John Delach

Gary Gulman has a wonderful comedy routine about how the government decided to set the two-digit code for every state. Gary begins his routine by explaining that he recently watched a 93-minute documentary about the group of “abbreviators” the government brought together in 1973 to convert the existing abbreviations each state preferred into two-letter codes. The existing shortcuts were confusing at best with many having little in common. For example, Alabama was Ala, Hawaii and Idaho were Hawaii and Idaho respectively, Kansas was Kans, Missouri was Mo and Pennsylvania was Pa. So off to work these appointees went and, while they were at it, they also included two-letter codes for Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Northern Marianas and Palau.

Gulman explained that the documentary placed the abbreviators in a hotel conference room fully expecting to wrap this up quickly enough to enjoy the hotel breakfast buffet before it closed.

All right, let’s do this in alphabetical order and let’s do it quickly so we can get out of here. First up: Alabama; make that AL. Next up: Alaska, (and the first moans.) Let’s skip that and go to the next state; Arizona. Easy, AR…next, Arkansas…’oh s***! We’ll go back to those two. Next: California, easy- CA, next: Colorado…CO, hey, we’re on a roll, Next: Connecticut…damn, damn, damn!

In exasperation one participant screams out: “How many times can this happen?”

Gulman answers for him: “Twenty-Seven!”

In fact, the documentary he refers to doesn’t exist. Nevertheless it has become an urban legend and has even been given a title: “The Abbreviated State.” It is simply a figment of Gulman’s imagination that he uses as the vehicle to introduce his routine. Despite this fact, there remains a small army of truthers out there combing through the corners of the internet desperately seeking to find it.

But Gulman’s routine does beg the question, how did the postal service select the more difficult choices for these codes? Absent a conspiracy model, most decisions appear to be logical, practical or both.

Eighteen states and two territories already used two letter abbreviations so the Postal Service agreed that they would retain those letters as their new codes. Missouri retained MO and Pennsylvania, PA. The list included DC, GA, KY, MD, all the popular “New’s,” NH, NJ, NM, and NY, not to mention the four geographical names, NC, ND, SC and SD. Other codes became shortened versions of the existing abbreviations. Miss became MS, Minn-MN, Ariz-AZ, Nebr-NE, Fla-FL and Iowa-IA.

Some must have been show stoppers. Texas versus Tennessee or, Tex vs. Tenn. It would appear that calmer heads prevailed giving us TX and TN.

But the M’s must have been a tough nut to crack. Including Marshall islands and Micronesia, there are ten and so we have ME, MD, MH, MA, MI, FM, MN, MS, MO and MT. No, that’s not a mistype; the postal code for Micronesia is FM. (Two other territorial oddities are Northern Marianas – MP and Palau – PW.)

Had enough? I would think so and I do believe I should stop beating this horse. It is dead.

Next time out, I plan to offer a proper explanation of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System’s numbering codes. I will explain how we get from I-5 to I-95 and from I-10 to I-90. I will also explain why we make side trips on routes like I-115, I-278, I-391, I-495, and delve into why Florida’s I-8 exists. I will offer my opinion why all of the distance signs on I-19 south of the Tucson city limits on the way to the Mexican border are in kilometers and not in miles. Did you know, Bob and Ray, the interstate system includes: H-1, H-2 and H-3 on Oahu, Hawaii? Yes, Virginia, there is a method to all this madness.

As an aside, if you choose to watch Gary Gulman’s routine, please make sure you also watch another of his called “The Adolph Hitler Documentary.” Again he makes up the existence of a documentary to introduce his subject. This time he explains that a women friend told him about it but couldn’t think of the word, atrocities, so she used a synonym and told him it was called “Hitler’s Shenanigans.”

Thursday, June 8^th found Bill Christman and me riding in a rental car 33-miles south of Tucson on Interstate-19 to the exit for Green Valley. It’s hot, really hot as we drive west for a mile on a two-lane road before we find our destination. Just off this road, we find a non-descript metal sheeted building behind a small parking lot. A cyclone fence stretches from one side. In front of the fence is a small sign that says: “Watch for rattlesnakes. We’re not kidding!”

Behind the fence sits a concrete structure low to the ground. Welcome back to the Cold War, a de-commissioned and preserved Titan II missile silo. Scott, our guide is a retired air force officer who spent two years as the launch commander in just such a facility. He leads a party of ten, Bill and I, a family of five, mom, dad and three teenage girls, another couple and a single fellow with a Germanic accent, into the facility. We enter a twisting passageway to begin our descent fifty-three steps down a metal staircase.

If the site had been operational, we would have had to pass through four locked checkpoints to gain access. As it is, we pass through two massive blast doors to enter the control room. Everything about this facility is deadly serious. Scott explains how serious from the intricate steel rebar pattern used to strengthen the massive concrete floors, walls and overheads – all laid in single pours to the complex’s communications system that has four independent and redundant back-ups.

