Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics)

by Joseph Mitchell

  I went on back to the rear of the lobby and spoke to Mr Cusack, but he didn’t look up or answer. He had the stairs blocked or I would have gone on past him. After he got the tack out of his shoe, he stood up and grunted. His face was heavy with worry. We shook hands, and I asked him if he was going to Mr Flood’s party or coming from it. ‘Going, God help me,’ he said, ‘and I dread it. I feel like I ought to pay my respects to Hugh, but I dread the stairs. A poor old man in my condition, it’s taking my life in my hands.’ The Hartford is five floors high and it doesn’t have an elevator. Mr Flood’s room is on the top floor. I stood aside and waited for Mr Cusack to start up, but he said, ‘You go ahead. I’m going to take my time. It’ll take me half an hour and when I get to the top I’ll most likely drop dead.’

  Mr Flood has a corner room, overlooking the Slip. The door was open. His room is usually in a mess and he had obviously had it straightened up for the party. There was a freshly ironed counterpane on his brass bed. His library had been neatly arranged on top of his tin, slatbound trunk; it consists of a Bible, a set of Mark Twain, and two thick United States Bureau of Fisheries reference books, ‘Fishes of the Gulf of Maine’ and ‘Fishes of Chesapeake Bay.’ His collection of sea shells and river shells had been laid out on the hearth of the boarded-up fireplace. Ordinarily, his books and shells are scattered all over the floor. On the marble mantelpiece were three small cast-iron statues – a bare-knuckle pug with his fists cocked, a running horse with its mane streaming, and an American eagle. These came off one of the magnificent fire escapes on the Dover Street side of the old Police Gazette building, which is at Dover and Pearl, in the fish-market neighborhood. (Mr Flood is sentimental about the stone and iron ornaments on many buildings down in the old city, and he thinks they should be preserved. He once wrote the Museum of the City of New York suggesting that the owners of the Gazette building be asked to donate the fire-escape ornaments to the Museum. ‘Suppose this bldg. is torn down,’ he wrote. ‘All that beautiful iron work will disappear into scrap. If the owners do not see fit to donate, I am a retired house-wrecker and I could go there in the dead of night with a monkey-wrench and blow-torch and use my own discretion.’) Above the mantelpiece hung a lithograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Thomas Rowlandson aquatint of some scuffling fishwives in Billingsgate that came off a calendar, and a framed beatitude: ‘BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO DOES NOT BELLYACHE – ELBERT HUBBARD.’ In the middle of the room stood an ugly old marble-top table, the kind that has legs shaped like the claws of a dragon, each claw grasping a glass ball. There was a clutter on the table – a bottle of Scotch, a pitcher of water, a bucket of ice, a box of cigars, a crock of pickled mussels, a jar of marinated herrings, a smoked eel, a wire basket of sea urchins, two loaves of Italian bread, some lemons, and a stack of plates. The sea urchins were wet and dripping.

