The Irvington Milkman

Fusari vs. Rocky Graziano

A ranked welterweight in the 40s and 50s, Charlie Fusari had a bar across from Newark City Hall. My grandfather was a big fight fan, my great uncle Phil Krug was a ranked middleweight, ergo, I was a ten-year old kid on a bar stool at Fusari's!

A Newark Memory Lane

Newark's pride and Joy, the sitting Lincoln, by Gutson Borglund, who also created Mt. Rushmore and many other famous sculptures all around America. Trust me, you don't want to read this guy's bio. You've been warned.
The sitting Lincoln is south on Market, past Bamberger's. That's the Essex County Courthouse, behind Abe.

 Wednesday Shopping
(see pic below to orient and illustrate the directions)
We'd meet Mom under the Bamberger's clock at 5:30 - one block south, on the right, where we spent most of the evening. An aunt, Dorothy Rice, worked at Bam's. She wasn't a sales person, she worked in an office, but we stopped to stay hello. (I think she got us 'deals' on stuff, but I'm not sure.)Anyway, her son was in the Navy during the war; he was on a PT-Boat! I thought that was super cool!.
We always stopped at Nedick's for a 'small orange', their specialty drink. Mom would occasionally buy some chocolates at Loft's, but Jim and I had to be on out best behavior to win this treat. Directly above Loft's was a Chinese restaurant; we had dinner there or at Matthew's, a small counter- restaurant across the street. I always had chicken egg drop soup - I liked the sound of it - at the Chinese place and a hot roast beef sandwich at Matthew's - open-faced with gravy on top and a side of green beans. A couple of waiters always hit on Mom, they would offer to comp our meal, but Mom never went for it. By the way, I thought  the roast beef sandwich was something rich people ate!

On the north side of Broad, on the left, was a men's haberdashery - American Shops -- the Newsreel Theater and the Jersey Central railroad. Phil Rizzuto and Gene Hermanski were part owners of American Shops, but I never saw them there - and I really looked!

On Market Street north on the left was the Paramount Theater and the Newark Evening News offices. The Paramount had two balconies, the News was the city's premier paper. Our grandfather told us 'They sell our News on the streets of New York'.

Penn Station was further down Market. Then came 'Down Neck', Krug's Tavern and Ruppert Stadium, home of the Newark Bears, the Yankees AAA farm club. The area was called either the Ironbound - it was flanked on two sides by two railroads - or 'the Neck' because a bend in the bordering Passaic River resembled a neck.

If anybody can add to this, please do.

Charlie Fusari vs. Rocky Graziano - waddaya know about this guy?

A Big Surprise Off the Georgia Coast

Beautiful, no? The sky off the southern Georgia coast has often been so described. And the night sky is no different, better even, on a cloudless night. Like the night of Feb 5, 1958.

Clean, crisp, the scent of the ocean all pervasive, the stars a mariner's navigation tools.

On a training mission at 36,000 feet, an Air Force B47 Stratojet bomber collided with an F86 Saber Jet fighter. The smaller plane was completely destroyed and the bomber was critical, with a ruptured wing and a partially dislodged engine. After several unsuccessful landing attempts, the bomber captain was ordered to jettison his payload - a four-ton, fully armed hydrogen bomb.
            The captain chose the shallow waters off Tybee Island, figuring a swift recovery could be made in that pristine target range.
             It didn't work that way. Despite many attempts over the years....
Hey! Wait a minute! I wrote this article years ago, and I was just updating it when I found this. Click on this headline for a real bang-up ending!

                AMATEUR DIVERS FIND LONG-LOST NUCLEAR WARHEAD

Quote for Today

'The less a man knows, the more sure he is he knows everything.'
Joyce Cary

The Horse's Mouth - film

I'm still gonna do Facebook, but...

… but I think I'm gonna migrate the bulk of my stuff over to my blog.

Why? Well, because I have more freedom of expression. I can italicize, for one (I've bitched about this for years, but Zuckerberg doesn't listen) I can also bold face, type bigger or smaller, and post pictures in the size I want them and where I want them.

Nautilus French Toast

I can even add captions, and hot links.

If I'd like to post something additionally to Facebook, I just do it, and then my FB buddies can see, as an editor,  how I would lay the article out, instead of blindly following the Facebook rigid style.

Give 'em hell, Lizzie!

