Old Mr. Flood

by Joseph Mitchell

  There were four people sitting around the table—Mr. Flood, Mrs. Treppel, a salesman of fishing-boat hardware named Ben Fass, and an old man I had never seen before. Mrs. Treppel had Commodore, the Hartford’s big black cat, on her lap; she had given it the head of the eel. Mrs. Treppel was still in her market clothes. She wore a full-length coat-apron over her dress and she had on knee boots and a man’s stiff straw hat; this is the uniform of the boss fishmonger. The hat was on the side of her head. Mrs. Treppel is stout, red-cheeked, and good-natured. Even so, as a day wears on, she becomes quite quarrelsome; she says she quarrels just to keep her liver regulated. “Quarreling is the only exercise I take,” she says. She is a widow in her late sixties, she has worked in the market since she was a young woman, and she is greatly respected, especially by the old-timers; to them, she is the very embodiment of the primary, basic, fundamental Fulton Fish Market virtue—the ability to look after Number One. “Birdy Treppel likes to run her mouth, and she sometime sounds a little foolish,” I once heard one old boss fishmonger say to another, “but don’t ever underestimate her. She could buy or sell half the people down here, including me.” Mrs. Treppel owns a couple of the old buildings on Peck Slip, she has money in a cooperage that builds boxes and barrels for the fish trade; she owns a share in a dragger, the Betty Parker, which runs out of Stonington, Connecticut; and she keeps a fresh-water stall on the Slip, dealing mainly in carp, whitefish, and pike, the species that are used in gefüllte fish. Mr. Fass is known in the market as Ben the Knifeman. He is slight, edgy, and sad-eyed, a disappointed man, and he blames all his troubles on cellophane. He says that he was ruined by cellophane, and he sometimes startles people by muttering, “Whoever he is, wherever he is, God damn the man that invented cellophane!” He once was a salesman for a sausage-casings broker in Gansevoort Market, selling sheep intestines to manufacturers of frankfurters. He enjoyed this work. Ten years ago many manufacturers began using cellophane instead of intestines for casings, calling their product “skinless” frankfurters, and in 1937 Mr. Fass was laid off. He became an outside man for a Water Street fishing-boat supply house, which is owned by an uncle of his. Carrying samples in a suitcase, he goes aboard trawlers and draggers at the pier and sits down with the captains and takes orders for knives, honing steels, scalers, bait grinders, swordfish darts, fog bells, and similar hardware.

  Mr. Fass and Mr. Flood are good friends, which is puzzling. Mr. Fass has no interest in boats, he dislikes the fish market, and he despises fish. He is outspoken about it; not long ago he lost one of his best customers by remarking that he would rather have one thin cut off a tough rib roast than all the fish God ever made. Mr. Flood, on the other hand, believes that people would be much better off in mind and body if they ate meat on Fridays and fish all the rest of the week. I have known Mr. Flood for nine years, but I found out only recently how he arrived at this conclusion. From 1885 until 1930, when he retired, the offices of his firm, the H. G. Flood Demolition & Salvage Co., Inc., were on Franklin Square, a couple of blocks from the fish market. In the winter of 1885, soon after moving there, he observed that there was a predominance of elderly and aged men among the fishmongers. “I began to step up to these men and inquire about their ages,” he told me. “There were scores in their eighties and dozens in their nineties and spry old crocks that had hit a hundred weren’t rare at all. One morning I saw a fist fight between two men in their nineties. They slapped each other from one end of the pier to the other, and it was a better fight than many a fight I paid to see. Another morning I saw the fellows shaking hands with a man of eighty-seven and it turned out his wife had just had a baby boy. All these men were tough and happy and full of the old Adam, and all were big fish eaters, and I thought to myself, ‘Flood, no doubt about it, you have hit on a secret.’” Since that winter he has seldom eaten anything but seafood.

