John Delach

John Delach

May 2023

Part One

Like losing contact with an old friend, AM radio seems to be disappearing from its familiar frequencies. Not just from headlines, but from relevance itself. AM Radio is slip-sliding away.

 Sadly, the internet and social media have become the main sources for the American public to discover and understand current events. Television weakly occupies third place with radio, in particular AM radio, and newspapers essentially invisible to the average American under sixty.

Once upon a time, but not that long ago, by 7:00 AM every morning about 40% of the driveways in our neighborhood would be occupied by one two or even three morning newspapers delivered by different drivers. Today a single driver delivers newspapers to fewer than 10% of these houses. Granted, many former print customers seem to now read the E-edition of these papers, but at most, the total readership of both print and e-editions is less than 25% of traditional subscribers. The absence of printed newspapers is all too apparent, but the loss of listeners to the AM Band radio stations is far more subtle.

The New York airwaves remain filled with the sound of major stations like WMCA, WFAN, WOR, WABC, WCBS and WINS, but they no longer rely on listeners to tune into to their broadcasts on traditional AM frequencies. They broadcast simultaneously on FM outlets, and Internet radio. A casual listener probably could not identify the original source.

Recently, I discovered that station on-air identification has changed to lessen the identity of their AM frequency, or eliminate it altogether. WFAN identifies it’s call letters as “WFAN 101.9 FM” eliminating 660 AM. The all-news 1010 WINS now tells us we are listening to “1010 WINS all news 92.3 FM” and its sister station, all news, WCBS identifies itself as “WCBS News

radio 880, 101.1 MHZ.

Peter Funk recently reminisced in The Wall Street Journal: “When I lived in Denver in the early 1970s, Sunday nights included an audio excursion of my hometown of New York, a trip only AM radio could provide. At 770 on the dial, I listened to WABC, with its distinctive disc jockeys, rock music and ‘news at :25 and :55’ via a signal traveling more than 1,600 miles.”

After, World War II, the major AM stations, by then, long established, continued to broadcast personality shows like Martin Block’s Make-Believe Ballroom (WNEW) and live studio broadcasts featuring prominent performers. Almost all of the major stations kept their music mainstream, safe, and middle of the road.

Enter Alan Freed, who, I believe is the prime mover who influenced Rock and Roll’s take-over of AM radio content. If you question my belief, I recommend you visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. When you enter the hall’s tribute to rock and roll radio and who set it free, you will be attracted to a silver box set on a pedestal in the center of the room bathed by a spotlight that highlights the room. Alone, under that bright light, the silver box contains Alan Freed’s ashes.

Alan Freed’s career began in in June of 1945 at WAKR in Akron, Ohio. Freed was the bad boy of his era and faced several fines and suspensions from management including a five-year fight to leave WAKR that he lost in court. In 1950. Freed joined WJW (850 AM)) in Cleveland to host their midnight program. Prior to his arrival at WJW, he met Leo Mintz, owner of Record Rendezvous, one of Cleveland’s largest record stores. Mintz told Freed that he had begun selling black music, then called soul or rhythm and blues (R&B), and that he noticed increased interest in these records in his store by white customers.

Freed peppered his on-air speech with hipster language and on July 11, 1951, began playing R&B records on a main-stream radio station. He began calling his show “The Moondog House” and described himself as the “King of the Moondoggers.”

“He addressed his listeners as if they were all a part of a mythical kingdom of hipsters united in their love for black music. He also began popularizing the phrase, ‘rock and roll’ to describe the music he played.”

The following spring, Freed was one of the organizers who created, “The Moondog Coronation Ball”, a five-act show that exceeded the capacity of the Cleveland Arena, an event that now is considered the first rock and roll concert. Over-crowding almost led to a riot and Freed’s popularity soared.

In July 1954, Freed followed his success to New York City and WINS (1010 AM.)

In 1956, he produced a major rock and roll show at New York’s Paramount Theatre, but once again overcrowding again led to a near riot. Unfortunately, badly behaved American youth, rioted at the same time Hungarian youth were dying in an unsuccessful fight to free themselves from the USSR. Life Magazine produced side-by-side pictures of our youngsters battling NYC policemen while Hungarian youngsters shed their blood under Russian soldiers AK-47s.

Freed went on to WABC 770 (AM) another of New York’s powerhouse rock and roll station.

He became embroiled in the federal government’s investigation of payola by disc jockeys. Payola scandals appear from time to time. Payola in broadcasting is defined as an induvial or an FCC licensed radio station accepting money to play a specific song, or anything else. Payola is always with us.   In 2006, the latest settlement, four major radio monopolies, CBS Radio, Citadel, Clear Channel and Entercom paid Uncle $12.5 million to settle payola charges.

