John Delach

March 2017: Number 169. Revised and edited. February 2024

John Delach

I am pleased to present this piece by my daughter, Beth Briggs.

I had avoided getting a dog for some time but my days were numbered. My excuses (our family move, young children, summer vacation) were running out and the day of reckoning was coming.

Late last August I had lunch with our 12-year old, Marlowe and my husband, Tom and they really put the pressure on –When were we going to get a dog? They were tired of my excuses and concerns and they were ready. Tom and I walked away from that lunch in different corners but quickly resolved our differences, as modern couples do, over text messages. I texted Tom that we should talk to our neighbor, Mark, who lived with a small, older rescue dog named P.B. to think about how we could do something similar. We reasoned that finding a dog, a little older and maybe lightly trained would make the whole situation easier. We left it at that.

I woke up early the next day, a Saturday morning, to head to the local bagel store. As I was getting ready to leave our doorbell rang. It was Mark from next door – he asked me to step into the hallway because he had a question for me. I thought he was asking us to dog sit for P.B. as we had done earlier in the summer.

Dog sitting was not on his mind but dogs were. He explained that he had had dinner at the new Thai restaurant across the street from our building and that the owner had approached him during his dinner. It seems that she had found a dog tied up two blocks over from our building on Friday morning. The dog was scruffy and alone except for an empty bowl of food. She already had a dog – plus she had just opened a new restaurant – and she could not keep this found dog. In fact, when she first saw the dog tied up, she just passed him and went home. A true animal lover, she could not stop thinking about this poor dog’s predicament and within an hour of returning home she went back and rescued him. She named him Sampson and Mark thought of us immediately when she asked him about taking Sampson home.

I was a little overwhelmed by Mark’s proposition – Is this it? Is this how we wind up with a dog? I decided to take the kids to get bagels and leave Tom sleeping and revisit this all in a few hours.

As I headed out of my building with my kids in tow there was his rescuer across the street walking her dog and Sampson. She knew we wanted a dog from Mark and we all stopped on the sidewalk for what would become a life changing transaction. She introduced us to this small furry creature with a cheerful disposition and a serious under bite. He was beyond what we could have hoped for, small but sturdy, hypoallergenic and friendly. I told the kids to go get their father and Tom came to meet us from a sound sleep. After all agreeing, she handed us Sampson’s leash and he was ours, just like that on the street outside our building. Suffice to say, we never saw those bagels.

We took him to the Vet and learned that he had no chip, weighed around 16 pounds and was between 1 and 2 years old. We kept the name Sampson because it seemed to suit him. And, thus began our adventure of dog ownership.

Needless to say he is the love of our lives. Most of my original worries were fulfilled – the dog walker costs a fortune, as do all dog expenses, the kids don’t help nearly as much as they promised they would and he has occasional accidents. But owning a dog is not a rationale decision, it is an emotional one and he has captured all of hearts.

Note to regular blog readers: I would be remiss if I did not note that Sampson has a particular love for my parents’ dog Max. Max, who some may know is the Robert Redford of Golden Retrievers, views Sampson as an unfortunate small beast to be sniffed and dismissed on each occasion they meet. Once Max creates action, Sampson insists on participating by biting Max’s back legs. To date, Max has refused to acknowledge this annoyance.

Second note: It is now February of 2024. We lost Max in May of 2023. He almost made it to his thirteenth birthday. Sampson, I am pleased to say, still rules the roost in Brooklyn. Not so much in Port Washington.

In October of 2023, we adopted Molly, an eight-year-old black Lab mix from Louisiana who was turned in to a local rescue organization after her master died. She turned out to be a perfect fit for us, smart as a whip and full of life and love.

Sampson still had a bit of the bully in him and decided to take on Molly. Molly reacted in a flash and quickly pinned Sampson to the floor in our kitchen. Sampson has since given Molly a lot of space since then.          

January 2017: Number 164. Revised and edited, February 2024

I commuted between Port Washington, Long Island and New York’s Pennsylvania Station from 1977 until 2000 and, since my retirement, I continue to make this run mostly on non-rush hour trains two to three times a month.

Port Washington is a terminal and my title is taken from the banter between crew members that I could hear over the open intercom in the coach as the crew prepared for the morning run:

Engineer to conductor: “Mickey says it’s time to go.”

Conductor: “No orders, no messages.”

Engineer: “I have the railroad.”

…and off we’d go each morning.

Other happenings were not so regimented or contrived. One morning a conductor named, Barney, entered my coach just after the train left the Plandome Station. A well-dressed and coiffed dowager looked up at him as he prepared to punch her ticket and asked, “Conductor, please tell me what time this train will arrive at Grand Central Terminal?”

Barney punched her ticket, looked at her and replied, “Lady, you’re on the wrong f***ing railroad.”

(Of course, today her question would have been valid now that the LIRR’s long-time East Side access terminal, known as Grand Central Madison finally opened last year,)   

One evening on a return journey, the train was just emerging from one of the East River Tunnels as a different conductor entered the car. He commanded: “All tickets, please, all tickets, please. This is the 6:11 Flyer to Port Washington stopping only at Great Neck, Manhasset, Plandome and Port Washington. We expect to arrive in Port Washington at 6:48. All tickets, please.”

When he reached my row, a chap sitting across from me asked, “Why did you say ‘expect?”

“Because nothing in life is guaranteed.”   

Beginning in 1989, I started a morning routine of having a daily workout before beginning my workday. I used Cardio Fitness, an upscale facility located in Rockefeller Center as my company was willing to pay for the annual membership. This required me to make the 5:36 train, not to be late for work,  as insane as that sounds. Needless to report, my regular coach was only sparsely populated with other riders when it left Port Washington.

 One morning, I sat next to the window on a two-seater on an otherwise empty coach. I was already engrossed in the morning’s New York Times when a young woman entered and sat down next to me. I slowly folded my paper, put it down, turned toward my unwanted companion and looked directly at her.

I obtained the desired effect. Clearly flustered, she spoke rapidly trying to explain: “I didn’t know what else to do, my mother always tells me to never sit anyplace, but on the aisle and look for a well-dressed gentleman to sit next to in order to be safe.

“Look around, the coach ids empty. I assure you that it will not get crowded and you can pick any other aisle seat except this one and nobody will sit next to you.”

She did as I asked and I returned to my paper but I did keep a protective eye on her, just in case.

Slowly, I realized that I shared the same locker bay at the club with David Rockefeller of the banking family fame and David (Punch) Sulzberger, Publisher emeritus of The New York Times.

Of course, I couldn’t resist telling people about this historical breach in the order of the universe. I’d tell them: You won’t believe this, but I get undressed and dressed with David Rockefeller and Punch Salzberger!

“In fact, we are on a first name basis; they call me, ‘Hey you.’ And I call them, ‘Your Wealthiness.”

Over time, another fellow who worked out at the same time that I did, realized we both took that same 5:36 train. He boarded at the Little Neck Station, the first  stop in the Queens’ part of New York City. Quickly, we arranged to meet in a certain coach and to share a cab ride from Penn Station to the club in the McGraw-Hill building. His name was Marty Blanc and he was an international diamond dealer.

We traveled together most workdays for the next ten-years, but, being typical New Yorkers, we learned very little about each other during our time together. Since we both traveled extensively, it was not uncommon that we missed each other, but without advanced notice. I did know that Marty drove from his house to Little Neck to catch that train, but I never knew where he lived.

Sad, but it was that type of a relationship…

And so it goes.  

August, 2016, No. 147 0f 500. Revised February 2024

I wrote Boeing’s 747 when this magnificent airplane was still the queen of the sky. I didn’t realize how fragile its future really was. The Air Bus A-380 with a passenger capacity of 550 went into service in 2007. But Boeing believed their 747 could co-exist with the bigger jumbo.

In reality both airplanes were doomed by changes in airline operations. Both jumbos were designed for the so-called hub and spokes operations where they flew passengers from regional airports in smaller planes to their main hubs. Jumbo’s would carry the consolidated  passengers between hubs. Instead, passengers preferred point to point flights that didn’t require changing airplanes.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Covid-19 Pandemic put the older Boeing 747 fleet out of business and doomed the assembly line for the A-380 to being cancelled in 2021.

And so it goes, but I did have many experiences  on that airplane that I hope you enjoy hearing about..       

The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing has delivered more than 1,500 747s since 1970. I first flew in one belonging to Pan American in 1974 on a flight to San Juan, P.R. from John F. Kennedy (JFK) and my last, in 2010, a British Airway jet from London Heathrow (LHR) to JFK. I have travelled a total of 133 flights on board those jumbos, 125 of them business related. More than half those flights were to and from London but 747s also carried me to and from places like Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, Zurich, Rome, Tokyo, Manila, Singapore, Kula Lumpur, Hong Kong and Beijing.

My number one provider of 747s was TWA by choice as I was both a valued frequent flyer and a member of their Ambassador’s Club. This combination gave me almost automatic upgrades from coach to business class. Before Carl Ichan ruined TWA, they had terrific on board service and even, post-Ichan, when many good flight attendants quit; TWA still retained an edge due to their seating setup.

TWA made the upper cabin of the 747 all business class seating. This meant the space was exclusive to 18 passengers who sat two by two with an aisle in the center (ten seats on the left side, eight on the right to allow for the spiral staircase.) We had access to two rest rooms that we shared with the flight crew and a happy flight attendant exclusively assigned to this section. Happy because the attendant only had 18 clients all of who were in business meaning no first-class drama and no jerks from coach.

On one particular occasion, Mary Ann, joined me for a business / vacation trip to London. TWA was desperate so we both wound up in this cabin with upgrades after I bought heavily discounted coach tickets. At best, there were only four or five business travelers accompanying us up in our perch. As we approached the start of the descent into LHR, a baby Ichan bred stewdess presented us with a bottle of champagne explaining, we were the best passengers on the plane. We thanked her and when she left, I shook my head and said to my wife, “She’s sweet and trying, but in an emergency; worthless, damn, I miss those TWA women who mattered when you needed them.”

I flew with Alexander, the deposed heir to the Yugoslavian throne who enjoyed my father’s heritage and sent me Christmas cards for two or three years, two former presidents, Jimmy Carter and Dick Nixon. Dan Rather was the most interesting. This happened because  TWA cancelled their evening flight and re-booked my mate and me on an Air India 747. That was January of 1981. I was flying in first class with Leo Whalen; (need I say more) as was Rather. Rather hustled off the plane to make a BA connection at Heathrow. Only later did we realize he had been tipped off that Iran was about to release our hostages the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Rather was on his way to Algeria where they would be released.                  

