Remembering the Automat.

When the not-so-young man behind the counter of the Bridgehampton nursery informed me that a tiny bottle of liquid plant food would cost $11.50, and I said “I could have eaten at the Automat for a month on $11.50,” and then he said “What’s the Automat?” I knew I was old!

Yes, if you are under forty you too may not know what the Automat was but it was where everybody, rich or poor, ate because the food was so predictably tasty, fresh and cheap.

When you walked in you were met by a matron behind a brownish Italian marble counter whose rubber tipped fingers threw out 20 nickels for your dollar bill with astonishing speed and accuracy.

The word “Automat” came from the wall of small chrome windows that ringed the restaurant, behind which there could be a sandwich, a piece of pie, or a cod fish cake with a little jar of tomato sauce. You inserted the required number of nickels and turned the knob to have the door flip open with a click. (The codfish cake was two nickels, coconut custard pie three, and delicious always fresh coffee just one.)

There was also a long steam table where you could assemble a hot lunch with vegetables perfectly cooked to secretly held formulas. I can remember the tastes even now.

One of my favorites was mashed and pureed sweet potatoes with a visible swirl of brown sugar— delicious but on occasion, when sweet potatoes went out of season, the price would double from five cents to ten, and I would of course hold off till it returned to a nickel.

To write this piece I Googled the Automat’s history and learned, not surprisingly, that it had its origin in a Berlin automated cafeteria that was recreated in Philadelphia in 1902 by Joseph Hart and German-born Frank Hardart. It was always known as the Horn and Hardart Automat (indeed we sometimes would say, “Meet you at Horn and Hardart’s.”)

The Automats were everywhere, with a big one in Times Square which of course became a mecca for tourists, but my favorite was the one on 57^th Street, not too far from Carnegie Hall. I would take Audrey there for Sunday lunch for under a dollar (that is for both of us,) then to Carnegie Hall where we could sit in the front row with a one-dollar student ticket, and then I would take her home to Queens on the subway (five cents) for a date that cost less than three dollars.

People with no job or no family, or both, would come in and sit at a table to read the paper, sometimes timidly striking up a conversation with the more purposeful transients. Some tables would become theirs unofficially, and they got to know one another while listening to each other’s complaints, impatient to air their own.

If you were really poor you could make a free glass of lemonade by taking out the cut lemons from the waiting ice tea glasses and squeezing them into one glass with free sugar and water.

So perhaps now you know why I am struck with disbelief when I discover on my restaurant check that I have just paid $16 for a glass of wine, or that 4 ounces of plant food is $11.50.