September 29th

Today is one of, if not the most important day of my life. I say that because on the afternoon of Saturday September 29th in 1979, Susie and I stood on the altar of the Interfaith Chapel at C.W. Post College. 31 years ago today we said our "I dos" and started out on our great adventure! And what an adventure it has been!

I feel that I was truly blessed to find my soul mate and to have spent the last 31 years in the most incredibly magical relationship. You see, we have discovered over the years that we have a different relationship than a lot of married folks we know. We would rather be with each other than with anyone else, and so we do (it seems in comparison) an incredible amount of "stuff" together. Whether it's the mundane stuff like going to the cleaners or to pick up Chinese takeout, or the big stuff like taking kids to college, we are together in it. Go on vacation without the other?? Not gonna happen with us!

We met 33 years ago, on July 3rd, 1977 at a Fourth of July barbeque at mutual friends. It was a set up from the get go as the wife of the couple worked at the hospital with Susie and I had worked with the husband for years. We later found out that getting the two of us together was the major theme of the event, so I guess you could say it was a success! Susie had some fireworks she'd bought visiting her aunt in North Carolina and it was my task to try and set them off! They were duds, but it turned out we were not!

A couple of days after the party we went out with the couple who'd set us up. We spent the day on the boat I had at the time, went out for Chinese food and then played miniature golf. At dinner my fortune cookie said, "You will marry your current lover and be happy". I think fortune cookies were much more perceptive back in the 70s! Well, the cookie was right because I think it was pretty obvious that it was love at first sight for the two of us! I remember the summer of 1977 for two things….the bad thing was there was a NABET strike at ABC that kept us out of work at WABC for almost 6 months. The good thing was that I met Susie and because of the strike, there was lots of time to get to know her better (so perhaps in retrospect, there were two good things to remember from the summer of 77)! That was the beginning and, as they say, the rest is history…and what a history it's been! I asked her to marry me on Christmas, 1978 and then it was the whirlwind that took us Saturday September 29, 1979.

When I started this blog I said that I'd written for years but that there was no consistency to my writing. That is very true, but for one area. You see, for years and years, Susie has not only been the biggest fan of my writing, but also my most consistent reader! I'm not sure when exactly I started doing this (after 31 years some things do fade into the murky part of the brain) but she has been the recipient of my writing on all holidays. From Christmas to her birthday, from Mother's Day to Valentine's Day and all the holidays in between, just giving a card is not enough. On every occasion that a card (or multiple cards in our house) is given, at least one of my cards to Susie has a note in it. It started out with a hand written message but over the years it has grown and now it is typed into the computer and printed out. At least one of every batch of cards I buy Susie is selected with this note in mind. Does it have a nice blank page, is it sized right, will there be a good way to attach my musings to the card….these are all now standard considerations.

So I guess over the years, those card messages have been my most consistent form of writing and Susie my most consistent (or should I say only) reader. She tells me that she has saved them all over the years and one day is going to organize them into a book. I tell her that it will probably be a very boring book because I'm sure I've repeated themes and perhaps even whole passages over the years (I never look back at prior years so I have no idea) but she insists that they are still great. Perhaps that was my blog to Susie before the word blog was even invented! Whatever it is, it has always been a labor of love and a way for me to tell Susie just how special she is to me and how much I cherish our relationship and our life together!

Now some people might just say that we were lucky that we met but I cannot just ascribe it to that. To me it was too perfect to have just been a fluke. Honestly, from the moment we met, we both felt like we'd known each other forever. If you believe in reincarnation, perhaps we were together in another life. Perhaps we have known each other forever! Whatever it is, I have trouble believing it wasn't part of a grand plan and so I replace the word luck with the word bless. I was truly blessed to find the love of my life and we have been blessed for the last 31 years!

Blessing #2 was Billy. 4 years later blessings #3 and #4 showed up when Krissi and Kenny arrived. Wrap them all up with a big bow and you have the blessed life that our last 31 years have been! We've had lots of dreams along the way and amazingly the vast majority of them have come true. That's why Susie is sure we will win the Mega Millions (or Powerball) lottery one of these days too!

So there you have it, the reason that this day is so special and indeed is the anniversary of day that my life really started! 31 years ago today with those two simple words, "I do" my life truly started and what had come before was just preparation. So a big thank you to Maryanne and Bill for that 4th of July party and to the man upstairs for putting my Susie on this earth. And thanks Susie for saying yes and for the most perfect 31 years and life that anyone could ever have. 31 years seems like a long time and when you think back to all that we've done it really does, but in so many other ways it just seems like a blink of the eye! It ain't over yet, and as the Carpenters sang a long time ago, "We've only just begun".

PS – As well as being the love of my life, Susie is also my copy editor. Because of the nature of this blog entry, I am working without a safety net on this one. This entry is a byproduct of me and me alone, so if there are any weird spellings or a comma out of place, or a sentence that doesn't make sense, it's all me! So Happy Anniversary to my Susie and I promise you'll get to proofread everything else! To my readers, thanks for your patience….

Attitude

Attitude – both yours and other's – a huge part of life!

One definition of the word attitude is, "a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item". Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist of the 20th century, defines attitude as a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way". For most of us, attitude is defined as just how pissed we get by the way other people treat us! On a daily basis, we both give, and get attitude, and how we react plays a huge part in how our day goes.

Let's look at what happens in the work place that affects your attitude. You get a new boss who really doesn't know how to do their job, and has no idea what your job is, and what their job's relationship is to your job. You have no respect for them, and you constantly question (to yourself or your co-workers) what exactly they do based on the amount of jobs they pass along. Oh yeah, that's a great attitude builder!

