PARKING SPACES FOR THE MEEK AND LOWLY

What Won't These Department Stores Think Up Next?

ROBERT AC. BECKLEY

WITH the tremendous increase in department store efficiency (and decrease in maternal efficiency) there is scarcely an emporium of any pretensions nowadays which does not furnish some sort of segregated parking space for the children of shopping mothers. If Mother has a piece of lace insertion to match and does not want Lambert to see the grim side of life so early, she may check him on the roof-garden, or in the nursery, provided by the store, confident that the worst he can do is fall out of the toy swing or eat the sand-pile. It may even be that the boyhood poems and songs of the future will hark back, not to "the old swimmin' hole" or to "the field behind the bam," but to the halcyon days when "us fellers" used to gather at Wax and Spieglebloomer's Emporium and frolic on the electric see-saw while our mothers fingered the "this day only" bargain displays, eighteen floors below. So much—perhaps too much—for the little ones. This was merely an introductory paragraph anyway.

IN this elaborate provision made for helpless members of the shopper's family, the beings who are most helpless and immature in the art of department-store navigation and savoir faire, the adult male, have been entirely overlooked. A child of nine is a finished manabout-town in comparison with a registered voter trailing in the wake of a shopping wife, sister or fiancee. It is therefore a source of great pleasure to Vanity Fair to be able to announce the successful inception of a department-store parking space and check-room for men. It has been successfully tried out in Chicago, and will be brought to New York a little later in the spring.

As field-work in preparing this paper and to demonstrate the growing need for such a service, I recently put on my tramping boots and deliberately went down into the shopping district. I believe in knowing one's subject at first hand, harrowing and nerve wracking as the results may be.

STATIONING myself at the entrance of one of our largest department stores I waited. As those naturalists say—who write in Harper's Magazine on The Fauna and Insect Life on the Upper Reaches of the Zombo—"before long my patience was well rewarded," for a taxicab drove up and a (presumably) married couple alighted. She was, in newspaper parlance, "a well-dressed woman of about twenty-nine." He was equally well dressed— but, of course, in a different mode—and would perhaps not be twenty-nine until July. They were not married. I Sherlock Holmesed that from the fact that she looked the other way while he was paying for the cab. But nevertheless they had reached that stage of intimacy where he was allowed to take The-Ordealby-Shopping, having apparently passed TheTrial-of-Waiting-in-the-Lobby.

I followed them through the store with note book, dictaphone and easel in hand, and recorded such evidence as will prove the parking scheme the greatest boon to mankind since the failure generally to adopt the paper towel. First to the poplin counter. He fairly blithe, due, perhaps, to his curiosity to learn what a poplin really was. Then a ride in the elevator, where he was allowed to be stepped on by large ladies and swished in the nose by their feather hat-decorations. By the time they had emerged at the Ladies-and-Misses-Cloaks-and Suits-Table-Rugs-Portières-Draperies-Crockery-Art-Kitchen Ware-and-Notions Floor his tie was askew and he was only answering questions in monosyllables.

Then on to the dimity counter. At every succeeding display she would stop to look and finger, he starting and stopping aimlessly and jerkily, like the 6:43 for Nyack. Something in the word "dimities" made him remain discreetly at the end of the aisle while she proceeded with her questioning. I could see him grow embarrassed under the scrutiny of the salesgirls, and when a floorwalker came up and asked him if he was being waited on, he fairly snarled, "No, I'm with someone," when it was perfectly obvious that he wasn't.

The dimity purchase was fairly sizeable and was turned over to his keeping. Again in the elevator to the glove counter, with stops and accretions at the toilet goods, hosiery and opera accessories, until he became so blase that he didn't even stop when she did, but just ambled ahead all by himself. Once he ambled too far and got lost, and when she found him he was resting on the bench reserved for bundle-girls and reading over some old bills he had found in his pocket.

