“I used to ride in my father’s rumble seat,” Dad told me once while we sat at the bar in Loftus Tavern. As Dad drank a short beer and I sipped a coke, I wondered, What’s a rumble seat? I asked. He said, “It was a seat that hinged out of the back of the car. It felt like you were riding in mid-air.” We mulled over our drinks and I thought, Someday, I’m going to ride in a rumble seat.
One afternoon in the Old Timer’s Tavern, as I was laying on the floor and watching the fan spin, I overheard my Uncle Mickey say to my father, “Bob, when we were young, I remember you driving us to Rockaway. Why don’t you have a car now?” He replied, “Because I know I’m going to drink, and I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
The Pryors didn’t have a car, and so we depended on the kindness of strangers and relatives. My Uncle George took us to beaches and lakes, my paternal grandfather took us with him to buy wool for my grandmother on Grand Street. I spent an inordinate amount of time in Checker cabs headed for Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden. That gave me access to the pull up seat on the floor of the cab. A seven-ticket ride.
My mother’s father, Pop Ryan, did not have a car either, but in 1961 he bought his first one, a Falcon in mint condition. This made my grandmother Nan very unhappy since my Pop Ryan had a reputation for taking the laws of self-preservation lightly.
Pop Ryan put plastic over the seats and washed the car every Saturday in front of the house on York Avenue (he was the building’s super). Nan wouldn’t let him take me driving for the first few weeks because he had just gotten his license by the skin of his teeth. After six weeks and relentless whining and begging, she finally let me go. I started off in the back seat but climbed into the front seat when we were out Nan’s sight. We turned left on 86th Street, and then went over to Fifth Avenue and passed my favorites places: Loews Orpheum, Woolworth’s, RKO, Horn and Hardart’s, Prexy’s, Singer’s, and many more.
We drove down Fifth Avenue past museums and mansions, and I took it all in on my knees with my head out the window catching air in my mouth. At 72nd Street we turned into Central Park and veered right past Pilgrim Hill. Going north, I waved at the boathouse doing 30 miles an hour.
At Cherry Hill, I said, “Pop, do 40!” He hit the accelerator. Near the Engineer’s Gate I saw a hawk swoop down and said, “Pop, 50!” The speedometer moved up. As we started down the hill past the 102nd Street transverse, I yelled,”60, 60, 60!” Pop gave me a wicked smile and there we went. Past the Harlem Meer at the north end of the park, taking the downhill curves at 60 miles an hour with no one on the road but us. When we rode the curb facing Cathedral Parkway and nearly hit a trash can, Pop backed down to 50, then 40, and we stayed there until we turned east at Columbus Circle and headed back to Yorkville.
Luckily, there was a spot in front of the house. Pop parked, while I jumped out ran up the stoop and busted into the apartment screaming, “Nan, it was great; we did 60 miles an hour in Central Park!”
The next day Pop sold the car.
Pop Ryan and Nan with the Falcon, 1961
My Paternal Grandfather in his Model T, 1922
Thomas Pryor has been featured on A Prairie Home Companion and This American Life, and his work has appeared in the New York Times. He curates City Stories: Stoops to Nuts, a storytelling show at the Cornelia Street Café on the second Tuesday of the month (next one May 8th). Check out his blog Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts.