Alan Freed refused to testify or to plead so WABC fired him on November 21, 1959.

He died a year later, but his legacy had already been established. Part Two will explore that legacy.

Recently my memory was triggered by two serendipitous events: The first came from a fellow member of my writer’s workshop. The second by a bit of news supplied in an email from my daughter.

Party Lines

Joel, a fellow member of my writer’s workshop was reading from a new novel he is writing and presented a passage about the main character, Stan who was talking to his sweetheart, Sheila, on the telephone. He had to remind her when she changed the subject that they were speaking on a party line and this subject was too sensitive for others who may be listening in. He explained that it would be better to hold this conversation until they were alone together.

Ah, the party line. Remember party lines? If you are of a certain age, chances are that you had a phone that was shared with others who were probably strangers. It was also called a multiparty – line, a shared service line and a party wire.

 My mother leased our first phone from New York Telephone (a.k.a. Ma Bell) in the mid-1950s. In those days, you didn’t buy the phone, you leased it. Your choice was limited to a black metal device made by another American Telephone and Telegraph, (AT&T) subsidiary, Western Electric.

My mother deliberately chose a party line to save money. I rarely went near that phone as her words were pounded into my head that phones were a luxury and outgoing calls must only be made for important reasons. Important reasons did not include talking to friends. Like most of you, I remember our first phone number: EVergreen-2-5849, but I don’t remember ever making an outgoing call on it. Mom’s preaching was effective. Of course, making a long-distance call was out of the question.

I think we had three or four families on our party line, but I never picked it up to see if I could listen to other conversations. A lasting consequence of my early relationship with that black gadget, and all that followed including its latest incarnation, my I-Phone 13, is that I hate talking on that evil device. Granted, I’m not as bad as some of my contemporaries who treat it like a pay phone, for outgoing calls only, but I’m not far behind. To me, speaking on a phone, any phone for more than five minutes is a waste of time.

How I Met my Wife and Our First Date

Just last week, my daughter, Beth, sent me an article about a project, still in the making, to restore the towers that are part of the New York State pavilion from the 1964 – 1965 World’s Fair. Beth thought to send this to me because those towers played a role in Mary Ann’s and my courtship in 1964.

My buddies and I, all of us over 18, then the drinking age in New York, figured the World’s Fair had to be a great place to pick up girls. Early in June, we made our way to the Wisconsin Pavilion that featured the world’s largest wheel of cheddar cheese that weighed in at 17 1/2 tons.

 Obviously, it wasn’t cheese we were after, it was girls. Our destination was a bar they called, The Red Garter, where the bands played banjo-centric folk music, then a popular style of my generation that became known as a Hootenanny. The 1964-1965 World’s Fair authorities described it as “An old-fashioned  beer garden with (a) sawdust floor, chilled steins  and banjo music. Manned entirely by college boys and girls, the beer garden is probably the liveliest place at the Fair, drawing heavily from the young element, particularly the collegians. No food is sold after 8 P.M., only beer… (that) goes on until 2 A.M.”

I spotted a group of young women sitting at the bar and, after being rebuffed by the first one, I approached, one of her friends and I hit it off with a lively conversation. Before we went our separate ways, she gave me her telephone number. Her name was Mary Ann Donlon, but contacting her again proved more difficult than I expected. In fact, she was out the first three times I called her. I would have given up trying to contact her had it not been for the encouragement her mother gave me to persevere, Finally, we hooked-up and she agreed to go back to the World’s Fair for an afternoon date on a coming Sunday.

That certainly relieved both of us of our anxiety as this was only a little better than a blind date. A Sunday afternoon date at the World’s Fair should be about as safe as a date could be. Still, I found a way to renew her anxiety by suggesting that we include a trip to that New York State Pavilion. My idea was this would be a great way to get a bird’s eye view of the fairgrounds, but she saw danger written all over it.

It didn’t help that the single elevator couldn’t carry more than four passengers at a time, that there were only a few other fairgoers who joined us on top of the tower, or that it only had a low railing. Mary Ann didn’t get her mojo back until we returned to terra firma. Over a meal at Tad’s Steakhouse, she confessed going to the top of that tower was a bad idea for her.” You see, I don’t like heights.”

Laughing out loud, I replied, “I promise never to take you there again or any other high places unless you explicitly agree in advance.”

Now the state has put $24 million into the towers to stabilize then. A Phase II is planned that: “… would allow for limited guided tours of the towers in the future.”

On behalf of my wife of 55 years and myself, “thanks, but no thanks. 

Note: On the Outside Looking In will not be published on May 3^rd, but it will return on May 10^th.       

April 2023

A last hurrah, the final World Series championship won by the New York Giants at their venerable Manhattan home, the Polo Grounds.