  There were four people sitting around the table – Mr Flood, Mrs Treppel, a salesman of fishing-boat hardware named Ben Fass, and an old man I had never seen before. Mrs Treppel had Commodore, the Hartford’s big black cat, on her lap; she had given it the head of the eel. Mrs Treppel was still in her market clothes. She wore a full-length coat-apron over her dress and she had on knee boots and a man’s stiff straw hat; this is the uniform of the boss fishmonger. The hat was on the side of her head. Mrs Treppel is stout, red-cheeked, and good-natured. Even so, as a day wears on, she becomes quite quarrelsome; she says she quarrels just to keep her liver regulated. ‘Quarreling is the only exercise I take,’ she says. She is a widow in her late sixties, she has worked in the market since she was a young woman, and she is greatly respected, especially by the old-timers; to them, she is the very embodiment of the primary, basic, fundamental Fulton Fish Market virtue – the ability to look after Number One. ‘Birdy Treppel likes to run her mouth, and she sometimes sounds a little foolish,’ I once heard one old boss fishmonger say to another, ‘but don’t ever underestimate her. She could buy or sell half the people down here, including me.’ Mrs Treppel owns a couple of the old buildings on Peck Slip, she has money in a cooperage that builds boxes and barrels for the fish trade; she owns a share in a dragger, the Betty Parker, which runs out of Stonington, Connecticut; and she keeps a fresh-water stall on the Slip, dealing mainly in carp, whitefish, and pike, the species that are used in gefüllte fish. Mr Fass is known in the market as Ben the Knifeman. He is slight, edgy, and sad-eyed, a disappointed man, and he blames all his troubles on cellophane. He says that he was ruined by cellophane, and he sometimes startles people by muttering, ‘Whoever he is, wherever he is, God damn the man that invented cellophane!’ He once was a salesman for a sausage-casings broker in Gansevoort Market, selling sheep intestines to manufacturers of frankfurters. He enjoyed this work. Ten years ago many manufacturers began using cellophane instead of intestines for casings, calling their product ‘skinless’ frankfurters, and in 1937 Mr Fass was laid off. He became an outside man for a Water Street fishing-boat supply house, which is owned by an uncle of his. Carrying samples in a suitcase, he goes aboard trawlers and draggers at the pier and sits down with the captains and takes orders for knives, honing steels, scalers, bait grinders, swordfish darts, fog bells, and similar hardware.

  Mr Fass and Mr Flood are good friends, which is puzzling. Mr Fass has no interest in boats, he dislikes the fish market, and he despises fish. He is outspoken about it; not long ago he lost one of his best customers by remarking that he would rather have one thin cut off a tough rib roast than all the fish God ever made. Mr Flood, on the other hand, believes that people would be much better off in mind and body if they ate meat on Fridays and fish all the rest of the week. I have known Mr Flood for nine years, but I found out only recently how he arrived at this conclusion. From 1885 until 1930, when he retired, the offices of his firm, the H. G. Flood Demolition & Salvage Co., Inc., were on Franklin Square, a couple of blocks from the fish market. In the winter of 1885, soon after moving there, he observed that there was a predominance of elderly and aged men among the fishmongers. ‘I began to step up to these men and inquire about their ages,’ he told me. ‘There were scores in their eighties and dozens in their nineties and spry old crocks that had hit a hundred weren’t rare at all. One morning I saw a fist fight between two men in their nineties. They slapped each other from one end of the pier to the other, and it was a better fight than many a fight I paid to see. Another morning I saw the fellows shaking hands with a man of eighty-seven and it turned out his wife had just had a baby boy. All these men were tough and happy and full of the old Adam, and all were big fish eaters, and I thought to myself, “Flood, no doubt about it, you have hit on a secret.”’ Since that winter he has seldom eaten anything but seafood.

  When I came into the room, Mr Flood had just begun a song. He has a bullfrog bass, and he sang loudly and away off key. He had a highball in his left hand and a cigar in his right, and he kept time with the cigar as he sang:

  ‘Come, let us drink while we have breath,

  For there’s no drinking after death

  And he that will this health deny,

  Down among the dead men,

  Down among the dead men—’

  I was quite sure that he would put in more ‘downs’ than the song called for, and I counted them. There were eleven, and each was louder than the one before it:

  ‘Down, down, down, down, down,

  down, down, down, down, down,

  Down among the dead men

  Let him lie!’

