The Front Page By Jack Coll

“THE FRONT PAGE”

24 Hours in New York City

By Jack Coll

Sometime ago Donna and I decided to take in a play in New York City.  We’ve seen some of the best plays, in some of the most beautiful theatre’s that New York has to offer.  We’ve also seen some of greatest performers Broadway has had to offer over the past two decades.

Hal Linden, Linda Lavin, Kathleen Turner, Jude Law, Carol Burnett, Stockard Channing, Jack Klugman, Tony Randall, Rachel York, Rex Smith, Lauren Bacall, Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, John Lithgow, Delta Burke, Marsha Mason, Christine Ebersole, Jill Clayburgh, (Jill was one of my favorite actresses) Tony Roberts, and Amanda Peet.  We’ve seen dozens of other actors from Philadelphia to Bucks County, to San Francisco, California.

So a few weeks ago Donna went on-line to purchase two tickets for “The Front Page.”  The play had not even debuted when she bought the tickets but we were familiar with the story and it had a powerhouse cast including Nathan Lane, John Slattery, John Goodman, Jefferson Mays, Robert Morse, Christopher McDonald, Sheri Rene Scott, and Holland Taylor just to name a few members of the cast.

Tickets were $147.00 each, needless to say this is a major outing for us.  Our next decision was to book an overnight room in New York, this can be a very tricky proposition.  We could book a room uptown for $400.00 for the night, or downtown for $350.00 for the night, no-sir we booked a room right there in midtown Manhattan in the Garment District for $235.00 plus tax, the total for the room came to $270.00, check-in time was 3:00 pm and checkout time was 12:00, we had less than 24 hours to take Manhattan by Conshohocken storm.

For more than twenty years when Donna and I traveled to New York we always drove the New Jersey Turnpike, sped through a tunnel and WA-la the good times were rolling.  But this time we decided to take a train to the Big-Apple and see how that would go!  Train Tickets, $70.00 each!

So out-of-bed at 6:00 A.M. to catch the R-6 at the Conshohocken Train Station to 30^th Street Station where we jumped on the Amtrak train to New York.   The train rides couldn’t have been smoother, everything was on time and very comfortable.  Once we arrived at New York’s Penn Central Station we hit the street outside of Madison Square Garden and headed four blocks to our hotel.

The hotel entrance was a bit of a disappointment but not as disappointing as the room would be.  We checked our bags because we had a couple of hours to kill before check-in time, we headed to the Theatre District to grab a little lunch and hang-out taking in the sights and sounds of Times Square.

We headed back to the hotel, we’ll protect the name of the place and say, call it the “Memory Motel” (A little play of the Rolling Stones).  We checked in to find a room that was eight feet wide by fourteen feet long plus the bathroom.  We stayed and marveled at the spacious room for about six minutes and headed back out looking for dinner and then go stand in line for the eight-o-clock show.

When we arrived at the theatre rather than stand in line we stood at the theatre door where the actress and actors arrived, we marveled at a few of them arriving and headed inside.  For $147.00 per ticket we really did have good seats, I headed for the rest-room when Donna yelled to me to grab her a bottle of water.  Bags were checked at the door, absolutely no food, or drinks including bottles of water, I noticed a trash can full of bottles of water on the way into the theatre.

So I proceeded down the steps to the restroom and the bar area.  I bellied up to the bar and ordered two bottles of water and I also order a bag of twizzles and M&M’s, peanut.  So as the bar tender is pouring the small bottle of water into a cup, (no bottles allowed into the theatre) he says to me, “you know the water is $10.00 per bottle,” Whoa, “Ten bucks a bottle,” I asked, “you bettya” he said.  And the candy is $7.50 per bag and you are not permitted to eat the candy in the theatre.  I said to him, “Wait a minute, two bottles of water and two bags of candy is $35.00 and I can’t eat the candy in the theatre?” “That’s right,” I said, “forget-it,” and walked away.  I am by far not a cheap-skate, but $10.00 for a bottle of water is by far above my budget for a drink of water.  When I got back to my seat I told Donna to suck-it-up she ain’t getting a bottle of water.  The guy behind me heard our conversation and said that he also told them to shove-it.