Bill Christman shares his memories of that season:

August of 1954. My Dad took me to a Sunday doubleheader against the Pirates. We had an early, but traditional Sunday dinner of leg of lamb. My Mom made delicious sandwiches of left-over meat and off we went to see Johnny Antonelli and company win both ends of that doubleheader 5-4 and 5-3.

The Giants were my love, but things were rocky. They had lost three straight to the second place Dodgers reducing a 3 ½ lead to just ½ game. But the lead had replenished itself back to two games going into that Sunday. I kept one eye on the scoreboard that showed the Dodgers losing to the Phillies in both games of their doubleheader in Ebbets Field. I can still see in my mind’s eye the man to my right and several rows back yelling, “Philly got five runs.” When the sun set, the Giants lead was four games.

The Giants opponent in the World Series was the Al Lopez-led Cleveland Indians who won a remarkable 111 games that season, ending the Yankees run of five consecutive AL Pennants.

The Giants went on to sweep the Indians, four games to none. The accepted turning point of the series occurred in the top of the ninth inning of Game 1. With the score tied at 2-2, runners on first and second base, Giants manager, Leo Durocher brought in left-handed relief pitcher, Dick Littlefield, to pitch to Vic Wertz, the Indians first baseman batting second.

 Wertz hit a long fly ball deep into “Death Valley” also known as the Polo Grounds’ center field. Willie Mays, playing a medium- ranged center field position, took off at the crack of the bat. The ball and Mays reached the 440-foot mark at precisely the same moment. Mays, with his back to the ball, made a spectacular over-the shoulder catch.

 After catching the ball, Mays used his momentum to pivot 180 degrees back toward home plate. As he rotated, his right arm swung out and around him allowing Willie to release the ball at exactly the right moment with an amazing velocity. His perfect catch followed by his perfect throw forced the runners to hold up. Durocher called time-out to go to the mound. Littlefield greeted his skipper with a great understatement, “Well, I got my man out.”

The game remained tied as the runners were subsequently stranded. In the tenth inning, Dusty Rhodes pinch-hit a three-run homerun to win the game 5-2.

The next day, September 30, 1954, the Giants won the last World Series game ever to be played in the Polo Grounds, 3 to 1. Rhodes again was the hero driving in all three of the Giants runs. The Giants finished the series in Cleveland winning the last two games, 6 to 2 and 7 to 4 to sweep the Indians in four games.

1955 belonged to the Brooklyn Dodgers as “Wait until next year,” fell into the same category that the Boston Red Sox did to “Reverse the Curse” in 2004. By winning the World Series, it just did not matter anymore. The Dodgers won the pennant with a record of 98-55 while the Giants finished in third place behind the Braves.

Bill Christman remembered a Fourth of July doubleheader against the Dodgers.

The Giants and Dodgers hardly ever played each other in doubleheaders which made this a special event. I went to the Polo Grounds with a good group of neighbors and friends on a day that, weather-wise, could not have been a better day for baseball.

My scorecard shows that the Giants did not allow the Dodgers to score a run in the first inning of the first game. The next time they accomplished this was the second inning of the second game. Brooklyn won the first game, 15-2 and the second, 6-1.

Willie Mays hit 51 home runs in ‘55, but the pitching floundered. Leo Durocher resigned as manager on September 25 to be effective at the end of a doubleheader against the Phillies. The Giants won the first game 5-2. Here is how Noel Hynd described what happened in the bottom of the ninth inning of the second game with the Phillies leading 3-1 and the Giants at bat:

With Joey Amalfitano on second base and Whitey Lockman on first, Bobby Hoffman lined a ball to Phillies shortstop, Ted Kazanski. Kazanski flipped the ball to Bobby Morgan, the second baseman, to double Amalfitano. Then Morgan threw to first before Lockman could return there. Leo must have been muttering to himself as he took his final walk to the center field clubhouse. His reign in John McGraw’s old job had ended on the short end of a triple play.

The Giants reign in the Polo Grounds came to an end on Sunday, September 29, 1957. The home team lost to the Pittsburg Pirates, 9-1, before an angry crowd who did their best to demolish what they could. Some in the crowd chanted: “We want Stoneham with a rope around his neck.”

The Giants abandoned New York for San Francisco joining their principal rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, who abandoned Brooklyn for Los Angeles. The Dodgers home park, Ebbets Field, was quickly demolished to provide land for Urban Renewal housing.

Curiously, the vacant Polo Grounds was left intact. Good thing: It became the initial home, first for football in 1960 when the newly minted American Football League (AFL)  New York Titans made the Polo Grounds their home field.

When the baseball expansion New York Mets joined Titans successor, the Jets there in 1962, the life of this historic ballpark was extended until its replacement, Shea Stadium, could open in April of 1964. A week before the Mets inaugurated Shea with a contest against the Pittsburg Pirates, the jack hammers went to work beginning the destruction to erase this old friend.

