 From Hollywood the CBS radio workshop. That's clerk Journal American 411 right away Good afternoon Arthur. Oh Hello, mr. Shelby any messages for me not since I came on sir. May I have my key, please? I'm sorry, mr. Shelby, but the manager says not to give you your key until your bills paid. Oh It's a hundred and thirteen bucks in some odd sense. I know you want I should call him so you can talk to him about it No, never mind Sorry, mr. Shelby. It's not your fault Arthur. I'll stop back in a couple of days to see if there's any mail. Yes, sir $14 and 60 65 66 cents Well, I can eat for a week or so and Plenty of people sleep in the subway CBS radio presents the CBS radio workshop dedicated to man's imagination the theater of the mind Tonight subways are for sleeping based upon the Harper's magazine article by Edmund G. Love a true story of one man's Strange adjustment to mid-century materialism in the largest city in the world Have you ever gotten fed up with rents and taxes and bill in the crater of telephones? With all the demands large and small that our complicated civilization makes opponents Henry Shelby finally did When they locked him out of his hotel room, he stayed out for the past three years He has by choice been homeless and without a steady job Yet Henry Shelby is no bum He is as well-dressed and as smoothly shaven as the next man you'll meet. He's not stupid He holds a master's degree in economics and as a former school teacher He has never visited a soup kitchen or stood in a bread line or asked for a night's lodging at a Bowery mission Still he has learned for himself how to maintain his sanity and peace of mind in a confused and confusing society Which takes from a man more than it gives Henry Shelby has reversed the process and this is how he does it I'm getting along all right. I'm perfectly happy I'm just waiting to see how things come out in Meantime I see to it that I always have at least 15 cents. So I'm sure of a place to sleep and The truest statement I ever heard is that no one will ever starve to death in the United States 86 and a bean soup All out of Yankee bean mac cream of tomatoes. Okay tomato a bowl Well as I live and hope to Shelby. Hello Ernie So you've got the counterman wanted sign on the window. Yeah, guy was here two weeks today never shows Want to go to work right now sure well go on back and grab a hat and jacket I ain't even check cash from breakfast yet. Okay, fine I want a cup of coffee or something first go right ahead. No, I'm fine. Here's your soup Mac crackers or bread crackers Answer the regular counterman me. I'm supposed to manage a joint. You give any bum comes along a job Shelby ain't no bum Mac. He's a college graduate Michigan or someplace like that used to be a school teacher, too So well, he shows up every three four months works a couple of days for five bucks a day in his meals Then he's gone when he tells me ain't coming back. So that makes him he ain't a bum doesn't my book He can do anything around the joint do it plenty good, too. How's the soup? All right Anything else? I don't know yet. This jacket isn't exactly the best fit in the world You look great Shelby. I'll bet now. Here's your checks and a punch Everything's the same as last time. He was here. It's not quite corned beef and beans are up a nickel. Hey, they are at that. I forgot Well, she's all yours. I'll check the register Anything else for you sir pie coffee. I might have some pie at that Apple right with cheese. I guess right empty the mouse trap on this pie. Hey, you look Shelby. I was thinking I Got no night chef for the moment either Why don't you stick around for a couple of weeks and help me out? Well eight-hour shift five days 55 bucks and all the food you can steal here. You are sir Well, I'll think about it Ernie. I actually didn't have to think about it when I went in I knew I'd only stay for a few days. I have five or six places like that. They're my social security I use them when my cash is way down and my suit needs dry cleaning and when I'm ready for a good long sleep Lying down so Henry Shelby works just long enough to get a little money ahead then he picks up his clean laundry and checks in at a respectable but inexpensive hotel Here's the 450 in advance I'm afraid I don't have any luggage and will you send the ballot up to my room in a few minutes, please? Once his suit is on its way to the cleaners Shelby spends the next 24 hours in bed or under the shower He has taken as many as 15 showers on one of these occasions and slept for as long as 22 hours It's an extravagance, of course Costs me seven or eight dollars and that's as much as I usually spend in a whole week But I certainly do feel fine when I check out And thus refreshed Henry Shelby sets out again to roam the streets of New York First stop to leave these laundry somewhere in the Grand Central area He owns two of everything except for his one suit and he'll pick up this bundle in a few days Babe and change in a pool the Grand Central terminal and drop the soil clothing off at another laundry in the vicinity I carry a safety razor in my pocket and I shave at least every 36 hours It cost 25 cents for a boot But I can freshen up generally at the same time the bums who look like bums are mainly the ones the cops bother Naturally, I don't consider myself a bum so I make it a point not to look or feel like one 24 hours can be a long time Particularly when all you have to look forward to is 24 more of the same But Henry Shelby fills them with endless variations of the same pattern and he walks between whatever