All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
--Rudyard Kipling
High Tor, N.Y., is a pretty enlightened place. It's the hometown
of artists, writers and theater people, budding and blooming. It
has a syndicated political cartoonist whose satire is just a shade
less biting than Herblock's. It has a playwright who has won a
Pulitzer prize. It has a socially conscious novelist whose books
are best-sellers in spite of their Messages. Then there's the
Chinese-American artist who not only prospers but (or perhaps I should
say "and therefore") is a respected and socially accepted member of the
community.
High Tor is progressive, forward-looking. It's quaint and
countrified--though it's only 35 minutes from Times Square--because of
its strict zoning laws. It has been written up in _The Exurbanites_
as a place neither as intellectual nor as stuffy as Fairfield County,
Connecticut, possibly because it doesn't have as many advertising men.
It's not as rich, either, which is why Mae and I can afford to live
there on the minimum plot allowed--one acre.
As I say, High Tor is no slouch of a town. If you're a New Yorker, but
can't stand the city for the hundred-odd reasons I'm sure I don't have
to list, High Tor is the place for you.
Therefore Mae and I were pretty shocked when we went out pub-crawling
and did some unintentional eavesdropping.
I'd come home worn out from the eight-hour grind at WW, which had
seemed like twelve, and suggested to Mae that we eat out and relax. She
had the lamb chops back in the freezer and her second-best dress on
in the same time it took me to luxuriate in an armchair over one dry
martini.
All unwound, I put Mae in the Volkswagen and headed for Armando's,
one of those quaint, but not too quaint, restaurants where the owner
himself comes over and suggests. He suggested the veal cacciatore and
we were agreeable.
As we were chewing the last mouthful, Armando came over to ask how it
was.
"Great," I told him.
"Out of this world," Mae said.
"Delighted," Armando said. "But please don't mention those
out-of-this-worlders to me."
"You mean the Monolithians?" I said. "What could they have possibly
done to you?"
"Two of them came in for lunch today, disguised as Negro people."
"Oh?" Mae said.
"They weren't disguised," I told Armando. "There are Negroes on
Monolithia, just as there are here."
"Well, anyway, I put them near the kitchen door and tell the girls to
bump the chairs every time they come out. You know."
I hadn't known. I looked at Mae, who looked down at the remains of her
veal cacciatore.
Armando went on: "So after a few bumps the one nearest the door
makes with a finger to me. I ignore him, of course. Then he hollers,
'Armando!' The place is full of the luncheon trade. I frown, but what
can I do? I hurry over to keep him quiet.
"'You are unhappy here?' I say to him. 'You would prefer to leave?' But
he says 'No, we prefer a better table.' I tell him there are no other
tables--the empty ones he sees are reserved. He says--he tells me this
to my face--that this is a lie. I ask him to leave, so as not to create
a disturbance."
"Sam," Mae said.
"Shh," I said. "Go on, Armando."
"Then he asks for the telephone, as if this is the Stork Club and I can
plug it in at the table. I tell him the pay phone is near the cashier's
desk, he can use it on his way out. Subtle, you see?"
"Then what?" I asked.
"He goes to the phone and calls SCAD in Albany!" SCAD is the state
commission against discrimination. "He tells them the whole story at
the top of his voice. It is mortifying. And now I am likely to lose
my license and have to close up--or else cater to the colored trade.
Mr. Kent, you are with a powerful news service. You know about these
things. Tell me--what can I do?"
"You can give us our check, Armando," I said.
Armando became upset. "You are late. I am sorry. I should not tell you
my troubles and take up your time. No--there is no check. You have been
my guests. My pleasure."
"But not mine, Armando." I said. I dropped a ten-dollar bill on the
table. "If you don't want it, leave it for the waitress. Good-by,
Armando. Come on, Mae."
In the car Mae said, "Ten dollars was too much. I saw the menu.
Seven-fifty, maybe."
"All right," I said. "Consider it a two-fifty contribution to the
NAACP. We'll make it up by not eating there again."
"Okay," she settled back in the seat. The financial end of it settled,
Mae said, "Good for you, Sam. The nerve of him, taking it for granted
we thought the same way he does. Why it wasn't so long ago that he was
a minority himself."
"The hell with him," I said. "Let's go get a drink."
Reno's Roost has a bar and a band and serves fried chicken or shrimp in
a basket. It's run by an old army buddy of mine, Paul Reno. He gambled
on the county opening up when they began building the Tappan Zee Bridge
across the Hudson and his gamble paid off. The place was jumping.
We went in and looked around for a place to sit. The bar was filled. So
were the booths and tables.