 Frank Sinatra memorialized its passing with a song called, “There Used to be a Ballpark here.”     

High drama did not return to the Polo Grounds until 1951. It was a bit improbable. First of all, the hated Leo Durocher became the Giants manager. Hated, because he had previously been the Brooklyn Dodgers manager before his mouth, that was beyond being colorful and his antics got him into trouble with the baseball commissioner, Happy Chandler, and Dodger General Manager, Branch Rickey. Chandler had suspended Durocher for the 1947 season for “an accumulation of unpleasant incidents.”

His nickname was “Lippy” and the incidents included having a big security guard beat-up an obnoxious fan, allegedly letting the actor, George Raft, run crooked card games out of his apartment and associating with Lucky Luciano during spring training trips to Cuba.

Durocher led the Giants back from a next to impossible deficit of 13 ½ games tying the Dodgers and forcing a three-game playoff. The teams split the first two games bringing the third and deciding game to the old ball park beneath Coogan’s Bluff.

Don Markey reflected on the ordeal of being a Dodgers fan in 1951:

The Dodgers had a 13 ½  game lead in August yet managed to self-destruct. True, the Giants had something like a 16-game winning streak, but the Dodgers gave them a big shot in the arm by doing things like losing back-to-back doubleheaders to Cincinnati and having Roy Campanella thrown out of a close game in Boston for arguing a play at the plate in the last week of the season.

On the final Sunday, with the teams tied, the Giants won their game early. The Dodgers won in the 14^th inning on a home run hit by Jackie Robinson. That blast followed a diving stop he made behind second base in the prior inning. Robinson made the throw to first for the final out to end the top of that 14^th inning. Robinson’s lightning quick reflexes and his power saved the day. Had he not made the perfect dive, the Dodgers would have lost the game.

I don’t remember much about the first game of the playoffs that the Giants won in Ebbets Field. The Dodgers won the second game 10-0 behind Clem Labine, their top relief pitcher who had to pitch because there were no starters available. Labine pitched a great game, but his effort made him unavailable to relieve in fateful game three.

I was a senior at Grover Cleveland High School, but I played hooky so I could watch Game Three on television at my family’s apartment on the first floor of 1881 Cornealia Street in Ridgewood, Queens. The Dodgers had, Don Newcombe, their best pitcher, on the mound. He was probably pitching on only two-day’s rest, but this was the same guy who, the year before, pitched a complete game in the first game of a Twi-night doubleheader then pitched into the 7^th inning of the second game. 

Newcombe pitched the Dodgers to a 4-1 lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning. Alvin Dark hit a single between first and second. Don (Mandrake) Mueller followed with a single to the exact same place putting runners on first and second. Newcombe then forced Monty Irvin to pop out before allowing Whitey Lockman, a double that scored Dark. Mueller hustled to third sliding in with such a force that he broke his ankle on the play. Clint (Hondo Hurricane) Hartung came in to run for the injured Mueller.

With the score, 4-2, Chuck Dressen, Brooklyn’s manager brought in Ralph Branca to pitch to Bobby Thompson with a very nervous rookie, Willie Mays, on deck. Thompson, born in Scotland, was nicknamed the “Flying Scott” after a fast train in Great Britain. He responded by hitting, “the shot heard round the world,” a three-run homer into the lower deck of the left field grandstand leading to utter joy on the part of Giants’ announcer, Russ Hodges, who shouted over and over again: “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant…” In his excitement, Hodges never completed his scorecard, his entries ending with Lockman’s double.

One can only imagine Branca’s despair as he walked that long, long walk back to the center field clubhouse. The next day’s sports pages carried a photograph of Branca sitting on the clubhouse steps lost and, apparently, sobbing.

These dramatics gave the Giants the right to play the Yankees in the last subway World Series between those two teams, four games to two.

Brooklyn won the pennant in 1952 and 1953 with the Giants finishing second and fourth respectively. But the Giants had one last time of glory in store for their fans. Durocher had not quite worn out his welcome as he led the 1954 Giants to a 97-57 record; five games ahead of Brooklyn. Johnny Antonelli was added to the pitching staff in a trade that sent Bobby Thompson to the Braves. Willie Mays’ return from the Army did not hurt their cause either.

Coming Up Craps on Our Super Destroyers

John Delach

April 2023

From time to time, we buy into radical thinking designed to short-cut and rapidly advance “what if” weapons faster and further than conventional  wisdom believed to be possible. Usually, we put our faith into the hands of the champions of this thinking, those so called  “Whiz Kids,” whose “what if’s” all too often, end in failures.