Or maybe you get along well with your boss, and every time you complete a project, they praise your work and stroke your ego by telling you how important you are. Sounds good, right? Well it is…up to a point. What happens when this same person who singles you out with praise, then lumps you in with a bunch of other folks who you work with, and treats you like you are just one of the group? Even worse, what happens when some of these others get perks that you don't?? Have they ever heard the phrase, "actions speak louder than words"?

And it's not just your supervisors who affect your attitude…how about these co-workers? Let's start with the one who you are always doing for, but who never seem to pay you back? Some people are just takers and you really can't expect them to repay the kindness. If you do, you are going to fall hard! Or how about the co-worker who really has no idea what your job is, but is very quick to throw you and what you do, under the bus. What is it with folks who don't know what you do all day, but are always happy to demean you and your part of the work puzzle? Or how about the new guy who acts like you have no idea how to do something you've done for years. Rather than tap your body of knowledge, they go elsewhere and it ends up being the blind leading the blind! Now that can really fry your attitude!

And it's not just at work…what about on the way to or from work? Is there someone on the train who acts like they are at home, playing their IPod as loud as possible, or talking on their cell phone? Have you had someone cut in front of you or push you out of the way on the subway platform? Or how about the driver who cuts you off making you wonder if they got their license at the K-Mart down the street, or if they even have one?? And you're not even at home yet!

How about after you are finally in your "castle" and on opening the mail find a bill from someone who threatens to turn off your electricity (or phone, cable, water, gas, etc.) because they haven't gotten a payment you know you made! Do you really want to attempt to get through their voice prompt system to a human being, or are you pissed off enough already? Let's not even get into what your family can do to you. Kids can push all the right buttons and yep, there goes your attitude!

So here we are, the nice guy or girl who starts out their day just wanting to get through it, and all you've done is dodge attitude from others all day. Bosses, co-workers, family and lots of folks you don't even know, have conspired to ruin your day, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it! Or is there?

Whenever I get smacked down by the forces of life, I think back to a book I read a long time ago by a pop-self help guru, Wayne Dyer. The book was called "Pulling Your Own Springs", and in big letters on the cover of the book, right under the title, were the following words, "Dynamic techniques for dealing with other people and living your life as you choose". An interesting thought…..

He starts right off in the introduction to the book which is titled, "The Philosophy of Non-Victimization", and goes on from there. His theory is that we don't have to let other people and their attitudes change the way we want to live our life. We don't have to let other people "pull our strings", because only we are in control of our life! If you say, "God, does Jane piss me off", you are wrong. Dyer says that Jane does not piss you off, but rather that YOU allow Jane to piss you off! So ultimately WE are in control of our attitude!

So what do you do? Well, according to this philosophy, other's attitude and actions towards you will not control your attitude UNLESS you let it. Is it easy to keep this control? Absolutely not! By far the easiest thing to do is to fall into the trap. To play the "poor me" card and become the victim. But again, you let yourself be the victim, and only you have the power to do that. So don't!

Look, you may not like the way some folks treat you at work, but if you are like me, until you win the Mega Millions Lottery, you need to keep working. The commute or your situation at home may not be perfect either, and it all affects you. I don't know about you, but I'm not the kind of person who can go someplace every day and hate it. So I think back to this book and try (and some days I am more successful than others) not to let others pull my strings. It's not easy in a lot of ways, but I find that life is easier if you keep a positive attitude. Some days this is even harder as others try to pull you into their funk and get you to share the victim attitude, but you just have to remember that YOU are in control of YOU! You may think that this is a real Pollyanna attitude and unrealistic, but think about it…if these folks piss you off, who suffers? YOU!!! If you don't let yourself get pissed off, you don't suffer!

So my advice to you (and to me because we always have to self reinforce this kind of attitude), is to not let others get inside of your head. You are ultimately in control of your attitude, and life is much nicer when you realize that! As Wayne Dyer might say, "Don't let others pull your strings". You may have also heard it expressed another way, and that works for me too. Simply put, "Don't let the assholes get you down!"

NY World's Fair

The first act of this story happened before I was born. I'm speaking of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. The purpose of that fair was to help lift the city and the country out of the great depression, and it was the first fair to look to the future with it's slogan, "Dawn of a New Day". It took place on 1,216 acres of former ash dump, that after the fair would be turned into a city park (This was the same ash dump that F. Scott Fitzgerald's characters passed through on the train ride from West Egg to Manhattan). As a kid growing up in Queens, I knew the park (in fact I'd even skated at the ice rink in one of the surviving buildings from the '39 fair, the New York City Pavilion) and had heard stories of the fair from my father.

Turn the clock ahead to the late 50s and a group of businessmen, who had fond memories of the 1939 Fair, and wanted the same kinds of experiences for their children and grandchildren. The result was the 1964/65 New York World's Fair. If you read the history of this fair today, you will discover that there were all kinds of problems associated with it right from the beginning. Money was, of course, a huge problem, as was sanctioning from the Bureau of International Expositions. But to a group of teens who lived literally down the street from the fair, all that we cared about was that for two summers we'd be blocks away from a huge playground of the future! Even better was the fact that Walt Disney had signed on to design the exhibits in a number of pavilions, so this would indeed be our East Coast Disneyland.

When the New York World's Fair opened in April of 1964, I was a 14 year old boy who lived in Queens just 5 subway stops away on the #7 train. The brand new Fair Subway Special subway cars were our gateway to a place that we would know like the back of our hands by the closing day in October of 1965. The "we" I refer to were my best friends Richard, David and myself, and over the next two fair seasons we spent over 100 days at the fair's Flushing Meadow Park site. Richard and I took the #7 train to the fair, but got on at different stops. In the days before cell phones, we'd try to hook up on the subway, but if we missed each other, we'd meet up at the fair stop. The third member of our group, David, lived on the other side of the park and would come in the Rodman Street entrance, and then the three us would meet up at the Unisphere.

