John Delach

Once upon a time the drinking age in New York State was 18-years of age whereas the voting age was 21. Now the voting age is 18 and the drinking age is 21 but the age in which you can be killed while serving in the military remains 18; go figure.

In my youth, we could drink and die at 18. I grew up in an ideal location for drinking, Ridgewood, Queens populated by a German-American majority who brought with them the old customs that included neighborhood bars and grills. In Ridgewood this meant that practically every other corner was home to a saloon. (We had small neighborhoods.)

My house of sin was Artie’s, a watering hole located on Grandview Avenue between Harmon Street and Greene Avenue. (For the record, Harmon and Greene like other thoroughfares in Ridgewood were named after Revolutionary War heroes.)  Artie’s was a typical Ridgewood saloon with one important distinction for a neophyte under-age kid looking for a beer buzz. Artie, himself, made it known that he would never serve anyone under 18 unless they were quiet, behaved and, most importantly, they were accompanied by money.

We were brought up on beer and beer was all that we sought. Artie had all of the Brooklyn beers on tap, Piel’s, Reingold and Schaefer plus Ballantine. Beer cost fifteen cents for a seven ounce glass of one of these local brews. Every fourth round was on the house, but bar etiquette required that customer never left after a buy-back. Artie had other rules as well. We were responsible for other non-legals we brought in, never bother the regulars, never sit at the bar until we were legal, never sit at the owner’s table unless invited to do so and don’t violate any other rules; real or implicit. Transgressions resulted in expulsion but the guilty would be re-admitted the following Friday night so long as he was still accompanied by money.

There was a prank regulars would play on the unsuspecting. I admit I fell for it: “Hey kid, Ace, (the bartender on duty) is short of pennies. Can you pay for your next beer in pennies?”

I obliged only to watch Ace scoop them up and scatter them behind the bar making me the fool. Part of my education, I learned and at least it didn’t happen when Artie was tending the bar.

Friday nights were special. Ginny, Artie’s wife, made what they called, “bar pies,” small pizzas cut into four slices that were out of this world. If our stamina held up to face the 4 AM closing hour, Artie was not adverse to arming us with cardboard travelers that my mates and I carried to nearby Grover Cleveland Park where we could finish our fantasy while we barked at the moon and solved earth’s problems.

Once legal we were welcomed to sit at the bar as citizens and I did spend many Friday nights and Saturday afternoons in this environment. This afforded me a distinct insight into the hierarchy of the hooch Artie served to his faithful. Behind the bar were three shelves with a mirrored backdrop. There were remote areas for gin, vodka, cordials and the like, but most of the shelves were devoted to whiskey. On the top shelf were the real whiskies, the Canadians; Seagram’s Seven, Seagram’s V.O. and Canadian Club.

(No Scotch, no bourbon, it would be further into the 1960s when Artie introduced a first Scotch, J&B and Kentucky’s Old Grand-Dad, both to culled out spaces on the top shelf.)

Below were an assortment of what we then were told were Rye Whiskeys that I now know as “American Blended Whiskeys.” Here is a definition of American Blended Whiskey: “They’re a blend of cheap whiskey with grain alcohol which is then watered down for bottling.”

On the middle shelf at Artie’s were Schenely, Four Roses, Three Feathers and Fleischmann’s. Down on the bottom; first choice of serial drinkers; Wilson, Philadelphia and Imperial. The bottom three were usually consumed as a “bat and a ball,” “a depth charge” or, simply, “shot and a short round.” Each involved a shot of booze with a 5 oz. beer chaser.

Four Roses should not be confused with Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey of the same name that has been extremely popular in Europe and Asia for many years and has a growing fan base here. Sold to Seagram’s in 1941, this American Blended had the best reputation of the lot.

Wilson has been lost to history except for a photograph I found in the Duke University online library taken along US-1 (The Lincoln Highway) in Rahway, NJ in 1940. In the background is a billboard that has a raised bottle of whiskey and the copy: “No Better Whiskey in Any Bottle – Wilson Whiskey, ‘That’s All!”

Here are some reviews of the others that continue to exist:

Schenley from Schenley Distillers, Owensboro, KY / Bardstown, KY / Atlanta, GA. Tag Line: “America’s Finest.” “I detect hints of acetone and notes of toluene as well as other industrial solvents. I have never put anything this terrible in my mouth. ‘America’s Finest’ Paint Thinner, maybe.

Philadelphia Blended Whisky (sic) from The Medley Company, Bardstown, KY. Tag Line:”The Heritage Whisky.” “Mommy, it hurts when I swallow. This dreck is insulting to everyone’s heritage. According to the label this stuff is ‘a premium quality blended whisky famous since 1894 for its smooth taste and incomparable flavor.’ Drano also has an incomparable flavour.”(sic)

Imperial American Whiskey from Barton Brands, Bardstown, KY. Tag Line: “An Exceptional American Whiskey” The Urban Dictionary: “A cheap rotgut, bottom shelf booze that drunks love.” Or this: “Imperial is a whiskey one drinks to get drunk provided one can drink enough of it.”

