John Delach

June, 2017: Number 186. Revised and edited: March 2024: Number 503

Thursday, June 8, 2017 found Bill Christman driving our rental car 33-miles south of Tucson on Interstate-19 to the exit for Green Valley. It’s hot, really hot as we drive west for a mile on a two-lane road before we reach our destination, the Titan Missile Museum, formerly Launch Complex 571-7.   A cyclone fence stretches from one side. In front of the fence is a small sign that says: “Watch for rattlesnakes. We’re not kidding!”

Behind the fence sits a concrete structure low to the ground, the welcome center for a de-commissioned and preserved Titan II missile silo, now a National Landmark.

Welcome back to the Cold War.

Captain Joe Scott, our guide is a retired air force officer who spent two years as the launch commander in just such a facility. He leads a party of ten, Bill and I, a family of five, mom, dad and three teenage girls, another couple and a single fellow with a Germanic accent, into the facility. We enter a twisting passageway to begin our descent fifty-three steps down a metal staircase.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I absorb this information, I think to myself: And now: “Let us pray.” 

March 2024: No. 502

This edited piece combines two pieces, Once Upon a Time in Middle Village  (No. 182) and Time and Again in Middle Village (No. 195) both written in 2017.

(All of these events happened between 1970 and 1977.)

 One hot, steamy Saturday morning found me vacuuming the orange shag-rug that covered our first-floor living room and dining room. Mary Ann had left me alone taking Beth and Michael with her. A fortuitous glance out of our front window revealed my cousin, Bob, exiting his car…a dream come true. At that time, Bob was a Seventies swinging single and it was within the bounds of reason to believe he’d fantasize knocking at a door answered by a bored housewife wearing only her panties and bra. Close but no cigar; In fact, I was the one smoking the cigar and dressed only in a tenement tee shirt and Jockey shorts. I didn’t even give him the chance to ring the bell … I threw open the front door, vacuum cleaner in hand, cigar in the other to exclaim: “What can I do for you good looking?”

We moved into 65-33 77 Place in February of 1970. Beth was born in 1969 and Mary Ann would soon become pregnant with Michael who would be born in April of 1971. The house was where my Aunt Helen had grown up. She had it renovated  with new appliances. She offered it to us a rental so low that the amount was almost a miracle.

A word about street addresses in Queens County. There is a code to them that is not readily apparent. 65-33 77 Pl. The 65 is the number of the closest cross-street. The 33 tells you that house is the thirty-third house on the block and 77 Place, Street, or Way is the actual location.     

My cousin Helen, her husband Don and their family lived four houses away from us in 65-25. In April 1972, they moved to Ramsey, NJ but first sold the place to her brother and his wife, Bill and Del, and their family.

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

A second foyer in back of the kitchen led to a small back yard and a garage that opened to a common alley that ran the length of the block. The neighborhood children including our own kids loved to race their Big Wheels in this alley. The Big Wheel was a plastic tricycle built close to the ground with an enormous front wheel and two small trailing wheels. The kids could quickly get it up to speed, it was extremely stable and built for quick and rapid turns.  

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

Fred and Huguette arrived from Viet Nam in 1975. They moved into 65-31, a heretofore vacant house right next to us. Fred first served in Viet Nam as an army electronics technician during the early days when the army was still advisers. After  completing his service he took a job with Decca and returned in country where he met and married Huguette. Fred was a pragmatist with a terrific sense of humor. One Saturday afternoon witnessed the two of us consciously deciding not to prevent an accident. It was one of those Saturdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the Long Island weather gods produce a mild day perfect for installing outdoor Christmas lights. We were both outside, each working on our own displays, when Bill came out lights, ladder and staple gun in hand. Bill erected his ladder, plugged his string in and climbed up to begin fixing it to the house.

“Should we tell him to unplug them first,” Fred asked?

“Naw”, I replied, “Let’s watch the show.”

Bill’s second or third staple hit the wire. Fred and I watched as the spark, shock and sound took him off the ladder and onto the grass. Unhurt but flustered, Bill didn’t appreciate our uncontrolled laugher and our now useless advice to unplug the lights first.           

One of our favorite Friday night activities was “stoop sitting” around the front walkway leading to the door. Bill and Del, Fred and Huguette and we Delaches lived within five attached houses of each other. We’d leave the widows fronting the street from our kids’ rooms open allowing these organic baby monitors to sound the alert by way of crying if one awoke.

The gals smoked cigarettes, guys cigars; we drank beer or wine and a few exotic drinks, mostly for the ladies like whiskey sours, sloe gin fizz or whatever else was trendy. Eventually, the need for pizza would strike our collective stomachs and a couple of the men would make a pizza run to Tudor Tavern Pizzeria on nearby Eliot Avenue and 80^th Street. The later it was, the better the pizza tasted.

Fred and Huguette lived right next door to my aunt’s house. That fist winter, Fred complained about the amount of his heating bills from The Brooklyn Union Gas Company. It cost him almost twice as much as we were paying. It seemed this disparity repeated itself every month. No matter where he set the thermostat, his bill was enormous. He even had the gas company check his system to no avail. One night I mentioned to Mary Ann how this was driving him crazy. “John’ it’s his wife’s doing. Huguette has no tolerance for the cold so as soon as Fred goes to work, she cranks up the heat to 90 degrees so she can wear summer day wear. She lowers it back to 65 about an hour before he comes home.”

“You’re kidding me! Oh boy, one of these days he’s going to explode once he figures that out. I don’t want to be around for that, but damned if I am going to tell him.

I can report that they are still married, so I have no idea how that was settled if at all.

By 1977 we were ready to buy the house, but Aunt Helen wouldn’t sell as she wished to keep her house in her immediate family. So we bought a house in Port Washington where we continue to live to this day.

Part of me still misses Middle Village.                                                                                                                                                                                             

The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe versus Wade on January 22, 1973 forced me to announce to my friends and family that I couldn’t accept abortions performed for convenience. Of course, I realized how unpopular my belief was so I explained to that this was my belief, and I would never try to stop someone from having an abortion. I simply ask others to accept my beliefs the same way as I accept theirs.

I also explained that rather than engage in discussions about abortions, I would avoid each and every one of these debates as they can be too emotional. In return, I would take on reporting the daily weather information from The New York Times. For any readers out there unfamiliar with the Times daily weather report, it is quite comprehensive.

My particular task would be to monitor the paper’s daily measure of our rainfall for the last 30 days and for the last year. I assumed responsibility to monitor shortfalls and report possible droughts.

Fortunately,  everybody accepted my wacky solution and so ended further debates of pro-life versus pro-choice.

Once I committed myself to belief in the right to life, I came to understand that I had to come to terms with death in combat and public executions. War turned out to be too big and too complicated to wrap my mind around and I finally decided to remove it from my consideration. I will admit that if I was forced to choose, I would lean on the side of becoming a conscientious objector, but I will never know if I would have had the courage of this conviction if push came to shove.

I also had a hard time coming to a meaningful conclusion for absolute prohibition of capital punishment. My problem was that to be meaningful, such a prohibition would have to include those who are so evil that to let them live would be repulsive. Thankfully, we rarely encounter people who are this vile and my epiphany didn’t arrive until Timothy J. McVey destroyed the Alfred P. Mirrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

April 19^th was a Wednesday and Mc Vey detonated his eight-hundred-pound ammonium nitrate / fuel oil bomb that he hid in  the cargo compartment of a rented Ryder truck that he had parked outside the north entrance to the building. The massive explosion destroyed the entire facade of the eight-story building and about a third of the interior killing 168 people including 19 children, most of them in a nursery pre-school located on the first floor.

McVey said this about his victims:

             To these people in Oklahoma who lost a loved one, I’m

             sorry but it happens every day. You’re not the first mother

             to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or

             a granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the

             world. I’m not going to go into that courtroom, curl into a

             fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to do that.                  

.

In other words, His victims were merely collateral damage.

Of the children he had killed, McVey remarked: “I thought it was terrible that there were children in the building.”

Mc Vey was charged and convicted for killing eight federal agents who were on active duty that day. The penalty for killing each one of them was clearly death. Mc Vey was transferred to the federal death row at USP Terre Haute in Indiana where he was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.

If you can, find the iconic photo by Charle Porter of a fireman gently cradling the body of a one-year-old child fatally wounded by Mc Veigh’s bomb. It sums up the results of Mc Vey’s despicable attack.   

Well, there you have it. I took a long time to straighten out my feelings and to make peace with my beliefs. Finally, I realized that my belief for life must prevail, even for Timothy Mc Vey. That photo will haunt me until the day I die,

Still, I choose to belief in life, so help me God.         

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best decision I ever made was making that trek.       

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