You Did Say Have Another Sausage

by John Meadows

  Big Apple, Small World

  I went to the same hotel where I had previously stayed on my way to Michigan. One floor was still reserved for students, where guests would be required to share rooms. It had the atmosphere more of a backpacker hostel than a Manhattan hotel, and people were coming and going all the time. I was allocated a room already occupied by two others, who greeted me with a friendly handshake and pointed to my bed. It felt as though it was my first day at a boarding school. I presumed that they were together because the laughter and banter between them was as if they were old friends. However, it quickly transpired that they had only met each other the day before. Everyone had so much in common due to a shared experience of working at the summer camps and travelling around on Greyhound buses. The three of us went down to the hotel bar and we were good mates by the time we had finished the first beer. Sandy was a Scottish student who was studying medicine at Edinburgh University. He fitted the prototype, clichéd image of a Scotsman with his pale, freckled complexion and red hair, fashioned in the 1970s mullet style. Despite spending the whole summer outdoors in upstate New York, he still looked paler than Michelangelo’s ‘David’. He joked that we should have seen him before he left Scotland. As the comedian Billy Connolly put it: it takes a Scotsman two weeks in Spain before he turns white. However, Sandy was far from being a quintessentially dour Scot. He had a ready wit and the natural timing of another legendary Scottish comedian, Chic Murray, when entertaining us with some of his stories. Malcolm was an engineering student from Birmingham who had an outrageous laugh, so they complemented each other perfectly.

  The following morning I went out to familiarize myself with the vibrant city of New York and to work out an itinerary to enable me to see as many of the famous sights as possible. I bought a tourist map at a magazine booth and started to mark off the places: Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, the newly-opened World Trade Centre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as many as I could manage in three days. The ubiquitous taxis created continuously flowing yellow rivers in straight lines along the famous grid lay-out of the streets and avenues. There is a painting by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (famous for his simple rectangles and squares of primary colours framed in black lines) called ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’. The vibrancy and movement captures the essence of New York as eloquently as Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’.

  Pedestrian crossings were controlled by a simple instruction of WALK in green and DON’T WALK in red. I became quite adept at body-swerving and sidestepping oncoming pedestrians as two hordes approached each other head-on like armies in a medieval battle. It’s amazing how they inter-meshed and emerged on the other side without having made bodily contact with anyone. It was as if everyone has in-built human radar. After a couple of blocks, I just missed the crossing as the DON’T WALK sign flashed up. As I stood on the kerb at the edge of the sidewalk several rows of people quickly built up behind me, like at the start of a marathon. I watched for the lights to change as intently as a Formula 1 driver on pole position. I don’t know why, perhaps I was subconsciously afraid of being knocked over by some pin-stripe-suited businessman hurrying to a meeting in Wall Street. The lights changed and I was off to a smooth start. As the opposing army approached, I started to mentally plot my way through the mêlée, the way a rugby player or American footballer does after catching the ball from the kick-off. When the two front rows were a couple of yards apart our eyes met and we momentarily stopped dead in our tracks right there in the middle of the road. It was Brett. You remember him? He was the guy who was run out of Cheyenne by the police and who befriended Richard and me on the bus. When we had said goodbye in San Francisco I had no intention of giving him a call in New York as he had suggested. And yet, here we were face-to-face a couple of thousand miles on the other side of America in a city the size of New York. It was a chance in ten million. He put his arm around my shoulder and turned around to walk back to where he started.

  “Hey John, it’s great to see you. I thought you were going to give me a call.”

  “Great to see you too,” I replied, and, surprisingly, I meant it.

  I delved into my pocket and, fortunately, I still had the card with his phone number. “I was just about to call you,” I lied while holding it up as proof of my sincerity.

  “Well, I’ve saved you a dime. C’mon let’s go back to the office.”

  We walked a couple of blocks through the canyons of Manhattan, chatting and laughing like old friends on a reunion. He asked about Richard and wanted to know all about our road trip. He seemed genuinely interested and gradually my long-held suspicion about him evaporated. I even remembered to ask about his sister in San Francisco.

  We arrived at a respectable-looking, glass-fronted office building and made our way through the entrance lobby towards the elevator. He seemed to be well-known by the various receptionists and passers-by and, of course, Brett greeted everyone in his customary gregarious manner. This finally convinced me that he was a straightforward, genuine character, because I would still have been hesitant about going with him to some down-at-heel shabby building in a run-down area of New York. Brett had told Richard and me that he worked for a theatre ticketing agency, which proved to be the case. We emerged from the elevator on to a large open office, where about a dozen people were working at typewriters. Of course he had a friendly word with everyone, male and female, almost as if he had an endless supply of jokes, quips and innuendoes. He didn’t introduce me to any of his colleagues on an individual basis, but what he did do was stand on a chair and make an announcement. Why wasn’t I surprised?

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said with surprising formality. He paused with the timing of a seasoned public speaker while waiting for the clacking sound of a dozen typewriters to subside. One man paused his telephone conversation and held the phone to his shoulder to listen to what Brett was about to say.

  “You remember I told you that I had met a couple of English guys and travelled with them to San Francisco?”