Thank god we only drank beer back in the day and I never said the Ridgewood of my youth was a classy place.

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

They give us the greens of summers

Make 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.

Kodachrome lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Songwriter: Paul Simon

Kodachrome, Eastman Kodak’s non-substantive color reversal film. Born 1935 – Died 2009. It produced the sharpest, brightest, clearest slides, films and photographs and in the hands of a skilled photographer or film maker, brilliant shots and scenes that forced us stop and take notice. Gone, a casualty first of digital photography and finally of cell phone cameras. Now the name is remembered by most as the title of this song replaced in talk about photography with a new and crass expression, “the selfie.”

Paul Simon’s Nikon camera and paper photographs are also on the list of endangered species extinguished by smart phones, tablets, text messages, etc. and sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblir, Flickr and other social media destinations. The SLR is being relegated to the small ranks of serious photographers and professionals. The camera of record is the cell phone where an endless stream of junk photographs and out of focus videos fill whatever the space is where the internet exists covering such riveting, moving and important subjects as, what I ate for supper, how I am dressed, look at my fabulous vacation, my children doing disgusting things and cute pet tricks.

And that’s just some of the benign uses. Humans behaving badly take pains to utilize their devices to record their transgressions. They don’t do this secretly or covertly; no, no they share it enthusiastically. Any thing of note that happens, a fist fight, accidents, crimes, natural disasters; people are seemingly poised to shoot the scene usually poorly. But this doesn’t prevent the media from running with it. These scenes will viewed on countless outlets where talking heads guide us through what is otherwise unrecognizable. Beyond television, many watch on the internet, podcasts and other social media locations which will take hits in the millions.

This junk photography and free electronic distribution has also wrecked and continues to wreck print media. Once upon a time, the various entities within Time – Life preened about the quality of their photography particularly Life Magazine and Sports Illustrated. In the 1970s, Sports Illustrated’s advertising slogan was, “We Are Sports in Print” and this slogan would appear under dramatic action photos on billboards and posters mounted on buses and train stations. I remember one in particular photo taken at the 1976 World’s Series. Taken from behind first base, it shows Mickey Rivers in the air as he is starting his attempt to slide into second. The baseball is passing to the left of his head on its way to Joe Morgan who strattles the bag, glove extended waiting to make the tag. Definitely Kodachrome; now that was a photograph. We Are Sports in Print indeed.

Now Life is long gone except for special editions, Time is a shadow of itself as is Sports Illustrated. The entire organization is in doubt. As David Carr wrote in his piece, “Print Is Down, and Now Out” in the August 10 edition of the NY Times, “The people at the magazine business Time Inc. were not so lucky, burdened with $1.3 billion in debt when Time Warner threw them from the boat. Swim for your life, executives at the company seemed to be saying, and by the way, here’s an anchor to help you on your way.”

Regional newspapers are on life support and successful media giants are casting out their print divisions. Time is not alone. Rupert Murdock set the Wall Street Journal adrift. Granted, he did it with a generous infusion of almost $2 billion but it begs the question, how long will it take to burn through that?

Gannet has cast aside USA Today. Good grief, does this mean that McPaper’s days are numbered?

Dark days ahead according to Mr. Carr:

“Newspapers will be working without a net as undiversified pure-play print companies. Most are being cut loose after all the low-hanging fruit like valuable digital properties have been plucked. Many newspapers have sold their real estate, where much of the value was stored.

“More ominous, most print and magazine assets have already been cut to the bone in terms of staffing. Reducing costs has been the only reliable source of profits as overall revenue has declined. Not much left to trim.”

It seems a brave new world is before us, one without photographs to view in albums nestled in our laps, or newspapers to fold and caress or even magazines for in depth coverage of news we already know.

As I read David Carr’s piece I wondered if he stopped to consider: “Damn, I’m writing my own obituary!”

To the average sports fan, the New York Times is the most infuriating vehicle of any existing newspaper that prides itself on sports section staffed by a dedicated stable of professional sports writers. When we try to obtain information about our favorite sport or team, the Times is woeful. Give me the New York Post, the Daily News or Newsday, please.

I don’t believe the Times’ editors are trying to murder their Sports Section although the Paper of Record does favor its Arts Section over Sports. Despite cutbacks, arts continues to stand alone seven days a week whereas sports has been subsumed into the Business Section four of those days and only stands alone on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. But the Times does understand the value of sports to its readers. Witness their E-edition. The index to its sections is as follows: First: Top Stories, second: Opinion, third: Sports, fourth: Arts and five: Fashion.

