John Delach

Seventy-five years ago tomorrow, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt went before a joint session of Congress requesting that a declaration of war be issued against the Empire of Japan following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.  Set out below in its entirety is his so called “Day of Infamy” speech.

Mr. Vice President, and Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that Nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and the Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American Island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for a continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Island.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of the Nation.

As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our own interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounding determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.

I ask that Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

On this, the 75^th of the anniversary of that awful day, we should give pause to remember all of our citizens who were caught up in the Second World War, those who perished, our friends and family members who answered the call and especially our surviving veterans. They are our link to history; they are our national treasure.

 God bless them one and all and God bless the United States of America.   

Little House, the rural vacation home in Marlow, NH has been in our family since 1984. It sits off a dirt road three quarters of a mile from NH State Highway 10 (once known as the Dartmouth Highway.) Approximately one acre of the property is cleared but the deed shows the size of the parcel as being: “Ten acres more or less.” This vagueness is understandable as the overwhelmingly wooded part of the plot borders on a NH State Forest.

Over the years we have hiked through the woods many times especially in the fall when the weather is cool, dry and free of bugs. We have never encountered other critters except for the occasional deer or wild turkey and figured that the scents and noise of our Golden Retrievers kept other critters at bay. We never gave much thought as to what might be living in these woods.

Nope, we never gave it a thought until this past Labor Day when, John R, a college roommate of our son, Michael together with his friend, Dave, paid us a visit. John and Dave are hunters who hail from Billerica, Mass. John had researched this area and our land in particular as a possible hunting spot free from other hunters.

They asked our permission to hunt here once the season opened on November 7. We readily agreed; so John explained what they wanted to do was to fix a heat and motion – sensitive camera to a tree about 100 yards from the clearing. John explained, “That way we will learn what animals are back there and how often they come around.”

They returned several times in the following weeks to download the camera and John duly texted the photos to me. Surprisingly, over time the camera caught considerable activity including a black bear and her two cubs, a buck deer with an impressive rack, a female moose, a feral pig and a bobcat.

No doubt about it, we had been inadvertently operating an animal sanctuary practically in our back yard. Remarkably, over all those years and all the dogs (10) that had lived with us and our children’s families, only once did a dog encounter a critter. That was Maggie who suffered a serious stomach wound from what I took for granted was a raccoon. (The wound became infected and only the kind care by Dr. Ann at the Port Washington Animal Hospital saved Maggie.) But now, who knows for sure what she encountered?

John and Dave decided to try their luck on the opening weekend November 10 to 13. We offered them the use of our house as their hunting camp that they readily and gratefully accepted.

As the old saying goes though, once hunting season begins the animals disappear. They did manage to spot a large buck, but he must have spotted them too because he vamoosed not to be seen again…and so it goes. Oh well, there’s always next year.

Last Saturday afternoon, the Nassau County Poet Laureate Society honored my teacher by presenting members of his family with personal tributes by poets and writers. This is my interpretation of the man who taught me how to write. 

Maxwell C. Wheat Jr., poet, parent, preacher and man of peace.

Activist, protester, man of passion, letters, understanding and always; a poet.

Teacher, facilitator, critic, editor, advisor, arbiter, encourager, friend.

Witness excerpt from his eulogy to Pete Seeger’s genius saving the Hudson:

Now Pete Seeger belongs to his Hudson

His outreach of rousing songs

Are the frisky breezes, tall winds coming off the hills,

Touching, stroking the waved back of this 315-mile

Pleistocene invertebrate of a stream

He concludes his poem:

Pete Seeger’s song now parcel of the river’s song:

listen for his voice in the rustling of its autumn leaves,

listen for his voice in the rock slashing of the white capped waves.

Max often referred to his beginnings: reporter, New York Geneva Times Daily.

Assigned obits, his editor explained: “Human interest.” Max never forgot.

This from his poem about 9/11 he called, “Everybody Has a Story,”

Eamon McEneaney 46 in the first attack, 1992,

Led sixty three people down one hundred flights of stairs.

Senior vice president, brokerage firm, Cantor Fitzgerald.

