Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics)

by Joseph Mitchell

  ‘What is the difference?’ I asked.

  ‘In the manual alphabet,’ Fitzsimmons said, ‘the letters are represented by the positions of the fingers of the hand, and talking with it is called finger spelling. It’s tedious. The sign language is a great body of gestures which has been passed down from one generation to the next, each adding to it. If I put my right hand to my chin and pretend to pull an imaginary beard, which is a sign for “old,” and then point my index finger at a deaf person a couple of times, he will understand that I’m asking “How old are you?” Many deaf signs are used by the general public, and thousands of them are exactly like the signs used by the Plains Indians. An example is the sign for “crazy.” You touch the forehead with the index finger and then move the finger in a circle over the forehead two or three times. In many conversations both signs and finger spelling are used. Unfamiliar names, for example, are always finger-spelled. Some signs require great skill in pantomime. No one person knows all the signs. Some are expert, others know just enough for simple conversations.’

  ‘How many deaf persons are there in the city?’ I asked.

  ‘In the five boroughs,’ Fitzsimmons said, ‘there are between five and six thousand so-called deaf-mutes. By and large, they live in a restricted world, a world of their own. They prefer their own company because most hearing people have a tendency to look upon them as peculiar, or mysterious, or unnatural. When they converse with each other in sign language out in public, they are stared at as if they had escaped from the zoo. On the street or in subways, no one takes them for granted; they are always stared at. Because of this, they like to go about in groups. Even the phrases used to describe them, particularly “deaf and dumb,” show a lack of understanding. There is nothing wrong with the vocal organs or the intelligence of the average deaf person. One learns to speak by imitation, and the deaf child can’t speak, simply because he can’t hear. He doesn’t know what speech is. It’s like expecting a blind child to visualize a color.

  ‘Only about thirty-five per cent of the deaf were born that way, and they are called the congenitally deaf. The bulk of the others lost their hearing during babyhood or childhood after having the measles, influenza, diphtheria, scarlet fever, meningitis, or some such disease, and they are called the adventitiously deaf. The vocal organs of practically all the people in both groups are normal, and it is possible to teach many of them to speak intelligibly, but it takes almost superhuman patience. This effort is made in most of the deaf schools in New York State. Finger spelling and the signs aren’t permitted in classrooms in these schools. Instead, the pupils are taught to speak and lip-read. Some become proficient, particularly those who had talking experience before they went deaf, but others manage to learn only a few phrases. However, the speech of just about all deaf persons sounds queer to those unaccustomed to it. Hearing people complain that it is too guttural, or that it lacks modulations, or that it sounds animal-like. In any case, for one reason or another, it seems to make most of them ill at ease. If they don’t understand a deaf person right off the bat, they motion to him to write out what he has to say. And they always stare. You see how it is. If the deaf use signs, they are stared at. If they speak, they are stared at. Upstairs a while ago you jumped when my friend asked you for a cigarette. Was his speech that unpleasant?’

  ‘I’m very sorry. It wasn’t that his speech was unpleasant,’ I said. ‘Mr Frankenheim spoke to both of you in sign language when we came into the room, and I took it for granted all of you were deaf. When your friend suddenly spoke, I was startled.’

  Fitzsimmons shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘The chief characteristic of the deaf is their clannishness,’ he said, abruptly changing the subject. ‘I don’t mean to imply that they are embittered. Most of them are happy enough as humans go, but for understanding and companionship they have to depend almost entirely on each other. For this reason there is a slew of clubs, societies, leagues, lodges, federations, and associations exclusively for them. The majority are little informal groups or cliques. The club in which I hold honorary membership is one of these. It has fourteen members. They all come from Brooklyn. Our members are above the average in intelligence. They are great readers. One has an A.B. from Gallaudet College, the old National Deaf-Mute College, which is the only one of its kind in the world. It’s in Washington. During the winter we meet above a cafeteria near Borough Hall. The cafeteria is owned by a relative of a member and he lets us use a vacant room on the second floor. We sit around and talk and smoke and drink beer until late at night. The deaf prefer cafeterias, by the way, particularly Automats. I know a deaf woman who has eaten in an Automat regularly for twelve years without ever uttering a single word. Every Sunday during the summer our club goes down to Coney. We always meet at the Brighton Beach Baths, which for some reason is popular with the deaf. Several clubs go there. On winter Sundays the club often goes in a body to the Metropolitan Museum, which has free lectures for lip readers. The deaf are great for museums. We have a couple of members who damned near live in the Metropolitan. We had a wedding in the club not long ago – a girl from our club and a fellow who belongs to the Union League. The deaf almost always marry the deaf. Look here, I’m tired of standing. Let’s get a seat somewhere.’

