John Delach

One: Adrift in a Sea of Doctors

There is little question that modern medicine allows us, the aging of America, to live longer and live better. This includes new wonder drugs, better procedures, more thorough examinations and those machines that lead to more accurate diagnosis.

The bad news is those same machines have incentivized doctors to rely on them not only for their results but also for the added revenue they generate from Medicare. Not only does each test generate a separate charge, the results open the door for more and more tests and prescriptions. This is especially true for those of us on Medicare. The Feds created Medicare and, like any government program, it is subject to stringent rules and regulations. Uncle guarantees payment but only so much. Uncle never pays doctors or hospitals what they want but enough to make tests profitable. Therefore, more tests equal more profits.

Once we enter into the system, we are off and running going from one test to another. Last spring / summer, my medical adventures centered around my prostate. This year doctor’s concerns were aimed a bit further north covering cardio and pulmonary issues. Along the way I was introduced to a bevy of machines and examinations some more than once. I have had PSAs, 4Ks, MRIs, Ultra Sounds, Cardiograms, Echo Cardiograms regular and nuclear stress tests, MRIs, CTEs and more blood tests than an Olympic Athlete.

Now I have been told I need a controlled overnight test for sleep apnea. WTF! This is so far off the mark that enough is enough. Senor y senora doctors, no mas!

Two: Living on a Glacier’s Edge

Granted, this happened 2.6 million years ago but I finally gained insight into the last great ice age. Thanks to the Science Times Section of The New York Times I now understand how the topography of Long Island was formed by the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the last great glacier to cover North America. I grew up in Ridgewood, Queens a rather hilly neighborhood. The good Dominican Nuns at St. Aloysius grammar school insisted we lived on a coastal plain. But we knew differently. All we had to do was look around to see this assertion was nonsense. However, nuns being nuns, we had little choice but to accept their version of the truth or face their draconian reaction to our perceived insuborbination.

William J. Broad’s piece finally explained this incongruity. “Much of North America once lay under a thick sheet of ice. Its final retreat left the city with a singular geological legacy. The ridge of rubble deposited by…the glacier shaped the later development of New York City. The Laurentide ice sheet ended in a sheer cliff across… (the city.) The ridge, called a terminal moraine, is visible today as a band of hills, parks, golf clubs and cemeteries across these boroughs.”

By Jove, it appears the ice sheet did almost as much to affect Long Island as Robert Moses!

One of the places we visited when I was a kid was Highland Park. I marveled that the southern end of the park ended with a rather large cliff. Sometime in my youth an adult pointed out that this cliff was formed by the ice age an explanation I accepted that without further details. Now I have those details thanks to Mr. Bond.

Ridgewood is not alone. This is a list of the communities the terminal moraine passes through beginning with Staten Island: Richmond Valley, Arden Heights, Lighthouse Hill, Dongan Hills and Clifton. The ridge crossed The Narrows until this defacto dam was destroyed in a great flood by water cascading down the Hudson Valley. The ridge enters Brooklyn at Bay Ridge, heads north east through Sunset Park, Green-wood Cemetery, Park Slope and Crown Heights.

From there it turns east and crosses into Queens at Cypress Hills. Today the Jackie Robinson Parkway travels along the terminal moraine and through the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Highland Park, Cypress Hills Cemetery, Forest Park and it’s golf course. The route continues through Ridgewood, Glendale, Richmond Hills, Forest Hills and Kew Garden Hills. Further east, the ridge passes through Jamaica Hills, Hillcrest and Hollis Hills before passing into Nassau.

Eventually, it formed the cliffs at Montauk Point.

“The ice over Manhattan would have buried even the tallest skyscraper and was so heavy that it depressed the underlying bedrock. As it melted, giant boulders embedded deep within its flanks landed throughout what became the city. Many are still visible in Central Park, unlikely obelisks scored by time…the hilly ridge around NYC tends to be quite prominent. Its maximum height is roughly 200 feet, about that of a tall apartment building.”

All the land south of the terminal moraine was formed by the outwash of sand and sediment carried by thousands of streams from the melting ice. This outwash created the great Hempstead Plaines the home of potato farms, early aviation and multiple post World War II subdivisions. “Without this sediment most of Long Island would be under water.”

Bottom line: Those Dominicans were correct after all but with one big asterisk.

It was called the Marshall Plan, and if not for a small group of forward thinking American statesmen who are now mostly forgotten, Western Europe as we know it would have disintegrated. Generalissimo Joe Stalin and his Soviets successors would have been the masters of a new European order while the United States retreated to the other side of the Atlantic.

This happened in 1947 and, trust me, it was far from easy. America had little interest in becoming involved in European affairs. Dragged into World War I, the post war Senate rejected joining the League of Nations and America returned to our natural state of isolation.

Isolation was in our DNA, placed there by George Washington in his farewell address when he chose to preserve our Republic by not accepting an un-apposed third term.  He admonished us “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, above all Europe.”           “Europe,” he said, “has a set of primary interests which to us have a remote relation.”

When Hitler came to power, we hid behind the ocean that protected us refusing to consider much less confront the growing menace. Once the shooting started in 1939, America First, Father Coughlin and the American Bund attacked FDR for his short of war policy. They stood fast hoping to prevent a repeat of Wilson taking us into World War I.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 instantaneously erased any isolationist thoughts as America flipped a switch and declared total war in Europe and the Pacific. That National will combined with our wealth, economic capacity, manpower and those two oceans produced the arsenal for democracy; a safe place to build an army, air force and navy and produce enough material not only for the USA, but sufficient for our allies, especially England and the USSR to achieve total victory.

