John Delach

Mary Ann, Maggie and I travelled from Port Washington to Sanibel Island five times from 2000 to 2004. We  managed to convert our dog from a sickly and horrible car mate into a road buddy, Maggie added to our adventures. Back then the two Carolinas didn’t allow pets to stay in local motels. We avoided those states by  making our first stop in Emporia, Virginia, the last town before North Carolina and our second stop in Brunswick, Georgia, south of the Carolinas.

Both were dog friendly. On our last morning, fed, walked and ready to roll, Maggie would complain about these boxes we stayed in the past two nights and this rolling box we traveled in during the day. She’d verbalize her dissatisfaction with a combination of sighs and whines before settling down.

Although, our morning walks on the beach were perfect adventures for Maggie, I recognized  that I was breaking a local law by letting Maggie off the leash. True, but keeping my water-crazy Golden leashed on the beach would have been impossible. Taking our walks early in the morning and leaving the beach as soon as possible once we reached the public park was my game-plan to minimize confrontation with a non-dog lover or someone with an authoritative bent.

I thought this out, understanding that when somebody confronted me for Maggie being off leash, they would be correct to do so and I couldn’t challenge them on the facts. I considered different approaches until I found what I hoped would work if I could pull it off.

When this confrontation actually transpired, I was prepared for it. Maggie and I had just emerged from the woods onto the state park beach, when I caught sight of a couple walking toward us. We were still close to the surf and they were about half-way up the beach. Normally, I would have leashed Maggie at this point and headed inland, but an instinct told me to leash her, but stay near the surf.

Sure enough, the man walked away from the woman and headed in our direction on a diagonal path, despite her protestations not to do that.

 Oh shit, I said to myself, Here we go! Okay, you’ve got this down. Give him hell, John.

My protagonist quickly closed the gap between us so I chose to stop, tighten

Maggie’s collar to bring her close and wait for his assault. He didn’t disappoint. Instead of stopping far enough away to maintain respect for my space, he aggressively stepped forward occupying it.

Self-righteously, he proceeded to lecture me on my violations against the local laws for the proper handling of dogs on the beach. I let him lecture me until I could sense that he was running out of the energy to sustain his own self-serving indignation. Then I struck!

First off, as I began to attack him, I stepped toward him while lifting myself up to my full height. He gave way as I took a more aggressive step. I continued to close in on him making him uncomfortable. I lifted my right arm into the air and commanded: “You are correct, it seems I have violated a municipal ordinance, but this is nothing. What you should worry about are the laws of God!”

At this point, I took another step toward him, again, forcing him to give way: “Do you believe in your Lord, Jesus Christ? Are you ready to be saved? Have you repented? I ask you one last time, HAVE YOU REPENTED!”

One look told me that I had reduced him to nothing more than the jerk he was. With that, I turned Maggie away from him  and we walked away at a rapid pace leaving him behind. As we left the beach. I looked off to where his wife stood and it was obvious, she knew he had it coming.

As we walked off the beach, I told Maggie, “Another good day in paradise. We’ll do it again, tomorrow.”

Instinctively, she senses the water. Perched on the back seat of our SUV, Maggie extends her nose out through the partially opened window, her senses and  experience tells her that this is the way to the beach. Like a child, after a long automobile ride to a favorite seaside destination, she cannot contain herself as the Gulf of Mexico reveals itself.

Mary Ann lets us off before continuing on to her journey morning tennis  lession. Maggie and I will make our morning trek along the beach and back to our Sanibel rental. Maggie is a maniac, an ill-behaved Golden Retriever who luckily found her way to two of us, who can deal with her insanity.

Once on the ground, I hook my hand under her collar. Tugging, bucking, crying, she pulls me along until I secure my footing into the sand. I speak to her as I look up and down the beach. “It’s okay, Maggie, it’s okay.” The beach is clear; only a few early morning shellers, no unattended children and no other dogs. I take her collar in one hand and draw her close making her leash go slack. With my other hand, I open the clasp and let go.

Maggie crouches and pushes off with all her strength, kicking up sand as she bolts toward the water quickly closing the distance until she reaches the surf and plunges in. She swims through small breakers, turns, catches the next wave and body surfs back to shore.

 I jog toward the sun and Maggie darts ahead, establishing her own routine. She explores the beach, searching for sticks and coconuts to carry, sea gulls and osprey to scatter, or a decaying fish to sniff and, if its scent is acceptable, to roll upon.

 “Maggie, stop that.” I yell, but she ignores me until I have moved too far ahead for her to be comfortable. She stops and trots to catch up, overtakes me and veers back into the water, tail held high, to ride the surf again.

And so, our morning routine unfolds until we reach the public beach  populated with a few early arriving families ending my insane Golden Retriever’s daily morning activity to run freely and frolic in the surf.

