The Newell Post

Number 10

Number 9

Number 8

Number 7

Number 6

Number 5

Number 4

Number 3

Number 2

And the number one reason I love President Trump.

Number 1

Growing up in a pre AC era I often recall days like today when the mercury reached 100+ and wonder how did we survive without air conditioning? I actually remember the day we got our first fan. It happened to be my 6th birthday; it was a Cool Home fan. That wasn’t my birthday gift but it could have been, even a fan was a welcomed addition.

Then a few years later we got a second fan. On Leland Avenue, we were hi rollers. As a kid we never really stayed in the apartment during the day so I guess the heat never seemed to bother us. We would play on the shady side of the street and take a break when there was no shady side of the street.

But the worst was yet to come. When I turned 18 and got a job in the mailroom at Lorillard Corp and had to take the IRT 6 train to Grand Central, and a new level of torture by heat presented itself.

Now, you were hot from the moment you stepped out on to Leland Avenue and made your way over to the Parkchester station. But then getting on the 6 was like entering a sauna. In fact, we used to joke and say, “It’s like a sauna in here,”

Ok, so we weren’t funny, but it was freakin hot. The sweat dripped right off your head onto your NY Times, which you had to fold in a very special way, the art of which has been lost unfortunately, but where was I? Yeah, it was freakin hot. But it got better.

We got to 125th and changed for the downtown express. The train was right across the platform and it was already jammed with people. However, if you positioned yourself, as I always did, right by the door so that you could scoot over and just squeeze yourself into the little bit of the free space available, you were able to make the train.

I was not the only one, though, who wanted to make the train and it was not unusual for me to have barely squeezed in to suddenly find myself on the opposite side of the car, having been crammed through like the chopped meat at Lenny’s butcher shop. This, of course, only made it freakin hotter.

This tender memory of days gone by does absolutely nothing to help me deal with today’s heat. It is unfortunate that I am no longer 18 as I think that would have enabled me to cope better. Not having to commute on the Long Island Rail Road in this summer of hell does take the sting out of the weather.

I do take comfort that there is no snow to shovel or ice to chip and I will try to focus on taking a dip in the pool that while I try to remember those halcyon days or extracting my shoe out of the melting surfaces of the city streets

I Say…You Say…Or My Night With A Knight

Late one night, a night that would soon change to early one morning, in the middle of November, 1963, I heard a song on my Dick Tracy transistor radio (a story for another time) that would change my life for ever. I heard it once around midnight and I couldn’t go to sleep until I heard it again. The song was I Want To Hold Your Hand by a group from England of all places.

Well, I wasn’t the only one who heard that song as the Beatles came roaring into our lives. You might say they saved our lives. I always thought that their first hit, my all time favorite song that I heard back on that November night in 1963 was exactly what the country needed just a few weeks after I first heard it.

In the Dark Days that followed when we were sucker punched by Lee Harvey Oswald we needed someone to hold our collective hands and the Beatles showed up just in the nick of time. The trouble was not everyone got the Beatles. Some ridiculed their look; others denied their harmony and musical talent. This was when I was introduced to the world that would become the 60’s and while it took a few years for it all to sink in, my worldview was altered forever.

All these emotions presented themselves to me last night as I sat in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium with my family. It was Eileen’s coming out party, as she liked to describe it (she was one year removed from breast cancer and surgery). There I was, in the Bronx, where 48 years ago I heard I Want To Hold Your Hand back in my bed at 1261 Leland Avenue, waiting for Paul McCartney to take the stage. When he finally did I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Fortunately I did neither but I must have had a quizzical look on my face because Eileen kept asking me if I was alright.

So Paul or as I like to refer to him Sir Paul, just started singing around 8:30 and didn’t leave till around 11:20. Hello Goodbye; Eleanor Rigby; Jet; and perhaps the shocker of them all, A Day In A Life. I tried to take snippets of all the songs but every time he went to the piano I just knew he was going to sing Hey Jude. But, as luck would have it, that did not come till the end of the show and as I started my video that sick little twirling spiral indicating that my iPhone was shutting down appeared on my screen. Oh well, I’ll get it tonight at my second night with a Knight.