  When I came into the room, Mr. Flood had just begun a song. He has a bullfrog bass, and he sang loudly and away off key. He had a highball in his left hand and a cigar in his right, and he kept time with the cigar as he sang:

  “Come, let us drink while we have breath,

  For there’s no drinking after death

  And he that will this health deny,

  Down among the dead men,

  Down among the dead men—”

  I was quite sure that he would put in more “downs” than the song called for, and I counted them. There were eleven, and each was louder than the one before it:

  “Down, down, down, down, down,

  down, down, down, down, down,

  Down among the dead men

  Let him lie!”

  Mr. Flood’s guests banged on the marble-top with their glasses, and he beamed. He was looking well. His friendly, villainous eyes were bright and his face was so tanned that the liver freckles on his cheeks didn’t show; he carries a blanket down to the pier and lies in the sun an hour or two on good afternoons. He had on a white linen suit and there was a red rosebud in his lapel. I tried to congratulate him on his birthday. He wouldn’t let me. “Thanks, my boy,” he said, “but it’s too early for that. I just got started. Wait’ll I hit a hundred.” He turned to the stranger at the table. “This is Tom Bethea,” he said. “Tom’s an undertaker up in Chelsea, my old neighborhood. Tom’s wife and my second wife were great friends. We belong to the same Baptist church, only he goes and I don’t.” Mr. Bethea was roly-poly, moon-faced, and bald. His eyes were remarkably distrustful. He wore a blue serge suit that was so tight it made me uncomfortable to look at him. He had a glass about a third full of straight whiskey in one hand. With the other, he was plucking mussels out of the crock and popping them into his mouth as if they were peanuts. He seemed offended by Mr. Flood’s introduction. “I’m not an undertaker,” he said. “I’m an embalmer. I’ve told you that time and time again, and I do wish you’d get it straight.”

  “Whichever it is,” said Mr. Flood. He turned to me and said, “Pull up a chair and fix yourself a drink. I got something I want to show you.” He took a photograph out of his wallet and handed it to me. It was a photograph of a horse, an old white sway-backed horse. “Look at it and pass it around,” he said. “I was going through some papers in my trunk the other day and came across it. Thought I’d lost it years ago. It’s a snapshot of a horse named Sam. Sam was a highly unusual horse and I want to tell about him. He was owned by George Still, fellow that ran Still’s Oyster and Chop House. Still’s was on Third Avenue, between Seventeenth and Eighteenth, middle of the block, east side of the avenue. It opened in the eighteen-fifties—1853, I think it was—and it closed in 1922 because of prohibition, and it was the finest oyster house the country ever had. It was a hangout for rich old goaty high-living men—Tammany bosses and the like of that. Some of them could taste an oyster and examine the shell and tell you what bed it came out of; I’m pretty good at that myself. And it got crowds of out-of-towners, especially people from Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, and New Orleans, the big oyster-eating cities. Mr. Still handled a wider variety of oysters than any restaurant or hotel in the world, before or since. He had them out of dozens of beds. From New Jersey he had Shrewsburys and Maurice River Coves. From Rhode Island he had Narragansetts and Wickfords. From Massachusetts he had Cotuits and Buzzards Bays and Cape Cods. From Virginia—they were very fine—he had Chincoteagues and Lynnhavens and Pokomokes and Mobjacks and Horn Harbors and York Rivers and Hampton Bars and Rappahannocks. From Maryland he had Goose Creeks. From Delaware he had Bombay Hooks. From New York—the finest of all—he had Blue Points and Mattitucks and Saddle Rocks and Robbins Islands and Diamond Points and Fire Places and Montauks and Hog Necks and Millponds and Fire Island Salts and Rockaways and Shinnecocks. I love those good old oyster names. When I feel my age weighing me down, I recite them to myself and I feel better. Some of them don’t exist any more. The beds were ruined. Cities grew up nearby and the water went bad. But there was a time when you could buy them all in Still’s.”

  “Oh, God, Hugh
ie,” said Mrs. Treppel, “it was a wonderful place. I remember it well. It had a white marble bar for the half-shell trade, and there were barrels and barrels and barrels of oysters stood up behind this bar, and everything was nice and plain and solid—no piddling around, no music to frazzle your nerves, no French on the bill of fare; you got what you went for.”

