John Delach

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.”

Three jets revolutionized air travel and unlocked the wonders of flight for the average person.  They introduced casual travel and brought down the curtain on the formal, expensive and restrictive practices the piston era and early jet commercial aviation. Prior to these jets entering service in the mid-1960s, regular, reliable and affordable flights were only available in medium and large-size cities. Flight was such a rarity to ordinary people that it was considered an event. Friends and family members accompanied the traveler(s) to witness this odd, mysterious and dangerous event.

Even growing up in New York City, I remember that time. When I was about six or seven, I joined my mother and her friends for a trip to LaGuardia Airport to see off one of her best friend’s sister on a flight to Los Angeles. An old black and white photo shows our group standing in front of the old main terminal. Her father and mother stand there proudly. So too do her sisters’ husbands and their offspring. All of the men wear sport jackets, ties and hats and the women; Sunday church dresses. I have on what must have been an Easter outfit, sports jacket and even a fedora.

I first flew in 1957 on an Eastern Air Lines DC-6 to Miami courtesy of my father who arranged a visit to see his second family. John, Sr. was then a major in the USAF, assigned to Homestead Air Force base home of B-47 bombers as part of the Strategic Air Command, (SAC) as a navigator / bombardier; the person who actually would drop the bomb.

An entourage drove me to, Idewild, more formally, New York International Airport, (today, John F. Kennedy) to see me off.

Back then, Idewild was half-cooked. Permanent terminals didn’t exist and the airlines were forced to use a collection of Quonset Huts, Butler Shacks and a maze of plywood structures that the Port Authority had thrown together. It was bad. My one disconcerting memory of that send-off was observing my mother going over to a kiosk to buy flight life insurance on me!

Think about it: Your own mother goes to the airport casino and puts her money down that, if you lose, she wins. Yeah, that’s the bottom line: If you lose, she wins; brilliant and then I boarded the airplane…

Sure, sure, I know; in 1957, that was the done thing. Flight was mysterious and potentially dangerous. People were uncomfortable at best so it was the accepted and almost universal thing to do. Few had real life insurance back then so the accepted wisdom was to make that bet just in case. Believe me though, at 13, it didn’t sit well with me at all.

The domestic age of the jet began when American Airlines introduced the Boeing 707 for domestic service between New York City and Los Angeles in January of 1959. But those first four-engine beasts, the 707, Douglas’ DC-8 and the Convair-440 required long runways for take-offs and landings limiting service to routes between major cities.

That all changed on February 1, 1964 when Eastern Airlines inaugurated “Whisper jet” service between  Miami and Philadelphia with the first commercial flight of Boeing’s 727.  This radical looking tri-engine jet and Douglas’ twin-engine DC-9 that Delta introduced on December 8, 1965 began to open the skies to new domestic travelers. Both jets were designed for frequent and short flights to airports with shorter runways. The final entry, Boeing’s 737, joined these two in February of 1968.

When de-regulation followed, a revolution began that continues to this day as airlines try to cope and get it right. Along the way, well-known giants of aviation failed: Pan Am, TWA and Eastern being the biggest losers. Regional carriers disappeared or were gobbled up: Braniff, Southern, Western, National and Piedmont to name a few. Finally, surviving majors merged to stay alive: American and US Air, United and Continental and Northwest and Delta. The new kids on the block, particularly Southwest and JetBlue also soldier on.

The 727 had the shortest production lifespan of the trio, 1962 to 1984. During that time frame, 1,832 were produced. Today, only UPS still operates a domestic fleet of 727s in cargo service. Nine hundred seventy six DC-9s were produced from 1965 to 1982. Kick in its near-siblings, (MD-80) adds another 1,463; a grand total of 2,439 produced over 41 years ending in 2006. American, Delta and several other carriers continue to fly these slender birds. The winner became the 737. To date 9,365 of these jets have been placed into service and Boeing now produces the 737-800 and 737-900ER.

In my time, I flew extensively across the United States mostly on these three jets. That era favored the business passenger like never before with a wide choice of alternative flights, frequent upgrades, mileage credits and flexibility to change flights or airlines at any time. In return, we paid a premium but, from a service perspective, this was a golden age for business travel.

That age came to a sudden, dreadful and permanent end in the aftermath of the disaster of September 11, 2001. Commercial aviation was almost shattered and barely survived. Airlines re-invented themselves to reflect a new world-order. They commoditized operations, forgot why they fly and lost their soul.

Part 1: It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn

Most often when we bolt upright in the middle of the night a horrible thought has invaded an otherwise restful sleep cycle. The cause is part mental, part emotional, a psychological imperative that usually includes a physical element. It is the night-cycle manifestation of a festering emotional, personal, economic, health, work, or family problem. An erupting volcano. Something we thought we were managing and believed we had under control when we drifted off to sleep. Yet it intensified and finally metastasized into a fully-formed crisis of immense and unsolvable proportions. Sleep is ended, welcome to panic city, like it or not.