geographical points are involved Breakfast time may find him at a juice bar on 3rd Avenue Large tomato juice, please Come on there friend fill it up. Your sign says 12 full ounces for a dime coffee at the automatic on 6th Another cup later in the gloomy fluorescent glare of a cafeteria in the garment district. I Load in all the cream and sugar the muggle hold their calories free calories Lunch in the Gramercy Park neighborhood today Yesterday it may have been at Broadway and 116, but at the same kind of a white tile stand and very likely the same lunch a Frank fritter, I guess and a large glass of milk two or three more cups of calories during the afternoon and finally the one substantial meal of the day The Vienna love dinner looks all right Vienna love coming up not that slice the next one with the hard-boiled egg in it Yes, that one fried a boiled potatoes corner stewed tomatoes and no potatoes plenty of starch in the bread How about a good helping of cream spinach instead Mac if you got all our car? Why don't you go to the wall door for a 21? Well, I'll take you to either one of them someday is my guest. Yeah, I'll hold my breath. Okay spinach Corner stewed tomatoes stewed tomatoes What's that you're putting on gelatin salad comes with it. No, thanks. Let's trade for a dab of those cooked carrots Okay, now look they're probably cheaper than the salad. You're saving money for the management. That's what I'm interested in okay But don't ask me for no Charlotte rules There you are Mac. Very good. Very well balanced dinner. Yeah, not bad for 42 cents not bad at all I may continue to give you my patronage when I'm in the neighborhood Thus the inner man is stoked though perhaps not aesthetically satisfied And always a walk between each refueling stop the aesthetic hunger is assuaged along the way There is the ever-changing kaleidoscope of Manhattan store windows displaying their shiny wonders their sturdy common places Their exotic luxuries their mundane necessities There is a record of mankind's daily activities the world over in a newspaper plucked from a trash basket And there are benches and parks and public buildings where Henry Shelby may rest while he reads There are pillared halls where paintings and sculpture may be viewed Henry Shelby is a regular visitor to New York's many art galleries, but his paper is the Metropolitan Museum of Art Now if you'll follow me, we will view the museum's unrival collection of the works of Edward Degas Edgar Degas, Edgar Hilaire Jermaine Degas Oh, I'm sorry madam. Don't apologize young man. That's very interesting. Degas worked chiefly in oil Although his renderings and pastel are achieved something. He wasn't a bad sculptor either The oil to the immediate right and above is at the milliner and of the right of that and below is Dancers practicing at the bar only the first one is a pastel not an oil. This guy doesn't know what I'd imagine You don't mind do you mister no not at all they sort of hurry you through on the guided tours Now what about the one that's a pastel instead of an oil well Degas pastels Particularly his later ones do have a deep rich almost oil like texture He applied the color in successive layers fixing each tone or shade separately and Using open lines to allow each undercoat to show through Oh, I don't quite understand, but I see what you mean. Are you an artist? No, although I'm planning to do some painting Sometime my daughter's very artistic back in Chilacofi What's this one that lady sitting with a big bouquet? That's an oil. It's called woman with chrysanthemums If you aren't an artist, how do you know all these things? Oh, I spent a lot of time here and I read a great deal Goodness your regular Billy Pearson, I beg your pardon, you know the jockey on television. Oh, yes I've read about him didn't he win 64,000 dollars and then go on and tie with a fellow named price for another 64 or something Yeah, that's the one. Did you ever watch those program? No, I can't say that I do. I'm afraid I don't have a television set Yes, there's plenty of free culture and free entertainment to be found in New York City Even without a television set or a radio in your home even without a home One of the most spectacular free entertainments in Manhattan is presented by the fire department Henry Shelby always follows a fire engine. He generally gets to the fire too for the rabies in which each engine company Operates is small enough to permit even a pedestrian to arrive shortly after the equipment All this one is nothing. It's just a chemical job. They might as well have left the ladder truck back at the station Now you should have been at Amsterdam on a hundred and thirty third the other day I happen to be in the neighborhood There are the inevitable New York traffic I Shelby has a nose Belize and for straight fights and he never leaves the scene until the last policeman has closed his notebook The parks and public squares are places where a man with a message may speak at fourth within certain limits of subject matter Continue to eat the flesh of the animal what mother nature intended us to nourish ourselves with grows in the ground Henry Shelby stops to listen to every street corner or a tour he runs across Weighing gravely the ideas he hears I can scarcely agree But he does have a wonderfully resonant voice There are the new buildings that constantly alter New York skyline Our well-kept vagrant knows every major construction project in town and shows up at the exact moment Some critical problem is to be solved No, no a little more to the right Say does