a rather elongated tribute to a man named Stanley 
Abramovich, the man that I once detested:

TALENTED HUMAN BEINGS WHO LAST FOR A LONG TIME ARE VERY RARE...

EACH IS AN INDIVIDUAL, BUT SHARE MANY COMMON CHARACTERISTICS.  Most are  intelligent, including those without formal education.  Intelligence doesn't seem to indicate a smooth ride in life.  Whiskey and drugs carry too many talented people to early graves - Montgomery Clift and Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker to name only a few.  Their aborted lives did not serve as useful guides for the generations that followed.  From  Janice Joplin to Jimmy Hendrix and Elvis Presley, among hundreds of others, it wasn't their talent that killed them.  The life-style they led did. 


     For awhile, the new plague of AIDS slaughtered the talented young with the remorseless efficiency of the guns and drugs that destroyed so many impoverished kids in the ghettos.  On some mornings, the obituary page of the New York Times and other newspapers throughout the entire country had a peculiar consistency; the dead were either 85 or 35.  We will never know how they might have added to the salvation of our shaky civilization.  There were, of course, older people who died of the same disease, like a 59 year-old man who jolted the television audience with his gaunt and almost incoherent speech pattern when he joined his friend Doris Day as she was about to announce at a press conference in July of 1985 that she was about to launch her new cable television show.  He died in October of that year. 

     His name was Rock Hudson.


     I once knew another talented man who died of the same disease.

     His name was Stanley Abramovich. 


     I was first  introduced to Stanley in September of 1986 by my daughter, Traci, who happened to be his friend.  At that time, he was 38 years-old, a highly-successful motivational speaker, a man of elegant manners and wonderful taste, who enjoyed hosting chic and fashionable black-tie and cocktail dress events, along with a marvelous dinner that he himself had prepared.   He lived at 150 East 61st Street in an apartment on the 16th floor.  It was an open, finely furnished place, with an expensive burgundy  carpeted floor, a bar, leather couches in hues of black and white, and a library filled with volumes of books. 

     But he was also a man of certain irritations.  He easily became upset about the prices of aspirin and newspapers and candies; and although he was gay, he was critical of almost every man he met; nor did he seem to be fond of any food other than his own.  He made rather rude comments to his waiter or waitress when he went out to eat, left them a rather small tip at the finish of his meal, and made it known to the restaurant manager that, according to his standards, the meal that he had just eaten had been far below-par. 

     He was, however, equally fond of bragging about the night he happened to be dining at Le Cirque Restaurant on East 58th and Jane Fonda was sitting at the table next to his, when he bent over and whispered in her ear that he thought she could use a more stylish hairdo.  In other words, Stanley could often embarrass you when you were out with him in public.

     Stanley suddenly departed the City of New York in 1990, and his name was remembered fondly by those who knew him.  He had been a gracious host, intelligent, best known for being an exponent of all forms of fine art and good music, and now he had suddenly disappeared.  Some thought that he may have returned to his home in Boston.  Others were certain that he was living in the Castro of San Francisco.  Wherever he was, most thought of Stanley as remarkable, a reflection of what a man who was both sophisticated and fashionable ought to be, in spite of his sometimes offish and rather critical demeanor when it  came to the price of aspirin or dining-out at fine restaurants.  


     I was completely unaware that I would one day live in fear for my own life whenever I was in his presence. 

     It was the beginning of a  heartbreaking decade in modern American history, and almost everyone had lived through the experience of having someone they either knew or loved  dying of AIDS.  Many of my friends were becoming ill with this grueling disease, some had given up and taken their own lives, and for  others there were numerous funerals and trips to a grave.  We were obviously aware of the mounting terrible toll, the murderous stupidity and carelessness and innocence when it came to sexual unions of the past, and the outrages of the consequences of the grim present reality.  It was in the midst of all of this when Stanley returned to the City of New York in 1992, unaware that he was in the early onset of the deadly disease.

     Stanley had given my daughter Traci a call to announce that he was back in the city on a summer's day in July of 1992, and the two-of-us met him at Ted's Corner Tavern on 34th Street and 3rd Avenue early that afternoon.  He  looked thin, attributed it to healthy eating  and a regimen of working-out, but gave us little clue on what he had been up to of late or where he had been.  He was obviously not going to answer any questions on either subject, so we went on  to discuss other topics.  He informed us that he was now teaching computer sciences and a place called Interboro Institute  up on West 54th, which was designed to give a 2 year associates degree to the kids from the ghetto who were on Pell Grants, then added that they were looking for a professor to teach writing and wondered if I might be interested.  I said that I was, and it was then that he mentioned that he was looking for an apartment.  

     At the time, both Traci and I were residing in a four-story red-bricked apartment building located at 216 East 36th between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.  She on the third-floor and me on the floor above.  It was in an area called Murray Hill.  Both apartments were rather large: there were two bedrooms and twin living-rooms with fireplaces, as well as a large kitchen and a good-sized bathroom.  The building was located in a small area of shops and restaurants, and was reputed to have once the home of  a former Mayor of New York.  Stanley clearly needed the support of old friends, so I asked him if he would like to share my apartment with me.  Stanley said that he would.  I contacted Mr. Zoreno, the owner and superintendent of the building, and Stanley moved-in.

     He and I spent the remainder of the year teaching our classes in the morning, eating out at various midtown restaurants in the afternoon after our classes had come to an end, and going out for drinks in the evening Extra-Extra Restaurant and Bar on East 42nd Street in the evening, where my daughter worked as a waitron prior to her acting and voice-over career taking-off. Everything seemed to be going along rather evenly and serenely until the onset of 1993, when the rumors about Stanley began to circulate within the halls of Interboro.  These were triggered by the display of sudden anger at on his part at various students, quarrels with fellow professors over minor incidents, and the failure to show-up for work from time-to-time.  He was dismissed as a professor the following semester, and diagnosed with AIDS shortly thereafter.

   AIDS was not, however, the only critical problem.

   The rapid onset of dementia was. 

   Stanley, who had now lost  income and health and a rapid decline in mental stability, immediately headed over to The Gay Men's Health Crisis Center on West 33rd for advice, where he was told he no longer needed to pay rent due the severity of his illness.  I informed Mr. Zoreno.  Mr. Zoreno told me that I would still be held responsible for Stanley's share.  It was then that everything else began to fall apart and the absolute terror on my part began.  A good friend of ours named Barbara Dague decided that the two-of-us ought to go to the East River to watch the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks Show and failed to ask him to go with us. 


     Shortly thereafter, I began to hear rumors from other friends of his that he had begun to make threats on my life.  I now hesitated returning to our apartment after my classes had concluded for the day at Interboro, knowing that I was about to face bouts of explosive anger, which began in earnest on the night he went at me in the kitchen with a used hypodermic needle clutched in his hand, and a week after that  attacked me wielding a kitchen knife.  After I had physically disarmed him, I immediately headed over to the 17 Police Precinct on East 51st where a detective informed me that nothing could be done about the threats on my life, and my only choice would be to protect myself with either a baseball bat or a revolver.  So  I now blocked my bedroom with a chair  shoved under the knob every night, and every afternoon upon my return to the corner of East 36th at 3rd Avenue, I would stand forlorn and fearful in the freezing-blowing snow, hesitating and wondering where Stanley might be hiding when I unlocked my apartment door.

