Horn & Hardart (The Automat)

Subject: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: BH
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 07:11 PM

Besides being one of the hosts of TRADITIONS on WFDU I also produce and host TABLETALK. Tabletalk airs on the 2d and 3d Sunday of each month.

This Sunday -=--if you are into nostalgia--you will hear a wonderful conversation with the great grand-daughter of Frank Hardart (one of the founders of Horn & Hardart) She and her co author Lorraine Diehl, the NY Daily News writer,have a wonderful book about the Automat that is now flying off the shelves.

If you are from NYC or Phila.---or are of a certain age you will love the book---and the interview.

So==when does TABLETALK air----8 AM ET. WFDU 89.1 FM in the NY metro area. On the web you can hear us live
    www.fm


Bill Hahn
WFDU
Traditions and Tabletalk

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: BH
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 07:13 PM

Ok the web address got screwed up

www.wfdu.fm

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 07:58 PM

One of my earliest of memories........the train trips every few months to NYC, free because my Dad was a PRR engineer and Pennsy employees families had Permanent Passes. I would whine and beg to eat at the H&H every time.........

To a kid, especially one from a small railroad town in the east Ohio hills, it was the neatest place in the world, almost magic!!! Gawd what a thrill to a kid to be able to see and buy exactly what you were going to eat with your own handful of money. I still think the beef pot pie was tops, but once I remember I got and ate creamed spinach with no idea what it was because it just looked so damn good! My Mom was laughing all the time I ate it...........

Spaw--had to have the Hot Chocolate too!!

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 11:08 PM

I grew up with H&H. The Automat was a treat on our occasional trips Downtown, but Northeast Philadelphia had two other Horn and Hardart Restaurants: the old one on Roosevelt Boulevard, and the H&H cafeteria on Cottman Avenue, where my dad would take me every morning I had early orchestra practice. My standard breakfast then was orange juice, oatmeal with brown sugar and butter, two poached eggs on toast, [bacon], a glass of milk, and one of those wonderful HUGE sticky cinnamon buns. How did I ever stay so scrawny for all those years? (Must have been because I never ate scrapple.)   

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Sorcha
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 11:20 PM

Oh, gawd......THE Automat??? West 42nd, wasn't it? I was in THE Automat in 1965 or so.........wunnrerful, wunnerful experience.Same one? (Maybe not W. 42nd, but NYC for sure.........) A whole wall full of little doors to choose from.

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Dave Swan
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 11:27 PM

Let us not forget Peter Schickele's Concerto for Horn and Hadart (S.27)Bb.

Here is a note on the hardart.

A Hardart has a range of over two almost chromatic octaves, with each successive tone possessing a different quality of sound, including a plucked string, bottles which are blown and struck, a bicycle horn, various whistles and a cooking timer. Due to its length - over nine feet - and the great variety of motions necessary to produce its tones, the hardart requires its player to be athletic as well as musical!

D

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 11:33 PM

Hey, there's a Horn and Hardart Website! I first encountered H&H on my high school graduation trip in 1966. We took a bus from Milwaukee to DT, to Philadelphia, to Manhattan.
I got a can of turtle soup for lunch at Horn and Hardart, the first and only time I've seen canned turtle soup. It's probably illegal now.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 12:32 AM

Joe, you're weird, ya' know that?   Who the hell gets a can of soup at the H&H?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Amos
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 12:33 AM

One of the icons of my childhood. Those mysteriosu guys in the white hats that you could sometimes see loading the boxes from the other side -- what were they? Where did they come from? Were they aliens? It was magic!!

And the shiny nickle-chrome that was bright all day and all night!! How did they DO that?? Those little knurled knobs with the porcelain disks as labels int he center!!   and the funny square edged slots for dropping quarters into. Sigh....


A

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 12:34 AM

Say it ain't so, Joe! The venerable H&H reborn as just another yuppie espresso stand? O tempora! O mores! O latte! Oh, hell.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Art Thieme
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 10:41 AM

My great uncle was the one who put the turtle soup in the Horn and Hardarts. He was in a restaurant in Kansas City many years ago having a bowl of turtle soup.-- When the bill came the price was so high I---er---he just flipped out. But he got to thinkin' it over and he hired some turtle boys, gave 'em gunny sacks and sent 'em to southern Texas to gather together a herd of land terrapins, the idea being to drive the herd to the railhead at Abilene.

