John Delach

When I was a kid, my Christmas centered around Lionel Electric Trains. My starter set consisted of a modest steam engine and its tender, a Baby Ruth candy bar box car, a Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) gondola, a Shell tank car and a Lionel Lines caboose.

Once I discovered Lionel Catalogues, I became aware of what was available. But money was tight, and I had to temper what I wanted. This would become my big gift. One year I asked for a Santa Fe diesel switcher, another, additional rolling stock. Relatives helped me to add automatic switches, an upgraded transformer and operating cars like Lionel’s cattle car and a log car. At the flick of a switch, cattle would leave their pens and enter the car or exit the car for the pens. Logs would be ejected from a flat car and into a saucer like container.

That is, of course, when they worked properly. Sometimes a cow or two would fall over jamming the path of others causing chaos, or logs would be flung in multiple directions knocking down scenery or blocking the tracks.

One year I asked for a PRR electric engine and my mother traveled to the Abraham & Straus (A&S) Department Store in Downtown Brooklyn to buy my desired motor. I was old enough that she allowed me to open the box when she returned home. To my horror, I realized that this unit was missing one of its two panographs.

I panicked and Mom returned it to the box, put on her coat and repeated her round-trip bus ride to exchange this engine. The trip took about two-hours and I waited for her return ashamed that I caused this to happen. Mom retuned with a new motor that passed inspection. To this day, I feel guilty.

By the time I reached 12-years of age, I had expanded my layout to allow two trains to operate at the same time. At 13, I had moved on and my railroad remained boxed and stored in our cellar bin.

When I was 17, I visited my father who was then stationed at March AFB in Riverside, California. Dad convinced me to ship my collection to him for my half-siblings, Nancy, Mark and Steven who were all quite young, He offered in return, a good pair of 7x 50 binoculars. His offer was an easy sell as I was beginning my life as a football fan and my Lionel Trains didn’t matter anymore.

Time marches on. Nancy, Mark and Steven outgrew electric trains, I married, and Mary Ann and I had our own children. I petitioned my Dad who agreed to return everything to me. Their return allowed me to build bigger and more complex layouts that I created in the basement of the house we rented in Middle Village, Queens. I continued to set up Christmas layouts after we moved to Port Washington in1977 until Beth and Michael also outgrew the magic of electric trains.

For twenty-years my trains remained inert and without power.

Drew Delach, my Number One grandson, entered the world in November of 1999. I told him early on that he was our only grandchild born in the Twentieth Century. When he turned four or five, I unboxed my train set and erected a new layout for that Christmas season. The look on Drew’s face when I powered up the system for the first time was magical. The action, the sound and the smell of these electric trains was as unique and powerful to Drew as it was to all who came before him starting with me.

Over the next four years I added additional items, a new steam engine to replace my original, a Long Island Railroad passenger car set and a set of four old IRT subway cars that I operated on a steel elevated line that ran above the train boards.

Four more grandchildren followed. Marlow and Samantha’s interest waned quickly, but the remaining two boys, Matt and Cace lasted the course. Cace is the youngest, and despite the inroads of electronics, my train set enthralled him longer than I could have expected. In February 2012, I underwent hip surgery. That Christmas season, I had to call on my son-in-law, Tom Briggs, to help me set up my railroad. By then Cace was the last kid interested. Together, we successfully set it up.

Sadly, Cace only came to visit my train set one time.

For Christmas 2013, I set up an abbreviated layout. A fool’s errand, the only times I turned it on was for my own enjoyment. Sadly, I would turn on all the illuminating fixtures on the layout, turn off  the basement lights and watch the lights while I listened to the sound, of the running gear and smelled the electric ozone as the trains circled my layout knowing this was my last stand.

Since then, my train set has remained boxed and stored in protective containers as they await either a future family resurrection or an estate sale.

December 15, 2019: MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ:

An early pre-winter “Hawk” made its presence known today by howling through the MetLife parking lots reducing tailgate tents into scrap heaps. Undaunted, we the tried and true faithful Giants fans gathered one last time in another season of our discontent. It is practically a foregone conclusion that Pat Shurmur, the team’s head coach will be fired at the end of the season, just two more weeks away. The team was 2 and 12 going into today’s contest; a miserable season for sure.

Eli Manning has been our quarterback of record for 16 seasons, a team captain and the winner of the Walter Payton award as the NFL’s Man of the Year. This award recognized Eli’s dedication to curing juvenile cancer.

