In the late 1960s, I was an ad man on Madison Avenue and commuting to Stamford, Connecticut. My hours were often quite late and my need for a drink (think drinks) quite strong. One night, returning home on a New Haven Railroad train leaving Grand Central Station at 11:05 PM, I found an improvised Bar Car – comprised of a seat-less half-car with a bartender serving paper cup vodkas and whiskies on the rocks from wooden crates. There were also four wooden crates to sit upon. I occupied one and a very robust young lady, flushed from a company party, sat on another, and two, also pre-imbibed, gentlemen on the two others. By the time we left the tunnel, we were all fast friends and enjoying each others company in the most raucous manner.
I was not anxious to keep up with their pace of drinking over the short trip so when we arrived at Rye station and the drunken young lady and one of the equally high young men said they were getting off because her car was parked here and they would drive to her home in New Canaan, I jumped up and got off with them. I said, “Look guys, I’ve only had a couple, let me drive, to the North Stanford station where my car is parked and from there you will only have a few miles to drive home”. To my surprise, they agreed immediately and, when we arrived at her two-door car, they both immediately climbed into the rear seat as she handed me the keys.
I thought, that was easy, and I drove from the station to get on the Merritt Parkway. But, even before I turned unto the parkway, one of the young lady’s shoes, fell on the seat beside me, then another. By the time I pulled unto the Merritt, his shoes had also fallen there and clothes were strewn on the back of the seat.
I looked in the rear view mirror, and caught a glimpse of her robust buttocks rising and falling at a rapid pace, and, they were making all the appropriate grunts and groans and “ohs” and “yes-yeses” and “that’s its”! ‘Oh, Jack’, I said to myself, ‘they are making out and you are on a very public highway’. Then, I realized the depth of my predicament. If a state police man patrolling the highway and, noticing in passing the steamy rear windows, should choose to stop me and ask me if I owned the car, I would have to say, “No”. If he asked, “Who are the people making out in the rear seat” , I would have to answer, “I don’t know their names”. Then, I saw the headline in the New York Times, saying “Madison Avenue executive says he doesn’t know couple copulating in back of a car that he is driving but claims he doesn’t own.” I guess that would be a good story for Mad Men in 2010. But in 1960s, it would have been rather unprecedented. Fortunately, we were not stopped and when, finally, we drove up to the Springdale Station, near my Stamford home and where my car was parked, I felt them struggling to get back into some of their clothes. When I got out of her car next to my own, she said, “Thanks, what’s your name?” I answered, “Jack”. And, she wrapped up the evening by saying,
“Well, you’re married, Jack, and I’m not. And, I’m hot as a pistol.”
I didn’t argue.
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