Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-30
DEAH OLD MOO YAWK

can populace through the medium of New
York. shows, sang the song that reached
! my heart" said the fat man who knows
Moo fawk well. and several other places
/ besides
| The Kansas City man beat me to it,
because he's q writing individual and has
the means to get his thinks into print, but
he never beat me to 1t IN thinking this
deah old Moo Yark gag over. For more
!; years than I've got fingers and toes I've
| teen fnwardly bucking about the way
| these snide actors and singers from the
Dig iunmox OF burg over che way from
Hoboken try to crowd the Moo Yawk idea
down the threats of folks that live all
over the United States.
| ia hate to have to even mentally re-
| capitulate the years during which I've had
| to sit still while these numbskull hams
have tossed those sickeninG Hits about
Take Me Back to Herald Square and On
| Croak in Moo Yawk Town and all the
| rest of that kind Of slopperinos. at me over
| the footlfghts. And during all that time
the bum comedians. the mugs that stand
! around the upper Broadway corners most
| of the time and frame up touches for the
| laundry money. have been hurting cheap
| MOO fawk gags at me, and then, when
| failed to rock and roll around uproariously
| in my seat. they've whispered to each
! other in the wings that all of us out IN
+ front were hanky-panks on the minor
| league circuit, and weren't hep to real hui
NOR of the Moo Yawk variety-for which,
| thank heaven!
| Now. femme tell you something about
| deah old Moo Yawk-and I know what I'm
| talking about for I've been compelled. for
| long stretches at a time, to live over there
| for my sins, and you couldn't lose me in
| deah old Moo Yawk If you'd tie me in a
| coffee sack and turn me loose in the mid
die Of vacant lot while fog was in
progress. The average Moo Yawk man,
| the fellow born and raised over there, Is
! the most monumental lightweight, phony,
! peripatetic, bogus, itinerant counterfeit
Is, at the same time, the most utterly con-
| ceited. swell-up pinhead that ever lived on
| this globe. He Is eighteen pounds lighter
than a sheet OF shaving paper. and yet
| he's got q gas-house imitation that makes
| him a positive nuisance and an afliction
whenever he does contrive to get forty
| miles away from Manhattan Island. If
| there's anything more nauseating on earth
| than the smirky, idiotic, self-complaisance
| of the average New York male, especially
| in the attitude he adopts toward people
| from every other part of the United
| States and the world In general, you've got
| to show me.
He has no real knowledge. He has
certain nasty familiarity with the smudgy
! viciousness Of the Tenderloin of his own
| town, and he loves that sort of thing with
| love unspeakable. He bankers to have
you consider him master OF all the dead
bad things that he tells you about, and
he walks the worlds. chucking insinuations
| at himself as a gay dog of the worst
| imaginable kind. Manhattan Island is the
whole world to him. The average Moo
Yawker rarely gets farther away from Moo
Yawk than Coney Island. He neither
knows nor cares what lies on the other
side OF Jersey City. and the plains and
mountains and rivers beyond. He's Moo
Yawk guy. and he's satisfied. You've got
to show him why and how Moo Yawk isn't
| the hull United States. the entire show and
the concert afterward. Everybody else on
earth. besides the Moo Yawker, is to him
| a Rube and Zeke and a wearer Of hair
the chief Of all Of the worlds provincials
He's dense. thick. obtuse, Opaque as to
everything else on the globe but Moo Yawk
His one and only Idea Of what he calls
good time is to repair to Tenderloin res
taurant frequented by bum bookmakers and
patchouli-diffusing sextet trippers and get
souse on in that exalted company. That's
| his idea Of dead high life and going some.
He hasn't got any home. never had a
home. never will have home, and doesn't
want any home, because he doesn't know
the nearing of a home.
Just because he happened to be born
or brought up within the limits of Moo
Yawk he takes 1t for granted that he must
necessarily know it all. heritage of his
environment. II for no other reason No
body can tell him anything. He's hep
He's wise to it all. You can't throw him,
because he's the boy with the litter OF
foxy junk. And yet happen to know, for
d ucdu Sure Thing CnaI the average MOO
Yawk man that ever does. by some pecu-
liar accident, get away from his own town,
viii fall for all the gold bricks that they
ofrer to him in Scituate, all the green goods
they attempt to break off in him in Painted
Post, and prove himself, when he gets out
into the open, where the real smart tray
eled people actually live, mere dressed-up
mannikin four-fiush.
"Deah, old Moo Yawk's the town where
they all just think they're having fun TIE
MOO Yawk bunch viii stand for more vile
imposition than any other people on the
whole globe without making so much IS a
murmur. They're mere sheep in standing
for imposition. and. for all Their perkfness
they let the few Moo Yawkers that ac-
tually run things break off any old kind of
club in them, and they never let cheep
out OF them. Most of them live cooped up
like dogs in kennels. and they think they're
having dickens OF time when the jani-
tor stands for their having a case of beer
in the iceboX and refrains from kicking
holes In them If they walk in unsupported
feet over the fiat floor after half-past 10
O clock at night Few of them ever get a
Shutdown ride on the street cars. and still
they never buck. They just take the wal
lops as they're handed out to them. and
giggle over the pure joy of just existing in
Moo Yawk They are buncoed at the thea
tiers, and yet they fall for the theaters
that shred them without a kick. They're
prodded and moved on, and battered
around, and swept hither and yon and tbs
way and that like so many corralled jack
rabbits, and nix the protest do they ever
make, but take it all if it was coming
to them sort of other-side balance to
the acute gladness of life in deah. old Moo
Yawk.
Most of these rummles that sing or
chin about the joys of deah, old Moo Yawk
are berry panhandlers that know the lunch
routes of Moo Yawk like a Pullman con-
ductor knows his rate book. Moo Yawk has
never given them anything but boot and
g. hist and a slap In the teeth. but they
cont know that. They just know that
when they're fourteen miles from deah old
Moo Yawk they're camping OFT and living
in state of barbarism
II don't mind their liking their oNn
cheap and nasty town if they can see it in
that light But I'm there with a buck as
big as a spring simeon when they try to
gush the Moo Yawk stuff at me. You don't
hear the duck from Chicago bawling, with
berry bathos, Take Me Back to Lincoln
Park The San Francisco chap doesn't
belIer I Want to Die by the Golden Gate
The Pittsburger doesn't chuck at you, In
Deah Old Smokeville.' They like their
towns, too, and stand for them. but they
don't try to crowd 'em down the outlets of
everybody else on earth. That's the pecu-
Iiarity of the Moo Yawker exclusively. It's
time these theatrical dubs found this out
I never hear one Of 'em making the OPEN
ing break toward letting out one of those
Moo Yawk gulpies that whole lot of peo-