It is bad enough that the editors constantly try to minimize mainstream sports. For a while they actually eliminated baseball box scores until a howl of protests forced its return. Still they over-report obscure and junk sports consistently loading the pages with in-depth articles on trivial and trendy happenings (in their eyes) at the expense of decent coverage of out-of-town NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL games. And don’t get me started on that artificially hyped quarto-annual phenomenon, The World Cup. Again we went through it this spring from Brazil; soccer is the next great thing. The Times fell over themselves with their coverage. Every four years, here we go: THIS TIME IT’S FOR REAL, THIS TIME AMERICA IS READY FOR FUTBALL, FUTBALL IS AMERICA’S FUTURE; balderdash!

The latest manifestation of their editorial policy came on August 15, 2014 in a piece by Sarah Lyall: “Mini Golf as Career? She Gets Past the Obstacles.”  Ms Lyall profiled Olivia Prokopova, a 19 year-old girl from the Czech Republic who… “last year swept the sport’s three top competitions – the United States Open, the Masters and the world championships-for an unprecedented triple crown in miniature golf.”

Miniature golf! Surely, this was a put-on, a ruse, a tongue in cheek attempt at humor? I’m afraid not. Ms Lyall navigated the subject and gamely authored paragraphs like, “Olivia? There’s no fear in her,’ said Rick Alessi, 57, a municipal heavy-equipment operator from Erie, PA, who is to compete against her in the 2014 United States Open Miniature Golf Tournament…”

Or this: “Prokopova proved an elusive interviewee. She speaks only basic English, and a Russian interpreter had been provided so that Vlk, (who dat?) who speaks Czech and Russian could relay questions to her. But she tended to refer queries to her father, Jan Prokop. That added another layer of complexity because the burly, chain-smoking Prokop, who spent much of the interview talking excitedly and banging messages into his two cellphones, speaks no English at all.”

Que pasa, why is the old man’s name different and isn’t this right out of Monty Python?

Worse yet, putting it in perspective, the Times ran this article alongside  three legitimate sports articles; the first about the election of the new Commissioner of Baseball, the second, a piece about an “All-Black Team” from Chicago competing in the Little League World Series and, the third, about Tony Stewart’s accident prompting changes in Nascar rules. Results of the Mets game that night were tucked inside.

So why today, mini golf? Let’s delve deeper into what the paper that proclaims it presents, “All The News That’s Fit To Print,” didn’t see fit to print.

The organization behind this nonsense is the US ProMiniGolfAssociation, or the USPMGA. They run two of the three championships that Ms Prokopava won in 2013, the US Open and Masters. The 2014 Open took place last weekend, August 15-16, played at the Bluegrass Miniature Golf Course at Monmouth Park Racetrack in Oceanport, NJ. (If you know the history of Monmouth, you know Sonny Werblin and Leon Hess are spinning in their graves.)

Participants played nine to ten rounds in quest of a $3,500 purse for first place. In all $12,000 was awarded to the top 30 scorers. In October, the Masters will be played on two courses in South Carolina, one called the Hawaiian Rumble and the other, Pineapple Beach. Total prize money is also $12,000.

The USPMGA is serious, organized and has an extensive web site should you choose to indulge. They note in their “The World of Mini Golf” white paper that there are several thousand different balls approved for mini golf to account for all conditions and that scoring differs dependent on the different approved surfaces: Eternite, Betong and Felt.

I kid you not!

Here’s the best part; the USPMGA is a member of the World MiniGolf Sports Federation, (WMFS) and the newsletter notes, “Since October 28, 2000 the WMSF has become a Provisional member in the General Association of the International Sports Federation (GAISF) which is a big step towards becoming an Olympic Sport.”

With that the circle is complete. Mini golf may soon compete with futball and every four years the NY Times will tell us why one or the other will soon become our new national sport.

(For those keeping score, Ms Prokopova failed to repeat succumbing to Matt McCaslin.)

The buses left the hotel in Cleveland just past 2:30 on Sunday afternoon carrying about a hundred fans who had all made this journey to Ohio to witness Michael Strahan’s induction into the NFL Hall of Fame. The drivers were taking us south on Interstate 77 to Canton for the second day of the festivities. Yesterday, we visited the Hall, had a dinner and reception in a BBQ joint and watched the seemingly endless induction ceremonies that dragged on for five and one-half hours.

Today, our destination was a meaningless exhibition game between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills to be played that night in Fawcett Stadium, a rinky-dink semi-ancient high school field. But that’s not the reason we went. Prior to delivering us to the field, the twin travel services, Big Blue and Road Crew had planned a reception and buffet diner at a Courtyard by Marriott in Canton where every fan attending would have a photo op with Mr. Strahan.

