ZOOMING AROUND CENTRAL PARK
Having read about attorney
Sidney Freidberg's peregrinations on a motor scooter in The Wall Street Journal
a year ago, and having heard more recently from other sources that the
attorney’s wife, Mrs. Caryl Nicolson Freidberg, was something more than a
pillion passenger herself, we scooted over to Eighty-eight Central Park West
one evening to investigate. The night was warm and we slipped the Bella into
half a parking space between a Sunbeam Talbot and a Ford Ranchwagon. The
doorman smiled and nodded toward the elevator. Returning the smile, we followed
the nod across the lobby and into the lift. “Freidberg apartment, please,” we
told the operator. “Who?” he asked. We repeated the name, but it didn’t ring a
bell, because he went off across the lobby to confer with the doorman. They
whispered and consulted a register and then the operator came back, took the
controls and declared a trifle abruptly, “Second floor.” Almost as abruptly the
door slipped back and we stepped into the vestibule of the Freidberg apartment.
Two Freidbergs answered the bell: Sidney, youngish and horn rimmed, dapper in a
maroon smoking jacket, and Mousie, a shaggy black and white collie with a long
dark muzzle. Incredibly long, we thought. Mousie sized us up with a battery of
sniffs and grunted a temporary visa. He drum-majored us into a large, academic
looking livingroom and nuzzled us into a soft chair under rows of recessed
bookshelves, while Mr. Freidberg went off to fix a gin and tonic. Mousie hunched
down, head between paws, baleful eyes on the caller, and said nothing. We sat
still, too, until Mousie shifted his sights and started thump-thumping the
floor with his tail. We turned to see a sunkissed blond haired lady in a blue
print dress swish into the room. “Hello, I’m Caryl Freidberg.” she said,
radiating our way. Mr. Freidberg approached from another direction, drinks in
hand, and introduced us. “Please sit down,” she smiled, sitting down herself on
a sofa at the foot of the bookshelves. “Sidney, did you get him a drink? Oh, I
see.” It probably wasn’t The Wall Street Journal, but somewhere we heard that
she was or had been an actress. We inquired. “Well, that’s flattering,” she
said. “No, I’ve come through the backstage door at City Center more times than
I want to count, but I’m no actress. Here, why don’t you sit over here, then we
won’t have to talk long distance.” We moved to a chair near the end of the sofa
where Mrs. Freidberg was arranged, cigarette holder in hand, and Mr. Freidberg
eased into the chair we had just vacated and lighted a cigar. Mousie trotted
over to the window to murmur a throaty protest at a scooter that growled by
below. “No, I act sometimes, but I’m no actress,” said Mrs. Freidberg. “Just a
wife and a mother. I drive a motor scooter, though. But is that so unusual ?
Yes, I guess it is,” she reflected, curling one leg under her and blowing a
light blue cloud toward the ceiling. “But it shouldn’t be, you know. I’d like
to see many more women on scooters. Men shouldn’t have a monopoly on them, and
I see no reason why women should always have to take a back seat, do you?” Mr.
Freidberg shifted his cigar. “Tell about parking your scooter at City Center,
dear,” he said, flicking an ash into a tray next to the chair. “I think he’d
enjoy that.” We allowed we had thought the scooter was Mr. Freidberg’s, since
his name has been linked with it so frequently in the press. “No,” Mr.
Freidberg said, “it’s Caryl’s scooter. I just use it on Saturdays.” “Yes,” said
Mrs. Freidberg, “it’s registered in my name and I bought it without Sidney
knowing about it. Sidney wouldn’t let me buy one in Europe. We could have
gotten it in free. He didn’t care for them at all, did you dear? When I was in
Florence in 1955, I met a man who had a Vespa. We whizzed all around Florence
on that Vespa and I loved it. He wanted to take me to Venice on it, but Sidney
put his foot down. He just thought that was carrying things too far. But Sidney
wore starched collars in those days.” We tugged at our tie sympathetically.
“Well by then I had scooters on the brain. When we got back here to New York I
used to go zooming around Central Park on Burris Jenkins’ scooter. That’s
Burris Jenkins, Jr. You’ve heard of his father. He’s the famous cartoonist,
Burris Jenkins. I never had the guts to drive his machine, though. Then I got
in touch with Mr. Kahn at Butler & Smith over on Eighty-third Street and
told him to let me know if he got in a good used scooter.” Mousie returned from
his rounds of the seven other rooms, plunked down in front of his mistress and
busied himself with the walking side of his front right paw. “One morning Mr.
Kahn called and said he had an NSU Lambretta with just a few hundred miles on
it. I told him I’d be right over. I got there and I didn’t know what to do with
the thing. Luckily, a bus starter happened to be there who owned a scooter. He
drove me to where he worked, at Fifty-ninth and Sixth, and then left me on my
own. So off I went, chugging and halting. Burris Jenkins, Jr. showed me more
about it later on.” We asked Mrs. Freidberg whether she had any near mishaps in
those first few halting days. A light flicked across her gray-green eyes. “No,”
she said quickly. “I’ve never had a near mishap or a near anything. I do all
terrible things, too, and people are so polite about it. If I have to make a
left turn across a line of traffic, a taxi driver — mind you, a taxi driver,
will stop and motion me ahead. Policemen stop traffic just to let me go by.
