Lonely in the Automat
I always thought of automats as lonely, melancholy places.
Naval bases in those days were almost defined by their automats. There were the living quarters, the dining hall, the bar if you were old enough and the automat if you were not. I was not.
There were two common occasions to visit the automat and its character changed dramatically for each occasion.
Killing time after lunch — waiting for class to begin — there was the brash, flashing automat. At lunchtime, the automat was a buzzing hive of sailors playing video games and drinking crap coffee from the crap coffee machine. The vending machines were filled with sausage rolls and pork pies and Tooty Fruities. You tap the A-H and 1-9 buttons to make the inner robot spring to life, threatening to dispense a pack of Tooty Fruities. But it disappoints you again with physics-defying feats of cruelty.
Then there were the video games.
I completed Dragon’s Lair to great applause in the automat at HMS Collingwood and I found all the Easter eggs in Track ‘n’ Field. Alf Menzies and I were the first to make it to the end of Super Mario Bros. The trivia machine, Blockbusters, gave out big prizes and we emptied it of its pound coins every day.
That was the happy automat of the daytime.
Dragon’s Lair.
The fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight on your quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an eeeevil dragon….
Lead on adventurer! Your quest awaits!
The nighttime automat is the automat that looms in my memory.
Nighttime automat was a melancholy, empty hall of flickering lights and it was the only place open at 2:30 AM when the bus arrived back at the base after a weekend of stolen kisses.
I remember several variants of that sad journey. The midnight train from Bexleyheath to Fareham was always filled with tired sailors. The 500-mile drive from Portsmouth to Helensburgh was the longest journey but the hardest was the one back to HMS Fisgard in Torpoint, Cornwall.
It started on Platform 2 at Sidcup Station (where the Rolling Stones began) and the 12¾ miles to Charing Cross. Next came the long, rumbling Circle Line reaching Paddington just in time for the 4-hour train ride down to Plymouth. From Plymouth Station, it was a short cab ride to Devonport and, most romantic in my misty memories, the long chug-a-lug of the Torpoint Ferry dragging itself along its heavy chains across the dark, forbidding Hamoaze.
By the time you got to the Cornwall side of the river, you were well into the wee hours of the morning, and if you were lucky, you could share a cab ride to the base. That was the moment when it struck you that you were in the Navy for real and for the foreseeable future and then it was just a short walk up the hill to the automat.
The automat was the only place to get food in the middle of the night and it was entirely transformed from the bustling, mechanical bazaar of the daytime. At night, it was just you and the whir of the carousel dispensing your stale Cornish Pasty.
The overhead lights were always off and you’d peer at your pasty in the ancient microwave oven, lit intermittently by the bold flashing of the video games. The nighttime sounds were still fresh and familiar — from the ding-a-ling-a-ling! of the slot machine to the Beep-beep-BEEEEEEP! of Pole Position — until, eventually, the bright Ding! of the microwave announced that it was time to wolf down my oggie before the sun came up and summoned me to my classes in just a few, short hours.
I didn’t think I’d ever finish this drawing. I thought my muse was gone. It happened before. I have a half-finished charcoal drawing of my wife that I started in 2001. I don’t know how many times I’ve picked up that drawing and stared at it, wondering how I would ever draw anything ever again.
I chose Hopper’s Automat precisely because it looked easy. I expected I’d just lose myself in the memories of automats past as my finger rubbed the image of Hopper’s lonely flapper girl onto the screen of my iPad but even the act of opening Art Studio was a challenge.
But now my drawing is done and my memories of automats past can fade back to where they came from.
I wonder what stories that lonely flapper girl in Hopper’s Automat had to tell.
I really enjoyed this story. I have many memories of the Torpoint Ferry and many more of The Harbour Lights nightclub. :-) The automats sound quite something - I wish I’d seen one (during the day!) And I love your Hopper drawing. Thanks, as always, for sharing!
JiT