We had nine in our group, my son Michael, his two boys, Drew (14) and Matty (12), my cousin, Uncle Bob, his friends, Vinnie and Joe, my tailgate buddies, Dave and Tim and me. I had ordered white GMEN brand tee shirts for each of us before the trip. Strahan has an interest in this company and I thought he’d take notice. I had the back of each shirt customized by a local printer in the same black ink that proclaimed, GMEN, on the front:

MICHAEL

HOF

‘14

We decided that all of us who wore these shirts would have our photo taken with our former defensive end. Three hours passed between our arrival and Strahan’s during which we ate, smoozed and took advantage of the open bar. My second grandson, Matty, a natural born salesman and politician, worked his magic with Jim Fassel, the former Giants head coach who was our guest celebrity. He told Fassel how nice his 2000 NFC Championship Ring looked and the coach asked, “How’d you like to wear it for a while?”

Next we knew, Matty was sporting the ring showing it to anyone willing to look at him. It was big on his ring finger and he followed his dad’s advice to keep that finger curled up.

Meanwhile, Drew made his way to the lobby where he staked out a perch near the entrance. He carried a white-panel football made for autographs and a permanent-ink Sharpie pen. And there he waited and waited forgoing lunch or any other activities. As the time for Number 92’s arrival grew near, Matty decided to join his brother, but Drew had little use for this Johnny-come-lately and shooed Matty away. When he persisted, both his father and I shooed him away too.

But Drew’s plans were foiled as Strahan came in with four or five other people and walked straight by him without taking notice. Disappointed for the moment Drew joined us to wait for our photo while scheming how to pull off a post-photo signing.

We were lined up in numerical order based on numbered wrist bands previously issued to us. We were all in the forties and when we reached Mike, the fellow in charge, we explained that we’d all like to go together. He agreed as this also made his life easier and told us to spend a little time talking to Strahan. Our session went off well and he was enthusiastic about our shirts and amazed that my son was taller than him. We had photos taken of us facing the camera and with the back of our shirts to it.

As we left the room, both Drew and Matty lingered by the exit door. As Strahan left, Drew offered his football and open pen, but distractedly, 92 ignored it and grabbed an old visor with a Giants logo from Matty and signed the bill. YES: You read that correctly; HE IGNORED DREW AND SIGNED FOR MATTY!

Undaunted, Drew turned and joined the other fans chasing him and managed to get close. At just this point, Strahan was passing our buddy, Vinnie, who called out as he held up his hat, “Hey, Mike, would you sign this for a Vietnam vet.” (Vinnie had fought there earning three Purple Hearts.)

Drew had reached the Hall of Famer as he turned after hearing Vinnie. Instead of offering his ball for signing, Drew grabbed the hat from Vinnie, hustled back to 92 and gave it to him. Strahan took the hat from Drew, signed the bill and returned it while continuing toward the exit. Drew had had two choices, offer his ball or grab the hat from Vinnie. He chose to grab the hat but, in the process, lost his own opportunity. With that, Strahan was out the door. Drew stopped and before he could react, we all mobbed him praising him for his selfless act. All of us that is, except Michael who told his son, “Give me the ball and wait here.”

With that Michael went out to the car and chased the group down. That same fellow, Mike (in charge of the photos), told Michael, “Sorry, no more autographs.” But Michael went right by him and told Strahan, “My son gave this up so you could sign for a vet. Please sign his ball, he deserves it.”

Michael Strahan signed Drew’s ball.

The Giants won the exhibition game that night. We didn’t care; our day had already been made.

It is good to be the king especially in New York City. Witness these gems that all appeared in the July 26 and 27 weekend edition of the New York Times. The following pieces appeared in the Real Estate Section:

Manhattan’s Secret Pools and Gardens: The authors point out that the asking price for a four-bedroom apartment in Franklin Place, a condo with a roof-top swimming pool is $7.5 million. Nice crib, if you can get it.

Another venue: “The Dream Downtown, a hotel in the Meatpacking District, charges $175 a day to use the pool, Monday through Thursday. A cabana on the weekend will set you back $2,500.”

(The e-copy of this article was accompanied by a slide show.) My favorite is a shot from a helicopter hovering over a condo on Broadway between East Eighty Eight Street and Waverly Place. The camera is trained on an elevated roof-top pool and a large patio area one level below the pool Young things male and female line the apron below the pool soaking in the rays, the boys in knee length or longer suits and the girls in miniscule Bikini triangles. A few peer up at the chopper. Meanwhile, way down on street level, pedestrians oblivious to the scene above shuffle along Broadway more in tune with a passing a subway entrance than the good life above them.

Park and River Vistas for $30 Million: Tyler Ellis, the daughter of fashion designer, Perry Ellis, held the record for the most expensive sale of the week at $30,003,000. Marcel Herrmann Telles, a Brazilian billionaire is the buyer of her former abode, Apartment 33A in the tower at 15 Central Park West. Mr. Telles is the controlling shareholder in Anheuser-Busch InBev.