VE-Day, (Victory in Europe) arrived on May 8, 1945 and VJ-Day (Victory over Japan) on September 2, 1945. Once the celebrations ended, America de-mobilized. By 1947, only 1.5 million men remained under arms from the 12.2 million at war’s the end. However, our troops occupied US zones in Austria, Germany and Berlin (as we did in Japan.) The USSR, British and French occupied the other three zones.

The Soviets had no intention of going home deploying their army throughout Eastern Europe. To be fair, Stalin, despite his growing paranoia, established a buffer between Germany and his Motherland to prevent a repeat of Hitler’s 1941 invasion. It is estimated that the USSR lost ten million soldiers and eleven million civilians in the war against the Nazis. The generalissimo established a militarized buffer as the rights and aspirations of the citizens of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungry, Rumania and Bulgaria were of no concern to Stalin.

Western Europe, on the other hand, was near collapse. Currencies were worthless, their infrastructures lay in ruins while coal and other fuel sources were scarce Hunger and deprivation ruled the day. The continent was covered by armies of displaced people fleeing the Communists or just trying to return to homes and families that no longer existed. The rule of law had ceased to have meaning. An organized black-market ruled the distribution of food and goods, an outgrowth of years of brutal German occupation. These black-market operators prospered as great shortages and busted economies couldn’t offer alternatives.

Great Britain fared little better. The economy at home was in shambles, the nation close to bankruptcy while its empire disintegrated.

Harry Truman, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, William Clayton, George Kennan and Lucius Clay were the architects of the Marshall Plan. Truman decided on the name explaining that his secretary of state and former five-star general’s name was a better choice than his own: “If I send a plan to a Republican congress calling on America to spend billions in Europe and call it the Truman Plan, it will D.O.A.”

And it came to pass that despite so many reasons for the plan to fail, congress authorized this most generous and unprecedented expenditure for a period of five years. Between 1948 and 1952 the United States Treasury transferred $14.3 billion to Western Europe ($143 billion in today’s dollars.)

Success though didn’t happen because our nation and the congress compassionately embraced a starving Europe. The architects realized early on that in the realm of American politics and popular opinion, altruism wasn’t high on our agenda. National security was, and, because of his paranoia, Stalin misplayed the cards he was dealt so badly, almost everything he did, backfired. His disruptions and pig headedness only made the Soviets the bad guys and the people of Western Europe saw the writing on the wall.

The failure of Stalin’s Berlin blockade to starve the city into submission and lay low the USA was his Waterloo. For sure, it may not have been the beginning of the end of the USSR, but it was the end of their European expansion. (The Berlin wall was a monument to failure.)

The Marshall Plan gave birth to West Germany, and resurrected Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey and the UK. It committed America to defend Europe and NATO quickly followed! Once America committed to treating and attack on a member’s homeland as an attack on our homeland, including nuclear retaliation, Western Europe stabilized under America’s nuclear umbrella knowing a return to isolation was dead.

Our terms for European participation insisted on a united Europe thereby intentionally providing the groundwork for the EEC and the EEU.

The wall came down in 1989 and freedom for those enslaved nations soon followed. Not too shabby a legacy!

(If you are interested in reading the complete story, I highly recommend: The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War, by Benn Steil.)

Students of America’s Civil War battles know that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was the hero of the struggle for Little Round Top fought on the second day of this momentous battle. Chamberlain led his 20^th Maine Infantry out of their lines and down eastern slope routing the charging 15^th Alabama infantry to save the day. Awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, he went on to survive the war, become governor of Maine, president of Bowdoin College and lived a full and public life passing in 1914 at the age of 85. Chamberlain’s fame was revived thanks to his portrayal by Ken Burns in his Civil War documentary.

Fate didn’t serve Patrick Henry O’Rorke nearly as well. O’Rorke wasn’t awarded the Medal of Honor and Ken Burns found no reason to include him in his documentary. Worse yet, he was cut down at his moment of triumph by a bullet through his throat. His widowed bride of less than a year, the former Clara Wadsworth Bishop, joined the Sisters of Charity in Providence, Rhode Island where she remained until her death in 1893.

Born in 1837 in the ancient town of Brefini, County Cavan, Ireland, O’Rorke’s parents brought him to America settling in Rochester, NY in 1842. In 1853 he was offered a full scholarship to the University of Rochester when only 16 but declined and took a job as a marble cutter to support his family when his father died. Four years later he was appointed to West Point and graduated first in his class in June of 1861.

Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineering, he served at the First Battle of Bull Run where his horse was killed from under him. That autumn he provided vital engineering service for the construction of the batteries on Jones and Tybee Islands, Georgia for the siege and bombardment of Fort Pulaski guarding Savannah harbor. O’Rorke was selected as one of the officers who received the Confederates surrender following the fort’s capture.

He returned to Rochester in the spring of 1862 where he married Clara on July 9^th.

In September he offered his services to New York State and was commissioned as a colonel and commander of the 140^th New York Infantry Regiment a unit comprised of Irishman and other volunteers from the Rochester area. “Although Colonel O’Rorke believed in strict discipline,’ one of his soldiers wrote that every man in the regiment ‘knew that in his colonel, as long as he did his duty, he had a friend.’ Another soldier described O’Rorke as the ‘ideal of a soldier and a gentleman.”

