among the house staff to finish up in peace. Then the new doctors reported in July, and the whole thing came full cycle.
I never could figure out why the bums stayed in New York for the winter. Birds went south. Golf caddies I knew when I was a boy in New Jersey would migrate to Florida in late September, spend the winter on the Sunshine State links, and then would appear back in New Jersey the next March all suntanned and hearty-looking, ready for another season.
So why in
God’s name did the Bowery Bums have such an attachment to Third Avenue below Fourteenth Street? Why weren’t the autumn streets filled with vast flocks of them crossing the Hudson to catch the freights as they rolled across the Jersey meadows?
Once I got curious enough to ask one of my patients this question. He considered the situation, and then shrugged and said, “Dunno. Never thought about it much.”
I figured that pretty much answered the question. When you hit the Bowery, you’ve hit bottom; there’s just nowhere else to go. You have no future and no hope; you’re just marking time and waiting. When you hurt enough, you try, somehow, to make it stop. Total numbness is the
ultima thule
.
And so, the annual parade of infected lungs and rotten livers went on making their way to The Vue. The individual faces were familiar for a time, but for most of them it was a pretty short career. Attrition was high among the old-timers, and their places were rapidly assumed by the new arrivals. Youth must be served. The Bowery is a tough world.
One day during my internship, they wheeled in a guy for me to take care of. He was about forty, with wiry, gray hair and beautiful yellow skin. He wasn’t Oriental though; it was his liver. He was out cold with hepatic failure. I figured that his liver must have been about the size of my pinky and have had both the appearance and the functional capacity of a piece of shoe leather. I really thought he had had it.
The nurse and I began to take off his clothes. As we did, dollar bills spilled out of his pockets and his underwear and scattered all over the bed. I seriously considered proctoscoping him. We gathered up the greenbacks and put them into an envelope with his name on it. Then we started him on treatment. I didn’t think it would do any good, but he fooled me and began to recover. As the days passed, his skin color lightened and he even began to become responsive. Finally he reached the point where we could talk to him and expect to get a reasonable answer. So I asked him where he had gotten all that money. He must have forgotten about it till that moment, because he suddenly looked panicky and clutched at his pajama pockets. I assured him that the dough was in the hospital safe with his name on it. “I’m just curious where you got all that money,” I said. “To be honest, you just don’t look like a guy who’d have over a hundred bucks in his pockets. But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
The guy grinned at me. (Why did all Bowery Bums have only three widely separated teeth in their mouths?) “Don’t mind at all. Gimme a cigarette, ‘n’ I’ll tell yuh.”
I didn’t have any cigarettes, so I persuaded the bum in the next bed that it would be an act of charity and, in addition, he might learn how to get rich too. My patient lit up and began to talk. “I made it washin’ car windows,” he said. I guess I must have looked at him a little blankly, because he hastily added, “Y’know, down onna Bowery. When the cars stop fer red lights, I run out inna street ‘n’ wipe off the windas. Then I put out m’ hand.”
Now I understood. When you stop your car for a red light as you drive down the Bowery, these guys fly in swarms off the curbstones. They charge over, make a few passes at your windshield with a cruddy old rag, and then present themselves at your window, palm up. I myself had never paid one of these characters, first, because all they ever did was to streak
I never could figure out why the bums stayed in New York for the winter. Birds went south. Golf caddies I knew when I was a boy in New Jersey would migrate to Florida in late September, spend the winter on the Sunshine State links, and then would appear back in New Jersey the next March all suntanned and hearty-looking, ready for another season.
So why in
God’s name did the Bowery Bums have such an attachment to Third Avenue below Fourteenth Street? Why weren’t the autumn streets filled with vast flocks of them crossing the Hudson to catch the freights as they rolled across the Jersey meadows?
Once I got curious enough to ask one of my patients this question. He considered the situation, and then shrugged and said, “Dunno. Never thought about it much.”
I figured that pretty much answered the question. When you hit the Bowery, you’ve hit bottom; there’s just nowhere else to go. You have no future and no hope; you’re just marking time and waiting. When you hurt enough, you try, somehow, to make it stop. Total numbness is the
ultima thule
.
And so, the annual parade of infected lungs and rotten livers went on making their way to The Vue. The individual faces were familiar for a time, but for most of them it was a pretty short career. Attrition was high among the old-timers, and their places were rapidly assumed by the new arrivals. Youth must be served. The Bowery is a tough world.
One day during my internship, they wheeled in a guy for me to take care of. He was about forty, with wiry, gray hair and beautiful yellow skin. He wasn’t Oriental though; it was his liver. He was out cold with hepatic failure. I figured that his liver must have been about the size of my pinky and have had both the appearance and the functional capacity of a piece of shoe leather. I really thought he had had it.
The nurse and I began to take off his clothes. As we did, dollar bills spilled out of his pockets and his underwear and scattered all over the bed. I seriously considered proctoscoping him. We gathered up the greenbacks and put them into an envelope with his name on it. Then we started him on treatment. I didn’t think it would do any good, but he fooled me and began to recover. As the days passed, his skin color lightened and he even began to become responsive. Finally he reached the point where we could talk to him and expect to get a reasonable answer. So I asked him where he had gotten all that money. He must have forgotten about it till that moment, because he suddenly looked panicky and clutched at his pajama pockets. I assured him that the dough was in the hospital safe with his name on it. “I’m just curious where you got all that money,” I said. “To be honest, you just don’t look like a guy who’d have over a hundred bucks in his pockets. But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
The guy grinned at me. (Why did all Bowery Bums have only three widely separated teeth in their mouths?) “Don’t mind at all. Gimme a cigarette, ‘n’ I’ll tell yuh.”
I didn’t have any cigarettes, so I persuaded the bum in the next bed that it would be an act of charity and, in addition, he might learn how to get rich too. My patient lit up and began to talk. “I made it washin’ car windows,” he said. I guess I must have looked at him a little blankly, because he hastily added, “Y’know, down onna Bowery. When the cars stop fer red lights, I run out inna street ‘n’ wipe off the windas. Then I put out m’ hand.”
Now I understood. When you stop your car for a red light as you drive down the Bowery, these guys fly in swarms off the curbstones. They charge over, make a few passes at your windshield with a cruddy old rag, and then present themselves at your window, palm up. I myself had never paid one of these characters, first, because all they ever did was to streak
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