Old Mr. Flood

“...you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

“He had a habit of remarking to bartenders that he didn't see any sense in mixing whiskey with water since the whiskey was already wet.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“I have a great deal of experience in justifying myself to myself.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“All information of a spiritual or personal nature will have to come from our father, who art in heaven, and I think he's in New York right now.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“It is perhaps an ugly comment on the American press, but the function of the interviewer on most newspapers is to entertain, not to shed light. . . . An interviewer soon begins to judge public figures on the basis of their entertainment value, overlooking their true importance. It is not easy to get an interview with Professor Franz Boas, the greatest anthropologist in the world, across a city desk, but a mild interview with Oom the Omnipotent will hit the bottom of page one under a two-column head. . . . It is safe to write accurately only about the nuts and bums. When a public figure does something ridiculous reporters may then write about him accurately.”
― Joseph Mitchell, My Ears Are Bent

“I’m not going to stand for it any longer," said Mr. Flood. "I’m going to put my foot down. All I want in this world is a little peace and quiet, and he gets me all raced up. Here a while back I heard a preacher talking on the radio about the peacefulness of the old, and I thought to myself, ‘You ignorant man!’ I’m ninety-four years old and I have never yet had any peace, to speak of. My mind is just a turmoil of regrets. It’s not what I did that I regret, it’s what I didn’t do. Except for the bottle, I always walked the straight and narrow; a family man, a good provider, never cut up, never did ugly, and I regret it. In the summer of 1902 I came real close to getting in serious trouble with a married woman, but I had a fight with my conscience and my conscience won, and what’s the result? I had two wives, good, Christian women, and I can’t hardly remember what either of them looked like, but I can remember the face on that woman so clear it hurts, and there’s never a day passes I don’t think about her, and there’s never a day passes I don’t curse myself. ‘What kind of a timid, dried-up, weevily fellow were you?’ I say to myself. ‘You should’ve said to hell with what’s right and what’s wrong, the devil take the hindmost. You’d have something to remember, you’d be happier now.’ She’s out in Woodlawn, six feet under, and she’s been there twenty-two years, God rest her, and here I am, just an old, old man with nothing but a belly and a brain and a dollar or two."

"Life is sad," said Mr. Maggiani.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr. Flood

"... a trouble-maker. What race do you belong to, anyhow?’ ‘The human race,’ I said. ‘I come from the womb and I’m bound for the tomb, the same as you, the same as King George the Six, the same as Johnny Squat."
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“I’m immune to the average germ; don’t even catch colds; haven’t had a cold since 1912. Only reason I caught that one, I went on a toot and it was a pouring-down rainy night in the dead of winter and my shoes were cracked and they let the damp in and I lost my balance a time or two and sloshed around in the gutter and somewhere along the line I mislaid my hat and I’d just had a haircut and I stood in a draft in one saloon an hour or more and there was a poor fellow next to me sneezing his head off and when I got home I crawled into a bed that was beside an open window like a fool and passed out with my wet clothes on, shoes and all. Also, I’d spent the night before sitting up on a train and hadn’t slept a wink and my resistance was low. If the good Lord can just see His way clear to protect me from accidents, no stumbling on the stairs, no hell-fired automobiles bearing down on me in the dark, no broken bones, I’ll hit a hundred and fifteen easy.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“The trembly fellow sighed and said, “I’m all out of whack. I’m going uptown and see my doctor.” Mr. Flood snorted again. “Oh, shut up,” he said. “Damn your doctor! I tell you what you do. You get right out of here and go over to Libby’s oyster house and tell the man you want to eat some of his big oysters. Don’t sit down. Stand up at that fine marble bar they got over there, where you can watch the man knife them open. And tell him you intend to drink the oyster liquor; he’ll knife them on the cup shell, so the liquor won’t spill. And be sure you get the big ones. Get them so big you’ll have to rear back to swallow, the size that most restaurants use for fries and stews; God forgive them, they don’t know any better. Ask for Robbins Islands, Mattitucks, Cape Cods, or Saddle Rocks. And don’t put any of that red sauce on them, that cocktail sauce, that mess, that gurry. Ask the man for half a lemon, poke it a time or two to free the juice, and squeeze it over the oysters. And the first one he knifes, pick it up and smell it, the way you’d smell a rose, or a shot of brandy. That briny, seaweedy fragrance will clear your head; it’ll make your blood run faster. And don’t just eat six; take your time and eat a dozen, eat two dozen, eat three dozen, eat four dozen. And then leave the man a generous tip and go buy yourself a fifty-cent cigar and put your hat on the side of your head and take a walk down to Bowling Green. Look at the sky! Isn’t it blue? And look at the girls a-tap-tap-tapping past on their pretty little feet! Aren’t they just the finest girls you ever saw, the bounciest, the rumpiest, the laughingest? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for even thinking about spending good money on a damned doctor? And along about here, you better be careful. You’re apt to feel so bucked-up you’ll slap strangers on the back, or kick a window in, or fight a cop, or jump on the tailboard of a truck and steal a ride.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“Life is a goddam mess...but you wouldn't want to miss it!”
― Joseph Mitchell

“We get a lot of goormies in Libby’s,” said Mr. Murchison. “I can spot a goormy right off. Moment he sits down he wants to know do we have any boolybooze.” “Bouillabaisse,” said Mr. Flood. “Yes,” said Mr. Murchison, “and I tell him, ‘Quit showing off! We don’t carry no boolybooze. Never did. There’s a time and a place for everything. If you was to go into a restaurant in France,’ I ask him, ‘would you call for some Daniel Webster fish chowder?’ I love a hearty eater, but I do despise a goormy. All they know is boolybooze and pompano and something that’s out of season, nothing else will do. And when they get through eating they don’t settle their check and go on about their business. No, they sit there and deliver you a lecture on what they et, how good it was, how it was almost as good as a piece of fish they had in the Caffy dee lah Pooty-doo in Paris, France, on January 16, 1928; they remember every meal they ever et, or make out they do. And every goormy I ever saw is an expert on herbs. Herbs, herbs, herbs! If you let one get started on the subject of herbs he’ll talk you deef, dumb, and blind. Way I feel about herbs, on any fish I ever saw, pepper and salt and a spoon of melted butter is herbs aplenty.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“Gould is a night wanderer, and he has put down descriptions of dreadful things he has seen on dark New York streets – descriptions, for example, of the herds of big gray rats that come out in the hours before dawn in some neighborhoods of the lower East Side and Harlem and unconcernedly walk the sidewalks. ‘I sometimes believe that these rats are not rats at all,’ he says, ‘but the damned and aching souls of tenement landlords.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel