|
E-mail this page to your
friends
|
Black Tie
International:
The Piņata Party
|
|
The Piņata Party
By:
Alan J. Rude |
|
Review by Ward
Morehouse III |
As someone who has lived with a tribe of Indians on
a remote tributary of the Amazon River I was especially
looking forward
to reading Alan J. Rude's book "The Piņata Party." I had
retuned from South America with several headdresses and
other "trinkets" as well as having filed stories on the
adventure for The
Christian Science Monitor. |
But I was unprepared
for the laugh riot I encountered in many
of the pages of "The Piņata Party," about Rude's own
adventures, or more accurately, misadventures, not in the
Amazon, but New York's Greenwich Village. They reminded me
of the sheer joy I felt reading James Thurber's
classic short story "The Night The Bed Fell." And from the
moment Rude ventures into his Greenwich |
Village store one night one bed after another seems to fall
at least figuratively on
Rude and his Ivy League-educated partners. |
On the way up
darkened stairs to their $100,000 acquisition (which
included
a wear-house as well as a store) they encounter a group
of shrunken heads from the Shuar tribe in Ecuador; their
entire order of six thousand red and black masks for
the prestigious Elizabeth Arden cosmetic firm was
useless since the
individual masks were supposed to be both red and black
- not
3,000 red and 3,000 black.
|
|
When violent screams
are heard from downstairs of The Piņata Party, Rude becomes
very worried and is about to call the police. But he relates
his landlady told him, "I am in no difficulty as you see. I
am conducting a 'Primal Scream Therapy' session. I do this
often as a therapeutic, psychological procedure."
|
|
Then there's a visit from the Peruvian secret police
who want
to horn in on Piņata's operations which by 1968 are
becoming
quite successful with additional storefronts in
Manhattan, Long Island,
Connecticut and New Jersey.
|
|
It should be noted that with the serious accounting
skills
of Rude and his partners the late 1960's was a time when
colorful "hippie"
fashions were all the rage which the youthful
colleagues
took full economic advantage of.
|
|
If "The Piņata Party" was merely a host of
highly-amusing anecdotes
it would stand securely on its humorous own. But it's
also a highly
readable capsule history of a time and place, Greenwich
Village
in the 1960s when talented writers and painters were
achieving
their first glimpses of lasting success.
|
|
It was also a time when highly promising politicians
such as New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay we're
bringing a new energy and idealism to the city as
short-lived
as it turned out to be.
|
|
Ward Morehouse III's
latest book is "The Bear Who Lived at The Plaza." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
| |