From Time to Time (19 page)

accidentally caught something else I'd see a lot of in this New York the street-corner loafer there by the lamppost. A moment later, he leaned his shoulder against it. Julia would be pleased when I told her the Vanderbilt mansion still looked just as we so often saw it walking up Fifth Avenue toward the Park of a Sunday-Julia never failing to wonder what it looked like inside, and I never failing to suggest that we drop in and see, explaining to the Vanderbilts that we were just passing by.

A car came rolling into the mansion grounds through the Fifty- eighth Street gate, and I strolled over and tried to sneak this, but got caught, as you see. It was a fairly big camera, hard to hide,

and at Fifty-seventh Street as I stood waiting to cross, an open car came chugging along toward Fifth. I could easily have skipped

across in front of it, but instead I raised my camera, pretending to take something up ahead. And I snapped this as it rolled past, the beauty inside giving me the haughty eye. The young guy at the wheel was singing "Turkey Trot, and as I walked on behind their car I sang softly: "Everybody's doin' it, doin' it! This was fun, walking-strolling, really-along this sunny, leisurely street. Some kids were playing up ahead on the walk, and when I stopped

to take this, I got caught once more, by the towhead there, and as I passed he said, "Juh take my piteha, Mista? I said, "No, you broke the camera. There's a first time for everyone to hear this ancient joke, and he stared, then grinned and whirled to inflict it on the girl playing behind him. "D'man says you broke duh camera!

I'd suddenly recognized the building up ahead with the awning, the St. Regis Hotel. I walked on a block, and near the corner I took this. From under the awning and behind the hedge I heard

voices and the cheerful clink of china. Lunch? I pulled out my watch; only a bit after eleven-they were serving breakfast and I wished I'd known and sat here too, under that awning watching the easy leisurely traffic move by.

Onward, watching, happy, I saw this approaching, turned and caught the bride inside smiling out at me, at my camera, and at the world.

Then I stood winding my film, and a couple strolled by me, her face merry and beautiful. She was young, not more than thirty, andl it occurred to me that she had been born about the time I met Julia. And that by my own time far ahead she'd be . . . but that wasn't a thought I wanted.

They'd gone by, but I took their picture anyway, here beside a formidable building I didn't know.

Took it because they were young here in 1912; took it for the twin spires of St. Pat's Cathedral up there ahead alone on the sky-it would have pleased Julia that at last both spires were finished. And I took this picture for the fire hydrant there at the curb, the lamppost on the corner, and to capture this quiet instant of this fine vanished day. A dozen more steps, and the couple turned into the building beside them. A moment or so later when I passed the entrance and saw the polished brass plaque reading Gotham Hotel, I wondered what my young couple were doing in there; then wondered if they were married, sort of hoping, too, they weren't. And walked on then, wondering why I should hope that.

Up ahead, the southwest corner at Fifty-third Street meant Allen Dodsworth's School for Dancing. But no longer. His sign was gone, though the building still stood. I wasn't surprised: the dancing I'd seen last night wasn't what Allen Dodsworth had taught. Was he still alive? And what stood on that corner far ahead in my own time? The Tishman Building? I wasn't quite sure.

On past one of the great old Fifth Avenue mansiOns I knew so well, from the outside. I turned to look back, then moved to one side, composing this view, which I'm a little bit proud of. See how

the old Fifth Avenue of the foreground sort of frames the new twentieth-century Fifth Avenue of great fasionable hotels rising behind it? Must be giving the owners of the house beside it fits.

Click-click, snap, snap. Just ahead lay a stretch of the street, this one, looking almost unchanged, one of the great old mansions

serenely taking up half the sidewalk, St. Pat's over there at the left and on ahead, across the street to the south of it, an old friend (Howdy!), the Buckingham Hotel, looking as permanent as St. Pat's, but I knew I was seeing a ghost. Because as I framed this scene in the little window of my viewfinder, I could also see, standing in the Buckingham's place far ahead of time, Saks Fifth Avenue looking just as permanent. Well, Saks became an old friend too.

At Forty-ninth Street I stopped, stepping just around the corner to watch a gray limousine, the gray-uniformed chauffeur sitting out front in the open, hunched over his wheel, as he swung off Fifth into West Forty-ninth, made a tight little U-turn, and stopped before an imposing brick building. The chauffeur hopped out and stood almost at attention by the curbside rear door. Then the doors of the building were swung open hr a uniformed attendant, and out trooped this impressive bunch, to head down to