it look to you as if they're placing that girder properly? It doesn't right now But they'll raise it another three feet and then force it to the right with a cross member. Oh, yes Yes, I see actually it's a different technique than we're accustomed to watching in the usual steel skeleton construction Seems to me there'd be too much strain on the cross no I understand the ally is both light enough and strong enough so that in effect They're employing a variant of the ancient Egyptian post and little methods. Hey, they're awesome. Well, aren't they you're an engineer? I take it no matter of fact my master's was in economics. Is that so I'm liberal arts myself. Yeah, oh 28 Instruction sort of hobby of mine Watching you did it right mine too. It's so much so that I've done quite a bit of reading on it There you see what they're doing now. That's how they equalize the stresses. So they do Hey, you're office in the neighborhood. No, it isn't I just happen to be passing this way No, mine is just across the street 230 part. I'm Hj Chisholm regal paper company. How do you do sir? I'm Henry Shelby. Hello you with the firm or your business for yourself neither I don't have a connection right now. Is that a fact? Well, if you're looking why don't you stop by the office whenever it suits you? He might very well have something for a chap like you. That's mighty nice of you, Mr. Chisholm I'm not really looking at present, but I'll certainly remember you when I am I wish you would say Wouldn't it save time and an extra piece of heavy equipment to haul those I beams up on the construction elevator and then place them With one of those small hoists. It seems that it would at that I think you have something there, Mr. Chisholm and I'm going to look into it the next time I'm at the library the public library one of Henry Shelby's favorite haunts a Fellow vagrant once advised him that the library was a good place to keep warm on a cold day But he found it to be much more than that on his first visit to the massive old building at 42nd and 5th Avenue He asked for a copy of the New York Times for November 10th 1936 and was referred politely to the microfilm room. Here you are, sir Are you familiar with the operation of the viewing machine and not particularly? I'll be happy to show you the entire addition is on this roll of film You place it in the machine Attach the end and thread it this way Close the machine and turn the handle forward. Yes, it's fine You sit right down here use the headrest and view the film through the aperture. Yes. I see very clear and Very comfortable. Yes, isn't it? It rather makes research a pleasure. Doesn't it? I should say so What if I fall asleep? Well, I'm afraid no one would awaken you if you did There seem to be so few of you scholars taking advantage of our microfilm facilities Just come to the desk if you wish additional roles Say How long has this been going on? Henry Shelby was asleep in 15 minutes and awoke undisturbed five hours later For some time the microfilm room was at the top of his list as a place of shelter Then suddenly he realized it was a far more valuable place for pure entertainment He has read all the issues of the times available on film All his favorite comic strips from the date of their inception All the columns Damon Runyon ever wrote and has even developed a system for playing the horses One time he worked long enough to accumulate 25 dollars and with it visited aqueduct racetrack Now entering the winner's circle is time. You told me ridden by jockey feral zoo health The time for the mile in a 16th was 143 and 2 and the result of the eighth race is now open 1120 to win. Let's see that makes me 87 dollars and 40 cents ahead for the day after expenses Well, how long has this been going on? Very prudently Henry Shelby bought himself a new suit of clothes leaving his original 25 dollars untouched a few days later He visited bellmont park and lost the entire sun I still play the races in the microfilm room During the winter I study the preceding summers entries make my selections and check them against the results in the following day's paper I never look at the results in advance Mike just as well be honest about it. Yes, new york offers many diversions There is the waterfront the ferry boats the slips where the huge liners done I come down here a couple of times a week I always try to be around when the merry or the elizabeth are coming in Now what's that we hawk and ferry doing a quarter mile off her course? Just sightseeing a little bit or her captain ought to have his confounded papers picked up Shelby enjoys the ferry boats all of them, but his favorite is the statin island ferry There's nothing quite like it in the world Outward bound from the battery. There's the thrill of passing the statue of liberty And coming back Ms. Liberty welcomes you home as the incredible skyline of lower Manhattan hang shimmering in the haze Like the pleasure dome of kubla con Where else can a poor man get such an ocean voyage for a dime? Of course 10 cents for one round trip does put the satin island ferry in the luxury class But during the rush hours shelby has discovered that he can board the jersey central ferries across the hudson And make three or four trips for the same dime without being noticed This kills time and also furnishes amusement for shelby quietly enjoys criticizing the pilots Who do not bring their vessels squarely into the slips? Among other things Henry shelby has become an expert on the management and conduct of new york harbor And then there are the parades New