He was benched after the second week of the 2019 season in favor of Big Blue’s Number One draft choice, Daniel Jones, out of Duke University.

And so it goes…the inevitable passing of the torch to the new kid on the scene from the old king whose diminished skills left management, the coaches, his teammates and the fans wanting.   

Elisha Manning’s talents may still have been enough to produce a winning season if he had been surrounded by talented players. Unfortunately, the 2019 Giants are a bad football team that loses consistently. They manage to snatch defeat from victory every chance they get while repeating the same mistakes game after game.

Young Mr. Jones began fresh and new winning his first two games only to have reality return with a thud that led to a nine-game losing streak. During that ninth loss, Jones suffered a high-ankle sprain that relegated the young man to ranks of those unable to play.

Eli was temporarily reinstated as the starter for the Monday night contest against the Philadelphia Eagles in the City of Brotherly Love on December 9. Eli started smartly throwing two touchdown passes that generated a halftime lead of 14 to 0.

Unfortunately, every football game has two halves and the Giants did nothing in the second half while the Eagles scored 14 points of their own tying the game at the end of regulation time. The Eagles then proceeded to win the game in overtime: 20-14.

Coach Shurmur knows the season is effectively over and I believe he decided to give Eli one more chance at glory in today’s contest against the Miami Dolphins. After a shaky start that included throwing three interceptions and a Miami lead of 10 to 7 at halftime, Eli shook off the cobwebs and went to work.  He led his glorious eleven offensive teammates to four touchdowns in the second half and a final score of 36 to 20.

One play into the Giants last possession with 1:50 left on the clock, Coach Shurmur pulled Manning from the game showcasing Eli to the media, his teammates and the faithful who gave him a standing ovation while chanting Eli Manning, Eli Manning, Eli Manning…

This Most Valuable Player Super Bowl XLII and XLVI took it all in as he hugged his teammates and coaches. We continued to stand and chant his name after the game ended for as long as he remained on the field. In a way, we were celebrating his last hurrah.

Even though two games remain, one next week in Washington DC and the last game at home in MetLife Stadium once again against the Eagles, I expect that Jones will resume his career while Eli returns to the sideline. I hope so as Eli achieved all that was left to achieve against the Dolphins.  

Eli summed up his feelings:

“I don’t know what the future is. I don’t know what lies next week let alone down the road. The support of the fans and their ovation, chanting my name, from the first snap to the end I appreciate that. I appreciate them always. Special day, special win and one I’ll remember.”

Eli will soon leave the pro football stage, but we will see him in the future, first when his brother, Peyton enters the NFL Hall of Fame and again, when he follows in Peyton’s footsteps.

Thank you, Eli Manning.     

Recently, I rode the train into the Pennsylvania Station on my way to lunch with my son. The ancient dungeon we call the Long Island Railroad level was undergoing major renovations. The plan is to open the roof of the main corridor so that natural light will shine down from Thirty-Third Street. The construction also includes a new entrance / exit from the corner of Seventh Avenue and Thirty-Third from the LIRR level directly to the street.

Temporary scaffolding has been erected to facilitate this work lowering the ceiling to a claustrophobic height. Any person over six feet tall had best approach the construction area carefully.

Newsday reported that construction would necessitate closing the retail shops that lined the north side of the main corridor. Many of the traditional vendors had been forced out several years ago by a concerted effort to attract upscale businesses.

The bookstore that specialized in military histories and other hard-to-find non-fiction subjects had closed together with one of best newsstands in Manhattan. They were both great places to browse. The newsstand carried both an abundance of newspapers, and a magazine inventory that stretched from A for aviation to Z for zombies and included practically every possible publication in between.  

Gone too were several passable pizza joints and the bar we had frequented for a late-night slice or a drink or a beer for the ride home. Terminated, gone, kaput, they were replaced by Starbucks, Shake Shack, an upscale Shushi eatery and Rite-Aid. Now they were all gone.

Only one fixture remained for me to mourn, Sole Man, a shoe-shine emporium and repair shop. Sole Man has occupied their spot since the early 1980’s. Over time they corrupted their theme but in their early years they presented a Blues Brothers motif. The shoeshine staff, both male and female, mimicked Jake and Elwood by wearing black trousers, white shirts, narrow black ties and faux black fedoras.

Beginning a day with a professional shine falls just behind starting the day with a professional shave. I rarely had the luxury or opportunity to experience the latter, so a shine remained on the top of my list.

