Automat

What’s to be said about the “great” American depression that hasn’t been said by John Steinbeck? Did it teach us anything? Did we become a greater people for it? Did families stay together because they couldn’t afford to split asunder? Is there a greater compassion today because of the terrible want of the thirties? To this day when I look in our gleaming refrigerator and it isn’t full of food, some small bell rings and I am disquieted.

As a child I remember being dispossessed from a15 dollar-a-month Manhattan apartment, my father’s rage and my mother’s quiet desperation. I recall the quiet tears rolling down her face as we accepted a box of “relief” food. I remember the holes in my shoes which were stuffed with cardboard. There were shattered dreams of so many who found poverty their birthright, despair their daily lot and apathy their horizon.

There were a few bright times when my father, with all his Irish charm and guile, would wangle a job and we would eat well, even dine in the luxury of the Automat on 23rd Street and Seventh Avenue. The Automat was a place of plenty and it was cheap. A man would sit at this kiosk and dispense nickels for quarters and half dollars or even an occasional dollar bill, and you went to look through the little glass doors which would open to an apple pie or a sandwich. The nickels would go in, you would turn the brass handle and the food was in your hand. You could eat your fill for about 25 cents.

The incident I remember occurred in the mid thirties when few of Roosevelt’s many plans for recovery were working. West 22nd Street, for instance, was called “gas pipe alley” for the number of suicides of men who lived in tiny apartments with grease-coated bulbs from cooking on a tiny gas ring. Some just turned on the gas, lay back on their single beds and went to where there is no despair or crushed hopes and shattered dreams. Our neighborhood, Chelsea, where an small apartment currently rents for $2,500 a month, was typical then of the stricken neighborhoods throughout every American city.. The Automat, and eating out, was the ultimate luxury.

On a Friday night, we had gone to the enormous, high-ceilinged building, gotten our change and our meals, and brought them to the table. During the meal I sat looking at all the people and the recessed lights on the thirty foot ceiling . My mother and father were talking when he got up to get something he’d forgotten. We continued eating when a man in near rags sat down and started to eat my father’s dinner. My mouth was open but my mother shook her head at me as we watched him shovel food in his mouth as fast as he could. He had nearly finished the plate when my father returned and confronted him. He immediately jumped up and offered profuse apologies, saying contritely that he thought it was his dinner, that he had made a mistake.

My father could be a violent man and he was no stranger to making a scene in public for maximum effect, but surprisingly he simply stood, then said, “No, it’s O.K., I want you to finish it . There’s no problem,” but the stranger continued to offer his apologies, begged our forgiveness and walked away from the table. My father went and got another meal while I registered my confusion.

I must have asked my mother what the man had done and she said simply, “It’s all right Sonny, he is just poor. Finish your dinner. ” My father sat down, stopped eating with the fork halfway to his mouth, put his head in his hands and I knew not to say anything else.

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