The 140^th was present at the battles of Fredericksburg in December of 1862 and Chancellorsville in May of 1863 but they were held in reserve and didn’t see action.

O’Rorke’s regiment was part of the 3^rd Brigade under the command of Brig. Gen. Stephen H. Weed which arrived at Gettysburg on the second day of fighting on July 2, 1863. Weed was ordered to bring his brigade up to the front and join General Daniel Sickles’ III Corps. As they approached the front lines the 140^th last in formation encountered Brig. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren who was desperately searching for units to prop up the meager forces holding Little Round Top. Wikipedia romantically states that Warren implored O’Rorke to disregard his instructions and said, “Never mind that, Paddy, bring them up double-quick and don’t stop for aligning. I’ll take responsibility.” Wikipedia’s version goes on to note that “O’Rorke caught up to his regimental colors and mounting a rock to urge on his men, was struck in the neck and fell dead.”

Both notations of what really transpired appear to be false. (Never trust Wikipedia!)

Warren did instruct O’Rorke to send his 526 strong regiment in the direction of the 16^th Michigan that was failing under the intense pressure from the 4^th and 5^th Texas then preparing their third assault of the day. O’Rorke sent a messenger telling Weeks of his change in plans and “…ordered his men to move double-quick to the summit. Upon reaching the summit, the men did not have time to fix bayonets but rushed to support the 16^th Michigan.”

This action was unorthodox and not to be found in any drill manual. Accomplishing this feat demonstrated the skill and discipline O’Rorke had instilled in his regiment. His men fired individually as they crested the summit. The Texans returned fire and O’Rorke fell dead. Several New Yorkers fired at this soldier and his body was found to have 17 bullet wounds.

Hand to hand fighting ensued as the Texans were driven from the western side of the hill at the same time Chamberlain was clearing the eastern side. Faced with these failures, Robert E. Lee ordered a general withdrawal and so ended the day’s battle.

“Patrick O’Rorke and the men of the 140^th arrived at a critical moment to shore up the crumbling (Union) flank. Colonel O’Rorke may not deserve the title of the hero of Little Round Top, but his actions should earn him the recognition on a par with Chamberlain.”

In 1889, the state of New York erected a monument to the 140^th on the western face of the hill featuring a brass relief bust of Patrick O’Rorke.

If you visit the battlefield be sure to make a stop on the western ridge of Little Round Top. O’Rorke’s aquiline nose is the most prominent feature on the monument and, in a curious twist of human irony, rubbing it is considered a good luck charm. As a result, his nose looks as if it had been polished that morning even though the rest of his bust and the stone is weathered and worn.

Perhaps fame comes in different disguises?

The second I stepped into one of those four ancient subway cars, the memory of that old, familiar smell ignited my senses. Electric ozone, a not unpleasant odor, filled my senses as it had since I first rode the subways with my mother in the 1940s. All those rides to all those places, movies in Times Square, shopping at Macy’s and Gimbles at Thirty-Fourth Street, adventures in Coney Island, voyages from Whitehall Street on the Staten Island Ferry and sweet sunny days at the Canarsie Pier. Later in my teens, trips to Madison Square Garden for Ranger games, the Polo Grounds for the Mets and Jets and Yankee Stadium for the Bronx Bombers and the New York Football Giants.

The odor always present, was joined by a vague taste of steel in the air. Sounds once common, also returned. As I sat on the waiting train my ears picked up the idling DC electric motors as they thumped and whirred until the motorman put them in gear. As the train began to move these electrical devices gave off a cacophony of bangs and booms as the carriages shook off their inertia and begrudgingly moved off into the waiting tunnel.

This excursion began at the Grand Central subway station that served the Forty-Second Street Shuttle Line. Sponsored by the New York Transit Museum, it was called Centennials & Cemeteries. About 50 ticket holders had gathered at the Museum store inside Grand Central Terminal where we were escorted down to the shuttle station. As soon as a shuttle train departed from Track 1 bound for Times Square, the four IRT (Numbered train lines) Lo-V cars entered the station from the opposite direction. As we boarded we could see that we were greatly outnumbered by subway workers, some on the job running the train, some providing security and crowd management, but mostly, subway buffs like many of us.

Not all were transit buffs, though. Our destination was the Woodlawn Station at the top of the Bronx celebrating it’s 100 anniversary and a tour of Woodlawn Cemetery. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011 by the National Park Service, Woodlawn’s celebrated lot owners include VIPs like Robert Moses, Herman Melville, Joseph Pulitzer, Fiorello LaGuardia, Celia Cruz, Admiral David Farragut, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, Charles Evan Hughes and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”

Our little train began the journey by heading downtown on the Lexington Avenue (East Side numbered) Line on the local tracks south to the City Hall loop. The train moved slowly along this route as the train ahead made all stops from Thirty-Third Street to Brooklyn Bridge. South of that stop, we entered the loop that passed the abandoned and museum quality City Hall Station, the stop where the First Subway originated. The chandeliers and wall lights were all illuminated providing an excellent view of this historic station. The loop continued back to the north bound local tracks at Brooklyn Bridge.