When TWA was forced to sell their lucrative London service to United, I switched to British Air and soon achieved gold card status. This came with a sensational bonus; whenever I flew business class or, as BA referred to it, Club Class, there was always the chance when I checked in for Flight 178, (the 10 AM morning flight to Heathrow (LHR,) that the clerk would ask, “Mr. Delach, would you be interested in changing over to 004?” (You have to love British subtlety; BA 004 was the 1:30 PM Concorde.)  Leave three and one- half hours later and arrive two hours earlier. It did happen more than a ½ dozen times! Loved the 747 but, the SST: the only way to fly when it’s on someone else’s dime!

The 747 was the greatest venue for international travel back then before the world and airline travel went into the crapper after the horror of September 11, 2001.

My favorite flights were those Friday-afternoon return trips out of Heathrow bound for JFK when all of the victories and horrors of negotiations with Lloyds were over. Win, lose or draw, the battles had ended.

Back then the last flights left Heathrow at 3 PM meaning we were out of London by 11 am at the latest and, more importantly, we were going home. The best were those homebound flights when we found other New York insurance guys sharing the same flight. No matter that we worked for rival firms; school was out; time to play…One time six of us took over the large empty space in the tail of a half-empty 747 to drink and smoke our way across the Atlantic. We generously tipped the flight attendants and none of us hit on them.

They enjoyed us and we’d spin our fingers to let them know it was time to “sprinkle the infield.”

What a flight! I still remember the price I paid due to my condition when I arrived home. Oh hell, it was worth it.

May, 2016, No. 133 of 500. Revised January 2024

Are you familiar with the expression, “Six, Two and Even” or as it is also stated, “6 – 2, & Even?” It’s cloaked in mystery and the key to solving it is missing.

I first encountered it when I discovered Foley’s, the Irish sports bar on East Thirty-Third Street across from the Empire State Building. Shaun Clancy, Foley’s proprietor adopted this expression to encourage people to come and enjoy life at his saloon, “Foley’s NY Pub & Restaurant, An Irish Bar with a Baseball Attitude where Everything is 6-2 & Even.”    

Shaun explained to me that many people who know this expression trace first hearing it back to the life-long Red Sox manager, scout and coach, “Walpole” Joe Morgan. From 1988 to 1991, Morgan managed the Boston Red Sox and brought with him a down-to-earth; tell it like it is personality. When fired by Haywood Sullivan and other Sox executives, he left them with these parting words: “Your team is not as good as you think it is.”

How unique was Morgan? For about ten-years while he was in the Red Sox organization, he had an off-season job working for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority driving a snowplow each winter earning him a second moniker: “Turnpike Joe.”

Shaun shared this about Morgan: “Joe used it as code for any questions he didn’t want to answer or felt the asker didn’t need to know. It started at his first news conference when some of the writers were asking questions to try to make Joe look stupid so he used the phrase. No one called him out so he continued to use it.” 

Rory Costello wrote about Morgan for the Society for Baseball Research:

Almost 20 years after he left the Red Sox, people still remember a Morgan catchphrase, “Six, two and even.” Many fans were baffled by what this meant – even Joe himself didn’t really know. Humphrey Bogart used the line in The Maltese Falcon, but Morgan picked it up from his old minor-league manager, Joe Schultz (who was also full of little sayings).

Morgan told Costello: “(Schultz) used to say, ‘six, two and even’ all the time and when I asked him what it meant, he’d just shake his head. It wasn’t until I was out of baseball about 15 years that I met this old guy, he was 94, who was a bookmaker in the 1920s.” He explained that it refers to betting odds on horse races.

A number of horse racing folks will agree that it refers to the odds on a pony in a given race: Six to one to win, two to one to place (finish second) and even money to show (finish third.)

But others believe it has a more sinister nature describing when the odds on a horse to win a race drop from six to one down to two to one and finally to even just before post time signifying that the so called “smart money” has jumped on that nag and the fix is in.

That would explain why Humphrey Bogart’s used the term in the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon? I read that Bogart changed what was written in the script and I was able to locate a Warner Brothers’ document with the notation:  “FINAL VERSION (2nd re-make)” of that script. The term, 2^nd re-make, referred to the fact that the Bogart film was the third version of the film. The first version opened in 1931, a the second in 1936.

In the 1941 film, Bogart played detective, Sam Spade. In a confrontational scene with Joel Cairo, (Peter Lorre) and Kasper Gutman, (Sydney Greenstreet), Spade turned to an un-named character simply referred to as “the boy” and, according to the script I perused, he was supposed to say: “Two to one they’re selling you out, son.”

Instead, Bogart changed the line and said: “Six, two and even, they’re selling you out, kid.” Perhaps Bogart believed this more forceful term revealed that the kid was being set up and trumped the more mundane of two to one odds?

There is also a Dick Tracy connection to this expression. For two years in 1961 and 1962, the same Chester Gould, who created the comic strip in 1937, produced an animated version for television. On the show whenever Tracy or one of his assistants finished their wristwatch telephone conversation, they signed off with: “Six, two and even, over and out.”

