John Delach

This is about Queens and its greatest advocate, Jimmy Breslin. Queens is the fourth borough in terms of prestige. Finishing next to last stinks but being the laughing stock is reserved for last place and, at least, Queens’s residents don’t have to endure the abuse and ridicule directed at the residents of Staten Island.

Staten Island will always be the least respected, least understood or cared about borough in New York City. The sophisticated, pretty, moneyed, self-absorbed young elites who populate and socialize the Manhattan night-scene scorn all the outer boroughs and Jersey traffickers. They derisively dismiss them as rabble: “The Bridge &Tunnel (B&T) crowd.” Staten Islanders don’t even qualify to be so disdained even though they’ve had their bridge since 1965. Pity!

Queens is next to last in prestige on the NYC social food-chain and will also always remain so. It has none of the grit, character, drama or clout of Brooklyn or The Bronx. In fact, if not for its two airports, Kennedy, (JFK) and LaGuardia, (LGA,) or the fact that people must drive through Queens or ride the LIRR to reach the super-wealthy East-End, few would care if Queens slipped back into the sea.

(The thought occurs: If technology had advanced  just a bit further along in 1925 when Fitzgerald published, “The Great Gatsby,” poor Jay would have avoided his downfall by being flown or helicoptered over the hellacious Flushing Meadows ash dumpsite. Again, Pity!)

We have the Mets, two world’s fairs – although the 1964-65 Fair was cheapened by the line in, “Men in Black:” Why else did you think we put a world’s fair in Queens?

While I was born in Brooklyn, I emigrated to Ridgewood, Queens as soon as Mom returned home from Bushwick Hospital. Mary Ann was born in Astoria, grew up in Astoria and Flushing. We met at the fair on June 6, 1964 and we returned there on our official first date. I actually took her to the top of the towers where the alien space ship was cleverly hidden in the movie, Men in Black…Who knew?

When first married, we rented in Kew Garden Hills. After our daughter, Beth was born, we moved to Middle Village. We rented a house from my aunt at a discounted amount, but, when it came time to buy, she wouldn’t sell. We left Queens for Port Washington in 1977.

When I was in college, I discovered Jimmy Breslin, then a regular columnist at the Herald Tribune. I quickly realized that Breslin was a treasure and both a critic and an advocate for the fourth borough. My belief in Jimmy was confirmed by a letter to the editor about the late Ed Lowe, a beloved columnist at Newsday. Early in Ed’s career, he received a congratulatory phone call from Breslin.

Bill Mason described the event in a letter: “Ed got up from his desk and walked very slowly over to mine. His eyes were wide open and his mouth was pretty much the same way. He seemed to be in a trance.

‘That was Jimmy Breslin,’ Lowe said. ‘Jimmy Breslin telephoned me.’

“Apparently, Breslin had read an article by Lowe and called him out of the blue. Lowe said Breslin told him, ‘Kid, you just remember to stay out of Queens. That’s my territory.”

Breslin got Queens and his pen gave life to minor characters, small-time hustlers, grifters and wannabees who populated the perpetually darkened streets under the elevated lines along Jamaica Avenue, Roosevelt Avenue, 31^st Street, Liberty Avenue and Palmetto Street. He understood Glendale, Sunnyside, Cypress Hills, Corona, Maspeth, Flushing and South Ozone Park.

Breslin gave us Fat Thomas, Klein the lawyer, Shelly, the bail bondsman, Marvin, the torch and Un Occhio, the mob boss.

He got The Pastrami King and the Queens Boulevard Courthouse scene. He got ex-borough president, Donald Manes, who ran unopposed across party lines multiple times before committing suicide following a municipal scandal that Breslin first broke. He christened Queens’ D/A, Brown, “Duck-down Brown,” for hiding behind his desk when then a judge during a shoot-out in his court room. Breslin said this about the blood feud between union boss, Mike Quill and mayor John Lindsay: “John Lindsay looks at Quill and sees the past and Mike Quill looks at Lindsay and sees the Church of England.”

And, of course, the gripping and terrifying saga of Breslin’s bizarre relationship with David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam.

Breslin understood the mentality of holding functions in halls. Church halls, VFW halls, Knights of Columbus, Masons and American Legion halls. If it were a social event, we called it a racket. Local married couples dressed in their best, took tables for ten or twelve, brought their own bottle of Seagram’s or Canadian Club for their tables and bought set-ups that consisted of ginger ale, club soda and a bowl of ice from the sponsor to cover the nut.

He covered endless events held in halls, political and social, triumphs and tragedy, weddings, funerals celebrations and protests. If you knew Queens, you knew halls; folding chairs and portable tables that the organizing committees set-up and dismantled.

Jimmy Breslin got it. He ended his run at Newsday with this sign off in his final column:

 “Thanks for the use of the hall.”   

