John Delach

“For crying out loud, Dave,” I yelled, “What is in your head? Are you nuts? You’re 50 years old and you don’t have another job.”

Dave never made things easy. Not for him and not for me. Unhappy with his raise and the lack of a promotion, he waited until I was vacationing in California to offer his resignation to the one person who despised him, my boss, Bob Nevers. When Dave offered Nevers his formal resignation, Nevers accepted it without hesitation. By the time I returned from vacation, it was too late to reverse this insanity.

When I asked him why? He said nothing, but looked at me with “a thousand-yard stare.” The enormity of what he had done was sinking in. Moving quickly to perform damage control, I convinced Nevers to keep Dave on the payroll for at least three months and provide him with an office on another floor with secretarial services.

“Dave, your job now is to find another job.”

Relieved, he set about his task and, within two months, found a good position at another firm. When he told me, I was both pleased and relieved and I proposed having lunch to celebrate his good fortune. We set a date and I added: “Why don’t you bring in your company car and I will drive it home so it can be reassigned?”

He agreed and we had a delightful lunch discussing past times and future hopes. Toward the end, he handed me the keys and the garage receipt and said: “You do know how to drive stick shift?”

“Yeah right,” I replied thinking he was putting me on. He heard, “Of course I can.”

It was shortly after 6 PM when I arrived at the Kinney Garage on 48^th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, paid the charges and waited for the Honda to be delivered. Tipping the attendant as he opened the door, I sat down and stared at the clutch and shift.

“Holy shit”,  I exclaimed out loud as I sat there cursing myself for getting into this dilemma.

The last time I attempted to conquer stick shift was courtesy of Uncle Sam in a U.S. Army jeep 25 years ago. And here I am in the middle of Manhattan during rush hour wondering what to do. Prudence dictated getting out and having an attendant park it again. Unfortunately, prudence is not my M.O. as I repeated the words of Admiral Farragut at the battle of Mobil Bay to myself, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

Conjuring up my rudimentary skills, I managed to leave the garage and head east to Park Avenue successfully shifting between first and second gears at various red lights and actually getting the Honda into third gear on one occasion. I decided not to risk breaking down in the Queens Midtown Tunnel so I headed north on Park Avenue towards the 59^th Street Bridge. At 53^rd Street trouble finally struck as I popped the clutch and stalled again and again, missing two green light cycles. Taxi drivers were unmerciful-their honking bringing me to a near panic sweat, but with several deep breaths, I got the car moving again.

East on 58^th Street, up onto the bridge’s upper deck, I hit stop and go traffic. Touch and go, stalling, coaxing, praying, cursing, taking deep breathes, “stay calm” became my mantra. Finally, I left the bridge as I tried to ignore the dirty looks from those cars I held up.

I headed south on Queens Boulevard to the Long Island Expressway (LIE) where I turned east struggling past Flushing Meadows Park. The expressway traffic was too much for me so I decided the service road was my best bet. If I lose it, I can leave it by parking it there. So far so good, but as I passed Springfield Boulevard, I anticipated the steep hill that leads to the light at the Douglaston Parkway intersection.

“Oh God, if it is red, I will never get this car going again. To hell with it, I am not stopping if I can avoid it,” As I approached the intersection, the light was green and I exclaimed,  “Thank you Lord”!

 From there it became easier and as I headed north towards Port Washington and home, I actually manage to put the Honda into fourth gear for the first and only time.

Safely home, I poured myself a large Jameson’s as I recounted my adventure to, Mary Ann, my wife. Mary Ann grew up with stick-shift cars and she occasionally drove the Honda to her school, PS 121, in South Ozone Park, Queens.

Eventually the Honda was re-assigned to Alan Gardiner who was rewarded by several years of good service once he replaced the transmission that I had ruined. I made sure our firm paid for the damage I had incurred.

On the Outside Looking In will not be published next Wednesday, May 27th

The front page of the May 7 edition of The New York Times included a story with this title that was set out entirely below the fold. Written by Julie Bosman, I present it to you:

CHICAGO-Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.

About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal became Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, he put in his call to his bank back home, a close friend, the Rev. Tom McCarthy, told a gathering of Catholics in Naperville, Ill., last week.