Perhaps, like Joe Morgan, Gould liked the rhythm of the expression? Curiously, Gould used it to describe a more level playing field where circumstances are as they should be, the planets and stars are in alignment and Mother Nature is at peace. “Six, two and even, over and out” in Gould’s use translates to “all is well.”

The mystery of its origin remains unsolved. If you have a theory, I can direct you where to express it.

My own preference echo Shaun Clancy’s when he used it to invite people to come and enjoy life at his saloon. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic and the quarantine in the spring of 2020 killed Foley’s. Shaun had no alternative but to permanently close his saloon.

Mike Scott and I lost our place to meet in the City, Shaun, Papa John, his father, Tom Cahill, the waitresses, bar tenders, the place where everybody knew our names and where everything was: Six, Two and Even.    

Piece No 84 of 500 “He Failed to Negotiate a Curve”

May 2015, Revised and edited in January 2024

John Delach

“He Failed to Negotiate a Curve.”

Such a poetic remark, that I lifted from The New York Times obituary as the cause of death for Joe Don Looney. Joe Don, a former football star died while maneuvering his motorcycle along a winding road in East Texas. He died the same way he lived; chaotically.

Memories of his comet like life and death were reawakened recently. Twenty-six years after Joe Don’s death, he still retained the power to co-op his father, Don’s obituary.

Despite the elder Mr. Looney having lived a long and successful life first in sports then in the oil patch, his passing at 98, was trumped by Joe Don’s eccentricities.  

Don Looney, (the father) born September 2, 1916, starred at Texas Christian University and was named MVP of the 1938 National Championship team that finished 11-0 beating Carnegie Tech 15-7 in the Sugar Bowl. Don went on to play three years in the NFL before joining the Army Air Force where he continued to play football with his base’s team known the Randolph Ramblers. After the war, Don embarked on a successful Fort Worth based career that included many civic, industry and charitable honors. When he passed, Don was the oldest living former NFL player and the last living member of TCU’s 1938 team.

When it came to football, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Unfortunately, it must have bounced too many times that most obits found it necessary to reference the son, Joe Don, in his father’s last earthly recognition. Once again Don was usurped by the life and crimes of his only son.

Joe Don played for Pascal a high school in the Fort Worth area where he gained fame as a senior beating rival Arlington Heights on a thirty-five-yard run in the fourth quarter to make the final score, 14-12.

In 1962, he was a bench warmer at Oklahoma University. OU was losing to Syracuse with five minutes left to play. Joe Don took it upon himself to walk up to his legendary head coach, Bud Wilkinson, to announce, “If you want to win the game, you’d better get me in there.”

Stunned, Wilkinson was speechless so Joe Don inserted himself into the game, told the quarterback to give him the ball and bolted for a sixty-three-yard touchdown for an Oklahoma 7-3 victory. A magnificent runner and punter, Joe Don led the Sooners to a berth in the Orange Bowl.

Things went badly the following year. Wilkinson kicked Joe Don off the team following a smack down delivered by Looney to an assistant coach.

Despite this incident, the New York Football Giants picked Joe Don as their first-round draft choice in 1964. He lasted a grand total of 25 days with the team before the Giants traded him to the Baltimore Colts. This is how I described his tenure with the Maramen in my book, 17 Lost Seasons:   

It was said of the 6-3, 230 pound back, “He can run, he can punt, he can block, but, most of all, he can run.” It also should be noted that Sooners’ head coach, Bud Wilkinson had cut the 21-year-old handsome Texas native mid-way through his junior year at the request of his teammates. Joe Don had run for 852 yards in 1962, averaged 6.2 yards per carry, scored 62 points and led the nation with a 43.4-yard punting average. When Wilkinson cut him the following year, the coach was quoted as saying, Joe Don was, “…a bad influence upon other members of the team, was indifferent about practice and discipline.”

“We’re not interested in the past,” responded head scout and former head coach, Jim Lee Howell when asked why the Giants drafted this product of four colleges in two states as their number one choice. Question: Didn’t anybody from the Giants think about contacting Bud Wilkinson, the Sooners’ world class head coach to ask just how screwed up Joe Don was and how much he lived up to his last name?

Perhaps it was the fact that his dad had played for the Eagles and served as an NFL official? Joe Don’s career with the Giants lasted twenty-five days during which he refused to participate in workouts and slept, on occasion, 22 hours a day.

The Giants traded him to the Baltimore Colts for cast-offs. Even though he helped the Colts to win a division championship, head coach Don Shula refused to let Joe Don punt: “I was afraid to put Looney in the game to punt because I didn’t know if he would punt. He might do anything.”

At his next stop with the Detroit Lions coach Harry Gilmer told Joe Don to go into the game and tell the quarterback to call a screen pass. Joe Don replied to his head coach, “If you want a messenger boy, call Western Union.”

From there he went to the Washington Redskins where he punched out an opposing player. The army sent him to Viet Nam where he began his love affair with automatic weapons. He then wound up in India under the tutelage of a peculiar swami who prophesized the world as we knew it would implode in the mid 1990s, the anti-Christ would make his appearance and guns would be used for currency. (The story that Joe Don punched out the swami’s elephant may be an urban legend.)

Joe Don believed he was prepared for the end of all things. He lived alone in Alpine, TX off the grid with his automatic assault guns in a solar-heated dome without electricity or a telephone.

