TO: ALL CITY MANAGERS
FROM: ROSS RO,
NEW YORK CITY MANAGER
SUBJECT: GELATIN MOLDS

Well, boys, this is going to be rather an informal communication because I think there’s a serious lesson for you in a situation we had here recently. I might as well be the first to tell you about it. You’ll hear about it soon enough anyway. Frankly, I’m hoping you’ll have a heart and lend a brother City Manager a hand.

As you boys know, I was re-elected last April to my post as City Manager for another four years and I felt pretty good about it. So good that I was looking around for something to do which would sort of let the voters of little old New York know how I felt about them. Most of you have met my political assistant Charlie Tight--or, rather, my ex-political assistant. Charlie was looking around, too, and he came up with the idea of covering over Central Park.

We have never covered over Central Park with the perma-plast roof like the rest of the city because it is a fairly large area and there wasn’t any public demand for it. So naturally it rains and snows there and we spend a lot of dough keeping the grass cut and what have you. It’s a popular spot with a lot of folks.

Charlie figured--and I must admit that I agreed with him--that covering over Central Park was quite an idea. Controlled conditions would let the grass grow only so much and the temperature would remain constant. No rain or snow except from 1 A.M. to 3 A.M., when we would put in a little artificial precipitation to keep the greenery going. Plenty of nice air-conditioned air. Eternal spring. Really up-to-date.

We put it through the computer down at the Civic Machine and figured it would cost only about 25 hundred million. It looked real good. You see, we recently got a new addition to the Civic Machine and the manufacturer gave us a deal on a new model Projector for the whole city. It makes constant forecasts on practically everything we need from moment to moment. It doesn’t wait for a Tech to run the data thru it. Saves a lot of time because it’s directly connected with Supply.

This Projector is so good that we have been able to cut down on expenses about 20 hundred million in only two years. I figured this would easily pay for the perma-plast roof over good old Central Park.

To make a long story short, I went before the people on TV and told the whole story. Charlie had the TV Techs mock up a scene of what it would look like and we had models posed in family scenes and the like. Should have gone over like a shot--and it would have, except for this screwball Hatty Dakkon.

It wasn’t an hour after I had made my broadcast that my secretary announced this Mrs. Hatty Dakkon. She proved to be a young matron type with pretty good legs and a chip on her shoulder. She was against roofing Central Park.

Well, you boys know how it goes. Always some crank who doesn’t like things changed, and after they have blown off steam, they quiet down and you can go ahead and do the work.

So I let this Hatty Dakkon talk on and on until my ears were limp from listening.

She said she was against roofing Central Park because it would be just like every other place in the City--weatherproof, air-conditioned and humidity controlled.

She figured that children should have some place where they could feel the wind on their faces and the falling of rain and snow and the smell of air as it was in nature.

She said that was the only way most of our children could ever, ever find the ties with the past that were sacred.

She quoted poetry about the wind and the rain in your hair, and on and on and on.

Finally I let her talk off her head of steam and she got calmed down so I could tell her: “Thank you, madam, for this expression of your opinion. You can rest assured that I will do everything within my power and the power of the Civic Machine to see to it that anything possible is done.”

Her head came up like a rocket at blastoff.

“Hold it!” she said. “You can’t put me off with that old one--that’s Standard Answer No. 1 in the City Manager’s guidebook and I ain’t buying it, Buster. I used to work at the Civic Machine myself, so I know all the Standard Answers backward and forward.”

“Well, I assure you, madam--” I said.

“Don’t hand me that stuff again. What I want is for you to call off the Civic Machine and quit trying to roof the only place left where our children can feel the open air and sunshine.”

“I see. You aren’t going to be satisfied with anything else,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. We have programmed the roofing job for next month on the Civic Machine and we can’t change it now.”

“That, Mr. Ro, is a lie,” she said, leaning across my desk and sticking a slim white finger under my nose. “I know you can change it in five minutes if you want to.”

“It won’t be changed,” I said.

“Is that your final word?”

“Final.”

“Mr. Ro,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “I think you’ll be sorry.”

She headed for the door, only to turn around and ask me if my wife was at home.

“I suppose she is,” I said, “but don’t bother her--she takes no interest in Civic affairs.”

I don’t have to tell you boys that I dismissed the lady from my mind and went on to other more important matters. Or so I thought.

When I got home that night, I didn’t say anything about Hatty Dakkon. My wife is inclined to see things differently than I do and I had a hunch she would side with Hatty. Consequently, rather than get into a discussion, I just let it slide.

Not too many of you boys know my wife, but those who do know that she is like so many other women--not particularly interested in any Civic Machine. Just so she gets what she wants when she dials the home connection to the Machine is all she is interested in.

That night, though, my wife surprised me by having a burning interest in the Civic Machine. She wanted to know all about it. How it produces the consumer products. How it gets them to the living area. How it knows what to order. And she especially quizzed me about the new Projector.

When I asked her why she wanted to know about all that after 15 years of married life, she just smiled sweetly and said that naturally she was interested in my work.

Next day, I brought home a sample programming sheet for her to see and damned if she didn’t dismiss it with a sniff as being too complicated and boring.

Go figure women out!

That night, we had two molded gelatin dishes. The round kind with a hole in the center.

The next night, we had the same kind of supper, except that instead of fish and something in gelatin, we had meat and something in gelatin. Same sort of deal for dessert.

The next day, I got my first tip that something was up when Willie Kipe, the caster for NYC-TV, called me and asked about the protest on the Central Park roofing proposal, saying he got the item from his woman assistant. I said it didn’t amount to much and that the project was going ahead on schedule.

I caught Willie’s cast that night and he treated it in a light manner which really made me smile. I should have been crying instead.