     The Endgame for me came on the day prior to Christmas Eve in December of 1994 when I began to contemplate how to kill Stanley before he did the same to me.  I talked all of this over with my daughter, she suggested that that I cease-and-desist my murderous thoughts and that I move elsewhere, assuring me that she would feel safe in the apartment below, I contacted a real-estate friend of mine, told Mr. Zoreno about my situation and asked his permission to vacate the apartment I then shared with Stanley.   He gave me his blessing, and I moved into a new apartment located in Hell's Kitchen at 449 West 44th at the onset of January.  It was nearing year's end when I was informed by my daughter that Stanley had passed-away.

     God bless America!  I thought to myself...

     ...But if Stanley Abramovich was long gone, so were so many others: figures who had once been prominent in literature and music and movies and art, who had been celebrated for their talent, with admirable accomplishments, now no longer among the living.  They had been struck down by a disease that they had not asked for, had been done away with as if they  had been an ax murderer executed for their crime.  We have said goodbye to Isaac Asimov and Arthur Ashe, observed Rudolph Nureyev and Anthony Perkins leave life early, bid farewell to Tony Richardson and Amanda Blake far too soon.  I know now that I have yet to experience the path leading inexorably through evening of life and on into the night  where death lies in wait.  Nor do I know how I might react to a diagnosis of that obvious eventuality...

     ...So perhaps the time  has come for me to forgive Stanley Abramovich for his relative minor crimes and misdemeanors committed because of a disease he neither wanted nor deserved...

the imaginary capers of the Caputo clan:


Jodi Picout in her book 'Handle with Care' wrote: It is one thing to make a mistake; it is another thing to keep making it...

WHICH IS WHY WE THOUGHT THAT NO MOVIE MAKER OR NOVELIST COULD HAVE EVER...

INVENTED THIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SON,WHO MOST FOLKS SAID WERE A TRIO of felonious outlaws, and the tale that follows is about what nefarious errors in judgement that the three of us were about to make with regard to the three of them.   The father was named Grayson.  The son, Tate.  Grayson seemed to be a man rife with  cynicism and one who despised children.  Tate was the family black sheep who everyone was certain was 'A little-light-in-the-loafers' because he had dainty walk; and they were both manipulated by the equally odd wife and mother by the name of Ambrosia.  Although nobody had ever actually  seen Ambrosia do any of this, hearsay had it that even as attractive as she was, she liked to tend to her vegetable garden with a pistol tucked into a holster at her hip with a toothpick jutting out of her mouth, always wore pink slippers and bib-overalls without a top when she watered the front yard, and sometimes stood naked behind the drapes of her living room as she peered-out at passing trucks filled with old-farmers kicking up the dust of the dirt road in front of the family farm.  


    They all resided in a small tight-knit farming community called Windsor, Colorado, 59 miles north of  Denver where strangers were rare, and they had appeared out of nowhere in early spring.  Since we had no true history of how they arrived in Windsor or where they had actually come from before that, circulating stories were packed with theories that the family had once robbed banks back in the 1930's in places like Nebraska and Kansas and Wyoming, which had enabled them to live a life of relative ease.  This was due to the fact that there were still old-timers around town who talked about The Notorious Heists of the Caputo Gang; and Caputo happened to be their last name.  One rumor had it that they may have been responsible for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh toddler back in June of 1930 because some folks around town said that they thought that the Caputo's might have originally been from East Amwell, New Jersey, where the kidnapping had taken place even though a fellow by the name of Bruno Richard Hauptmann had been convicted and executed for committing the crime.


     The Caputo family happened to own the farm adjacent to my Uncle Jake and Aunt Eugenie's farm just south of town.  Tate went everywhere his Mother went.  They shopped in town, he dressed in a linen suit and straw hat with a red feather sticking out of the band, while Grayson spent the majority of his time building a large tugboat on  an acre of land near the rear of the property .  There was a quality of fable to all of this, of course, a tale of intrigue about why a man would build a tugboat in a Colorado potato patch.  


     At the age of 6, my cousin Charlene  and I had little doubt that we had the answer to all of the above.  The war in Europe had just begun and it was obvious to the two-of-us that not only were they responsible for robbing banks and kidnapping babies, they were, in all likelihood, Nazi spies, as well.  We we were almost certain that the boat was being built in order for them to fulfill their Utopian dream of  eventual escape when the villainous  Adolph Hitler found a way to flood America with water in order drown our crops and starve us to death while Hitler's henchmen rode away on the top of the rush of water to the  safety of some place like Mexico in the tugboat.  


     Charlene's brother, Arthur, who was then 8 years-of-age, was equally convinced that Grayson's boat was a mere ploy designed to take our minds off-of-the-fact that the Soviets of the Stalinist regime were planning to invade Colorado in order to get our potato crop because he'd read in the local newspaper that Russians were almost devoid of food due to the Russian winter, and he was as  certain as we were that they were planning an invasion with motorized tanks, now hidden within the bowels of The Rocky Mountain Range somewhere near Colorado Springs in order to steal our food.  By then, of course, all of this did not answer the question as to why a  tugboat would be in a Colorado potato patch, but our  collective imaginations had now grown by leaps-and-bounds, and we then began to evoke the images of the nefarious Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, since Caputo seemed to us to be and Italian name, we began asking ourselves: Could Benito be behind the building of the boat?  And if so, Why?  But we knew how important it was to find out, and it was then that Arthur said: We're going to confront the Caputo's head-on!


     What we now needed was A Master Plan.  The task at hand would have to be one of stealth and deception and be absolutely fail-safe, in order for us to succeed.  The fate of our Nation was at stake.  We were, after all, about to deal with a family of potential saboteurs with an absolutely evil past of  both carnage and corruption.  So we came to the decision that Arthur would be in command of whatever our brilliant plan would turn out to be.  The first thing Arthur did did was grab his father Jake's' binoculars and we all went outside to survey the Caputo farmhouse to see if any of them were home.  They were.  We were now filled with that unnerving sense of menace, one  which precedes any frightening adventure into the great unknown, as we made slowly our way through their potato patch toward their farmhouse in the distance.


     Neither Charlene nor I knew what Arthur's plan was until we walked up the steps to the front porch and he knocked on the door, then asked in a loud voice, Is anybody home?  Grayson was standing in his underwear when he opened he drapes, peered out at us, then yelled: Get off of my front porch!!!  We quickly scurried down the steps and across the potato patch, through the yard, and up to the front porch of a uncle Jake and aunt Eugenie's farmhouse, where we balanced ourselves precariously on the front porch railing completely out-of-breath, as Arthur wheezed, I think I need to think of something else...


     It was then that he decided to kidnap Tate in order to get the truth about what this nefarious clandestine family of his was actually up to.  The Caputo's happened to own a black 1936 Hudson Teraplane which he would drive to The Windsor Hotel, order scrambled eggs with crisp bacon with a side-order of mashed potatoes and gravy almost every morning, then take a stroll to the grocery store to buy roses for his mother, and make his way to the Sugar Beet and Potato Dump to negotiate the selling price for his father's crop.  


     Arthur's plan was to capture him and take him hostage as he returned to his car, where he would be made to drive the three-of-us back to uncle Jake's barn, we would then tie-him-up and sit him down in a horse-stall, and  the questioning would begin.  The problem with that was this:  We waited until 2 o'clock in the afternoon across the street from the hotel on the following Tuesday morning and he never showed-up.  We then found out from the owner of the grocery store that Tate he had apparently been drafted and was now off to the war in Europe.


