Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) (37 page)

‘And they like to talk about reservation matters. The last time I was home, I sat down with the bunch in a store and I tried to tell them about something I’d been studying up on that interested me very much – Mongolian spots. They’re dark-purple spots that occur on the skin on the backs of Japanese and other Mongolians. Every now and then, a full-blood American Indian is born with them. The old men didn’t want to hear about Mongolian spots. They were too busy discussing the matter of street names for Caughnawaga village. The electric-light company that supplies the village had been trying and trying to get the Indians to name the streets and lanes. The meter-readers are always getting balled up, and the company had offered to put up street signs and house numbers free of charge. The old men didn’t want street names; they were raising holy hell about it. It wouldn’t be Indian. And they were discussing the pros and cons of a waterworks system. They’re eternally discussing that. Some want a waterworks, but the majority don’t. The majority of them, they’d a whole lot rather get behind a poor old horse that his next step might be his last and cart their water up from the river by the barrel. It’s more Indian.
Sometimes
, the way an Indian reasons, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Electric lights are all right and the biggest second-hand car they can find, and radios that the only time they turn them off is when they’re changing the tubes, and seventy-five-dollar baby carriages, and four-hundred-dollar coffins, but street names and tap water – oh, Jesus, no! That’s going entirely too damned far.

‘On the other hand, there’s things I look forward to. I look forward to eating real Indian grub again. Such as
o-nen-sto
, or corn soup. That’s the Mohawk national dish. Some of the women make it down here in Brooklyn, but they use Quaker corn meal. The good old women up on the reservation, they make it the hard way, the way the Mohawks were making it five hundred years ago. They shell some corn, and they put it in a pot with a handful of maple ashes and boil it. The lye in the ashes skins the hulls off the kernels, and the kernels swell up into big fat pearls. Then they wash off the lye. Then they put in some red kidney beans. Then they put in a pig’s head; in the old days, it was a bear’s head. Then they cook it until it’s as thick as mud. And when it’s cooking, it smells so good. If you were breathing your last, if you had the rattle in your throat, and the wind blew you a faint suggestion of a smell of it, you’d rise and walk. And I look forward to eating some Indian bread that’s made with the same kind of corn. Down here, the women always use Quaker meal. Indian bread is boiled, and it’s shaped like a hamburger, and it’s got kidney beans sprinkled through it. On the reservation, according to an old-time custom, we have steak for breakfast every Sunday morning, whether we can afford it or not, and we pour the steak gravy on the Indian bread.

‘And another thing I look forward to, if I can manage it – I want to attend a longhouse festival. If I have to join to do so, I’ll join. One night, the last time I was home, the longhousers were having a festival. I decided I’d go up to the Catholic graveyard that’s right below the longhouse and hide in the bushes and listen to the music. So I snuck up there and waded through the thistles and the twitch grass and the Queen Anne’s lace, and I sat down on a flat stone on the grave of an uncle of mine, Miles Diabo,
who
was a warwhooper with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and died with the pneumonia in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1916. Uncle Miles was one of the last of the Caughnawaga circus Indians. My mother is in that graveyard, and my father, old Nazareth Diabo that I hardly even knew. They called him Nazzry. He was a pioneer high-steel Indian. He was away from home the majority of the time, and he was killed in the disaster – when the Quebec Bridge went down. There’s hundreds of high-steel men buried in there. The ones that were killed on the job, they don’t have stones; their graves are marked with lengths of steel girders made into crosses. There’s a forest of girder crosses in there. So I was sitting on Uncle Miles’s stone, thinking of the way things go in life, and suddenly the people in the longhouse began to sing and dance and drum on their drums. They were singing Mohawk chants that came down from the old, old red-Indian times. I could hear men’s voices and women’s voices and children’s voices. The Mohawk language, when it’s sung, it’s beautiful to hear. Oh, it takes your breath away. A feeling ran through me that made me tremble; I had to take a deep breath to quiet my heart, it was beating so fast. I felt very sad; at the same time, I felt very peaceful. I thought I was all alone in the graveyard, and then who loomed up out of the dark and sat down beside me but an old high-steel man I had been talking with in a store that afternoon, one of the soreheads, an old man that fights every improvement that’s suggested on the reservation, whatever it is, on the grounds it isn’t Indian – this isn’t Indian, that isn’t Indian. So he said to me, “You’re not alone up here. Look over there.” I looked where he pointed, and I saw a white shirt in among the bushes. And he said, “Look over there,” and I saw a cigarette gleaming in the dark. “The bushes are full of Catholics and Protestants,” he said. “Every night there’s a longhouse festival, they creep up here and listen to the singing. It draws them like flies.” So I said, “The longhouse music is beautiful to hear, isn’t it?” And he remarked it ought to be, it was the old Indian music. So I said the longhouse religion appealed to me. “One of these days,” I said, “I might possibly join.” I asked him how he felt about it. He said he was a Catholic and it was out of the question. “If I was to join the
longhouse
,” he said, “I’d be excommunicated, and I couldn’t be buried in holy ground, and I’d burn in Hell.” I said to him, “Hell isn’t Indian.” It was the wrong thing to say. He didn’t reply to me. He sat there awhile – I guess he was thinking it over – and then he got up and walked away.’