Robert McNamara, the chief Whiz-Kid of the Kennedy administration as Secretary of Defense, forced a complete reorganization of our armed services. Long story short, and with no love for Mac and what he did, his biggest success was forcing the army to abandon brown shoes in favor of the black ones worn by all the other branches.

His biggest failure was the F-111, Aardvark. This fighter / bomber he decreed would work as well for the Air Force as it would for the Navy. Despised by both air forces, it worked for neither. The Air Force and the Navy quickly abandoned it as soon as they could, the USAF, in favor of the F-15 Eagle, and the Navy, for the F-14 Tomcat. Both aircraft served well and, of this writing, the F-15 remains in service.

It seems we will never learn that “short cuts” and “quantum leaps forward” just don’t work out as planned.  Again and again, we tend to believe the “Big Brains” and their malarkey that a new advanced technology is the answer to solving unsolvable problems that, in reality, don’t need solving.

We are still suffering from the consequences of the decisions by Donald Rumsfeld and others, going back to President George Herbert Walker Bush, (41), that advanced three major projects. Each incorporated weapon systems based on a new paradigm, “Leap Ahead Technology.”

The exact meaning of Leap Ahead Technology is lost to history. Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan. Another instance where think tank, big brain so-called wunderkind analysts convinced DC policy makers that their latest, greatest new-think weapon solutions are in fact: “The way the truth and the light.”

Leap Ahead Technology gave us the terribly flawed Elmo Zumwalt class destroyers, the F-34 Lightning II fighter and the Gerald Ford class nuclear aircraft carriers. Leap Ahead Technology’s goal was to incorporate the next generation of technology into these new weapons by relying on unproven systems still in development. This produced multi-billion-dollar crap shoots that a broad array of new technologies would reach maturity before they became operational.

The lead ship was named after Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who was the innovative and popular Chief of Naval Operations from 1970 to 1974. When I wrote about the Zumwalt’s in 2015, I noted: “Back in 2009, the GAO “…found that four out of 15 critical technologies in the Zumwalts’ design were fully mature. Six were approaching maturity but five would not be fully mature until after installation.”

So much went wrong that the navy cut the order from 32 ships to three and deemed that this trio would be utilized, “…as state of the art platforms for experimental weapons such as lasers and electromagnetic rail guns… The cost, $4.2 billion for each ship, did not include an additional $10 billion in development costs plus invoices still to come to make these systems workable.” 

 “They are unable to fulfill the original intended role of multipurpose destroyer warships, while the scale of cost overruns brings the viability of the program into question even if the destroyers were able to function as intended.”

Sebastian Roblin, a military expert called the destroyers an “Ambitious but failed ship concept “

Roblin noted that the ship’s long-range land-attack projectile guided shells cost roughly $800,000 each-about the same price as a cruise missile. Sad to say, the contract to purchase these shells was cancelled after the guns had been installed in the lead ship. Think about it, our destroyer for the Twenty First Century went to sea with state-of-the-art weapons, but no ammunition!

“The Zumwalts lacked several vital features, including anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine torpedoes and long-range area-anti-air defense missiles. A complete and utter failure.

Finally, the navy recently declared a moratorium on new destroyer design and construction until 2032. They will continue building their tried-and-true Arleigh Burke-class destroyers first built in 1988 while new designs are tested out. This will allow the Burkes to have the longest construction period of any class of ships in the navy, 44 years. 

Meanwhile, the three Zumwalts will live in limbo until the navy feels that decommissioning is no longer a major embarrassment.

DD 1001 was named after Michael Monsoor, a Navy Seal, who was killed in Iraq during Desert Storm and DD 1002, named after President Lyndon Johnson.

Funny, Ike, Washington, Lincoln, Truman, Bush 41, Ford and JFK all had front line carriers named for them.

Not so LBJ. Sorry, Lyndon, at least they can’t blame you for this fiasco.

I decided that my recovery and rehabilitation from knee surgery had progressed far enough for Mary Ann and I to make the trip  to Grand Central Madison and enjoy lunch at the Bryant Park Grill nearby\to the LIRR’s new East Side destination. To eliminate any threat of overcrowding, we scheduled this adventure for Saturday, March 4^th.

To prepare for our trip, I examined an article from a 2015 edition of Trains Magazine that contained an extensive diagram of the new terminal. Back then, it was informally called the East Side Access project and it would not receive its current moniker, Grand Central Madison until just before its opening.

Little did I realize how overwhelming the actual experience of navigating the new LIRR terminal would be.

When the conductor came to punch our tickets, I first realized how much attention these LIRR ticket-takers were spending with each passenger making sure that they understood that this train was not going to Penn Station and that they had to change trains in Woodside to continue on to Penn. The extent of the railroad’s concern that passengers were going to their correct destination became more apparent as we approached the Woodside Station. A crew member used the P/A to give a detailed explanation of how to transfer to the correct train.

