By Phyllis W. Zeno

A few weeks ago I was sailing from Ensenada, Mexico, to Hawaii aboard the Celebrity cruise ship Summit when a distinguished gray-haired man approached me at my dinner table.

I had an immediate flashback to 45 years ago. “Bill Rother?” Indeed it was. Bill, a retired vice-president of Tauck Tours, was to be the enrichment lecturer on the Summit, talking about his many years in Hawaii. But before that prestigious job, Bill had been a guitar and banjo player for Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians at the same time I was writing music and lyrics for Fred’s weekly Sunday night CBS television shows.

As we reminisced, I recalled an episode with Buddy Bernier, Waring’s long-time lyric writer, who had taken me on as his protege when I first came to New York and ushered me through my beginning years as a songwriter.

It was unseasonably warm in New York on one particular evening that Buddy and I were in our office working late. The air-conditioning had shut off at 6 p.m. We had the window open and an electric fan blowing, but the heat was overpowering. Buddy’s shirt hung over a chair, and we had taken our shoes off as we paced the floor, trying to make the lyrics as bright and funny as Fred expected.

Frustrated and sweltering, we took a break and walked down the hall to get a couple of Cokes. When we returned to our office we found the door had blown shut and locked! Our shoes, Buddy’s shirt, my purse all were inside the office.

Buddy, who came from a family of aerial artists in the circus, immediately proposed that he scale the outside of the building and cross over from the office window next door. Looking down six flights to the pavement below, all I could imagine was Buddy splattered on the sidewalk; but shoeless, shirtless, how could we get home that night?

Then it dawned on us! The wardrobe room! We could borrow shoes and a shirt from the costume department. There were the hobo outfits of course…big, sloppy shoes with the toes out. And Easter bunnies with fuzzy cotton ball feet…hardly the thing to wear on Manhattan subways.

And then there were Minnie and Mickey Mouse costumes. Minnie’s oversized patent Mary Janes had big daisies sprouting up from the toes while Mickey’s high button boots were red and white polka dot. His jacket barely closed over Buddy’s chest while the sleeves were elbow length. What choice had we? Sheepishly, we slipped into our costumes and rode the elevator to the first floor. Stepping out on the street, we slunk down the stairs to the subway platform. Amazingly, no one even seemed to notice us…we were just two more New Yorkers, a little loony perhaps, but not so very different from the others who rode the subway at that time of night.

Early the next morning, with the janitor on duty, we slipped into our office, put on our shoes and returned the costumes to the wardrobe room.

Throughout the cruise, Bill and I recaptured many of the unforgettable moments with Fred and the Pennsylvanians, but nothing ever quite matched the night that Buddy and I rode the subway as Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

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