The principal feature at his funeral service was some fellow playing Stardust on a piano.

Joe Don could have done worse than to be sent off to the sound of Hoagy Carmichael’s soothing hit melody.

Sometimes I wonder why I spend

The lonely nights

Dreaming of a song.

The melody haunts my reverie

And I am once with you.

R.I.P. Joe Don Looney, if possible.        

As I near publication of my 500^th piece, I have revised my inaugural  piece that appeared on October 16, 2003 as Piece No.1 of On the Outside Looking In, called “An Incredible Story.”

James Muri passed away on February 3, 2013 and his obituary ran in the NY Times on Feb. 10. Ninety-four at the time of his death, 71 years earlier, when Mr. Muri was only 23, he was part of a failed attempt to sink the Japanese fleet at the battle of Midway on June 4, 1942.

The battle of Midway was the major battle that turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. It was fought over three days that early June. Prior to the battle, American cryptologists had broken the Imperial Japanese Naval Code, but only in part. They knew the next invasion would come at a location designated, Area AF. But great controversy evolved about where AF was located. The brass at the Pentagon were sure it was the Aleutian Islands, but the code breakers at Pearl Harbor were sure it was Midway Island. They won the day when they sent a message to Midway via a secure underwater telephone cable that the island garrison was running out of water and told the commander in charge of Midway to broadcast it back to Pearl in plain, un-coded language. Sure enough, The Japanese intelligence operatives advised Tokyo that AF was running out of water.

Every force available was geared up for action. The navy only had three carriers operating in the Pacific; the Yorktown, the Enterprise and the Hornet. Despite the enormous risk of loss, all were committed to the battle. But the islands that comprised Midway itself, one named Sand, the other Eastern, constituted a fourth and an unsinkable aircraft carrier from which to launch strikes against the Japanese fleet. A ragtag and eclectic collection of airplanes and crews were dispatched to Midway to go into harm’s way.

First Lieutenant James Muri of the Army Air Corps piloted a B-26 Marauder light bomber. Designated airplane No 1391, Muri had named it, Susie Q, after his wife. He and his crew were at Hickam Field in Oahu, awaiting orders to join other bombers from his squadron in Australia when he and three other B-26 captains still at Hickam were ordered to fly their airplanes to Midway and report to the navy. On arrival, they were informed that their bombers were going to be used as torpedo attack planes. One can only imagine the look and feeling of incongruity on their faces as they received their orders. These army pilots had as much idea as to how to attack a ship as they did attacking an iceberg and the use of torpedoes was completely alien to them. Nevertheless, an order is an order no matter how insane it is. To make matters worse, the launching system for the torpedo was jury-rigged under the bomb bay.

For the record, crews never trained in naval warfare were ordered to make torpedo attacks against a superior enemy in airplanes never designed to fly in this manner without any real practice. Brilliant! Only the military could have come up with such a mission, even granted the critical nature of the battle.

Lt. Muri and his crew took off at dawn on the morning of June 4 and joined the other aircraft flying toward the reported position of the Japanese fleet. As they drew close, they were attacked by a number of the excellent Japanese fighters, the Zero, whose pilots were protecting their prize possessions, the four aircraft carriers that they called home. Shot up, Muri pressed on and tried to launch the torpedo. It jammed, but somewhere during his attack, it fell into the water.

The captain of the carrier Muri attacked saw the danger and ordered an emergency turn into the wake of the torpedo speeding toward it. This presented Muri with the only choice of flying down the carrier’s deck, front to back which is precisely what he did.  His obituary included his description of this experience, “The guns were all pointing out. It was the safest place to be. I always said we could have touched down if we lowered the gear.”

Without the weight of the torpedo, the B-26 finally outran the pursuing Zeros and made it back to Midway, shot up with a badly wounded crew. They say that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing and the wreck that landed at Midway that afternoon validated that theory. The crew counted over 500 bullet holes before they gave up with half the airplane to go. Every man survived; a miracle into itself.

Of the sixty-two airplanes that took off from Midway on June 4, 1942, thirty-three were lost, all without scoring even one hit on any ship in the Japanese fleet. Then, in the blink of an eye, dive bombers from the Navy’s carriers found the fleet and sank three of the four Japanese carriers. The war in the Pacific turned just like that. The last Japanese carrier succumbed two days later. Midway was a victory in spite of all of the things that went wrong that could have prevented it from being so. Walter Lord called it in his book, Incredible Victory.

Martin Caidin, an American World War II aviation historian included the exploits of Lt. Muri in his book called, The Rugged, Ragged Warriors. He ended the book with an affectionate description of what was left of Susie Q: “On the side of the Midway airstrip, several men swathed in bandages, went out for a long look at Old 1391. The Marauder stood at an ungainly angle, her skin punctured and blackened. She was a wreck. They say it is possible for an airplane to look tired. This one looked it.”

RIP James Muri

June 2019 Revised. January 2024

The New York Football Giants 1966 season turned out to be an absolute disaster, the worst in team history. Entering Week Ten their record was 1-7-1 as head coach Allie Sherman led his boys into DC with their new back-up QB, Tom Kennedy. Three weeks earlier the Giants had plucked Kennedy from the minor league Brooklyn Dodgers of the short-lived Continental League. Kennedy was something less than a stellar addition to the Giants roster, but he assumed the starter’s role after Gary Wood, the team’s other sub-par QB, hurt his shoulder.