On arrival at the new squeaky-clean, well lit and well-signed platform, we realized we had de-trained on one of the lowest levels, so we used an elevator to ascend to the mezzanine level. There we found one of the four banks of escalators that took us 120 feet up to the new LIRR Concourse that ran north to south from 48^th Street to 43^rd Street.

Since our destination was located in Bryant Park between 42^nd and 41^st, we headed south to the end of the LIRR Concourse and into the corridor that connected this passageway with the traditional Grand Central Terminal, the subway and the new skyscraper named Vanderbilt 1. I was so intent on navigating us in the right direction, that I ignored the troubling signals I felt walking along this concourse. We reached the street via another escalator on the corner of Madison Ave. and 42^nd Street. Our destination was only two and a half blocks away.

Lunch was fun and brought back fond memories of other meals at the Café. This was our first visit since the COVID 19 virus first hit three years ago in March of 2020.

We became a bit confused trying to figure out the time of departure for the next train that would return us to Port Washington from Grand Central Madison

rather than from Penn Station. Finally, we determined that we would make it if we left the Bryant Park Café in the next ten minutes.

Even though paying the bill was easy, I had a funny feeling that making our train on time would be a problem.

We retraced our steps back to Vanderbilt One and those escalators that returned us to the entrance to both GCT, the subway and the entrance to the LIRR Concourse. We walked north to check out the ticketing area and the waiting room. Mary Ann remarked that the relatively narrow concourse with its low ceiling reminded her more of an airport. We both were surprised how empty it was. All of the shops on both sides of the concourse are unoccupied with the windows papered over that added to this strange sensation of claustrophobia.

The almost totally empty ticket office and the waiting room only added to my confusion. I think the combination of the absence of people in this hall, poor signage and the miniscule seating area for a maximum of three dozen ticketed passengers further disoriented me. Of course, that number exceeded the few passengers awaiting their trains. It began to seem like other than the two of us, almost everybody else in those spaces all worked for the LIRR. Cops, staff, ticket agents and guides.

It all closed in causing me to lose my bearings. When Mary Ann told me our train had been called, I was able to walk us over to the down escalator, but vertigo set in. When we reached the mezzanine, my ability to locate our train had almost deserted me.

Fortunately, I figured out that we had to take an elevator going above the mezzanine to reach the platform for our train I led us to the closest door and seats inside. At this point, my thinking process shut down. Mary Ann asked me something about the station, but all I could do was mumble gibberish.

I realized that I couldn’t communicate, but I couldn’t explain this to Mary Ann. I finally made it clear that I was out of it and she left me alone.

Somewhere during our journey, I got my act together allowing me to reconnect with my brain and communicate. First, I convinced Mary Ann that I was back on the same planet with her. Then, I swore to her that I was there the whole time, but that some kind of sensory depravation had temporarily shut down my ability to communicate.

Fortunately, my explanation made sense to her.

I have no interest in having that experience happen to me again so I have decided that on my next visit I will stay on the street for as long as possible.

The Long Island Railroad’s (LIRR) “Big Dig” finally commenced operations this past January with a soft opening. The initial service was limited to shuttles running between Jamacia and the new station to discover hidden bugs and gremlins lurking in the new physical plant before subjecting it to the chaos of twice-a-day rush hours. Next, a modified schedule followed until it was finally time for  full-service to be introduced in March.

This seemingly endless project to bring LIRR service to the East Side of Manhattan was first proposed in 1963, but didn’t get legs until the creation of the new super commuter operating agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in 1967. This super authority  subsumed most existing transportation agencies including the NYC Transit Authority, the LIRR,  Metro North and those operations of the New Haven Railroad into Grand Central with the cooperation with the State of Connecticut. Other agencies were also included particularly the Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority that built and operated all of the tunnels and toll bridges that cross the East River.

In 1968, New Yorkers approved a $2.5 billion MTA bond issue to fund its Program for Action that provided few details how the MTA would spend this money or the additional money they would also need.  Their top-priority project was a new four-track tunnel to cross from Queens to Manhattan along 63^rd Street to carry a new subway line and give the LIRR access to the East side of Manhattan.

The planners decided to use a big chunk of the available funds to build the tubes under the East River. Rather than use traditional machines to dig out a path beneath the river, they contracted with Bethlehem Shipbuilding of Baltimore to construct four tubes in a dry dock like they were submarines. When each tube was completed, both ends were sealed, so that they could be floated out and towed to New York. The first tunnel segments were delivered in May of 1971, and by March of 1972, all four had been lowered into place. By that October, the two completed tubes and the middle land section on Roosevelt Island that included a subway station had been linked together.