Paul came over from nowhere and said, "Sam! Where the hell you been?
Hello, Mae. How's the gestation?"
"He's fine," Mae said. "Big crowd tonight."
"The biggest, now you're here. Here you are. Reserved for the Kents."
"This looks like your table, Paul," I said. "We don't want to send you
back to work."
"Sit down," he said. "I'll come sit with you when my feet get tired.
What'll you have? First round's on the house."
"I'll have a very weak Tom Collins, Paul," Mae said, "and I mean weak."
"Right you are, Mrs. K. Sam?"
"Scotch and soda, thanks."
"Strong, to even it out. Okay, Max!" He called a waiter and gave the
order. He had Seven-Up himself. Paul never drinks on the job till 1 A.M.
"I see Oliver's still with you," I said. Oliver is one of the
bartenders. He's a Negro. "We should have come here for dinner, Mae."
"Oliver's my right-hand man." Paul said. "Where did you eat, chumps?"
"Armando's," Mae said. "But I'd just as soon not talk about it."
"Armando's!" Paul said. "That ptomaine domain! What's the matter--you
don't like chicken? If you don't like chicken we got shrimp. For you we
even got tablecloths, if you insist. Armando's! Has he got a band?"
"He's got nothing," Mae said. "Who's playing tonight, Paul?"
"Tonight as always we have the Trans-Hudson Five, the finest
aggregation west of Ossining, augmented by that rising young cornet
star, Pete Kato."
"Japanese?" I asked.
"The rising son himself."
"Never heard of him."
"Just off the plane. He's here for kicks. I don't pay him, but maybe I
will. He's not bad."
"Jazzman?" I asked.
"I don't know," Paul said. "Sometimes he sounds like Harry James.
Sometimes he's Max Kaminsky. He's obviously listened to a lot of
records. He's pretty derivative."
That's one of the things I appreciate about Paul Reno. Most of the time
he sounds like Mr. Night Club himself, but then he comes out with a
word like "derivative."
Paul went off to see how things were in the kitchen. As I mentioned,
the place was crowded, with little space between tables. The band was
between sets and I could over-hear the people at the table behind me.
"... deliberately soften us up with all that mumbo-jumbo in the UN," a
man's voice was saying. "Then they smuggle in a boat-load of colored
behind our backs, as if we didn't have enough of our own already."
"And Chinks," another man's voice said.
"And Chinks," the first man agreed. "And Japs. I'll bet that was their
plan all along. They're dumping their unwanted surplus population
on us. It's a sneaking subversive thing to do and I wonder when Old
Fathead Allison will wake up to the fact that they're playing him for a
sucker."
"You used to think Gov was pretty good," a woman's voice said. "You
voted for him."
"Never again. The country's going to the dogs. It has been for years,
ever since Roosevelt. My God, Earl, do you know a Spic family is trying
to move in down the road from us? Bunch of jabbering foreigners--must
be a dozen of them. Can't even speak English."
"Now, Harvey," the same woman's voice said. "How can you talk that way?
You've always been very pleasant to our maid and you like Oliver over
there behind the bar."
"Exactly," he said. "'Over there behind the bar.' In his place."
This might very well be Oliver's place one day, I thought to myself.
Paul Reno was hoping to open another place, given the right breaks, and
he'd spoken to me about the possibility of putting Oliver in charge of
this one.
Feeling one up on the people behind me, I quit eavesdropping and gave
Mae a big smile.
"Well," she said. "Welcome back. What pleases you so all of a sudden?"
"Nothing," I said. "Just the happy thought that that bunch of WASPS
behind me are going to be stung themselves sooner or later."
"Wasps?"
"Capital letters. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It's a term applied in
certain quarters to a certain type."
"_You're_ a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant," Mae said.
Paul Reno came back. "You will shortly be entertained by the greatest
little combo this side of Suffern," he said. "I'll join you for the
concert, if you're not engaged in pitching woo."
Mae laughed. "Sit down, Paul. The woo was pitched a long time ago.
We've been discussing the state of the world."
"On your night out? Sam, can't you ever forget that deadline stuff?"
"I'm willing to now, if your Augmented Five ever get their horns out."
There were piano, drums, guitar, trombone and clarinet, plus Kato's
cornet. The guitar man usually played trumpet. They did a good loud
job, but I noticed that Kato appeared really comfortable only when he
was taking a solo, such as the Berigan chorus of _I Can't Get Started_
or the James version of _You Made Me Love You_, where he was not only
derivative but imitative. In ensemble work he was terrible.
We decided we'd better go home after the band closed with _The Saints_.
I had my 6 A.M. alarm clock in mind.