Sometimes we recognize the truth immediately, usually when it is self-evident. But sometimes it takes a bit of a jar to recognize when it is present.

One recent Sunday afternoon, I found myself in the Port Washington Library making copies for our writer’s workshop. As I was leaving, I noticed a stack of books on a table close to the exit. One stood out, a rather thick non-fiction book with the title, “The Fate of the Day,” by Rick Atkinson. This was the second volume in his trilogy about the American Revolution.

My cousin, Bill, my friend, Geoff, and I are all avid Rick Atkinson fans who have read his trilogy about the US Army’s battles in Europe during the Second World War. In the same way we each read his first volume about the revolution, “The British are Coming.”

I did talk it over with Bill as to who’s turn is it to purchase the book this time and we concluded it was mine. Too bad, talk about inflation, its cover price is $42!

Mary Ann ordered it from Amazon Prime on the afternoon of May 4 and it arrived before 9 AM the next morning. Another massive undertaking, 618 pages of script! Looking at my new book, I wondered how long it’s been since the author’s first volume was launched? I looked it up, April of 2019.

There it was for anyone to see, the ugly truth that it could take Atkinson six years to publish his new and final volume.

SIX YEARS: OMG!

If the final volume takes that long, I will be 87 when it’s published:

What are the odds that I will still be around?

And if I am, what will be the odds that I can still absorb its content?

And if I can absorb it will I want to?

FUHGEDDABOUTIT!       

May 2014, Revised May 2025

When the 7:07 PM Metro North / Connecticut Transit train to New Haven left Grand Central Terminal on time on Friday evening, May 9, 2014, it included one of the last bar / lounge coach cars operating on any American commuter railroad. Officially dubbed, Café Cars, this forty- something years old unit was removed from service at the end of that run together with three other lounge coaches.

They were rolling dinosaurs and only lasted this long because Connecticut deferred replacing their M-2 commuter car fleet well beyond other railroads had like Metro North and the Long Island. Their very existence was odd as the Nutmeg State still chose to include Café Cars when they ordered new train sets in the early 1970s at a time  almost all other systems were eliminating these coaches as they modernized their equipment.

Like Chicago; Jim Hagelow recalled “We lost ours years ago and with them, many fond memories. Birthday parties, Cubs outings, ‘Oh Shit’ card games and singing Christmas carols. Every year for years, a fellow from Peat Marwick and I led the car singing carols during our rolling party.” Jim also admitted a universal truth: “I think my wife was happy when it went away.”

Geoff Jones remembered that the older pre-MTA equipment included lounge cars with upholstered chairs and couches that could be moved around. “Some had service bars at one end, but there were others with long bars running along one side of windows. The railroad had a bartender who rode south from Poughkeepsie in the morning running a continental breakfast service. At night he became the bartender for the northbound return run to Poughkeepsie where they put him up in a small apartment. On weekends, he continued further north until he reached his family home.”

“When the new equipment arrived, booze carts on the platforms at GCT replaced the lounges. But drinks bought there didn’t last to Peekskill where a funny thing often happened on Fridays. The platform is located on a pretty sharp bend of the Hudson. The train emptied on the right so it took the conductor a long time to check it all to see if passengers were safely off. Just across the street was a pizzeria and thirsty commuters who still had a way to go pre-ordered pizzas and six-packs of beer from pay phones in GCT (no cell phones) to meet the train. A designated runner left with the first wave of exiting passengers to secure the order and re-board the train. Usually, the run went smoothly, but I do believe the conductor held the train when it didn’t. The pizza always smelled great but it was only ten minutes to my stop in Garrison so I didn’t join in.”  

After the LIRR introduced their new M-1 coaches without bar cars in 1969, for a while they turned trains that went long distances into bar cars by putting a cart and bartender on one of the units. He maneuvered the cart taking over one of the two vestibules in that car. He disabled the doors behind him and the conductor would announce his location. Pity the passengers, especially non-drinkers in that car. A line would snake down the narrow aisle with thirsty patrons competing for space with others carrying their drinks back to their friends. If that didn’t create sufficient discomfort for regular riders, once the bartender came on board, that coach officially became a smoking car!

My own make-shift bar experience came on my son’s last commute to Port Washington  before he was to be married and moved to Fairfield, CT. I bought two cans of Budweiser 16 ounce tall boys to share on our express run home. While the train was still in Queens, we made an unscheduled stop for what the crew described as a medical emergency. “EMS is on the way and will be here soon.”

We had finished our Buds, the doors were open and I spied a bodega at the end of the platform across Northern Boulevard. “Watch my briefcase,” I said to Mike and made my way as quickly as I could.

Dodging traffic, I replenished our diminished rations and made it back as the EMS fellows were removing the distressed commuter from the train. “Hey, is that for us?” one of them called out as I re-boarded.

“Afraid not fellas, but if you had let me know, I would have picked up two more.”