  We ordered another round of drinks and sat down in a booth in the back room.

  ‘Our group is quite informal,’ Fitzsimmons continued. ‘We have officers and dues and we call ourselves the Borough Hall Ephphatha Society. “Ephphatha” is a word that Jesus spoke when he healed a deaf man. You’ll find it in St Mark. It means “Be opened.” It has been picked for a name by many Protestant and Catholic deaf clubs. We seldom use it. Usually we just say ‘“the crowd” or “the gang.” Once in a while we have a regular meeting with parliamentary order and everything, but mostly we just sit around and talk. That’s the way it is with most of the small clubs. Then there are larger, better-organized groups who have religious affiliations and hold their meetings in churches. Four or five of these groups meet in the parish house of St Ann’s Church for Deaf-Mutes at 511 West 148th Street. This little church was the first of its kind in the world. The pastor is deaf, of course, and all services – sermons, weddings, funerals, christenings, everything – are conducted in sign language. During services the front of the chapel is flooded with light so the congregation won’t have any trouble seeing the pastor’s hands. It has a choir and the people in it sing hymns with their hands. St Ann’s is old. It was founded in 1852, and the building they’re in now was put up in 1898.

  ‘St Ann’s is Episcopal, but people of all religions go to it. The Catholics have many deaf organizations. The principal ones are the Knights and Ladies of De L’Epee Sick and Disability Association and the Ephphatha Society for the Catholic Deaf. Both are combined social and insurance organizations. They pay sick benefits, hold card parties and socials, and sponsor athletic teams. The De L’Epee Association meets in an office building in Brooklyn. It was named after an eighteenth-century French priest who founded what was probably the first deaf school. The Ephphatha Society meets at St Francis Xavier’s on West Sixteenth Street. Deaf athletic teams use the gym at this church for tournaments. Services in the sign language are held there the first Sunday of every month by an old Jesuit named Father Michael A. Purtell. He is a hearing man, now in his seventies, who has been working for the deaf since he was a young priest. He puts out a paper full of social notes about the deaf from all over the country, and it is widely read. It used to be called the Catholic Deaf-Mute, but not long ago he changed the name to Ephphatha. As a matter of fact, in the last ten or fifteen years almost every title with “deaf and dumb” or “deaf-mute” in it has been changed. Used to be that every school for the deaf had “deaf and dumb” in its title.’

  ‘How do deaf Catholics confess?’ I asked.

  ‘There are a number of priests who know the signs, and they hear confession in sign language,’ Fitzsimmons said. ‘In Brooklyn, for example, you’ll find them at St Br
igid’s, St Michael’s, Transfiguration, St Monica’s, and Fourteen Holy Martyrs. Some of these priests had deaf parents. In membership, the Jewish organizations are next in size to the Catholic ones. The largest of these is the Society for the Welfare of Jewish Deaf, which rents space in a hall on West Eighty-fifth Street in Manhattan. It’s a lively outfit. It gives classes in sign language. It has a dramatics group, which puts on plays and vaudeville in signs, a gym group, and several athletic teams. It has Friday-night religious services, in which an interpreter stands beside the rabbi and translates, and it has teas, lectures, movies, and Bingo parties. It even has a plot of its own in New Mount Carmel Cemetery in Brooklyn. Every so often, a delegation goes out and puts flowers on the graves of departed members. Also, this society has an employment service.’

  ‘I wanted to ask about that,’ I said. ‘How do the deaf go about finding jobs?’