The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevorst, saying that he wished to change the phone number and the address that the bank had on file, Father McCarthy said.

 The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.

Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough – he would have to come to the bank in person.

“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’ “ Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustrations as the audience laughed.

“I gave you all the security questions.”

The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.

“Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked , according to Father McCarthy.

She hung up.

Even while more than one billion Catholics around the world and living in gilded spender amid priceless works of art, popes can sometimes be entangled in the mundane, both, accidentally and with purpose. In the first 24 hours of Pope Francis’ papacy in 2013, he insisted on paying his own hotel bill and collecting his own luggage, a gesture of humility to Catholic clergy.

Pope Leo rose from modest roots in Dolton, Ill., a small suburb just outside Chicago, before serving as a bishop in Peru and in an influential post at the Vatican where he was elected pope nearly one year ago.

The matter was sorted out thanks to the intervention of another priest who had a connection to the bank president, Father McCarthy said.

There was no word on the customer service representative who had cut off her call with the bank’s most famous customer.

“Could you imagine being as the woman who hung up on the pope?” Father McCarthy said.   

I loved this joke, a joke I could tell whenever I wished that was totally suitable for mixed company.

The Joke:

After the pope died, the College of Cardinals assembled in Rome and voting began to elect his successor. It soon became evident that three cardinals were all viable candidates, but none of them could gain the needed majority of votes. After two months of black smoke following unsuccessful balloting, morale became desperate. The senior cardinals decided that a select committee would interview the three candidates, two of whom were American and one who was Polish.

First up was Cardinal Jones. He was asked, “What is the holiest day in the Church’s calendar?”

Jones replied, “Oh, the Fourth of July when we go to the beach and watch the fireworks.”

So much for Jones who was escorted out.

Cardinal Smith was next and he replied, “That would be Thanksgiving when we all get together and consume a mountain of food while watching football on TV.” Good bye Smith.

Last, was Cardinal Komorowiski: “Tell us cardinal, what is the holiest day in the Church’s calendar?

The cardinal replied, “Easter Sunday, of course.”

The relief among the committee was audible. “Yes, yes,” replied the chairman who then asked, “Why is it the holiest day?”

“Because that is the day that Christ rises from the dead, his guardian angel rolls back the stone. Jesus leaves his tomb, but, if he sees his own shadow, we have six more weeks of lent.”  

When My Joke Turned on Me

I was out one night at a business dinner with a group of twelve people that included wives. It was a joyous occasion where the wine and champaign flowed freely and people began telling their favorite stories. I carefully waited for a lull when I began telling my favorite joke confident that it would bring the house down.

When I reached the parts about Jones and Smith, the realization hit me square in the head that I was doomed. My joke was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. I was so sure of myself and my story when I began that I had ignored a simple fact that doomed me: I was telling it at a dinner in London where nobody had ever heard about Ground Hog’s Day.      

When I was researching my piece about Liberty Ships, I discovered that one of these ships was named the S.S. George Handley after a man who served in the 1^st Georgia Battalion of the Continental Army where he rose to the rank of captain. He was taken prisoner at Augusta, Georgia in 1780. After the war, Handley served as Governor of Georgia from 1788 to 1789 and was instrumental in the drafting of Georgia’s state-constitution. He died in 1793 at the age of forty-one.

The SS George Handley was the second Liberty ship of over three dozen of her sisters constructed at the Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation’s pop-up yard in Savannah, Georgia. Designated. Hull No. 342, construction began on May 28, 1942 and the Handley was launched on December 7, 1942, the first anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

George Handley never entered commercial service. The government agency, War Shipping Administration Transport, (WSAT), requisitioned the ship and turned it into a troop carrier to be operated by the U.S. Army Transport Service, (USAT). Handley transported European Axis prisoners to POW camps that sprang up in various rural parts of America including Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Imagine how lucky these POW’s felt escaping the war to perform manual labor in the lap of luxury far from the fighting.  

Handley had a carrying capacity of 550 men per voyage. There is no record, I could find of what Handley carried on its outbound voyages. Neither is there any record about its post-war career, if any. I did find that George Handley was scrapped in 1964 and it is reasonable to believe that the ship spent those 19 years mothballed in one of those reserve fleets like those on the Hudson River south of the Bear Mountain Bridge or the James River in Virginia.     

