In the lobby we met Archie, to whom the Jotta Girl had spoken at Mrs. Israel’s lecture. She introduced us casually, he invited us in for tea, and in we went. More dancing, at which I was exactly as good and as bad as before. But Archie was an easy, amiable guy, good company, we all had fun, and I stayed quite a while, before—all of a sudden—I was so tired I thought somebody, preferably the Jotta Girl, would have to carry me to my room. And I made my excuses, went up, and—shoes and half my clothes off—dropped down on the bed, and right to sleep: a big, big day.
18
DOWN IN THE LOBBY before breakfast next morning, I bought a Times, then stood at the lobby theater-ticket window behind a man buying tickets for Kismet. And felt not even slightly surprised to hear just behind me, “Good morning, Simon. What are you going to see?” And I turned to face the Jotta Girl, glad of an excuse to smile—it was hard not to laugh. But I didn’t mind being so obviously pursued: this was a good-looking girl. And while it was flattering, I knew my feelings for Julia couldn’t be touched, so it was kind of funny, too. “The Greyhound,” I answered, and could have spoken her reply right along with her.
“Why, so am I,” she said, her voice astonished at the coincidence. And, the man ahead of me turning away, studying his tickets, I stepped up and bought a pair on the aisle for today’s matinee of The Greyhound. I didn’t mind; I don’t like sitting alone at a play or movie. And keeping the aisle seat for myself, I handed her the other.
But I like breakfast alone, and had it in the hotel coffee shop, with only the Times. Read the advance review of The Greyhound, which said, among other not entirely flattering things, that “by checking your intelligence with your hat,” you might like the play well enough.
A TAXI-AEROPLANE.
Frank Coffyn is Looking for Fares at Pier A, North River.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
I thank you for your comment on my trusting my aeroplane. You are like the boy in the well-known song in that you “guessed right the very first time.” Aeroplanes, particularly hydro-aeroplanes, are very much safer than people think. In my opinion the machines are ahead of the men who pilot them, for probably 95 per cent of flying is in the machine one flies. That is immediately apparent when one sees that almost everybody who wants to learn how to fly does so very quickly. Aeroplaning is not for supermen, and they who fly are not supermen at all.
But aeroplaning, particularly in this country, has received several black eyes because of the carelessness, amounting almost to criminal recklessness, of some airmen and some aeroplane builders. Imperfect machines there are, of course, just as there are badly built automobiles. Chauffeurs who try to take sixty-mile-an-hour automobiles around street corners at that speed find imitators among the airmen. You will find such antics more or less common with every kind of vehicle, born, probably in the familiarity which breeds contempt for the factor of safety.
I agree with you that “It would be interesting to know how many people in this city would be willing to take a ride in an aeroplane.” It costs money to operate a flying machine, particularly with the present types of motors. I cannot therefore, much as I should like to I do so, invite people to ride with me at no expense to themselves. But I will carry passengers, either male or female, from Pier A, North River, to and around the Statue of liberty at a price that should not hamper those who really want to ride. Aviation has not yet reached the stage where it has become a poor man’s pleasure, as the case is with the automobile.
My hydro-aeroplane is, in my opinion, a far safer machine than the average New York taxicab. Certainly I feel that I take far fewer chances in it than I do when I ride through New York’s crowded streets in a taxicab, whose chauffeur is trying to take me to my destination as quickly as possible, regardless of decent precautions for my own or pedestrians’ safety, so that he may pick up another fare at an early momemt.
Again permit me to thank you for your editorial. If the same class of people who made the automobile industry, as it now exists, possible by their purchase of motor cars were only to try aeroplaning, particularly over the water, which is ten times safer than flying over land. I am sure that aviation would receive that stimulus which would quickly put it on a sound and sane footing, free from crazy exhibition features and disgusting exploitation of circus stunts.
FRANK T. COFFYN.
And then I found this in the Letters to the Editor column. But Coffyn’s “assurances” didn’t even come close to convincing me that “hydro-aeroplanes” were “very much safer than people think.” What did sound persuasive to me was that “aeroplaning, particularly in this country, has received several black eyes because of the carelessness, amounting almost to criminal recklessness, of some airmen and some aeroplane builders.” Even while reading those bone-chilling words, the blood was withdrawing from my skin with the sudden understanding that I actually had to go up in Frank Coffyn’s “hydro-aeroplane.” Had to. Had to. Because how else—I sat looking across the restaurant tabletops—how else could I search the length and breadth of Manhattan Island for something, it seemed to me, that I’d never seen or even heard of? How else search for a building with a prow like the Mauretania’s? Oh, Rube, Rube, what have you got me into?
It was early, so I walked, taking my camera. This is Broadway and Twenty-third Street, southeast corner of Broadway. And this is Broadway and Ninth Street, northeast corner of Ninth. Still pretty nice and respectable down here. But as I moved further and further down into this 1912 New York, it got shabbier. I glanced into Max’s Busy Bee Quick Lunch Room here, and thought that if Max had ever eaten here himself, it must be his widow running it now.
But every sight and street sound, even these kids’ voices (this is Ann Street) were a fascination to my hungry eyes and ears. Here on Fulton Street even this barber pole and tailor’s shop—is this understandable?—took my eye. And when I reached the place those men are passing, I had to stop and—feeling foolish—take this.
Pier A was down where Frank said it was, sticking out into the Hudson on the west side of lower Manhattan not too far from the very tip of the Island. And today, strung out along the grassy riverbank for maybe a hundred yards on each side of Pier A, stood . . . I really don’t know how many people; a lot. The crowd—men’s dark suits and white stiff collars, women’s long colorful dresses—stood silent, faces tilted up, absorbed and staring. I walked up to them, and stood looking between heads out at the gray Hudson. Out beyond Pier A a wooden raft lay swaying from the tiny waves, a rowboat tied to it. Then, far beyond this, I found what these silent people stood watching: a plane, not high, way off over the water toward the Jersey shore.
I wasn’t sure at first that I actually heard it. Then, watching it, small and low but sharply clear and alone in the air, I did hear for sure the steady stutter-stutter-stutter-stutter-stutter-stutter sound. He was coming low, right at us; then he rose steeply and, over the trees of Battery Park, Frank Coffyn, his plane white on the blue, began swinging and swerving, entertaining us down here, gracefully tilting from side to side, the right wings dipping, then the left, and from the crowd came a long murmured ohhhhh of pleasure.