  Mr Flood’s guests banged on the marble-top with their glasses, and he beamed. He was looking well. His friendly, villainous eyes were bright and his face was so tanned that the liver freckles on his cheeks didn’t show; he carries a blanket down to the pier and lies in the sun an hour or two on good afternoons. He had on a white linen suit and there was a red rosebud in his lapel. I tried to congratulate him on his birthday. He wouldn’t let me. ‘Thanks, my boy,’ he said, ‘but it’s too early for that. I just got started. Wait’ll I hit a hundred.’ He turned to the stranger at
the table. ‘This is Tom Bethea,’ he said. ‘Tom’s an undertaker up in Chelsea, my old neighborhood. Tom’s wife and my second wife were great friends. We belong to the same Baptist church, only he goes and I don’t.’ Mr Bethea was roly-poly, moon-faced, and bald. His eyes were remarkably distrustful. He wore a blue serge suit that was so tight it made me uncomfortable to look at him. He had a glass about a third full of straight whiskey in one hand. With the other, he was plucking mussels out of the crock and popping them into his mouth as if they were peanuts. He seemed offended by Mr Flood’s introduction. ‘I’m not an undertaker,’ he said. ‘I’m an embalmer. I’ve told you that time and time again, and I do wish you’d get it straight.’

  ‘Whichever it is,’ said Mr Flood. He turned to me and said, ‘Pull up a chair and fix yourself a drink. I got something I want to show you.’ He took a photograph out of his wallet and handed it to me. It was a photograph of a horse, an old white sway-backed horse. ‘Look at it and pass it around,’ he said. ‘I was going through some papers in my trunk the other day and came across it. Thought I’d lost it years ago. It’s a snapshot of a horse named Sam. Sam was a highly unusual horse and I want to tell about him. He was owned by George Still, fellow that ran Still’s Oyster and Chop House. Still’s was on Third Avenue, between Seventeenth and Eighteenth, middle of the block, east side of the avenue. It opened in the eighteen-fifties – 1853, I think it was – and it closed in 1922 because of prohibition, and it was the finest oyster house the country ever had. It was a hangout for rich old goaty high-living men – Tammany bosses and the like of that. Some of them could taste an oyster and examine the shell and tell you what bed it came out of; I’m pretty good at that myself. And it got crowds of out-of-towners, especially people from Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, and New Orleans, the big oyster-eating cities. Mr Still handled a wider variety of oysters than any restaurant or hotel in the world, before or since. He had them out of dozens of beds. From New Jersey he had Shrewsburys and Maurice River Coves. From Rhode Island he had Narragansetts and Wickfords. From Massachusetts he had Cotuits and Buzzards Bays and Cape Cods. From Virginia – they were very fine – he had Chincoteagues and Lynnhavens and Pokomokes and Mobjacks and Horn Harbors and York Rivers and Hampton Bars and Rappahannocks. From Maryland he had Goose Creeks. From Delaware he had Bombay Hooks. From New York – the finest of all – he had Blue Points and Mattitucks and Saddle Rocks and Robbins Islands and Diamond Points and Fire Places and Montauks and Hog Necks and Millponds and Fire Island Salts and Rockaways and Shinnecocks. I love those good old oyster names. When I feel my age weighing me down, I recite them to myself and I feel better. Some of them don’t exist any more. The beds were ruined. Cities grew up nearby and the water went bad. But there was a time when you could buy them all in Still’s.’

  ‘Oh, God, Hughie,’ said Mrs Treppel, ‘it was a wonderful place. I remember it well. It had a white marble bar for the half-shell trade, and there were barrels and barrels and barrels of oysters stood up behind this bar, and everything was nice and plain and solid – no piddling around, no music to frazzle your nerves, no French on the bill of fare; you got what you went for.’

  ‘I remember Still’s, too,’ said Mr Bethea. ‘Biggest lobster I ever saw, I saw it in there. Weighed thirty-four pounds. Took two men to hold it. It was a hen lobster. It wasn’t much good – too coarse and stringy – but it was full of coral and tomalley and it scared the women and it was educational.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Flood. ‘That’s the way it was.’ He poured himself a drink. ‘In addition to the restaurant,’ he continued, ‘Mr Still did a wholesale oyster business in a triple-decked barge that was docked year in and year out at a pier at the foot of Pike Street, upriver from the fish market. The barge was his warehouse. In the old days all the wholesalers operated that way; they brought their stock in from the beds in schooners that’d come alongside the barges and unload. At the time I’m speaking of – in 1912 – there were fourteen barges at Pike Street, all in a row and all painted as loud and bedizy and fancy-colored as possible, the same as gypsy wagons; that was the custom. George Still is dead, God rest him, but the business is there yet. His family runs it. It’s one of the biggest shellfish concerns in the city, and it’s right there in the old barge, head office and all – George M. Still, Incorporated, Planters of Diamond Point Oysters. Still’s barge is the only one left, and it’s a pretty one. It’s painted green and yellow and it’s got scroll-saw work all over the front of it.