The fair, with the slogan Peace through Understanding, had lots of incredible cultural happenings during it's two years, such as the ability to view Michelangelo's Pieta at the Vatican Pavilion, but the favorites of the three of us were the pavilions of the Industrial area. We knew the song from the Pepsi Pavilion ("It's a Small World After all"…come on, sing along), enjoyed GE's Progressland (which you can still visit in Disney World as the Carousel of Progress), and had even seen Mr. Lincoln talking to us at the Illinois Pavilion (well, when Mr. Lincoln worked!). Thanks to Mr. Disney and others, the 1964/65 World's Fair was a real showcase of new ideas, new products and new ways of doing things! The perfect playground for three teenage boys! Our days started early and didn't end till we'd watch the fountain-and-fireworks show every night at 9 p.m. at the Pool of Industry, just outside the Scott Paper pavilion.

At the Bell System pavilion we got to see and use touch tone phones for the first time. At the IBM Pavilion we loved the way the theater slid up into the huge egg, and we learned about the future of computing. We signed up for pen pals at the Parker Pen pavilion, and looked at the contents of a new time capsule at the Westinghouse pavilion - a match to the one Westinghouse had sunk in the ground at the same spot at the 1939 Fair. We enjoyed the chemical magic show at the Dupont pavilion, got to use a microwave oven for the first time, and even got to taste Belgian Waffles and have chicken chow mein in bowls made of fried noodles! But, as full-fledged car nuts already, many of our days were spent across the Grand Central Parkway from the main fair in the Transportation area.

I remember the Chrysler Pavilion, and getting our first up close look at the Chrysler Turbine Car in its incredible copper color with decidedly Thunderbird design influences. I remember seeing the automotive near future at the General Motors Futurama Pavilion - although I am still waiting for the roadways they claimed we'd have by the year 2000 that would have imbedded control strips in the pavement that would allow drivers to sit back and relax with their passengers while the road controlled the cars! As a died in the wool Ford Fan, I especially remember the Ford Rotunda!

I remember walking up and seeing the Mustangs (which were introduced to the world at that fair) on the carousels outside the pavilion as we waited to get on the ride. As "World's Fair Experts", we were partial to pavilions that had continually moving rides as the line went faster than did those with theater style exhibits. This was how the folks at Disney had constructed the Magic Skyway, so Ford was one of our favorites, and it was one we went to almost every time we were at the fair! The ride started you out in the past - as far back as the dinosaurs - giving you a look at the history of transportation, starting with the invention of the wheel, and then moving you through the present into the future. Of course, the best part of the ride was that, unlike the GM pavilion where you sat in a moving chair, at Ford, you took your ride through time in a Ford Motor Company convertible!

There were lots of family groups going to the fair, so they were often put in one of the big Ford convertibles such as the full size Ford, Mercury or Lincoln cars. As three teenage boys, more often then not, we got one of the smaller cars, like a Falcon convertible or one of the Mustangs. I have to honestly say that from what I remember, the ride was good in a typical Disney way, but it was the ride in a new Ford convertible that kept us coming back! Once you were finished with the ride, there were still lots of Ford cars to see, and even sit in, and of course, the Ford Rotunda state pin to take home as a souvenir!

One of our saddest days was our visit to the fair the day it closed for good, October 17, 1965. It, of course, included a visit to our favorite pavilion, the Ford Rotunda. For three young teenage boys from Queens, the two years since the April 1964 opening had been magical. We always had a destination, and a way to have fun and explore, and at a $2 entrance fee, for not a lot of money. I remember that last day that folks all over the park were taking souvenirs, and that many of the knobs were missing from the Ford cars on the Magic Skyway. Over 40 years later, the memories I have of those two summers spent with my two best friends are some of the best souvenirs I could have. It may also be why my 2000 Mustang convertible is my pride and joy, and my own Magic Skyway vehicle!

WMCA Good Guys

In the 1960s, in New York Radio, WMCA was truly the "Little Radio Station that Could!" In the new "Top 40" radio format, it was the little 5,000 watt station that was 50,000 watt WABC's chief competitor. If as Avis said for many years, #2 had to just try harder, then no one tried any harder that the WMCA Good Guys to put their station over the top. Under the direction of legendary Program Director Ruth Meyer, the DJs at WMCA were everywhere promoting their station and extending what they did on the air to their listeners. While WABC had a huge signal, WMCA and the Good Guys owned many parts of New York City where they had a very good signal. During my time in New York radio, I have been very lucky to work with most of the Good Guys, just not at WMCA.

Most of my introductions came at 1050 WHN in New York where I was hired as an engineer in March of 1972. I graduated from college in June of 1971, and the following fall entered ATS's FCC Exam Prep course and started studying for my First Class Radio Telephone Operators License, which was in those days the entry into most of the New York market's Engineering Departments. Once I completed the course the next spring and passed the FCC tests, with license in hand, I started sending out resumes. One of the best interviews I had was at WHN, and soon after, the Chief Engineer, Pappy Dirkin offered me a job as a vacation relief engineer in their department.

On April 17, 1972 I reported for work, and within a relatively short time of starting my training that day, I was on the air working with a disc jockey! In 1972, WHN's format was a kind of MOR blend in which you might play a Frank Sinatra song, followed by a Herb Albert Tijuana Brass cut, followed by an instrumental. While they did use carts for commercials and some songs, much of the music they played was still via records. In those ancient days of radio, one of the skills you needed was being able to "slip cue" an album. This involved putting the tone arm on the correct cut, and as soon as you heard audio, actually grabbing the surface of the record with your fingers, stopping it, and then backing it up….all with the turntable still spinning underneath the record. Then when you were cued by the DJ you had to let the record go and turn up the audio pot and play the record. If you did it right, there was a seamless start of the record on the air. So I'm sitting on the board in the WHN control room at 400 Park Avenue, trying to grab these records with my nervous sweaty fingers, when this tall man walks into the control room with some papers in his hand. After I start the record, he extends his hand to me and says, "Hi, I'm Jack Spector. These are my music lists and since this is my first day I just wanted to make sure I'd done them correctly." To which I replied, "Beats the shit out of me…it's my first day too!"

