A gloomy day and the loop streets grimace behind a mist. The electric
signs are lighted. The buildings open like great fans in the half dark.
The streets invite a mood of melodrama. Windows glint evilly. Doorways
grin with rows of electric teeth. This, _Jonnerrvetter_! is the Great
City of the old-time ten-twenty-thirty thrillers. The devourer of
innocence, the strumpet of stone.
I walk along humming a bar of villainous music, the "skeeter scale" that
the orchestra used to turn turn turn taaaa-tum in the old Alhambra as the
two dockwallopers and the leering Chinaman were climbing in through little
Mabel's hall bedroom window to abduct her.
Those were happy days for the drama, when a scoundrel was a scoundrel and
wore a silk hat to prove it, and a hero was a two-fisted man, as anybody
could tell by a glance at his marcelled hair and his open-at-the-throat
shirt.
Tum tum tum tum taaaa-tum. Pizzicato pianissimo, says the direction on the
score. So we are all set for a melodrama. Here is the Great City
back-drop. Here are the grim-faced crowds shuffling by under the jaundice
glare of electric signs. And Christmas is coming. A vague gray snow
trickles out of the gloom.
A proper time for melodrama. All we need is a plot. Come, come now--a plot
alive with villains and weeping maidens. Halto! The window of the 5--and
10-cent store! a tumble of gewgaws and candies and kitchen utensils.
Christmas tree tinsel and salted peanuts, jazz music and mittens.
The curtain is up. Egad, what a masterly scene. A kitchen Coney Island. A
puzzle picture of isles, signs, smells, noises. Cinderella wandering
wistfully in the glass-bead section looking for a fairy godmother.
A clinking obbligato by the cash registers. The poor are buying gifts.
This garish froth of merchandise is the back ground of their luxuries.
This noisy puzzle-picture store is their horn of plenty. A sad thought and
we'll dismiss it. What we want is plot.
Perhaps the jazz-song booster singing out of the side of his mouth with
tired eyes leering at the crowd of girls: "Won't You Let Me Love You If I
Promise to Be Good?" And "Love Me, Turtle Dove." And "Lovin' Looie." And
"The Lovin' Blues."
All lovin'. Jazz songs, ballads, sad, silly, boobish nut songs--all about
love me--love me. All about stars and kisses, moonlight and "she took my
man away." There are telephones all over the walls and the song booster's
voice pops out over the salted-peanut section, over the safety-pin and
brassware section. A tinny, nasal voice with a whine and a hoarseness
almost hiding the words.
The cash registers clink, clink. "Are you waited on, madam? Five cents a
package, madam." The crowds, tired eyed, shabbily dressed, bundle-laden,
young, old--the crowds shuffle up and down, staring at gewgaws, and the
love-me love songs follow them around. Follow them to the loose-bead
counter where Madge with her Japanese puffs of hair, her wad of gum and
her black shirtwaist that she keeps straightening out continually by
drawing up her bosom and pressing down on her hips with her hands--where
Madge holds forth.
Tum tum tum tum taaaa-tum--halto! Here is our plot. Outside the pizzicato
of the crowds, the Great City, shining, dragon-eyed, through the mist--the
City That Has No Heart. And here under our nose, twinkling up at our eyes,
a huge tray full of 10-cent wedding rings. End of Act One.
Act Two, now--Madge, the sharp-tongued, weary-eyed young woman behind the
counter. Love-me love songs in her ear and people unraveling, faces
unraveling before her. Who buys these wedding rings, Madge? And did you
ever notice anything odd about your customers? And why do you suppose they
buy ten-cent wedding rings, Madge?
"Just a moment," says Madge. "What is it, miss? A ring? What kind? Oh,
yes. Ten cents. Gold or platinum just the same. Yes."
Two giggling girls move off. And Madge, chewing gently on her wad of gum
and smoothing her huge hair puffs out with the coyly stiffened palms of
her hands, talks.
"Sure, I get you. About the wedding rings. Sure, that's easy. We sell
about twenty or thirty of them every day. Oh, mostly to kids--girls and
boys. Sometimes an old Johnny comes in with a moth-eaten fur collar and
blows a dime for a wedding ring. But mostly girls.
"I sometimes take a second look at them. They usually giggle when they ask
for the ring. And they usually pretend it's for somebody as a joke they're
buying it. Or sometimes they walk around the counter for a half hour and
get me nervous as a cat. 'Cause I know what they want and they can't get
their gall up to come and ask for it. But finally they make the break and
come up and pick out a ring without saying a word and hand over ten cents.
"There was one girl no more than sixteen just this morning. She come here
all full of pep and kidded about things and said wasn't them platinum
wedding rings just too grand for words, and so on. Then she said she
wanted a half-dozen of them, and was there a discount when bought in such
quantity? I started wrapping them up when I looked at her and she was
crying. And she dropped her sixty cents on the counter and said: 'Never
mind, never mind. I don't want them. I can't wear them. They'll only make
it worse.'"
A middle-aged-looking man interrupts. "What is it, sir?" asks Madge.
"Anything in rings? What kind?" "Oh, just plain rings," says the man with
a great show of indifference, while his eyes ferret among the trinkets on
the counter. And then, very calmly: "Oh, these will do, I guess." Two
wedding rings, and he spent twenty cents. Madge follows him with her eyes.
"That's it," she whispers, "usually the men buy two. One for themselves
and one for the girl. Or if it's the girl that's buying them it's one for
herself and one for her girl chum who's going with her and the two fellas
on the party. Say, take it from me, these rings don't ever hear no wedding
marches."
* * * * *
Back into the gloomy street again. A plot in our head, but who's the
villain and who's the heroine and the hero? An easy answer to that. The
crowd here--sad faced, tired-walking, bundle-laden. The crowd continually
dissolving amid street cars and autos is the villain.
A crowd of shoppers buying slippers for uncle and shawls for mother and
mufflers for brother and some bars of soap for the bathroom. Buying
everything and anything that fill the fan-shaped buildings with their
glinting windows. Buying carpet sweepers and window curtains and linoleum.
Pizzicato, pianissimo, professor--little-girl gigglers and hard-faced dock
wallopers and slick-haired lounge lizards and broken-hearted ones--twenty
a day they sidle up to Madge's counter, where the love me, love me songs
razz the heavy air, and shoot a dime for a wedding ring.