They started out O.K. but then the stuff hit the fan. At night they had to settle the herd riding around 'em and roping strays and singing to 'em. It's not easy to rope a turtle. They pull in their heads and little feet and the damn rope just slips off. Also, every night the whole 30,000 head o' turtle had to be FLIPPED OVER onto their backs----one by one---to keep 'em from stampeding. Waving their little legs in the air all night wiped 'em out so bad that they could only make about 3 yards the next day. Moving at that rate, it would've taken 'em 40 years to get to market.

But one good thing was that, as they moved, the females would lay eggs. The herd would move on and there would be a HUGE mass of eggs left in the valley. The first herd hadn't got to the horizon and a secondary herd hatched and followed behind. You could still see the dust kicked up by their little hooves---er--legs out there in the distance. My old uncle just had dollar signs in his eyes----. He had an image in his mind of a whole string of hurtle turds-----er---turtle herds----stretching all the way from Texas to the railhead. Well, it probably would've worked---

BUT !! They got to the banks of the Red River and sunning himself on the shore was a big old mud turtle named Studs---STUDS TURTLE. He saw this whole thundering mass of turtle flesh stampeding toward him and he got spooked. He dove into the river and all those land terrapins followed him-------but being land terrapins, they all drowned. That should've ended the GREAT TURTLE DRIVE as it has come to be known today. But those turtle boys were pretty resourceful. They dug huge pits and filled 'em with red hot coals. Then they pushed boulders into the pits and heated those to a red hot status. Then they pushed 'em into the Red River. The old river heated up slowly, and then it started to steam and froth and foam and boil. I'm here to tell you that the Red River ran turtle soup that day. Pure stuff. Kept the Indians through a tough winter. Everyone turned out pretty happy.

Naturally, there was a ton of turtle soup left over---really good stuff. Horn and Hardart came and bought all of it. Took it and slowly sold it in cans in their automats. It took 'em years to do it too.

So Joe Offer is right.

Thinking over the Great Turtle Drive and what had gone wrong, these same turtle boys said, "If we could try it with turtles, why the hell not with cows."

And that was the start of the cattle industry as we know it today. I always did wonder why that particular chapter of Western history is always left out of the history books !?!?

If you're wondering how I know all this, I have turtle recall.

END OF STORY

(Friends, I found the germ of this story in PARDNER OF THE WIND by Jack Thorp. Thorp was the first man to ever issue a book of cowboy songs in the USA. He did that in 1908---two years before John Lomax's book COWBOY SONGS in 1910. Then I added my own interpritation and told it on stage for 25 years. I recorded it in 1976 and again in 84. As was the custom in folk music for all of the years I was a participant, we always gave credit to our sources. A few years ago---1996, a storyteller named Steve Sanfield "wrote" a kid's book" called The Great Turtle Drive. It had wonderful illustrations by Dirk Zimmer---as you might well imagine. It sure would have---in the past---been the right thing to give credit to the source of the story and my roll in continuing the tradition. We were songcatchers then, not singer/songwriters, and the lineage was very important to us. In this new millenium, I guess, that's not the way things get done. It would've been the right thing to do though!!!-----------Get this book---if only for the illustrations.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 11:18 AM

Studs was bad, but "turtle recall" is abyssmal!!!! That's somewhere between a bad pun and a jack tale and a shaggy dog.....My favorite stuff!!! I think they should be called "Groaners." Drives Karen nuts when I do the long setups for a miniscule punch line, especially when it's a pun. "All that for THAT?!?!?!?!" And of course, Art, I'm sure you know the feeling.....LOL.......I will be stealing that one, with due credit!

BTW, I fixed up your typo stuff and deleted your message about them. That one is way too good no to!!!

Thnaks my friend....

Spaw

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Amos
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 02:03 PM

Groaners, aye!.

Anyone (with turtle recall) recall that humorous song that began,

I met him at
The Automat!
He had some cream-of-wheat
On his cravat...

A

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: KateG
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 02:08 PM

I thought is was on East 42nd Street, not far from Grand Central. My whole 2nd or 3rd grade class ate there when we made a trip to see the UN. At that age, it was magical.

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Art Thieme
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 08:49 PM

I meant role----not roll.

Thanks Pat. If you want that on a cassette, just say the word. (You still in Bremen?)

Art

Subject: RE: Horn & Hardart (The Automat)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 04:23 AM

Thank you, Art. I knew I was right. The turtle soup tasted darn good, too.
-Joe Offer-