From there excitement reigned supreme once the train left Brooklyn Bridge. No regular scheduled trains were operating on the express track making it our exclusive province. The motorman opened the throttle allowing this consist to travel uptown at the generous speed limit. What a feast of sounds, sights and smells as we roared through the tunnels and the local stations. These Low-Vs were built between 1916 and 1925 and they acted accordingly. We bounced and bucked continuously, conversation was impossible there was so much noise while a breeze manufactured by the moving train filled the cars with the same subway scent I remembered from old New York subway tunnels, the London Underground and the Paris Metro.  The motorman only slowed down to a more reasonable speed when we rolled though the express stops at Union Square, Grand Central, Fifty-Nine Street and Eighty-Six Street. What a run, there is nothing like riding a New York City subway express going full out especially one that felt it would fall apart at any moment.

The train became elevated as we approached Yankee Stadium and we continued northward through the Bronx past eleven more stops and such sights as the Kingsbridge Armory (once the largest indoor floor space in the world), Lehman College and Mosholu Parkway to the Woodlawn Terminal.

Coincidentally, Mosholu Parkway, a three-mile car only roadway connecting the Bronx Botanical Gardens and Van Cortland Park was built by Robert Moses in 1937 and remains a Bronx treasure.

This happened on Sunday, April 15, one of those many unpleasant days we were forced to endure this past winter and spring. The air was filled with a biting wind and enough moisture to make it miserable. I decided that the train ride was enough for me and chose to call it a day and ride a southbound Number 4 train back to Grand Central.

Seeing Robert Moses’ resting place would have to wait for another day.

A Guest Blog by Geoff Jones

Ralph and I were seniors at Briarcliff High School. His family had multiple cars and his favorite was what we called a Jeepster. an elongated Jeep with a frame and canvas roof/siding. One day Ralph drove a group of us to a drag strip somewhere near Cornwall, in the hills north of West Point. On the way home, the Jeepster’s engine made a loud noise and just died as he pulled to the side of the road. We left it there and our friends drove us home. I agreed to help Ralph retrieve it the next day.

We conceived a plan to tow it back to Briarcliff using my big beat up 1954 Buick with plenty of power. The next morning, Ralph and I with another friend drove up Route 9A past Camp Smith and onto Bear Mountain Road, a curvy two-lane road that led to the Bear Mountain Bridge where we crossed the Hudson River. We continued past West Point and up a road that goes up and around Storm King Mountain, another steep, curvy and dangerous road.

I had an old but thick Manila rope which we tied between our bumpers. Ralph took the Jeepster wheel, I drove the Buick with our friend riding shotgun with me. We left about 15 feet of slack between us for safety and started out. The early towing was easy as it was level and even the uphill wasn’t bad aside from a few jolts when our speeds differed too much. We quickly realized that downhill was a problem. If I saw Ralph getting too close, I’d tend to speed up at about the same time he realized he was getting close. This produced some real snaps, but the rope held.

When we reached the Bear Mountain Bridge I remembered too late that we had to stop and pay the toll. We’d given little thought to this complication and it occurred to me that since what we were doing was illegal, not to say nutty, the toll taker could be a real problem. The bridge is in a state park, so the tolls were run by some sort of cop.

Undaunted, we coasted up and I gave the toll taker money for both of us and stuck out my hand to indicate to Ralph not to stop. Remarkably the guy did nothing. To this day I still think he was so dumbfounded he didn’t know what to do and didn’t call it in because he might have trouble explaining how he happened to let us through while collecting both tolls.

Back on the Bear Mountain Road, we pulled on to a shoulder to plan things because if you’ve driven it you know it’s tricky. We decided to tow him to the top and release him to coast down toward Camp Smith. We drove to the top just fine, found a big overlook to park in while we untied. Then we pushed him out onto the road and waved goodbye. Ralph started slowly but began gathering speed as he disappeared around the first bend. We returned to the Buick and took off to catch him at the bottom.

But we forgot something. That was just the first of several downhills separated by long enough stretches of level road that killed Ralph’s momentum. In a few minutes we caught up to him and stopped where there was no shoulder. Working in the road with nothing to alert drivers approaching from behind, we had to hook up the Jeepster again and resume towing Ralph to the top of the hill before us. We crested it, stopped, untied and pushed him off for another downhill ride.

Once again, we caught up to him in a few miles only to find the Jeepster at the bottom facing another hill. We did it all over and this time he rolled to the bottom a mile or so from Camp Smith. This was the end of Bear Mountain Road, so we hooked up and towed him from there down Route 9A to the exit before the old Putnam line railroad station.

There we exited onto the main road that led to Ralph’s garage located directly across the street from the police station. I gulped as I spied, Bob Whiting, a Briarcliff policeman standing at the front door wide eyed as we pulled in. Fortunately, Whitey knew me well from umping high school games and was one of the few nice cops on the force.

He strolled over and we tried to explain what we’d done. I remember him saying something like. “I didn’t see you, you never spoke to me and if you say anything I’ll guarantee to ticket you every time I see you until you graduate.”

We kept our word for at least for a few months by which time Whitey mentioned it to me when I came to bat in a game. He actually thought it was dumb but funny.

Step in a little closer, ladies and gentlemen and observe that I have nothing up my sleeves. I come before you today with the deal of a lifetime. I kid you not but let me warn you that I shall not pass this way again any time soon. Observe the little red card I hold in my hand. The Moviepass Mastercard. It’s a debit card property of the Fifth Third Bank but it can be yours.