  “I remember Still’s, too,” said Mr. Bethea. “Biggest lobster I ever saw, I saw it in there. Weighed thirty-four pounds. Took two men to hold it. It was a hen lobster. It wasn’t much good—too coarse and stringy—but it was full of coral and tomalley and it scared the women and it was educational.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Flood. “That’s the way it was.” He poured himself a drink. “In addition to the restaurant,” he continued, “Mr. Still did a wholesale oyster business in a triple-decked barge that was docked year in and year out at a pier at the foot of Pike Street, upriver from the fish market. The barge was his warehouse. In the old days all the wholesalers operated that way; they brought their stock in from the beds in schooners that’d come alongside the barges and unload. At the time I’m speaking of—in 1912—there were fourteen barges at Pike Street, all in a row and all painted as loud and bedizy and fancy-colored as possible, the same as gypsy wagons; that was the custom. George Still is dead, God rest him, but the business is there yet. His family runs it. It’s one of the biggest shellfish concerns in the city, and it’s right there in the old barge, head office and all—George M. Still, Incorporated, Planters of Diamond Point Oysters. Still’s barge is the only one left, and it’s a pretty one. It’s painted green and yellow and it’s got scroll-saw work all over the front of it.

  “Back in 1912, Mr. Still delivered his oysters to hotels and restaurants and groceries with horse-drawn drays. He owned nine horses and he thought a lot of them. Every summer he gave them two weeks off on a farm he had in New Jersey. One of those horses was Sam. Sam was the oldest. In fact, he was twenty-two years old, and that’s a ripe old advanced age for a horse. Sam was just about worn out. His head hung low, his eyes were sleepy and sad, and there wasn’t hardly any life in him at all. If some horseflies lit on him, he didn’t even have the energy to switch his tail and knock them off. He just poked along, making short hauls and waiting for the day to end. Mr. Still had made up his mind to retire Sam to New Jersey for good, but he was one of those that puts things off; tomorrow will do.

  “Sam’s driver was a man named Woodrow and he was attached to Sam. Sam was noted for his good disposition, but one morning in October, 1912, Woodrow went to put the harness on Sam and Sam kicked at him. It was the first time that ever happened. Next morning Sam was worse. Every single time Woodrow got near, Sam kicked. He was so old and awkward he always missed, but he kept on trying; he did his best. Every day that passed, Sam got more free and easy. He’d rear back in the shafts and tangle up the strappings on his harness, and sometimes Woodrow would tell him to whoa and he’d keep right on going until he was good and damn ready to whoa. He got a mean look in his eye and he kept his head up and he walked faster and faster. He’d toss his head to and fro and dance along like a yearling. One day, all of a sudden, up on Sixth Avenue, he started running after a bay mare that was hauling a laundry wagon. It was all Woodrow could do to pull him up. And Sam kept on doing this. Every day or so he’d catch sight of a mare somewhere up ahead and he’d whinny and whicker and break into a fast trot and Woodrow would have to brace himself against the footboard and seesaw on the lines and curse and carry on to stop him. Sometimes a crowd would collect and cheer Sam on. Woodrow worried about Sam, and so did Mr. Still, but they didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t figure him out.

  “One of the places that Woodrow and Sam made a daily delivery was a chop house on Maiden Lane. Sam would stand at the curb and Woodrow would shoulder a barrel of oysters off the dray and roll it in. The cashier of this chop house was an old lady and every morning she’d step out to the curb and pat Sam’s nose and coo at him and give him sugar. She’d been doing it for years. She was one of those old ladies that just can’t leave horses alone. One morning she came out, cooing, and she put her hand out to pat Sam and Sam bit her. He bit her on the hand and he bit her on the wrist and he bit her on the arm. She was all skint up. As you might expect, a great deal of screeching took place. They sent for a doctor, but that didn’t quiet the old lady. According to Woodrow, she kept screeching she didn’t want a doctor, she wanted a lawyer.