The design and engineering of this facility is based on one over-riding reason, protect the Titan II missile and the four-person launch crew from all but a direct hit from an incoming nuclear device. (As an un-nerving aside, Scott pronounces nuclear in the same manner that W does.)

Completely sealed off inside, the crew has enough food, water, power, clean air and a/c to function for 12 days. Massive springs and shock absorbers, flexible cables and hoses protect the missile and the launch instruments from a nuclear shock wave. Positive pressurization prevents contamination by fall out or poisons.

The complex contains three separate chambers connected by tubes. The control center, the missile silo and the crew’s quarters. We only visit the first two but Scott explains the crew quarters are basic, a small kitchen, bunk beds and a toilet.  “The crews rotated every 24-hours so there wasn’t’ a lot of downtime. For the most part we didn’t cook as the kitchen had to be cleaned for the next crew. Instead, we subsisted on a diet of Coke and Twinkies.”

Scott is matter-of-fact, friendly, open and knowledgeable. He leads us through an excellent presentation of the launch procedure while we stand around the control room. He reminds us that the crew (two officers and two enlisted) were in their early twenties or late teens. Crazy as it sounds, the fate of civilization could have rested in the hands of personnel who could not legally buy a beer!

Scott selects two of the girls to play the roles of the commander and her executive officer (XO).He directs them to sit in the two oversized rolling office chairs each at her appropriate work station.  They are about six-feet apart with the sister playing commander perched before a console bursting with a plethora of 1950s and early 1960s technology. Phones featuring rotary dials, analogue displays and switches and black & white TV monitors.

Scott points to a large metal cabinet with all the draws marked “empty.” He explains:    “Originally, these draws were filled with vacuum tubes that powered the internal guidance settings for the missile. The air force estimated these missiles would remain in service for about five years. They actually lasted 20. Tubes must be replaced at regular intervals but after ten years, manufacturing ceased.” Pointing to one panel in the cabinet where a display is located, he continues, “Fortunately, NASA, Boeing and MIT developed this digital guidance system that replaced all those tubes.”

He instructs the sisters to re-enact a missile launch. First, he has the commander find a series of six numbers from her orders which she instructs the XO to enter into a switch that releases the locks holding the missile in place. Then he instructs them to simultaneously turn their two keys on the commander’s count.

(The position of these two keys is deliberately placed about twelve feet from each other making a one-person launch impossible.)

A series of turns activates a green light on the commander’s console. Scott gives the command, “Push the launch button.”

Reality check: It took less than two and a half minutes to launch!

Scott notes, “By the way, the air force thought it best that the crew had no knowledge of their missile’s target.”

Someone asks, “What was the crew to do next?”

“One and done. They had no further real orders.” Scott is not without a sense of humor. “Remember, we were basically big kids. One night, off duty, after a few beers, we concocted a ‘what if’ plan. We’d leave the complex, walk down to the interstate, use our side arms to hijack a vehicle, rob a bank, hook up with four hot girls and hightail it to Mexico.”

In case you are wondering, the missiles cannot be recalled. The time to target was a little more than a half-hour.

And now: “Let us pray.”

(Title used with apologies to Johnny Cash.)

From 2002 until 2014 our merry band of retirees made 14 baseball road trips. On most of these trips, four of us traveled together, Bill Christman, Mike Cruise, Don Markey and me. We missed 2012 and 2016. Bill, Mike and I made a non-baseball trip in the spring of 2016 to ride behind a restored Norfolk & Western J- Class steam locomotive, No. 611.

We lost Don who passed away in the fall of 2016. Mike couldn’t make the 2017 trip, but Bill and I are traveling to Phoenix and Tucson today for our next adventure. FYI, the forecast is 107!

Mike and I made the first trip by car. Our first stop was Pittsburg and a Pirates game at PNC Park. Granted, this was my first out-of-town ballpark, but its layouts, amenities and the great view of downtown Pittsburg blew me away. I still rate PNC Park as the best. We also visited Cleveland to see the Yankees lose to the Indians 11-3 at the Jake.

In 2003, we did Ohio flying to Cincinnati, Mike and I from LaGuardia, Don from Newark and Bill from Dallas. We rented a minivan: first stop Dayton for their Class A minor league Dragons who defeated the Lansing Lugnuts. The main event on this trip was an incredible air show staged at Wright-Patterson AFB celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight. Next up, Columbus and the AAA Clippers and finally two Reds games back in Cinci.

2004 found us in Chicago to see the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field and the Cubs beat the Cardinals in the “friendly (but uncomfortable) confines” of Wrigley Field. We finished with an Amtrak round trip to Milwaukee for a Brewers game at Miller Park before returning to Chicago.

A 2005 road trip took us to DC and Maryland. We watched the Nationals lose to the Cardinals at RFK before driving to Fredrick, MD the home of Barbara Fritchie who refused to strike the Stars and Stripes telling old Bobby Lee, “If you must shoot, shoot me and not this flag.” We saw their home team Keys play the Myrtle Beach Pelicans before finishing up in Camden Yards with the Orioles on the same day Katrina floods New Orleans.