So we settle into our seats as the lights started to dim and I found Donna on one side of me and an elderly lady on the other side, a nice lady, we chatted a little before the start of the show.  So during the show the elderly woman is leaning into me as though she is cuddling up to me.  Hey I don’t mind, she’s an older women out on the town for the night.  At one point during Act Two she takes her hand and grabs me on my upper thigh and after inhaling I look over at Donna who is paying no attention to me she is locked in on the play.  So my head snaps back around to also stare at the stage but I’m thinking she’s gonna give me a little New York excitement right there in the theatre during the play, lucky-me.

I look back at Donna, nothing, so I turn my head to the date on my left and she’s just sitting there and slowly removes her hand from my thigh.  The entire incident seemed like it was going on for about 20 minutes but in reality it lasted maybe 20-30 seconds.  In the end I think she believed she was grabbing the arm-rest not realizing it was my leg, at that point I almost felt a little disappointed.

So following the play we headed back out onto 44^th Street headed to Broadway.  The play wasn’t great but wasn’t bad.  The one disappointment was, Nathan Lane whom we considered the star of the play, never appeared on the stage until mid-way through the second act.

Once on Broadway we once again strolled the strip checking out everything as fast as our heads could turn.  On the way back to our luxury hotel we decided to step into an Arby’s for a small pumpkin-cheesecake milk shake.  While we were sitting at the front window taking in the best show on earth an apparent “Homeless Woman” pulls up her milk-create, sits down right outside the Arby’s window. She  pulls out her empty cup in an effort to extract lose change from the passerby’s pockets.  My girl the homeless-looking women, by our best guess was maybe 60 years old but had some nice looking sneakers on and Donna noticed some jewelry hanging around her neck and on her wrist that a lot of us would be hard pressed to afford.

So while we’re sipping our shakes a customer who had come into Arby’s to purchase food bought her a large drink and took it out to her while waiting for his order.  Another customer, a young lady who was also watching the show was having dinner behind us and took a large bag of fries out to our actress.  And finally a man appeared from Arby’s and handed her a sandwich of some-kind.  Thinking back on Donna and I sitting inside sipping our $7.00 milk-shakes I can’t help but to wonder if we could have made out better if we had grabbed a couple of milk-creates and sat outside Arby’s.

We headed back to the memory motel where we enjoyed the comforts of our 12 inch television screen, we counted 13 channels, did you catch that? 13 channels.  We had separate beds, hell we’re married 43 years we could handle that, each bed was three feet wide, (36 inches with two feet in-between.  (I knew this because there were eight-12 inch tiles on the floor, each bed covered three tiles with two visible tiles in-between the beds)

The night’s sleep was what you would expect at a memory motel, Donna wasn’t up-set at the bug she found in her bed before going to sleep, but she was a little excited about the bug she found when she woke up.  (I think it was a little overkill, the little fella just wanted to share her blanket)

It’s really rather funny when you’re in New York, we both jumped in the shower in the morning, (at separate times of course, now there was a time years ago when, I know our kids don’t really want to read about this) but taking that morning shower in an effort to wash some of that New York funk off yourself it felt like we were putting more NY funk on us.

We checked out super early with no-where to go so we headed for the early morning McDonalds show.  It was a cool place, you had to show the bathroom attendant your receipt from that day to gain entrance into the bathroom.  At some point we headed back Penn Central Railroad Station to watch that show, (no-charge of course) before boarding our train for 30^th Street station.

Looking back at the high priced memory motel, train tickets, show tickets, small milk shake prices, six and a half inches of New York funk on our skins even after the morning showers and two bugs found in Donna’s bed I’m on that train ride home thinking about the Rolling Stones, “You’re just a memory, of a love that used to be.”

God, I can’t wait to go back, Sally Fields is appearing in a show on 48^th Street in the spring, we’ll be on that train going the other way!

“Start Spreading The News.”