A friend said, 'but no one reads personal blogs. Maybe so, but I'm writing just to write. Fun facts I like to share, stories I like to tell, jokes, rants. Anyway, let's see how it goes. And you can comment on the blog, too.


I almost forgot - I've got hot links, too. Political links, sports links, even occasional fun stuff like an English-to-Latin translator. And the whole thing is archived; you can search for anything I've blogged over the years - like the article about the live hydrogen bomb the Air Force lost off the coast of Georgia!


This may be too much work -- I'm not as facile as I was in my Perry White prime -- but let's see how it goes.

Oh Baby Now I Know I Love You So...

West Side High School graduation, June 1956. As they called Mark Rynar's name, he broke out into song as he shuffled toward the aisle to receive his diploma. Mark was no singer, but his smile was so wide and infectious I think half the class tried to join in for a minute.
Mark's gone, but that smile is still hanging around!  I hardly ever hear the song he chose that day, but when I do, Mark is always
singing it

OMG! Where did they all GO?

Al Jackson, Jr, Steve Cropper, Donald Dunn & The Man! (front)*


















* Booker T. Jones, Booker T and the MGs

Not just these guys, but these guys!
          

Music for a Lazy Saturday

The story behind Prokofiev's 'Lieutenant Kije's Suite' is charming, wonderful, funny and romantic. Click on the first underlined reference and listen to a wonderfully British eight-minute tutorial about the Lieutenant; then, if you're interested, click on the Kije caption below; better than Benicar!

Lt. Kije Suite

Can you cheat at Russian Roulette?

Surprisingly, yes.

Pусская Pулетка, (russkaya ruletka )is a lethal game of chance in which a player places a single round in a revolver, spins the cylinder, places the muzzle against his or her head, and pulls the trigger. "Russian" refers to the supposed country of origin, and roulette to the element of risk-taking and the spinning of the revolver's cylinder, which is reminiscent of a spinning roulette wheel.

Because only one chamber is loaded, the player has a one in x chance of being shot; x is the number of chambers in the cylinder. So, for instance, if a revolver holds six chambers, the chance is one in six. That assumes that each chamber is equally likely to come to rest in the "correct" position.

However, due to gravity, in a properly maintained weapon with a single round inside the cylinder, the full chamber, which weighs more than the empty chambers, will usually end up near the bottom of the cylinder when its axis is not vertical, altering the odds in favor of the player. This only applies to swing-out cylinder type revolvers, and only if the cylinder is spun outside of the revolver and allowed to come to a complete stop before being locked back in. The number of pulls of the trigger before a round is expected to discharge is 3.5 (without spinning between the pulls) or 6 (with spinning between the pulls).
In this famous film sequence, (click the last sentence) was De Nero aware of that advantage?  It looks like 'maybe.'

The LaSalle - the prettiest American car ever?

The LaSalle was the first brainchild of Harley Earl, the legendary American auto designer. It was created as a sort of entry-level Cadillac - a little cheaper, more stylish, designed as an early 'hook' for upwardly mobile younger buyers. After initial success, the onset of the Great Depression gave the LaSalle a rocky survival road upon which the brand finally failed, but not before some spectacular iterations and a somewhat mysterious namesake. Was this the LaSalle of John Baptist de la Salle, an 18th century French priest, or of Robert de La Salle, a 17th century French explorer who claimed Louisiana and the entire Mississippi delta for his mother country.
Let's clear this right up. LaSalle University in Philadelphia is named after the French priest; their sports teams are called 'Explorers.' (Doncha luv it when a page of history refuses to lie flat?)
Anyway, here's a 1936 LaSalle convertible. You can't get much prettier than this!

                                                              

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New Jersey Has The Right Attitude

 New Jersey is the 'Attitude ' state: 'Hey! you got a problem with that? But in the middle of our beloved president's Russia flap, Jerseyites fly above the fray, welcoming stranded Russkis with cots, blankets, water and pizza -- we even provided a translator, which shocked the passengers, who were surprised anybody could even speak their language.
------------------------------------------------
From Madison, NJ. to Russia, with love:

Добро пожаловать в Нью-Джерси-корень для Oрлов в 'Супер Боул!'😘

Airplane From Russia To Cuba Stranded In South Jersey

The Devil, you say!

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists "Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost" as an 'early 16th century' proverb. It also has evolved to mean weak members of a group, such as the trailers in a pack of wolves.

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Great Period Piece!