On the Upper West Side, a House Divided by Income: A new development on the Upper West Side south of Seventy-Second Street has …”received approval from the city for separate entrances – one for wealthy residents and one for those earning far less who would occupy the projects affordable units in a separate wing.”

This “Let them eat cake” concept of providing affordable housing was introduced during Bloomberg’s administration as part of the incentive to spur developers to include such “affordable” units in “market-rate projects.” But this plan for Riverside South has raised a bit of a storm. Gina Bellafante noted in her piece that it is doubtful the De Blasio administration can do much about the decision even though…”the building’s configuration is anathema to his values…” as it is perfectly legal

This separate entrance, already deemed, “the poor door,” allows rich people to live, as they prefer with other rich people by effectively separating out the masses.

But, then again, so does first class travel.

Not to be outdone, the Sunday Business Section included this First Page gem:

Seeing a Supersize Yacht as a Job Engine, Not Self-Indulgence: (The last piece demonstrates that Big Money plays just as well in St. Louis as it does in Gotham.)

Dennis M. Jones who sold his niche drug company, Jones Pharma, for $3.4 billion in 2000 has taken delivery of his new 161 foot mega-yacht, D’Natalin IV, where he intends to spend winters sailing in the Caribbean and summers cruising Europe. Christensen Yachts won the bid to build and outfit his boat for $34 million.

Mr. Jones noted by coincidence, the price of his boat is the same amount that he has contributed to charities since the year he sold his company in 2000. Bully for you, Mr. Jones.

The 75-year old Jones also noted his purchase saved the boatyard located in Vancouver, Washington. Paul Sullivan reported that, “Joe F. Foggia, chief executive of Christensen Yachts, does not dispute Mr. Jones’s recollection. His yacht order was a catalyst for others. ‘We had finished some boats, but the last one delivered was in the later part of 2010.”

If that alone is not sufficient proof that Mr. Jones is an engine for jump starting the economy, the article points out that the D’Natalin IV will have a crew of 10. “An experienced captain on a ship like this earns $200,000 a year, an engineer about $150,000 and the rest of the crew from $40,000 to $50,000. (Room and board are free.)…This is not a bad gig, especially as the Jones and/or their friends are not on board a decent amount of the time.

Christian Bakewell, a yacht broker who oversaw construction explained it for us, the unwashed: “People see splashy images of Beyonc’e  stepping on a yacht. What they don’t see is how many people go into building that yacht and maintaining that yacht. Those things get missed and people fall back on the one percent arguments.”

As Mel Brooks said and at the risk of being redundant, “It’s good to be the king.”

Vincent Sombrotto’s died in January of 2013 and his obituary was promonetly reported in an obituary in the New York Times. Mr. Sombrotto was 89 and died in St. Francis Hospital on Long Island. His obit explained his claim to fame. It read in part, “Vincent Sombrotto, who was a rank-and-file letter carrier, led a wildcat strike that shut down post offices across the country in 1970, prompting President Richard M. Nixon to call out the National Guard…”

Those were crazy times. Starting with Michael Quill’s face off against newly installed Mayor John V. Lindsay on New Year’s Day, 1966, the results he achieved for his members of the TWU as the result of the 12 day strike that killed him less than a month later influenced the union leaders of municipal workers, quasi-city workers and others. They took to the streets as strikes seemed to spread like wildfire through the 60’s and 70’s until at one point forty different unions went out on strike in one calendar year.

It seemed that everyone who was a “union man or woman” joined the cause in those days of rage. Sanitation, police, fire, ambulance services, hospitals and even ballerinas from the American Ballet Theater took to the streets one even in toe shoes. Umpires picketed Yankee Stadium, cemetery workers engaged in a hunger strike. OTB clerks, prison guards, tug boat operators, milk truck drivers, school bus drivers, and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) toll collectors all walked. Albert Shanker led the teachers out in a series of nasty strikes that pitted minority controlled community boards against his United Federation of Teachers (UFT) culminating in a 36 day strike commencing at the start of the school year in September of 1968. Beyond material gains, the strike brought Shanker dubious fame thanks to a line in the Woody Allen movie, Sleeper: “(That) the world as we knew it had been destroyed by a mad man named, Albert Shanker who got a hold of a nuclear device.”

Another outrage to the citizens in a seemingly endless chain came in 1971 when bridge tenders belonging to Victor Gotbaum’s District 37 of the Municipal Employees Union opened all 27 draw bridges in the city before locking the doors, removing fuses and walking off the job after throwing their keys into the waters they guarded before leaving their posts. The chaos they left in their wake was insane. Only 7,000 of Gotbaum’s 400,000 members, actually went out but his 2 ½ day-rant included other vital workers at sewage treatment plants, garbage disposal terminals and school cafeterias.