I have availed myself of this simple luxury many, many times over the years and I have surprised friends, colleagues and customers by treating them to a shine whenever circumstances brought us close to Penn Station.

Curiously, a shoe-shine is more personal than one might expect. Our feet are sensitive, hence foot-fetishes. If you haven’t had a professional person polish your shoes, you have not encounteed that moment when they tackle your instep and you experience a sensation beyond what you expected. The sensation quickly disappears as the artist moves on making your shoes come alive using all the tricks of their trade.

I never walked away from a shoe-shine stand unhappy, the shine alone makes me feel better. Sole Man was the best. It seemed to me that their gang made the extra effort.

I decided to indulge myself one last time. The gal who claimed me went the extra mile returning my shoes to glory. Finished, I stepped down and chattered with the cashier, a young woman with a good sense of humor. The cost was three dollars, the same price as when Bill Clinton was in office.

As I turned to walk out of the shop, I stopped to thank the gal who serviced me, wished her good luck and handed her a $5 tip.

On the Outside Looking in will not be published the next two Wednesdays and will resume on December 18. Happy Thanksgiving.

 October 29^th marked the seventh anniversary of the day when Superstorm Sandy flooded the New York metropolitan area. The storm’s high tide surge drove a wall of water through the Narrows flooding coastal Staten Island and Brooklyn, burying the Battery, lower Manhattan, Jersey City and Hoboken. Sandy flooded the Hudson Valley almost as far north as Albany.

The same surge flooded most of southern Long Island’s coastal communities like Breezy Point, Broad Channel, Long Beach, Freeport, Seaford, Amityville, the Hamptons and Montauk.

A second surge followed the next high tide that raced west through Long Island Sound inundating the north shore of the island, coastal Connecticut, LaGuardia Airport, the Eastern Bronx, upper Queens and upper Manhattan.

Our tri-state congressional delegations joined in a bi-partisan effort that squeezed more than $60 billion from Uncle to address our joint recovery needs. In the last seven years most of the affected areas have recovered and rebuilt to prepare for a future event, albeit unevenly.

The top priority of restoring vital infrastructure was brilliantly achieved in short order. Rail, subway and highway tunnels were pumped out, cleaned-up and returned to service in a matter of days. Power was restored south of Thirty-Fourth St. in Manhattan and to the towns and villages Sandy had pounded in a few days to a week.

More complex remediations such as renewing rail and subway tubes inundated by saltwater remains a work in progress with several vital links put on back burners. Overall surge protection to combat future storms remains in the planning stages since they are complicated by the need to protect the environment from rising sea levels.

The original idea called for the Army Corp of Engineers to build two barriers to protect Manhattan. One would stretch from Coney Island to Sandy Hook, NJ closing the Narrows to another Sandy. The other would stretch from the Bronx to Queens across the narrowest part of Long Island Sound providing protection from the east.   

In a storm emergency, gates protecting the channels would be shut thereby protecting the City of New York from a tidal surge.

But the blocked water must to go somewhere else and the backflow, especially at high tide, would have a material effect of inundating several other communities along Long Island Sound. This would put my Port Washington home in harm’s way, a victim of acceptable collateral damage.

However, the barriers are but one of several alternatives the Army Corp. of Engineers is considering although the Corp has yet to publicly explain its design or how they will operate.

A notation in the report grabbed my attention. It stated that the proposed barriers wouldn’t provide protection from future increases in the sea level. That struck me as odd especially as I have yet to notice any responsible official or politician advancing a plan how to deal with rising sea levels? The only reference I have discovered was one from the EPA noting that rising sea levels may become an issue in the next 35 to 50 years.

I am not aware of any national initiative to cope with rising sea levels much less create an action plan to combat it. Instead it would appear that each segment of our government is content to pursue the status quo. There isn’t even consensus to address the problem much less a dialogue to develop a national solution.

All I see is the right resisting the idea of climate change while the left demands radical solutions as they proclaim that the sky is falling. Noise, nothing but noise, that is what, we the people hear. Our government has become unhinged. Both political parties are using power to incapacitate each other.

The coastline of the continental United States is 12,383 miles. This number balloons to 95,471 miles when all the bays, sounds, estuaries and islands are included. 

Inaction prevails as our leaders choose to kick this can down the road. I doubt they have that luxury this time. No one knows for sure if or when the full moon tides will begin to play havoc with our ability to continue our normal activities uninterrupted.