  ‘Back in 1912, Mr Still delivered his oysters to hotels and restaurants and groceries with horse-drawn drays. He owned nine horses and he thought a lot of them. Every summer he gave them two weeks off on a farm he had in New Jersey. One of those horses was Sam. Sam was the oldest. In fact, he was twenty-two years old, and that’s a ripe old advanced age for a horse. Sam was just about worn out. His head hung low, his eyes were sleepy and sad, and there wasn’t hardly any life in him at all. If some horseflies lit on him, he didn’t even have the energy to switch his tail and knock them off. He just poked along, making short hauls and waiting for the day to end. Mr Still had made up his mind to retire Sam to New Jersey for good, but he was one of those that puts things off; tomorrow will do.

  ‘Sam’s driver was a man named Woodrow and he was attached to Sam. Sam was noted for his good disposition, but one morning in October, 1912, Woodrow went to put the harness on Sam and Sam kicked at him. It was the first time that ever happened. Next morning Sam was worse. Every single time Woodrow got near, Sam kicked. He was so old and awkward he always missed, but he kept on trying; he did his best. Every day that passed, Sam got more free and easy. He’d rear back in the shafts and tangle up the strappings on his harness, and sometimes Woodrow would tell him to whoa and he’d keep right on going until he was good and damn ready to whoa. He got a mean look in his eye and he kept his head up and he walked faster and faster. He’d toss his head to and fro and dance along like a yearling. One day, all of a sudden, up on Sixth Avenue, he started running after a bay mare that was hauling a laundry wagon. It was all Woodrow could do to pull him up. And Sam kept on doing this. Every day or so he’d catch sight of a mare somewhere up ahead and he’d whinny and whicker and break into a fast trot and Woodrow would have to brace himself against the footboard and seesaw on the lines and curse and carry on to stop him. Sometimes a crowd would collect and cheer Sam on. Woodrow worried about Sam, and so did Mr Still, but they didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t figure him out.

  ‘One of the places that Woodrow and Sam made a daily delivery was a chop house on Maiden Lane. Sam would stand at the curb and Woodrow would shoulder a barrel of oysters off the dray and roll it in. The cashier of this chop house was an old lady and every morning she’d step out to the curb and pat Sam’s nose and coo at him and give him sugar. She’d been doing it for years. She was one of those old ladies that just can’t leave horses alone. One morning she came out, cooing, and she put her hand out to pat Sam and Sam bit her. He bit her on the hand and he bit her on the wrist and he bit her on the arm. She was all skint up. As you might expect, a great deal of screeching took place. They sent for a doctor, but that didn’t quiet the old lady. According to Woodrow, she kept screeching she didn’t want a doctor, she wanted a lawyer.

  ‘Woodrow led Sam back to the barge and broke the news to Mr Still that he had a damage suit on his hands. Mr Still called in a veterinarian to see could he find out what was the matter with Sam, what ailed the old fool. The veterinarian looked Sam over and he punched and he thumped and he put his head against Sam’s belly and listened. He said he couldn’t find anything wrong except extreme old age. Then he happened to look into Sam’s feed bag, and what in hell and be damned was in there, mixed in with the oats, only some shucked oysters. They weren’t little nubby oysters; they were great big Mattitucks. And what’s more, Sam was eating them. He was eating them and enjoying them. The veterinarian stood there and he looked at Sam and he said, “Well, I be good God damned!” He said he
’d run into some odd and unusual horses in his practice but that Sam was certainly the first horse he’d run into that’d eat oysters.