Harpo Speaks! (5 page)

I spent many hours on the frozen pond in Central Park, skating gimpily around the edge of the ice on my one left-foot skate. I spent many more hours sitting on the ice, freezing my bottom where my pants weren’t patched, tying and splicing and winding, in the endless struggle to keep the skate lashed to my foot.

Oddly enough, winter had fewer hardships for me than summer did. I could always find a warm spot somewhere when it was cold. But when the city was hot, it was hot through and through, and there was no cool spot to be found.

The only relief was temporary, like a chunk of ice from the loading platform of the ice works. That was a blessing to hold and suck on, but it didn’t last long. What to do then? Only one thing to do then-go for a swim in the East River. But the way we had to swim, off the docks, was exhausting and we couldn’t stay very long in the water.

You can always spot a guy who grew up poor on the East Side by watching him go for a swim. When he gets in a pool he will automatically start off with a shallow kind of breast stroke, as if he were pushing away some invisible, floating object. This was a stroke you had to use when you jumped in the East River. It was the only way you could keep the sewage and garbage out of your face.

One way of keeping your mind off the heat was making horsehair rings. We used to sneak into the brewery stables and cut big hanks of hair from the horses’ tails, then braid them into rings. Horsehair rings were not only snazzy accessories to wear, three or four to a finger, but they were also negotiable. They could be swapped for marbles or Grover Cleveland buttons, and they were handy as ransom when you were ambushed by an enemy gang.

Then, suddenly one summer, rings and marbles became kid stuff to me. I found out how to use the city transportation system for free, and I was no longer a prisoner of the neighborhood. My life had new horizons. I, a mere mortal, could now go forth and behold the Gods in Valhalla-which is to say, the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds.

Trolleys were the easiest way to travel without paying. You just hopped on board after a car had started up, and kept dodging the ticket taker. If the ticket taker caught up with you, you got off and hopped on the next trolley to come along. It was more sporting to hang on the outside of the car, but you took a chance of being swatted off by a cop.

It wasn’t so easy with elevated trains. You couldn’t get on an El train without giving a ticket or transfer to the ticket chopper at the platform gate. To swindle the ticket chopper took a good deal of ingenuity, involving old transfers, chewing-gum cards (which happened to he the sane size as tickets), some fancy forgery-and for me, thanks to Grandpa’s training-sleight of hand.

Once a year the city would change its system of tickets and transfers, trying to cut down on the number of free riders. But they never came up with a system that couldn’t somehow be solved by us kids.

Thus I was now a man-about-town. In my travels I found out, in the summer of 1903, how to watch the Giants play for free. That was the only sure way to beat the heat in New York. When John J. McGraw and his noble warriors took the field in the Polo Grounds, all the pains and complaints of the loyal fan faded away, and he sweltered in blissful contentment.

I was a loyal fan but I could never afford, naturally, the price of admission to the Polo Grounds. Then I discovered a spot on Coogan’s Bluff, a high promontory behind the Polo Grounds, from which there was a clear view of the ballpark. Well, a clear view-yes, but clear only of the outside wall of the grandstand, a section of the bleachers, and one narrow, tantalizing wedge of the playing field.

So to tell the truth, I didn’t really watch the Giants. I watched a Giant-the left fielder.

When the ball came looping or bounding into my corner of the field, I saw real live big-league baseball. The rest of the time-which was most of the time-I watched a tiny man in a white or gray uniform standing motionless on a faraway patch of grass.

Other kids collected pictures of Giants such as McGraw, Me- Ginnity and Matthewson. Not me. I was forever faithful to Sam Mertes, undistinguished left fielder, the only New York Giant I ever saw play baseball.

Eventually I came to forgive Sam for all the hours he stood around, waiting for the action to come his way. It must have been just as frustrating for him down on the field as it was for me up on the bluff. It was easy for pitchers or shortstops to look flashy. They took lots of chances. My heart was with the guy who was given the fewest chances to take, the guy whose hope and patience never dimmed. Sam Mertes, I salute you! In whatever Valhalla you’re playing now, I pray that only right-handed pull-hitters come to bat, and the ball comes sailing your way three times in every inning.

Much as I ran away from it every chance I got, the home neighborhood was not altogether a dreary slum. It had its share of giants too, men and women who belonged to the Outside World, who brought glitter and excitement into the lives of the rest of us East Siders.

