My father told me this story. He was a doctor.
We lived on the East Side of Manhattan, where the tone of genteel
prosperity was pervasive. Daddy
worked on the West Side of Manhattan, where things were a bit different, back
in the 1950’s.
Central Park lies between East and West, and, to make things
easier for people like my father, there are a number of transverse roads (I
think we used to call them “cuts” because they run largely in trenches below
ground level).
One of these cuts leaves Central Park at 97th
Street and Central Park West.
Thanks to urban renewal, 97th Street is quite wide as it
heads toward Columbus Avenue. This
was a favorite route for Daddy and his doctor friends as they commuted to St.
Luke’s Hospital. They could go
over to Amsterdam and turn right, or they could turn right on Central Park
West. St. Luke’s is less than a
mile north on Morningside Heights, nestled in with Columbia University and the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
When I think of my father I often think of an old French
movie, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Not for the movie,
although it’s quite a good one, but for the title.
Daddy didn’t believe in showing off. We lived well, but not
extravagantly. And that was on
purpose. You showed just enough
for the world to see you as a member of the upper middle class. And you didn’t show any more.
Daddy drove a Buick.
He would never drive a Cadillac.
Too flashy by half. One day
he came home and told us that a very successful colleague had purchased a
Rolls-Royce. Daddy wasn’t one to
criticize a colleague. I imagine
him shaking his head and chuckling, as he often did.
And then one day he came home and told us the story. Again, it was not his way to take joy
in the suffering of others. Not so
much as an I told you so. Just a
shake of the head and a rueful smile were enough for him.
As I recall, it was summer, and the nights had been
warm. Dr. Rolls-Royce had been on
his way to the hospital at the end of the day to see his patients. This was called “evening rounds.” He drove through Central Park and
emerged on to 97th Street, where it appeared that an informal street
party was going on.
As I mentioned, the street here is quite wide, so it’s a
natural place for a crowd to gather.
You can put a lot of people on the asphalt and still have room for cars
to get through.
Perhaps it was a very large crowd. Or perhaps people looked at the car and felt unmotivated
about moving out of the way. I
don’t know. But Dr. Rolls-Royce
found himself having trouble getting down the block. Rumor has it he may have honked his horn once or twice. Then he accidentally bumped someone. And the next thing he knew, strong
hands were pulling him from his mobile castle and beating him. Whaling the tar out of him would
perhaps be an appropriate phrase.
I don’t actually know how all this was resolved. Perhaps the police arrived. I don’t know. But Dr. Rolls-Royce managed to get out of there with his
car, which apparently didn’t suffer so much as a scratch. And when he got to the doctors’
cloakroom at the hospital, he waxed indignant for all to hear.
This story puts me in mind of a scene in the movie Casablanca, where Humphrey Bogart says to Major Strasser,
“Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise
you to try to invade.”
I think it was then that I began to understand there was
more behind our lifestyle than simple modesty. My father became a grownup during the wretched excess of the
Roaring Twenties, and then he lived through the Great Depression and spent a
few years touring Europe during World War II. He’d seen a lot, and he knew when to keep his head down.
The rich of his time also seemed to have learned this lesson
(with a few exceptions). Then,
somewhere perhaps in the Reagan administration, they forgot. And I think we owe much of the more
tedious aspects of our politics today to that forgetfulness.
