PART 1 OF AT THE PLAZA

AT THE PLAZA by ruie

A Story

Walkathons were great entertainment for a quarter during the Depresion and were still popular into the 1940's. My father had a deal with the hotel manager for me, my mother and himself to live at The Plaza Hotel, he was a man who knew how to make deals. This deal not only included members in his band, but other entertainers who were not part of the Walkathon in St. Charles, south of St. Louis off Route 66. Daddy had already been promoting Walkathons for a few years by 1940. Mother was a dancer and signed on to one of his shows in Minnesota where they were married and I was born a year and a half later.

Picture of mother with her first partner - Atlantic City, NJ...after 625 hours 1933In those days, couples working the shows would go out and get sponsors. The sponsors would pay for their wardrobes and some of their living expenses. Some of the couples were secretly married and the sponsors frowned on that. They wanted the audience to root for lovebirds, not married couples. It was a strange life but for some the only way they survived the Depression. Daddy arranged for the married couples to come to the hotel a couple of nights a week, to get a break. Otherwise, they were just like the single guys and girls and had to sleep on individual cots, separated by curtains, men on one side and women on the other side, backstage."What do ya want to do with the kid?" Daddy would ask my mother. "She staying here or coming with us today?" I was the kid, at six, never thinking I'm a kid. I roamed up and down hotel elevators and my playmates were theatrical adults.

Daddy would get out of bed, shower, walk back in the room, his slicked-back hair dripping water over mother as she slept in bed and say, "I said, what do ya want to do with the kid"? A slender white arm would move from under the covers toward the phone, her index finger dialed 3 numbers; in-house numbers for Henry. "Is Henry here today," more a mumble than a question, but she got the idea across. Henry, a seventeen year old bellhop, used to run errands and do favors for Daddy and his band. Henry was a tall, skinny black kid. I never saw him out of his hotel uniform. Crisp white shirt, black pants with a permanent crease down the front, a red jacket and a toothy grin, always eager to please. Whatever Daddy wanted, Henry managed to get. Smokes for the band, extra sugar for mother's coffee delivered to our room. Sugar was a premium but Henry always seemed to have some stashed for mother. He would come up to our room, knock ever so quietly on the door, just in case she was still sleeping. I'd open it a crack and there he would be, all crisp and polished, his hands outstretched with a tray of coffee, toast and extra packets of sugar for mother. He'd say, "this here's for you mother", and I'd roll my eyes. He'd flash that toothy grin and I'd open the door wide so he could see mother sitting up in bed with the morning paper. He'd hand me the tray and give mother a salute and me a wink and off he'd go whistling down the hall. I think Henry had a crush on mother. And why not, she was really beautiful with the most perfect skin, deep set double-lashed blue eyes and the thickest black hair down to her waist.

ruie at six years oldHenry was my babysitter, and I was trouble, a piece of work to Henry but he had a big heart and a smile that stretched from one end of town to another. He took good care of me. My parents never worried because "the kid" was taken care of. He would come up to the room every morning at 11 am. "Now listen, Toots tell me what you ate for breakfast." Breakfast was downstairs in the hotel cafe, the same every morning, one slice of toast, a bowl of oatmeal, a glass of orange juice, and a pat of butter right smack in the middle of my oatmeal. First, I'd chew on the toast, the grape jelly looking as if a mudslide in purple had assaulted the bread. My butter would be melting away, then I'd sprinkle so much sugar on top of my oatmeal it made a white crust covering it. I'd eat it down to its last speck with the intensity of a Walkathon Contestant preparing for 40 hours on the floor. Later I would recall it as my security breakfast. Some kids had blankets they carried to make them feel all's well with the world. I had my oatmeal and a slab of butter. I was a lonely kid.

My mother, Ruie - First plane ride, years later at 60 she flew solo and got her pilot's licenseHenry, whose punctuality was uncanny, would knock again on my door at Noon, "Hey Toots, are ya okay in there?" I'd open the door a crack just in time to see him give that big wide grin and wink conspiratorially at me. I'd hold out my right hand and feel his warm fingers gripping around some cool metal; the keys to the elevator. It was a game we played. He'd slip me the keys and I'd ride the elevator up and down, past the third floor, down to the basement where laundry and the hotel kitchen were; I'd get out and talk with the cook and dishwasher. Cook usually gave me a piece of fruit and I'd hang out there for a while. If the hotel lobby was empty, I'd sneak over to the baby grand piano and play chopsticks until it made the Desk Clerk nuts and then back to the elevator; I lost track of time; I spent hours in that elevator. And every once in a while, when I felt perverse or extra lonely, I'd deliberately stop the elevator between the floors. Time, precious little of it, would pass. I'd hear a big raucous noise of the fire captain shaking the lobby door; loud voices shouting; some thumping overhead my elevator cage. A tiny part of my elevator roof would open, and some big burly guy with a red sweaty face would haul me up through the top of the elevator to safety.