Such a luminary was Mr. Jergens, who ran the ice-cream parlor around the corner on Third Avenue. Mr. Jergens built and operated the first automobile in the neighborhood, a jaunty little electric runabout. When the runabout came cruising through our street, older kids would jump up and down and throw their caps under the car, yelling, “Get a horse!”

If Mr. Jergens was disturbed by the jeering mobs, he never showed it. He drove straight on, leaning over the tiller, which he held with a death grip, squinting at the horizon of Lexington Avenue like Christopher Columbus sailing for the New World.

I was one of the privileged few in the neighborhood who got to touch the runabout. Mr. Jergens had ordered a suit from Frenchie, and I went along when he delivered it. Mr. Jergens saw me admiring the car, in the alley behind the ice-cream parlor. He grinned at me and promised to take me for a ride. Boy oh boy oh boy! I had heard that the runabout could zoom down the brewery hill at a speed of fifteen miles an hour!

But I never got my ride in the automobile. After making his promise to me, Mr. Jergens went upstairs and tried on his new suit and it was years before he ever spoke to me or my father again.

There were two true aristocrats in our neighborhood, Mr. Ruppert and Mr. Ehret, the owners of the big breweries. Jake Ruppert’s mansion was on the corner of 93rd and Park Avenue. This was a fabulous place to me, for the principal reason that Ruppert’s garden contained a row of peach trees, which once a year bore lovely, luscious peaches.

Ruppert’s garden also contained two huge watchdogs who ranged along the inside of the iron spiked fence, on the alert for peach poachers. It was the theory of Ruppert’s caretaker that the dogs would be more vicious if they were kept hungry. This theory backfired. I used to hustle a bag of fat and meat scraps from a butcher, feed the starving dogs through the fence until they got friendly and sleepy, then shinny over the spikes and fill my shirt with ripe peaches.

No fruit ever tasted so sweet as stolen fruit, which was about the only kind I ever had until I became, at the age of eleven, a fulltime working man.

There was a spectacular pageant on our street, every weekday of the year. The show went on at nine in the morning, and was repeated at six in the evening. This was the passing of Mr. Ehret through 93rd Street, to and from the Ehret Brewery.

Mr. Ehret rode in a dazzling black carriage, pulled by a team of prize black stallions. A footman and a coachman, in regal uniforms of blue and gold, sat on top of the carriage. The eastern half of our block sloped downhill toward the East River and when the brewer’s carriage reached the top of the slope, in the morning, the coachman would stand up and shake the reins and the stallions would charge down the hill in full gallop.

When they passed our house, the stallions were wild-eyed and foaming at their bits, and the cobblestones rang like anvils. When they returned at night, straining against the rise, you could see the sparks fly up from their pounding hooves.

Thunder and lightning. Pomp and circumstance. Glory and magnificence. I wonder how a poor kid who never watched a brewer ride to his brewery, who never shivered with goose bumps when the coachman rose to start the downhill gallop, could ever know that there was another kind of life, the Good Life.

Thanks for the show, Mr. Ehret. Thanks for the peaches, Mr. Ruppert. Sorry I never liked beer.

Then there were the Brownstone People. They weren’t as high and mighty as the brewers, but I think they furthered my education about the outside world just as much.

We lived on the tenement side of 93rd Street, the north side. Facing us, on the south, was a row of one-family brownstone town houses. They were not cluttered in front with ugly fire escapes, like the tenements. They were decorated with ivy and window-boxes full of flowers.

What went on inside those elegant houses was something I found impossible to imagine, like the sound of harp music. While other kids wondered about life on Mars or the Moon, I used to wonder about life across the street. For hours at a time, I watched the brownstones and saw the Brownstone People come and go. There were two whom I watched and waited for in particular.

One was a dashing young lady named Marie Wagner, who was a well-known tennis player of the day. I took to following Miss Wagner to Central Park to the courts, where I became her self-appointed ball retriever. The courts had no backstops, and I ran myself ragged chasing down tennis balls. But it was worth it. For an afternoon’s work, Miss Wagner would reward me with an old ball.