She understands, I attach her to the leash as we begin our land journey back to the rental. I am proud of her. Yeah, she’s a half-baked poorly raised  rescue, but she’s ours and I am happy she loves swimming so much. When she came to us, she couldn’t travel in a car without her throwing up and dripping with uncontrollable sweat. Over time, she came around and we could include her on that three-day drive from Port Washington to Sanibel  without any of these issues.

We also taught her how to swim in Hempstead Harbor in Long Island Sound. We used tennis balls, another favorite, having her fetch them at the water’s edge. We threw them further and further until she had to accept floating and began to understand how to swim and reach them. Maggie quickly caught on to what being an aquatic retriever was all about.     

As we walk back to the house, she’d looks at me and whines. I’d look back at her and say: “Tomorrow is only a day away.”

(To be continued.)           

On the morning of Saturday, May 10, 1987, Ronald and Nancy Reagan attended the funeral Mass of CIA Director William Casey who had died the previous Wednesday. George de Lama reported for the Chicago Tribune that, “Casey died of pneumonia after being incapacitated since undergoing surgery for removal of two brain tumors last December. He resigned from his CIA post in February.”

“Security was tight in Roslyn, the Long Island town where St. Mary’s Church, the Casey’s local parish is located. The Reagans came directly there for the Requiem Mass with only invited guests allowed inside the church. Former president Richard Nixon sat next to Mrs. Reagan and the red-brick church was filled by…’virtually every senior member of the administration who came to honor and bury the crusty old spy who began his career by dropping Allied agents behind Nazi lines during World War II.”

Bishop John McGann, head of the Rockville Center (Long Island) diocese said the Mass and eulogized his old friend. This didn’t prevent McGann from criticizing Casey on his anti-communist views especially toward President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista government. Neither the Reagans nor the Casey family ever publicly commented on McGann’s remarks.  

Casey was close to General William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan and served under him in several capacities in the newly formed OSS, Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War.   Casey joined other significant intelligence operators like Richard Helms and William Colby, both of whom later headed the CIA. In 1943, Donovan sent him to London where he took charge of inserting allied agents into German held territory. “Helms said years later that Casey had a feel for things clandestine. He also admired Casey’s ability to make hard decisions.”

Casey served during both the Nixon and Ford administrations. He only met Ronald Reagan in 1980, but soon after, Reagan invited Casey to become his campaign manager. Their campaign was a total success that swept Reagan into office. Reagan and Casey were sympatico when it came to implementing the “Reagan Doctrine” supporting anticommunist resistance movements.

One of their targets was Daniel Ortega, the revolutionary who led his Sandinista National Liberation Front to overthrow the US supported, long time, banana republic dictator, Anastasio Somoza one year earlier and condemn him to the dust pan of history.

“A Marxist-Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution…” that made him and his government a natural target for the Reagan Doctrine.    

Once empowered as head of the CIA Casey initiated military action to support the Contras, the most organized group actively at war with the Sandinistas.

Under Casey, CIA Operatives became involved in various black-ops like mining harbors and flying numerous missions supporting and supplying the Contras.

When Congress caught wind of what was going on, they introduced bills to curtail these activities. Essentially, Casey ignored these mandates whenever he could. Eventually, Congress cut off all funding that supported the Contras.

Undeterred, Casey and the President, agreed to fund them using creative yet illegal funding mechanism. Casey and the boys and girls at the CIA engineered a plan where Israel would sell US made anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and we would direct them to send the proceeds to the Contras. Even members of Reagan’s inner circle like George Shultz and Ed Meese opposed these actions.

Eventually, this led to a congressional investigation. As the circle began to close, it became apparent that Director Casey was at the center of these activities. It was about this time when Casey was about to be called before the committee that Casey was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the former chief United States delegate to the United Nations defended Casey in her eulogy at his mass. “Supporting the Nicaraguan freedom fighters had a special priority for him, no question about it, but that had no more priority than law.” Dr. Kirkpatrick characterized Mr. Casey “as a bold, committed man in an age rent by controversy. He was not,’ she added, ‘afraid of the Devil.”

Casey’s wife, Sophia Kurz Casey, asked the mourners that in lieu of flowers or other contributions, “they make donations to the William J. Casy Fund for the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters.”  

We can only speculate about President Reagan’s state of mind as he considered the turmoil that surrounded Bill Casey when he died. The Democrats had been closing in on initiating a congressional investigation to determine if the President’s administration had knowingly violated  Congress’ mandate not to supply the Contras with assistance.

The key was Bill Casey. Casey knew where all the bodies were buried. Like or hate Casey, you have to admit that he took what he knew to the grave. Without Casey, the chain of responsibility was broken.

Bill Daniel Ortega was peacefully voted out of office in 1990, but regained control in 2006. There he remains to this day. Now, 78, he has reverted to becoming just another Banana Republic dictator.                      

John Delach

Updated October 2023: Originally published in June 2014

A recent message sent to my blog prompted me to issue this encore edition.

A reader discovered my piece and chose to send me his recollection of living in a post-World War II Quonset Hut.