The Alienst

Strange bedfellows

Sometimes God Throws You A Bone

Mario Pei

I needed one more class to fulfill the course requirements for my Masters, but I couldn't find anything to fit into my busy business schedule. A last-minute cancellation gave me an opening for a Saturday 8AM linguistics seminar; it's sounded excruciatingly boring, but I had no choice.
Surprise #1 - the course was hosted by Mario Pei, world renowned linguist doing a guest shot from Harvard.

Miriam Makeba

Surprise #2 - Pei was a shy showman, fluent in half a dozen languages, able to converse in a hundred others, so magnetic and engrossing he could've easily done a TV talk show guest shot.During one lecture the affable native Italian segued into African dialects, complete with throat clicks and glottal stops. He produced a turntable and album, and spun us Miriam Makeba and her incredible 'Click' song; halfway through he joined her, karaoke style, and brought the house down! Africa and its history opened up to the class.

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The Time of my Life

It was July, 1964. I was an Air Force veteran, had just graduated college, and was going to get married in August. The New York Mets were playing in their third season - their first at Shea Stadium - and I was a crazy fan. (They finished 10th, 40 games out.) The All-Star game was at Shea; by the rules, every team had to send one player. The Yankees, of course, had several - here's one, posing with the Mets' lone representative. You know the Yankee, but I'm not going to tell you the Met, you'll have to guess!
NASA's Project Mercury 'The Right Stuff,' remember? had evolved into Project Gemini, but a 2-man Gemini flight wasn't scheduled until 1965.
I had a summer job as a camp counselor/swimming instructor at Bungalow Acres, a day camp in Mt. Freedom, NJ. Part of the job was ferrying 8 Newark kids to and from camp. I was lent a '59 Mercury station wagon to do the job. Getting my charges up to camp by 8am was a huge pain in the ass, but the ride back became a legendary piece of business we all looked forward to.
Everyone was tired, there was no A/C in the car, but I started a routine that the kids latched onto with enthusiasm - it was against camp rules and probably illegal, but I  jury-rigged everyone's bathing suits to door handles and the radio antenna and we flapped like geese and arrived home with dry suits!
But the big fun was the radio. FM radio was feeling its oats, and loud, static-free music was still a thrill. The kids would sing along with most tunes (they were 9 to 11 year olds) but they waited anxiously for the Four Seasons, first, because everybody lived next door to them (figuratively) and second, they were HOT. When their big '64 hit came on, that Mercury ROCKED! (Click 'Mercury' --Top of your lungs, now - remember, you're 10 years old!)

Man's Best Friend

Over the Christmas break, Diana and I dog/house sat for two mixed labs, a 5-year-old black, 'Clarence,' and a much older white, 'Bruce'.

Clarence & Bruce

"Feed them twice a day; Bruce has the run of the house, but if you go out Clarence has to go in his crate' - a pretty large thingie in the kitchen corner. 'Just say "Kennel up" and he'll go in. Let them outside twice a day - the yard is fenced- and they'll come to the door when they're ready.'

 Perfecto. Two of the nicest dogs EVER, plenty of personality, friendly... they knew what was expected of them and they gave it, but they each pushed the envelope just enough to let you know they knew what they were doing - Clarence would stay out a little longer, every once in a while grabbing a toy and coming to the door with a 'Play with me' look (I gave in twice); Bruce wouldn't go out right with Clarence, he'd hang back for 10 or 15 seconds and give a look like, 'Hey, I'm the Boss. I go out when I damn well please!'
 Clarence would suck up for a pet or a scratch, but Bruce? He'd sit on his bed in the corner and stare you down; when you got up, walked over and gave him a couple of hugs you got a couple - just a couple - of tail wags, like 'That's good...yeah, that's good.'

Those two dogs had more personality than half my friends!
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How Does Trump Compare With Nixon?

I just finished watching 'All the President's Men Revisited.' Redford has produced a reflective masterpiece. I came away with two incontrovertible thoughts:

1. I'd forgotten just how bad Nixon had been. It wasn't just the Watergate burglary, it was the President of the United States and dozens of conspirators, acting with sustained evil, conspiratorial intent.
2. Trump has been FAR WORSE! How can we have missed this obvious comparison? He really needs to resign - impeachment is too good for him - and he should be imprisoned. I would suggest a ten-year sentence, eligible for parole in a year. Oh yeah, and any financial gains he has accrued during his tenure should be confiscated.

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