Kansas and Missouri in 2006; stops included Omaha and the AAA Class Royals, Wichita for the AA Wranglers and Kansas City for the Big League Royals. In Omaha we saw a Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4023 displayed high on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River and John Rosenblatt Stadium, home of the NCAA World Series. We visited the Truman Museum in Independence and Kaufman Stadium in K.C. with its great sight lines and dancing water fountains.

2007 was our most ambitious car trip with stops in Toronto, Detroit, Akron and Philadelphia. My Yukon XL provided room and comfort. Bill met us in Toronto where we watched the lackluster Yankees lose to the Blue Jays, 15 to 4. The next morning we drove across the farmland of western Ontario to Comerica Park, the Detroit Tigers home that featured a carousel featuring tigers instead of horses. We spent the night in Ann Arbor, (Go Wolverines!)  Next stop: Akron, for the Aeros. Bill left us in Pittsburg on our way to Philadelphia where we watch the Atlanta Braves beat the Phillies 7 to 5 at Citizen Bank Field. We said good bye to Don at a rest area on the NJT while Mike and I pushed on to Long Island having covered 1,769 miles in six days.

Our ranks swelled in 2008 and again in 2013 when we played “Backyard Baseball” in NYC. The first outing took us to Shea Stadium and old Yankees Stadium both in their last year of existence. The second took us to Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium. We coupled those trips with a visit to the Staten Island Yankees in 2008 and the Brooklyn Cyclones in 2013.

On the road again in 2009, we drove down the Delmarva Peninsula to Perdue Stadium for the Shorebirds vs the NJ Blue Claws. Continuing south we caught the Norfolk Tides at Harbor Park, visited the Navy base, the battleship, USS Wisconsin, and a replica of the USS Monitor before returning to DC and the new Nationals Park. Bill flew home from Regan National and Don again met Helen at a NJT rest stop.

We gave Bill a break in 2010 as we played Lone Star Baseball. Don and I flew separately to DFW where we met Bill. First stop, Arlington, a tour of Jerry’s palace (aka Cowboy Stadium aka AT&T Stadium) and a Rangers game. We had lunch in Austin on the way to San Antonio to attend a Missions game that night. We finished in Houston, visited the battleship Texas in San Jacinto, rode the light rail and saw the Astros play in Minute Maid Park (aka Enron Stadium.)

Reunited, the four of returned to the Midwest in 2011. A Twins game in Target Field, Minneapolis, a cold, wet visit to A Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, a rainout in Davenport, a Cardinals home game and a visit inside the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The Davenport rainout allowed us a serendipitous experience to enjoy an outstanding dinner at a fine restaurant called the Duck City Bistro and not at New York prices.

2014 made five of us with the addition of Geoff Jones. Geoff and I met in Atlanta and watched a couple of innings of a Braves game at Turner Field. The next day we drove to Charlotte, NC where we met Bill, Mike and Don. We rode their light rail, visited the NASCAR Hall of Fame and attended the AAA Knights game in their brand new BB&T Ballpark (named after a bank.) On our way to Durham and the Bulls, we came across Spencer and a sign for the North Carolina Transportation Museum. Located in old shops, once part of the Southern Railroad, they have an impressive collection of locomotives and rolling stock. Quite a find and a worthwhile visit. We watched a Durham Bulls followed by a pub dinner in a mall built around the old American Tobacco Company factory.

That turned out to be our last trip as a group. Curiously, I wrote an epilogue for that 2014 trip: “Older and not very wiser, we had a ball, great friends; lots of laughs. Baseball is our stated reason for making these trips but it’s really the good and bad, the things that go right and go wrong that make these trips special and what makes each of them a good time.”

I believe I can say for us all us, it’s been a blast!   

Bad boys, bad boys,

what you gonna do,

what you gonna do

when they come for you?

The realization that I had a problem struck me almost two and a half hours into our gathering at Foley’s NY, a sports bar on 33^rd Street opposite the Empire State Building.

Thirteen of us had gathered for our second spring luncheon to celebrate being part of a group of (mostly) guys who tailgate together before every New York Football Giants home game. We call ourselves, “Maramen Tailgaters,” and our name comes from the time when the Mara family owned 100% of the team. In that era, sports writers commonly referred to Giants players as “Maramen;”  hence our name.

For whatever reason, in the middle of having a good time, I reached into my pockets only to realize my IPhone was missing. “Damn.” I reached for my rain jacket only to find nothing but empty pockets. “Damn, damn, damn, I left my phone on the train.”

Within seconds of announcing my developing dilemma, Drew, my oldest grandson (17) asked, “Grandpa, do you know your Apple ID and password?”

In fact I did. The gal who set me up at the Apple Store when I bought my first device gave me a simple combination for my ID and password. Drew handed over a phone and asked me to enter both into the “Find My Phone” app. As if by wizardry it opened to reveal my phone was moving along Broadway toward Twenty-Six Street, about eight blocks from our location. My son swung into action and messaged my phone: “Lost my phone. Do you have it? Please call (his mobile number). Thank you.”