Folks hear me out, this little red card is your entrance to endless entertainment on the big silver screen any day, every day at movie theaters throughout the United States of America. Armed with this little red card, you may walk into a participating theater each day of the week and see a motion picture of your choice for free. You heard correctly; F-R-E-E, free, free, free!

You ask, “So what’s the catch?” There isn’t any catch. All you need do to obtain this little red card is to have a smart phone. You download the Moviepass app, fill out the application on the app and register your credit card number with your new pals at Moviepass. They will charge your credit card $9.90 a month and send you the little red card in seven to ten days.

“I sense skepticism! Do not fear and let your hearts be glad. I guarantee your credit card will not be billed until you successfully use your little red card for the first time.

Think of the possibilities: you can see 30 movies a month for the sum of $9.90. You say $9.90 is too much, how about $7.90? No; how about $6.90? Ladies and gentlemen, you must agree this is the deal of a lifetime.

Our daughter, Beth, first told us about Moviepass in early February. We took the $9.90 plunge and received our cards later that month. My first attempt didn’t go well. The rules that accompanied my card seemed simple enough, go to the theatre armed with your smartphone and debit card. On arrival in the lobby, activate the app for that theatre, the movie you want to see, the movie start time and check in electronically. Once my app confirmed I was checked in, all I had to do was present my debit card to the cashier who will print my ticket. But when I arrived at the Stadium multi-plex in Westbury, the app would not connect. I went so far to seek assistance from the theatre’s customer service rep. without satisfaction. Humbled, I thanked her and returned home.

Rather than give up, I tried using the app at our local theatre in Port Washington where it worked just fine. I had no desire to pick the movie about to begin so I gave my ticket to a waiting customer who successfully used it. As a second test, Mary Ann and I returned to the Stadium that had defeated me. This time, she successfully used her card. She picked Peter Rabbit as her movie. She asked the next person in line if he was interested in that movie? When he said yes, she made his day by giving him her ticket.

Since then we have enjoyed the following movies on Moviepass: Darkest Hour, Black Panther, The 3:15 to Paris, Red Sparrow, Game Night, A Wrinkle in Time, Stalin’s Funeral, The Leisure Seekers, Outside, In, Lean on Pete and Chappaquiddick.

To say this is a movie goer’s bonanza is at best an understatement. Not only does it provide a ready-made incentive to see the movies we truly want to see, it entices us to take-in less desirable films that we wouldn’t ordinarily considering seeing.

It works like a charm. Are there restrictions? Of course, there are. There is limited access to e-ticketing so advance purchase from home is severely limited. It doesn’t include 3-D showings or IMAX and so-called “stadium theatres” showing block-buster movies like Black Panther. Operators who know they will be mobbed can opt out of accepting Moviepass for new openings. But other than these slight inconveniences it is swell.

Truthfully, our problem is we keep looking over our shoulders waiting for the ultimate implosion. Someone is not making money. We’ve asked ticket clerks if this was hurting them? They laugh and say, “Not at all.” They are satisfied with amount they receive and are paid immediately thanks to the debit card.

Is this a Ponzi Scheme? Does Moviepass have a complicated business model we can’t contemplate? Or is this a means to some other end?

Who knows, not me. I sense somewhere a clock is ticking but until this bomb goes off, Mary Ann and I will ride these horses as far and as long as they will take us, and should a day of reckoning come around, we’ll take solace in an old warning that we expect will be Moviepass’ epitaphic:

It was too good to be true and like most deals that appear to be too good to be true, they usually are too good to be true… and so it goes.

(I will be traveling next week so the next edition of “On the Outside Looking In” will appear on May 23.)

On April 8, 1968, New York Magazine reappeared as a new stand-alone weekly magazine. My heart leapt with joy to discover this offspring of the late, great New York Herald Tribune had sprung back to life. Prior to the Trib’s demise, New York Magazine had been their Sunday magazine section and featured the Trib’s stable of outstanding writers. I had high-hopes for this new venture, but I soon realized we had a disconnect. Their editors designed the content with an elitist Upper East Side focus that disappointed me. I also suspected that these editors would be disappointed if they knew they had a subscriber like me and so began my love / hate relationship with New York Magazine.

I first discovered the New York Herald Tribune while a student at St. Francis College in Brooklyn in 1961. My newspaper experience growing up was limited to The Daily News and Daily Mirror in the morning and the New York Journal-American at night. College opened my horizon but one look at The New York Times turned me off. All those columns and tiny headlines on the front page reminded me of a tombstone.

The Trib lived right next to The Times on every newsstand and I quickly took a liking to its off-beat approach and especially, the collection of skilled scribes, writers and reporters like Jimmy Breslin, Dick Schaap, Art Buchwald, Tom Wolf and Red Smith. These were giants who could go toe to toe with anyone The Times could bring to bat.

Little did I realize how fragile newspapers were and that their golden age was about to disappear forever. The demise began when Thomas Murphy, the head of The Newspaper Guild, led the largest newspaper union out on strike against The Daily News on November 1, 1962. The other newspapers foolishly joined ranks and ceased publishing. This prolonged the strike / lock out which still could have ended with a reasonable solution. However, on December 8^th, Bert Powers, the radical president of the NY Typographical Union, led his Local 6 out on a bloody strike with outrageous demands that would destroy the newspaper industry as we knew it.