  ‘They have the devil of a time,’ Fitzsimmons said. ‘It is the thorniest problem they have to meet. There is one employment agency specifically for them. It is operated by an energetic young woman named Margarette Helmle, who used to be a personnel manager for General Motors, and it has office space in the New York State Employment Service building down on East Twentyeighth Street. Miss Helmle is an expert signer. Her salary is paid by the three schools in which most of the deaf in the city are educated – the Lexington in Manhattan, St Joseph’s in the Bronx, and the New York School in White Plains. She tries to find jobs for all applicants, whether they come from these schools or not. She goes out and calls on the personnel managers of big corporations and talks up the deaf, and she averages twenty-two placements a month. The deaf are strongest in the printing trades. There are four in the job plant where I work, and you’ll find two or three in most big newspaper plants. They can do any kind of work that doesn’t absolutely require hearing. Employers usually write out orders to them. They make particularly good welders, power-machine operators, carpenters, and electricians.’

  We had long since finished our drinks. Fitzsimmons appeared to be tired of talking and I suggested another round, but he refused. He said he thought he would go back upstairs to the Union League and play some pinochle. I left Larry’s Café with him.

  ‘This may interest you,’ he said, just before he started up the stairs. ‘The deaf, particularly lip readers, are suspicious of hearing people who begin sympathizing with them. They’ve learned that sooner or later these people will ask questions that are rather embarrassing. There is the type who right away wants to know exactly how it feels to live in a soundless world. One of the members of my club, the graduate of Gallaudet I told you about, has an answer. He got it out of some book or other, and all of our members have memorized it. It goes, “The deaf live in a world of deadly silence. The singing of the birds, the inflections of the human voice, beautiful music, and the confusion of noises that proclaim life are lacking. Many things are in motion, but there is no sound.”

  ‘Then there is a type of woman who has caused many a lip reader to think of murder. She will sigh and say, “Sometimes I get so tired of the noise in the city, I think deafness would be a blessing.” All lip readers have had to put up with this remark scores of times. My friend upstairs, the fellow who asked you for a cigarette, is very meek and mild, but it always infuriates him. The last time a woman handed him this line, he gritted his teeth and said, “Lady, please forgive me, but you sure are a god-damn fool.”’

  (1941)

  Santa Claus Smith

  A RAGGED, WHITE-BEARDED old man who tells people he is John S. Smith of Riga, Latvia, Europe, began hitchhiking aimlessly on the highways of the United States early in 1934. He has been seen as far north as Clinton, Connecticut, but he spends most of his time in the South and Southwest. He wanders from Louisiana to California and back again about twice a year. He is approximately seventy years old. People who have had dealings with him say he has a kind, honest face, speaks broken English, smokes a pipe, wears an overcoat winter and summer, loves cats, and keeps a supply of brown wrapping paper, cut into oblong slips, in a pack he carries on his back. His behavior has puzzled waitresses, tourist-camp proprietors, and housewives in at least twenty-three states, and he is frequently a subject of conversation in highway lunchrooms at which drivers of cross-country trucks pull up for hamburgers and coffee.

  On the night of October 23, 1936, for example, he strayed into a lunchroom on a highway near Columbus, Texas, told the waitress he had no money, and asked for a cup of coffee. She took him into the kitchen and gave him a bowl of stew, a jelly roll, and coffee. When he finished eating he took a grimy slip of brown paper out of his pack and scribbled on it with an indelible pencil. He slid the paper under his plate and hurried out into the night. When the waitress picked it up she found that it was an improvised check for $27,000, written on the Irving National Bank of New York and signed ‘John S. Smith of Riga, Latvia, Europe.’ On the back of the check was a note, ‘Fill your name in, send to bank.’ Four days later he turned up at a diner on the outskirts of Yuma, Arizona, and asked the counterman for coffee. After Smith departed, a similar check, for $2,000, was found beside his cup. On October 30th he was wandering along a highway near Indianola, Mississippi. He asked a farmer’s wife for something to eat and was so pleased with the flapjacks and molasses she gave him that he handed her two checks, one for $25,000 and the other for $1,000. On November 9th he asked the proprietor of a tourist camp near Denver if he could come in out of the cold for a few minutes. He sat beside the stove and filled his pipe with tobacco salvaged from a handful of cigarette stubs he took from his overcoat pocket. The proprietor made him a present of a dime can of tobacco. He wrote a check for $16,000, handed it to the proprietor, and went on his way. Five days later a housewife in Baldwin Park, California, gave him some scrambled eggs; he left a check for $12,000 beside the plate. Next day he gave checks aggregating $52,000 to waitresses in two cafés in Los Angeles. A month later he was back in Texas. On December 12th, on a street in Fort Worth, he asked a young woman sitting in a parked automobile for a nickel. She gave him a dime. Using a fender for a desk, he wrote her a check for $950. She laughed and thanked him. Then he took the check back, tore it up, and wrote another for $26,000. ‘That’s for your sweet smile,’ he said.

