NEW YORK OYSTERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 277, 22 November 1934, Page 11

NEW YORK OYSTERS

AND THEIR PATRONS.

HOPES AND INSPIRATIONS. THE GREENWICH VILLAGE LURE. (By a Soceial Correspondent.) NEW YORK, October 0. To-aay is oystef-ioving day among those whose lives are governed by the calendar, and there are many such in New York.

Barrels of oysters have been slamming in all week at the various fish markets, and Gloucester men have been shifting down, Virginia Cape men shifting up, to do right by them. The arguments between Gloucester Men and Virginia Cape men on the proper way of opening an oyster are more or less savoury to behold. They go 011 and 011 while the oysters are forced, at the point of a knife, to listen open-mouthed. Down on the battery the preparations have been simpler. There, " Pop " holds the fort with a single, ancient stand, sea-whipped, salt-stained and coming out at the edges. " Pop's " preparations consist of a new broon " to sweep up," he says, " the poils." "Pop" is among the few professional oystermen who have found a pearl. And it came about in this way.

Last year some sprightly spirits from the gay worjd uptown "discovered" Pop, and made pilgrimages down to the seawall for his fresh-plucked oysters. It was a pleasant drive through the deserted streets, past silent rows of deserted buildings, apd, when they arrived, they were someplace. They had tlio sea air, driving in fresh and cold, to scatter'the hothouse fumes of liquor, jazz and perfumed cuties, and they hud Pop, with his oysters and thick mugs of steaming clam broth. The ladies in their evening dresses, the gentlemen in their high hats eat on high stools and wrenched the oysters from the shells with stubby knives and doused them without benefit of sauce. Pop has sauce. He's had it for years, but you have to fight to get it. He thinks a gentleman likes oysters for themselves, and will not "gild no lilies."

One dawn, while sweeping up after a luxuriant party had rolled off into the northern darkness, Pop glimpsed a- globo of dusky white bouncing off his broom. And the man who, in the last 20 years, has opened millions of oysters, stoopc-l down to pick up the only pearl he has ever found. It was artificial, at that. Oysters Macabre. An oyster-loving story we always have been fond of happened to us one night in a village a few miles west of Penaacola, Fla. We rolled up to a welllighted station for some gasoline, but no one answered our repeated honkings.

Wandering back to a gloomy garago, we came upon a strange scene. A man was seated on an upturned box, scratching numbers on a pad. At his feet was a "burlap sack of oysters, and, over it, squatted a second man, knife in hand. With a single, deft motion he was ploughing open the shells and then transferring their contents to his hardworking mouth.

Tt went on endlessly in the. quickened stillness of a village night, troubled by the boom of the gulf surf and the rustle of the sea wind through the palmettos. From the men, there was not a sound, save the scratch of the pencil, the scrape of the knife against the shell and an occasional gulp-

When he had got down to the end of the sack, the man stood up, wiped his mouth, accepted a, £1 bill from his friend, aiid, turning to us, uttered his tirst words. "How many?" he asked.

It seems there had been a bet. If lie ate 400 oysters at a sitting, he won 16/, If he finished the sack, he won £1. If he gave up, he paid £2. Any interruption would have meant cancellation of the wager. "Do you do this for a living?" we asked. "Oh, no." replied the gas man. "But I like oysters powerful." The Home of Inspiration. When Sinclair Lewis wants to write a book, ho flees to New York. When Eugene O'Neill has a play lumbering through the crannies of his mind, ho takes flight to Sea Island, Ga. When (James) Branch Cabell is putting one word after another, you can't drag him from Virginia. Yet, year after year, the pale, grey hopes of American literature, the lads and lassies whose heart's blood is ink, pour into New York in search of inspiration. The movies have not turned the tide to Hollywood, the depression has not stanched, only thinned it.

Theodore Dreiser gave a clue to this phenomenon when he paused, during the celebration of his sixty-third birthday, to remark: "If a young writer wants to write for the love of writing, let him find some other means of earning a living." From out there, Xew York looks, like one swell place to find some other means of earning a living. And. from here, vice versa.

We thought of this when lie saw a fine, strapping boy, valise in one hand, typewriter in the other, poke amid the ruins of Greenwich Village in search of a room. Greenwich Village is where all the pale, grey hopes of literature bury themselves, but it is still used by ■some of the beginners who are going somewhere.

The antique stables down there, converted now into "apartments," are on the fringe of midtown, and from them you can walk (saving car fare) to the editors' offices. Then the village lias none of the "stigma" of the outlying, cheaper districts. Yet one of the new white hopes—Leonard Ehrlich, of "God's Angry Man"—did all hie writing in the Bronx. The Cemetery of Hopes. It is all too easy for a pale, grey hope to bury himself literally in Greenwich village. The distractions are many and luring. Conversation—some of it wise, some of it bright —-goes on in every alleyway and every gateway, in saloons, cafes, restaurants, drug stores, delicatessens and candy stores.

Then, those who like to do their work at night—a la Amy Lowell —and there are many of those, are always dropping around for some fun in the daytime. And those who do their work in the day always drop around at night for their fun. That means days and nights of fun, which, in the dreary future, doesn't become funny to the pale, grey hope. And henco that vast army of "almosts" and "would be's" and "never was's" whose numbers are so large they shut from view the perspiring genius battling all day, every day and far into the night with some garret typewriter. The Movie Big Shot. The lover of curiosities can do no better than travel out to Astoria, where Ben Hecht and Charles Mac Arthur are putting on a private show while grinding out motion pictures. In Mr. Hecht's offices there are several large signs for the guidance and inspiration of his staff. One reads: "Better'n Metro is not quite good enough." Another says tersely, "Cut to the chase!"

This last is Mr. Hecht's way of saying, "Eliminate .everything up to the climax." Mr. Hecht's idea of the perfect movie is: "Opening scene: Man heaves a custard pie. The next five reels: He is chased."

Down the corridor a bit is a superb creation in private offices 111 the Hollywood manner. On its door, lettered in chaste gold, is the legend: "General supervisor." Opening the door reveals what amounts to an estate, acres and acres of gilt splendour, of banked flowers and concealed lights. • The only human being in the office sits behind a lawn of mahogany, on which roost flocks of telephones. The surprise is that the human being is one of those oval-headed whatisits from Coney Island freak shows, whose conversation consists exclusively of the word "Slrrrrhpt."

It costs Mr. Hecht about £20 a week to preserve this surprise.—(N.A.N.A.)