Jack had a good laugh out of that, and that was my introduction to Jack Spector, the first of my Good Guys. Jack was a great guy and a lot of fun to work with. He had been everywhere, had done everything, and had great stories, so there was never a dull moment when you worked with Big Jake! A couple of months after we both got there, WHN changed format and became 1050 Country, and shortly after that, I became Jack's regular engineer.

With the change to country also came a new program director, and it was the lady who created the Good Guys, Ruth Meyer. To Ruth, the Good Guys were a Family, and so not only did she come to WHN, but so did a large number of the Good Guys – either in full time rolls, or as weekend guys, or fill in hosts. Over the next couple of years I got to work with Dan Daniel, Joe O'Brien, Dean Anthony, and Ed Baer. Some I got to know very well (Ed Baer was there for a long time and we really became friends out of the station), and others I just worked with for a couple of shifts, but they were all great guys with wonderful stories.

Following what Ruth had done at WMCA, these guys were not just sitting in the studio doing their shows, but they were out in public. We had country shows at area colleges, a big 1050 Country Fair, listener parties at places all over the area, and just about any other kind of promotion that you can think of that showcased the DJs and the station. It was a very interesting experience to be exposed to her and the way she saw a radio station and these guys who were classic radio DJs. The best was being anywhere with a group of them when they'd start to talk about the WMCA days and get into their stories. They were part of a fascinating time in New York Radio, and to hear the stories of these legends that were there was incredible for a young guy just starting in the business!

After 4 years at WHN, I left 1050 and moved down the block and down the dial to WABC (both WABC and WHN's studios were on 54th Street in Manhattan). It was here that I got to know the last piece of my Good Guy Puzzle, Harry Harrison. Having moved right into the WABC Morning Show after leaving WMCA in 1968, Harry was the Morning Mayor of New York. The first morning I was training at WABC, all I had to do was tell Harry that I'd been Jack Spector's Engineer at WHN and had worked for Ruth Meyer, and I was an accepted member of the team!

WMCA's Good Guys were the definition of personality radio. Each of them was different and brought different things to the table, but they were all clearly a part of the team. I was very glad to get to meet and work with so many of them, and get to see what that kind of radio was like. I doubt if it's something we'll ever see again, and in the fractured media world we live in today, that's very understandable, but still sad.

My first Good Guy, Jack Spector died March 8, 1994 while on the air at WHLI on Long Island. Jack had worked a lot of places during his radio career, and as sad as it was that Jack was dead at the young age of 65, I think it was very fitting that he died while on the air doing what he loved. In the words of Jack Spector, your Main Man Jake, "Look out street, here I come!"

September 11th

Anyone who was just about anywhere in the New York Metropolitan area on the morning of September 11, 2001 will always remember that day, and where they were. I know in our family that's the case. My wife Sue was at work at Hampton Street School in Mineola. Our oldest son Billy was in his second year at Ithaca College, and his brother and sister, Krissi and Kenny, were sophomores at Mineola High School. I was at work at WABC Radio, 17 floors above Penn Station.

I remember it was a great looking, if uneventful, September morning. There was just a touch of fall in the air – it was one of those special kinds of days we get after the humidity of summer leaves. I was, as usual, on the 7:24 LIRR train from Mineola to Penn Station. As I said, a totally uneventful September morning in all respects….but that was soon to change.

Shortly after the first plane hit at 8:46 AM, word started to come into the newsroom that a plane had hit the World Trade Center's North Tower. It was primary day in New York, and there were reporters around the city for the various TV morning shows. Almost immediately, Dick Oliver of channel 5 went on the air from Park Row, just outside of City Hall. They weren't the best shots, but you definitely could see the fire and damage to the tower. Everyone assumed that it was a small plane that had hit and no one could understand how someone could have missed seeing a structure as big as the World Trade Center on a beautiful, clear morning. There was speculation of a student pilot, or someone who had a heart attack – just about anything, but what had really happened, which up until that point was unthinkable to most of us.

By 9 o'clock, better pictures of the damage were available on TV, including long shots of the buildings from further uptown. Just before 9:03 AM,I was standing in studio 17E next to Chief Engineer Kevin Plum, when we noticed a plane flying into the frame of the shot. Assuming we were looking at a small plane trying to get a better view of what was happening, one of us commented, "what the heck is that plane trying to do?" At 9:03 we were shocked when we saw that plane (which we later found out was a Boeing 767) crash into the South Tower and explode in a ball of flames. In that moment, everyone who saw that happen live, knew that life as we had known it up until that moment was over, and that there was a brand new reality.

I remember all hell breaking loose at the station as we all went into high gear. There was an incredible amount of misinformation flying around, and frankly, open fear from some. Everyone tried to act professionally, but since no one knew exactly what was going on, and since we were all working 17 floors above Penn Station and a couple of blocks west of the Empire State Building, many wondered if we might be in the target zone too. The next hour was a blur of news reports, discussion and speculation. Shortly after the first plane hit, our morning anchor George Weber took off downtown armed with a cell phone and a recorder. He phoned in a couple of reports about what he was seeing, but as the cell phone system overloaded, we stopped hearing from him. Then at 9:59 AM, the South Tower collapsed. Faces stared at the TV pictures, and as a group, were almost unable to fathom what we'd seen. Less than 30 minutes later the North Tower collapsed, and these twin buildings, which were so identified with the skyline of New York City, were incredibly gone, along with close to 3,000 of our fellow New Yorkers.

