The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-11-13
In New York
By PAUL HARRISON

New York-While thousands. of people in limousines and taxicabs and subways were rolling up to Madison Square Garden to see the National Horse Show, the city's half-dozen venerable h c k m and their horses stood, disconsolate and idle, at their old stand-and their last stand-on the edge or Central park. Not single customer all that day. Nor likely to be one, either, the weather as it was, threatening ike, The horses faced the wind, their heads hanging down. The ldrivers lounged against the stone wall, their heads hanging down. Calm resignation in every line or them. MT Rafferty and MT Toomey smoked pipes. MT Mulligan rubbed
 a rusty hat with threadbare sleeve. MT McMahon applied a cloth to the cracked finish of his hansom.
 MT Nelson (whose name. be- Iieve. is not Nelson, was reading
 about the horse show in news paper he had retrieved from a waste can. He did not seem ir the | least mindful of the harsh irony that he, one of the last relics of the days when horses were utili- tartan as well as sporty, had not driven a single sentimentalist to Madison Square Garden. He hadn't | in fact, had a fare of any kind for
 three days.
 Hanson Is As
 The hackmen also were observ- | ing ("celebratihg" is scarcely the word) the hundredth anniversary of Joseph Aloysius Hansom's in- vention of the patent safety cab. The two-wheeled hansoms, with the driver on a dickey up behind, were quite an advance in trans- portation. Ladies hired them for afternoon shopping trips. and
 swains preferred them for the pri- vacy they afforded. Even today. hansoms are preferred to the open
 victorias which most of the hack men drive in summer. The modern generation, even on a lark, seems
 a little bashful about sitting right out in the open in turn through Central park.
 1 Until a few weeks ago MT Me- Mahon had one steady customer a little old lady who lives on lower Fifth avenue. Three afternoons a
 week she'd ride up to'the plaza in
 a taxicab and there transfer to his victoria. They'd jog all around the 1 park, talking old times. She hasn't | appeared lately. MT McMahon in- quired about her and found she | had a cold. He won't tell her
 name: says stiffIy that she wouldn't
 be interested in publicity |
 Private Lives
 As a matter of fact. few of the
 ancient hackmen will tell much of anything. Reporters are. their spe- cial abhorrence because they try to wheedle intimate anecdotes about famous people of the van ished era. Mike Toomey. who is more than 70 and has been driving
 in Manhattan for nearly half a century, won't talk at all. Ask him
 a question and he just glowers and shakes his gray head and it's threadbare silk hat. Offer his
 horse a piece of sugar. and MT
 Toomey has little left but his mem
 ories, and he isn't going to share
 those with anybody.
 Pat Rafferty, who has the trim
 mest conveyance in the plaza, turns dWdy dll IeDOI1cTS OCCduSc ouC OL them once called his hanson a
 "dilapidated rig. He says maga- zine writer once offered him $1.0e0 for his story of the days when he drove real people,. But MT Raf- ferty's memories are not for sale. In the manner of one casting a lcondescending pearl. he confided | to me that he drove Greta Garbo II through the park a few years ago. At least, he guessed it was Garbo.
 She was ''pretty one". and used
 a funny accent when. at the end
 of the drive, she asked the amount of the fare.
 Fare Enough
 The fare, incidentally. is pretty steep. Fifty cents for the first mile, and forty for every mile thereafter. Three dollars for the trip around
 Central park, which is little more | than seven miles, and takes at least an hour. Lots of people now adays try to beat down their rates. The dour old cabbies never haggle: just fold up the iaprobes again and
 stalk back to their lounging place against the wall.
 l There's not one of them but will admit that the automobile has it's place in the scheme of things. They just keep on hacking because there's nothing else to do. Not one
 would ride in taxicab, much less l drive one.
 So they stand there. shabby sym.
 bols of leisurely age.
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