Here in the Metropolitan Area shouldn’t we the people demand that our leaders address this possibility now? What will be the usefulness of the new airports, train tunnels and so many infrastructure projects now being built if they are under water?

Hand wringing is not the answer.

What happened to the political will of the people? What happened to strong leaders willing to form a consensus where all sectors join in a common effort to solve this problem?

We are consumed by a crisis of government that is tearing us apart. And for what? A gotcha moment that will never happen.

Stop the madness. Focus our collective effort on solving our national crisis. To hell with trying to ameliorate world-wide climate change! Protect our homeland. That should be our top priority.

Where is Robert Moses when we need him …

I have acquired an enormous knowledge about certain subjects, most of them useless for all practical purposes. My cousin, Helen, once experienced a large enough dose of my trivial inventory leading her to exclaim: “John, you might have been a smart person if you didn’t have so much junk clogging your brain.”

I didn’t disagree, instead I embraced it. When I read a book, watch a movie or listen to a radio program I take pride in knowing that the author, commentator, director or researcher got it wrong. My pulse quickens, heart beats faster and a private, “Gotcha” races through my spirit.

Most of the time, I keep these triumphs to myself, but if I find one especially egregious, I am happy to contact the offender. Usually the written word provides the easiest opportunity to reach the author. For books, it is by way of the publisher. For instance, Geoffrey Perret in “Winged Victory” wrote that Doolittle’s raiders took off from the USS Enterprise rather than the USS Hornet. I let Perret have it. As usual, no reply.

Another time I discovered an unforgivable error in a biography of General Curtiss LeMay. One chapter in a book covered the ill-fated air attack on the Ploesti oil fields in Romania by Army Air Force heavy bombers. The author maintained several times that these bombers were B-17s. In my letter that went un-answered, I sarcastically pointed out to him that if he had only bothered to look at the photos of the airplanes in his own book, he would have noticed that all those B-17s were cleverly disguised as B-24s.

My personal best involved a sports blog about the Chicago Bears written by a life-long fan of “Da Bears.” In it, he told the story of how the Bears had defeated the Football Giants in New York’s Polo Grounds in the 1963 for the NFL Championship game. The piece included his e-mail address, so I critiqued him somewhat as follows:

“Interesting piece but for the record, the Giants left the Polo Grounds in 1955 and were playing in Yankee Stadium in 1963. However, that was the least of your sloppy reporting. The sad reality is the 1963 Championship game was not played in New York. It was played in Wrigley Field in your home city!”

I included my phone number in my critique and he soon called me to object to my criticism. When I countered that he had made a huge error he tried to duck responsibility. “I had somebody else do the research.”  

“Not an excuse.” I replied. “You are trying to throw somebody else under the bus! No, you don’t, this went out under your name and nobody else’s.”

Movies are my favorite hunting grounds. Authors and their staffs usually do enough research to get it right. My experience is movie researchers are sloppy about history. They don’t care if they get it right, they want just enough accuracy so that perhaps it makes some sense.

Even I’ll admit that continuity can be trumped by the story line. Take the car chase under the elevated subway line in the “French Connection.”. The film makers used poetic license by using several different elevated lines to heighten the excitement of the chase. Still, privately I do note the filmmaker’s errors. My curse.  

Which brings me to the new feature film, “Motherless Brooklyn,” a period piece detective story set in 1957. How do I know this: The hero drives a 1957 Chevy and the Dodgers are still in Brooklyn but on the cusp of leaving. That could only be 1957.

That being established what errors did I find. Before I reveal them, I admit this is a good movie and they do get many things right. Also, it is based on a novel so poetic license is rampant. The villain is a thinly disguised Robert Moses character named Moses Randolph played by Alex Baldwin. If Caro didn’t make you hate R.M. Baldwin will.

My criticisms are historical and boring. During a car chase shortly after the start of the film, a scene includes a City bus that didn’t exist in 1957.

Later in the film, the heroine boards a subway train to take her home to Harlem. The vintage train the director uses was in service in 1957. But it only operated on the BMT lines which didn’t go to Harlem. The closest that train would have taken her to was 57^th Street a long walk from her home on 148^th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

The last mistake shows an elevated train that would have been a futuristic vision in 1957. I am almost certain that this was a simple case of laziness. The director used it as a quick background shot and didn’t care that the train, we see didn’t exist then.

Boring, indeed, but not to me.