But Vinnie and his gang were different. They were federal employees. As the strike spread from Manhattan and the Bronx across the land, it tested President Richard M. Nixon’s patience and on March 23, 1970, five days into the strike, he announced on television: “(I) just now directed the activation of the men of various military organizations to begin in New York City, the restoration of essential mail services.”

As members of various units in the 42^nd Division of the New York National Guard, we reported to the armories where our outfits were housed. Bill Wilson went to the Armory on 18^th St. where his unit, the famous “Fighting” 69^th was housed. Geoff Jones reported to his outfit, Company B, 42^nd Maintenance Battalion at the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx and Bill Christman and I journeyed to an armory in Hempstead, Long Island, the home of Company C of the 242^nd Signal Battalion. For the next eight days, these were our places of work until the strike was settled. Of the four of us, only Bill Wilson actually delivered mail on an assigned route in lower Manhattan. So little mail was sorted at the GPO that delivering it would take him less than an hour each day allowing Bill to go off to his regular job as an insurance broker while still in his army fatigues before returning to the armory.

Bill Christman remembered our greatest accomplishment: “Putting up a volley ball net between two deuce-an-a-halves (Two and a half-ton trucks) and that our First Sergeant, Sgt. Peter Stegle commented, ‘Once the postal workers envisioned us invading their work places, they figured they better settle.”

We never left the armory and when the strike ended, Sgt. Stegle ordered us into formation on the drill floor to address us before dismissal. He reminded us that although we never left the armory, “Those who stand and wait also serve.” As he finished these remarks one soldier let loose in a stage whisper, “Ah, the motto of Burger King.”

Vinnie’s passing reminded us, the veterans of the great mail crusade, of the joy he inadvertently brought to us by calling that wildcat strike. Unbeknownst to any of us, embedded in our National Guard contract for service with Uncle was a provision that, if we were ever Federalized by order of the Commander-in-Chief, we would have a reduction up to one year of our six-year commitment regardless of the duration of being Federalized.

Thank you Vinnie, thank you and Milhouse!

Only one obstacle remained, the governor of the state of New York. It seemed we also had a separate contract to be part of a State Militia, But Nelson Rockefeller turned out to be a player and he dispensed us from this commitment. Thank you too, Rocky, your wealthiness.

I don’t recall recruiters trying to get many of us to re-up; that would have been too funny and a waste of time.

But I do know that like other aging vets of the great mail crusade, the next time I put a stamp on an envelope, I’ll think kindly of ole Vinnie.

Don’t you think that the “almost” Long Island Railroad strike scheduled to begin last Sunday morning was settled almost too easily? I know I do and when I saw all of the smiling faces belonging to Governor Andrew Cuomo, MTA officials, union leaders and hangers on as they shook hands and broke bread at Docks, the trendy seafood hot spot on Third Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street, I knew that Mike Quill was spinning in his grave in Gate of Heaven Cemetery. Michael J. Quill, the late, “great” leader of the Transit Workers Union of America, the same Mike Quill, who let the press know in no uncertain fashion how he was treating a judge’s order to halt the  New York City subway strike:

The Judge can drop dead in his black robes and we would not call off the strike. Personally, I don’t care if I rot in jail!

Now that was a top-notch donnybrook.  Quill was a rough tough, take no prisoners union man who was in the top three of the New York labor leaders the public loved to hate because they screwed up life so badly with strikes. The other two, in my opinion, were Bertram Powers of Big 6, the International Typographers Union who killed several New York newspapers starting with the Daily Mirror and Albert Shanker of the UFT, the United Federation of Teachers, who shut down the entire public school system.

But Quill was a special villain having the ability and chutzpah to hold the entire city and its suburbs hostage every other New Year’s Eve. Each go-round, he dragged negotiations beyond midnight agreeing to stop the clock all the while ranting about Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. Wagner, served as mayor from Jan. 1, 1954 to December 31,1965 and  endured being Bud Abbott to Quill’s Lou Costello or Dean Martin to Quill’s Jerry Lewis time and time again. Each go-round, Quill starred in this bi-annual “pantomime making bad faces, shouting ugly threats waving his Irish blackthorn stick, and generally doing his histrionic best to make the city shake and quiver.”

Wagner understood the seriousness of his role and gamely played his part. And serious business this was. During the December, 1963 contract battles, Mayor Wagner was forced to leave the bedside of his dying wife, Susan, or risk Quill’s vindictive retaliation with a last-minute breakdown in his negotiating strategy. And how did Quill react. Asked by a reporter to comment on Wagner, Quill rejoined in his twill brogue:

Mayor Wagner is the only man I know who can speak out of both sides of his mouth and whistle at the same time.

After three terms, Wagner had had enough. John V. Lindsay, the tall, handsome, progressive Republican congressman from Manhattan’s Upper East Side “Silk Stocking District” won the race beating the Democrat, Abe Beam, and William F. Buckley who ran on the Conservative Party line. (A footnote: When asked, “what would you do if you won?” Bill Buckley replied, “Demand a re-count.”)