Calling his wife at her office, shouting “Is Bonnie there?

I love her and I love the kids…”

He was – in the Newsday obit,

The ending of a poem to his wife:

“…The end

is a bend in the road

That we’ll never find

A death I will always

Defend

You from.”

Maxwell Wheat a man of peace who served his nation in the USMC,

Did his duty and yet espoused Whitman and Melville; do no harm.

First Poet Laureate of Nassau County, a national treasure:

Adios my teacher, my friend: Via con Dios!

On October 27, 2016, a Boeing 737-700 had a close call while landing at LaGuardia Airport. The jet had been chartered to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Mike Pence, now Mr. Trump’s vice president-elect was on board at the time of this event.

A preliminary report that appeared in Newsday several days later stated that the engine spoilers had failed to automatically deploy as soon as the airplane hit the ground and the flight crew took four seconds to manually deploy them. In that short space of time, they also hit the brakes so hard that the 737 skidded off the runway and into the soft concrete slurry arrester bed. The report also noted that this aircraft had been chartered from Eastern Air Lines.

On reading this, I looked up the airplane to check its markings. It had two big names stenciled on both sides, TRUMP and PENCE, but it was a blue band that ran along both sides of the fuselage and up the tail that attracted my attention. Sure enough these markings were a double band of blue, light on top dark blue below; the same markings that the old Eastern Air Lines used in their many years of flying jets. That era lasted until January 19, 1991 when Eastern closed it doors and ceased all operations. Eastern was my domestic carrier of record for most of my business career and I previously wrote in 2014  about my many experiences flying on board that defunct carrier as part of a piece with the title: “Why I Hate Airlines:”

Once upon a time it seemed that I lived on Eastern Air Lines because they flew to all of the places where I peddled insurance; Richmond, Boston, DC, Miami, Atlanta, Mobile, Houston, San Juan and Bermuda. I was one of their Executive Travelers and a member of the Ionosphere Club when it mattered. That combination was so powerful that I knew the receptionist at the club in their JFK terminal on a first name basis. Her name was Helen and she always upgraded me to First Class. In fact, one morning back in the 1980s I arrived for Flight 807, the morning airplane to Bermuda, without my passport or even my driver’s license. Helen, asked, “What are you going to do Mr. Delach?”

“Well, Helen, I do have my company ID that has my photo and we have an office in Bermuda so I think that will work.”

“Okay, good luck but I’ll put you in first class as that could help.”

Imagine that encounter today. Long story short: It did work with a minimum of fuss both ways; getting past Bermuda Immigration onto the island and U.S. Customs and Immigration getting off.

But I watched Eastern go down under Frank Borman’s stewardship. In fact we had a running joke to describe how bad things became before Eastern went out of business: “Eastern is run by Frank Borman, but the way it is run you’d think it was being run by Martin Bormann.”

This new Eastern Air Lines began flying in 2015 as a charter operation based at the Miami International Airport. That Boeing 737-700 with the close call had been chartered to the Florida Panthers for use as their team plane before being chartered by the Trump organization. Eastern replaced it with a 737-800 for the rest of the campaign. That aircraft was the San Francisco Giants team plane.

But here’s the thing. The report in Newsday noted that the failure of the spoilers to automatically engage was a known problem and had not been working during the last three flights before the LaGuardia landing. The story noted that it was unknown at that time whether the flight crew was aware of this problem prior to the bad landing.

Sad to say, but it should be noted if maintenance is that slip-shod, the new Eastern Air Lines isn’t any better than the old Eastern Air Lines, perhaps worse…flyer beware!

Now that the sun is up and the sky hasn’t fallen, I present to you my intended blog for today.

The weather was as perfect as predicted, clear, mostly sunny, morning temperature: 52 degrees, 60 to 62 at game time. A perfect day for the New York City Marathon but, more importantly, a perfect day for football. A One PM start: Eagles vs. Giants at Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ- football doesn’t get better than this!