     That minor problem did not seem to  deter Arthur at all.  He decided that when we returned to the farm, he would call the FBI Office in Denver and inform them that they had just sent a potential archenemy of the United States of America off to the European front, where he would no doubt be a saboteur for either Hitler or Mussolini and even perhaps, Stalin.  The call was made.  Arthur gave his name; and the trouble began almost immediately thereafter when a tan Chevrolet came roaring through the front gate of of aunt Eugenie's and uncle Jake's farmhouse as the sun was about to set and the three of us out were on the porch waiting for dinner.  We watched in fascination as two FBI Agents exited the car, showed us their identification, walked up the front porch steps, and gave a rapid knock to the door.


     Once uncle Jake had answered the knock and they once again identified themselves, one of the Agent's motioned for us to come inside and then told us to sit on the sofa, the three of them went off into the kitchen where aunt Eugenie had been cooking dinner, and they had a long whispered conversation while we waited in the living room.  By the looks on their faces, it was obvious to the three-of-us that they were not the bearers-of-good-tidings.  It was then that uncle Jake made a telephone call and the next thing we knew Mr. and Mrs. Caputo were rapping on the door, one of the FBI Agents answered the knock, escorted them through the living room past the three of us, and they too were now in the ever-growing crowded kitchen.  I think something's up and whatever it is, it's not good, Arthur whispered.  


     He was obviously  right, because it was then that the two FBI Agents came back into the living room and ordered  Arthur to stay seated on the sofa, as  Charlene and I were escorted back out onto the front porch, told to plop ourselves on the porch swing, while one of the Agents sat on the railing with an ashtray in his hand, kept-an-eye-on-us, and began to smoke a Lucky Strike cigarette.  Arthur was grilled for about an hour and from what we could see through the front screen door, it did not look as if it was going well because Arthur was crying and aunt Eugenie and uncle Jake and Mr. and Mrs. Caputo, who had now returned to the front room, were all glaring at him. 


     When I thought it could not get worse, it did. 


      It was then that I saw my Mother and Father drive through the gate.  They quickly got out of the car and walked past me without so much as a word.  A half-an-hour passed.  Then an hour, as  Charlene and I sat silently on the swing.  The FBI Agent finished another Lucky Strike, put the stump out in the ashtray now  full of cigarette butts, and then Mr. and Mrs. Caputo came out the door, slammed the screen door shut behind them, and began to walk back against the hard-packed gravel of the driveway in the direction of their farm.  


      It was shortly after that when my Father stepped out onto the porch, stared down at me with a look of disappointment, and asked, Dick, where did you come-up with the cockamamie story that the Caputo's were some kind of foreign agents?  I felt a small tremble about what might come next.   Were you aware that Mr. Caputo served under  General 'Blackjack' Pershing and his American Expeditionary Force that led to the victory over Germany in  World War One and that Mr. Caputo won several  citations for bravery including the Purple Heart?   I sheepishly replied, No Sir.  And he said, Or that Mr. Caputo became a tugboat designer in New York City after World War One came to an end and that the tugboat on his farm is a prototype for a new design in order to allow  bardges to turn safely in narrow channels?  I had some time here now to think of an apt reply but could only come up with, No Sir, I didn't know that.  I then idiotically added, I guess that means he didn't kidnap the Lindbergh baby or rob any banks, either, right?  At that moment uncle Jake came out on the porch, looked at my Dad, and said, It's all settled.  The FBI is satisfied and the three of them will start at dawn tomorrow morning.  Dad asked, Caputo is OK with that?  And uncle Jake answered, He said that he'd be more than happy to work them from dawn to dusk seven days a week but wants to know if he needs to feed them lunch. I told him No.


    I somehow became painfully aware that I would be spending more than my planned two-week stay at my aunt and uncle's farm and that we were not, in all likelihood, having any dinner that night. 


     It was on a Tuesday in the second week of the three of us digging into the damp well-drained soil and hauling the potatoes in a wheelbarrow to a large barn when we saw the huge truck from New York City pickup the tugboat.  We were now surrounded by German prisoners-of-war who were digging ditches for Mr. Caputo to plant even more potatoes, and the German prisoners got fed every day promptly at noon.  The one that Mrs. Caputo had cooked for them.  While they were resting and eating and telling each other jokes in German, we were milking cows and cleaning-up cow dung and pigeon poop and sipping small canteens of water.  Each day had begun prior to dawn at at 4 o'clock and ended at 7 PM after the sun had begun to set.  One day Arthur said, Do you think it would help if we apologized to Mr. Caputo?  We did.  It didn't.   He then decided that we would also paint his barn each-and-every night until 9 o'clock in the evening.  


     One afternoon wet with rain about a month after that, I saw Mrs. Caputo in a yellow dress coming out of the house, peeling an orange.  I could hear the sound of an engine, saw an Army Jeep coming up the road, watched the Jeep pass me with a man in a uniform driving and Tate in the passenger seat dressed in civilian clothes.  Later it would be reported, without details, as a minor incident involving Tate attempting to solicit his Drill Sergeant by asking the Drill  Sergeant if he would like to spend  a little time with him naked on a cot, and that Tate had then earned himself a dishonorable discharge for asking a simple question.  This did not surprise us at all, because as rumor had it, his Mother  liked to get naked too.  From that day forward, Tate dug potatoes with us but got to eat with the German prisoners and only had to work from 10 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock in the afternoon.


   When summer's end eventually came, my Mother and Father arrived to take me back to our home in Denver.  My Dad paused as he looked at me and said, It looks like you've lost a little weight, Son.  I have, I said.  Later Charlene and Arthur and I sat silently on the living room sofa while my Mother and Father and aunt Eugenie and uncle Jake sat smiling and sipping coffee in the kitchen.  They were joined shortly thereafter by Mr. and Mrs. Caputo and Tate, who sat quietly on a chair next to us and Arthur asked him in a low voice, How come you like to diddle men?  And Tate replied, How come you like to tell lies about my parents?  You tell me why you do that and I'll tell you why I do what I do.  The uncomfortable silence returned to the room. 


     Eventually, Mr. Caputo came from the kitchen into the living room.  It was the first time we had ever seen him smile.  He said,  I want you to know that I'm not upset about  the the fibs you told about my family, I'm upset that you have put your parents in a position where they can no longer believe a word you say.  


      He then looked at Tate and added, And that I have put my own son in a place where he was afraid to tell me the truth about who he was and is.  I would like it if all of us would take the time to get to know each other before we start  talking about one another behind their backs.  With that, he walked over to Tate, gave him a hug, and they departed the farmhouse to go out for a long walk.


     Over the years that followed, Tate would become a leading advocate for Gay Rights with Arthur marching at his side, Mr. and Mrs. Caputo became good friends to all three of us, she would make Charlene and I a rhubarb pie every time I came to visit my aunt and uncle, and he would show all of us the schematics of how to build a boat...


   ...Our lesson learned was this: Never again attempt to second-guess who people are because you may be way-off-base and destroy the reputations of some really fine people along-the-way...

Lau Tzu, the poet and philosopher of ancient China once said:
"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don't resist them; that only brings sorrow.
Let things flow naturally in whatever way they like."


WHICH IS WHY I REMEMBER BEING ON ARAPAHO STREET...