By then the phone had moved so Michael texted: “Checked it and see that the phone is at 24^th and 7^th. If you return it to Foley’s on 33^rd I will buy you a beer.”

My son-in-law, Tom, pinged the phone at 2:27. This is a command that you can use if you know your phone’s location but can’t find it. It sets off an annoying beep every 15-seconds. Thinking this through, we decided to cancel this as the finder might it so annoying to just throw the phone away.

Drew sent follow-up messages at 2:32 and 2:49 so we learned that it had come to rest at Broadway and Twenty-Eighth Street. About an hour later it still hadn’t moved so Tom and Drew decided to go to that location. I yelled to them as they left, “Please stay safe and don’t do anything foolish.”

The words were hardly out of my mouth when a feeling of dread came over me and I thought to myself, this is a mistake. I later learned that Tom sent out this message when they reached the location, “We are on your block. Are you there? We are at 28 & Broadway walking to find you. Please call (his number) as we are trying to find you.”

No response, just as well as far as I was concerned. I was greatly relieved when they returned. Back in Foley’s, Drew noted that the phone was on the move again. Then it stopped and Drew reported that the map showed it was at Madison Square Garden. Then it died. Drew is obviously a smart teenager, but having grown up in Fairfield, CT, he knows squat about Manhattan.

“That’s great,” I exclaimed! Drew looked at me like I had two heads. “Drew, Madison Square Garden sits right on top of Penn Station. This means there is a chance whoever has the phone will turn it in to the LIRR’s Lost and Found.”

On my way home I went to L&F only to see that it was closed on weekends…and so it goes.

I rode home cut-off and phone free. Tuesday was the earliest I could attempt to retrieve my phone. Sure, I needed a mobile phone but I am not yet so addicted that not having one crippled me. What did bother me was the thought of re-programing all the stuff we park on our mobile devices to a new one. My daughter, Beth, assured me that Apple has most of it in the cloud that I could retrieve the same way we located my phone. I chose to doubt that but I know nothing.

On Tuesday, I rode the 10:11 out of Port Washington to retrieve my phone. The L&F office was its usual busy place but the clerks show patience and empathy that calms frantic riders. As I waited, I came across a chap who lost his designer sunglasses, a business man who left a Manila folder with important papers and two others looking for phones.

I explained that mine was a white IPhone 5C in a black Otterbox Case. The clerk produced the plastic bin dedicated to IPhones and began extracting them one by one for my inspection. I stopped him when I noticed a phone up against the side of the bin. A white 5C in a black Otterbox Case. “I think that’s it, I exclaimed”

Of course, it was dead. He put it in a charger but said, “This will take time.”

“Fair enough, I’ll be back in a half-hour.”  Tuesday was a perfect spring day, mid-60s, so I enjoyed my walk. When I returned, he held up the phone. He had opened it to the “go-to” page. Staring at me was a photo of Max, our Golden Retriever. “That’s my dog.” I exclaimed.

When I gave him my code to open the phone: Game set and match!

Of course, I was thrilled, but yet, I am left to wonder about the finder’s motives. Was this person a good Samaritan, a railroad employee on a lunch break or did our surveillance send the warning: You can run but you can’t hide.

Perhaps true love does conquer all. Surely, in my case, it conquered geography.

I met Mary Ann Donlon at the New York World’s Fair on June 5, 1964 at The Red Garter, a banjo bar in the Wisconsin Pavilion. (The pavilion prized exhibit was the world’s largest wheel of cheddar cheese.)  Mary Ann gave me her phone number and after a few unlucky false starts, she agreed to a safe date; a Sunday afternoon return to the fair. Once she gave me her address and directions, I began to realize that we may have been geographically incompatible.

Did I mention that I didn’t have access to an automobile nor that it mattered as I didn’t have a driver’s license either?

We were separated by two bus lines. My first ride was on the B-58 bus that once upon a time had a more descriptive name, the Flushing – Ridgewood trolley. I rode the B-58 on a 45-minute journey to reach the junction of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing’s business and transportation center. Leaving Ridgewood, the bus meandered through Maspeth, Elmhurst, Corona and the World’s Fair before reaching Flushing and the end of the line.

I transferred to the Q-16, Q-14 or the Q-44 to arrive within proximity of the Donlon residence.

Being a city kid, public transit was in my DNA and I never considered this trek to be other than the way it was, much less a burden. No doubt, the early sparks of romance between us eliminated any possible negative thoughts. The girl was more important than any geographical inconvience.

We soon found ourselves dating regularly on most Saturday nights and many of these dates took us into Manhattan for dinner and/or a movie or a Broadway show. I didn’t consider going to the city on a Saturday night to be unusual even though it required extensive time on public transit to make the journey to a young lady’s house, escort her to Manhattan, enjoy a date, bring her home and return to Ridgewood.

On those early dates, a kiss or two or a short series of kisses was all I expected. Then it was good night, good bye until our next lengthy phone call. During this time the first inklings of love blossomed. As our relationship developed, I lingered longer and longer before beginning my journey home.

