tales of the hotel st crispian: chapter 43

"Mortimer's theory"

by Horace P. Sternwall

edited by Dan Leo*

illustrated by rhoda penmarq

*Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History; Assistant Volleyball Coach, Olney Community College; editor of Say Hi to All the Gang: Collected Letters of Horace P. Sternwall, Vol.4 (1946-1950); Olney Community College Press, “The Sternwall Papers”.

Mortimer knew that people looked down on him.

He knew people looked down on him because he was an elevator operator.

A forty-two-year-old elevator operator.

A forty-two-year-old elevator operator who lived with his mother in a third-floor walk-up apartment down at Bleecker and the Bowery.

But Mortimer didn’t care what people thought about him. He didn’t care because he loved his job and he loved his life.

What more could a guy ask for?

Who needed a wife, or a girl friend? Mortimer had his mom to do his laundry and darn his socks for him. Not that Mortimer had anything against dames, mind you. Wasn’t his own mother a dame? And Mortimer’s mother was a saint, bringing up her seven children all alone after Mortimer’s poor overworked dad dropped dead in the rendering vat at the hot dog factory...

(Click here to read the entire thrilling episode!)