Joe arrived at my house at 7:43 AM. Dave was next and by eight we three were out of Port Washington cruising west on Long Island highways and over the Throgs Neck Bridge. Thank God for early Sunday mornings. We crossed The Bronx in ten-minutes, galloped over the George Washington Bridge onto I-80, the New Jersey Turnpike and made it into our tailgate parking lot by 8:40!

Festivities were already in progress, our mates who arrived before the parking lot opened at 8 AM had secured select spaces to park and tailgate. Let the cooking begin: Prosciutto Roll, Lox and cream cheese bagels and empanadas accompanied by Bill’s bloody Marys to kickoff our fourth tailgate of the 2016 season. Today, the New York Football Giants face our most sinister rival, the Philadelphia Eagles, a never ending vendetta. These two division rivals must play each other twice a year, every year until hell freezes over.

Grills are fired up, coolers mostly stocked with beer from exotic imports to Bud and Miller Lite abound. Shrimp cocktail, steak, brisket, burgers, clams, dogs, Italian sausages and peppers, Philly cheese steak sandwiches, boar sausages, knockwurst, etc, etc. We take joy in sharing this bounty and revel in our common love and our common cause; Heavenly Father, let us defeat, nay destroy the ugly bird from the City of Brotherly Love and let our beloved Big Blue advance. Amen.

The disputed presidential election two days removed is without meaning or consequence for the next six hours. No Clinton, no Trump; Giants against Eagles; we win –  we’re a contender – they win, 2016 is kaput for us. Got it? It’s that simple, we win, we go on – lose, the season’s over. As Doctor Mike once put it: “Just exactly, how is this election going to affect the outcome of today’s game?”

Shortly after noon, we broke down the tailgate and made our way though three different parking lots to reach Met Life Stadium, aka, the new joint. Not surprisingly, numerous Eagle fans were in attendance dressed in green and silver paraphernalia. We endure the triple lines of security, the price we pay to enjoy life in these dangerous times. I travelled with Joe, his brother Justin, Dave, my son, Michael and his son, Matt. Dave, Mike, Matt and I used our regular seats, in Section 108, Row 10, Seats 1-4. Joe sat with his brother, Justin in their seats at the other end of 108.

The league celebrated our armed forces in honor of next Friday’s Veterans Day. A massive American Flag was unfurled that covered almost the entire playing field for the playing of our national anthem that ended with an impressive flyover by three F-18 Hornets.

The Eagles won the coin toss and deferred, now the thing to do in the NFL.  The Giants offense did nothing going three and out and forced to punt. Then the fun began.  The Giants defense intercepted two of Carson Wentz’s passes on the first two Eagles possessions and Eli Manning turned both into touchdowns: Giants 14, Eagles 0.

So much for the easy part. From then on it turned into a slug fest. Both defenses played well and the Giants, particularly well. They stopped the Eagles on three out of four Fourth Down attempts and blocked a field goal.

At the end of the third quarter, the Giants were up, 28 to 17. I took that stoppage to make a pit stop. Excitement was at a fever pitch and I said to the guy at the next urinal, “That Wentz has a rifle for an arm when he throws short passes. We have to disrupt him, knock him on his ass as often as we can.”

At that point I turned toward him only to realize he was a guy about 50 wearing a white Eagles jersey. “Oh,” I remarked, “disregard that transmission.”

“Roger and out.” He replied.

With the score 28 to 23 the Eagles last scoring attempt ended with an incomplete pass thrown to the corner of the end zone right in front of us. A nail biter to the end but put it in the win column. High fives, hugs and joy.

We waited our turn to exit our section and made the long but happy walk back to the car for the traffic choked trip back to Long Island. I’ll miss next week’s game as it’s on Monday night and I don’t do night games. But Sunday, November 20 is another One PM start against the Bears so I get to do it all over again.

Go Giants.

Welcome to Wednesday morning and I hope you are sitting down. Yesterday, Donald Trump pulled off an upset so improbable that it almost defies explanation. In other circumstances I would describe this election by writing: He trumped everything and anything we thought we understood about our political scene, but that comes across as being silly and redundant.