  “Yeah,” was the rather unenthusiastic reply from some, while others just nodded uninterestedly.

  “Well, John is here,” he said pointing towards me as if I was some visiting celebrity.

  This was met by a stony silence only broken when one of the girls replied, “Yes, go on.”

  “Well, that’s it,” answered Brett, wondering why his office-stopping announcement hadn’t been met with exuberant enthusiasm. There were a few groans of disappointment but everyone acknowledged me with a nod, a smile and the occasional ‘Hi John’, as they resumed working. I chatted to one or two people and their biggest surprise was that I had accidently bumped into Brett out on the street. The boss came out of his frosted-glass office wondering what was going on and Brett introduced me to him.

  He greeted me with a welcome hand-shake, and turned to Brett to say, “Don’t think you are taking the rest of the day off just because your buddy from England has arrived.”

  “No? Well in that case John can come with me to all the theatres,” Brett answered while at the same time looking at me for approval.

  “Why not? It’s just another way to see the city,” I replied, nodding in agreement.

  Brett’s job was to go to all the Broadway and off-Broadway theatres to deliver tickets and to pick-up cancellations. His boss then turned to me and said with a twinkle in his eye, “I hope you’re not expecting me to pay you?”

  “Er, of course not,” I replied flummoxed. “That thought never even occurred to me.”

  “Would you like to see a Broadway show tonight?”

  “I can’t afford a ticket,” I answered cautiously.

  “That will be taken care of. Which one do you fancy?”

  “Jesus Christ Superstar?”

  “No problem, it’s the hottest ticket in town.”

  Brett and I spent a couple of hours touring theatre land, and, of course, e
veryone in every ticket office knew and seemed to like Brett. We walked back to my hotel at about four o’clock and he told me that he would pick me up at seven. I went up to my room and Sandy was just making a cup of coffee. Malcolm had checked out that day.

  “In the bar last night, do you remember me telling you about the guy who was forcefully put on the bus in Cheyenne?”

  “Yeah, I do remember that story.”

  “Well I have just been to his office and spent most of the day going to Broadway Theatres.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to ring him?”

  “I didn’t, I just met him in the street.”

  Sandy was amazed at this chance meeting and even more amazed when I told him that he was taking me to see the top show in town. I showered and changed, and still half-expected to be stood up on my first date. Sandy and I were sitting watching Patrick McNee in ‘The Avengers’ on TV when the phone rang. Sandy answered and turned to me to tell me that my host was waiting to take us to the Mark Hellinger Theatre. I expected a ‘restricted-view’ seat, or perhaps one up in the ‘Gods’. Brett handed our tickets to the usherette, who greeted him with a beaming smile and a hug. It was only about ten minutes to curtain-up and most of the audience were, by then, in place. Brett led me down the central aisle and I was looking left and right to see where our seats are likely to be. Very few were still vacant but Brett just marched straight down to the orchestra pit and led the way along the first row.

  “Hi, how you doin’?” he said to everyone in turn as they stood up to allow us to edge along.

  I followed with a simple, “Thank you.” I was amazed to find that our seats were plumb centre of the row, the most expensive in the house. As we sat down, Brett looked behind him, left and right and had a friendly word with everyone. I sat down and took my ticket-stub off Brett. Not as a souvenir but to confirm that these really were our seats. Brett leaned forward to look over the orchestra pit to chat to the conductor and any musicians within ear-shot. They all responded in a friendly manner as they tuned-up. He then turned round to engage a middle-aged couple in conversation.

  “My buddy here is from England,” he announced proudly. I turned and smiled to acknowledge the introduction and shook hands. I was beginning to feel like a VIP. The orchestra began the overture and it was time for curtain-up. When King Herod came on stage, I half-expected Brett to shout, ‘Hi, how ya doin’?’ The show was fantastic, and during the interval we stood up to stretch our legs. We chatted to members of the audience, or, should I say, Brett held court as if he was part of the entertainment. At the end of the show, the palms of my hands were tingling after applauding several curtain-calls, always a good yardstick by which to judge a show. We said goodbye to everyone around us and, naturally, Brett leaned over and shook hands with as many of the orchestra as he could reach.

  “Do you wanna go backstage to meet the cast?” he asked rhetorically.

  “Yeah, why not,” I answered with a nonchalant shrug, by now just going with the flow. I don’t know if he had a backstage pass, or if he knew the theatre’s security officers but he seemed to breeze through with his usual bluff, confidence and flamboyance. I got the impression that he was using me as an extra card because he made a special point of introducing me and saying that I had come over from England especially to see the show. Remember, being from England was still something of a novelty in those days. We mingled with the members of the cast and even joined them for their after-show buffet and drinks. If we were gate- crashers, nobody seemed to notice. I shared a plate of vol-au-vents with King Herod, Jesus turned the water into wine, and I had a quiche with Mary Magdalene. A few of the supporting cast invited us to a party at an apartment somewhere in New York, I haven’t a clue where, which went on late into the night. Brett escorted me back to the hotel in a yellow cab. He got out and wished me good night with a hand-shake and hug. I never saw or heard from him ever again. It was almost a case of ‘Who was that masked man’. In case you are wondering, I never did find out what made him Cheyenne’s public enemy number one. I didn’t like to ask. Why spoil a good night out?