(1949)

All You Can Hold for Five Bucks

THE NEW YORK
steak dinner, or ‘beefsteak,’ is a form of gluttony as stylized and regional as the riverbank fish fry, the hot-rock clambake, or the Texas barbecue. Some old chefs believe it had its origin sixty or seventy years ago, when butchers from the slaughterhouses on the East River would sneak choice loin cuts into the kitchens of nearby saloons, grill them over charcoal, and feast on them during their Saturday-night sprees. In any case, the institution was essentially masculine until 1920, when it was debased by the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The Eighteenth Amendment brought about mixed drinking; a year and a half after it went into effect, the salutation ‘We Greet Our Better Halves’ began to appear on the souvenir menus of beefsteaks thrown by bowling, fishing, and chowder clubs and lodges and labor unions. The big, exuberant beefsteaks thrown by Tammany and Republican district clubs always had been strictly stag, but not long after the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the suffrage, politicians decided it would be nice to invite females over voting age to clubhouse beefsteaks. ‘Womenfolks didn’t know what a beefsteak was until they got the right to vote,’ an old chef once said.

It didn’t take women long to corrupt the beefsteak. They forced the addition of such things as Manhattan cocktails, fruit cups, and fancy salads to the traditional menu of slices of ripened steaks, double lamb chops, kidneys, and beer by the pitcher. They insisted on dance orchestras instead of brassy German bands. The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most ecstatic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak, and got the most grease on his ears, but women do not esteem a glutton, and at a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than six pounds of meat and thirty glasses of beer. Until around 1920, beefsteak
etiquette
was rigid. Knives, forks, napkins, and tablecloths never had been permitted; a man was supposed to eat with his hands. When beefsteaks became bisexual, the etiquette changed. For generations men had worn their second-best suits because of the inevitability of grease spots; tuxedos and women appeared simultaneously. Most beefsteaks degenerated into polite banquets at which open-face sandwiches of grilled steak happened to be the principal dish. However, despite the frills introduced by women, two schools of traditional steak-dinner devotees still flourish. They may conveniently be called the East Side and West Side schools. They disagree over matters of menu and etiquette, and both claim that their beefsteaks are the more classical or old-fashioned.

The headquarters of the East Side school is the meat market of William Wertheimer & Son, at First Avenue and Nineteenth Street. It is situated in a tenement neighborhood, but that is misleading; scores of epicures regularly order steaks, chops, and capons from Wertheimer’s. The moving spirit of the East Side school is Sidney Wertheimer, the ‘Son’ of the firm. A dozen old, slow-moving, temperamental Germans, each of whom customarily carries his own collection of knives in an oilcloth kit, are the chefs. Mr Wertheimer is not a chef. He selects, cuts, and sells the meat used at the majority of the old-fashioned beefsteaks thrown in East Side halls, like the Central Opera House, the Grand Street Boys’ clubhouse, the Manhattan Odd Fellows’ Hall, and Webster Hall. The caterers for these halls get an unusual amount of service when they order meat from Mr Wertheimer. If the caterer wishes, Mr Wertheimer will engage a couple of the old Germans to go to the hall and broil the meat. He will also engage a crew of experienced beefsteak waiters. He owns a collection of beefsteak-cooking utensils and does not mind lending it out. The chefs and waiters telephone or stop in at Wertheimer’s about once a week and are given assignments. Most of them work in breakfast and luncheon places in the financial district, taking on beefsteaks at night as a sideline. For engaging them, Mr Wertheimer collects no fee; he just does it to be obliging. In addition, for no charge, he will go to the hall and supervise the kitchen. He is extremely
proud
of the meat he cuts and likes to make sure it is cooked properly. He succeeded old ‘Beefsteak Tom’ McGowan as the East Side’s most important beefsteak functionary. Mr McGowan was a foreman in the Department of Water Supply who arranged beefsteaks as a hobby. He was an obscure person, but in 1924 his hearse was followed by more than a thousand sorrowful members of Tammany clubs.