THE DAY THAT THE  LIBRARY BURNED TO THE GROUND.  The year was 1946 and I was a boy the age of 10.  I was walking with my father and there was a stirring on the street, movement away from 16th Street to the corner of 15th, and then great clouds of black smoke piling into the cobalt sky.  You could hear voices: The Library  is burning!  People began to run then, and we could hear sirens of the Fire Department and saw high arcs of water rising in a majestic way and falling into the flames.  Reporters were there and photographers, all of them wearing hats with press cards stuck in the rims, just like they did in the movies.  We watched for hours, drawn as citizens always are to the unity of disaster, and saw windows burst and the building collapse into black, wet rubble.  The next day, we all read about it in The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News.  Something that once was in the world was now forever gone, and for the first time in my life I felt a sense of permanent loss.  


      Back then, Denver was still filled with the sound of Benny Goodman quartets from the radio of the corner drug store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.  The taxi cabs were all Checkers with ample room for your legs, cars never double parked, shop doors were never locked in the daytime, cops walked the beat and everyone knew their names.  You wore galoshes in the rain.  Waitresses called you Honey.  And you slept with the windows open to the summer night.  That Denver seems to be gone now, hammered to dust by time, progress, accident, and greed and living only in memory.  Most of us distrust the memory of how we lived here, not so very long ago.  And then, suddenly, you hear a piece of music and you are once again at the Dolly Madison Ice Cream Store on the corner of Cherry Street and Colfax Avenue eating a double-dip strawberry cone.  In the cross-cutting of memory, the parents you loved are still alive, and you have just been in Elitch Gardens, sitting on a blanket in the grass on a summer's evening listening to free concerts under the stars and to the music of The Tommy Dorsey Band or dancing to the music of Harry James and his Orchestra. 


     Things then began to change when the older Denver began giving way to the new, as we watched newsreels in the movie houses showing the  extermination camps of Auschwitz and Dachau, saw the skeletal bodies and vacant eyes of those who had survived; witnessed the clouds of the atomic bombs explode and destroy  the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where people sat on empty streets attempting to comprehend what had just happened to them; and lowered our eyes as soldiers and sailors arrived home after the war minus their arms and legs.   Items which had been rationed during the war began to reappear: Cat's Paw soles for shoes, licorice microchips called Sen-Sen, which was guaranteed to keep your breath sweet while kissing; Bazooka and Beechie bubble-gum were back in our mouths, as were candies called Sky Bars, Houton's and B-B Bats, while the price of a haircut went up to a quarter, men were smoking Fatimas and Wings, mothers were in the kitchen using J-O Paste and Flit to rid the house of cockroaches, and boys were tearing-off cereal boxtops in order to get Captain Midnight code-o-graph rings or a Tom Mix Whistle.


     Although, in that Denver, you could still wander through the stalls on Colfax Avenue, watch leather-workers ply their trade at the stall on Detroit Street, look in awe at an old Italian shoemaker working in a window with his mouth full of nails down on Champa Street, and see the iceman make his deliveries to the Safeway store on Monaco Boulevard, who seemed stronger than any man on earth.  Or you could sit on a bench on Alameda Avenue for the next trolley car to take you to Lakeside Amusement Park for a day at the speedway and roller-coaster rides.  If you got sick, the doctor would come by in an hour.  And if you got lucky, and all went well, you could sneak into The Bluebird Theater through a side door to watch the Saturday afternoon triple-matinee and see serials of Dick Tracy and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon.  On Sunday nights, you would most certainly turn on the radio and hear that staccato voice: Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea...This is Walter Winchell and the Jergerns Journal - let's go to press...


     There were, of course, the great sporting events... .


     ...Like the much ballyhooed Heavyweight Champion of the World return match of the World Champion Joe Louis knocking out Billy Conn in the eighth round in Madison Square Garden on the 9th day of June in 1946; where every neighborhood window had been opened in order than nobody missed so much as a single punch, and on the 28th day of June, play-by-play games came on the radio for all of the New York Yankees games began...


     ...And then came the football game of the Century played on the 9th day of November in 1946 between the United States Military Academy at West Point, then ranked number 1 in the Associated Press football poll, and the University of Notre Dame was ranked number 2.  The game was played in Yankee Stadium where the radio announcer Bill Stern said, You couldn't fit another person in here with a shoehorn.   Both teams were undefeated.  Both had averaged 30 points a game.  Army had Felix 'Doc' Blanchard, also known as 'Mister Inside,' and Glen Davis, also known as 'Mister Inside,' and a fine quarterback by the name of Arnold Tucker.  Notre Dame had  Johnny Lujack at quarterback and Leon Heart at end.  All four of these men would be Heisman Trophy winners.  Despite the much-hyped  offenses, the game ended in a scoreless tie, and Notre Dame's defense did something no one had ever done, they held 'The Touchdown Twins' of Blanchard and Davis to a total of 79 yards.  Coach Earl Blake of Army called it, The best defensive college football game ever played; and Notre Dame was named the the National Champions by the Associated Press.  And for the rest of us, it was the greatest sporting event we had ever heard.


     It was as if the quote from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verse  2, were coming true.  The one that said: There is a time for everything under heaven.  A time to give birth and a time to die.  A time to uproot and a time to plant.  A time to kill and a time to heal.  A time to tear down and a time to build up.  We had witnessed Hiroshima and Dachau, seen the wounded return home, listened to Notre Dame defeat Army, heard Joe Louis defeat Billy Conn, experienced a war coming to its final end with something called The Marshall Plan designed to give economic recovery support for Europe as we began our own postwar economic expansion by establishing suburban communities like Levittown where every single block looked exactly alike.


     Meanwhile, we were growing-up both content and confused.  We were now known as  The Silent Generation, where we were neither to speak nor be heard, so we boys turned our attention to the reading of lurid pulp magazines like The Argosy and True Detective Magazine and other slick girlie magazines with pinups by Vargas, like Eyeful and Wink, which were, of course, stowed neatly under our beds each-and-every night in fear that they might be found by our mother or father.  Women who who filled our minds with lustful images and heartfelt desire were exotic dancers like Tempest Storm and Lili St. Cyr, and most of us were tickled-pink when we later found out that girls did not automatically become pregnant when you went to bed with them.


     As the old faded into memory and life continued to renew, when the 1940's were gone and the 1950's had begun, it was then that you could meet that girl in the polo coat who is arriving at Union Station  from college in Albuquerque; the one who you had fallen in love with at the age of 13 at a youth camp called Rainbow Trail 7 years before.  And if you were lucky, if all went well, if you had enough money and the courage, you might succeed in taking her to The Ship Tavern in The Brown Palace Hotel on 17th Street for lunch.  Or you could take her to The Buckhorn Exchange, the city's oldest steakhouse.  Maybe you'll get a grilled-cheese sandwich at LoDo downtown or stroll to the State Capitol Building on East Colfax Avenue to stare at the golden dome glistening beneath the afternoon sun, and then slip into The Cruise Room in the lobby of The Oxford Hotel on 18th Street for a couple of final beers. 


     It would never happen.


     You would receive a Dear John Letter that morning.


     And eventually survive.