  After four attempts, I managed to get the key into the lock of my door and, as I was stumbling around in the dark, Sandy mumbled, “Is that you John?” Not such a daft question in view of the fact that another bloke was now in the other bed. Since I had woken up my room-mates, I told them the story of my night out.

  “Will you actually be going to see any of the sights of New York?” asked Sandy with a hint of sarcasm.

  I did get to see most of the places on my list, but at this point I am going to make my final journey back to the future because, like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, New York smartened up its act. I hope Sandy and our other friend, whose name I didn’t quite catch, won’t be disturbed again by me rubbing my flux capacitor under the bed clothes in the dark. I have set the timer for 1997, just in time to join another school trip, but a different one from the Golden West. I am also going to attempt to transport us back across the Atlantic faster than the speed of light. Here goes. Next stop: Wigan.

  Somehow Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas no-more.

  “New York, New York it’s a wonderful town, the Bronx is up and the Battery’s down, the people ride in a hole in the ground...”

  “Shut the bloody door, I’m waiting to turn the car round!”

  That was Val being dropped off by her husband on the school car park. It was seven o’clock in the morning and already there was a great party atmosphere as everyone was anticipating the vibrancy and excitement of the city that never sleeps - New York that is, not Wigan. Val, a gregarious, larger-than-life member of staff had barely let the car stop before jumping out and seamlessly performing the Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra routine from the film ‘On the Town’. Like a Covent Garden busker she threw her arms out flamboyantly and gave an impromptu show for her large ready-made audience.

  “She doesn’t get out much,” shouted her husband to everyone as he drove off laughing.

  New York was such a popular destination for our school art trip that our party comprised not only pupils and teachers, but also some parents, the headmaster and several of the office staff lead by the school bursar Audrey, who arrived already in Western mode wearing a leather cowboy hat. The age-group of our pupils was from thirteen years to eighteen-year-old sixth formers, and, during the Trans-Atlantic flight, they formed groups and happily mixed with members of the public. As tour leader, I was very conscious of the fact that other passengers might not be too happy to be caught in the midst of a school trip, so I made sure I kept a close eye on any potential noise or misbehaviour. On arrival at JFK Airport, as everyone was collecting luggage from the carousel, I had to go to a telephone booth to ring to confirm that our two buses would be waiting for us outside the terminal building. As I was speaking on the phone, I became aware of a man and woman standing outside the booth waiting. When there was a pause in my conversation I pulled the door back and told them that I would probably be a few minutes and suggested that it might be quicker if they used one of the other telephones.

  “Oh, it’s you we wish to speak to,” said the man in a distinctive nasal New York accent, straight out of the ‘Godfather’. At that moment, a voice came back on the phone so I was able to gesture to the couple to wait a second as I closed the door. As I was confirming my pick-up point my mind was racing ahead wondering if the American couple were about to make a complaint about something which might have happened on the flight. I replaced the receiver and stepped out of the phone booth to see what the problem could be.

  “Can I help you?” I said, feeling myself going on the defensive.

  “We just wanted to tell you that we have had a wonderful flight chatting with some of your students. They are a credit to you and your country,” said the American lady, with a beaming smile.

  “Yes,” added her husband, “we fly to Europe regularly
and we have never enjoyed a flight as much.”

  “Well, thank you very much for taking the trouble to speak to me,” I said with a mixture of surprise and pride.

  Just as they were shaking hands with me, a group of our boys and girls came over to wish their new friends goodbye. As I returned to the carousel, Janette asked what was going on. Of course she was delighted and I was pleased to congratulate the whole group when we had our meeting at the hotel.

  “We have started as we mean to go on,” I added pointedly. I stressed to the students that we were in a city centre hotel alongside members of the public, unlike some tours where smaller hotels often cater exclusively for school parties. Consequently, I expected good manners and courtesy at all times, and especially when using the elevators. Show consideration to other guests and, for goodness sake, “Do not shout Sir at the top of your voice across a crowded lobby or dining room. Be discreet because some members of the public might not be too happy to be sharing a hotel with a large school group.”

  “So what shall we call you?” asked one of the pupils.

  “Call him Dad,” joked one of the staff.

  Everyone laughed as I answered that ‘Mr Meadows’ would be fine but not shouted out.

  Our rooms were on three separate floors, and I made a quick tour to make sure that there were no problems. I decided to go down to the lobby for a reconnaissance and I pressed the elevator button, which descended immediately from a couple of floors above. The doors opened and already in the lift were three of our year nine boys (fourteen year olds). Also in the elevator was a lady who immediately struck me as an archetypical New Yorker. She was quite elderly as she stood holding her pet poodle in her arms, and she had an air of quiet superiority. She was wearing a large hat and dark brown fur coat, and looked as though she had stepped straight out of the Marx Brothers film ‘A Night at The Opera.’ As soon as I entered the lift, the three boys all greeted me with an exaggerated, “Hello Dad,” and laughed.