Judge — August 8, 1931 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Good Old Days Tw Gin Mills of the Beer Gods tumble It seems I could choose: «stoop in Fiftieth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, ring its bell, be recog- nized, admitted and become a worm with aglow. I mingled with folk who reveled in a smirk at the Hate-teenth Amendment. My circle of acquaint- ances increased at the rate of thirty a night and falling in love was a mo- notonous ritual, [ became an inces- sant baritone—an easily provoked minstrel who plugged “There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding” and “Good-bye, Girls, I'm Through!” in harmony with the well-known “Coupla Other Fellas.” I saw a popular song writer listen to me ten minutes one night and then leave hurriedly, per- haps to turn my variations of “Dolly nto the next week's city-wide whistli I gave plots to playwrights and novelists freely. I cured beauti- ful girls, blondes or brunettes, of hic- cups. I stepped between brawling pairs, sometimes a little too impul- I predicted crash after crash in the stock market. I've sympathized with millions of depressed ladies—set- ting their faces into the sunlight of righteousness and getting their tele- phone numbers. I've leaped over the bar and taught bartenders amazing new concoctions. When I appeared Y! — DID YOU HAPRPEW 6 COME ACROSS A FLASHING © BLACK EYED GIRL WHEN You TORE DOWN TOWN'S? MUNIOR WATCHES OLD SCENES 7ymBe ! JUDGE SN vere Zhe ees son h ADMITS % BEING TRERWIER oF FADO on the stoop alone and was admitted Lusually left a message with the door- man such blonde. thereafter any unaccompanied blondes who entered the place would be ush- ered to me, and though they always would say, “There must be a mistake —I don't know the gentleman—" a conversation would be started. In other words, Iam the composite man, dispossessed by Mr. Rockefeller to make way for his new Radio While all’ my old haunts we wrecked and carried aw on the protecting fenc sadly watched each tumbling stone, I won- dered if they'd found the bamboo stick IAIG-H I'd lost in Beppo's. Had the wreckers come across any more of the beads I'd scattered from a fair neck in Joe's one November night? And the hat I'd left as security in the Cat Clubh— did they find it hanging on ae of the cash register back of the bar? And the portrait of the ¢ girl in topper and stockings I'd sketched with a burnt Bour! on the plaster wall of Georg: that been preserved, for Mr. Roc ler's private gallery or had it been rejected? And had they found the flashing, black-eyed gitl who she'd wait for me at the bar of Tony's if it took me years to find a taxi in the Sadness, what-ho and no end! Mr. Rockefeller might have left one old brownstone house in the middle of 50th St.—as a sort of shrine in hilari ous memory to the street's fun from sun through moon to sun. Mr. Rocke- feller wouldn't miss twenty feet out of that great block! © And maybe that one old note of damp architecture is just what the Radio City pile needs to stabilize its lines. And yet—good ol’ silver lining all last’ week my mail carried nouncements; Beppo has reopened in Forty-seventh with ping-pong and backgammon rooms; Joe is in East Sixty-first and requests formal dress after theatre; The Cat Club is now The Intimate in West Fifty-sixth, with modernistic litter; George has taken a whole house somewhere up ‘ast Seventy-way and features little individual bars on wheels, which you can drag around and up and down the clevators and be your own bartender; The Mad House moved name and all uptown str ast, hard by the ¢ Knock Knee is now > Trés Petite under the Third Ave- nue L, and thus, Poo-Pa- Doop,Fiftieth Street, West, way, practically intact. The Outdoors Inane G* the ping-pong table on the lawn and using a tennis ball and one or both hands, play a game of tennis that does not neces- sitate covering a huge court and it will give you just as much thrill as the real game. comicbooks.com *