Lindsay chose to refrain from participating in the negotiations or playing his assigned role in The Quill Show. Although many pundits considered this decision to be crucial to the failed process that followed, I am not so sure this was correct. First off, Quill had a huge chip on his shoulder heading up to the Jan. 1, 1966 deadline. Following the successful settlement of the 1963 negotiations, one of the two Transit Authority associate board members, John J, Gilhooley or Daniel Scanlon, publicly crowed how his side of the table had been able to snooker the TWU. But more importantly, Quill and Lindsay quickly decided that they despised each other. Humbly born Quill and patrician Lindsay rubbed each other the wrong way on sight. ‘Pipsqueak’ Quill sneered. ‘Amateur.’ He belittled the incoming mayor purposely referring to him as “Mayor Linsley.”

Jimmy Breslin take was: “John Lindsay looked at Quill and saw the past and Mike Quill looked at Lindsay and saw the Church of England.”

Quill threw down an impossible gauntlet presenting the incoming mayor with a list of 70 intractable demands including a 30% across-the-board wage hike, a 32-hour work week and six weeks paid vacation. The estimated cost for these demands was $680 million dollars as opposed to the Authority’s offer of $20 million worth of increases.

As the deadline neared the Authority won an injunction banning a strike. Quill came out swinging, “Injunctions make very poor track walkers. We defy the city to run the subway.”

He tore up the court order but cut his demands to an estimated cost of $216 million…a bridge too far!

The strike lasted 12 days. It was a nightmare. Quill went to prison where he promptly suffered a hear attack that put him in a hospital. If the strike had any positive results, the one that was the most lasting involved workplace dress codes. Prior to the strike, pants were off-limits for women in the office. But crossing East River Bridges on foot in the cold and winds of January made slacks acceptable at least on a temporary basis that quickly became permanent after the strike ended.

Mayor Lindsay finally enlisted labor negotiator, Theodore Kheel, to hammer out a new contract. A settlement was reached, Quill was released, but the ordeal finished his already weakened heart and he died on January 29 at age 60.  Pete Hamill wrote, “He stood in the moral wreckage of the labor movement as the last leader to go to his grave cursing the bosses.”

The settlement cost New York City $60 million, an amount Gotham could ill afford. Worse yet, it opened the door to a myriad of municipal strikes to come during the 1960s.

Pleased stay tuned for the continuation of this saga in next week’s blog.   

Disasters sometimes seem to have an awful habit of happening in a series. Air crashes coming in threes is a popular belief. Legend, perhaps, but strange as it seems, multiple events occur far too often to be coincidental. The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) went through such a sequence, two unprecedented catastrophes and two other large fires in an eight-day period in December of 1960.

It was a rotten month weather-wise described in the NY Times as, “…numbing cold and roadways made virtually impassable by snow and ice.” The first and the worst of the disasters happened on just such a day, December 16^th. The weather began as snow before turning into light rain and fog. United Airlines Flight 826, a DC-8 out of Chicago on approach to Idlewild (now JFK) overran its designated holding pattern over South Amboy, NJ striking a TWA Constellation occupying the same holding area. The Connie, Flight 266 originated in Dayton, Ohio destined for LaGuardia via Columbus. One of the DC-8’s four jets engines was ripped off as it struck the Connie from behind crashing into its triple tail and fuselage tearing them apart and forcing the airplane into an uncontrolled dive. Derbies and at least one poor soul trailed the falling flight that smashed into a corner of Miller Field, a small airbase on Staten Island killing all 39 passengers and the crew of five.

There was no evidence that the United crew retained control of their mortally damaged jet which managed to stay in the air for nine more miles as it descended over Brooklyn where it violently came down at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place in the heart of Park Slope setting ablaze the Pillar of Fire Church, ten brownstones, the McCaddin Funeral Home, a Chinese laundry and a delicatessen. Six people on the ground were killed, the church’s caretaker, two men selling Christmas tress, a sanitation worker shoveling snow, a store keeper and a man walking his dog. All of the 77 passengers and seven crewmembers died including 11-year-old, Stephen Blitz, who was thrown onto a snow bank surviving the impact. He succumbed to his burns and injuries the next day. FDNY units from every borough except The Bronx responded to the Park Slope Plane Crash which claimed a total of 134 lives and would remain the deadliest U.S. commercial aviation disaster until 1969.

Three days later, on Dec.19, a forklift operator moving a metal trash bin on the hanger deck of the USS Constellation under construction in the Brooklyn Navy Yard shifted a steel plate that ruptured a diesel fuel line. Once the leaking oil came into contact with “hot work” being performed on lower decks, the insides of the aircraft carrier were transformed into an inferno that took 350 firefighters 17 hours to conquer this ten-alarm blaze. Most of the nearly 4,000 shipyard workers on board managed to escape using two main gangways connected to the aircraft carrier. Others escaped in more dramatic fashion. Several shed their shoes and heavy clothing and jumped into the East River where they were rescued by tugs that raced to the shipyard.

