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.