What an amazing turn of events. Many of you are shocked to say the least. Those of you who favored Hillary Clinton probably assumed today would be: “Oh Happy Day.” Instead, it’s the morning after the night before, a “what the F***” moment, when the unthinkable is reality.

How do you think I feel? I had a perfectly clever piece about my Giants victory last Sunday over the Philadelphia Eagles primed and ready to go. But…nooo! Do you really want to read a piece about football, a nice, warm autumn afternoon, a tailgate, good food, good friends and an exciting football game? I think not. You can hardly put one foot in front of the other, drink your coffee, pick up a newspaper or put on TV or the radio.

Instead, I find myself up at 4 AM putting this together in an effort to say to you: It’s okay, this too shall pass, the sun will come up and life goes on. Trust me, I know, I came of age in 1964 as a passionate follower of Barry Goldwater…and how did that work out for me? It’s always darkest before the entire world collapses in on you.

To all of the giddy and hung over trumpers and trumpettes, congratulations in what has to be one of the greatest upsets of all times in the history of our Republic. We have had mavericks before; Ronald Reagan, to mention one. But nothing like the Donald. He took on a field of 15 seasoned Republicans in a seemingly unending primary designed, may I say “rigged” to stop him and blew them away. Trump did stumble and he fell several times, inflicted himself with wounds but he rebounded over and over again.

In the general election campaign, most of the main stream network television stations, the press and The New York Times in particular tuned on Trump with a partisan vengeance to the point of their own embarrassment.

Through it all, he made his case to millions of voters disaffected with the system, people who seek another path, another chance.

And so it goes…on the second Tuesday after the second Monday in November of 2016 the people have spoken and elected Donald Trump, president of the United States.

The people have spoken. Let us unite. God bless America.

Halloween has grown to be a significant American celebration. Outdoor Halloween decorations, lights, ghosts, gremlins, witches and more sinister exhibits mimicking zombies, werewolves and vampires decorate suburban front lawns. October 31 is second only to Christmas for outdoor displays, lights and decorations and the Halloween experience extends well beyond giving out candy, carved jack-o-lanterns, bobbing for apples and costume parties.

Trick or treating toddlers wearing popular comic book, TV and movie character costumes  go door to door shepherded by protective parents monitoring their safety in this potentially dangerous world. But after bedtime brings about their departure, the night gives way to curious, semi-occult costume parties featuring outfits and devices that once upon a time were considered occult or demonic.

I just don’t get what Halloween has become and find its celebration of lights and decorations to be bizarre. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Halloween celebrates death and the forces of satan. It is the antithesis of the Christian feasts of All Saints Day celebrated on November 1 and All Souls Day on November 2 that honor and pray for the dead. I grew up Roman Catholic during the 1950s, the era of Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Fulton Sheen when the good nuns of the Dominican Order, who treated Halloween akin to the black plague, ruled our lives at St. Aloysius grammar school.

In that era, Halloween was a day and night of mischief. By day, the bullies who took to the streets armed with socks full of ashes (we burned coal back then) or pieces of chalk broken apart under the wheels of buses or trucks. They descended on the rest of us in wolf packs to mark us wherever they could strike our bodies. Our only defense; run like hell to get home and hope other victims were slower.

Halloween night was for the hooligans. Older boys created controlled mayhem, but breaking into stores and homes was off limits. If they crossed that line, the local precinct cop made their life miserable. He knew his beat and how to find them. They knew if they went too far, they had no place to run, no place to hide.

So they limited their bad behavior to rude yet acceptable limits; knocking free the front gates and hosting them up utility poles, destroying the metal garbage cans left outside by forgetful landlords, egging parked cars or just getting drunk. Real destruction of personal or real property was out of the question.

In Ridgewood, Queens where I grew up, our time for begging was Thanksgiving morning and it was called Ragamuffin Day. I was reminded of this by a recent piece in the Metropolitan Section of The New York Times on Sunday, October 23.  Writing for the FYI Column, Tammy La Gorce reported that this odd practice began in 1870 after Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving as a holiday. “Basically, kids would go around, probably while their parents were creating the holiday meal, knocking on their neighbor’s doors and saying, ‘Anything for Thanksgiving?’ They were beggars. That’s why they were called ragamuffins. Pennies and apples and pieces of candy were the most common responses.”