     I suppose that not too many years from now, when I've been safely tucked into the turf at Fairmount Cemetery on South Quebec Street next to my Mother and Father, someone will write about a lost Denver that includes The Buckhorn Exchange and The Bluebird Theater and The Lakeside Amusement Park and Dolly Madison Ice Cream and the loss of young love.  Someone might even mourn the loss of Houton's and B-B Bats.  Anything is possible.  But if so, I hope at least one old and wizened Denverite will reach for a pen and try to explain about our lost glories: and mention trolleys and Flit and 'The Touchdown Twins - if he or she can make it clear, if they have the skill...


   ...Even say that memory itself is the only place where you are forever young...


     ...And then recall the words of Lau Tzu, 'Let everything flow naturally in whatever way they like...'


   

a lost girl running along a railroad track:


BACK IN THE YEAR OF 1988 THERE WAS...
 A SALOON NAMED THE OLD PIT STOP IN Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, located at one end of a line of old railroad tracks.  You could enter the somewhat seedy bar filled with with pinball machines, aging long-shore men from the city of New York, hippies nursing drinks, a prostitute or two strolling around the bar, along with the sound of the Rolling Stones, who always seemed to be singing You Can't Always Get What You Want and Brown Sugar on the jukebox. It was the place that I would stop to have a drink  every evening after departing the New Jersey Transit from Manhattan before returning to my small apartment in Pompton Lakes.  It was almost midnight in late June when when I exited the Transit, and took note of a girl running along the railroad track.  


   She had a thick chunky body encased in denim shorts  and a dark green T-shirt.  There was a man in front of her, holding her tightly, and another man behind her, running his hands over her body.  In front of the Old Pit Stop, the people at the bar door were watching, some of them smiling, as the girl struggled.  She pushed one of the men back and then darted away among the parked cars in front of the bar.  The man chased after her.  He was wearing a pair of dirty white jeans, his hair tied in a ponytail.  The thick little girl dashed to her right between the slow moving cars on the street, then she ran into the sand which ran along the side of railroad tracks.  When she disappeared from view, the man stopped chasing her, got into an old blue Ford Mustang, and drove-off down the road. 

  Late on the following evening, I saw her sitting at a small table in front of Mack's Bar and Grill on Wanaque Avenue, a block up from The Old Pit Stop.  Her brown hair was matted and there were stains on her bare feet.  Her clothes were the same clothes she had on the night before.  She was greedily eating a hamburger, and I went over and sat down across from her.  How did you make out last night? I asked.   You saw me?  I did.  Her eyes were suddenly jittery and she stopped eating.  I don't know you, Mister.  I don't have to say nothin' to you.  You're right, I said, and went into the main room of Mack's Bar and Grill and ordered a a small salad. 


   I paid for it and went outside and sat at another table.  Pick-up trucks lumbered down the street, waiting at the light to turn off of Wanaque Avenue in order to exit the town.  Two 40-year-old farmers with ancient eyes walked up to Mack's, shirtless and shoeless, and looked blankly at the chunky girl.  One of them went into the store and the other stared at her.  She got up and came over and sat across from me.  You mind if I sit here? she asked.  Not at all, I replied.  What's your name?  Lydia, she said.  You sure you're not a cop?  Do I look like I'm a cop? I said, laughing.  I teach writing at a two-year college in New York.  And you?  Where are you from?  Trenton, she said.  I ran away last September.  I couldn't take it no more.  My mother, always naggin', always on me, you know?  So I just went off one night, me and a girlfriend.  She quit on me in New York City, but I kept goin'.


  Somewhere in New Jersey, she was picked up by a trucker.  They went all the to West Virginia together.  I thought he was a nice guy, she said.  He was doin' a lot of pills and stuff and he'd sing songs along with the radio.  He knew every word.  We came to some place, a truck stop.  They had a separate restaurant, just for truck drivers.  He gave me some pills.  I took them.  We stayed all night, and he passed me around to other drivers.  I didn't mind, she said flatly.  It was better than bein' home with my mother.  He drove off without me.  I had $3 in my pocket.  So I had to hitchhike.  Some old farmer picked me up, and he wanted to take me to some place, but he was so old, and I said no.  He got mad at me and left me on the road in the middle of the night.


  It took her a week to reach Atlantic City.  She stayed there for awhile, living on the boardwalk.  There were a lot of sailors in town, she said, and they liked her.  Nobody ever liked me in Trenton.   One of the sailors took her to Pompton Lakes for the Labor Day Weekend. He left without her.  She had been here ever since.  I like it here, she said.  A couple of older men arrived, and she seemed nervous.  I gotta go, she said.  She got up quickly, and we walked together back toward The Old Pit Stop.  It was getting dark now.  Two scrawny men stood in front of the bar. Why don't you just go back home, Lydia? I said.  I don't never want to go home, she said, her voice rising.  I don't want to never go home ever again.


  She ran toward the railroad tracks, rushing toward the lights of the passing cars, and past the bar into the darkness. 


   I never saw her again... 


  ...Until I was walking down 10th Avenue in the City of New York on my way downtown on one Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1998, when I thought I saw her.  She was holding hands with a man which I assumed to be her husband with two small children at her side, and as they walked past me, she gave a slight nod of recognition...


   ...And I could not help but giving myself a small smile...

"I pray to God my soul to keep" are the thoughts I had upon awakening on this day marking my 100th blog going back to the 15th day of May in the year of 2013:


THERE IS A VALID ARGUMENT  THAT NO WORDS...

NO PICTURES, NO MOVIES CAN EVER EXPRESS the  horror of the Holocaust or the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki any more than we can explain the the despotic furies of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now known as ISIS.  These are visions of hallucination and nightmare that are always present in our collective imagination, viewed by most in awed silence and utter fright.  There also remains the attempt in memory to relieve some other tangled feelings of  national guilt; for the incineration of so many Japanese civilians, for failing to act to save the European Jews when it was clear that the Holocaust had begun.  As I ease my way toward the final curtain of my Earthly existence, I don't pretend to have the answers to such cosmic questions.  


     But I can now look back to when I was twenty-one, full of possibilities , with my whole life spread out before me.  When I realize where I truly am, and that I am seventy-eight and no longer that confused and romantic boy I once was, I now know that I have committed my share of stupidities.  I was a dreadful husband.  I tried to be a good father, but made many mistakes.  Faced with the enormous crimes of the world and particularly the horrors of this appalling century, you acquire a sense of proportion about your own relative misdemeanors and tend to push the cosmic questions aside.


     My thoughts now drift to the problems of the self and back again, measuring my own triumphs and disasters, errors and illusions, against the experience of others.  The damage of the past is done; nothing can be done to avoid it or to repair it; I hope to cause no more, and I'm sometimes comforted by remembering that to many people I was also kind.  For good or ill, I remain human. That is to say, imperfect.  Today, I accept the inevitable more serenely.  I know that I will never write as many books as I wished to write.  Nor will I ever enter a game in late September to triple up the alley in center field and win a pennant for the Yankees.  More frequently now, I read history, biographies, memoirs, and journals because they have the effect of lengthening my life backward into the past, and because the complicated stories of other lives layer and multiply my own.


