ABOUT THE BOOK

This is the story of one man’s impression of life in the Great Society. Foot-loose and fancy-free he follows the lead of his insatiable curiosity, taking the armchair traveler on a memorable junket. The book is no Baedeker. From his arrival (when he winds up in a hotel that has been freshly raided as a place of questionable repute) until his last backward glance at Kennedy Airport (as his home-winging plane rises for its trans-Atlantic flight), the days and nights of his journey are filled with adventure, people, humor and heart... For whether he is exploring the canyon which is Wall Street, or the dusty and treeless playgrounds of Harlem, whether he braves the swirling traffic of a well-regulated metropolis, or the back lanes of a Southern town gone mad with lynch spirit, his story of the American Way moves swiftly — and with a forthrightness that will charm the reader. He narrates his American Encounter with an open-minded freshness and with a sharp eye that penetrates the smog of big-city living and big-city headlines.

MANHATTAN SALUTE

Morning

Foreword

To the brooding calls of foghorns the giant ocean liner slides past the Statue of Liberty northward into the mouth of the Hudson. The churned-up river laps against the hulls of freighters moored to the wharves of Manhattan and Jersey City. Cranes screech as cargoes are hoisted from the holds: Coffee from Brazil, rubber from Sumatra, bananas from Costa Rica... Invisible ferries scuttle tooting toward Hoboken and Weehawken. Gradually the silhouette of the liner disappears in the fog, her eerie hooting swelling the clamor over the water front, intensifying the expectancy of most everyone aboard — the Negro musician returning from Paris, the migrant toolmaker from Dortmund traveling steerage, the Swedish professor of sociology, the American millionaire’s widow homing to her suite in the Waldorf-Astoria....

Beyond the embankments of New Jersey, way out on land, express trains out of Waco, Mobile, Los Angeles, Kansas City, pound wailing across the fog-shrouded country, Manhattan-bound all of them as west of the Hudson they roar into tunnels deep under the river till they emerge amid towering skyscrapers on the last lap of their journey — Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Railroad Station. Soon now the young aspiring writer from Gary, the prettiest actress in the Erie dramatic club, that rural bank clerk heading f or W all Street, the hope fid mechanic from Buffalo, will disperse — newcomers among untold thousands of others — through that vast glass and concrete maze of buildings in the heart of the city.

All over Manhattan weary nightworkers, watchmen, waitresses, printers, hostesses, dockers, subway cleaners, postal employees... are returning home. A water wagon rolls by. Bands are still playing in a dozen nightclubs. In the Upper East Side, in the Upper West Side, around Union Square, in Chelsea and Greenwich Village, the harsh, relentless ringing of alarm clocks shocks the ear. Sleepers wake. Another day, another dollar. Don’t forget to send my suit to the cleaner’s and drop by at Macy’s for a couple of shirts from the bargain sale —

The crowd increases with the light. Work-bound on buses and on subway trains a million people, two million, three ... stream through the city — the faces of New York: Italian, Mexican, Jewish, Negro, Irish, German, Puerto Rican ... footsteps on granite, high heels, low heels, the sound of feet merging with the swelling roar of the traffic. Toward the leaden sky an airplane rises, veering westward, wing tips slicing the lifting fog. Below the earth, speeding subway trains sway and thunder on steel rails, rocket through the tunnels — Crosstown from Queens, Shuttle to Times Square, Broadway Line to South Ferry — the length of Manhattan within the course of a minute hand. Grab a cup of coffee and run! Breakfast between trains. Outside, on Fifth Avenue, the girl’s voice is lost in the roar of traffic: He took me to the Rainbow Room; it got so late, we had a time of it finding a taxi. . . is lost in the squeal of car-brakes.

The morning sun reveals the pinnacle of the Empire State Building, the heights of Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, Pan American’s helicopter port over Grand Central. Now the upper stories of hotels and apartment houses on Park Avenue'*are fringed with light, the morning sun reflects in a million windows, filters through obscure skylights of lofts. Down in the street canyons the people still scurry in a twilight, hasten into the buildings as if escaping the traffic, crowd the elevators that soar to the loth the 1,0th the both floor — then down nonstop in seconds. Inside an office sixty young women secretaries take off the covers of sixty typewriters. These shoes are killing me, she says, sitting down. Did, you read about the air crash? Why do people take those things — but how else can you get there fast?... The windows shake with the boom of a )et plane — or is it a terrestrial blast where that ancient warehouse is crumpled to make way for — what? borne store, another hotel, a bank, an insurance company ....

In Harlem, not a block east of Eighth Avenue, in 12th Street, the Negro musician tarries outside the Apollo Theater, inspects the photos of performers in the showcases, studies the cast, wonders bozo best to impress the white management later — ten years in Paris seems almost a lifetime suddenly: New stars have soared into prominence, new names, will they give me an audition?

The migrant toolmaker from Dortmund has reached Yorkville at last, struggled with his fiber suitcase away from Central Park across Lexington, Third Avenue, Second Avenue toward the east end of 86th Street. At odd, moments he seems transplanted home again — his surroundings a curious mixture of New York and Dortmund; the row of low and ugly brownstone houses ends at a corner pub, very pointedly, very old-fashionedly German in appearance: Heidelberger Fass; another Kneipe: Im Kühlen Grund, displays German beer mugs in the window. German newspapers are laid out in the newsstands. Gothic lettering marks the fronts of delicatessen stores—Schafer’s Delicatessen — Bockwurst, Mettwurst, Leberwurst, Knackwurst, Blutwurst on the clean, tiled display counter. Further along, a music shop: Deutsche Schallplatten. Hansa Lloyd Reisebüro: Photos of Bavarian mountain- scapes, castles on the Rhine... He puts down his suitcase, asks for directions in German. Now wait a minute, Buddy, l don’t dig that language. Go ask some Kraut, will you!

The Swedish sociologist has not left the ocean liner yet — in one of the ship’s lounges he is facing correspondents from The Nation, The New Republic, The National Guardian. It isn’t my task to probe the verisimilitude of the finding that some single individual like a Lee Oswald assassinated the President, he explains in impeccable English. That will have been decided. What 1 am concerned with is the moral and social climate that facilitated the tragedy ....

The widow of the millionaire is trying vainly to sleep in her suite in one of the towers of the Waldorf-Astoria. The maid is drawing the bedroom drapes across the tall windows, obliterating the sunlight, the view to the garden terrace, muffling to a whimper whatever city sounds rise to the height of six hundred feet — quietude! The light is dim. Will there be anything else, Madam? she asks. No, my dear. It has all been a little too much for one morning. I´m dreadfully tired, worn out. I just can’t face anyone or anything, not yet, anyhow, not for the next few hours ....