That's the Way it Was...

It was not unusual for the regulars at The Palm to see Walter Cronkite at lunchtime. Just around the corner on Third Avenue at 44th Street, the restaurant was tucked inside a two-story, faded red brick building that might as easily have been a tailor shop, a second-hand furniture store or any other of the non-descript businesses lining the avenue. One had to know it was a restaurant. Those who did were the regulars, the men and occasional women who worked nearby in advertising, journalism and publishing whose daily ritual included “lunch”. Among them were the well known, the little known and, like me, the unknown. But inside it didn’t matter. Although the walls were filled with an inked-on gallery of graffiti, cartoons, drawings and signatures of celebrity guests, the place was as egalitarian as a neighborhood diner. Long and narrow, its worn smooth oak floor sifted with sawdust, the main room started at a wide window looking onto the avenue and ended deep inside at the oak bar.

The bar. Shined to a wooden mirror sheen by thousands of swipes of the bartender’s white cloth with an equally polished brass rail at its base that was buffed bright by the leather soles of even more thousands of shoes, the bar was not the focus of the place nor was it the central reason for coming to The Palm at all. While some perched there longer than others, it was the open kitchen just beyond the bar that was magnetized, pulling you back lunch after lunch after lunch. This was the truest kitchen of all. For it was Italian.

Real fire erupted from atop the black cast iron stove inside the kitchen each time the old man tending his squat flock of sizzling pans moved one and then another to what he knew was a better place. A wave of heat blasted out the open door with every fiery roar to touch the cheeks of those watching from the bar just feet away.

This day was special. Today was not just lunch, it was the prelude to a dream. Young and hopeful, an editor with a major publishing company an avenue over, with a new first child and the aspiration to become a writer, I was at a familiar table at The Palm with a friend. He and I ate there often in the comfortable symbiosis of editor and illustrator that was the basis of what grew into a genuine friendship. His career was well established. Mine was just beginning. Today was to be the first day of that beginning.

At an earlier Palm lunch I’d proposed a book idea to Jack based on the next year’s presidential election campaign. He liked it and agreed to illustrate it. It would be a book of simple humor using the growing cast of characters sure to be running for president in ’64 as well as many other well-known public figures. We called it Instant Candidates ’64. Within weeks we produced a book dummy ready to pitch to a publisher. Simon & Schuster liked it, bought it and sooner than we believed possible, we had a contract ready to be signed.

Political humor was not yet a genre, but its potential was evident. Television was already central to the instantaneous spread of news, politics, marketing and ideas. Magically, it seemed, in pictures and a few words the medium could feed its eager audience an effortless shorthand of awareness and understanding of events from virtually anywhere in the world at virtually any time. The process was not yet refined, but it was clearly ages beyond the time-locked traditions of the daily newspapers just down the block and the men who worked at them who ate and drank their lunch at The Palm.

The new medium gave people more than just news. It also showed the people who were in the news. Showed them, as in pictures. A small black and white television set hung over the bar, though it was rarely turned on.

The Palm was not a noisy place. Ordinary conversation and a bit of business talk filled the room but never overpowered it. Attention was fixed among those at each table for it was a place of camaraderie after all. Jack and I spoke eagerly of what this day would bring for at two o’clock, less than an hour away, we would meet with Simon & Schuster’s attorneys to sign our contract. A dream, certainly mine, was about to begin.

“Quiet!”

The room stilled to a puzzled murmur. White aproned waiters froze motionless on the floor. The old man’s dancing pans stopped midway in their shuttle.

The bartender turned up the volume on the TV above his head. A static-crackling image filled the screen. Walter Cronkite. Everyone in the room knew him. Soon everyone in the country would too.

There were two dreams alive that November day when Jack and I sat down for lunch at The Palm. America’s and mine. One died so abruptly it changed the world forevermore.

A few months later, Jack and I were once again at The Palm. On our table sat a brand-new, just published copy of Instant Candidates ’64. On its cover was Jack’s caricature of  Lyndon Johnson. The Palm’s owner, a friend to everyone who ate there, glanced at the book and then gestured across the room to a nearby table. “It’s Cronkite,” he said quietly. “Want to meet him?”

Jack and I autographed our book and Cronkite accepted it graciously.

I still have the hand-made dummy Jack and I made to pitch the original Instant Candidates ’64. It’s in a sealed envelope never opened since our lunch that shattered day at The Palm, Friday, November 22, 1963. On the cover is Jack Sparling’s illustration of JFK.

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