Unfortunately, by the mid-1970’s New York City was essentially broke and when President Ford refused to bail-out the city: “Ford to NYC: ‘Drop Dead,” its ability to borrow money collapsed  All capitol construction came to a halt. NYC suffered through massive lay-offs. And massive default was staved off by a last-minute injection of cash from the Teachers Retirement Fund. Other forces finally convinced the Feds to intervene.

Still a period of hard times would freeze projects for the foreseeable future. Despite Mayor Abraham Beam’s public announcement that all work had ceased, Richard Ravitch, the MTA Chairman said the work on fitting out the tubes had to continue or they would deteriorate to the point of being unusable. Fortunately, he preserved the core of the project.

Finally, in 1989, construction on connecting the subway line resumed with a new target date for its completion to a dead-end station in Long Island City set for October. (This new subway “to nowhere” would remain unfinished until 2011 when new tunnels connected it to the main subway lines under Queens Boulevard.)

By 1999, conditions at Penn Station had grown chaotic thanks in part to the initiation by NJ Transit of their Mid-town Direct connection that allowed trains from their northern routes direct access into Penn Station rather than terminating in Hoboken.

In 2002, Congress passed a bill that allocated $132 million for infrastructure projects in New York State that included enough seed money to resurrect the East Side Access project.

Construction began when two tunnel boring machines began the one mile journey from the East River ends of the tubes west to Park Avenue and then south digging out two new tunnels to two new terminal caverns each 100 feet beneath the original Grand Central Terminal. Each cavern would accommodate two platforms servicing four tracks stacked on top of each other and separated by mezzanines. Theses mezzanines 0would house elevators and four stacks of escalators to take passengers 70 feet to a new LIRR Passageway 30 feet under the existing station. Those banks of escalators provided new exits at 45^th , 47^th and 48^th Street. Additional exits connected to GCT, the subway at 42^nd Street and the brand new skyscraper, One Vanderbilt Avenue.

Finally, East Side Access became a reality. All it took was 60 years and $12 billion to build this dream. Frankly, the only reason it was actually finished was it became too big and too expensive  to fail.

But be careful about your dreams. It seems we became so used to not having a choice where to get on and off the train in Manhattan. We now have to choose where to go and when. Schedules had to be split between Penn and GCT. The same train no longer went to the same place. Commuters are confused and annoyed.

The railroad also had to decide on how to divide service between these two terminals with their analysis fogged by the new work-from-home movement developed during the COVID 19 quarantine. Good grief, does this mean we didn’t need this new terminal after all?

And don’t even let me get started about what the LIRR did to their service to Brooklyn, the LIRR’s bastard son.

At least the railroad is reacting to the debacle they created and is working on changes to routes, stations, length of trains and timing. But this remains a moving target and they have a long way to go before Grand Central Madison can be declared a success.

On “The Outside Looking In” will not publish on March 22 and will return on March 29^th. 

John Delach

March 2023

The following message was forwarded to me by a British friend. He received it from his adult daughter:

Getting undressed last night, being all slinky for my new husband…

Seductively take off my bra…to reveal an unused dog poop bag stuck to my boob.

Always keep humor alive.

First Published December 2014, Edited February 2023

Christmas, 2010; Mother Nature was not a in a nurturing way for those of us living in the Northeast. Small as our family is, we seldom spend it together but 2010 was the exception. Besides Mary Ann and me, both the Briggs and Delach tribes trekked to Marlow, New Hampshire.

Tom, Beth, Marlowe & Cace Briggs, Michael, Jodie, Drew, Matthew & Samantha Delach, plus the granddame, Bare Delach, the elder Golden Retriever and Max & Ruby Delach, two, eleven-week-old Golden puppies, the male belonging to us and the female, a birthday gift to Jodie.

Six adults, five kids and three dogs, all made it in three separate vehicles having to brave through various intensities of a major snow storm old Ma Nature threw at travelers like us navigating the I-91 Corridor. Mike and his family caught the worst of it but, fortunately, the peak of the storm didn’t hit until after we’d all made it safely to that place we call Little House.

Loss of power is issue number one in rural NH. Issue number two is freezing pipes that closely follows issue number one. We do have two wood burning stoves for our primary heat and our wood supply was superb. But, if we lost power, we’d lose water and life gets difficult quickly when that happens.

Cut to the good news: the power didn’t fail: “Thank God Almighty; say halleluiah, say Amen!”

With power, everything is good even though we were snowed in.  We shoveled where we had to with joy. The two pups realized they were in Golden Retriever heaven being able to play with each other in the snow without adult supervision anytime they wanted. Mike and Tom laid out a challenging sledding run on the hill above us that became the major outdoor attraction until the town sanded the hill.

