Curtain calls
Magical moments in New York City
Memories beget memories beget memories. My recent piece on Key Club jaunts, which touched briefly on a New York theater experience, reminded my old friend Jay Edwards of a family vacation of his, which also involved theater. Which also jogged more of my own memories of memorable spring breaks gone by.
In any event, many parents use spring break for family vacations, rather than summers … better flights and hotel deals, less heat, fewer competing tourists. And a number of them try to make those ventures educational, and culturally broadening and also fun, hoping to delay the year in which the kids decide they’ve seen one too many historical markers and are suddenly embarrassed to be seen doing anything with their parents, of all people, even in places where no one knows them.
In the case of their mother Emily and me, going to New York with our daughters and including live theater in the mix, even on a budget, softened the uncoolness factor considerably.
After all, nothing quite compares to the live, professional theater experience, wherever you find it.
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On our first trip to New York with the girls, Emily had located a really cheap hotel a stone’s throw from Times Square. It was scheduled to be demolished eventually, so it was getting a minimum of maintenance, hence, the low cost. But we just needed a place to sleep, no need to be surrounded by amenities.
It helped that out our hotel windows could be seen a huge, brightly lit roof sign screaming “WHOREHOUSE” … advertising the hit The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, of course.
We also were within walking distance of a cluster of theaters so the morning after we arrived we headed that way. After a few steps, a man walked past us carrying a very long metal pole, the sort of thing used in hanging stage lighting and so forth, so we figured we were on the right track.
As he passed, the pole flexed and he bumped me lightly on the head. He was horrified and implored me to seek medical attention. I explained to him that nothing short of a concussion was going to deprive our daughters of a minute of their New York City experience.
Finally, he gave up and took us around the corner to the box office where he got us free tickets for the preview that night of theater giant David Merrick’s play I Won’t Dance, starring TV fixture Monte Markham and a woman who had been Miss Texas in a recent Miss America pageant. It closed in less than a week, but the girls thought this experience was indeed cool.
We somehow grabbed bargain tickets to see Barnum with pop singer Tony Orlando in the title role. Tony really worked at punching up his performance and projecting his songs. Anyone seated in the first three rows left the theater feeling just a little damp.
On a second trip, Emily discovered the TKTS kiosk in Times Square, which sold SRO tickets at rock-bottom prices. We bought tickets to 42nd Street, A Chorus Line and La Cage aux Folles, starring Van Johnson, three shows in two days!
One morning we had breakfast at the Algonquin, of literary fame, where our waiter, who had daughters the same age of ours, poured them hot chocolate with an incredible frothy bubbling flourish. Thus fortified, we headed out, in glorious weather, to Central Park and the Bronx Zoo.
However, the most arresting wildlife was on the New York sidewalks— while standing in a snow cone line, ahead of us we spied a woman in a white suit and outrageous shoes with lacquered pins in her coal black hair and funky jewelry and sunglasses, immediately crowned The Queen of Mars.
That evening we happened to visit the World Trade Center as the sun was going down and the lights of Manhattan were twinkling on.
Those moments were magical. Nonetheless, the highlight of that first trip, which thus went down in family lore, was my encounter with the pole and the resulting free tickets to a show only a select few would ever get to see.
Only in Manhattan.