AT his first entrance he had appeared to be a fairly athletic young man, but, after trailing up and down the aisles, he was a ghastly sight—a wreck of what had once been a man. He had removed his overcoat and was carrying it with his leaning tower of bundles, but from the way he shifted it from one arm to another I could see that he was thinking of giving it to the first deserving poor boy who might happen along. While she went to the shoe department, to be gone, as she said, for exactly five minutes, he seated himself on a revolving stool by the blankets and puffs, and piled his bundles on top of his overcoat.

For the first fifteen minutes he watched the passers-by with a languid, weary interest. Then he got out his old bills again and thumbed them over sadly. He read the passenger's contract on the ba«k of his commutation ticket and the list of cities of over 5,000 population on the fly-leaf of his note-book. He even took out his bunch of keys and told them off, like a rosary, guessing what each key was for. Then a strange light came into his eyes and a flush began to steal up around that part of his neck where the barber always tries to shave you unless you catch him in time. He tore a slip of paper from his book and wrote on it these hurried words: "Helen: I can stand it no longer. Please forgive me. I know that it is all for the best, for we could never have been happy. Try to forget me, and give my gray gaiters to Meadows. It will be useless for you to try to find me, for I shall be floating out to sea. Good-by, my dear girl. Your loving Stanley." This note he pinned to a little case of sewing-silk at the end of the counter—and the world saw him no more. Neither did I stay to witness the tearful return of the maiden, for I had a dinner engagement with a dramatic artiste, at 7 :30.

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THIS rather unpleasant little episode is cited only to show what hundreds of young men were going through in the congested or shopping districts of every large city in the country until the Husband's Temporary Home and Day Nursery was launched. Now, see how changed it all is!

Immediately on alighting from the cab, or dromedary, the male escort is taken directly to the roof of the store, where he has a numbered check assigned to him. A corresponding check is given to the lady. When she is through shopping she hands her check to a megaphone caller who is stationed at the entrance to the Recreation Center and the number is shouted in its proper turn. Sometimes it is also flashed on a board in case the man is at the farther end of the Gents' Parking Space. Every man, on leaving the playground, is presented with an orange. Inside the Depository there is at all times a scene of brilliant and festive animation. On the left, as they enter, ladies may leave their men to spend their time assembling automobile parts, a pile of which are furnished to each newcomer, with perhaps a carburetor or so missing, just to add zest to the game. Then there is a table with bound volumes of "The Iron Age" and "The Gent's Furnisher," dating back to 1897. These books may be used only by the men whose lady-friends have charge accounts at the store. The charge coin must, of course, be displayed as an earnest of good faith.

A word of caution should be given here with regard to furnishing the men with charge coins, as anything on the roof may be purchased without the expenditure of a nickel if the charge coin is shown. Lately one or two ladies have been forced to take their coins away from their husbands because of the enormous bills that came in at the end of the month with such items as "Three Rubbers at 1/2c" and Five rounds of H&H—and professional services."

HE auction bridge pavilion is in the center of the parking place, and is equipped with refreshment bubblers for those who are playing the dummy. If all the bridge tables are taken, the applicant can spend his time at the artificial-ice rink. Uniformed maids are in attendance here to skate with refractory charges, but there is a time limit on the amount of such exercise, as, without some sort of restriction, it has been found hard to get the men to answer to their callnumbers when their wives have finished ravishing the white goods.

AT the left-center, under police supervision, is a segregated district for elementary Russian ballet dancing. This is only for mild weather. In other booths _ there are moving-pictures showing what the welldressed man will not wear, - and a few interesting reels of last winter's Palm Beach society dramas, run backward to vary the monotony.

It will be seen that there is no limit to what might be done to make this sort of recreation center attractive. Of course it couldn't be made too attractive or the ladies would have no male escorts for the rest of the day unless they eloped—through a side door—with the floorwalkers.

Under the safe and sane method embodied in the system as here outlined, there is no reason why shopping should not become one of the most popularly favored of indoor sports for men—especially since such queer persons have been getting into one's clubs of late.