I couldn’t expect to own a tennis ball for longer than a day or two before it got swiped by some older kid, so whenever Miss Wagner paid me off I’d sprint for home and get in as many licks as I could before the bandits turned up. I was conducting a sort of one-man Olympics, competing against myself for new world’s records in Tennis Ball Bouncing Against the Stoop of 179 East 93rd Street, New York City.

I kept hoping that one afternoon I’d still be bouncing and catching the ball when Miss Wagner came home. Then she might see me from across the street, and know that I wasn’t using the trophy she’d given me in any childish, ungrateful way. I was improving my game.

But she never saw me in action. This was a lingering, cruel disappointment. I had quite a crush on the dashing Miss Wagner.

I regret to confess that the time I set the All-Time Stoop Bouncing World’s Record of 341 without a miss, I didn’t use a ball of Marie Wagner’s. By that time I had become a pretty worldly fellow. I still hung around the tennis courts in the park, but I had turned pro. I retrieved for anybody and everybody, not for love, but strictly for the loot.

My other idol of the brownstones was a gentleman named Mr. Burns, a retired attorney. Mr. Burns was as elegant as his house. When he stepped forth for his daily stroll to Central Park he wore a derby hat, a trim, faintly striped suit, suede gloves, and narrow patent-leather shoes. When the sun shone he carried a walking stick with a silver top. When it looked like rain he swung a long, furled umbrella with a silver handle.

Once I asked Frenchie if Mr. Burns was rich and famous. Frenchie’s answer baffled me. He nodded and said, mysteriously, “British cut.”

The most astonishing thing about Mr. Burns, however, was the tipping of his hat. On the street he tipped his hat to everybody. He even tipped his hat to kids! I used to lurk on the corner of 93rd and Lex, waiting for Mr. Burns to start his daily walk. When he came briskly by, headed for the park, he never appeared to see me. But as he passed he never failed to switch his stick or umbrella from right hand to left and tip his derby.

This was a grand and satisfying moment in the life of a lonewolf, friendless kid.

In my daydreams I knew now what it was going to be like on the absolute pinnacle of worldly success. I would be riding down Third Avenue in my black carriage pulled by four black stallions, munching on ripe, red peaches from the bushel on the seat beside me. As I tipped my derby to people on the streets, right and left, I saw them smile with gratitude, and I could hear the cop saying as he held back the crowd, “Stand back, now! Make way for Mr. Marx, the famous tennis star and left-fielder with the silver handle on his walking stick!” When I passed a peaked-face, shaggytop kid with horsehair rings on his fingers, I tossed him a peach and a brand-new tennis ball. The kid said, “Bless you, sir!” and a great shout went up from the crowd, and the cop, grinning from ear to car, saluted me with his nightstick.

I tipped my derby again, to the north and to the south, and ordered my coachman to start the gallop.

At Christmastime, the brownstones across the street were even more remote from my tenement world. Wreaths of holly appeared on the doors and in the windows, and at night I could see Christmas trees inside, glowing with the lights of candles.

The one thing I remembered that Miss Flatto had taught me, in P.S. 86, was the legend of Santa Claus. I was entranced by it, but being a young cynic, I told myself it was all a bunch of Irish malarkey. The only time anybody got presents in our family was when Uncle Al came to visit or when Frenchie happened to get paid for two suits at a crack.

Nevertheless, on the night of December 24, a month after my ninth birthday, I decided to give Santa Claus a chance to make good. I hung one of my stockings in the airshaft, pinned under the window. The airshaft, I figured, was the nearest thing to a chimney in our house. Maybe even better. A lot more room for a fat and jolly old guy to shinny down.

On Christmas morning, my stocking was still empty. I didn’t tell anybody about it. I was too ashamed of being played for a sucker.

Yet, a year later, when I saw the holly on the brownstones, and the candles flickering on the Christmas trees, I swallowed my pride and hung my stocking again. This time, to bolster my faith, I confessed to Chico that night what I had done. Chico wasn’t scornful, or even surprised. He knew all about the Christmas stocking deal. “But,” he said, “you got to figure the odds. Figure how many airshafts on 93rd Street, let alone in the rest of the city, Sandy Claus has to shinny down in one night. Then you figure he’s got to take care of the Irishers and Bohunks and Eyetalians before he gets around to the Jews. Right? So what kind of odds is that?”