John Delach

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.”

                                               —————————-

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?”

                                                  —————————

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.

March 2026

Dear reader, my best friend, Mike Scott, passed this February. I spoke at his memorial service but I couldn’t include this story as it would have made my eulogy too long. So, I set it aside to use in this blog to honor Mike, the late Foley’s NY Pub and Restaurant and Shaun Clancy, the owner and our friend.

Michael and Shaun were both avid baseball fans. Mike was a long-suffering Boston Red Sox fan redeemed by their successfully winning the World Series in 2004 and repeating this feat three more times. Shaun was a devotee of the New York Yankees and their bar room rivalry became an important bonding experience. Lordy, could they go at it, but those debates were lined with respect as they both knew what they were talking about. I remained on the sideline enjoying my Guiness while I watched them go at it. Frankly, their debates didn’t last long as, invariability, Shaun, would get an important call, or someone would arrive who needed his attention.      

My personal favorite was lunch with David Cone in 2014. It was the day of his induction ceremony into the Class of 2014 of the Irish-American Baseball Hall of Fame.

Shaun had asked us to arrive early and directed us to sit at our usual round table in the right-hand corner close to the mic. “Leave the seat facing away from the corner vacant for Coney (David Cone) and sit in the two seats on either side.” Shaun sounded like he wanted us to be Mr. Cone’s bodyguards noting that our size did afford him privacy if not protection.

It should be noted that in New York City, many assumed Dave Cone was a Jewish ball player. Ah contraire, mon frere, he was Irish and hence his induction into the Irish-American Baseball Hall of Fame.

David Cone was a delightful lunch partner who regaled us with wonderful stories. Mike asked him about being a Red Sox – particularly a Yankees game at Fenway Park in 2001 in this his last year in baseball.

Mike told him, “You were pitching for the Red Sox opposing Yankees’ starter, Mike Mussina. Mussina was pitching a perfect game and you had a shut out going into the ninth inning.”

David looked at Mike with a measure of excitement, smiled and replied, “It could have been yesterday. Tino Martinez hit a single, but Jorge Posada popped up for the first out. Paul O’ Neill hit a perfect double-play grounder that should have ended the inning and my outing.”

Mike interjected, “But the Sox second baseman, Lou Merloni, whiffed on the play.”

“Correct,” David agreed smiling, while shaking his head. “Instead of getting out of the inning, I had runners at first and third with only one out.”

Mike asked, “Didn’t Joe Kerrigan, the Red Sox manager, came out of the dugout and asked you if you wanted to stay in the game?”

“Right, you are Mike! You have a good memory. I told him what he wanted to hear, ‘leave me in.’ The last thing I wanted to do was give up the ball when I still had a shutout to protect.”

The next Yankee batter, Enrique Wilson, hit a double that scored Clay Bellinger who had replaced Martinez as a pinch runner.

Cone: “Kerrigan took me out of the game. I knew my career was almost over. This could have been my last hurrah, but Mike (Mussina) had a better day. What was utterly amazing was, as I neared the dugout, the Fenway sell-out crowd broke into a standing ovation.

“Guys, understand how amazing that was. 2001 was my only year on the team and I had pitched against their Sox with the Royals, the Blue Jays and, of course, their evil empire, the Yankees.

“What a thrill!”

“You tipped your hat to the crowd,” Mike replied.

“Yes, I did, they deserved that.”

I sat there mesmerized taking it all in. I’ve realized that professional athletes have a photographic memory of all their highs and lows. But David Cone’s responses to Mike Scott’s  prompts were terrific.

All this dialogue took place over servings of cheeseburgers, fries and a couple rounds of Guinness. 

For sure, for me and for Mike, the best lunch at Foley’s, ever.

I first penned, “Through the Heartland,” in 2001 and I included it in my 2011 anthology, “The Big Orange Dog and Other Stories.” I love it and have edited it since then tweaking this and that. Perhaps this is the final edition? In any event, I present it to celebrate these two mile-stones and the fact that I am now 82 years old.

Ten hours out of Chicago, the sun outraces the train as it sets across the flat, western horizon. Nighttime has come to the Great Plains and Kansas speeds by under the brilliance of countless stars shining across a clear, prairie July sky. Blackened fields, silhouetted by a three-quarter moon, stretch out to meet the stars at the horizon.

 He sits alone in the dome car of a westbound Santa Fe Chief, staggered by the scenery, unable to sleep. At 17 it is all too much, too grand to miss. Reaching into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, he launches one out of the pack and into his mouth with a practiced skill. Clicking open his Zippo, he strikes the wheel and lights another Marlboro. In a few minutes, his eyes adjust to the darkness of the dome car lighted only by muted bulbs outlining the aisle and the glow of his cigarette.

Both the fields and the sky draw his attention and his thoughts wander with them. This is the furthest he has ever been from home and each mile he travels opens the distance. Ahead lays Oklahoma, the deserts of New Mexico, the mountains of Arizona and the Continental Divide. He remembers the exhilaration earlier that day when the train crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri and the West. What about his destination, Riverside, California? What will he discover there, what will he discover about himself? The process began earlier that day when he fell into the company of a group of sailors straight out of the Great Lakes Training Center on their way to join the Seventh Fleet. They treated him as an equal, playing cards and drinking beer. He’s already changing although he cannot explain it.

He becomes part of the rhythm and motion of the train united with the darkness, the Luna landscape and the stars.