Ordinarily, the saga about this ship would peter out right here. However, by a curious coincidence, when I first joined Marsh & McLennan in 1971, the manager of the firm’s world-wide marine operations was George W. Handley.

George was bigger than life and a natural leader. You knew Handley was present every time he entered the room. As one of my colleagues put it, “Working for Handley is like working for a combination of George C. Scott as Patton mixed with Coach Vince Lombardi!”

Our George was a force that influenced and motivated all who fell under his spell. I was beginning to come of age at the firm when I became his go-to-guy for international business. George would travel to Europe and the far East to acquire shares of insurances for me to place in our domestic hull market. Soon, I came to realize that I was his assault trooper who was certain to fail in making the deal to convince marine underwriters to take a share of the latest international fleet that George sent me out to peddle.

Sometimes, more aggressive underwriters gave me a lewd and blasphemous message to take

back to Handley. I never told him about these messages and, when I’d report back to him that John Blackman, Terry Deeks, or Bill Petersen essentially threw me out of his office, he would thank me for my efforts and say, “I’ll get back to you later today.”

Later those afternoons, George would tell me over the phone to come up to his office. I was on nine, he was on eleven, at our head-quarters at 1221 Avenue of the Americas. I took the closest stairway two steps at a time.

One time, I vented my frustration to him. I said, “You know, George, it can be tough being your sapper who throws himself on the enemy’s barb wire with an explosive charge to create the path to glory.”

George got my message, In, 1974, I was promoted to Assistant Vice President before anybody else. George, as was his style, sent me his leather folder that the Marsh & McLennan directors received at their meeting in Dallas. It contained a personal note to me that read:

TO: JJD

From: GWH

Congratulations. It was a close vote, but I voted for you.

George Handley passed away in 1975 from a heart attack

The ironic part of this story is that in the 1960s and 1970s Liberty Ships reached the end of any usefulness and were being scrapped in droves. One maritime entrepreneur thought up the idea to make scale model Liberty Ships cast from the steel from the actual ships being scrapped.

George loved the idea and started collecting these steel models to give away to visiting customers and overseas brokers when they visited his office. I asked him one day: “George, I wonder what the Japanese and Germans really think about you giving them models built from the steel of the ships that helped to defeat them?”

My comment received a super scowl!

George never learned that one Liberty bore his name. There would have been no living with hm had he made this discovery.

Grant me this aside. George had a wicked sense of humor and loved to brag when good things were said about him. Sometime in about 1973, a short interview with Marsh’s CEO, Jack Regan,  appeared in Time Magazine when Time was an important news source. The piece quoted Regan as saying:

“Even Exxon, with all their expertise counts on Marsh & McLennan for their needs. For example, they depend on the advice of George Handley for their extensive marine operations.”

When George became aware of the piece, he let us all know, “Isn’t it nice. Time mentioned all four of us, Jack, Henry (Marsh), Don (McLennan) and me”

I informed those of us still around who knew George back in the day about my discovery. I voiced my opinion that had he known about that ship; he would have commissioned a heroic portrait of the SS George Handley fighting its way through rough seas on the North Atlantic in pursuit of victory.

Perhaps he would have had lithographs made, framed for VIP customers, rolled up copies for the rest of us. Maybe, even Christmas cards!

The best reply to the idea of a framed original oil of the SS George Handley hanging in GWH’s office behind his desk came from his former secretary, Diane Robertson, “John, you are absolutely right, and guess who would have had to feather dust that stupid painting every single day!”

Before I tell you this story, I must explain that my memory of it was on the verge of disappearing into oblivion. It is not uncommon for me to forget names, especially when I am telling a story. I know the name when I begin telling my story, but this all-important item slips away before I get to it leaving me lost and speechless. This is not uncommon for us Octogenarians.

Today’s story takes the failure of not remembering names a step further. In this instance, my entire story revolves around a man who was almost completely forgotten.

I was having a telephone conversation with my good friend, Geoff about his old job in marine insurance. “You know, John, I worked for a guy who was quite a character. I don’t mean, Bill Smith, this guy was Smith’s boss.”