     I begin to think about the people I would miss if my life ended:  my daughter, Traci.  My son, Scott.  My grandchildren Taylor, and Keeko; my friends Barbara and Glen; the women I had loved and who had loved me back.  Their faces move in and out of my consciousness; I think also of other things that have made my life a life: Max Roach and Ray Charles; tabloid headlines, the poems of Yeats, and the painting in fine museums and the jazz played in smoke-filled nightclubs.  It seems absurd, even outrageous, to think that I would never see Casablanca again,  read Hemingway and Elmore Leonard, sit in John's Pizzeria on Bleeker Street, glance up at the ChryslerBuilding, the most elegant in the city, spend another evening in a bar called Extra-Extra on 42nd Street, then walk back home with my daughter in the glistening night rain along 3nd Avenue in the City of New York, singing songs from our favorite musicals and clasping hands with an umbrella over our heads.  And sitting on a Sacramento sofa with my son watching television and cracking jokes about what we were wasting our time watching.   If I died now I'd never know what Harper Lee's new book was about, written 50 years after To Kill A Mockingbird had made her famous.  And what about all the words I hadn't written (or said) to the people I had truly cared about, people I didn't see much because I was too lazy to make a call?  The places I had yet visit out there in the world?  Never, goddammit, hear Sinatra singing I Did It My Way, or sit beneath a tree on a Sunday afternoon seeing the light of the sun spilling down and giving me warmth?  Or smell garlands of flowers and cherish the taste if strawberry ice cream?  


     I now know that I will never be able to answer the cosmic questions of life, much less resolve the minor crimes and misdemeanors of my own, but I can always be thankful for the people that I have met and loved along the way, give a glance upward to where God theoretically resides and pray that at least a small portion of my soul has remained intact along the way...


     ...And that may be the best that any of us can do...

the surreal day Henry and I spent with Maria and Armando, Cookie, an unnamed prostitute, and Bishop Bart in Big Bend  National Park:


"DON'T GO," HE SAID.  "DON'T GO...

BAD THERE.  SHOOTING THERE."  He was speaking to two female tourists from Des Moines, Iowa named Irma and Eileen.  The shooting had all begun the moment after my friend Henry, a former rodeo-rider, began to make his way up the hill to use the Men's Room with the uneven trudge of a man with a permanent limp, due to a bucking-horse accident.  Henry and I had driven here from Houston, and I was now sitting on a rock next to a man squatting on a small pile of dirt to my left, who happened to be the guy who had just said Don't go.  Don't go.  Bad there.  Shooting there, and I took a moment to watch Irma and Eileen run rapidly back up the hill to their car with twin looks of fear etched across their faces, then turned my attention back to see what was happening across the river.   


     About 50 yards across the Rio Grande on the Mexican side of the river, I was looking at what I thought to be a lone United States Custom Agent who was still firing his pistol in the direction of a man running away from him wearing a white shirt and barefoot with what appeared to be a ham-and-Swiss sandwich clutched in his hand.  This seemed odd,  although I was aware that every day as new drug dealers entered the village of Boquillias del Carmen, innocent tourists crossed the river from the Big Bend National Park on the Texas side of the great river, unaware of the danger  that might lay ahead, leaving safety behind in order to see the magnificent sunset for which the village was famous.    


     It was then that I took note of the woman on my left.  She was also sitting on a rock with a 6-month-old loosely cradled in her arms.  She had cinnamon-colored skin, and high cheekbones, and hard white teeth.  She just sat there, making a low moaning sound like women do when they are overwhelmed with fear, but the look on her face seemed to be one of casual disinterest.  She was, however, moaning rather loudly: My husband...my husband...he will die!  The man who was being shot at would turn out to be her husband and the father of her child, and the man sitting next to me on the small pile of dirt saying, Don't go.  Don't go.  Bad there. Shooting there, turned out to be her brother, Armando; who was a small man with a glass eye, which made him look as if her were glancing past you.   I felt as if I were watching a badly scripted movie.  It got even more peculiar when the woman said, My name is Maria.  My husband is the barefoot man.  His name is Pedro.  The man in the uniform of a Custom's Agent is my cousin Gilberto. Pedro has pretended to take Gilberto's sandwich from the seat of his car, she said that as if that explained everything.  Which it didn't.


     They are playing a game for the tourists, Senor, Armando  said.  Both Armando and  Maria were obviously very proud of Pedro. A group of teenagers crowded around.  They were a small Kansas town named Bison.  It looked like an invasion had started when more middle-aged people began to gather.  I could still hear the snapping of small arms fire.  Pedro was still running up a hill and Gilberto was  still chasing him.  It was then that Armando added: You need not worry, Senor.  It is only a game we play for the tourists.  The bullets are not real. Gilberto, he is  firing what you Americans call 'blanks.'  He gave a wan smile.   Tomorrow morning, the tourists will return. They will want to see what has happened.  To find out if Pedro was killed.   I will be there with my canoe. My canoe will take them across the river and back.  I will charge  $20 for the trip.  It is the way we make our living.   


     In order for you to understand what a different sort of day it had been thus far, I must now go back to earlier in the day when Henry and I had initially driven into the Big Bend National Park and stopped for breakfast in a ghost town called Terulingia, which was the former home of the Chisos Mining Company and famous for having been the quicksilver capital of the world, as well as being the town in which the first chili cook off was held.  


     This was where we met an older string-bean-of-a-fellow  with wrinkled skin from too much sun wearing a white and somewhat stained Stetson hat and cowboy boots colored dark-green, who said his name was Cookie.


     Cookie indicated that had once been a prospector, but was now the proud part-time bartender and regular customer of The Kosmic Kowgirl Kafe. He then added:  Come on in, sip a cool drink, enjoy th' shade of th' front porch, hang out, an' when you go back home you'll have some stories to tell.  When we stepped inside, he smiled and added, I know I look like a ol' lummox, but I saw Elvis once in Vegas.  I've been around...That ain't to say that everything breaks my way, I've also been arrested a whole bunch o'   times for loiterin' an'  for bein' drunk-an'-disorderly, an' once for inhalin' Mary Jane's. He then gave a small smile and added, How'd you two guys like to go to th' whorehouse.  It's just down th' street.  Th' 3 girls there are uglier than sin, but usually at this time o' day there ain't much of a waitin' line, an' they won't nickel-an'-dime you to death...


     Henry and I quickly sipped our Pepsi's, thanked Cookie,  rapidly departed, and drove into the adjacent town with the population of 162 called Study Butte, which was located at the Junction of Texas Highway 118 and Farm to Market Road 170, where we decided to have lunch instead of breakfast at The Roadrunner Deli in the Study Butte Mall.  The mall consisted of the deli which had a 'Picnics To Go' sign hanging above the door, and stood adjacent to The Needful Things Country Store and The Cottonwood General Store, all three of which were ramshackle buildings with fading white-and-blue paint and looked as if the wooden steps would creak every time you stepped on them.  By the time we arrived in Study Butte, rain was pelting the windshield and the wipers were on.  Out on the small veranda of The Roadrunner Deli was a huge American Flag hanging right next to the 'Picnics To Go' sign held in place by rocks. 


     About 10 yards ahead, we saw a woman running through the rain in our direction.  She dived into a ditch the moment she saw us.  She looked around again, peering at us through the rain.  Henry was driving and rolled down his window to get a better look at her.  It was then that she said, Do either one of you guys have a towel?'  Henry answered, 'I think I have one in my suitcase.'  And she replied, 'Either you do or you don't.  I've got a whole bunch of Texas Rangers out looking for me.  I'm what you might call a whore -on-the-run.  She then eased herself up and was now standing in the ditch, wiping the rain from her stringy-blond hair and off of her almost see-through dress, as she slowly began walking toward us through the downfall of rain.  I need to get to Marfa, she said as she bent down to look at us through the car's side window.  I think that I may have infected a couple of Rangers with syphilis and need to get myself checked-out before I'm hauled-off to jail.