My hunt continues. Next up, a new movie called, “The Battle of Midway,” The film chronicles the naval battle in the Pacific in early June 1942 that changed the course of the war,

Already, from what I’ve read, heard and saw, it is chock-a-block full of flaws and mistakes.

Don’t worry, dear reader, I will save what mistakes I find for another time and I promise to snot to report them to you any time soon.

The following tale is excerpted from a 2005 travel diary that I kept during a trip to Alaska. We sailed from Seward to Vancouver on board Holland-Americas’ MV RYNDAM.

We observe the scenery as the ship approaches the port of Ketchikan. It is more industrialized than Juneau or Skagway, the other two ports we visited on the Alaska panhandle. We pass a cannery, a container terminal where two tugs maneuver a barge around our ship, a small shipyard with a floating dry dock, and many marinas. Floatplanes circle the ship and land in its wake. Eventually, we pass the floating platform that acts as their terminal and where they are moored. Then we have the dubious opportunity to watch them take-off and climb as they head right for us. They do cross at an angle to pass down the ship’s left side, but one of them passes at the same height where we are sitting, Deck 8 of 13, providing a little too much excitement.

Using thrusters, our ship is docked quickly and safely without the assistance of tugboats.

 We leave the ship with Helen and Don as a tour guide directs us to a van. There are eleven of us taking this tour and we are forced to wait for a last woman to arrive. Shoshanna is our driver. She just graduated from high school and has lived here for most of her life. By this time, we have met enough residents to realize many begin to get nervous if it doesn’t rain for two or three days. Shoshanna doesn’t tell us how lucky we are that it’s not raining. Instead, she complains that it has not rained much in several days. She boasts about how much more rain they get in Ketchikan than Seattle. She is really upset making me I think to myself, “For Shoshanna, a day without cloudy skies and pouring rain is a day without sunshine.”

Shoshanna drives us to a marina where we are introduced to Christine, the young woman who will pilot us out to Orca Island. We are outfitted in life jackets in a little shelter she uses and parade across the marina to the dock where her Zodiac is moored. Shoshanna is thrilled when she calls the tour company and receives permission to join us. The trade-off for her is she will pilot our return trip back to the dock. Climbing on board requires dexterity, but we all successfully board albeit with a couple of close calls. Mary Ann remarks about how beautiful Christine is. “Tall, thin and blond,” Mary Ann says, “She’s model quality.”

You wouldn’t know it to listen to her. She is a licensed captain who has sailed boats solo from Maui to San Francisco and has assumed the rough and tumble mannerisms of a sailor or a construction worker.” Once you get your rear ends into the boat, I can blow this place.”

 Disembarking is also a study in balance. Christine drives the boat onto a pebbly beach. There, two college age young men who will be our guides hook a ladder over one side of the boat. It is at a crazy angle and when I try to descend, I almost fall off. Watching me, Mary Ann decides to descend facing out so she can see what she is doing. The guides provide a good commentary about the forest and we do learn more useless information like the difference between “witch’s hair” and “an old man’s beard.” At the end of the walk, they supply a fire for roasting marshmallows. They also serve us hot chocolate, smoked salmon cheese and crackers. (They too are looking for a tip.)

Christine returns to collect us. The four of us choose to sit near the bow and have the hell beaten out of our coccyges as Christine speeds into the wind. The worst jolts occur when the Zodiac slams down on three waves in succession. Fortunately, we soon return to sheltered water and the beatings cease. As we near the marina, she stops the boat and directs our attention to an eagle struggling in the water. “Oh, my God,” she exclaims. “Do you see that? What’s happening is the eagle has grabbed a fish that’s too heavy in its talon and it can’t liftoff. Neither can it let go of the fish because once it grabs something, its talons lock. The only way the eagle can open the talon to release the fish is by putting it down on to something solid. If the fish is too big the eagle will tire and drown.”

We watch as the bird gently flaps its wings in a swimming fashion to reach shore. Happily, it has only about twenty feet to go from the spot where Christine spotted it and it makes it to the rocks. A throaty cheer follows from our boat when the bird reaches dry land. Shoshanna (who is waiting at the dock) is thrilled. “In the eighteen-years that I have lived here, I’ve seen eagles drown, but I never saw an eagle do that.”

The eagle preens itself on the shore drying its wings so that it may fly again. While it does this, sea gulls try to relieve it of its catch, but the eagle fights them off. In an instant the eagle is gone but none of us sees if it left with the fish.