 Frank Litsky reported in The New York Times on Saturday, “The Redskins have lost three in a row, but Sonny Jurgensen’s passing will probably make them well.” Jurgy already had 18 touchdown passes, rookie Charlie Taylor had developed into a fast, dangerous receiver and the Giants had been reduced to playing three rookie linebackers, Mike Ciccolella, Jeff Smith and Freeman White who was supposed to be a tight end. The Skins were scheduled to start two former Giants in their backfield, Steve Thurlow, and the bizarre, Joe Don Looney.

Sunday, November 26 produced, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

The Good:

The Giants scored 41 points, the most they would score all season.

They out gained the Redskins 389 yards to 341.

They had 25 first downs to the Skins 16.

Joe Morrison caught two TD passes from Wood for 41-yards each.

Homer Jones caught a 50-yard TD pass from Wood.

Wood ran one in for 1 yard.

Aaron Thomas caught an 18-yard TD pass from Kennedy.  

The Bad:

            The Redskins intercepted the Giants five times and scored on a 62-yard fumble recovery,

            a 52-yard punt return and a 62-yard interception.

The two teams scored 16 touchdowns, ten by the Redskins and six by the Giants.

The Ugly:

Bobby Mitchell scored the final TD for the Redskins by running the ball for 45-yards. Mitchell had last played as a running back in 1961 with the Cleveland Browns. Normally a flanker back, he shifted position due to injuries to the other running backs. Redskins head coach, Otto Graham, told reporters after the game, “He doesn’t even know the plays from that position.”

Kennedy started, but the Redskins defense befuddled him with blitzes and fake blitzes leading to three interceptions in the first half. The sore shouldered Wood replaced him, but finally had to give way to Kennedy again in the fourth quarter.

This opened the door for Kennedy to engineer a bizarre play that led to an all-time scoring record. With seven seconds left on the clock and with the ball on the Giants 22-yard line, Kennedy intentionally threw a fourth down pass out of bounds to stop the clock. His excuse was that he thought it was third down which begs the question: With seven seconds left on the clock and your team down 69 to 41, just exactly why are you stopping the clock?

Graham ordered Charlie Gogolak to kick a 29-yard field goal. When asked if his motive was to embarrass the Giants, Graham replied: “Hell no, I didn’t know anything about records. I wanted Gogolak to try a field goal. He hadn’t had a chance all day and he missed two against Cleveland last Sunday. I’m not one to run up the score on anybody.”

But new records they did set: It was the first NFL game with a total combined score of over 100 points. The total of 113 points was 15 more than in another game involving the Giants, a loss in 1948 to the Chicago Cardinals, 63-35.

The Redskins scored the most points ever scored in a regular season game, one shy of the 73 points the Chicago Bears scored against the Redskins in the 1940 championship game.

The 16 touchdowns scored set a record for most scored in an NFL game.

The Redskins 10 touch downs and Charlie Gogolak’s 9 PATs tied a record. If Charlie had made his first, another record would have been broken.

The New York Times also reported that the Redskins lost $315 in footballs that went into the stands. In this era before nets behind the goal line, 14 Duke footballs, then manufactured by Thorp Sporting Goods costing $22.50 each, became fan souvenirs. The Times article pointed out that the Duke is named after Wellington Mara, the Giants president.

Coach Allie Sherman wasn’t happy either. “I guarantee you this is never going to happen to a team of mine again.”

He was right, but then again, that’s a tough score to replicate. But the Giants did try. The next week in Cleveland, they lost to the Browns 49 to 40. At home against Pittsburgh, they crumbled to the Steelers 47 to 28 before ending the season with a milder 17 to 7 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Yankee Stadium.

That game ended the season with a dismal record of 1-12-1.

Truly, the season of our discontent.

“There was no ship big enough to master the Atlantic Ocean. This included the Queen Elizabeth and I remember this one time when a big wave washed over the ship and took one of the lifeboats on the upper deck as if it was made of paper and smashed it into pieces. The North Atlantic and the Australian Bite were the two roughest bodies of waters that I was ever in.

“There were also many scams that were perpetrated on board the ships. Most of the fellows involved were from Belfast, but some from Dublin. One scam involved jackets. In summer, we wore white jackets, in the winter, navy blue jackets. They would go ashore with two jackets. They’d meet with fellows who wanted to come to America and give them one of the jackets. This was enough to get them on board and their buddies would arrange for places for them to hide for the five-day voyage. Nobody would know.

“The ship was that big. I came to understand how difficult it could be to find someone. I knew a fellow by the name of Peter Fox from Ballinamore and his uncle told me he had signed on to work on the liner. Even so, between the size of the Queen Elizabeth and time off between voyages, it took me three months to find him.

“If you were a Tourist Class passenger, you’d never see the First-Class passengers. Likewise, if you were Cabin Class, you never mixed. It was completely and utterly separate. The ships were constructed in sections. Separate blocks that were joined together and separated from each other by big steel doors cut into the bulkheads. Passageways connected each block, but if there was fog or a big storm, the crew would close those doors or the captain could close them automatically using switches on the bridge. The crew could open them manually by pulling the handle located on each door. If any section went on fire, they could shut off that area and flood it without any effect on the balance of the ship. This way the captain could secure the ship so that if anything hit it they could seal off that section.