By the time the strike ended in 1963, several newspapers were severely damaged. The loss of holiday advertisement for the 1962 season was put at over $100 million and post-strike circulation dropped by almost 12%. Powers name became a curse word outside his union, as the man who killed newspapers.

The Daily Mirror succumbed on October 15, 1963 with the remaining papers deeply wounded yet trying to continue.

The post-strike Trib gave birth to New York Magazine in 1963 as a new concept to enhance its ability to compete with The Sunday Times Magazine. It did enhance my love for The Trib. Breslin and Schaap’s columns regularly ran as did Buchwald’s giving me an extra dose of their journalistic ability. Unlike the later magazine, it had a man-on-the-street approach to covering the city. (Then again, with Jimmy Breslin, how could it not have had this approach.)

The Trib soldiered on for three more years before raising a white flag. That was when a grand merger of three of the traditional but ailing newspapers was announced early in 1966. The Herald Tribune, Journal-American and the World-Telegram & Sun would combine operations producing two daily newspapers, the morning Herald Tribune and the World Journal in the afternoon.

The new entities were scheduled to debut on April 25^th, but several newspaper unions went out on strike against, “this cost-cutting consolidation (that) also meant the loss of many jobs for typographers, reporters and editors.” A settlement wasn’t reached until September 12^th, 140 days later.

These strikes gutted the new entity, reducing it to a single evening newspaper now christened as the World Journal Tribune. The cripple lasted just over a year until Friday, May 3, 1967. The headline on the last night of business proclaimed: “World Journal Tribune Ends Publication Today.”

I’m not sure how many times I re-subscribed to New York over the years but my M.O. was consistent. I’d see an issue with an article that reflected the city that I believed in. I’d sign on, once again only to be disappointed and turned off by the glut of opinions counter to my own. My last renewal began several years ago. Somehow, I signed on for a perpetual subscription. I kept looking for renewal notices, but none were forthcoming.

Granted, occasional pieces were noteworthy, but it was a slog. Meanwhile, New York, like many other magazines suffered under E-commerce and subscription rates fell off over the last few years. Eventually, they reduced their frequency to two issues a month which extended my subscription. Last fall I received notice that my subscription would expire in the spring.

Any consideration that I would possibly renew ended when they ceased mailing the magazines and bought into a cheaper delivery service. Their magazine would be delivered by the same drivers who brought us Newsday, our local morning newspaper. Delivery has been haphazard at best. I estimate that I have missed at least half of the editions since they began using this service.

I kept waiting and finally the day of my salvation arrived. I received the March 19-April 1 issue clad in a red cardboard jacket that proclaimed: “LAST ISSUE: RENEW NOW!”

No phone calls, e-mails or telegrams.* Perhaps they finally had enough of me too. Whatever:

Adios New York Magazine, I’m free of your clutches at long last!

*Does Western Union still send telegrams?

This is a follow-up to the piece about my rookie trip. Several of these stories have gone unreported since 1976.

Although we arrived on a Sunday morning, our room was ready. We were able to nap, shower and eat before being picked up by a CT Bowring chauffer who drove us together with Ed Kettle from Chevron and his wife out to Roger and Irene Tyndall’s suburban home. (Ed seemed perturbed at having to share a car with us interlopers.) I remember a pool in the Tyndall’s back yard with a mechanized removal cover and little else.

Monday night belonged to Bland Welsh. Tony and Johan Tisdall and David and Mary Hussey met us at the Shakespeare Tavern near Downing Street for drinks. (Tony managed to spill his drink down Mary Ann’s back although he never acknowledged this.) Dinner was a blur, but they took us to the Mermaid Theater off the Thames River to see “Side by Side by Sondheim.”

Hartley Cooper hosted a curious dinner. Eddie Norris and his wife took us to the Ritz Hotel on Green Park first. (The Ritz was then on its heels and this was prior to its re-birth as a luxury hotel that befitted its famous name.) Norris introduced us to Powell Watson a major marine client of Hartley Cooper based in Norfolk, Virginia.  Norris had put Watson up in an enormous suite which was obviously to Mr. Watson’s liking. Although it was shabby, his suite was a throwback to a more elegant era. We sat in their living room where Eddie ordered champagne and hors d’oeuvres via room service. I remember observing the state of the room but being impressed by the display of intercom buttons on an old telephone that included one for a maid and another for the butler.

Norris’ working brokers, Chris East and Ian Wallace and their wives joined us for dinner. I recall Wallace’s wife, Jane, a raven-haired beauty and Watson explaining to the table that he had recently purchased a Cadillac Eldorado for his widowed mother living in Florida. Powell noted: “Mother’s sight is poor, and this car will protect her when she crashes.”

John and Jan Bremner of Baines Daws together with John’s deputy, Bill Boyle and his wife, Janet, met us at a dock near the Tower where we boarded a Russian built hydrofoil for a fast ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We visited the museum dedicated to the world clock and home of Greenwich Mean Time. The museum also had an exhibition explaining America’s revolution and our Bi-Centennial. Dinner followed in a Greenwich restaurant and I presented each of their wives with a mint-condition bicentennial two-dollar bill.

Dennis and Connie Mead had us to their first home in Nazing. I don’t recall who else joined us, but I’ll never forget how warmly they treated us. Connie Mead presented Mary Ann with the large bouquet of flowers she picked from her garden. (That was the infamous night when, on our return to the Carlton Tower, we encountered Chuck and Ann Marie Sabatino.)