An Anglophile’s Delight

This has been some weekend. It began, as the best weekends often do, on Thursday night. Bryan and I went to see Deathly Hallows Part 2 and it was spectacular. It may not have included all of the back-stories we would have liked but it was terrific all the same. We certainly will be going back for another viewing.

I guess this desire for redundant experiences in English culture was again exhibited the following two nights as we set off to Yankee Stadium, not to see Derek Jeter add to his 3000 hits, but to hear the hits of another icon of Brit lit, Sir Paul, He’s still a Beatle, McCartney. Now some of you may not recognize the producer of self proclaimed silly love songs as nothing more than a rock icon. But Billy Shakespeare himself would have chucked his sonnets for the opportunity to hear Sir Paul sing A Day In A Life and Give Peace A Chance. Nor would you ever hear a Yankee Stadium crowd serenade the Bard as we did Sir Paul, recognizing him in the traditional Yankee Stadium Bleacher Creature Roll Call.

The show Friday evening was so spectacular and was matched by an equally spectacular show on Saturday that it will take several weeks for me to stop thinking about being 13 and listening to the Beatles on our Hi Fi back on Leland Avenue. Of course facing myself in the mirror while shaving should put an end to those time travels but only for a moment.

It may be just a little ironic that someone deemed a Patriot will be forced to plead the fifth but that is not what I am writing about.

I am Pleading The Fourth.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Americans have been celebrating the Fourth of July for 241 years, ever since the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Thirteen Colonies became Thirteen Independent States. Then, with the adoption of the Constitution Thirteen years later, the fun really began.

We were and we are one nation. Some like to add “under God” to it and some resent the extra words. We have focused on this disagreement and many more others of late thereby highlighting all that we hate about “Them”.

“Them” could be the people who watch MSNBC or FOX News. It’s all in the eye of the viewer. Whichever side you support, tolerance for the opposite view has gone the way of the musket. We don’t like each other anymore.

America has a long history of not liking each other.

Put your group (HERE) and you can be pretty sure at some time people didn’t like members of your group. Many may still not.

Back in the day when young people were singing peace and love songs and burning cannabis instead of flags and crosses, many of us extolled the similarities that we all shared. We weren’t so much into promoting diversity as much as ignoring our differences of color and faith and national origin as well as sexual orientation and recognizing that we are all brothers and sisters sharing a common humanity.

It was easy to do this in The Bronx. Even in neighborhoods that were predominantly white, there were Jews, Protestants, and Catholics (no one advertised they were an atheist and we didn’t know the word agnostic). There were Germans, Italians, Irish, Polish, Greeks, and they all hyphenated “American” onto their identity.

In school and as our neighborhoods evolved blacks and hispanics were added to the Bronx American Dream and, yes, life was never perfect but we did our best to get along and I think we pretty much succeeded,

When Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 there was some jubilation in Catholic households, well Irish households. I was never quite sure the non-Irish members of our Church were ever that happy about it.  But the point is, anyone who voted for Nixon was still a proud American. No one talked trash about either of the candidates or about each other’s political party.

All Men Are Created Equal.

I always like saying that you couldn’t put All In The Family on TV today. We have gotten so intolerant that good old fashioned satire is taboo. I think the same is true about The Declaration of Independence, at least that portion above.

I know that statement excludes women but I think it is a good thing.

In order to evolve as a people, we must understand our past. Excluding women in that statement may offend us today, and, even though an argument can be made that it made for a better sentence by not adding  …and women to it, women were not equal at the time of its writing. You can be damn sure that blacks did not come under that umbrella either.

The Constitution went even further and had to be amended to correct it.

It’s to our betterment to remember that our Founding Fathers were not perfect. It keeps us honest by knowing that. Our leaders today are also not perfect. It took the people and voters over the 241 years of this blessed country’s history to get us this far and we are not done.

We fought a Civil War because we could not see beyond our own shortsighted views. Let’s not make the same mistake.

We argued about immigrants when  they were coming from Ireland and then from Italy and then from China and then from Eastern Europe. We also learned that each of these groups added so much to our nation and perhaps we can learn from that past and apply it to the new immigrants who are being castigated today.

So, whether you are hosting a BBQ or going to the beach or just watching the Macy’s Fireworks on TV, think about the history behind the celebration. While it may have been an imperfect start, no one I know is unhappy with the result.