Mr Wertheimer had almost finished cutting the meat for a beefsteak the last time I went to see him. Approximately three hundred and fifty men and women were expected that night, and he had carved steaks off thirty-five steer shells and had cut up four hundred and fifty double-rib lamb chops. In his icebox, four hundred and fifty lamb kidneys were soaking in a wooden tub. The steaks and chops were piled up in baskets, ready to be delivered to the uptown hall in which the beefsteak was to be thrown. (Technically, a beefsteak is never ‘given’ or ‘held’; it is ‘thrown’ or ‘run.’) Mr Wertheimer, a pink-cheeked, well-nourished man, looked proudly at the abundantly loaded baskets and said, ‘The foundation of a good beefsteak is an overflowing amount of meat and beer. The tickets usually cost five bucks, and the rule is ‘All you can hold for five bucks.’ If you’re able to hold a little more when you start home, you haven’t been to a beefsteak, you’ve been to a banquet that they called a beefsteak.’

Classical beefsteak meat is carved off the shell, a section of the hindquarter of a steer; it is called ‘short loin without the fillet.’ To order a cut of it, a housewife would ask for a thick Delmonico. ‘You don’t always get it at a beefsteak,’ Mr Wertheimer said. ‘Sometimes they give you bull fillets. They’re no good. Not enough juice in them, and they cook out black.’ While I watched, Mr Wertheimer took a shell off a hook in his icebox and laid it on a big, maple block. It had been hung for eight weeks and was blanketed with blue mold. The mold was an inch thick. He cut off the mold. Then he boned the shell and cut it into six chunks. Then he sliced off all the fat. Little strips of lean ran through the discarded fat, and he deftly carved them out and made a mound of them on the block. ‘These trimmings, along with the tails of
the
steaks, will be ground up and served as appetizers,’ he said. ‘We’ll use four hundred tonight. People call them hamburgers, and that’s an insult. Sometimes they’re laid on top of a slice of Bermuda onion and served on bread.’ When he finished with the shell, six huge steaks, boneless and fatless, averaging three inches thick and ten inches long, lay on the block. They made a beautiful still life. ‘After they’ve been broiled, the steaks are sliced up, and each steak makes about ten slices,’ he said. ‘The slices are what you get at a beefsteak.’ Mr Wertheimer said the baskets of meat he had prepared would be used that night at a beefsteak in the Odd Fellows’ Hall on East 106th Street; the Republican Club of the Twentieth Assembly District was running it. He invited me to go along.

‘How’s your appetite?’ he asked.

I said there was nothing wrong with it.

‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘When you go to a beefsteak, you got to figure on eating until it comes out of your ears. Otherwise it would be bad manners.’

That night I rode up to Odd Fellows’ Hall with Mr Wertheimer, and on the way I asked him to describe a pre-prohibition stag beefsteak.

‘Oh, they were amazing functions,’ he said. ‘The men wore butcher aprons and chef hats. They used the skirt of the apron to wipe the grease off their faces. Napkins were not allowed. The name of the organization that was running the beefsteak would be printed across the bib, and the men took the aprons home for souvenirs. We still wear aprons, but now they’re rented from linen-supply houses. They’re numbered, and you turn them in at the hat-check table when you get your hat and coat. Drunks, of course, always refuse to turn theirs in.

‘In the old days they didn’t even use tables and chairs. They sat on beer crates and ate off the tops of beer barrels. You’d be surprised how much fun that was. Somehow it made old men feel young again. And they’d drink beer out of cans, or growlers. Those beefsteaks were run in halls or the cellars or back rooms of big saloons. There was always sawdust on the floor. Sometimes they had one in a bowling alley. They would cover the alleys
with
tarpaulin and set the boxes and barrels in the aisles. The men ate with their fingers. They never served potatoes in those days. Too filling. They take up room that rightfully belongs to meat and beer. A lot of those beefsteaks were testimonials. A politician would get elected to something and his friends would throw him a beefsteak. Cops ran a lot of them, too. Like when a cop became captain or inspector, he got a beefsteak. Theatrical people were always fond of throwing beefsteaks. Sophie Tucker got a great big one at Mecca Temple in 1934, and Bill Robinson got a great big one at the Grand Street Boys’ clubhouse in 1938. Both of those were knockouts. The political clubs always gave the finest, but when Tammany Hall gets a setback, beefsteaks get a setback. For example, the Anawanda Club, over in my neighborhood, used to give a famous beefsteak every Thanksgiving Eve. Since La Guardia got in the Anawanda’s beefsteaks have been so skimpy it makes me sad.

