Salvaging Sociability

COUSINS from the hinterland frequently aver that New Yorkers are unsociable. Back in Canopee, they say, all the amenities are observed by those who live side by side. But, New Yorkers may well reply, here we do not live side by side. We live end to end; and the only means of informal, neighborly exchanges are, for many, such as are afforded by the dumb-waiter and the air shaft.

I once knew of an apartment house where, of an evening, a soulful tenant could carol a melody in the vicinity of his air shaft, certain that others above and below him would relay the refrain up and down the same channel of neighborliness. But this harmonious living was foredoomed. Less musical tenants objected and inferred that something more potent than the spirit of song passed up and down the dumbwaiter. Upon those who raised their voices the landlord shortly raised the rent, rocketing the per capita cost of neighborliness to a point beyond reason.

Living end to end does not represent New Yorkers’ closest human contacts. These occur, it seems to me, most conspicuously in our traffic jams. Those whose autos lock with our own, when the red light flashes at the intersection of two crowded streets, are perhaps more truly neighbors in the Canopee sense than the stratifications of sleepers among which, somewhere or other, our own residential interstices happen to be. In the traffic jam, amid the genial rubbing of mudguards, with a pulsating flivver snuggled confidingly against the door of one’s limousine, true neighborliness, I claim, may profitably be practised.

It is four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and we are driving through rolling Westchester. We are bound both homeward and never to try it again; for this is the weekly pastime, we discover, of perhaps a hundred thousand old fools (we now admit it) and new drivers. Ahead of us as far as the eye can reach, or could reach if it had a fraction of a chance, extends an unending procession of fellow repentants. We are fully eighteen inches from the car ahead. We think guiltily of those eighteen inches, and the appellation ‘road hog’ occurs to us. For if each car were to close up a similar gap it would effect a saving of one hundred and fifty feet per hundred cars, we calculate. In a minute, though, we do close up — quite unexpectedly. For suddenly the line halts and we proceed against the rear of the front car with considerable impact. Now if neighborly sentiment generally prevailed the bumpee would look upon this as but a friendly slap on the back on the part of the bumper. Generally he does not; and it takes several minutes of nods and smiles to persuade him that the jolt represents a social opportunity rather than a careless affront. But once he can be reduced to a state of sociability the real process of neighborly intercourse should begin.

While he has been examining the back of his car let us suppose that I have produced a pack of playing cards. When he turns to deliver the customary reproaches I proffer the pack. ‘Hearts,’ I suggest. We finish two games and are beginning an exciting rubber when the line of autos starts again. Play is suspended, but I follow closely upon his car, and another halt, at Mount Vernon, allows us to finish the game. Then we exchange cigars and wish each other Godspeed, which, on a Sunday afternoon, averages about eight miles per hour.

The time consumed in waiting at some crossings in New York suggests the possibility of a game of chess. By means of some kind of gum the chessmen might be lightly affixed to the board so that it could be passed between two cars waiting side by side. The game might even thus be played while the two autos were in parallel motion. The time taken to travel from Twenty-third to Forty-second Streets on Fifth Avenue allows, I should think, for nearly a full game by thoughtful players.

But, I hear someone say, what about those whose minds are partially atrophied by years of leisure, or by constant application to the same never-varying task, like machine operatives and college professors? For them, I believe, there could be pastimes a-plenty. Those in neighboring cars could form a pool and, like fellow passengers on an ocean liner, gamble upon the length of the run to the next red traffic light. Nor is bodily exercise out of the question. A few tennis rackets and a toy balloon would afford exhilarating exercise for those who occupy open cars.

Above all, the art of conversation should be fostered. Once motorists accept the idea of sociability in the traffic jam, it is probable that articulate intercourse will follow. As I have intimated, such conversation as now takes place is confined to those whose cars have come together from an error of judgment on the part of one of the drivers, rather than from any desire to promote sociability. The resulting conversation, as a rule, centres about the participants’ qualifications as drivers, and the moral right of each to operate a car on a public highway.

To facilitate conversation amid the din of Elevateds and heavy crosstraffic let us imagine every car to be equipped with large cards, each bearing a letter of the alphabet. By spelling out words with these cards at one’s rear window a neighborly conversation might take place with the occupants of the car waiting behind.

‘What is your name?’ we should probably spell.

‘H-e-n-r-y S-m-i-t-h,’ spells back the other. Or, as a pleasant possibility, it might even prove to be John D. Rockefeller, Wayne B. Wheeler, or Nicholas Murray Butler. But, assuming this not to be, we proceed: —

‘Where are you from?’

‘Canopee, Ohio.’

A Middle Westerner! Obviously one flashes back, ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smith.’

As the communing parties become intimate the talk turns upon the price of each other’s car, the terms of purchase, the size of one’s family.

Even afoot, New Yorkers, though unsociable, are a kindly lot. Many will go so far as to hesitate in their tracks in order to point with a thumb in the general direction of the street for which you are inquiring. And those who have had superior advantages, as indicated by their ability to own a motor, will, I am confident, coöperate to speed a new era of democratic neighborliness in their own beloved city.