As my stays extended, those rides became more of an odyssey as Saturday melded into Sunday morning. At that hour, my only chance for a reasonable wait for a bus back to Flushing was the Q-44 stop. It was the only line that ran with any frequency at that time of night. The stop was outside a bagel store, but at that hour, even the bakers had yet to arrive. On arrival in Flushing I headed for an all-night news stand at the corner of Roosevelt and Main that carried the “bull-dog” (early edition) of Sunday’s The New York Herald Tribune, my favorite newspaper.

Sunday meant the Trib’s new magazine section: New York, with the good chance of featuring pieces by both Jimmy Breslin and Dick Schaap. I’ve written about Breslin many times but Schaap was also a good writer and commentator. He was the person who coined the term, “Fun City” to describe John Lindsay’s New York. He also did a stint on the local NBC nightly news program as a sportscaster only to get into trouble.  When the great Secretariat was retired to stud, reports spread that his sperm showed signs of immaturity. His early breeding attempts in December of 1973 with Appaloosa received inordinate publicity prompting Schaap to comment: “It would not be an exaggeration to note that Secretariat and Appaloosa have become the most famous stable mates since Mary and Joseph.”

After picking up the Trib I made my way to a drug store with an outside vestibule unblocked by a security fence, common in those days. Their vestibule sheltered me against wind, cold and on bad nights, rain. The showcase windows gave off enough light for me to sit and begin reading my paper. Several times I reached my nest after one am. That made for a long wait as the next B-58 had an hour and a half layover and didn’t leave until 2:30. After discharging his Flushing passengers, the driver shut his doors and took a passenger’s seat for a nap. I never asked the driver to let me on. I just asked him to wake me if I fell asleep. Fortunately, I never did as the Trib held my interest.

I disappointed Mary Ann by not asking her to be my wife the Christmas of 1965. In February, 1966, the National Guard shipped me to Fort Dix, NJ for basic training and my advanced training in my specialty, MS-311, a telephone lineman.

When I returned home late that summer, Mary Ann invited me to stay over finally ending my odyssey. I popped the question on Christmas Eve, 1966 and we wed on November 11, 1967.

The best decision I ever made was making that trek.

One morning in 1973 found Bill Christman and I riding the Q-29 Bus from a stop on Dry Harbor Road to the junction of Woodhaven Blvd and Queens Blvd where we’d pick up the subway to Manhattan and work. Bill opened his copy of The New York Times and whistled surprise. “Look at this, John; CBS sold the Yankees to a group led by somebody named Steinbrenner.”

I looked over at the paper and said, “Holy sh**, that’s George Steinbrenner. I know about him, he owns a Great Lakes fleet and shipyards. He has a big reputation for being a hard ass and a prick. Well, I guarantee that the Yankees will be a lot more interesting than they’ve been under CBS.” (On December 31, 1974, the Yankees signed Catfish Hunter as a free agent. Good times and the Steinbrenner three-ring circus were on their way!)

We lived at 65-33 77^th Place in Middle Village from 1970 until 1977. I have a favorite photograph of my family standing on the stoop just outside the house. Beth looks to be about four, Michael, two. That would put it in 1973. Mary Ann stands in the doorway wearing a red blouse with white trim and blue slacks. The blouse has a Western look that would do Dale Evans proud. I have on my old army field jacket. My name, the US Army patch and the 42^nd Rainbow Division patch on my left shoulder are all visible. My sideburns travel to the bottoms of my ears and I have on the loudest pair of grey, blue, red and white plaid pants that the decade produced. The photo stops just below my knees but I’ll bet I was wearing a pair of Frye high-heel boots. You have to love the 70s!

Middle Village is a real community with its own character. We lived in pre-war attached houses,   18-feet wide, two-stories with a basement. The main floor, back to front began with a small foyer with a closet off the front door. An inner door opened into the living room that was the only room that took advantage of the full width of the house. On the extreme right of the living room was the staircase that led to the second floor. The dining room occupied about 2/3rds of the back of the house and the kitchen the other third. This made for a narrow kitchen, only six-feet wide before being reduced by counters, sink, stove and refrigerator.

We had three bedrooms and the bathroom upstairs. A good sized master bedroom, a second smaller one that was our daughter Beth’s and one the equivalent to a solitary cell on Rikers Island that was Michael’s.

The basement was unfinished but had a utility sink and connections for a washing machine. It also had half-bath featuring a small sink and toilet: Rikers, the sequel. I decorated the white-washed walls with four posters: Farah Fawcett posed in a bathing suit, hair askew and her left nipple visible. The second, a mock headline from The Daily News showing the first moon landing with a photo of Neil Armstrong descending down the ladder to the surface. The headline screams: SO WHAT! The third was my favorite. A photograph of Frank Zappa in all his ugliness sitting on a toilet bowl with his pants around his ankles. Frank mugs for the camera and the headline reads: PHI ZAPPA CRAPPER. The fourth was the movie poster from Jaws featuring the shark closing in on the women swimming above. Scared my daughter Beth to death and still does.

