The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-07-13
In New York
Rx PAUL HARRISON

NeW Ork, July I5.--ln 8OOu many ways it seems to me that the big town is failing to live up to its traditions--traditions engendered and nourished by fiction and the movies and the jottings of depart ments like this one. And gener- ally this stubborn non-conformity is all to the big towns credit. Gotham has gone along for generations considering itself a hard and heartless place, un- friendly, discourteous, and with the coldest kind of civic philoso- phy, if any. Yet have seen tough taxi drivers hop out of their cabs and lead blind men across streets, and the streaming traffic of a busy avenue shriek to halt to give right-of-way to pompous Pomeranian straying to an oppo- site curb.
 It's not true that men don't give their seats to women on the subway. Tired women or old women, anyway; gallantry does have limits. have even seen young men give their seats to old men. Inconspicuously, though by rising and edging toward an exit, as though intending to get off at the next station.
 
 Polite Police
 As for policemen-Im preju- diced about them, in their favor. They certainly dispense more cour- tesy than they receive. And as for ordinary people-I've fallen into conversations. friendly but trivial. on subways, at stations, in theater lobbies. Really lonely folk always can find companionship in the cocktail dens, where a certain type of speakeasy intimacy still prevails. A place particularly like is Fifth avenue of Sunday morning. | where pink-cheeked old gentlemen taking their constitutionals will nod and smile in neighborly fash ion if you look. pleasant and re- | spectable.
 Everyone has heard that in New York one can spend all his life in one flat without ever speaking to his next-door neigh | bor. Maybe such cases of isola- tion are not just isolated cases, but you ought to hear the halloo- ing across the courts of apart ment houses, and see the tenants getting acquainted while walking their dogs.
 Your confirmed New Yorker is inclined to sheer at small towns, with cramped confines and narrow perspectives. Yet consider the typ ical Broadwayman and his life. His home is suite of two little rooms in a midtown hotel. He breakfasts at Lindy's, works in a nearby build ing on Seventh avenue. lunches at Sardi's, dimes at Dempsey's, at- tends rialto theater or movie, goes to a night club in the West Fifties. The radius of his activities is less than the average distance between a small-towner's house and the drug store on the square. For that matter, what of the rest of the city's five million-the quiet, substantial, work-a- day people whom you never hear about? There are Brooklynitee who almost never visit Broad way; Staten Islanders who never have set foot in the Bronx. ] know an ex-newspaperman who married and busy with a family in Queens, has made only two fifteen-minute trips to Manhattan in three years.
 Suckerville
 | New Workers are the most sophisticated people in the world are they? We'll, you ought to set a crowd of them watching a man change a tire, or gawking at the legerdemain of "a street magician You ought to hear them applaud ing stale acts, and laughing at Joe Miller's hoariest gags.
 Maybe you've read that New Workers are the best-dressed peo- pie in the world. Then you should tnotice the numbers of women who make a point of houting fashion and the men who so to night spots clad in sports jackets. navy blue shirts and impressed slacks. It's Q studied shabbiness.
 Reading Lights
 Legend says you can read q newspaper on Times Square at midnight. We'll, try it, and vain. ly strain your eyes Chorus girls are supposed Co make hey. hey while the signs shine, creep. Ing Into bed only at dawn. 4 pleasant aiandor. Theater eutisz shuttle homo at iliaO, night. club dancers right after their o'clock show. Nobody on hroad. way enjoys less .enfFIculaf eatoiy than these HiFie, whose ioba depend on youthful fFeshne1zl