“Sorry, Geoff, Damned if I can remember him.”

We kept on talking and as we did, snippets of information and memory of Mister X began slipping back into my consciousness. “Hold on, Geoff, things about that guy are coming back to me. Wasn’t he a big man and wasn’t he independently wealthy?”

“Yes,” Geoff exclaimed, “He also lived in Central Florida where he had a cattle ranch.”

We failed to take this further, let it go and finished our conversation. After we hung up, more and more snippets popped into my head including his last name that first made it self-known to me in bits and pieces. At last, I remembered his complete last name, Klineoder!

“Son of a bitch”, I said out loud as I picked up the phone to call Geoff. He answered on the second ring and, before I could say anything, he shouted out, “Klineoder!”

We laughed like school boys as we proved that not-so-great minds can also think alike.

Re-discovering Klineoder’s last name was the key to my almost forgotten story, The Craziest Bet I Ever Made.

The Giants were doing well during the 1990 season and, with about two-thirds of the regular season games already played, a radical idea popped into my head. For some unexplainable reason, I became convinced that my team would not only make the playoffs; they would also defeat the two playoff opponents and be victorious in Super Bowl XXV.

I decided to call an executive I knew in the marine insurance industry who had a reputation for being a betting man. That man was Klineoder. I picked him to see if my proposition would fly. My fear was my proposal to bet $100 wasn’t enough to catch his interest.

I gave him an outline over the phone leading him to invite me to a lunch that was most likely to turn into an all-afternoon affair. To limit the damage, I prearranged our destination to be the Club at the World Trade Center using my membership. Hey, I knew what I was doing. I knew that he would restrain himself if I was paying the bill.

“I am proposing an interesting bet. You know how big a Giants fan I am and I have supreme confidence in this year’s team. I am willing to make a bet here and now that they will win the Super Bowl. In other words, I will take the Giants and you will have the rest of the NFL to beat them.”

“Interesting, John. How much are you willing to put up?”

“One hundred dollars.”

“Okay, and what odds do you want?”

Ah, the most important question. In my heart, I wanted 6 to 1, but I didn’t want to turn him off so I blurted out, “Four to one.”

“I’ll take it.”

Okay, the bet was made. So how did it go?

Two weeks later, the Giants lost their premier quarterback, Phil Simms to a season ending leg injury. Their fate fell into the hands of Jeff Hoestler, their back-up QB. He managed to win the last two regular season games and then beat the Chicago Bears in the Giants first playoff game at home in Giants Stadium.

Next up, the two-time Champion San Francisco Forty-Niners at their home field in Candlestick Park. A brutal struggle and a near defeat until LT, (Lawrence Taylor) stripped the ball from the 49ers running back, Roger Craig. This possession allowed the Giants kicker, Matt Barr, to kick the winning field goal as time expired.

A week later, Big Blue took on the Buffalo Bills in the Big Sombrero in Tampa, Florida. Defensive Coach Bill Belicheck engineered a remarkable defense that greatly limited the Bills pass-happy offense while O.J. Anderson, the Giants ancient running back ran both like the wind and as a battle tank that earned him MVP honors.

Between OJ, Geoff Hosteler and the Giants defense, they gave Big Blue the lead as the game clock ticked down. Still, it came down to the Bill’s kicker, Scott Norwood, to win the game. He faced a field goal kick of 47 yards, a bit beyond his range. I held my breath. His kick was like a bad golf shot sliced out to the right and it wasn’t coming back.

Lucky, lucky me. I collected my winnings while learning my lesson well. There is no such thing as a sure thing.

When Brooklyn Burned: December 1960 

John Delach

April 2026 (Originally published June 2014)

Disasters sometimes seem to have an awful habit of happening in a closely spaced series of events. Air crashes coming in threes is a popular belief. Legend, perhaps, but strange as it seems, multiple events occur far too often to be coincidental. The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) went through such a sequence, two unprecedented catastrophes and two other large fires in an eight-day period in December of 1960.