On the return ride Shoshanna entertains us with stories and tall tales. When we pass a totem pole, she says that hand carved poles cost $1,000 a foot. “I heard of a story where a man gave his wife a 25- or 30-foot totem pole for their 75^th wedding anniversary. He must have really loved her.”

 This prompts Helen to observe, “Ah, now we know, silver for 25, gold for 50 and a totem pole for 75.”

The following piece is partly an excerpt from a travel document I wrote about a trip we made in September of 2004 with two other couples, Don and Helen and Mike and Peggy to several Southwestern National Parks located in Arizona and Utah. They have been edited for content and subject manner.

On Tuesday, Sept. 21^st, we departed Zion for Bryce Canyon where we hiked and explored in the late morning before having lunch in the park. After lunch we drove north another 100 miles to the Wonderland Motel in Torrey, Utah.

The afternoon scenery rivaled the morning. Don and Mike shared the drive north on Highway 12 through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Park and Garfield National Forest. We reached 9,293 feet, as we ascend and descend on grades of 8% and 10%. The temperature dropped from 66 degrees to 38 as we encountered snow flurries and foliage comparable to New England at October’s peak. The most dramatic stretch of highway began north of the run-down downtown of Escalante where the road corkscrewed down the cliffs, crossed a small river then zig-zagged though a red rock canyon. Route 12 is cut into the right side of the canyon wall where we climbed at a steady pace. The left rim disappeared leaving the road to rise along the side of a mesa. On the opposite side, once we ascended to the top, a canyon provided a dramatic drop-off of several hundred feet. The top of the mesa was only wide enough to accommodate the road and narrow shoulders. This all happened in the space of five or six miles.

We reached Torrey after 5 pm and checked into the Wonderland Motel. Despite its whimsical name, the motel was strictly run with many rules. The woman behind the desk was polite, but firm. We could have only one key per room and could not check-out until the key is returned. The dinner menu at their restaurant was uninspiring and Don and Helen found an alternative in their AAA Guidebook called Café Diablo. It didn’t take much to convince the rest of us to take a chance over the Wonderland.

A 15-minute car ride into the desert brought us to what we were about discover was a four-star gourmet restaurant that was only open from April until October. When we arrived at six, it was already busy, and it just kept getting busier. As we enjoyed our meal, people crowded the lobby waiting for a table. Having to wait 20 minutes for a table on a Tuesday night in Torrey, Utah speaks volumes for the menu and quality of Café Diablo.

Our meal began with a complimentary Southwest Tapas. For appetizers we shared free-range rattlesnake, (it tasted like chicken) coconut calamari, and a house specialty called, Firecrackers with subcategories, Lady Fingers, Cherry Bombs and M-80 which were nowhere as hot and spicy as we expected. I ordered ribs that are served vertically in a circle. I could peel the meat off with a spoon. Don and Mary Ann had salmon, Helen, roasted pork tenderloin, Peggy, pecan chicken and Mike, Utah Lamb. Our margaritas received Don’s seal of approval. Our waitress was delightful, the wine, good and reasonable. She pointed out the fellow who is the owner and chef. He was busing a table when we spoke to him. He’s a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. “Why do you close for six months?” We asked. “Because I like to ski and travel, too.”

All desserts arrived with a separate serving of home-made ice cream. Mike devoured a large piece of chocolate cake, Helen, shared a piece of fruit-nut tart and Don, a plum tart, both topped with chunky ice cream and bourbon.

Mary Ann remarked, “Sure beats what we would have eaten at the Wonderland,” to which she received a collective, “Amen!”

A story about Utah triggered me to recall Café Diablo. I am happy to report that it is alive and well. Their 2019 menu includes Rattlesnake Cakes, Asparagus Firecrackers and Hellfire Shrimp as appetizers, Honeybee Salmon, Pomegranate & Chipotle Ribs and two steaks, the Rocky Mountain Elk Sirloin and the Boulder Mountain Ribeye.

As far as dessert, the menu notes: “It would be a sin if we told you before you got here.”

Café Diablo describes itself as: “A gourmet restaurant nestled below the Boulder and Thousand Lakes Mountains on the doorstep of Capital Reef National Park in Southern Utah. Café Diablo offers a fresh and fun dining experience that celebrates the geological majesty we find outside our own backdoor. Dine outdoors on our patio or indoors surrounded by paintings inspired by our landscape and the seed catalogs of the Early 1900’s. “

“It is our undying aspiration to make sure that you say ‘WOW’, when the food gets to the table. That you say ‘WHOA,’ when you take your first bites., and that you find yourself saying ‘WITHOUT A DOUBT ‘we will come back tomorrow.”  