The back door led to a small yard and a garage that fronted on a central alley serving all the houses on both sides. This is where our young children safely raced their Big Wheels and where we put out our garbage for collection. The inside of the garage was so small that even if completely empty, it could barely hold one car from that era. Before they moved to Ramsey, NJ, my cousin Helen and her husband, Don, garaged their full-sized 1973 Chevy station wagon in it for insurance purposes. Maneuvering this monster in and out was a nightmare akin to making a bed with fitted sheets.

Money was scarce in those days. One Sunday, I attended the 7:30 morning mass at St. Margaret’s, our local parish. A well-dressed couple entered late and sat in the pew behind me. They were both still dressed for last night’s activities in Manhattan and I had a distinct impression that these strangers were from parts unknown who found this church because she insisted on attending morning mass. When the time came for the collection, he placed a $20 in the basket. Wow, I thought to myself, that’s more money than I can get my hands on until the banks re-open at nine tomorrow morning.

Bill Christman reminded me that you can never go home. We have been cousins and friends forever. For a while both our families lived on 77 Place separated by only three houses. Years after we all moved on, Bill and his son, Tom, flew back to Long Island from Dallas to attend a family charity golf outing. This is Bill’s recollection: “We had time on our hands after we landed so we decided to visit the old homestead. Tom drove up 77^th Place passed both ‘home’ and ‘Michael’s house’ as Tom called it, he commented to me: ‘How little it all is.”

I replied, “Tom, you were only about four feet tall then. Everything seemed and looked bigger.”

Let me end with a life-lesson I learned living in Middle Village. But before I go, this exercise has stirred other memories of Middle Village that I will share with you in the future.

The life-lesson is: Don’t be so sure of yourself that you’ve got it right no matter how successful you think you are and always be kind and genuine with every one you encounter.

On those Sunday’s when I went to the 10:30 mass at St. Margaret’s, I’d usually see the same usher always dressed in a sports jacket and tie. He made the collection on the side where I sat and he moved his basket with efficient motions. I never wore a jacket to Sunday mass much less a tie.

During the week, on those days I chose to walk in the morning to the Metropolitan elevated station, I would sometimes encounter this same fellow working on the street picking up garbage wearing his Sanitation Department uniform. My uniform was a suit and tie.

The irony wasn’t lost on me and I thought on more than one occasion: One of us has it right and one of us has it wrong.

To this day I believe,  he had it right.

Over lunch, I misconstrued a friend’s comments about a book called, “The Sympathizer,” to be a recommendation. That was my first mistake.

I undertook a due diligence investigation to discover more about this book. “The Sympathizer,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen was the winner of a 2016 Pulitzer and the 2016 Edgar Award. The publisher’s description noted: “A profound, startling and beautifully crafted debut novel. The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties… A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics and a moving love story.” My second mistake, I bought into the description and acclaim.

I inquired about the novel from the national book wholesaler, Abe Books, who advertised a mint copy for $12 including shipping. On opening the package, I was surprised that I now possessed a brand new first edition. That’s when I realized something may be amiss. However, I had what I thought was a recommendation so I began to read it. One oddity became immediately apparent. Although written in a first person narrative with plenty of dialogue; the author completely ignored the use of quotation marks.

Imagine turning a page believing you are still following the narrative only to realize that someone else has been speaking, in some instances several people. Disconcerting to say the least! Several times I had to return to the point of departure just to understand what was going on.

Finally, I contacted my friend who I believed had recommended the book. “Not at all,” she exclaimed. “In fact, if you can figure out what is going on, would you please explain it to me?”

Too late to quit, I pressed on. I persevered and as I was wrapping it up I asked both of my book-trading buddies, Bill and Geoff, if they were interested. I explained, “It is dense, very dense. It follows a double agent from the fall of Saigon to America and back again. It has touches of “Catch 22” and some good writing but, I repeat, it is 372 pages of dense writing. Yes, it’s a good read but don’t expect to whiz through it.”

Bill declined. Geoff replied: “How on earth did you come across such a celebrated but apparently economically failed thing like that? I do have trouble sleeping at times so it could be Ambien in print.”

I replied, “In fact, I can testify that it is truly a useful tool to ease insomnia.”

Geoff sent his first impressions on April 17: “I began Sympathizer last night. This guy needs an editor more than any writer I’ve ever been exposed to. I found one sentence that was 18 lines long. He has to find out about periods. And he seems not to know about quotation marks…But I’ll plug along to see where it goes.”

Three days later Geoff transmitted the following: “This has to be the most obtuse book I’ve ever tried to read. Sometimes I’m looking at words without even trying to see how they fit in to whatever he was trying to say. It happened last night. He was writing of things he was reminded of by Lana’s (our hero’s love interest) singing…and the list seemed to be getting long. The count of commas and semi-colons grew as well…When I finally came across a period I paused to see if I knew what he meant and of course I had no idea. So I started working backwards to see exactly what he started out trying to explain. I counted lines and found the sentence, if it was a sentence had 25 lines. I decided to count the punctuation marks and there were 25 semi-colons, 6 commas, one colon and finally a period.”

