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.”