I am pleased to discover that Utah’s own gourmet restaurant lives on and remains true to its culinary mission.

Café Diablo, live long and prosper.       

Baseball was once our national pastime. From the beginning of the Twentieth Century until the mid-1960s baseball ruled supreme. Boxing, horse racing and college football trailed badly. Professional football was relegated to a niche corner like hockey, pro basketball, pro wrestling or roller derby.

Television changed the landscape beginning in 1956 when the New York Football Giants crushed the Chicago Bears before a national audience. Two years later, the Baltimore Colts sudden death victory over the same Football Giants rocketed the National Football League onto center stage and captured our collective consciousness. The professional game was a natural for TV and, like a light switch being thrown, pro-football became our collective sports obsession starting in the late 1960’s with the creation of Super Bowl, America’s predominate entertainment event.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a hater. I love baseball too. I grew up going to Brooklyn Dodgers games in Ebbits Fields. I watched the newly minted Mets in the Polo Grounds in 1962 and 1963 and attended their opening day at Shea Stadium in 1964. Since I retired in 2000, I’ve made many baseball trips; been to Wrigley, Fenway, Dodgers’ Stadium, Camden Yards, PNC Park, the Jake, Chase Field, Minute Maid Park, the Toronto Sky dome and Target Field among others. I have baseball credibility.

What annoys me most is baseball scribes and authors like Rich Lowry and George Wills and spokesmen like Jonathon Swartz who espouse a fake news script that baseball and baseball alone is the one sport that develops a special bond between fathers and sons.

Balderdash! I strongly object!

I have made many trips with my son, Michael, beginning in 1990 when we traveled to Chicago to watch our Super Bowl XXV winners play the Bears on opening day. Michael, still in college, flew in from Boston, I from New York and we met at O’Hare. Our hosts were Gary Gatewood, Jim Hagelow and Reuben Minor, three natural-born Bears fans all bigger than me but not as big as my son.

We had a great tailgate gate and a hell of a time at Soldiers Field that day even though Big Blue came up short in a closely fought contest. Win or lose, our bond had been born. We made two brilliant trips down to Florida to participate in what we refer to Miami I and Miami II. Both were insane and deserve their own telling but truly bonding experiences.

Contrary to common belief about the attitudes of folks living in the Golden State, Californian football fans are anything but laid back. We had an awful experience in San Diego, and, long story short, we were ejected from the stadium for the only time in most of our lives.

Needless to say, we were apprehensive going to Candlestick Park for a 49er’s game. Not to worry, just before kick-off, a posse of Hispanic five-by-five fans sporting spanking new Giants gear parked themselves directly in front of us.  After high fiving us, I turned to Michael and said, “Looks like we’re covered today.”

We’ve attended away games against the Bills, Bengals, Buccaneers, Cardinals, Chiefs, Cowboys, Mariners, Packers, Patriots, Saints and Texans. This coming weekend we are off to Detroit to see the Lions.    

Super Bowl XLII was and will always be the game of my life. What could surpass traveling to Tucson, Arizona with your son and a merry group of eight other Giant fans, trekking to Glendale in chartered SUVs, illegally tailgating then going into a stadium to watch your pride and joy come from behind on an impossible play to beat a team that was 18-0?

Following Eli Manning’s incredible Houdini like escape, his pass and David Tyree’s impossible catch, Manning regained the lead 17-14 with his lob pass to a wide-open Plaxico Burress with 34 seconds left on the clock. Here is how I described what happened next:

The Patriots had one last chance with 34-seconds and three time-outs left. When rookie tackle, Jay Alford nailed Brady on second down, I had the hope that the Patriots wouldn’t reach field goal range, but I held my breath when Brady tried to hit Moss on a pass he must have thrown 75-yards that Corey Webster knocked away at the last second. Ten seconds left on the clock and I was holding my breath. When Brady’s next pass went incomplete, I lost track of the downs and Michael had to remind me that the Giants now had the ball for the one second remaining on the clock.

When Michael lifted me in the air, I knew the Giants had won. The fellow with the cigar stood in stunned silence. Michael yelled to him, “You know where you can put that cigar now.”