It was a rotten month weather-wise described in the NY Times as, “…numbing cold and roadways made virtually impassable by snow and ice.” The first and the worst of the disasters happened on just such a day, December 16^th. Snow turned into light rain and fog. United Airlines Flight 826, a DC-8 out of Chicago on approach to Idlewild (now JFK) overran its designated holding pattern over South Amboy, NJ striking TWA Flight 266 occupying its own holding area for arrival at LaGuardia Airport. One of the DC-8’s four jets engines fell off as it struck the Constellation from behind crashing into its triple tail and fuselage tearing it apart and forcing the airplane into an uncontrolled dive. Debris and at least one poor soul trailed the falling flight that smashed into a corner of Miller Field, a small, retired airbase on Staten Island killing all 39 passengers and the crew of five.

There was no evidence that the United crew retained control of their mortally damaged jet which managed to stay in the air for nine more miles as it descended over Brooklyn where it violently came down at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place in the heart of Park Slope setting ablaze the Pillar of Fire Church, ten brownstones, the McCaddin Funeral Home, a Chinese laundry and a delicatessen. Six people on the ground were killed, the church’s caretaker, two men selling Christmas tress, a sanitation worker shoveling snow, a store keeper and a man walking his dog. All of the 77 passengers and seven crewmembers died including 11-year-old, Stephen Blitz, who was thrown onto a snow bank surviving the impact. He succumbed to his burns and injuries the next day. FDNY units from every borough except The Bronx responded to the Park Slope plane crash which claimed a total of 134 lives and would remain the deadliest U.S. commercial aviation disaster until 1969.

Three days later, on Dec.19, a forklift operator moving a metal trash bin on the hanger deck of the USS Constellation under construction in the Brooklyn Navy Yard shifted a steel plate that ruptured a diesel fuel line. Once the leaking oil came into contact with “hot work” being performed on lower decks, the insides of the aircraft carrier were transformed into an inferno that took 350 firefighters 17 hours to conquer this ten-alarm blaze. Most of the nearly 4,000 shipyard workers on board managed to escape using two main gangways connected to the aircraft carrier. Others escaped in more dramatic fashion. Several shed their shoes and heavy clothing and jumped into the East River where they were rescued by tugs that raced to the shipyard.

A crane operator lifted a thirty-foot narrow gangway to workers stuck on deck cut off from the gangways. He began lifting them off of the flight deck a few at a time. As firefighters made their way through the smoke, darkness and oven like heat to reach men trapped below, this gangway became their vital escape route. When survivors and victims were brought up on deck, an FDNY officer would signal to the operator whether the next lift was for the living or the dead; thumbs up if alive, thumbs down if dead.

Once the fires were extinguished and the searches completed, 49 dead workers had been carried off the Constellation. Paul L. Bua made it 50 when he died on Dec. 29^th from injuries sustained in the fire. Three hundred and thirty workers and firefighters were injured in the mazes of construction scaffolding blinded by darkness and smoke.

While the worst was over, fire crews had to contend with two additional major fires on Dec. 23. The first began in the early morning hours of that cold day when units from Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens responded to an eight-alarm fire at two lumber yards in Williamsburg, cheek by jowl with the Navy Yard. The fire raged across properties belonging to the Bridge Lumber Company and the Driggs Plywood Corporation beginning at five A.M. that forced the evacuation of the convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church and closures to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, disrupting morning rush-hour traffic.

The day ended with a final conflagration, a four-alarm fire in a gas station at the junction of Coney Island Avenue and Avenue L that began at 6:50 P.M. This final act destroyed the station and ten cars in the adjacent European Motor Cars building.

The one silver lining to this tale of destruction is that not one FDNY firefighter’s life was lost in any of these blazes.

This story begins in 1978 when my then boss, S. Hobbie Lockett, advised me that I was entitled to a “company car” meaning my firm would allow me to buy a new car and they would pay X amount for it. If I went over their limit, I’d have to pay the difference. I was amazed both by this opportunity and the generous amount that I was allocated. I chose a Chevrolet Caprice and my budget was large enough that it enabled me to load it with extras. One of the extras I selected was for one of those new cassette players. Curiously, when it arrived, GM had outfitted it with  an eight-track player instead of the cassette player I ordered.

“Oh well,” here I am with this brand-new beauty and I’d be crazy to make a stink. Sadly, eight tracks were already on their way out. Like Sony’s Beta version of VHS tapes, eight-track turned out to be the American Flyer equivalent of electric trains. Lionel ruled electric trains and cassettes ruled modern sound.