It was mostly associated with New York City and continued until about 1950 when early television made it apparent that most of the country had switched to Halloween for trick or treating.

That is almost my recollection. I do remember going out on Thanksgiving mornings dressing as a cowboy while other kids dressed as superman, sailors (especially girls) and tougher kids as hobos. But I recall one big difference from the Thanksgiving scene that Ms La Gorce described: Substitute “women” for “parents” as to who was creating the holiday meal.

But where was the old man, in the local tavern getting an early start on the day. So that is where we kids came to realize where we should go to make our score.

It was a delicate balancing act. We had to get there early before other kids ruined it, but not too early. The goal; be the first in when the fathers were feeling generous and before other little snots became a pain in the ass. If we hit one saloon just right, that was a good day; two, a cornucopia of riches and once we struck out in a couple of gin mills, it was time to call it a day and wait for next year.

Most people consider the need for underground pipelines to be somewhere between necessary or unnecessary evils. Something we need but: “Not in my backyard.”

They’re dirty, transport oil, gas, chemicals and other icky things and they can and do leak. Their only defense is being damn-well less dangerous than transporting that icky stuff by rail, truck or barge. Still, they arouse the wrath of environmentalists, ranchers, farmers, Native Americans and Uncle. The Obama administration has spent most of its time in office employing procedural mumbo-jumbo to stall the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Standing Rock Sioux, neighboring tribes and activists have practically gone to battle to stop construction of the North Dakota Pipeline.

There is considerable pipeline hostility out there.

But there is an exception, a pipeline from the gods, applauded by all save a silly few, that moves 1,000 gallons of beer an hour two miles from the brewery to the bottling plant cleanly and safely. This magnificent “miracle” of engineering opened last month in the medieval city of Bruges, Belgium.

Bruges is a beautiful city celebrated by its advocates:

Gorgeous Bruges is a tourist’s dream. This is Belgium’s most perfectly preserved medieval town, and its jaw-dropping, beautiful architecture attracts more than two million visitors every year. If you’re short of time on your Belgium travels, Bruges should be your number one stop. With its wealth of interesting old buildings and its canals, Bruges still retains a distinct medieval air.

 Anyone taking a walk through the narrow streets or a boat trip on the canals falls

Immediately under its spell, charmed by the atmosphere of what is for many the most delightful of all the cities of Flanders (the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium). Because the center of Bruges is comparatively small, even those with only a day to spend sightseeing can expect to take away a good idea of all the major attractions. Essential viewing should definitely include at least the main square with the belfry, the Burg with the Basilica of the Holy Blood, and a trip on the canals.

Located within its “warren of narrow streets” sits the 500-year-old De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) brewery. This ancient plant is surrounded by historical buildings making expansion impossible. The brewery was forced to locate its modern bottling plant on the city’s outskirts. Tanker trucks operated a shuttle service clogging the tight city streets. Brewery president, Xavier Vanneste thought up the idea of a pipeline and four years later it is a reality.

Engineering and construction were not easily accomplished. The pipeline material could not contaminate the beer possibly ruining the taste or, worst case, poisoning the customers. It had to snake under ancient streets and buildings dug by a computer-guided drill “to create a 1.3-foot wide hole.”

Some buildings are so fragile that engineers had to drill deep underground so as not to disturb them. To thread the pipe through these depths, the engineers assembled 650-foot sections before inserting them whole under the ground. Since Bruges’ winding lanes and alleys couldn’t accommodate this length of pipe, the engineers assembled these sections by floating them on the city’s canals.

While the bulk of $4.5 million pipeline was paid for by the brewery, Mr. Vanneste successfully raised a total of $325,000 from more than 500 subscribers over the internet by offering beer in return.

Top tier donations of $8,500 brought one 33cl bottle of Brugse Zot Blond every day for the rest of the subscriber’s life.

$1,000 bought one 24 bottle case of beer a year for life.