 We didn’t stay long and began the crawl out of the parking lot. The mood was overwhelmingly joyful. We had just seen the greatest football game of our lives. Then Michael noticed a young woman wearing a Brady Jersey walk by. He leaned out the widow and said, “Don’t worry, Tom, 18-1 ain’t bad.”

“Fuck off.” came her reply.

Brilliant, Michael had nailed her.

And that’s what I call bonding!

The Myrtle Avenue Elevated line ceased operating this month 50-years ago. I first wrote this piece in 2002 and included it in:” The Big Orange Dog and Other Stories.”

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 expresses the identity of the conductor who rings 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 gates 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 met the same fate as the gate trains and was demolished south of Broadway.

Sunlight returned to a 35-block stretch Myrtle Avenue after years of perpetual darkness and the relative quiet of a Brooklyn street replaced 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.

Dear reader, I believe you know about my love of retrievers. You also know that Mary Ann and I adopted Tessie last fall after her partner, Ria M reached the conclusion that Tessie could no longer perform all that is required of a blind person’s service dog. Tessie was Ria’s seventh Seeing Eye for the Blind guide dog all who had served Ria for as long as they could. If you wish to read in detail how Tessie came to live with us, go to my WordPress site and find “Welcome Tessy” published last December. (Using the spelling “Tessy” was my error.)

Goldens and labs are hard-wired to be retrievers. Historically, these working dogs have been bred to fetch waterfowl that their hunting masters bring down into ponds and lakes. On command, they follow hand signals to search out the fallen birds and return them to shore intact thanks to their soft mouths.

When Ria invited us to adopt Tessie, she hoped her loyal yellow lab companion would have experiences beyond those in the realm of a service dog’s life. Ria wanted Tessie to experience play with other dogs and the freedom to be just herself for herself.

Without question, we fulfilled Ria’s hopes and wishes thanks to our then eight-year old – still wacky Golden Retriever, Max, enhanced by our almost anything goes attitude toward our family dogs. When Tessie came to live with us, I told Mary Ann: “Give me a month and she will be a Delach dog.”

Tessie soon found pleasure in her new environment just as Ria had hoped. She checked off a variety of experiences previously off-limits in her mind. The most important to Ria was play. Not a problem as Tessie took to Max and, he to her. They became pals and play mates from the get-go; tug of war, a morning tussle, a post dinner tussle initiated by whoever decided to start a play session.

As the calendar flipped from 2018 into 2019 and winter morphed into spring, we re-opened our New Hampshire house and looked forward to summer.

Tessie had never experienced being in water. Our summer project was to convince a ten-year old Lab that she could swim. The key was to help her break the code that she was buoyant, that it was in her nature to retrieve and that she was engineered with a coat made to protect her from cold water.

We had a few advantages, Tessie loved playing with tennis balls and retrieving them. Another was Max. He is truly a water dog. When he was younger, he was somewhat ambivalent to fetching tennis balls but as he matured his enjoyment steadily increased.

In the beginning Tessie chose to concentrate on the tennis ball offered to her. Fortunately, she didn’t have a problem getting her legs and belly wet. It was only when she felt the beginning stage of becoming buoyant that she rushed back to shore. Our first goal was to make her comfortable. Throw the ball where she could grab it, praise her for retrieving it, repeat, repeat and repeat. A few times we tossed it beyond her comfort zone to extend her reach, but she wasn’t having any of that. This wasn’t a problem as we had Plan B; Max would retrieve the balls that exceeded her range.

Next time out, we tossed more balls into the forbidden zone. Each time we waited as Tessie checked out the distance and measured her options. Soon enough she chose to leap toward those tennis balls floating just outside her reach. She pounced, grabbed the ball into her mouth, made a quick 180 degree turn and quickly returned to safety where her paws found the muddy bottom.

She didn’t know it yet, but we recognized that Tessie had broken the code and was already swimming. Finally, after one otherwise uneventful toss, Tessie, leapt, grabbed and began to circle but then continued to circle realizing being buoyant was a good feeling that she could manage.

Breakthrough achieved, the rest was just a matter of increasing the distance, graduating from tossing the ball to using a tennis racquet to hit her target further and further out into the pond that eventually matched the distance that we were hitting them for Max.

We try to separate the balls, so our two dogs don’t aim for the same one. Even if we miscalculate and both aim for the same ball, neither can mouth more than one so both retrieve the prize they desire.

It is a joy to watch them race out to retrieve their tennis balls then leisurely paddle back to shore side-by-side tennis balls held proudly in their mouths. They are our water dogs who make us so happy.