     Henry said Let's find somewhere else to eat.  He quickly switched-on the ignition and we sped down Farm to Market Road 170 through the torrent of rain toward the border town of Lajitas.  I was looking at the map and said, I think we need to be on State Highway 118 in order to get to Boquillias.  Henry quickly turned the car around and as we once again reached the familiar  Junction of Highway and Farm Road, he said: May as well stop for gas.


     I'm sorry if I'm confusing you folks, so let's take a moment-or-two t0 go back to where this whole thing began: Henry and I were on vacation.   He was single and my girlfriend had gone-off to visit her family in Minneapolis.  So Henry and I decided it would be a real hoot to take a trip down to The Big Bend National Park and to do a little  hiking along the Lost Mine and Emory Peak trails in the Chisos Mountain Range and dine at the Chisos Mountain Range Restaurant, with a side-trip to Boquillias which was famous for its glorious sunset. 


     We both thought that this would be truly a great trip.  


     We were now, however, turning off of the Farm to Market Road 170 and onto Texas State Highway 118 and about to pull into Bishop Bart's Gas ' n Eats 'n a Pillow or Two in a downpour of early afternoon rain.   We then both thought we saw inside of the large building a small altar made of wood with a white cloth draped on top, and a painted plaster statue of the risen Jesus and a serene Mary.  To the right of the entrance there was a man of middle-age standing there with a grin on his face looking out at us.  He was a squat compact man with gold-rimmed glasses, garbed in purple and scarlet over a cassock.  I said, Maybe we should go get gas somewhere else.  I feel like we've just driven into The Twilight Zone.  Henry replied: We're almost  completely out of gas. And it looks like we can eat something too.  We don't have a choice.  There was a rap on the window of the passenger seat.  I looked out.  There he was, smiling at me.  I rolled down the window as he shielded his eyes from the still falling rain:  Hello, he said.  He then smiled and added: Pardon the garb, but I am the former Bishop Barton Barringer, but since I'm now defrocked, you may call  'Bart.' Why don't you fellows come on in and get out of the rain.  I don't get much business, and  I could use a little company.


     We exited the car, trudged after him through the rain, followed him through the front door, and he switched on the lights.  It was a vast space, much larger than it had appeared from the Farm Road or gas pump.  Behind the altar made of wood and the sculpture of Jesus and Mary, was another room filled with paintings.  All mauve's and greens and yellows and blues, with great bold structures on this one and lush coloring on that one.  Some had matte surfaces, thinned with turpentine.  Others were glossy.  They were bright, but most had a dark brooding power.  He smiled, I would assume you need gas.  Am I correct?  You are, Henry replied.  It that your artwork? It is, Bart replied.  Henry smiled, You are quite talented.  Thank you, he said.  After I pump your gas, please allow me to fix you a couple of hamburgers.  If you're tired, I've got a small motel out back that I call 'The Bishop's Basilica.'   Before your curiosity gets the best of you, I was defrocked for bedding a Nun by the name of Mary Grace, so I departed the archdiocese in Pittsburgh, came here, took up painting just to pass the time, and wear the clerical garb in order to see the looks I get while I'm pumping gas.  I hope I've answered all of your questions. He then put on a raincoat and went out to fill our tank.


     We then ate our hamburgers and paid him for the gas and bid him goodbye.  As we drove away, Henry said I really hate to say this, but he's the most normal person we've met today.


     I was still looking across the river and thinking about the events of the day when Henry limped back.  He paused for a moment to give a final zip-up of his pants, looked across the river and asked: What's been going on over there? A pretend shoot-out, I replied.  He did not seem at all surprised.  You look a little confused, he said.  You want to back to Bart's place, eat, get some sleep, drive back to Houston in the morning?  We can spend the rest of our vacation fishing by ourselves in Matagorda Bay drinking beer and eating fish we caught.  How does that sound?  Great,   I replied.  Maybe we can ask Bart if  he could close-down his place for awhile, and if he'd be up for something like that...


     ...Which he was...


    ...And the three of us had a wonderful time.


    

perhaps it is time for me to tone-down the rhetoric  against the far-right and take a more positive stance, knowing that history is on my side:


                                                                 "Those who don't know
                                                                       history are destined to
                                                                       repeat it..."
                                                                      Edmund Burke


ON THE 25TH DAY OF NOVEMBER IN  1947 ...
THE WITCHUNT IN HOLLYWOOD BEGAN AS ten writers and directors were cited for Contempt of Congress for refusal to assist delving into the activities of the American Communist Party.  A Blacklist began that prevented writers, directors, and actors from working on movies or television - and it became known as the McCarthy Era, named after a somewhat insane and alcoholic Junior Senator from the State of Wisconsin, who led the chase to the point where we also began to lose scientists, schoolteachers and scholars on ideological grounds.  We had a free press, but the vast majority of our newspapers couldn't challenge the intelligence of a cocker spaniel, living in fear that they too would be blacklisted by the Wisconsin Senator and his group of toadies.  Certainly, in our mass media, we seldom read, saw, or heard from American communists or socialists, who were dismissed as being disloyal to American freedom.  They simply were not allowed a voice of defense.


     Books were banned from bookstore and Dalton Trumbo, who wrote Exodus, was no longer allowed to write; Edward Dymytryk, a fine film directer was no longer allowed to produce or direct.  They were replaced by mediocrities, ass-kissing careerists, and McCarthy hacks like Walt Disney and Gary Cooper and Ronald Regan, who was then the President of the Screen Actors Guild.  They eagerly denounced former friends as being 'either friendly to the Communist Party or actual members of the party itself' by naming names to the members of the House of Un-American Activities. Individuals were raped of their reputations and could no longer find gainful employment, some of whom would eventually commit suicide.  This was voiced with great clarity by the actor Humphrey Bogart when he spotted another actor named Danny Kaye at a Hollywood party in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel and said to Kaye in a loud voice:  You fuckers sold me out!


     Our National amnesia had begun.


    On December 2nd of 1954, Joe McCarthy was censured by the United States Senate and he eventually died on the 2nd day of May 1n 1957 bent full of booze, fallen from grace, and more-or-less mourned by none.  Which proved to we Americans that we still had a choice to never forget our democratic past and our social contract. That it was a rather simple matter:  Allow the two party system work on the big decisions and let the individual make the small decisions on how to live out their own lives with both dignity and grace.


     The lesson learned was to never give up memory of past mistakes or the use of critical intelligence, and always recall the evil demand for national amnesia, when Americans were once urged to forget Gettysburg and World War One and World War Two, and when America itself edged toward a totalitarian state, one which began with whispers of Communists and Socialists not being truly American; or can just as easily begin in the present tense with equally small mutters and mumbles about our President not being truly American or that Latinos coming across our borders are merely carriers of drugs like marijuana and cocaine and are, thereby, a personal menace to all true American patriots...


     Good Old Draconian Measures have begun to rear-their-heads once again to bring order to what they assume is our disorder, and if that means clearing our streets of Latinos and Blacks and real-or-imagined addicts of any sort, then so-be-it; because their only agenda is to clean-house from all enemies either foreign or domestic with whom they disagree. 


     The problem with that is this:  You cannot fight the simpleminded with rational argument, because rational argument is something that conservatives seem not to understand.  Nothing makes their blood quicken faster than the spirit of revenge.  If it's history or verifiable truth, most of the yawn and turn away, if it resembles a movie, they snap to attention and are ready for war.  The British philosopher John Stuart Mill once said: Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.