The cheapest category, $300, comes with one presentation bottle of 75cl of Brugse Zot Blond each year on the subscriber’s birthday.

Truly a pipeline to love and in case you are wondering, the builders swear that it is tamper proof, but only time will tell…

Early in February, 1991, serendipitous circumstances enabled me to make my first road trip and witness the Giants beat the Bills, 20-19 at Super Bowl XXV in Tampa, Florida.. Bitten by the call of the road, I have made almost two dozen football trips since then including two additional super bowls; XXXV and XLII. I’ve followed the New York Football Giants to  Chicago, Miami, St. Louis, Phoenix, Kansas City, St. Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Seattle, San Diego, Houston and Dallas; some of these destinations multiple times.

Like the Johnny Cash song…I’ve been everywhere man, I’ve been everywhere…well, almost everywhere but not Green Bay. It wasn’t for lack of effort or desire. Various factors conspired to prevent me from making it to a Giants away game at the home of the Packers.

When I first viewed the 2016 schedule, my heart sank. As expected, my team had a game in Green Bay and it was in October, prime football weather. But it was on a Sunday night and I despise night games. Another away game in London grabbed my attention but the reality of time needed and the cost eliminated it from consideration. Two others may have worked but a nagging thought whispered: How many more shots at Lambeau will you have?

I decided to pass this idea by my travel partner, my son, Michael, but just as I was about to call him, another light bulb illuminated my mind. I put down the phone to ask Mary Ann her opinion:  “The Giants are playing in Green Bay on October 9 and I’d like to include Drew and Matt. What do you think?”

“Do it, the boys will love it,” Mary Ann replied.

And so, the four of us arrived at the Radisson in Appleton, Wisconsin just after 11PM on Friday night, October 7. Mike had driven the rental two-hours from Milwaukee following an uneventful Southwest flight from LaGuardia. Matt (14) stayed with me and Drew (16) bunked with his dad. We wolfed down two late night pizzas before hitting the sack.

Appleton is a college town 31 miles southwest of Green Bay. The Radisson has a solid reputation for privacy. Visiting NFL teams stay there which is why, The Giants Road Crew, our travel service, put us up there.

The weekend was all Lambeau oriented most of the time. Buses left at 1:30 on Saturday afternoon for a guided tour of this exquisite football palace.

Lambeau opened as a simple bowl in 1957 seating 38,000. It has retained its charm despite multiple renovations and additions that expanded capacity to 81,000. The original bowl was extended up and out while seating remained unchanged; backless aluminum bleachers. The entire circumference behind these bleaches has been walled off by a series of dark green structures containing club seats, luxury boxes, restaurants, reception areas broadcast and media centers. Bright gold paint highlights the aisles, railings and other fixtures providing a bright contrast to the forest green background. A perfect place to watch a football game.

A reception and buffet dinner inside Lambeau’s atrium followed a visit to the gift shop later that evening. While not exactly a culinary triumph, the choice of food sufficed thanks to an open bar.

Game time activities began the next day with a 2:30PM departure and a three-hour private tent party outside the stadium. The crowd surrounding us grew in a typical tailgate fashion and treated us with friendliness and polite humor. This experience continued as we entered the bowl. I had been warned to rent a padded seat with an attached backrest that hooked under the bleacher which I obtained from a sweet lady for $6.00. She advised, “You don’t have to return it. Just leave it on the bench.”

Like other concessions, these rentals are operated by charities who supply the man-power and keep 10% of the profits in return. The crowd remained friendly throughout and from my perspective, every Giants fan I saw behaved in like manner. Two young women who consented to have a photo taken with me did ask how New Yorkers compared to them. I couldn’t resist using this explanation: “How many New Yorkers does it take to change a light bulb? None of your f***ing business.” Their genuine laughter was my reward.

It was not the Giants night and the Packers cruised to a relatively easy 23-16 win to the delight of the home town crowd who happily chanted “Go Pack, Go” whenever cued to do so. As we worked our way to the exit, two local women offered their condolences to the boys. I reminded one that it was okay and only a football game.

Dawn witnessed the start of our return trip that was seamless and without drama.