This is a portion of the sentence in question:

We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the sweetness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the stickiness of our situation; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point is this; the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

Geoff read on and reported on April 22: “… he produced a 37 line sentence, perhaps the modern record for verbosity. He also seems to have forgotten his love affair with semi-colons. This time it was 49 (counted them) commas and a surprisingly but welcome question mark…The mind numbs, at least mine does, trying to capture a thought that is 37 lines long.”

In case you are wondering, dear reader, the book has an open ending with our hero embarking on another long voyage sort of like Yossarian in “Catch 22” paddling off in search of Sweden. He is a man without a country completely rejected as unfit by his communist masters. We end with him adrift at sea.

One last problem the author chooses to ignore much less resolve, that he had our hero commit

two cold-blooded murders while in California so he has two Murder-One raps hanging over his head as the book ends…neat!

My neighborhood friends, like me, weren’t very adventurous. This prevented us from doing things that could lead us into serious trouble but it did limit our new experiences. An exception happened during our biking years roughly ten to twelve when we enjoyed a bit of freedom to ride outside our neighborhood. Usually we limited these trips to Hyland and Forest Parks both within reasonable range in fairly safe areas. But one day, a pal related an adventure he made with his older brother when they rode their bikes up to the top of the Kosciuszko Bridge and flew down the bridge and onto the local streets. His excitement was contagious.

The bridge was named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer and leader who fought for America during the revolution and oversaw construction of fortifications including those at West Point. Back then, we pronounced the general’s name: kos-ke-os-co, but today it is generally pronounced: Kos-Ku-Shoe, and you spit it rather than say it.

The Kosciuszko Bridge was located less than four miles from our homes in Ridgewood. The bridge spanned Newtown Creek connecting Greenpoint, Brooklyn to West Maspeth, Queens. But the difference in those four miles from our home was night and day. Ridgewood was a residential community consisting of multi-family two and three-story houses. Northern Greenpoint and West Maspeth were heavily industrialized at that time. Greenpoint even hosted a working Mobil refinery, gas flare stack and all. A large Phelps Dodge smelter was located in West Maspeth that stretched over a half mile along Newtown Creek. Maspeth was also home to Bohack Square, a large warehouse and distribution point for the Bohack supermarket chain. An annex of the Brooklyn Navy Yard was also located in Maspeth along Newtown Creek where launches, lifeboats, anchors and anchor chains were fabricated for the new ships being built in the main yard. Long Island Railroad yard engines shuttled freight cars to different industries along railroad tracks that radiated in every direction.

Newtown Creek was completely polluted with oil, chemicals, sewage and hazardous waste defying description and the whole area reeked of the pungent odors of heavy, dirty industry.

Our pal continued to re-tell his tale and excitement gradually trumped fear. Five of us decided to accompany him one afternoon as he led us deeper and deeper into this dark and dangerous realm of unfamiliar streets. We dodged dump trucks, cement mixers, box trucks, panel trucks and 40-foot trailers. We didn’t falter and rode next to the creek as the bridge rose above us towering 125-feet above the creek.

The bridge opened in August 1939 and less than one year later, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, renamed it after General Kosciuszko. Over 15,000 New Yorkers attended the festivities, mostly Polish residents from their strongholds of Greenpoint and Maspeth. LaGuardia noted in his remarks that Poland and been subjugated by the Nazis and Soviets the previous September, “I am confident that Poland will live again. Any land that breeds such lovers of freedom can never be enslaved. The Polish people may be captive, but the flaming spirit of Polish liberty will never be destroyed.”

We rode alongside the smelter- a scary site indeed. Just when it seemed the bridge would overwhelm us, our leader turned right and we followed peddling hard along a street uphill. This street paralleled the descending bridge and met it at an entrance to a walkway. We rode our bikes up the walkway to the center of the span where we stopped high over Newtown Creek. We could see Ridgewood in the distance. Two landmarks stood out, the rather large sandstone buildings of Grover Cleveland High School and the tall clock towers of St. Aloysius, my neighborhood parish.  The smelter looked just as scary from above as it did from street level.

Fear of an unpleasant encounter with local thugs began to poison the mood reminding us it was time to leave. Re-mounted, we were off increasing speed as we descended. “Don’t brake, don’t brake,” we shouted to each other as we tried hard not to brake. A U-turn at the end of the bridge taking us back on the city street required braking but we quickly regained speed as we rode downhill toward the creek. We were able to negotiate a sweeping left turn at speed and it was wonderful, a true joy. We were flying.

We were hooked on the experience and returned for as long as we biked. Speed increased as we grew more proficient and less fearful. Perhaps it was dumb luck but we never crashed or encountered trouble. We did remain cautious and never rode into Brooklyn and the streets of Greenpoint. That place was alien to us and would have forced us to bike through Williamsburg and Bushwick, both neighborhoods then in transition and not for the better.