So many questions hit us all at once…who would do this, how did it happen, how could these two huge buildings collapse, and one that was on all our minds at WABC, where was George Weber? The news reports continued, but with all the confusion it was hard to tell what was true and what wasn't. Were there more hijacked planes out there, and had other attacks taken place in Washington and elsewhere around the country? Getting a landline phone call was very hard; cell service was pretty non-existent, communications among families and friends was almost impossible. It was over an hour later when we heard from George. He'd walked for blocks from the WTC site and had waited on a line at a pay phone before he was finally able to check in with the station. Okay, we knew one of our friends and coworkers was alive…but what about everyone else.

The day dragged on, and we watched TV as they tried to figure out what had happened, and what was happening. One of the hardest tasks of the day was getting in touch with friends and family, finding out if they were okay, and assuring them that I was fine. The first response of the city was to shut down, and a lot of us wondered how we'd get home. Being above Penn Station, we kept looking down at the crowds milling around a closed Penn Station. We also kept looking a couple of blocks to the east at the Empire State Building and realizing it was once again the tallest building in New York!

Later that day, the Long Island Rail Road started running and those of us from Long Island headed downstairs, and like every other commuter that day, got on any train as long are it was leaving New York City! As we came out of the tunnel into Queens, everyone looked to the south where the twin towers of the World Trade Center had been on the way in that morning, but now were replaced by smoke. It was very quiet in the train as everyone realized that those two buildings we'd seen every day on our commute into Manhattan were gone, along with all the folks who were working in them.

The days after September 11th were very strange to say the least. The fact that there were absolutely no planes in the sky made for a very eerie quiet that was very unlike the norm. I know that for weeks after the planes started flying again, every time one flew over I would find myself stopping and looking at it. Taking the LIRR into the city in the days after September 11th was also different. There was an uneasy quiet on the trains, that I guess came from a lot of folks who would rather be somewhere else, but who had responsibilities and had to do what they were doing. I remember not seeing people that had been regulars on our trains, and wondering if they were in the towers when they came down, or were they perhaps too scared to venture into Manhattan again. Questions I'd never have the answers to….

One thing that made the post 9/11 strangeness livable was the feeling that we were all in it together. There were American flags on houses, cars, businesses…virtually everywhere! Groups were banding together collecting items for families that were affected, or to help rescue workers at Ground Zero. People were friendlier to each other and more respectful…even politicians! From New York City to Washington, the political discourse had a united front. We weren't Republicans or Democrats, Liberals or Conservatives, we were Americans. There was no finger pointing, just everyone shouldering the load and helping to move forward. If every cloud has to have a silver lining, that was September 11th's. Unfortunately, 9 years later, even that's gone.

The Box

This is a story about my father, World War II, Italy, the Metropolitan Opera, and my relationship to it all. Let's start at the beginning…..the very beginning!

My father, Frank D'Elia, was born in 1910 on the lower east side of Manhattan. He was one of 13 kids in a typical big Italian family, and like many kids of his generation, never went to high school because he had to go out into the world and earn money to help support his family. My father was different from many folks in those days though, in that his chosen profession was an opera singer. Jobs were hard enough to find, but finding a job as an opera singer was even harder. Long story short, that's why he was very happy when he got to audition and then was offered a job in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, the Germans and the Japanese were edging the world towards war and this would impact my father's life in a very large way.

Sometime in that first year of being a member of the Met chorus, he got his draft notice! After years of struggling and scraping by while supporting his family, he was finally at the point where he had a regular job, and now the US Army was going to change all that. He went to his draft board, looking to get an extension so that he could at least complete the 1940 season before reporting for duty. I remember his story about the man at the draft board telling him that it was people like him that wouldn't want to help if Hitler was marching up 5th Avenue. My father's retort was that, "if Hitler was marching up 5th Avenue, I doubted that a short, fat opera singer is going to make much of a difference!" Well, I guess that was enough to convince them to give him that extension, so he finished out his first season at the Met, and then went off to the army.

Based on the established idea of how the army did business, my Dad was sure that he'd be sent off to some area where his background and experience would have no use to him. That's why he was very surprised to be assigned to Camp Upton, in Yaphank on Long Island, to audition for the Irving Berlin all solder show, "This is the Army". He passed the audition and joined the cast that included Broadway actors, movie stars, musicians from famous orchestras, and one singer from the Metropolitan Opera! For most of my childhood we'd be watching a movie or TV show, and my Dad would point out one of his "army buddies" that he'd traveled the world with in the show.

Well, the show opened on Broadway where it played for 6 months, did a National Tour, spent 6 months in Hollywood making the Warner Brother's movie, "This is the Army" and embarked on a world tour that included famous theaters, and army, navy and marine installations around the world. My Dad made friends and had experiences that he talked about for the rest of his life. Some of the places they performed were regal and some just a thrown together stage in the jungle, and their audiences ranged from Presidents and royalty, to groups of soldiers who had just come out of combat and who would be heading right back into it after the show.

In 1944, after playing for American and Allied troops around England, the cast thought they had reached the end of the road and the show would be disbanded. General Eisenhower, however, thought that the show would be a great moral tool for his troops, and requested from Washington that the show play to Troops at the front. The request was approved and in February of 1944 they sailed for North Africa, and after 2 weeks there, sailed for Naples, Italy. In Naples they were billeted in the partially destroyed palace of Victor Emmanuel, and that's where my story picks up.

This was not my father's first visit to Naples. During the 30s, he had sailed from New York to Naples with his voice teacher Madame Novelli. Madame Novelli was originally from Naples, and they stayed with her family for several months while visiting there. Among the members of the family was a young man about my father's age, and the two of them became fast friends. Turn the clock ahead to 1944 and the American liberation of Naples. As soon as the "This is the Army" company got to Naples, my Dad looked for his old friends and found them living at the same address he'd visited as a young man. The war years had not been kind to his Italian friends, and my father did all he could to get them food and other supplies that they'd been years without. One of the benefits of this was that my Dad got to eat with the family, and had home cooked Italian meals for the first time in several years.