One of the eight-tracks I bought was by Linda Ronstadt that included her recording of  a “Long, Long Time” written by Corey White.

Ronstadt recorded the song in 1970 and it was her first big hit. By the time I received my eight-track, the song had faded from the public eye, but it struck me; I found the cords and her rendition to be heart wrenching and “Long, Long Time,” is to this day, one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt recordings.

As time went on, the only time I heard this tune was when I sought it out from my collections of Ronstadt’s songs.

Curiously, “Long, Long Time” was resurrected back in 2021 for use in a TV show called “The Last of Us.” The producer decided to use Linda’s song in an episode to enhance a point of sadness and it took off from there, increasing in requests for playing time by 5,000%.

Fast forward to Madison Square Garden on Valentine’s Day, 2026. Our daughter, Beth, and her husband, Tom, attended a Brandi Carlile concert where MS Carlile sang “Long, Long Time” in honor of Linda.

Beth texted me the video of her performance. After listening to it, I replied:

“If you had just sent me the recording without the video, I would have done the biggest double take of all times! WOW!

I made a copy of the lyrics that are set out below. I do believe, you will get a sense of the song by reading them, but, if it’s possible, I recommend you listen to Linda singing this song as you read the lyrics.

The lyrics:

Love will abide

Take things in stride

Sounds like good advice

But there’s no one on my side

And time washes clean love’s wounds unseen

That’s what someone told me

But I don’t know what it means

Cause I’ve done everything I know

To try and make you mine

And I think I’m gonna love you for a long, long time.

Caught in my fears

Blinking back the tears

I can’t say you hurt me

When you never let me near

And I never drew one response from you

All the while you fell all over girls you never knew

Cause I’ve done everything I know

To try and make you mine

And I think it gonna hurt me

For a long, long time

Wait for the day you go away

Knowing that you warned me

Of the price I’d have to pay

And life is full of flaws

Who knows the cause?

Living in the memory of a love that never was

Cause I’ve done everything I know

To try and make you mine

And I think I’m gonna miss you

For a long,  long time

Cause I’ve done everything I know

to try and make you mine

And I think I’m gonna love you

For a long, long time

April 2026, originally published 2008

A recent article in Newsday stopped me cold. The headline read, “Power cables laid in Sound.” The article reported that new cables were being installed in trenches on the sea bottom in order to strengthen the electrical grid connecting Connecticut and Long Island. I sat back, amazed and soon found what I was looking for, the exact location of these cables. They were laid between Norwalk and Northport. The article stated that these new cables would replace aging, battered cables that were unreeled along the bottom of the Sound in 1969. “Those are my cables,” I laughed to myself.

In April of 1969, I quit my job as a claims adjuster at the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company and joined a small independent marine surveyor, Donald M. Lamont & Co. I’d only been there a little more than one-month when Lamont took me aside for a new assignment as soon as I walked into the office. He related in his thick Scottish brogue, “We just received an emergency job to survey damaged electrical cables being laid in the Long Island Sound as soon as possible. I cannot go because I have to be in Philadelphia for another job and nobody else is around.”

            “Don, I don’t know anything about electrical cables.”

“That’s okay. We don’t have a choice. All work has been stopped until the cables are inspected. There’s a crane barge, tug boats, workers and divers all hanging around doing nothing. Pirelli is the contractor and they need you up there, today.”

“Up where?” I asked.

“Norwalk, Connecticut. You’ll have to drive. Do you have a car available?”

“I don’t know. My wife has our car. If she’s home, I guess I can go.”

I called Mary Ann and tracked her down at her mother’s house in Flushing. “Great,  I have to go up to Connecticut to do a job for Lamont. Meet me at home and please make sure the car has a full tank of gas.”

I didn’t bother to ask Don what I should do. I figured I’d just wing it. The drive up to the Norwalk was easy, the sun still high in the sky on a nice June afternoon as I exited from Interstate 95 in Norwalk. I followed a two-lane highway toward a large power plant with an imposing smoke stack that loomed in the distance. The Connecticut Power and Light plant that was at the end of that road and it seemed to float on the vacant wetland that lined the Connecticut shore. About 500 yards from the power plant, I pulled up to an intercom positioned outside a massive gate. A detached hollow voice demanded to know who I was. “I’m the surveyor from Don Lamont’s office here to inspect the damaged cable.”