Today, all that industry is long gone. Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bushwick have been gentrified and Newtown Creek is as clean as it ever will be. The 1939 truss bridge wore out and a brand new cable-stayed span replaced it in late April. This is the first of two like spans that will constitute the new Kosciuszko Bridge. Late this summer, the old bridge will be dismantled and hauled away. The second span will rise in its place. When it opens in 2020, it will include a walkway. Unfortunately, I fear today’s safety regulations will probably prohibit flying bikes down the new bridge. But perhaps some boys will be daredevil enough to try their luck as we did so many years ago.

One of these days I will accept that I’m old, out of touch and a victim of this brave new world. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to rant. Today, I have chosen to tackle what has happened to the art and science of photography in the age of selfies, snapchat, etc. But I’ll be damned if we, the last of the breed of amateur photographers, who spent a lifetime dedicated to developing the best photographic skills we could master shall quietly go into the night beaten, devoured and overwhelmed by the tidal wave of cellular, smart phone and tablet produced junk photography without having our say.

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

They give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day

I got a Nikon camera

I love to take a photograph

So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

Paul Simon

December of 2013, in the early days of this blog site, I wrote a piece about a photograph taken at a football game in 1962 between the Giants and the Lions. I noted: “The colors are so vivid that the photographer must have used Kodachrome film. A marvelous photograph, the colors…shock the senses, and yet, only a photograph of an ordinary play taken on a sunny afternoon at the big ballpark in The Bronx. Brilliant!”

An observer recently noted: “In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt.”

Kodachrome was introduced in 1935. It required complex processing and was sold process-paid until 1954 when a legal ruling prohibited this. Subsequent additions like Fujichrome and Kodak’s own, Ektachrome reduced market share but it was the advent of quality digital photography that ended its run. Kodak announced its demise in July of 2010 when only one certified processing facility remained: Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas. Ektachrome followed, exiting in 2012 leaving Fujichrome to soldier on alone.

Most semi-serious amateur photographers converted to digital, coming to terms with a loss of quality in favor of the conveniences digital brings. We mothballed our film single lens reflex (SLR) cameras in favor of new Nikon, Canon, Pentax, etc. digital SLRs and continued our quest to imitate great photographers like Ansel Adams, Robert Riger, Arthur Hammond and John Thompson. A friend of mine, Fred Fort, fits this description and noted to me, “Much as I love photography I have come to realize, sadly, that the pleasure I get is from looking at other people’s work and from gear since I’ve hardly ever seen a gadget I didn’t want. I currently own three old 35mm film SLRs that haven’t been used in years, two dust covered 35mm slide projectors, a gadget that prints photos from slides plus an 8mm movie projector. All this in addition to three digital SLR cameras and two digital movie cameras. Pretty ridiculous.”

My own experience is similar to Fred’s although Fred has outdistanced me in the number of SLRs he possesses. But if I include Nikon SLRs that I have purchased for both my daughter and daughter-in-law, the gap narrows.

Digital changed the game but quality remained. The biggest difference; digital allowed for instant review of the selected image offering the photographer the opportunity to re-shoot to his / her content or to fire away a dozen or more shots and sort out the best of the batch at one’s leisure. Photography remained fun and rewarding.

Since I retired in 2000, I have traveled with my wife and friends, here and abroad, enjoyed annual baseball trips and separate football trips following my Football Giants across America. Last fall, I finally made it with my son and his boys to Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

I was a driven photographer, camera ready-anticipating lens changes. Digital let me crop shots, expand them and change the subjects by shifting the vision. Digital gave me abilities once limited to a photo lab – life was good.

Enter the cellular phone and the narcissistic selfie. How do you compete with a sea of junk photography? You don’t. In 2008, we sailed through the Panama Canal allowing me a brilliant opportunity to enjoy photographing that experience. Today, I’d leave my camera at home. Selfie-sticks and a mob holding up smart phones and tablets overwhelm photo opportunities.

A photo album, excuse me, just what is a photo album? Exactly, and so it goes. It’s in the cloud or on the internet. The idea of amateur photography being an art is dead and buried. So, if you are like most of us, you gave up, removed the batteries from your SLRs and stored them in closets.

All seems lost but I did read that Kodak Alaris, a U.K. based company that acquired Kodak’s film division plans to resurrect Ektachrome. (Alas, Kodachrome appears lost to the ages. The complex processing technique precludes its resurrection.)

I’m not holding my breath but…but… I have my Nikon N8008S sitting in a box and I’d sure like to fire it up one more time.

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

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

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

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

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

Mary Ann and I met at the fair on June 6, 1964 and we returned there on out first date. I actually took her to the top of the towers where the alien space ship was cleverly hidden in the movie…who knew?

We also had Jimmy Breslin. His recent demise has awakened the joy we natives treasure for the fourth borough. One that stood out for me came from a letter to the editor about the late, Ed Lowe, a beloved columnist at Newsday. Early in Ed’s career, he received a congratulartory phone call from Breslin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks for the use of the hall.”