They’re probably terrified at such a phenomenon. One of the first days I was
out on the scooter, three men stopped dead in their tracks and broke into
applause. I think that was about the nicest tribute I’ve ever received. It was
so fantastic, I guess.” Mr. Freidberg’s cigar burned bright red. “We must have
been the first family in New York to own a scooter,” he said crisply. “We got
it, let’s see, in 1955. Yes, May 1955.” Mousie thump-thumped the carpet as a
young man wearing a knitted gray sweater and a solemn expression ambled into
the room. We arose, knocking over our highball, and were introduced to Jamie,
the Freidberg’s oldest son. Spilled drink tended to, Jamie lowered himself onto
a footstool, Mr. Freidberg lowered his cigar, Mousie lowered his muzzle, and
Mrs. Freidberg picked up the narrative. “During the first year I used to drive
the scooter to City Center every day. I was director of the Friends of City
Center. I left the job about a year ago. Now I drive the children to school. We
have four. Jamie here is sixteen and he goes to the High School of Music and
Art. Next is Susan, who’s fourteen and goes to Nightingale-Bamford, that’s a
private school for girls at Ninety-second and Fifth. Davie is seven and he goes
to Collegiate School over on West Seventy-seventh. Emily’s two. She rides the
scooter, standing between my knees. I drive the children to the dentist and I
use the scooter to go marketing. Sidney uses it Saturdays.” Could Mrs.
Freidherg cope with a fouled spark plug as well as she balanced her pillion passengers,
we wondered? The question was advanced. “I have a very mechanical mind,” Mrs.
Freidherg said with a flourish of her cigarette holder. “I can fix anything. I
mean I fix my own washing machine and dryer. I used to fix my own baby buggy.
Is that hard?” We admitted it was more than we would attempt, even with an
unabridged instruction manual to guide us and a full set of spanner wrenches to
do our bidding. We harked back to Mrs. Freidberg’s work at City Center. “Well I
can tell you about that,” Mr. Freidherg grinned owlishly. “She used to park it
off the street, in the backstage alleyway. One day a cop gave her a ticket. He
said you can’t cross the curb with a motor vehicle unless the curb is cut. So
then Caryl started parking it in the window of an English Ford showroom on the
Fifty-sixth Street side near the stage entrance. That drew inquiries from
passersby. People actually came in and tried to buy the scooter instead of an
English Ford!” Mrs. Freidberg picked up the story. “The English Ford place was
very cooperative, but they were having their own troubles trying to sell the
English objects. No garage would take me. They said they had no room. I was so
angry! You can park it behind a pole or anything, you know.” Mr. Freidberg
concurred. “At night if we go out visiting, we almost always take the scooter.
We use it much more often than the car, just because there is such precious
little parking space in the city. Maybe he’d like to hear how you spend a
typical day with the scooter, dear.” “Oh? Well let’s see,” said Mrs. Freidherg.
“Take Wednesday, for example. Let’s see, I picked up the scooter. We keep it in
a one-car garage in back of the building, alongside a Jaguar. That’s quite a
contrast, isn’t it? I went across the street. From there at noon I went to
Fifty-eighth and Lex to pick up a pair of shoes. Then I met a friend for lunch
at the Russian Tea Room on Fifty-seventh Street between Sixth and Seventh. I
drove straight down the white line between those awful trucks. Going down the
white line is a little terrifying on Fifty-seventh Street. I parked right by a
sign that said ‘Ambulance Entrance Only’ and when I came out I had no ticket!
Then after lunch I zipped up to Fifty-sixth and Madison to Amie’s and then to a
French dressmaker at Sixty-fourth and Madison. Three times between Fifty-fourth
Street and Fifty-Sixth I passed people we knew. So then I bought some clothes
and I came on home about three.” Speaking of clothes, we inquired what
influence, if any, scooter riding had on Mrs. Freidberg’s wardrobe. “I’ve bad
to alter my wardrobe to fit the scooter,” she declared. “I’m limited to dresses
with full skirts, otherwise I can’t drive. I have two or three pressed pleat
skirts. ” And what happens if it starts raining? “If I’m caught in the rain, I
just drive home in the rain, that’s all. I creep along if it’s raining. I don’t
mind getting wet. Of course I never have too far to go because I never go below
Fifty-seventh Street. I’ve driven it to Greenwich Village a few times, though.
I snake in between traffic lines where it’s wide enough to get a scooter
through. I do a lot of weaving. I almost went to LaGuardia Airport on it once,
and then at the last minute I lost my nerve.” Mousie started to rise and
spiralled back to the floor, nose half buried under left leg. “We don’t have a
nurse during the summer, so we don’t take the scooter on long trips. That
reminds me, we had it shipped ahead with our things when we moved into our
summer home at Amagansett. That’s near Montauk. You won’t believe this, but we were
moved by the Home Sweet Home Moving Company. When we got there we found the
scooter in the middle of the living room.” The visitor raised the matter of
mileage. “Let’s see, we have exactly, well, 2.118 miles on it now.” Jamie spoke
up quickly. “We have 2,300 miles on it, mother.” Mr. Freidherg corroborated
this testimony. “Yes, about that. I looked today and I thought that’s what it
said.” Our thoughts turned to accessories before the fact. We asked whether the
Freidherg scooter was equipped with a windshield. “I am an anti-windshield
person,” Mrs. Freidherg said emphatically. “I prosper in ozone and cow pastures
and things like that.” “The physical sensation is a lot like skiing,” Mr.
Freidherg observed. “I adore the challenge of it,” said Mrs. Freidherg. Mousie
uncurled, sat up and scratched an ear, stood up and shook himself. He trotted
from person to person, and when he reached us, he nuzzled our knee. It was
getting late and we had to travel far below Fifty-seventh Street. All the way
to Greenwich Village, in fact.
FRADLEY
GARNER
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