There are differences among us. Regional, racial, religious, and political, differences that can cause terrible things to be said and written about each other. I stopped posting onto Facebook because of these differences and I let them dictate how I interact with the world.

No more.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July and it is a holiday that expresses the common heritage that we all share and enjoy.

Happy Fourth of July

Somebody, please take the phone away from the President! It’s bad enough living in a country that would elect such a moron ( I apologize to all the morons for that) but to have him boast our stupidity to the world just makes it worse.

I have tried to be silent. I have stayed off Facebook because I just couldn’t read all the nonsense that some have posted over the last year. It used to be a nice way to keep in touch with family and friends separated by distance but now I see Facebook as a source of annoyance.

If only our President viewed Twitter in the same light!

Calling out the Mayor of London after the most recent terrorist attack in London and misquoting him in the process should spur even Steve Bannon to rip the phone out of Trump’s hand. But then again, Bannon is the architect of this dismal regime.

By the way, has anyone heard from Paul Ryan? I think a search committee should be formed and a manhunt organized ASAP. His poor family must be out of their minds in worry.

I blamed Hillary for not slapping Trump’s face during one of the debates and walking off the stage. I think she would have won had she done that. It’s too bad that none of the Republican candidates could man up to smack this bully down.

Someone pointed out something during Trump’s Excellent Adventure Abroad. Next time you see Millenium ( I like to call her that) and Trump coming down from Air Force 1, take a look at her face. She cringes as he touches her. No wonder she lives in New York.

My wife and I moved to Florida in January. After living in East Quogue, in the Hamptons, for over 33 years you would think we had a major life adjustment to experience. We really didn’t at first.

The entire month of January was basically R and R. We were exhausted from all that we went through getting our house emptied of a lifetime of memories. I was scared that I would have seller’s remorse once I was no longer living in East Quogue, but, as I told our children, we sold our house not our home.

Nevertheless, we did leave all our friends and family behind. That was hard to take. But somehow we survived and got a nice tan to boot.

Knowing full well that friends and family would accompany us on our new journey made it easier. Three of my nieces, Patty, Kathy, and Noreen, were down a few weeks ago. Sean was down last week to help us unload our POD as was my niece Liz. Eileen’s sister, Aunt Mary is now with us so family is taken care of. Jeannine is down this weekend and Bryan is coming down Monday. My two sisters, Maureen and Barbara are in Stewart, just a few hours away as are two of Maureen’s daughters, Connie and Marybeth, and Barbara’s daughter Liz. My nephew Chip, Maureen’s son is also down here frequently.

Eileen’s brother Kevin and his wife Eileen are a half hour away and Eileen’s other brother Jimmy and his wife will be making an appearance in two weeks.

My long time friend Freddy is in nearby Venice and we have gotten together a few times. He helped me set up our gas grill, I handed him the screws.

Other friends also will be coming by I have no  doubt. John was down in February and I know he will be back. Mike will be coming down in October and again in March for Yankee Spring training. Lou will hopefully come down along with PJ maybe for the reunion PJ would host in Hampton Bays?

We have also made a few friends down here thanks to our long time friend, Connie who has introduced us to Tuesday Night Trivia which we play with her and Lucille, Connie’s sister, and Lucille’s husband Brian.

Connie also introduced us to Sue and Larry who have become good friends.

Despite all of this activity and company I had a unique, somewhat unsettling experience the other evening.

I was sitting on the lanai with Eileen looking out at our pool and the pond our property borders when I had an odd sensation. I felt as if I had been sitting on our deck in East Quogue having a Blue Point summer ale when I blinked and here I was sitting on a lanai with a pool. I had a complete life reset. What was is no more. What is presents an entirely new way of life.

I wasn’t experiencing remorse or anything that could be deemed painful but it was an odd feeling still the same.

I am not sure retiring and living in East Quogue would have been good for me. I think this reset of mine is just what I needed. I needed to have new routines, new things to do, new people to meet, a new way of life.

The beauty of it all is that I didn’t have to lose my old way of life. My family is still my family and I am in contact with them every day. We don’t see each other as frequently as I would like and the visits have to be arranged and booked but we will still get to see them. (I am secretly sending subconscious vibrations encouraging them to relocate to Bradenton so that may change the situation.)

