PART THREE
THE ESCAPE
(Confidential!)
34. THE TUESDAY-TO-THURSDAY SET
The most itching urge in Washington is to get away from it. Few have the conventional home ties there which bind the average American to the hearth, or the radiator. Weekends are dismally dull and shop shuts up from Friday night until Monday morning, with few exceptions. Civil servants rate thirty-day vacations. The winters are sleazy and frosty. The summers are insufferable in that swampy, flat region which enjoys no ocean breezes.
Where to go? Anywhere. Those who can afford it scram to New York or Atlantic City. The next layer hightails it for Baltimore or Philadelphia. Some fly to far points. Eastern Congressmen and officials rarely bring their wives and families to Washington, an arrangement of mutual consent after the rookies have tried domestic life there for a few months of high anticipation and depressing disillusionment. Most Congressmen from east of the Ohio River don’t wait for Friday. They are known as the “Tuesday-to-Thursday” set, because that’s the point of departure and return. Frank Roosevelt, Jr. is its most consistent member.
The great hegira starts Thursday, when the Congressional Limited leaves, at 4 P.M. For the rest of the day and throughout the night every outgoing train and plane is packed and the stragglers fill them up on Fridays, too. For these trips and returns, hundreds of regular reservations stand during sessions.
Weekenders who have no fences to mend or wives to mollify or private practices to superintend hie to resorts in Virginia and the Carolinas. But the pet dreamland of escape for the hiatus is Atlantic City. During spring and summer the Pennsylvania Railroad runs a through Pullman car daily to and from there, via the Delaware River bridge. This is hooked onto or off the New York-Washington train at North Philadelphia, where there is a rush for the club car. The drawing-rooms house either poker games or shut-in shebas who long to smell the sea. Teetotal-voting, Bible-Belt solons stagger up and down the boardwalk with potted patooties on the arms that beat the righteous breasts in the hallowed chambers.
The politicians favor the Claridge in Atlantic City, but the Brighton, across the street, is rapidly becoming the gay spot, much patronized by those who go up for laughs. Those who want seclusion usually stay at the Ritz-Carlton, at the end of the boardwalk and off the beaten track. The Ritz was once owned by Enoch “Nocky” Johnson, former Atlantic City political boss, recently discharged from federal prison. Nocky is on parole now and not supposed to drink or go to public places or engage in politics, but he does and is still a power in the town and is called on by visiting Washington G.O.P. dignitaries.
Nocky was one of the few leaders with underworld tie-ups prosecuted during the Roosevelt administration. Of course, Johnson was a Republican, not a Democrat, and the orders went out from Boss Hague in Jersey City to get him.