VIII
When I was eight or nine, my father was employed by a New York firm, so we moved north for the winter, and I joined the tribe of city nomads, a product of the new age, whose formula runs: “Cheaper to move than to pay rent.” I remember a dingy lodginghouse on Irving Place, a derelict hotel on East Twelfth Street, housekeeping lodgings over on Second Avenue, a small “flat” on West 65th Street, one on West 92nd Street, one on West 126th Street. Each place in turn was home, each neighborhood full of wonder and excitement. Second Avenue was especially thrilling, because the “gangs” came out from Avenue A and Avenue B like Sioux or Pawnees in war paint, and well-dressed little boys had to fly for their lives.
Our longest stay—several winters, broken by moves to Baltimore—was at a “family hotel” called the Weisiger House, on West 19th Street. The hotel had been made by connecting four brownstone dwellings. The parlor of one was the office. The name sounds like Jerusalem; but it was really Virginia, pronounced Wizziger. Colonel Weisiger was a Civil War veteran and had half the broken-down aristocracy of the Old South as his guests; he must have had a sore time collecting his weekly dues.
I learned much about human nature at the Weisiger House, observing comedies and tragedies, jealousies and greeds and spites. There was the lean Colonel Paul of South Carolina, and the short Colonel Cardoza of Virginia, and the stout Major Waterman of Kentucky. Generals I do not remember, but we had Count Mickiewicz from Poland, a large, expansive gentleman with red beard and booming voice. What has become of little Ralph Mickiewicz, whom I chased up and down the four flights of stairs of each of those four buildings—sixteen flights in all, quite a hunting ground! We killed flies on the bald heads of the colonels and majors, we wheedled teacakes in the kitchen, we pulled the pigtails of the little girls playing dolls in the parlor. One of these little girls, with whom I quarreled most of the time, was destined to grow up and become my first wife; and our married life resembled our childhood.
Colonel Weisiger was large and ample, with a red nose, like Santa Claus; he was the judge and ultimate authority in all disputes. His son was six feet two, quiet and reserved. Mrs. Weisiger was placid and kindly, and had a sister, Miss Tee, who made the teacakes—this pun is of God’s making, not of mine. Completing the family was Taylor Tibbs, a large black man, who went to the saloon around the corner twice every day to fetch the Colonel’s pail of beer. In New York parlance this was known as “rushing the growler,” and you will find Taylor Tibbs and his activities all duly recorded in my novel The Wet Parade. Later in life I would go over to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to see him in the “talkie” they were making of the novel.