     There are lessons to be learned here for all of us.  The American Right will never change.  There will always be a new enemy, real or imagined.   Therefore, we must never forget that our lonely fight to establish a Nation began over 2 centuries ago by men who were willing enough and believed enough in their cause to place their bodies before the might of the British nation.  At first, they had no guns.  And in the end they won.  They won for themselves and their families and their friends, for their country, for memory and history.  Others came after them, men and women fought for their own freedoms only 50 years ago, led by a man named Martin Luther King and aided by a woman named Rosa Louise Parks.  King once said: Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.


     He did not rant nor rail nor rave at the enemy and she simply sat down on a bus, they stood their ground for what they believed to be right, not for what the others told them that they ought to believe, and that understanding also won for those lonely men and women and children who had once stood under the heavy-hand of bigotry and stupidity.  One of the enduring mysteries of mankind is that there have always been men like Martin Luther King and women like Rosa Louise  Parks and that there always will be more...


     ...And that is the happiest ending of all.

my few minutes with Andy Rooney: 


I WAS LOOKING OUT OF MY BEDROOM WINDOW ONTO WEST 44TH STREET...

AT THE INFANTRY OF OF A MOVIE LOCATION -  TECHNICIANS, GRIPS, AND Actors and drivers were everywhere; trailers jammed the side of the street; a horse pretending to be a member of The New York City's Mounted Police Unit whinnied in an improvised corral.  I could see Jerry Orbach, who would soon be playing Detective Lennie Brisco signing an autograph for a young a man with a big grin on his face before his scene began.  Next to Orbach was another actor named Benjamin Bratt, who would become Detective Rey Curtis.  They were shooting a scene for a television show called Law and Order.  Orbach looked pleased.  Bratt appeared to be bored.  All of this was taking place while several students from The Actor's Studio on West 44th stood behind a rather large rope with the actress Shelly Winters at their side.  They were all eating apples and talking and laughing with a  beautiful actress by the name of Angie Harmon, who played A.D.A  Abbie Carmichael on the show.


     A sight like this was not unusual in the City of New York.


     In looking back in memory of those past days, these remembrances are but a reminder of what was  once lived in the present tense; of seeing the rich and famous while strolling down 6th Avenue or sipping morning coffee at a deli on West 43rd Street and browsing through books at Barnes and Noble up on East 86th Street.  Glimpses of the famous come naturally in the City of New York.  I once spotted the two actors Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole playing billiards at The Failete Irish Whiskey Bar on 2nd Avenue and 30th surrounded with gnarled wood furniture and high-beamed ceilings and having what looked to be a wonderful time, laughing as they discussed Richard's latest role as English Bob in Clint Eastwood's film, The Unforgiven; had a delightful but brief conversation with the beautiful Australian model and actress Elle Macpherson as she was waiting on one sunny afternoon hailing a cab in front of The Calvin Klein Headquarters on West 39th Street; stood in line at Ray's Pizza on 9th Avenue and 22nd Street between Richard Gere and Tuesday Weld, as Bianca Jagger was heading out the door with a slice of peperoni in her hand; and shared a taxi in complete shock and utter silence on East 72nd Street during a major snowstorm when Catherine Zeta Jones and Micheal Douglas had hailed a cab with me because there were very few cabs available at midnight in the blizzard blanketing the city...


     ...And then there was the former war correspondent from Albany, New York, who once wrote for Stars and Stripes from London during World War Two, and was now  employed by CBS News as a weekly commentator on 60 Minutes, always sitting behind a walnut table which he made himself, as he commented about everyday issues like annoying relatives, faulty Christmas presents, sports mascots and bottled water brands, along with the recent headlines and the people he admired or wasn't all that fond of, on the program entitled A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney...




     ...He was eating what the menu called called the '2 Steak Breakfast with Anger' and reading The New York Daily News at the Hudson Eatery on West 57th Street  early on a Monday morning when I happened to walk in.  There was no other seat available, so I sat down next to him.  Without looking up, he said, I don't want you staring at me.  Makes me feel uncomfortable and itchy.  Too many gawkies in this damned town for my taste and all they want are god damned autographs signed and most of them don't know exactly who I am!  With that, he took a sip of coffee, then added, All I am is a writer who accidentally appeared on television.  That's about it and it's no big deal.  So I'd appreciate it if you don't talk to me while I'm eating my breakfast, if that's OK with you...He then went back to reading the newspaper. 


     His full name, the one he was born with, was Aitken "Andy" Rooney.  He was originally from Albany, New York.  Born in 1919, he had  flown with the Eighth Air Force during bombing raids over Germany in World War Two.  Later, he was one of the first journalists to visit concentration camps near the end of the war and was the first journalist to write about them.  He joined CBS in 1949 as a writer for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, went to The Gary Moore Show, and wrote his first essay for 60 Minutes in 1964.  On the day I met him on that cold winter morning of 1990, he had just turned 70 and had recently returned to 60 Minutes after a 3 month suspension by CBS New President David Burke for having said that there were too many homosexual unions, too much food, and too many cigarettes in America which would lead to premature death. Viewership immediately dropped by 20 percent, and management th0ught it was in the best interest of the network to bring Andy back.


     He looked at me as he laid the folded newspaper on the counter top  and said, Who are you?  I told him my name.  What do you do for a living?  I informed him I was a writer, that I'd had 2 stage plays produced in London and New York, 1 book published, written numerous articles for various magazines, and that I was currently employed at a 2 year college called Interboro Institute where I taught writing.  He asked: Why haven't I heard of you?  I quickly replied Because I've apparently not been as irritable and crotchey as you are.  By the look on his face it was obvious to me that my retort was not nearly as astute and witty as I thought it had been, and it took awhile before he asked: That's the college on West 57th, right? he finally asked. I said, Yes.  The one for ghetto kids on Pell Grants?  Again, I said, Yes.  Why? he asked.  Why what? I replied.  Why do you teach down-and-out kids?  And I answered: Because they need someone to teach them, and I'm all they've got.  He smiled and said, That's a very good way to shape your experience as a writer.  


     He then turned to a discussion of his own family: His wife "Margie" and four children, Ellen, Emily, Martha, and Brian.   There has never been a writer who didn't hope that in some small way he was doing good with the words he put down on paper, and I've always had in my mind that I was always doing some little bit of good, and when my family says I have, it means more to me than any Emmy I've won or any other award.  If you're teaching these kids to take pride in what they write, then you've done right-by-them and their families, as well.  

     He suddenly stood-up, pulled his wallet out of his pant pocket, picked up my ticket on what I owed for breakfast, then said: Let me pay for your breakfast.  OK?  I looked up at him: Why?  He smiled and answered: Writing is an honorable profession.  Teaching is equally so.  You're doing both.  Keep it up.  He smiled.  It's time for me to go and put on the persona of the cantankerous old old grouch.  It's what I get paid the big-bucks to do.  He paused and gave me a smile before he added:  Give yourself a shot at practicing a scowl and sneer and growl in the mirror.  Maybe you can take my place when I retire...


     ...He then paid the bill, walked out the restaurant door, and disappeared from view as he made his way down West 57th and headed in the direction of CBS on West 52nd...


     ...And I know of no other city where something like that could have happened other than in the City of New York...