What could have been an ordeal, turned out to be a winter wonderland. The pups left their need for action outside in the cold, kids also exhausted themselves in the snow and the adults had a marvelous time. Each time kids came in they were relived of soaking wet snow clothes; hats and boots that were hung from every available hook, railing or most any other surface that could hold a hanger. The stoves were well-tendered and the clothing dried quickly enough to be available for the next onslaught.

Inside was non-stop action. Food was always being prepared whether it was bagels and eggs, hot chocolate, soup, or great dinners. Good cheer and entertainment of every kind abounded from simple board games to playing electronic games or watching TV or DVDs.

Of course, things still go wrong. At the time, I was driving a Chrysler Aspen that I parked at the bottom of our circular driveway. My plan was to use this SUV as the lead vehicle to open the way out of the 16 inches of snow the storm had gifted to us. Unfortunately, when I made my attempt to open the driveway, I judged the turn too sharply and put the left hand side of my rig into a depression. Mike’s van was behind me. Mike and Tom did most of the clearing around the wheels and dug it out enough to enable me to pull the Aspen out using low gear with the transmission in four-wheel-low. After I cleared out I walked my original route and told Mike, “If you put your left tire in the depression I made with my right tire and you will be okay.” He did so and got out easily.

Another time after the driveway had been plowed by a local fellow from a garage in Gilsum, one town away, I came into the top of the driveway too fast. We were returning from a small local ski slope where my passengers had gone tubing – Beth and Tom, their two and Matt Delach. As I went into the first turn by the house, I realized too late that I was on ice under the snow and I wasn’t going to stop. The house was on the right so that direction was not an alternative. Ahead of me where the driveway curves to the left was Beth and Tom’s Grand Cherokee so that wasn’t a good alternative either.  My only choice was to keep going straight between a bush and a tree; deliberately leave the driveway and drop down into a level snow-covered grass area below it. Not sure how much space this gap afforded, I aimed more toward the bush figuring that would be the path of least resistance. Hot damn, it worked. It all happened so quickly that nobody said anything. Good fortune, part two, I was able to drive through the snow and regain the driveway. Only then did we three adults begin to realize what just happened. It did occur to me what an old friend used to say, “Delach, you just cleaned out your locker!”

Peter King: September 2021

Edited and Amended: John Delach: February 2023

Excerpts from Peter King’s piece are in italics.

Stickball was the City Kid’s Game often played on local streets especially when the closest park or playing field was too far away, or it was located in another kid’s group’s turf. We learned early not to stray from our own neighborhood and to only play with kids we knew.

If we strayed too far, we ran the risk of running into aliens who were bigger, stronger, faster and meaner than we were. Then it could easily turn into an ugly scramble where it was every kid for himself as we retreated in every direction.

But played on own turf, stickball was a blast.

The rules might vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, but, “on the street the ball was hit on a bounce and the bases were sewers, manholes or parked cars. If there was no running, agreed upon boundaries designated a single, double, triple or a home run.

The block I lived on in Ridgewood, Himrod Street between Senaca Avenue and Onderdonk Avenue, had a moderate grade. By an unknown agreement, we always hit the ball in the uphill direction from the bottom at Senaca. The block had two manholes and any ball that was hit beyond the second cover was deemed to be a Home Run.

Stickball was entirely different from today’s world of travel team baseball. There were no expensive entrance fees or gloves, helmets and custom-made bats that cost many hundreds of dollars.

The only equipment needed was a broomstick and a Spalding (‘Spaldeen’) rubber ball. Most important there were absolutely no adults. Not one parent, coach or umpire. We had to make it work on our own and had no thought of being consoled if we gave up the game winning homer or struck out with bases loaded.

I was a mediocre ball player for most of my career and had a lousy record with longer broomsticks. I couldn’t bounce the ball and still get a long stick around in time to make contact. I was decent with a short sick and I always sort them out from the collection that laid on the street.

I should note that most broomsticks were cut to the owner’s preferred size. I use the word “owner’ lightly because wherever there was a stickball bat, there was an angry housewife lamenting over the destruction of her mangled broom.

Our greatest nemesis was cops in local patrol cars. Stickball was not illegal, but we were an urban nuisance to drivers and landlords. The easiest thing for the police to end a game was to confiscate our broomsticks and we all kept one eye open to spot the patrol cars before they spotted us. If we were lucky, we would see an approaching cop car before they spotted us, shove the bats under a parked car and scatter. The game would resume after they were out of sight unless some fink would make off with the bats before the rest of us returned to the scene of our game.

I did achieve a measure of success at 13 when I grew into the long broomstick. I could finally get the stick around fast enough to make good contact with the ball. With luck, I could drive the ball past the second manhole cover and become a two cover hitter.