Instead of a reply, the cyclone gate opened allowing me to drive a short distance to a second gate. The first gate closed trapping me until the second one opened. I drove up to the plant where I was directed to a parking space close to the plant’s dock. There, a boat with inflated rubber pontoon sides and a wooden bottom awaited me. I handed my camera to a crewmember, stepped into the boat and barely seated myself before the twin outboard engines roared to life and off we went into the Long Island Sound.

            I could see the barges and workboats clustered together about a half-mile away and I felt a pang of disappointment that the ride was going to be so short. Too bad, this was fun. The damaged cable had been hauled out of the water and on to the deck of a barge. I saw that it was leaking fluid from a long, jagged cut where it had been sliced open by an anchor from a handling boat. I took out my notebook and took a statement from an engineer who had been appointed spokesman. He explained that they planned to cut away about 100 feet of cable, drain the remaining fluid that may have been contaminated with sea water, splice in a new piece and pump in new fluid.

Who was I to argue? Any questions I asked would show off my ignorance. I wrote down everything I thought he said and took enough photographs to satisfy Don and the

insurance company then departed for my ride back to the dock.

            After I left the power plant, I headed toward a lobster shack that I had noticed on my ride in and bought two 1½ half pound lobsters for dinner.

            I called Mary Ann from a pay phone that I found nearby. It was about 7 p.m. “I just finished my survey. I think it went well. Listen, I know it’s late, but don’t make anything for dinner. I should be home in about two hours and l have picked up something special for dinner.”

The ride took a bit longer, but Mary Ann was not displeased when I walked in the door with two lobsters.

Don wasn’t displeased although I didn’t receive any praise either. In fact I never heard a word about my report or photographs, so I guess the insurance company was satisfied.

The article in Newsday confirmed that the cables lasted 39 years so the engineers must have done a good job splicing them.

During the first week of 2026, I heard a report on WINS Radio that a fire had devastated a dwelling at 1826 Green Street (sic) in Ridgewood, Queens. (The correct address is 1826 Green Avenue, named after the revolutionary hero who formed the Green Mountain Boys.)

The fire destroyed a four-family house and disrupted the lives of everyone who lived there. It also zeroed in on my own fear of fire. This, the winter of 2025-2026 has witnessed an exceptional number of house fires across the five-boroughs as if something was failing that resulted in major fires, some of them with fatalities.

The fire at 1826 Green Avenue was too close to home as I grew up at 1821 Himrod Street, two-blocks away in a similar two-story wood and shingle railroad flat. In 2002 I wrote about what it was like to grow up in Ridgewood during the 1950s. Here are my recollections about fire and fire engines from my unpublished memoir: An American Dream.

We considered the firehouse on Himrod Street three blocks south of my house as our neighborhood firehouse. Engine Company 271 and Ladder Company 124 were both located there and were our first responders.

I do believe these two fire companies were the most important municipal services that protected the citizens of Ridgewood at that time. Our home’s wiring and the appliances were poorly installed and dangerous and these companies answered many calls especially in wintertime. Until the mid-50s when City Codes mandated that these buildings be converted to central heating, each apartment had its own stoves for heating and for making hot water. In addition, until the advent of central heating, kerosene stoves were used to heat individual bedrooms and the living room. These portable units could easily be knocked over by a child, a dog or a drunk, adding to the dangerous conditions.

Whenever we were playing in the street and heard the fire sirens, everything stopped. Since Himrod Street was the only northbound through street to Metropolitan Ave, we frequently watched these engines go by. The sound of the sirens was both exciting and scary as we all knew folks who had been burned out of their apartments.

We all took notice to see what would happen next. If the sirens quickly faded, that meant the fire engines were going the wrong way south on Himrod Street heading one block to Wykoff Ave where they turned and disappeared. If they headed north, we waited until they reached Cypress Ave to see if they turned off. Many times, they did because Cypress Ave gave them to access to multiple stores on Myrtle Ave. But, if they kept coming north, we became alert. If they turned off onto one of the next two or three avenues, we took off right behind them.