The so-called “shit” just hit the fan! First; we take inventory. Is the bed wet? Did I have night sweats? Did anything worse happen? All the while, try not to disturb your mate. Breathe, breathe, deep, deep; calm the heart. Sit up: “Where’s the dog, don’t trip over the dog.” Okay, quietly, safely walk to the bathroom. Close the door, put on the light, sit down, breathe…breathe…deep breaths, calm down, relax, calm down…

All the time, an internal alarm keeps repeating; “Oh my God, Oh my God; what have I done? How did this happen? What can I do, and on and on and on…

Slowly, catch our breath, calm down…grasp the actual problem, begin to understand; the early stages of panic control.

The thing about these episodes is that they really do happen in the night and recur time after time. Nobody is immune but I do believe as we work our way through the actual damage assessment and gain control, we realize it’s not as bad as our panic imagined and we can take comfort that it is always darkest before the dawn.

Part 2: Hooray for Hollywood

I wonder what erupting volcano causes the “big brains” to panic in the night. Those world leaders who hold the fate of civilization in their hands; what brings on their “oh shit” moments?

I know if it were me, North Korea and their Looney Tune leader, Kim Jong-On, would be my recurrent nightmare and my principal source of panic attacks. If I were unlucky enough to be president, I would be physically ill trying to figure out how I could make a deal with China to take him out, rub him out, make him go bye bye, cease to exist, make him disappear, not come around anymore or swim with the fishes. Jong-On is the most dangerous man on the planet and only the Chinese can remove him without the threat of Armageddon.

Trump has a big brain working for him who should be devoted to making this deal come about. Rex Tillerson, now our secretary of state, ran the biggest non-government mother f***** on the planet; Exxon-Mobil. He has both the big brain, horse trading experience and the chutzpah needed to pull it off.

But, at what price? The Chinese will not go easy into the night and sign off to do this on the cheap.

They want a serious payback in return. Tillerson must make the Chinese an offer they cannot refuse. It won’t be easy. Rex shouldn’t be surprised if they ask for us to relinquish Boeing or Lockheed in return; something that we simply cannot afford to do. Negotiations will be tricky, very tricky. Tillerson will need to have hidden cards waiting to play, but not playable until darkness sets in and the impasse becomes overpowering. He will need an overnight time-out. An aide to the Secretary makes the motion: “Ladies and gentleman, it is late and this has been a difficult day. We’re all tired, exasperated; please, let’s call it a day. I propose we re-convene tomorrow to see this through.”

The majority so moves.

The next day, negotiators return exhausted, still exasperated and frustrated; tired of the same old arguments and positions. They just want it to end. Timing will be perfect for the Secretary of State to play his hand. This is how I expect the inde documentary later filmed at low-budget studio in Astoria, Queens will capture this break-through agreement:

(Scene: A modern, wood-paneled conference room overlooking Beijing. An American contingent sits on one side of the table facing off against a Chinese contingent. The room is quiet. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson speaks to those assembled:)

This has been a long and difficult road for all of us. I too am running on empty so I realize just how frustrated you are. I keep saying to myself, “Ole Rex, there’s got to be something special we can do for our Chinese friends to repay them for this difficult task.”

Goodness knows I’ve thought and thought about this and you know what? Maybe, just maybe we have something to give you that you’d love to have, something that will put you on the map as a world player and, at the same time, light up the lives and bring joy to all of your people.

Please understand this will not be easy for us. Mercy no, many Americans will be saddened and depressed over our loss but, if it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t be a fair trade.

I asked myself, what is the one thing you desperately need? What are the Chinese people desperate to call their own? And the answer is, of course, a first-rate motion picture industry. China is the world’s biggest box office and you deserve a top-notch film industry of your own.

And so, my friends, we are prepared to offer you Hollywood! That’s right, Hollywood! All of it, I’m talking about the studios, theme parks, actors, directors, producers, movie makers, key grips, best boys, their homes, their friends and families; the whole lock, stock and barrel. You have shipped entire steel plants from America to China, whole automobile assembly lines; this will be simple. You can create a  new Hollywood. If you build it, they will come. Bel Aires, Beverly Hills, Malibu, why even the Hollywood sign in your own image and likeness.

I know this will work. Let’s face facts, I am not loved by the people of Hollywood and neither is the president. They hate us and will be thrilled to move to New Hollywood. They will feel empowered and emboldened to escape our clumsy regime.

By golly, why it’s a win-win.

(Sounds of approval fill the screen as heroic music intensifies. The screen fades to black and five seconds later, the following statement appears on the black screen:)

Dateline: DEN NORSKE NOBELKOMITE. Oslo, Norway: September 30, 2017 –The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the President of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Jintao for his monumental effort that successfully returned the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea into the family of nations.

(The music stops. Ten seconds later we hear the sound of a telephone ring and Tillerson’s voice:)

Good morning Mr. President.

Good morning Rex. You know that prize rightfully belongs to you.