One morning, we took the train to Windsor where John and Brenda Shapiro met us, and we enjoyed a tour and a splendid lunch before they arranged for a car and driver for the ride home.

Being a veteran of NYC’s public transit, I actively sought out different ways to travel from the Carlton Tower to the City of London. The Underground was my first choice and I mastered the Circle and District Lines from Sloan Square to various stops in the business district. My next conquest was the Central Line from Marble Arch and I walked from the hotel through Hyde Park to utilize this line.

A word about the Underground circa 1976. Except for the Circle and District Lines that originated as steam rail lines built close to the surface, most tubes were accessed by long escalators. Unlike 1976 New York, I quickly learned that when you just rode the escalator, you always stepped to the left allowing those in a hurry to walk on the right. (Note: In New York, it’s opposite: walk on the left, stand on the right that is when we abide by this courtesy.)

Framed advertisements lined the walls that included rather risqué lingerie ads. One of the brand names for these women’s panties was “Loveable.” (The British called them knickers.) Their ad showed a woman police officer from behind. One view showed her wearing her utility belt, flashlight, club and other equipment. Next to it, a second view without her uniform wearing just panties with the caption: “Underneath it all, they are just loveable.”

One free and clear morning, Mary Ann and I had a leisurely breakfast before I kissed her goodbye and began my journey to the city by bus. Armed with a map of London routes, I made two or three changes to reach my destination. I could have travelled the same distance in less than an hour on the Underground that took almost 90 minutes by bus. But my convoluted journey was a learning experience of Central London congestion. I never ventured on a London bus again.

Coffee was awful, afternoon tea was a daily ritual served from a trolley wheeled by one of the women who also served lunch in private dining rooms. Those lunches began at one pm with drinks usually gin and tonic (G&T) followed by an appetizer like smoked salmon or prawns accompanied by white wine. A main course, a roast; beef, pork or poultry followed accompanied by white or red wine. Next, dessert, then cigars port or cognac and coffee. Lunch ended at three with brokers going back to work. I did too but I am not sure how I did it except I was young.

This was my first of almost 100 trips I would make to London during my career. I learned three important pieces of advice that I went on to share with those who came after me:

1. Look left.
2. Most things in London are on a 4/5^th size scale. If you are tall, prepare to duck when entering trains, buses, cars and rooms.
3. The queen is none of your business. If you think you have something to say to a Brit about Her Majesty be it good, bad or indifferent; shut your mouth and keep it to yourself.

Guest blog by Peter King

Recently, SNY, the N. Y. Mets sports network featured the award-winning documentary about Sunnyside Gardens, the old fight club the famous Queens arena and for many years, the home of the Golden Gloves Tournament sponsored by The Daily News. (I was given an advance viewing of the documentary and think it is terrific. Admission — I make several appearances throughout the documentary.)

Boxing and horse racing were the kings of sports in New York from the turn of the Twentieth Century until overexposure by television killed the old fight clubs. Clubs proliferated in New York City. The granddaddy of them all, St. Nicholas Arena located on West 66^th Street and Columbus Avenue reigned supreme from 1896 to 1962.

Eastern Parkway Arena deemed “House of Upset” held forth in Brownsville, Brooklyn from 1947 to 1958. Located at 1435 Eastern Parkway it was the setting for a national boxing show on the DuMont Television Network from May 1952 to May 1954. Teddy Brennan, later of Madison Square Garden fame was the matchmaker who featured up and coming talent like Floyd Paterson who fought there six times during that period.

Other venues included Jamaica Arena on Archer Avenue, the Broadway (Brooklyn) Arena, 1920 to 1951and The New Ridgewood Grove on the Brooklyn / Queens border from 1926 to 1956. These venues hosted their own televised boxing nights on the DuMont Network beginning in the late 1940s. This led to over-exposure as the ever-expanding television coverage of local boxing killed the gate and doomed these arenas. By 1956 most of these arenas had ceased to exist as had the DuMont Network.

Sunnyside Garden was the last of New York’s neighborhood fight clubs. A ramshackle, weather-beaten old building which stood stolidly on Queens Boulevard between 44th and 45th Streets in the shadow of the massive concrete el that carried the elevated Flushing subway line. It was about one mile from the 59th Street Bridge, three blocks from Manufacturers Trust Bank where Willie Sutton pulled his last stickup and four blocks from St. Teresa’s Grammar School where Dominican Nuns threw left hooks that rattled kids’ heads like trash cans full of broken toys.

I lived in an apartment house on 44th Street between Skillman and 43rd Avenues about 2 1/2 blocks from Sunnyside Garden and passed it each morning on my way to school. Next to the fight club was Robert Hall’s clothing store which was always good for a cheap suit. Inside the arena the air was a perpetual thick haze filled with cigar and cigarette smoke. There was a bar just after the front door and beer sales were always heavy. Since there were only a few hundred ringside seats, most of the always boisterous crowd crammed into rickety wooden bleacher seats.
Sunnyside Garden was all real with no frills. It didn’t attract Hollywood, Broadway or political celebrities. More likely to be seen were numbers runners, bookies or nondescript ward heelers. What it did attract were tough local fighters and the occasional top ranked fighters like Hurricane Jackson and Nino Valdez or even an ex-champ like Harold Johnson. One local guy who qualified on both counts was Levittown’s Irish Bobby Cassidy who fought countless times at Sunnyside against other club fighters and went on to become a top light heavyweight contender and a member of the New York State Boxing Hall of Fame.

