Evening star., 1925-05-18
Standing Room Only
BY IRWIN S. COBB.
BY IRWIN S. COBB.
Copyright. 1925. Consolidated Magazine Corporation

ger things up; and the fenced off pre-
scription department was marked
Private" and nobody entered 1t ex-
ceDtfng on business.
Milky Hartman's old stand was a
shoe-shine parlor, straw hats cleaned
while you wait. You scarcely would
be able to recognize the spot where
Paterson's old red brick livery stable
used to be; the site now as glorified
by an up-to-date filling station and re-
pair garage with storage facilities in
the rear behind the hip-roofed chalet.
The young girls still passed. it Is true.
but they no longer made a panorama
of their passing. Their electrics and
their cars in which they rode for
air merely were parts of a swift two.
way stream of traffic.
But, of course. Mr.. Oldham didn't
know about all these changes. He
, hadn't been back for more than three
years now. Probably he wouldn't have
believed you had you told him that
Tecumseh Center was taking it's mi
nor pleasures. these times. and Incl
dentally was sacrificing most of its
old restfulness just as bigger towns
were, on an humber scale than the
New York scale. but after the same
general formulas. He would have
thought you were Joking. Between
the waves of homesickness which hurt
like toothache he still saw it as it
had been, and to him as always il
would be-a great place for loaf1ng
and for passing the time of day with
folks.
1t was funny, it was so, that a fel.
lows point of view got switched
around after he moved to New York
Now, for instance, you take these for.
elgnerS. There had been time when
Mr.. Oldham had felt sort of sorry for
all such as came to this country from
| other countries. green as grass and
not knowing the United States or its
ways or its language.
But now he clearly discerned that
they had learned trick which his
kind did not master. They had learned
how to circumvent the commingling
or dullness and excitement which spir-
itually made New York what it was.
Their tap roots had not been broken
of, as his had, when they were trans.
planted. Really it wasn't as though
they had left Europe and come to
America; it was more as though they
had brought Europe along with them
The second generation might be diff
ferent, but the original immigrants
posing upon the local sills a colorado
reproduction of the colony life they
had lived in their former homes
Ihe thing was most marked in the
evening. Walking back to the Sui
tana Court. Mr.. Oldham would see
family groups and neighborhood
groups gathered in store doors
mothers and fathers and babies-or
choking the entryways into tene,
| ments, or on hot nights even taking
their ease out on the pavements, and
he IL l.,
and social details while insulated by
an immunity of their own devising,
which hedged them off from the swirl.
ing hurly Of life about them Also.
Tor the men folks there were congo.
NAL assembly places. such as the ma,
tive stocks seemed not to have the
wit or the willingness to provide for
themselves; club rooms and eating
places that were labeled with elab.
Grated names in Yiddish or Italian or
German or Magyar or even more out.
iahdlsh tongues. Once upon a time
he had felt pity for these people, com.
ing hither as strangers to a strangers
land. Now he was beginning to be en-.
vious of them
one day, moved by a vague inquisi-
uVeneSS mixed in with a gnawing de.
sire for communion, he entered A pla ce
on Second avenue which he had
marked as one seeming to enjoy a spe-
clal popularity. He went down three
stone steps into a basement room full
OF little tables and took a seat AT one
OF these tables. There were numbers
or other patrons present. mainly dark
small compact men with thick slick
black hair and cow-horn mustaches.
Formerly. Mr.. Oldham would have
catalogued them as Dagoes. that being
Jecumseh Center'S way of Jumping