Mr. President, It’s good it went to ole Hu. Heck, I’m just a lit’le old Texas boy who doesn’t need some kind of a prize.

Well, thank you Rex.

Mr. President, just doing my job but you’re welcome.

I have a stock answer to anyone who asks: “What would you do if you won an obscene amount of cash in the Powerball or Mega Millions lotteries?”

I reply, “Don’t ask me what I would do, ask me what I would never do again.”

My answer: “I would never fly commercial again!”

Our flight on March 11 to Las Vegas on Jet Blue Airlines was scheduled for a 4:55 PM departure from JFK with an arrival at 7:52 PM Pacific Standard Time, (10:52 PM EST.) Before we even left our home for a 2 PM pick-up, Jet Blue informed us that departure had been delayed until 6:23. Naturally, we’d already booked our car service so off to JFK we went. Making the best of it, we sat down for an early dinner during which a new Jet Blue alert pushed departure to 6:48. That subsequently became 6:58 and finally 7:30.

There is much to observe in an airline terminal when you have seemingly endless time on your hands. To begin with, security could have been a nightmare. It was jammed with passengers snaking their way through multiple switchbacks that led to inspection stations. Fortunately, we have TSA pre-check so we breezed through. But 95% of the passengers checking in that day did not. Mary Ann pointed out, “Of course they don’t. Look at them; they’re college kids on spring break.”

Being a punctual person, it amazed me how casual late arriving passengers can be. The attendants managing the gate adjacent to our waiting area almost begged passengers by name that “last call” had been announced and that they had to board now. Still, about five minutes later, all four of these passengers chose to make their seemingly relaxed appearance, presented their boarding passes and boarded as if this was the natural way to act. Had that been me, I’d be in the heart center or the psyche ward!

As the afternoon began to darken into evening, a man quietly joined me and sat down in a remote corner off to the side. I didn’t notice him until he placed paper towels on the rug, removed his shoes and placed his stocking feet on the tissues. He quietly recited his evening prayers without any drama or fuss. I afforded him his privacy and he cleaned up and left when he finished.

A short while later, a woman sat down in the boarding area. She was totally absorbed in a loud conversation via her mobile phone until at one point she noticed her surroundings.  She abruptly ended the call and asked an attendant what time her flight would leave from that gate. Looking perplexed, he answered, “It has already departed from a different gate.”

Faced with the realization that she had talked her way into missing her flight, her only response was: “When is the next flight?”

Our flight, (would you believe #711,) left shortly after 7:30 and finally arrived in Vegas about 10:15 PST, (1:15 EST.) We collected our three bags; rode the bus to McCarran Airport’s consolidated car rental facility, selected an auto and made it to Hilton’s Elara Hotel by 11:30 PST.

Nearly dead on our feet, we arrived at the hotel only to enter a different world filled with a multitude of young, nubile women on their way out to participate in Vegas’ Saturday night scenes. Heavy make-up and eye liner set the tone as did their platforms and stilettos. They wore competing, revealing and incredibly tight miniscule dresses or micro skirts that screamed, “Look at me.” They quickly yet delicately crammed their bodies into waiting stretch- limos and SUVs that whisked them away into the night. Welcome to Vegas; what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Our stay was considerably less lively, a stay that included two visits to Lake Mead for a cruise a visit to Hoover Dam and a hike along the old rail trail that included walking through five tunnels..

As an aside, on Thursday, I received a notice from American Airlines that a non-stop flight I had reserved for June 10 from Tucson, AZ to JFK had been cancelled and I was being re-routed via Phoenix. My five-hour flight would now take eight hours!

I thought about my new dilemma with American when we returned to McCarran for our flight home. No need to guess, our New York flight was a repeat of 711. Jet Blue #748’s take-off time of 2:10 PM was delayed in increments until 3:35.

I used part of Jet Blue’s problem to work on my American problem and managed to arrange better flights that hopefully will shorten that trip to six hours. I noted to Mary Ann: “You have to admit that things are really screwed up when you spend one airline’s snafu taking care of another airline’s snafu.”

Our fellow passengers were understandably subdued coming off Vegas stays.

As we began to board at 3:25, we received a new electronic notice delaying it until 4:10. This notice was too late to stop the process. Since the staff had commenced boarding, the crew was officially on–the-clock and Jet Blue had no choice but to complete the boarding, clear the gate and park in a penalty box until Air Traffic Control (ATC) released us. The pilot was as frustrated as we passengers and actually announced over the PA: “I’m not kidding, if any of you know someone who is an ATC, call them and see if they can get us out of this mess.”

Flight 748 finally reached JFK at 11:55 PM EDST. As passengers stood and prepared to exit the airplane, the captain had one more surprise: “Ladies and gentlemen, it appears there is a problem with the Jetway. They can’t get it to make contact with the airplane and a repair crew is on its way.”

Twenty-minutes later the hatch finally opened freeing us to go to baggage claim to find our luggage. Thankfully, our driver was waiting but we didn’t reach home until about 1:15.

No mas, por favor, no mas.