Sunnyside Garden held its last boxing show in June 1977. Just six months later the fabled arena was torn down to be unceremoniously replaced by a Wendy’s! Today the only indicator of what went before is a monument outside Wendy’s honoring the arena and the gladiators who fought their hearts out there.

The SNY documentary with its vintage footage and insightful interviews captures Sunnyside Garden’s proud boxing history of grit, sweat and blood — as well as the neighborhood spirit of the times. Definitely worth watching!!

My first experience arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport was humiliating at best. Mary Ann and I arrived on a Sunday morning having flown overnight on British Airways. The seal on the bottle of Johnny Walker Red had come undone somewhere during the flight. I had bought it at the Duty-Free Shop at British Airways’ JFK Terminal on the advice of my boss, Charlie Robbins. Enough whiskey leaked onto my sports jacket that I’d stowed beneath it in the overhead to make me smell like the town drunk.

“What should I do?” I asked Mary Ann as we prepared to de-plane.

“You don’t smell as badly as you think you do. You’ll be fine.”

Perhaps she was correct, but, from my end, I swore I stank. Curiously, nobody mentioned it, not Chuck or Ann Marie Sabatino, our traveling companions, none of the officials at Customs and Immigrations nor the snotty driver from Bland Welsh who drove us and the Sabatinos to the Carlton Tower. The staff at check-in nor the bell-hop who took us to our room didn’t seem to notice either, still…

The year was 1976 and Chuck Sabatino and I both had reputations as “wise asses” at Marsh & McLennan, he on the cargo side, me on the hull side. Despite this, both of us had been promoted to Assistant Vice Presidents and our bosses decided that it was time for us to be make our debut in the London market. Whoever decided to send us over together insisted that we bring our wives for obvious reasons. We had both been prepped by various bosses on how to behave including what to say to our wives. Our prep went so far that our supreme leader, John Buzbee, invited us to his office after five pm on the Friday before we left. We were heavy with cash advances both in Dollars and Pounds as credit cards were not yet universal. We both had the traveler’s high, the combination of excitement about our coming adventure and money to burn.

John’s purpose was to take us down a peg by warning us about the impressions we would make; “Don’t be frivolous, lose control (see drinking) and be respectful and serious.” I expect his lecture would have gone on longer, but Chuck cut him off with this: “John, I know this drill. When I was in the Marine Corps, we made a trip to Japan, but before they let us off the ship for liberty, our Captain gathered us in formation and said: ‘Men, Japan is an ally: Keep it in your pants!”

What a week, what a time and what a city. London was fabulous. Mary Ann and Ann Marie’s days were free, and they had a grand time both sightseeing and more importantly, shopping. But London was a dangerous place that spring. One of the IRA’s bombing campaigns had just ended. Posters lined the underground, buses and public places warning citizens to report any unattended items.  The Carlton Tower had a security desk just inside its lobby entrance manned by uniformed guards. Mary Ann and Ann Marie befriended the guards, but they still inspected the contents of the ladies shopping bags every afternoon as they did our briefcases when we returned from the city.

At night we went our separate ways as the cargo scene and the hull scene encompassed different casts of characters. In those days, we placed business with several different Lloyds brokers, so each couple had a full dance card for the entire week.

Each night revolved around a big dinner proceeded or followed by an event, the theater, a cruise down the Thames on a hydrofoil, a trip to a country inn or a concert.

We did manage one serendipitous late-night encounter where we could be ourselves and blow off steam. That night, we all arrived on our floor at almost the same time. Mary Ann and I had just started toward our room when the next elevator arrived. We both turned around and out came Chuck and Ann Marie. Mary Ann carried a large bouquet of flowers presented to her earlier that evening. Chuck took one look and sprinted toward her blowing by me. I watched as he jumped into her arms as down they went flowers cascading in every direction; one of the funniest sights, ever! We all exploded in laughter then retreated to our room where the four of us drank my bottle and the mini-bar dry as we let loose.

God knows how many rookie mistakes we made. The most common, when taking a ride with a Brit in their company Jaguar; automatically walking over to the left-hand door. The Brits loved it and always asked, “Oh, I didn’t know you were driving.” I can’t tell you how long it took to break that instinct.

Private lunch clubs prevailed, all of them position or class oriented. If I went to lunch with the, “so called, ‘boys,” the senior boy hosted the lunch at the firm’s pub. (Yes, they all had their own pubs and luncheon clubs and, in those days; men only.)

Lots of pretensions, many lunches were command performances for us to present ourselves.  That’s why lunches with those boys were my favorite. They were ambitious wise asses just like me and we could get on using guile and humor. Many of those boys became lasting friends.

My rookie lunch reckoning came at a more upscale lunch in the executive dining room belonging to Mead, Shapiro and Tyndall, a small firm, now long gone. The meal began with fried prawns as the appetizer, one of my favorites. I looked around for salt and spied a bowl that I assumed was what I sought. I spooned some on my dish and Giles Bly, a junior broker, admonished me my saying, “John, I didn’t know you liked sugar on your prawns.”

He deliberately compounded his slight by demanding that the waiter replace my ruined prawns immediately loud enough for all to hear.

To this day, Mr. Bly doesn’t realize how close he came to death for doing that.