On arrival at LaGuardia, it didn’t take long to lose Lambeau’s friendly aura. Michael alerted the off-site parking dispatcher that we were ready for pick-up. She directed us to the upper deck island outside Southwest. As we approached it, our Giants garb caught the attention of the uniformed attendant stationed there keeping traffic moving:

You at that game? Thought so; what is wrong with Eli? Damn, he’s too long in the league to play like that. What is up with those spiked balls, little baby passes? He knows better than that, he does. He’s gotta do better or we gonna have a long season.

Answering his challenges was not an option, but Drew noted: “Ah, New York anger, I missed that; I’m glad to be home.”

Amen, Brother Drew, amen.

If you use the traffic / navigational app, Waze, and live anywhere in the New York Metropolitan area, you know that using this app. up or down the I-95 corridor or to travel between New Jersey and Long Island is the equivalent of taking a rubber mallet and striking the side of your head repeatedly.

This Twenty-First Century electronic wonder is without a doubt a superb tool in other parts of the land of US, but in an area as congested as the place I call home, “It’s like the little girl with the strawberry curl; when it’s good it’s good but when it’s bad it’s awful.”

I find Waze guilty, but with an explanation. Simply put, Waze works when confronted with real choices. It’s just not designed to cope with the insane volume of traffic matriculating its way over the bridges, through the tunnels and attempting to transit these obsolete and inadequate highways we confront. Waze can’t deal with our chaos, but it must. So when traffic is FUBAU (F***ed Up Beyond All Understanding) it makes bad choices. Waze doesn’t understand urban areas.

On a recent trip from New Jersey to Long Island, Waze realized the Cross Bronx Expressway (I-95) was at a complete stop…Mayday, mayday, mayday: It has us bail at University Avenue in the eastern Bronx; fight grid-lock to go north to East Tremont Avenue where we entered an urban slog westward bound to Arthur Avenue fighting crossing traffic along the way. At Arthur Avenue, it directed us back to the Cross Bronx.

Admittedly, the road was clear at this point. It is interesting to note though, as we crossed the Throgs Neck Bridge, my cousin, Bob, passed us. Later, I asked Bob, “How did you get to the bridge?”

He said, “Stayed on the Cross-Bronx!”

Case closed.

Like Sergeant Joe Friday said: “The facts and only the facts.”

The last new tunnel to cross the Hudson River to Manhattan was the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel that opened in 1957. The last bridge between NJ and NYC was the lower deck of the George Washington Bridge that opened in 1962. The Throgs Neck Bridge (1961) from the Bronx to Queens and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1965) from Staten Island to Brooklyn were the last two bridges built to connect Long Island to the mainland.

These last two bridges were Robert Moses’ triumphs, the Verrazano his last hurrah. The master builder grew old, politics, environmental concerns and popular attitudes passed him by. His last stand, a cross-Long Island Sound bridge from Bayville, Long Island to Rye in Westchester County died on the drawing board.

And so it goes. We live on an island with a 1960s infrastructure. We modernize highways, add HOV lanes, better traffic patterns, introduced EZpass and other computerized improvements, but the fact remains; today’s bridge and tunnel traffic must use the exact number of lanes used in 1965.

So how is that working out? In 1965, 880,575 vehicles crossed all of our toll bridges on a daily basis. In 2015, the figure was 1,453,585.

I admit, Waze, recently did well by my family to avoid congestion allowing us to reach a funeral in Ramsey NJ in time. We left Port Washington at 8 AM for a 10 AM service only to discover all regular crossings through the Bronx or Manhattan were overwhelmed. Waze bypassed congestion by weaving us through the Bronx, Westchester County and over the Tappan Zee, (Malcolm Wilson,) Bridge, onto the NY Throughway to Suffern and back south on Route 17 to Ramsey where we arrived at 9:41.

However, two days later, it took me through every part of Fort Lee I never wanted to see on a slow, painful ride home from an awful loss by my beloved Giants to the hated Redskins at Met Life Stadium. I quit: I do no Waze no more:

Stupid Waze / Stupid Giants!