The Wilmington morning star., 1946-09-06
Fair Enough
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright. 1916, by King Features Synolcs'e'

BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, by King Features Syno'o"~'
Inc.) :,
NEW YORK, Sept. ST. am confident, !
hope, that the operators Of our notes. not
only in New York but elsewhere, Will appre-
late a few constructive remarks 1rom
guest apropos the strike OF Jimmy Peuluos
musicians here and the extension OF Mat
strike to taverns in other cities which are
rooms ard are the backbone or perhaps oy
now, only the backlog of the hotel industry
have been imposed upon grievously.
hope the hotels and the musicians union
never come permanently to terms ana u1at
my inn will become again a home away rom
home and cease to be a conb1naton cahce-
hall, vaudeville house, night-club and rat-race
for disorderly elements. Throughout the war
and FOR some time before, mine hosts oe-
prived me of my own mean portions OF but.
ter, bacon, sugar and Scraggly meat TO sen
it to casuals off the streets who came 10
dance, drink and marvel in alcoholic stupor
at the dexterity of the magician in the honey
moon room or the lunar grotto as he made
the ten of hearts hop out of a goblet, to mess
I'M food with their ashes and butts while they
sat enchanted by. the tough blonde gripping
hoarselv into a tin can mounted on a pipe
and to get babbling drunk.
Mine hosts never reduced the prices of their
food but, on the contrary, raised them either
subtly by charging outrageously for ersaz
and garbage Or, frankly. by revising upward
the figures in the right hand column, or both.
They were and are diluting the rations Of
their registered guests in order to accom-
modate the clubs which make pretexts to
hold lunching parties, with oratory, and the
drinking and dancing trade which comes at
night and pays cover charges for entertain
ment by c1ooners, comedians, prestldlgltators
and pretty little thrips who sing mischievous-
ly about adultery and can put a streetwalker
to blush in free-style repartee.
Room-service, once a pleasant and efficient
convenience, is neglected almost to abandon
ment so that the walters may be available to
shove drinks and snap the caps of sparkling
water in the carousing halls. The old, expert
walters have sunk into surly despair serving
noisy interiors in the intervals between in
decencies or the dance floors and the new
talent never heard of napkins.
These demonstration of the dance have now
reached a depth of dirty vulgarity that would
have brought the bouncers running in Bux-
baum's on the old Chicago line or the historic
Ansonia on the Vest side, more than SC years
ago. 1 would add that the more disgusting
performances are not discoursed by young
men wearing the brass duck and their ladies,
but by unsightly hulks, male and female, of
considerably greater age, whose expulsion
from any brothel would improve its moral
and social tone. Many Of the males are
dressed as though for bed in tobacco road
effects copied from Hollywood, and they
scratch their heads with their forks.
Why hotel men, who are worldly, practical
men with an eye to the future of their houses.
permit low exhibitions in places Of old and
respectable renown nominally dedicated to
decent and comfortable accommodations of
genteel guests. I am afraid I know quite well.
The nouse-guest is in no position to &c else
where not only because he probably can't get
a room but because, even if he could, the
management there is running the same sort
of juke or dump.
The house-guest, putting up for a place in
which to sleep and have his meals, finds the
management preoccupied with amusement
business, casual saloon trade, the so-called
cocktail traffic for which he provides a
gloomy tomb called the lounge" adorned by
stained and reeling old drolleries from the
brush OF a sign-painter, and an obsession for
garish publicity. The house-guest may get
a linoleum sandwich in the cocktail lounge if
he is naive enough to grope his way in there !
but it will be inferior to the one he could buy
at the counter of Joe's lunch for half the
price with no trumpet or clarinet to agitate
his nerves.
Again, the house-guest, dining belatedly
after a days work, finds that the business
mems grill and the coffee shop, awful as they /,
oie AdN Ueeu ClOSeQ since I o CLOCK and so, |
If he takes a chance on the pink elephant
room. ne finds that he is not a guest but a
disciplined inmate, paying extra for certain
restraints and responsibilities. He may not
receive service, even so much as the salt,
while Ollie Twitch and his Refer Boys are
tearing the atmosphere to bleeding ~tatters
from the platform and some agile mugger
with creased hair is twining a boneless
female around his neck and exhibiting an i'm
personal patch OF leg meat, hers. Having en-
dured this for Is minutes, he is by custom
obliged to smack his palms and risk an en-
core, or he may find himself selected by a
mind-reacer or jovial pickpocket to leave his
%tasteless vittles and submit under a SPOT
light to a quarter-hour of degrading embar-
rassment and bright b%anality, memorized
from a script bought from the boys who runs
the gents room.
At any rate, he must sit through such viola
tons of the peace and the d~ignified repose
that the tavern normally owes him or 20 out
1oraglng on the town, wait an hour FOR room
service to bring him cold left-overs in his
sleep-room, or go to bed hungry.
Inc last is the best way, but even then he
Will turn on the dim little bed-light with the
cockeysd shade that clouds even that little
llgnt - the war, you know - and read the
papers and smoke cigarettes until the degen-
crate hoWis OF the hot 1--WE from the Refer
boys and the braying of the baritone finallv
ole away amid the lunatic prattle of the con-
Ventlon trade, at twoi in the morning.
lnGTe was a time mt 1opo ,oo ,rbo, @La