I know I will have my friends in my life no matter where we live and I will be coming to NY for Yankee games and Jet games and for holidays so there will be opportunities for get togethers. (The Yankees are playing at home on my birthday so I am working on a plan…)

Resets are necessary sometimes. I have a MAC and sometimes I have to reboot to get it working again. Our garbage disposal wasn’t working and we hit the reset button and it works just fine.

I suppose that, in life, there is a distinction with self-inflicted resets and those thrust upon you by outside forces.

Mine was self-inflicted and has been a most pleasant experience with some minor inconveniences and bumps along the way. We have other resets thrust upon us that were life altering and not at all pleasant. You endure those and try to relish in your self-inflicted resets.

The one thing that has changed for me is relying on Facebook for social networking and contact. The entire Washington fiasco and the bitterness on both side of the political spectrum has caused me to shun the Facebook check in that I used to do on an hourly basis.

I tweet and rarely get any feedback which is kind of nice. It’s like shouting in a forrest and not caring if anyone hears you yelling or a tree falling

I suppose that is what happens in a reset.

Listening to a little Cat Stevens this morning, I was instantly  brought back to 1261 Leland Avenue on a typical summer’s Saturday morning. Feeling a little “tired” from the night before, it would not be uncommon to grab my camera and whatever book I was reading at the time and head downtown.

Walking over to the Parkchester station of the 6 train on a hot Saturday afternoon was glorious. There was no air conditioned subway to take me to 59th Street, but it was glorious nonetheless.

I used to love to look north from the subway platform and see the beautiful Bronx layed out in all its splendor. Even the rumble of the approaching train could not destroy the image.

The train was not nearly as crowded as the day before when daily commuters made their way to midtown or Wall Street. In those days we merely said we were going Downtown. After all, The Bronx was up and the Battery was down.

Part of my recollection to that typical Saturday morning circa 1970 included the books that I would be reading. No murder mystery. No Tom Clancy or Nelson DeMille. If JK Rowling had written a book, I hadn’t heard of it back then.

No, I was reading Herman Hesse, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and anybody who would make me wonder about life and the universe.

My single lens reflex camera was loaded with KodaChrome or KodaColor (KodaColour for my English cousins). Digital only applied to the finger that would activate the shutter.

The big decision of the day was weather to transfer to the 4 or 5 express at 125th street or to stay on the 6. Either way, I would disembark at 59th Street.

As you got to the top of the stairs to the street level of 59th Street, you were first struck by the heat. Even though the subway and the underground passages getting to the street were an inferno, somehow, when you got above ground and onto the sidewalk, it seemed even hotter.

The only way to beat this heat was to head west and go to Central Park.

I always entered on the Central Park South end of the Park and had a very defined route. It would take me over hills and around softball fields and to the Bethesda Fountain. The fountain was beautiful but it was the  terrace in front of it that was the attraction in those days.

Hundreds of frisbees would be flung, simultaneously it would seem, by scores of like minded people. No one worried about losing their frisbee, and no one criticized errant flingers.

I would continue my walk after a few minutes.

Literary Walk was a beautiful place to go. Not that I was a big fan of Robert Burns or Sir Walter Scott, but because it was a beautiful tree-lined path and a welcomed relief from the sun. However, it was the pick up musicians that you would meet along the way that made it the place to be.

There were several artists that would meet routinely on Saturday afternoons and they would play much of the music of the day. Free concerts and in such a beautiful setting were hard to ignore.

Somewhere I have pictures of these events but today they are only memories.

When I think back to living in New York, Central Park was as important to me as Yankee Stadium and Leland Avenue. Especially on a hot summer’s day.

Every culture that has sent its representatives to our grateful shores has, along with hard working people who had dreams of a new life and guts of cast iron, given America its language, folk lore but, most of all, food. This morning our subject is Irish Soda Bread.

I have always viewed Irish Soda Bread the way my Italian friends thought of gravy, what we call sauce. Just as any self respecting Italian would rather go hungry than be forced to eat pasta covered in Ragu, so, too, do I have my standards when it comes to Irish Soda Bread for no two soda breads are ever alike.