The royal palace in Naples had been German headquarters in the city, and as such was a favorite target of the allied bombings. My Father would tell stories of sleeping in incredibly opulent surroundings with bomb blasted holes in the roof. The doors at the palace were about 10 feet tall and decorated with intricately carved and painted 4 inch by 10 inch panels. In a typical GI move, my Father pried one of these panels off the door as a souvenir. He told his friend about this and even took it with him to dinner one night to show the family. His friend said that he knew a wood carver and how would my father like it if he could get him to carve a box to match the panel, and use the panel as the lid? My Father liked that idea, and a plan was hatched. About a week later at dinner, his friend showed him the box. The wood carver had done an excellent job of matching the lid, and the carving was exquisite. All that was left was to paint the box to
match the lid, and my father's souvenir would be completed. He left them that night and promised to be back for dinner in 2 nights, and in turn, he was promised that the box would be ready for him to take. As they say, best laid plans.

On the afternoon of the second day, the "This is the Army" company was ordered to load their trucks and be ready to leave Naples within 45 minutes. The Allied forces were continuing up the Italian boot and their show was needed closer to the front lines to entertain the troops. There was no time to get to his friends' house and no way to tell them what was happening, so that was the last of his stay in Naples, and of the carved box. That happened in 1944 and was but a brief episode in all the escapades of the "This is the Army" troop, as they continued through Europe and eventually island hopped in the Pacific theater too. Believe me, I heard lots of "This is the Army" stories growing up, but none of them was any more prominent that the story of "The Box"! The stories of "This is the Army" continued, especially every 5 years when the alumni of the company would get together for a reunion.

So now turn the clock forward to the summer of 1971. I've just graduated from college and we've planned a 4 week trip through Europe. It starts at the Ford of Germany plant in Cologne, Germany where we picked up a new Capri. We traveled through Germany, Switzerland and down one side of the Italian boot and up the other side. I very distinctly remember the day we got to Naples. After getting situated in the hotel room, my Dad went down to the lobby and found a phone book. He looked up the last name of his friend's family and found a listing at the exact same address they'd lived at during the war. My Father placed a call and when a young lady answered, he explained who he was and asked for his friend by name. She said that he was looking for her Grandfather and that she'd get him. In a few minutes his friend, who he hadn't seen or talked to in over 25 years, came to the phone. He couldn't believe that this voice from his past was on the phone and was in Naples. One of the first thing he said as they stated the conversation was, "Frank…I've got your box!".

That was almost 40 years ago, and was the culmination of a story I'd heard my Father tell all my life. Now his story of "The Box", the souvenir that got away, had a new, and almost impossible to believe ending! My Dad died in 1983, but I must admit that I have continued to tell the story, and I guess keep him and his "This is the Army" stories alive. My Father was a great story teller, and after growing up on so many of these stories, and then finally seeing the movie in my teens, I feel very connected to this time in my Father's life.

Oh…and the box? It's on my Mother's coffee table in her living room, as it has been since we returned from Europe in 1971, and it completed it's trip started in 1944!

Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story

Hurricane Earl….boy have we heard a lot about that guy this past week! Thanks to the advances in weather forecasting, we can now follow tropical depressions as they come off the coast of Africa. This gives the weather folks a lot of time to build up their stock of adjectives and to really get to know a storm before it blows itself out somewhere over the Canadian Maritime Provinces! Such was the case with our friend Earl.

Earl came blowing up the coast earlier this week, and about Monday or Tuesday, you could already hear the media start to lick their lips! I'm reminded of the old phrase, "never let the facts get in the way of a good story" when I look back at the way the media treated our friend Earl this week. Earl was a category 4 Hurricane as it headed towards the east coast of the country. That immediately made the media folks start to salivate – forget the fact that it was not over land but warm ocean water which did nothing but help Earl get stronger – as they speculated on where (not if) it would hit the east coast. Coverage plans were already being made and reporters were assigned to do prep work and to start beating the drum.

On Wednesday night, a local TV news station led off their 10 PM newscast with a reporter standing on the side of the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn holding a sand bag telling us that the Belt Parkway could be under water! Then he was at a beach in Queens talking about the devastation that would take place there. Finally he was at a sea wall in Brooklyn talking about how the flood surge would wash over at this area and flood the house behind him. Only after all this hype, at the end of the report, did he very quietly say something to the effect, "and that's what could happen to this part of southern Brooklyn and Queens were it to suffer a direct hit from a category 4 hurricane like Earl." Even then ALL the computer models showed that Earl would most likely travel off the coast, and at, best would be a wind and rain storm for us! Never let the facts get in the way of a good story….

I think the problem stems from the fact that east coast meteorologists – both government and private – are very jealous of their mid-west counterparts. I have the feeling that they think that these folks get a lot more respect than they do because they work in an area that spawns tornadoes! When a weather forecaster says that there are conditions in the area that are ripe for a tornado to develop, people listen. When a forecaster reports that a tornado has been spotted and that the projected path is heading right at you, you take cover. When an east coast meteorologist tells us on Tuesday that a big storm will be here on Thursday most people say, "Hey, they can't tell me if it's going to rain this afternoon and I'm supposed to believe them about something happening in 48 hours??" Like an old Rodney Dangerfield routine, they just get no respect!

So when a hurricane heads up the coast or a big snow storm looks like it's on the way, they always seem to go overboard. I know they would tell you that they are more comfortable to err on the side of caution and give us the worst case scenario, but frankly, I think they see it as a way to finally get even. I think they are secretly happy! "Now they'll listen to us", they think, and so the storm projection or the severity of the impact on us gets ramped up just a bit. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story….

