Michael Mayer - Time Trippers The Nights of the Round Table

“Thank YOU sir!” he said.

I explained that a quarter was the normal tip.

We walked up the stairs, and marveled at the immense high steel and glass ceiling towering overhead. I smiled knowing it was long gone since 1965, an architectural masterpiece destroyed.

We left the throngs of people and took the ‘shortcut’ to 33rd Street. We waited in a line for a taxi under the mighty stone columned taxi ramp. A young woman was waiting right behind us, almost dancing with impatience, clutching a small overnight bag. Soon a cab pulled up for us.

“Where to, Mac?” he asked.

“The Algonquin!” I said very cool.

“OK buddy!” the driver said as he started the meter.

“Say Mister!” the lady said, “Can we share a cab, I’m going nearby on 44th, that OK?” she asked nicely.

“Uh, sure, OK by me.”

“Gee, thanks Mister!” She piled in and sat on the seat facing us. “Hiya kids!”

The driver looked back at us skeptically, rolling his eyes. He ground the gears, the noisy motor making that peculiar burbling rattle cars made in those days, the car vibrating with the motor.

“This is a funny-looking car!” Jonathan said.

“Shhs!” I said. “Be nice… this is how cars look ‘today.’ Take a good look at some of them – long, lean narrow hoods, running boards, radiator and separate headlights, nothing hidden, nothing on the car that doesn’t need to be there – see that ‘roadster,’ I mean sports car over there? Lean and mean, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Jonathan said.

“There are a lot of people making cars now, names you probably never heard of: Packard, Pierce-Arrow, Moon, Marmon, Kissel, Jordan, Stutz, Studebaker, besides the big ones like Ford,” I explained to them.

The lady smiled at us in a puzzled way. “You’d think he never saw a car before…” I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled.

“We’re from Minnesota…”

“Oh…I see,” she said as if we said we came from Timbuktu.

The driver ran past Penn Station, its columns like a massive Roman building, past the Statler Hotel, Macy’s and busy Herald Square, under the ancient 6th Avenue El, crossing Broadway and its street car line I had forgotten about, past the place where the Empire State Building would soon be built.

“Say, I’ll pay my share,” she offered in her cutesy New York accent that reminded me of the old cartoon character, Betty Boop.

“Never mind – my treat, uh… Miss?”

“Kane, Helen Kane…Mrs. Kane actually.”

“Oh, sorry, didn’t notice,” I apologized. A sudden thought occurred to me. “You wouldn’t be by any chance the singer… ?”

She flashed her big eyes. “Yeah … that’s me! Gee! I have a fan! Did you see me in my show ‘A Night in Spain,’ the revue at the Winter Garden? I only have a small part.”

“No… just a fan of the theater. One hears about people….”

“Gee….thanks!” she said, all pleased.

“Are you a star?” Lauren asked.

“Not yet honey, but I’m in there swinging’ every night – someday!” she said optimistically.

“You talk like Betty Boop!” Lauren said in her matter of fact way.

“Who?!” Helen asked puzzled.

“Betty Boop?! You know, in the cartoons who says: “Boop, boop a doop!” Lauren said smiling innocently.

“Lauren!” I told her. “Never mind, you know, kids and their imaginations..” I interjected with a nervous laugh.

“Awww, that’s kinda cute - Boop, boop-a-doop…..I like it!” Helen said. “Boop, boop-a-doop!” she said sounding ultra-cute. “Hmm….if I added it to a song – kinda jazzy…”

We swung left up 5th Avenue. The streetlamps were very ornate and ‘busy’ looking.

“Foist time in Noo Yawk?” the driver asked.

“What’d he say, Lito?” Jonathan asked.

Ignoring him I told the cabby, “Yeah, I could say so…”

“Figured as much,” he said, “Fit Avenoo, classiest street in dah city,” he said proudly. We passed the massive Library, and stopped at the amazing ‘traffic tower’ dominating the intersection of 5th and Forty-second street.

“Look at that, kids. That’s how they control traffic at this intersection.”

The ornate, narrow tower rose from the middle of 5th Avenue with a clock and a little office at the top for the policemen and a traffic light on top of that lying on its side.

“Amazing!”

“Wow!” the kids said.

“Look at those double-decker buses, open on top, soon as we check in and get some lunch, let’s take a ride on one, see the city, OK?”

“OK!” they said.

The taxi ran two more blocks to 44th street then turned a sharp left, cutting off on-coming traffic, one car braking to a screeching halt, blowing his horn angrily: “AAAOOOOOOOGAH!!!” The kids laughed, Lauren said: “What a crazy horn!”

We pulled up in front of the elegant Algonquin Hotel. I paid the driver and Helen got out and thanked me giving each kid a hug and a kiss, leaving them each with a big lipstick imprint on the cheek. She walked off.

“She’s going to be super-famous, starting next year with her ‘Boop, boop a doop’ trademark in her singing - and Betty Boop will be modeled after her. Hmmmmm, Lauren… I wonder… ?” I said, wondering if we just changed something in time? We’d have to be careful.

The doorman took our bags and greeting us said: “Checking in? Right this way sir, I’ll look after the bags…”

I told the kids to be extra quiet. The desk clerk asked if I wished a room with or without bath? The kids started to grin at this.

“Triple room with bath for one week, please,” I told him.

“Very good sir, with our weekly rate, that works out to $28, or $4 per day, plus tax.”

I pulled out my wallet, and took out two twenties and he said that only a small deposit is necessary, I can pay when I check out. Smiling, I gave him $5, which would do for now.

He rang the bell on his desk saying “Front!” and a bellboy was right there wheeling the bag cart. He took us to our room on the 7th floor, which looked out over 44th street. The elevator, of course, had an operator, and closing the gate he took us up rather fast.

Lauren laughing “Weeeeeee this is fun!”

Wait until you go down, I thought, remembering the quick drops those old elevators could make.

Our room was small but comfy, with a bay window, with two full-size beds and a fold-out couch bed.

“Jonathan, you get the fold-out bed, no arguments, please.”

He frowned briefly but soon cheered up. “Say where’s the TV?” Jonathan asked.

“In the lab,” I said being a bit mean. “Sorry, scientists are just working on experimental television now; what we have is radio.”

He frowned and started to sulk. “No TV?!”

“Nope, sorry kids, guess I forgot to warn you, but radio is the wonder of the age, just now, the big thing for techno-geeks. There are also no computers, no cell phones, iPods, video games, DVDs, GPSs, CD players. You have to use an operator to make a phone call, not buttons or dials. Music is recorded directly onto wax disk masters with a needle, and from there they make copies called ‘records’ which are like CDs, but instead of laser light reading the sound waves, the needle does it mechanically.”