Most of the calls were minor problems or false alarms but we did see several fires. Our excitement intensified as additional equipment arrived and we usually stayed until the police organized things and forced us away from the action.

An overwhelming fear of fire descended upon me in 1954 when I was ten-years old after I awoke one night to smoke that filled the air, flashing lights and the sight and sounds of firemen climbing ladders and manning hoses right there on my block. The house where my friend, Joey,  lived had caught fire. He and his family were successfully evacuated, but they did lose their honey-colored cocker spaniel.

I was devastated and for several months I suffered through an uncontrollable fear that my house would catch fire if I left it. This fear would strike me at different times without warning. I could be playing ball in a local park. Be inside a movie theatre, on an outing with my mother or at a neighbor’s house. If I could, I would try to get home to save it. The only exception was school because, I could see my house from the classroom windows.

I never told my mother or anyone else about my fear, I just lived with it until one night, a friend of my mother gave me a model car. I took it to bed with me and as I was lying there, as if by magic, this fear lifted and slip-slided away into thin air.

Oh, happy day, but I must admit that since it left, I have retained an acute awareness about fires which is why I am focused on smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and other ways to prevent extinguish or escape fires. I don’t perseverate on fires, but I am aware of their existence  particularly in winter and I always will be aware of them.

March 2026

Two Irishmen answered an ad asking for experienced fishermen to go out into the North Sea to catch Atlantic Salmon. Both hade papers attesting to their experience. The captain asked the first man, “Your papers are in order, but tell me what’s your religion?”…”Protestant,” he replied…”Excellent!” the skipper replied. “You are part of our crew.”

Turning to the second man, he asked, “Your papers are also in order, and what is your religion?”…”Catholic,” he replied.

“Oh, that’s too bad. Before I can hire you, I need recommendations from your priest, your mayor and the chief of police.”

“Why me and not him?”

“That’s easy, young man, he’s Protestant and you’re Catholic.”

Reluctantly, the second fisherman took the blank forms and had them filled out by his priest, his mayor and the chief of police. He returned them to the captain who said, “Well done and welcome on board.”

Out into Atlantic they sail and after a day or two, ice starts to build up on the boat. The captain calls his two new crewmen to the bridge: “Boys, we have to get rid of that ice and as you are my most junior crewmen, I need you to do the job. He hands the Catholic a pick and the Protestant, a shovel. He ordered the Catholic, “You climb the mast and chip off the ice,” and the Protestant: “You shovel the loose ice over the side.”

The Catholic fisherman objects and he asked the captain, “Why do I have to climb up the mast and he doesn’t?”

“That’s easy, the skipper replies, “Because he’s protestant and you’re catholic.”

The two men went to work and after about an hour, a huge wave crashed into the boat washing the fellow on deck overboard, shovel and all. High up on the mast, the catholic fisherman observed this.

He put the pick into his belt, made his way down the mast and climbed up to the bridge and announced to the captain, “You know that Protestant who you let on your boat without any references? Well, he just made off with your fuuken shovel.”

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There are two clocks on one of the train platforms at the Dublin station that show times that are ten-minutes different from each other. One commuter gets tired of seeing this twice a day every working day. He finally decides to report this to the station manager. The manager listens to him, he thinks about it, then answers, “Well laddie, if they both had the same time all of the time, we wouldn’t need two of them, would we?”

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You don’t have to travel to Ireland to get a dose of their humor. For almost fifteen years, a gentleman known as Papa John Clancy acted as an informal host at his son’s Sports bar, Foley’s NY Pub and Restaurant located on 33^rd Street in Midtown Manhattan.

Papa John loved to play with their guests, especially the women.

One time, a guest noticed a photograph hanging on the wall of Pope John Paul with some man.  She demanded of Papa John, “Who is that with his Holiness?”

John looked at the photo, then at her and replied, “Sorry, I was off that day.”

Another time, John was talking with a woman when she asked him where he lives. “I live in Queens.” He replied.

“Oh, do you take the Long Island Railroad home?”

“Oh no, no, no, no, I’d like to, but where would I put it.