No matter how nice they look in their bakery wrapper, and regardless of the wonderful aroma that that permeates the bakery when you get the bakery-bought Irish Soda Bread home and attempt to slather it with butter, well, let’s just say it sucks. Supermarket Irish Soda Bread may suck even more. The only recourse true Irish Soda Bread Aficionados have is to only eat homemade Irish Soda Bread. But even here one must tread carefully. There are a lot of wannabes out there but Jimmy is here to help you. Take this down:

Lizzie McHugh’s Irish Soda Bread Recipe

First. My Mother never had a recipe. She winged it. One day when Eileen and I were still living in New Rochelle, I called her for her recipe. She obliged and I baked. I love having the first piece when the bread is still piping hot and the butter melts right into it. I didn’t love it this time. It didn’t even taste as good as a supermarket bread. I called her back and told her. She was confused and had me repeat what I had done. “I never said a tablespoon of sugar, you need at least a third of a cup.” Ok, I wrote the corrected recipe down and made a terrific Irish Soda Bread, just like Momma’s. Here it is for your baking and eating pleasure:

Ingredients

Combine

3 1/2 cups of flour

2/3 cup of sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1-tblsp caraway seeds (I like more I’m just saying)

1/2 half box of raisins

2 eggs

Buttermilk

2tblsps-melted butter

Beat the two eggs and add butter (let melted butter cool down) and enough buttermilk to bring the total mixture to 2 cups.

Add the liquid and dry mixtures and combine and place into a greased baking pan, round or loaf.

Put into a pre-heated 350-degree oven and bake for about an hour. Ovens vary so I would check at the 50-minute mark.

Let cool…but not that long as there is nothing on Earth quite like a warm piece of Irish Soda Bread.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day everybody.

The Republican members of Congress should first try to apply the cafeteria approach to health insurance, that they are trying to sell to the American People, on the cable companies first.

I mean, why should I pay for channels that don’t interest me. Let me choose from the available channels and create my own plan. Now, that may sound great for cable TV customers but it is a terrible health insurance plan.

You know, the one thing a good con artist has to be is consistent. One of the many anti-immigrant sentiments that is espoused is that many are unlicensed and uninsured when they drive. You get into an accident with one of these people and you have no recourse to collect damages or even get you fender fixed.

You get screwed when drivers drive without insurance.

You get screwed when people go to the emergency room without health insurance.

So the first act of destroying the Administrative State is to give people the freedom to screw us all over.

You know what will happen? It’s the same thing that happens with car insurance. Those who do obtain insurance have to pay the freight for those who don’t. Insured drivers have to suffer their own monetary loss when injured and those who have health insurance will pay higher premiums to cover hospital and medical costs that have to be recouped by a failing health care finance system, not to mention higher co-pays and higher deductibles.

The real solution to he health care insurance crisis?

I want the same plan that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell has.

I like to start Saturdays off with an episode or two of The Adventures Of Superman. This is the original TV series staring George Reeves (the best Superman and, more importantly, the best Clark Kent.)

Back in East Quogue it was common for me to get up early, brew a pot of coffee, and head downstairs to my TV/Train room to watch Superman without disturbing my sleeping household. After watching Superman I would go to the trains and run the trains that I began acquiring on Leland Avenue back in the early sixties.

There’s some psychology going on there I am quite sure.

The first episodes of Superman were filmed in 1951 but did not air until 1952. No HDTV back then, most had to settle for a nine inch black and white TV.

Harry Truman was still our President. The Soviet Union was our major international threat. The H Bomb was about to be tested for the first time.

I am quite sure that if you were to poll Americans at the time a fair amount of anxiety and fear would be common to the citizenry.

In addition to the Soviets and H Bombs, race relations had not progressed; polio was a dreaded disease; and the Korean War was raging. The only difference is that peopler didn’t have to watch it on TV 24/7 like we do today.

Despite all this, people remember this time as the beginning of Happy Days. Baby Boomers were being born; suburbia was on the rise; and the glorious post war era was in full swing.

I suppose that is why I resort to Superman and Lionel trains on Saturday mornings.

It’s always nice to do  a little time traveling on a quiet Saturday morning. It sure beats watching Fox News or MSNBC.