The rest of the media is only too happy to join in and pulls out all stops. You know news directors all over the region are thinking, "will this be the big one?" "Will this be the Katrina of the North East?" And thinking that, they send reporters out to every beach and shore spot they can find – even when those same reporters end up doing reports with a backdrop that looks more appropriate for a Fourth of July story than a Hurricane Devastation story! "Hey, we're just trying to make sure the public is aware of what could happen if Earl should turn towards the coast!", I'm sure my fictitious news director would say if questioned. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story….

One meteorologist that I have a lot of respect for is Craig Allen of Newsradio 88, WCBS in New York. Craig has been at it for over 30 years and to me seems to be much more reasonable, and therefore much more accurate than a lot of his fellow forecasters. On Wednesday evening, when all the computer models had the storm off the coast, and the only variable seemed to be how far off the coast, Craig was on the air giving an honest forecast of what he saw. He even showed a bit a skepticism regarding a change the National Weather Service had made in watches and warnings for the area saying he just didn't see what they obviously were seeing. I trust Craig because over the years, he, in my opinion, has developed a track record of accuracy that has earned him my trust.

So another storm passes amid much hype that didn't turn out as the media expected. Another false warning given to the area that may have dissuaded folks from heading to the beach for the last weekend of the summer. Another over the top representation of the conditions that may have hurt shore businesses in their last money making weekend of the summer. I know I may sound a bit like the Mayor in the movie Jaws, but really, what advantage is there in constantly crying wolf? Is it because folks were pretty tired of the Ground Zero Mosque story and the coming of Earl gave us something else to talk about? I just wonder what's going to happen one of these days when the real warning comes about the real hurricane or snow storm or Nor'easter, and no one listens! There'll be a hell of a story to report on then, and a lot of finger pointing as to what led to the disaster, but somehow I doubt they'll assess any blame on themselves. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story….

Facebook

Facebook

Wikipedia says, "Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004…with more than 500 million active users in July 2010. Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. ….Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to become a member of the website….Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade 'best-of' list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabble before Facebook?" Social Networking, huh? Well, I guess that's a nice way to put it!

I became part of the Facebook community kind of through the back door. There was a picture that someone at WABC showed me of a much younger me sitting at the board in the old WABC studios at 1330 Avenue of the Americas (in fact, it's this very same picture that graces my profile on this blog). He told me that Phil on the WPLJ side of the floor had found it on the internet. When I asked Phil where he'd gotten it, he emailed me a web address. Turned out it was from someone's Facebook page, and the only way I was able to get the picture was to register for Facebook…so I did!

Now let me stop this narrative and give you a little background. I had been strictly forbidden by my 3 children (Bill 27, Krissi and Kenny 23) from joining Facebook. They felt that this was something that belonged to them, if you will, and that they didn't think it was a place for their folks. I honestly understood that, as I really didn't want to know every little detail of their young adult lives, so Facebook wasn't even something on my radar…till this picture came up.

Well, I completed the sign up, signed in, found the picture, downloaded it, signed off, and thought no more about Facebook….until the first person found me a couple of months later! Out of the blue there was a notification from Facebook sitting in my email inbox that I had a "friend request". A friend request??? What the heck is that, I thought. So I followed the link and signed into Facebook. I don't remember who that first "friend" was, but I know they were someone from my past who I never in a million years thought I'd ever hear from again. WOW, I thought, this could be cool! So they had the hook in!

I spent some time and filled in some of the background information that they wanted. Told them school names, where I'd worked, etcetera. - No, I didn't give them a lot of info, so don't worry that I committed the Facebook sin of telling too much – and signed off. The next thing I know, my inbox is full of notifications of friend requests from folks. They were people I use to work with at WABC, WHN or WOR, people from high school, people from college, the sister of my best friend, and lots more! There were people I hadn't heard from in years, and people I see every day at work. Even Gloria who I went to first grade, with and who played Mrs. Clause to my Santa in our first grade Christmas play at Garden School!

I tried to be very conservative at first and didn't seek out friends, but rather let them find me. I didn't want to be one of those folks who worried about how many friends they had, and who seemed to need to win the numbers game, but eventually I too started looking for folks from my past. I am still conservative and won't accept friend requests from people I don't know (why would you…what are they, your audience??) and only have about 150 friends. In the couple of months I have been involved in Facebook, I have discovered some interesting things about my "friends", and I bet these same types exist on everyone's friend list!

The first Facebook member is the person that has to tell you EVERYTHING that is gong on in their life! I mean the ones that say things like, "taking a nap now, then out to dinner with family" or "rotten day at work…stopping at the bar in Penn on the way home." These folks also seem to be the ones with a smart phone and manage to give you up to the minute updates on their every situation. "WOW…long line of traffic to get into the parking lot at Jones Beach" or "I'm really wasted..hope I can make it back to the bar from the men's room". The more obsessive ones also seem to have a camera with them at all times, and there is almost always a photo tagged to the update!

The second type of member is the one that seems to be on 24 hours a day! Sign on at 7:30 in the morning and they're there. Sign in at noon…yep, there too. 3PM…you got it…still on! 10 at night…ditto. Can't sleep and you're cruising at 3 AM and they are still on! Now, perhaps this is a case of folks that never sign off, but it's really strange when they always seem to be on line! This person is also bound to be the one signed on via their office computer and sometimes even the ones that bitch about their boss or work load!

Then there are the ones that post links to anything and everything you can think of! These folks obviously spend lots of time everyday on the internet looking for things to link to their Facebook wall for the enjoyment of the rest of us. I want to grab some of them and say, "Hey…I can use Google too"…but I don't.

Then there are the game players. You can read about their crops and pigs in Farmville, cheer along with them as the get gems, and God knows what else! I suffered through these friends till I realized you could tell Facebook not to show them. Thank you Facebook!

