lady went to the telephone to prattle baby talk and the young gentleman went sadly out of the apartment building. He had recognized his father’s voice on the phone.
The number of his taxi is 21111. Inside was a small vase of fresh flowers and in a rack an open package of cigarettes and matches. On the way during a long drive he stopped to get the latest edition of the evening paper. He thought a 50-cent tip was too much; a quarter he considered ample. And I have been wondering since where in the world he came from.
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In a swank silversmith shop on the avenue there is a window display of a silver cocktail shaker surrounded by delicately flanged, thin-stemmed goblets. An engraved card stands against the shaker reading: “An ancient receptacle used to agitate liquids.”
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Today I donned a necktie sold under the guarantee “an exclusive pattern—sold only to a single customer,” and in a four-block walk I saw a half dozen exactly like it. It is only the comforting counsel of the Blessed Promises that keeps one going.
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