A crane operator lifted a thirty-foot narrow gangway to workers stuck on deck cutoff from the gangways. He began lifting them off of the flight deck a few at a time. As firefighters made their way through the smoke, darkness and oven like heat to reach men trapped below, this gangway became their vital escape route. When survivors and victims were brought up on deck, an FDNY officer would signal to the operator whether the next lift was for the living or the dead; thumbs up if alive, thumbs down if dead.

Once the fires were extinguished and the searches completed, 49 dead workers had been carried off the Constellation and one other, Paul L. Bua made it 50 when he died on Dec. 29^th from injuries sustained in the fire. Three hundred and thirty workers and firefighters were injured in the mazes of construction scaffolding blinded by darkness and smoke.

While the worst was over, fire crews had to contend with two additional major fires on Dec. 23. The first began in the early morning hours of that cold day when units from Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens responded to an eight-alarm fire at two lumber yards in Williamsburg, cheek by jowl with the Navy Yard. The fire raged across properties belonging to the Bridge Lumber Company and the Driggs Plywood Corporation beginning at five A.M. that forced the evacuation of the convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church and closures to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway disrupting morning rush-hour traffic.

The day ended with a final conflagration, a four-alarm fire in a gas station at the junction of Coney Island Avenue and Avenue L that began at 6:50 P.M. This final act destroyed the station and ten cars in the adjacent European Motor Cars building.

The one silver lining in this tale of destruction is that not one FDNY firefighter’s life was lost in any of these blazes.

A piece in the Metropolitan Section of the July 8, 2014 edition of the New York Times grabbed my attention. The piece chronicled the wake for Jason Wulf, 42, a “graffiti titan” who had been electrocuted last week when he came into contact with the third rail in a subway station while practicing his craft.

The article noted: “Mr. Wulf was a link to a vanished New York in which teenagers slipped through fences and etched wild letters on the metal husks of subway cars.”

Benjamin Mueller reported that aging so called graffiti artists, “…introduced each other by the tag names they once painted under bridges and on the walls along the Long Island Expressway…” But also, “…many brought along new wives and stories of recently born children.”

But what struck me was Mr. Mueller’s minor notation that this all happened, “At a funeral home…on the corner of Greene and Seneca Avenues…”  Seneca Chapels, 494 Seneca Avenue. I know this well, it has been functioning for many years but when I was a kid, the building where it is housed was once a third-rate movie theater with a lofty name, the Majestic. It was well down the food chain from our two most prestigious Ridgewood movie houses, the RKO Madison with a real organ and occasional live stage shows and the lesser Ridgewood Theater, still a showcase for new movies once they left the City (Manhattan).

The Majestic was below the next level too, semi-cut rate theaters that recycled better “B” movies. We had two, the Oasis and the Parthenon. The Oasis was the better of the two, cleaner and newer. The Parthenon stood on the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Wyckoff Avenue, a dirty house with an unruly crowd right under the el whose squawking trains could clearly be heard as they negotiated a sharp turn.

The Majestic was even a grade below its peer, the Grandview. At least the Grandview had a separate outdoor area where locals could comfortably watch a movie on warm summer nights.

The Dumps was a big box without a balcony or even a candy counter. A nickel vending machine was the only source for food. It was dirty, smelly, hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The movies were old and forgettable made worse by a balky projector that frequently broke down.

For all of these reasons, people never referred to it as the Majestic but rather as “The Dumps.” But the Dumps had two things going for it, it was close and it was cheap. Since it was only two and one-half blocks from my home, my mother let me go on Saturdays with other neighborhood kids. And the cost, if we arrived before 1 PM, it was eleven cents. After 1, thirteen cents.

(You may rightfully wonder why I remember this minute detail?)

It was a very important element in my life as a kid on Saturdays. I could not go to the Dumps alone and, if the Meyer kids, Blair kids or the Slezak kids were tardy; my day was doomed to failure. My allocation for the movies was sixteen cents and, if we arrived before 1, I had a nickel to use in the vending machine. If not, my three cents in change was useless.

The only movie I remember seeing at the Dumps was The Thing with James Arness (later of Gunsmoke fame). I didn’t remember much of it when I left the Dumps, all I knew was that Mr. Arness’ role as a creature from outer space who killed the scientists working at an Arctic base terrified me to the point that I had nightmares for a week and was banned by Mom from seeing another horror movie for a long, long time.

As for the Dumps, it was rightfully at the front of the first wave of the theaters to close succumbing to the early effects of television. I hope the resurrected Seneca Chapels gave Mr. Wulf a decent send-off