  “Woodrow led Sam back to the barge and broke the news to Mr. Still that he had a damage suit on his hands. Mr. Still called in a veterinarian to see could he find out what was the matter with Sam, what ailed the old fool. The veterinarian looked Sam over and he punched and he thumped and he put his head against Sam’s belly and listened. He said he couldn’t find anything wrong except extreme old age. Then he happened to look into Sam’s feed bag, and what in hell and be damned was in there, mixed in with the oats, only some shucked oysters. They weren’t little nubby oysters; they were great big Mattitucks. And what’s more, Sam was eating them. He was eating them and enjoying them. The veterinarian stood there and he looked at Sam and he said, ‘Well, I be good God damned!’ He said he’d run into some odd and unusual horses in his practice but that Sam was certainly the first horse he’d run into that’d eat oysters.

  “Mr. Still called his help together and inquired did anybody know who put the oysters in Sam’s feed bag. Finally one of the oyster shuckers confessed he did it. Said he just wanted to see what would happen. Said he’d been slipping them in for about a month. Said he’d go out on the pier, where Sam was hitched between hauls, and he’d make believe he was petting Sam, and he’d slip the oysters into Sam’s feed bag. Said he started with one oyster a day and worked up to where he was giving him four and five dozen a day. Mr. Still was put out; at the same time, somehow, he was proud of Sam. He decided to fire the shucker and send Sam to hell and gone to New Jersey, but he changed his mind. What he did, he cut Sam down to one dozen oysters a day. That worked out all right. It wasn’t too few, it wasn’t too many. It was just enough to keep Sam brisk and frisky, but it wasn’t enough to make him cut up and do ugly. People would come from all over the market just to see Sam get his one dozen oysters. Everything was just fine until Christmas Eve. You know how it is on Christmas Eve; people get high-spirited. And you can just imagine how high-spirited they get around an oyster barge on Christmas Eve. When it came time to feed Sam, the fellows got generous and gave him six or seven dozen oysters, compliments of the season. And that night Woodrow was driving Sam back to the stable and Sam caught sight of a mare about three blocks up and he took out after her and there was ice on the street and he slipped and broke a leg and God knows they hated to do it, but they had to shoot him.”

  A glint came into Mr. Bethea’s eyes. “Hugh,” he said, “I was just thinking. Suppose you took and fed a race horse on oysters! I bet you could make a lot of money that way.”

  Mr. Flood snickered. “Tom,” he said, “there’s a certain race horse on the New York tracks right now that’s an oyster eater. He’s owned by an oysterman here in the market, but the way I understand it, just to throw people off that might possibly get thoughts in their head, he’s registered in the name of a distant cousin of this oysterman’s wife. He’s not much of a horse—no looks, no style; he only cost eleven hundred dollars—but he wins every race they want him to win. They don’t let him win every race he runs; that’d look peculiar.”

  I watched Mr. Flood’s face. It was impassive.

  “They pick a day,” he continued, “and two days in advance they start feeding him raw oysters or raw clams, according to season. They experimented and found he runs about as fast on clams as he does on oysters. They give him five dozen the first day, eight dozen the second day, and one dozen the morning of the race. He always comes through; you just get a bet down and think no more about it. I don’t know how many are in on it. I do know that this oysterman and all his friends were rolling in money. He was nice enough to let me
and Birdy in on it. Whenever the horse is ready to run an oyster-fed race, we get notified, and naturally we’ve picked up a dollar or two ourselves.”

  “Hugh Griffin Flood!” said Mrs. Treppel. “I’m shocked and surprised at you. You were told about that horse in the strictest confidence. It’s a highly confidential matter, and you know you shouldn’t talk about it. Suppose it gets out. They’ll be stuffing all the race horses full of oysters, and then where’ll we be?”

  “I know, Birdy, I know,” said Mr. Flood. “I’m sorry. Anyhow, I didn’t tell the name of the horse.”

  “You keep your big mouth shut from now on,” said Mrs. Treppel.

  “Speaking of the old days,” said Mr. Bethea, “it seems to me businessmen were different in the old days. They had the milk of human kindness in them. Like George Still. Like the way he gave his dray horses a vacation.”