“One of the most dangerous places on a passenger ship was the gangplank. A lot of people would be injured or killed coming up the gangplank late at night, especially fellows coming home drunk. The problem climbing up was at its worst at high tide when water lifted the ship way up above the pier. Then the angle between the pier and the ship would be very steep making the climb difficult to make even if the fellow was sober. In the old days the piers were made of wood and if a person fell into the water, they could climb back up onto the pier using the timbers for support. But then the newer piers were concrete with straight walls and no handholds. Unless a person was a fantastic swimmer, he would drown.

“The order to abandon ship had its own dangers. The ship would be stopped at sea, but the waves would affect the ship and it would swing from side to side as the waves came in. The life boats would be lowered on cables connected to the ship. At the bottom of the cables were hooks and, as soon as the boat hit the water, the crew had to unhook the cables and row as fast as you could away from the side of the ship. Otherwise, the next wave would smash the life boat into the side of the ship.

“I had moved to New York and I went down to the pier to watch the Queen Elizabeth sail to England for the last time. It was very sad. The British should never have sold the ship. There will never be another ship like the Queen Elizabeth again. The workmanship was magnificent and nobody could afford that degree of service ever again. There were nearly two crew members for every passenger carried.

“The plan was to turn the ship into a tourist attraction based in Florida, but when this plan fell through, C.Y. Tung, the Chinese shipping magnate bought the Queen and had it towed to Hong Kong for conversion to a floating school. Renamed, Seawise University, the old queen caught fire during the conversion and rolled over onto its side in the harbor. A terrible sight, the ship remained there for several years before being cut up for scrap.”   

“Queen Soraya of Persia sailed with us. Married to Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, King of Iran in 1951; he divorced her in 1958 on the grounds that she was infertile. She would not dine in the dining room unless she could bring her two dogs with her. A compromise was reached where she and her dogs would dine at off hours when nobody else was there. That is except us. We would peek in at her to watch her eat.

“One time the head waiter took me aside and said, ‘John, you have a famous man coming on board. I’m sure you’ve heard of him, George Formby.’

“Of course, I knew who he was. George Formby was a British comedy actor, singer-songwriter and comedian who had been a star of English stage and screen in the 1930s and 1940s. I had seen his films especially; When I’m Cleaning Windows, back in Ireland when I was growing up. I remembered him as being a tall, slim fellow, but his movies were a bit old by the time I saw them. I was excited to see him until he came on board. He must have weighed 300 pounds and he was bald! Certainly not the same man I remembered and I was terribly disappointed.

“The Queen Mary had captured the Blue Riband in 1936 becoming the fastest ship to cross the Atlantic, a record the vessel held until the brand- new SS United States beat it in 1952 on its maiden voyage. We believed even after this happened that the Queen Mary could have re-gained the riband if Cunard would give permission to open it up. But management said no and abided by their advertising slogan: ‘Getting there is half the fun.’           

“When a ship arrived in New York Harbor, it would have to anchor at an area designated by Customs and Immigration as a “Quarantine Zone” until the inspectors were satisfied that the ship was disease-free and cleared the ship to enter the port. In the late 1950s, there was a bad case of the Asian Flu and several ships were not allowed in.

“A small boat came out to meet every ship. On board this tender were a doctor, immigration officer and the pilot who would navigate the ship into the harbor and to its dock. The doctor went down to the sick bay to see who was sick and what ailed them. If he determined there was disease on the ship, he would order the yellow flag to be raised quarantining the vessel. Once quarantined, the ship was forbidden to dock until the doctor cleared it. 

“The Queen Elizabeth was so large that once cleared, it could not enter the harbor unless the tide was flowing in. The pilot had to navigate the ship through a narrow channel in the center of the Hudson River. The ship’s boson actually steered the ship and he took his orders from the pilot and not the captain.

“One time, the tug boats that guided the ship from the channel and up along-side the pier were on strike when we arrived in New York. The captain announced that he would bring the Queen Elizabeth in himself without assistance. He did it, brought the liner in without any tug boats and successfully tied up to the pier without damaging either the ship or the pier. It was a great achievement. Of course, he would have lost his command if anything had gone wrong.

“Back in those days, my good friend, Paddy Reilly, had a bar on Spring Street called the Emerald. It was a hangout for “dockees” (longshoreman) and harbor pilots. The pilots’ office was next door and the pilots would tell the boys what ships were coming in and where they would dock. He’d say, “The Queen Elizabeth is docking at Pier 95.” and they’d all rush uptown. The docks were Mafia controlled and the “shape-up” guy would call out the names of the men who would be working that day. At that time, if you knew your way around, which I did, there was a place near to Pier 95 in Hells’ Kitchen called the Market Diner. At the back of the Market Diner there was a little room where you could go to buy bottles of whiskey, cigarettes and nylon stockings. Nylon stockings were a great thing which we used to smuggle back home because you couldn’t get them in England or Ireland.

“All of these products came to the little room thanks to the longshoreman who loaded and unloaded the ships. They would take a few cases of whiskey, cigarettes, nylons stockings, etc. The ship’s crew knew what was going on but they couldn’t do anything about it. If the dockees worked slowly they could keep the ship in port and cost the liner substantial overtime fees. The men in charge had no choice but to turn a blind eye to the pilfering.