Suddenly, he’s startled by a visual jolt. In the distance there is a light. “No, it is not, but wait, it is a light, a street light. I’ll be damned.”

It passes. “Hold on” he thinks, “here comes another one.” It is about a mile down the track. Then another and another, the intervals between light poles drawing closer and closer together until a small town appears, a few buildings, a gas station, some others, maybe stores or a post office, all illuminated as if to hold back the sea of night.

 It passes in a blur. Blackness returns as the gaps between streetlights lengthens and lengthens until they are no more.

Only Kansas at night returns once again.

“Wow.” Lighting up another Marlboro, he returns to his fascination with the magic of it all…Sleep will have to wait. “What will come next?”                

John Delach

February 2026. Originally published January 2002

This is one of my two favorite pieces about Brooklyn. These gate trains were taken out of service in 1958 and the el itself ceased operating in 1969 and was torn down south of Broadway.

Clang-clink, clank-clank, cling-clank, clang-clink, four bells, each rung twice, eight repetitions, the sound of the conductors’ song. No two sound the same; each bell identifies the conductor who rang it. Four different conductors play their song every day at each station on the Myrtle Avenue Elevated line.

The train’s crew, four conductors and the driver (or motorman) amble from their rest house at the Bridge Street Station and take their assigned positions on their five-car train. The conductors work outside forcing them to adjust their uniforms to meet their environment. Winter, cold and freezing rain are the worst elements and quilted vests, rubber gloves, ribbed shoes and plastic hat protectors’ help. But, at every station, they must leave the warmth of the coach and return to their position onto the open platforms between each coach.

With a lurch, the gate train leaves Bridge Street and downtown Brooklyn, its courthouses, law offices, the cavernous Dime Savings Bank, department stores like Abraham & Straus, Mays and Martins and its theaters, the Brooklyn Paramount, Fox and the RKO Albee. Nosily, the train crosses Flatbush Avenue and makes its way north through Fort Greene and Bedford – Stuyvesant past tenements and public housing projects, parks, storefronts and schools. Hovering two stories above Myrtle Avenue, trains travel on rails supported by wooden ties and steel beams past windows with open curtains, blinds, or shades revealing living rooms and kitchens, plants, bird cages, furniture, lamps, radios and televisions. Peering from coach windows, passengers glimpse people in their apartments. On hot days, women relaxing on pillows propped on windowsills stare back forcing the voyeurs to avert their eyes in embarrassment.

As the train pulls into a station, each conductor steps between the two platforms and faces the station. Straddling the space between two coaches, he observes the passengers waiting to detrain and board and pulls two iron levers toward him opening the gates. Passengers hurry by and, when all are on board, he takes a final look at the activity on the platform, reverses the levers and closes the gates. Then each conductor in turn performs the same ceremony, pulling the cord to his right ringing the bell on the next platform working toward the front of the train. “Clang-clang” it sings alerting the next conductor that the gates behind him are secured. He yanks the cord twice confirming that his gates are closed. The chorus continues until the final conductor rings a bell in the motorman’s cab signaling him “You have the railroad and it’s okay to go.”

Sparks fly from the third rail, motors strain emitting an electrical odor as coaches move over track joints. Trains cross busy streets active with trackless trolleys, diesel buses, cars, delivery trucks horse, wagons and push carts, relics of a bygone era, Pedestrians J-walk weaving and dodging to avoid colliding with this traffic.

Wooden platforms with ornate Victorian style station houses line the El. Each is named after the street below, many for famous Americans like Washington, Vanderbilt and Franklin.

Afternoon trains carry a melting pot mix of passengers, residents returning to their homes, Black and Hispanic women carrying groceries, their wash or packages from the central post office and German and Italian housewives, together or with children returning to Queens from shopping trips downtown. Post school time trains include high school students, boys from Brooklyn Tech with slide rules, science and engineering textbooks, girls from Dominican Commercial wearing pleated skirts and knee-high socks and boys sporting ties and jackets from St John’s Prep and Bishop Loughlin. Workers from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tired and dirty, board the train at a station appropriately named Navy Street and brewery workers from Rheingold and Schaefer board at Broadway. The train continues north through Bushwick, crossing into Ridgewood, Queens until it reaches the end of the line at Metropolitan Avenue and the low-density communities and plentiful cemeteries that populate Maspeth and Middle Village.

For 75 years, the melody of the gate train is played until the tide of time and progress stills its sound in 1958. More efficient rebuilt wooden cars requiring only one conductor to operate doors replace the gate trains and the gatemen. For eleven more years trains continued to roll. Then in 1969, to the relief of all who live there, the Myrtle Avenue El meets the same fate as the gate trains did and is demolished south of Broadway.

Sunlight returns to a 35-block stretch Myrtle Avenue after years of perpetual darkness and the relative quiet of a Brooklyn street replaces the repetitive noise of passing trains. Still neighborhoods like Fort Greene, Clintonville and Bed-Sty struggled through economic downturns, the drug invasion capped by crack and other crises. Now these neighborhoods are changing once again as gentrification takes hold. Ready or not Brooklyn is back.

In 2016 my daughter, Beth, her husband, Tom and their two children, Marlowe and Cace move into a brand-new apartment building on the corner of Flushing Ave. and Vanderbilt Avenue across the street from the old Brooklyn Navy Yard and two blocks from Myrtle Avenue. There is nothing visual to indicate that the elevated structure was once there.