 This was M.K.’s comment: My mom and myself lived in 24-26 14^th Walk, Jackson Heights, NY. I was about five or six. I loved it there. I have very happy memories of running around on the grass, playing. Thank you for a wonderful story of those Quonset Huts. You made me so happy thinking of that time. Do you know, I have never forgotten that address.

One Sunday afternoon, when I was about seven years old, my mother took me on one of our many outings to Canarsie to spend the afternoon on the pier overlooking Jamacia Bay. That pier was one of our regular Sunday destinations, but this trip had a different twist. Leaving to go home, we walked under the Belt Parkway overpass, but Mom didn’t head for the bus stop on Rockaway Parkway. Instead, she led me toward the Quonset Huts lined up in rows and rows that were a fixture for as long as I could remember.

As we walked toward one of the huts, I realized that they were deserted. Mom made sure no one was around then pushed open the door at one the end of the hut. I followed her inside this curved structure where the walls and the roof were one. It was empty, no furniture, no rugs, no remnants or reminders of who had lived there. I don’t even remember seeing a sink or a toilet. We only saw one half as each hut was divided by a corrugated metal wall in the middle to form two homes. But I do remember what my mother said out loud as we left: “I don’t know how a woman could make that her home and live there.”

When next we visited the pier, the Quonset Huts were gone and soon construction began on a public housing project that became known as the Bayview Houses.

But the image of those cylindrical huts sheathed in corrugated steel lined up like an army of gigantic half-buried cans of soda or beer remained in my memory. There was another colony of Quonset Huts that I recall being located on vacant land in Maspeth, Queens, a short distance from where my Uncle Bill, Aunt Helen and my Christman cousins lived. This development was arranged on the slope of a hill that led up Elliot Ave. from 69^th Street to Mount Olivet Cemetery. Curiously, I can picture these tin cans vividly, but, like Canarsie, I can’t remember any images of the folks who lived there.

Quonset Hut housing: the why and how:

Our deliberate detonation of two Atom Bombs on Japan suddenly and dramatically ended the Second World War. Overnight, the incredible number of young American men who had been assembled for the most massive of any seaborne invasion ever envisioned; the assault on the Home Island of Honshu became superfluous.

Overnight, millions of GIs, swabies, leathernecks and coasties who were waiting to meet their fate when they invaded Japan were ordered to stand down. The war was over. Each expressed, the same emotional prayer of rejoicing: I’m free, free, thank God Almighty; I’m free at last!

And what does a young man want once he finally feels free enough to look himself in a mirror, smile and reflect, “Damn I’m not going die alone out here.” What does he want? “The girl back home!”

The official date for the birth of the first Baby Boomers was January 1, 1946. That’s reasonable. The boys in Europe who did the heaviest fighting had already been discharged in May. A good number had already married their sweethearts before going overseas that gave them an early staring point. Nature’s course was inevitable but, with the sudden end of the war in the Pacific, a new reality quickly hit; millions of newly discharged veterans and their wives had no place to live!

“The housing industry, still reeling from the Great Depression, had been further diminished by a wartime shortage of materials and labor…As a result; an estimated one million families were forced to double up. Before the end of 1946 that number would triple.”

Fortunately, our Nation remained on a war-footing and the right organizations existed on  local, state and national levels to implement emergency housing. They used what was available, military housing on bases made instantly surplus, other makeshift facilities and  used trailers. But, for the most part, they relied on a ubiquitous and readily available alternative, the Quonset Hut.

Conceived by the US Navy before we entered the war, the original huts were built on their new base at Quonset Point, RI to equip a remote post on Greenland. The design was based on a British expedient building, the Nissan Hut. But His Majesty’s government in its infinite wisdom had given the copyrights to Peter Norman Nissan, who designed this beauty when serving with the 29^th Company Royal Engineers during World War I in recognition of his service. Some legal eagle’s in the Pentagon saw the patent implications of deeming these structures to be Nissan Huts, so they became Quonset Huts.

The emergency housing units went up quickly once construction began and most opened in 1946. One of the largest developments was in Los Angeles, the Roger Young Village, built on a surplus aerodrome; it housed over 1,500 families. The press reported that eager husbands camped out two to three days before registration began.

Four hundred and thirteen were assembled in Canarsie, each hut accommodating two families. The New York Times reported on October 16, 1946 that the first 75 units in a development in Jackson Heights, Queens were accepted just ten days after construction  began. Ultimately, over 1,800 Quonset Huts went up on the former site of Holmes Airport.

By 1951 these humble dwelling had fulfilled their reason to exist, but it took another two years for their hosts including the City of New York to evict the slackers, schemers, grifters and deadwood forcing them to move on down the road. By then, most vets and their families had moved on to the new suburban developments like Levittown and the beat went on.

The huts were dis-assembled, their mission completed. Here today, gone tomorrow. The land was re-developed with permanent housing. I believe that my research revealed the answer to Mom’s lament: “I don’t know how a woman could make that her home and live there?”

“Ma, she didn’t have a choice.”