  All these checks, like the one he gave the waitress in Columbus, Texas, were written on the Irving National Bank of New York. This bank went out of existence on January 6, 1923, eleven years before John S. Smith of Riga, Latvia, Europe, began writing checks on it. Mail addressed to the Irving National Bank is eventually delivered to its successor, the Irving Trust Company, and in the last six years two hundred and forty letters, most of them enclosing checks, have turned up at the Irving Trust from beneficiaries of John S. Smith’s generosity.

  The old man wrote his first check on the Irving National on January 15, 1934. He handed it to a housewife in Dallas who had given him coffee. It was for $2,000. The housewife kept the check a few days, wondering if ‘it was just an old man’s fancy.’ Then she mailed it to the Irving National, and the Post Office delivered it to the Irving Trust. The teller who got the letter was startled. He went into a vault in which the Irving National’s books are still kept and searched through them, finding no trace of a Latvian Smith. There had been John S. Smiths among the depositors, but it did not take long to ascertain that none of them could be this one. The perplexed teller wrote the woman in Dallas, asking for more information about the unusual transaction. While he waited for her answer, a letter arrived from a housewife in Los Angeles, inquiring if Mr John S. Smith of Riga, Latvia, Europe, had an account in the Irving National Bank of New York, N.Y. She wrote that after she gave him something to eat he left her a check for $3,700. ‘This old man may not have good sense,’ she added.

  Since then hardly a week has gone by that the Irving Trust has not received a hopeful letter from someone who has given food, tobacco, transportation, lodging, small change, or a sweet smile to Mr John S. Smith, getting a check for a substantial amount in
return. The checks contained in the letters have ranged from $90 to $600,000. He handed the biggest check to a waitress in New Iberia, Louisiana, who had given him a hamburger sandwich. The $90 check was received by a minister’s wife in Terre Haute who gave him what she describes as ‘a good hot lunch’; evidently he did not think much of her cooking. The checks are always written on slips of brown wrapping paper and many are spotted with grease. Occasionally the old man writes the name of the recipient on a check. He gave a farmer’s wife a check for $8,000 bearing her name, and when she asked him how he knew it, he pointed to the R.F.D. mailbox in front of her house. Most often, however, he leaves a space on the check in which the recipient may write his or her name. He always misspells ‘thousand,’ writing it ‘tousand.’ His handwriting is vaguely Gothic and is often difficult to read. He decorates many of his checks with a symbol. It is a crude face with a smile on it. There are two pencil dots for eyes, a dot for a nose, and a line turned up at both ends for a mouth. This symbol, evidently his trademark, appears in the upper right-hand corner of some checks; on others it follows directly after the signature.

  Just why he picked the Irving National Bank always has been a mystery. At first it was thought that he might once have worked for the bank as a janitor or guard, but personnel lists have been vainly checked for a clue. Tellers and stenographers at the Irving Trust have been put to a lot of trouble by the old man’s check-writing, but the trust company has never attempted to have him arrested, since no forgery is involved. So far as can be learned, he has never tried to cash a check or purchase anything with one. Irving Trust officials believe that John S. Smith is a simple-minded, goodhearted old man who feels that he should reward those treating him with kindness. The bank people call him Santa Claus Smith and wish that he had millions of dollars on deposit. Sometimes, for amusement, an official will get out the file of letters and, from postmarks, trace the old man’s crazy progress back and forth across the continent. However, the relationship between the old man and the bank has long since become a routine matter. The bank used to send lengthy replies to people who wrote letters, enclosing checks; now, when such a letter comes in, it is handed to a stenographer who types out this unvarying reply: ‘We are sorry we have to disillusion you, but we have no record that John S. Smith of Riga, Latvia, Europe, has ever maintained an account with the Irving Trust Company, or its predecessor, the Irving National Bank of New York. From numerous inquiries we have received from various sections of the country, it appears that this individual, in return for gratuitous meals or lodging, has given what purport to be drafts for large amounts drawn on the Irving National Bank. Sincerely yours, Irving Trust Company.’