I hear a lot of people my age bemoaning what the younger generation shares with the world on Facebook, and the amount of time they spend on line. You know those inappropriate posts we've all seen…like the picture of you doing a keg stand last weekend, or the obviously drunken pictures from the strip club, or the bitching about your boss, workmates, family, or whatever else you can imagine. "These kids today, (him…sounds like a line from Bye Bye Birdie) this living on the internet is going to come back and bite them in the ass!" Well, I do believe that, but it seems to me that there are lots of folks of an older demographic doing the exact same thing! I see posts every day from people who's 20s are but a dim memory posting complaints about their boss or work load (and during the hours they're at work), putting up pictures that are at best of a questionable nature, posting hundreds of times a week, telling me intimate details of their life, and just sharing too much information! I heard two people complaining recently about a mutual Facebook friend who was doing exactly that. I had to laugh when one of them said to the other, "Well what do you expect from a 65 year old man who spends all day on Facebook!"

So Facebook…wonderful tool or curse? I can see how it can go both ways and I guess a lot of it is your choice of friends, kind of like in real life! Did you know that there is a Facebook command that allows you to ignore your "friends" without them knowing? I tell you…gotta hand it to those 4 Harvard students who put Facebook together. Geniuses!!

What am I doing here?

So why have I started this blog? Good question...lets see if I can answer it.


Ever since I was a kid there has been something that fascinated me about being a writer. Perhaps it was because of books I read by authors like John Steinbeck that moved me, or perhaps it was because putting words on paper seemed somewhat easy for me when it wasn't for others, or perhaps it was from watching the Dick Van Dyke Show and seeing how much fun Rob, Sally and Buddy had in the Writers' Room on the Allan Brady Show! For whatever reason, I have been a closet writer for a number of years (no...I don't write about or in closets) and have even sold a couple of items to magazines. I have come up with some great ideas for articles and even written "pitch letters", started short stories, written some kid's stories that got my own kids' seal of approval when they were young, thought about book plots, and even committed some actual words to paper. I started on a Royal Portable typewriter in the last century, moved on to a huge IBM desk top computer and dot matrix printer, and now am on a small laptop. Through the years I've had bursts of activity and turned out the beginnings of some things that seemed to me to be going in the right direction. So why haven't I done more? If I had to be honest, I'd say it's because I'm just not committed enough to turn the idea into reality!


In reading books by authors about the craft of writing you read over and over again about how you must treat it has a job. You must be committed to spending time at your craft. You need to set aside time every day to write. You must write every day! I even saved the following quote in my Kindle from Sue Grafton's novel, U is for Undertow, "Writing's hard. It's a skill you attain by practicing. You don't just dash off good work in your off hours. You can't be halfhearted. It takes time. You want to be a concert pianist, you don't slog your way through Five Easy Pieces and expect to be booked in Carnegie Hall. You have to sit down and write. As much as you can. Everyday of your life."


So there's the rub as they say. Am I committed enough make the transition from thinking about doing it to really doing it? As I've said, I have always written to some extent. Bless the love of my life, my wife Susie, she is my biggest cheerleader and has always told me I am a writer (and volunteered the information to whoever would listen). So the encouragement is there. Through the years lots of folks have taken advantage of whatever ability I have with the written word and have asked me to "ghost write" speeches, college application essays, complaint letters, job resumes, newspaper articles, and even award nominations and recommendation letters. I've had friends say to me, "Can you help me with this...you're the writer", so there are others beyond my loving wife who admit I have some ability to string written words together. So we come back to the word commitment. Am I willing to make the commitment to spend some time on a consistent basis and work at this?


That's where this blog comes into play. A germ of an idea started running around my brain when I found a blog of a favorite writer of mine a couple of months ago. He's the kind of writer I love to read. One who fills his work with believable stories of people you care about. They are not great novels in the Steinbeck, Hemingway or Fitzgerald style, but rather short stories of real people and of important, funny or interesting events in their lives. His name is Ed Lowe and for many years he was a columnist for Long Island's Newsday. I was a faithful reader and even went so far as to write a letter to Mr. Lowe on a column that particularly moved me back in 1986 shortly after our twins Kenny and Krissi were born. I'd missed his work and was happy to find a new way to connect with him and his stories (if you are not familiar with Mr. Lowe's work or if you are and you too would like to re-connect with him, I suggest you check out his blog, Ed Lowe, Himself at http://edlowehimself@blogger.com).



Anyway, I am reading Mr. Lowes' blog entries and I am loving it! Rather than having to wait hours or days or weeks for the next installment, here I had a compendium of his writing. Much like having the entire series of an author's novels on hand so you can end one and start the next, I can finish one column and start the next (Mr. Lowe is at a very interesting place in his life and along with the stories of others, you also get a very good look at what he is going through. Rather than even attempt to share that with you, I suggest you sit back and let him take you along with him. He will do it with much more humor and insight than I could ever provide.). So while I am in the middle of becoming reacquainted with Ed Lowe and his work, an idea hits me...why don't I get one of these blogs and see if I can find the commitment to write something on a regular basis?

That's where I am now. I started this back in July when we were on vacation in Ocean City, NJ. A topic would hit me or something would happen that inspired me and I'd write an essay (I guess that's what you'd call it...my ego isn't so large that I could call it a column). As you can see from the history of my blog, this has been, at best, a random and occasional endeavor on my part. Back to that word commitment. I guess the point of this particular entry in my blog is an agreement between me and well, me to try and do this on a more regular basis. If I am successful at that I guess the next step will be to see if I can get someone other than Susie to read this. Perhaps I'll be one of those folks who share things with "friends" via Facebook (hey...if you can hear about someone getting a new pink pig or fertilizing their Farmville crops, you can put up with my sharing too). Perhaps if I have the feeling that I have responsibility to others I will find the commitment I need to do this on a regular basis. Perhaps I am just blowing smoke and nothing will change...time will tell!