“The movie, On the Waterfront, reminded me of an awful lot of things that went down at that time. The piers were a great place for ex-boxers, people who were punch drunk. It was sad to see these big, strong fellows working on the docks carrying heavy loads and some of them didn’t even know where they were. Their wives would bring them down early in the morning and they’d be there carrying loads up and down until the shift ended.

“One time after we arrived in Southampton, I went down to London to get film for a camera. The fellow in the shop asked me where I had gotten my camera. I told him, ‘I got it in Japan.’

“He asked, ‘Would you be able to get me a couple of those cameras?’

“I told him that I could and he said he would pay me well if I did. The next time I was in Japan I bought several cameras, but then I thought how am I going to get them home and off the ship? I had to strike up an idea to get them passed customs on the dock. I took one of the cameras out of its case and put it around my neck. Holding onto an envelope, I went to the agent on the pier and asked him where a post office was where I could mail it. He checked the bag I was carrying gave me directions and let me go. I went to a nearby train station, rented a locker and stashed the camera in the locker. I did this, three or four times when there was a different agent at the gate. And that’s how I made a bit of money on the side by smuggling the cameras.”

ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN will not publish on December 26, 2023 but will return on January 3, 2024 when I will send out Part 3 of Papa John’s experiences on the Queen Mary

Introduction and Part One

In 2011, I self-published my fifth and final anthology of pieces I had written from 2001 to 2010. I gave it the title, The Big Orange Dog and Other Stories. Shaun Clancy, the salon keeper of Foley’s NY Pub & Restaurant located on 33^rd Street offered me the opportunity to have a book signing in his sports bar.

Shaun asked me would I be willing to record and transcribe his father’s life-experiences, an amazing collection of extraordinary stories.

Of course, I agreed.

At times, it was like pulling teeth, but we finished our mission in 2013, when we published: Never Say: I Can’t.

 When John finished school, his father set him up to move to London and become an apprentice at a pub in London. Too young to serve alcohol, he was relegated to being the lowest of the low in the pub’s hierarchy. Essentially, he fell into being an indentured servant who was treated like a dog. Once he turned, 18, John made his escape by signing on as an ordinary seaman in the British Merchant Marine. Unfortunately, his choices were few and he picked an old dog to be his first assignment, the  SS Otronto. This passenger ship was built in 1926 and had been relegated to becoming aa immigration ship carrying failed Brits to Australia, only to return those Brits who failed in Australia back home again on return voyages.

John made three voyages between Australia and London as a steward because of his experience apprenticing in that London Pub. He was promoted from the Otronto to the modern Orcades, the Orient Lines first post-Second War liner completed in 1948.

John Clancy joined the Cunard Lines in 1957, first as a steward on the RMS Mauretania. Eventually, he was assigned to the RMS Queen Elizabeth.

RMS Queen Mary and the Elizabeth were two sister ships, that while different in appearance, were similar in size. The Queen Mary went into service in 1936 with a tonnage of 81,237 and a length of 1,019 feet (310 meters) while the Queen Elizabeth, which went into service in 1940, was 83,673 gross tons with a length of 1,031 feet (314 meters) that went into service in 1940, both Queens were converted to troop ships for the duration of the Second World War. When the war ended they were refurbished and returned to trans- Atlantic service. 

Cunard Lines demanded the same degree of service from the staff on both vessels. The Queen Elizabeth was the flagship of the Cunard fleet and its designation of RMS stood for Royal Mail Ship. All of the transatlantic mail was carried on the Queen Elizabeth and its sister ships which heavily subsidized the cost of operating them. This was a double-edged sword because the line was restricted in the amount of the profits they could make so long as they held these mail contracts. It was only when the contracts ended that the ships made serious money for the owners. But by then the two Queens were gone and the newer ships were mainly cruise ships and not transatlantic liners.

The service on board the Queens was unbelievable. The First-Class dining rooms had a restaurant manager, a station captain at each table who took all of the orders and a wine steward who, funny enough, had the title “Baths and Wine.”  In addition to being the wine expert who would describe the different wines and offer samples to the passengers, he ran the baths. Back then the Queens didn’t have showers or bath tubs in the cabins, even in First Class. The passengers had to share the baths and, to reserve a bath; they had to book it with this steward.

“We had to be experienced and well-trained to qualify to be First Class waiters. The menus were all in French, believe it or not, but we didn’t have to take the order; we had to serve the food. We would have to carve the roasts and serve all of the ingredients. The greatest number of guests we would have at the table would be 10 people. Each table would be served by a station captain, two waiters and a busboy.   

“The food was wonderful. Before we set out to sea on a new voyage, we would arrange a grand display of food in the dining room for the passengers to review. All kinds of fresh fish were set out displayed in ice flanked by ice sculptures carved into the images of mermaids and other creatures. Every type of food you could think about was displayed.

“Lunch was special too in the First-Class Dining Room. A passenger could order anything they wanted at lunch. If someone asked for Irish stew or something like that, you’d have it. It was the same at dinner. The chef would come into the dining room at 3 pm every day to meet with any passengers who had special requests so that he could start the process of preparing their special meal for that evening. There were also two restaurants for the first-class passengers as good as any top-rated restaurant in New York, but the passengers had to pay for these meals and they were quite expensive.”

To be continued