‘At the old beefsteaks they almost always had storytellers, men who would entertain with stories in Irish and German dialect. And when the people got tired of eating and drinking, they would harmonize. You could hear them harmonizing blocks away. They would harmonize “My Wild Irish Rose” until they got their appetite back. It was the custom to hold beefsteaks on Saturday nights or the eve of holidays, so the men would have time to recover before going to work. They used to give some fine ones in Coney Island restaurants. Webster Hall has always been a good place. Local 638 of the Steamfitters holds its beefsteaks there. They’re good ones. A lot of private beefsteaks are thrown in homes. A man will invite some friends to his cellar and cook the steaks himself. I have a number of good amateur beefsteak chefs among my customers. Once, during the racing season, a big bookmaker telephoned us he wanted to throw a beefsteak, so we sent a chef and all the makings to Saratoga. The chef had a wonderful time. They made a hero out of him.’

When we reached the hall, we went directly to the kitchen. Two of Mr Wertheimer’s chefs were working at a row of tremendous gas ranges. One had a pipe in his mouth; the other was smoking a cigar. There was a pitcher of beer on a nearby table
and
at intervals the chefs would back away from the ranges and have some beer. They were cooking the four hundred high-class hamburgers. The air was heavy with the fragrance of the meat. The steaks, chops, and kidneys were racked up, ready for the broilers. A strip of bacon had been pinned to each kidney with a toothpick. I asked a chef how many minutes the steaks were kept on the fire. ‘It’s all according,’ he said. ‘Twelve on one side, ten on the other is about the average. Before they go in, we roll them in salt which has been mixed with pepper. The salt creates a crust that holds the juice in.’ In a corner, waiters were stacking up cardboard platters on each of which a dozen half-slices of trimmed bread had been placed. ‘This is day-old bread,’ one of them said. ‘The steak slices are laid on it just before we take them out to the tables. Day-old bread is neutral. When you lay steak on toast, you taste the toast as much as the steak.’

In a little while I went out to the ballroom. The Republicans were arriving. Most of them were substantial, middle-aged people. They all seemed to know each other. At the hat-check booth, everybody, men and women, put on cloth butcher’s aprons and paper chef’s hats. This made them look a lot like members of the Ku Klux Klan. The hats had mottoes on them, such as ‘It’s Hell When Your Wife Is a Widow’ and ‘Prohibition Was Good for Some. Others It Put on the Bum.’ Before sitting down, most couples went from table to table, shaking hands and gossiping. After shaking hands, they would say, ‘Let’s see what it says on your hat.’ After they read the mottoes on each other’s hats, they would laugh heartily. On each table there were plates of celery and radishes, beer glasses, salt shakers, and some balloons and noisemakers. Later, a spavined old waiter told me that liquor companies send balloons and noisemakers to many beefsteaks as an advertisement. ‘In the old days they didn’t need noisemakers,’ he said contemptuously. ‘If a man wanted some noise, he would just open his trap and howl.’

While couples were still moving from table to table, a banquet photographer got up on the bandstand and asked everybody to keep still. I went over and watched him work. When he was through we talked for a while, and he said, ‘In an hour or so I’ll
bring
back a sample photograph and take orders. At a beefsteak I usually take the picture at the start of the party. If I took it later on, when they get full of beer, the picture would show a lot of people with goggle eyes and their mouths gapped open.’

As the photographer was lugging his equipment out, waiters streamed into the ballroom with pitchers of beer. When they caught sight of the sloshing beer, the people took seats. I joined Mr Wertheimer, who was standing at the kitchen door surveying the scene. As soon as there was a pitcher of beer in the middle of every table, the waiters brought in platters of hamburgers. A moment later, a stout, frowning woman walked up to Mr Wertheimer and said, ‘Say, listen. Who the hell ever heard of hamburgers at a beefsteak?’ Mr Wertheimer smiled. ‘Just be patient, lady,’ he said. ‘In a minute you’ll get all the steak you can hold.’ ‘O.K.,’ she said, ‘but what about the ketchup? There’s no ketchup at our table.’ Mr Wertheimer said he would tell a waiter to get some. When she left, he said, ‘Ketchup! I bet she’d put ketchup on chocolate cake.’ After they had finished with their hamburgers some of the diners began inflating and exploding balloons.

I heard one of the chefs back in the kitchen yell out ‘Steaks ready to go!’ and I went inside. One chef was slicing the big steaks with a knife that resembled a cavalry sabre and the other was dipping the slices into a pan of rich, hot sauce. ‘That’s the best beefsteak sauce in the world,’ Mr Wertheimer said. ‘It’s melted butter, juice and drippings from the steak, and a little Worcestershire.’ The waiters lined up beside the slicing table. Each waiter had a couple of the cardboard platters on which bread had been arranged. As he went by the table, he held out the platters and the chef dropped a slice of the rare, dripping steak on each piece of bread. Then the waiter hurried off.