york city is the only place where there is a parade of some sort every day That's one of the reasons henry shelby is happier here than he would be in any other city in the world I just love band music My last armistice day. I saw five different parades and even marched in one I carried the front end of the bass drum and got three dollars for doing it So the patternless pattern Of henry shelby's days and the days are perhaps thousands like him Man who choose to work only enough to maintain a bare thread of personal existence In a society that clamors for workers and rewards them with possessions and security And the same comfortable resting place each nightfall Where does henry shelby sleep a clean hotel bed is a once a month extravagance to him Perhaps he trudges to the pennsylvania station and boards an eighth avenue subway train at about one o'clock in the morning That's why his cash minimum is 15 cents the price of a subway token He settles himself in the almost empty front car and drops off to sleep He awakens before he reaches the end of the line has a smoke Boards another train and sleeps to the other end of the line He has several standard trips mapped out j street to queens back to the brooklyn end of the line Up to the tip of manhattan back to penn station In five hours. He has probably netted four hours sleep He has learned the habits of the transportation police and he tries to keep himself from becoming too familiar a figure That's why I use the subway maybe only every other night or not quite that often In warm weather there are fire escapes some of them covered and central park and prospect park And when it's really hot, there are the beaches. No one ever bothers you there Always plenty of legitimate sleepers trying to beat the heat When it rains and when the new york winter comes there are other carefully cataloged places for shelter and a few hours sleep Grand central penn station the port authority bus terminal hotel lobbies There are rules of conduct for each and henry shelby knows and observes them all On rare occasions. He's questioned, but he always has the answers. Come on there, mr. Come on wake up Oh, well I certainly dosed off didn't I officer? He certainly did you think this is a flop house? Of course not It's very obviously grand central terminal and that's it is and we don't allow bums to nap their bibs in here Bums I ought to resent that officer. Well, is that it all you like seems to me? I've seen you in here before well, that's quite possible I take the two o'clock local for perkypsy almost every night. I missed it tonight. So I'm waiting for the next train Six five I believe it is it is Can you prove you're not a bag or what a vagrant you got any money on you? Why yes, uh, let me see Six seven eight dollars and here's my ticket to perkypsy. Mm-hmm Well, you'd better get going mr. Or you'll miss your train What yes, it's two minutes after six Oh, I have no idea. I nearly oversled that you did. Thank you so much for awakening me. That's it's all that's what i'm here for Yes Well, I must say you're right on the job. You bet I am that's gait night. Mr. The perkypsy local Yes, well, I don't want to miss it this time. No, you don't So for the first time henry shelby had to take the train for perkypsy Under the suspicious glare of the railroad cop But the ticket was never punched for he got off the train at 125th street to begin another day of Manhattan meandering Henry shelby is never without three tickets One to perkypsy one to princeton and the third to elizabeth new jersey His operating equipment for sleeping in the three major terminals Why does this strangely bewildered yet far from hopeless man? Live apart from responsibility and the place he could so easily regain in working society How many weeks or months or years? Will he continue to walk the streets of Manhattan? I don't know how long I'll live this life I don't have much trouble. I've never gotten drunk and laying in the doorway all day I've never been on a police plotter I've never had to beg Things seem so easy and natural just as though they were supposed to be this way I'm not going to look at the future All I know now is that at six o'clock I'm going to be at a little delicatessen up on Broadway where they serve a mighty fine boiled beef dinner for 68 cents And I'd better get going takes me almost an hour to walk it Why don't I take the subway? Why subways are for sleeping The cbs radio workshop is produced in hollywood by william n robson and was tonight directed by mr robson Subways are for sleeping was based on the harper's magazine article by edmund g love and was adapted for the workshop by fran van hardsfeld henry shelby was played by byron kane and the narrator was william canily Also heard in the cast were sarah salby helene burk edwin bruce frank gerstle court falcon burg tony barrett ted bliss and alan reid The original score was composed and conducted by fred steiner Next week from new york the workshop will present only johnny knows A survey of child training from the birds and the bees era of wonderful innocence a century ago To the complex and guilt era of today's psychiatric sophistication A brilliant performance of the rarely played symphony number six in d minor by yon sabelius with nilce eric fugstad conducting the sabelius festival Orchestra is yours for the listening this sunday when world music festivals comes your way on most of these same stations Stay tuned for five minutes of cbs news to be followed over most of these same stations by my son g america listens most to the cbs radio network