My Tom Hanks Moment and Other Odds and Ends

Did you see the article or hear about Tom Hanks finding in Central Park the lost student ID card of a Fordham University undergraduate and then tweeting his discovery, “Lauren! I found your Student ID in the park. If you still need it my office will get to you. Hanx.”? 

The tweet included a picture of Hanks holding the photo ID card (http://strib.mn/1Lh7Mhv) (http://www.today.com/popculture/tom-hanks-finds-fordham-students-lost-id-wants-give-it-t48601)

Though we live during a social network age largely populated by the young, believe it or not Lauren did not have a Twitter account. She was thus oblivious to her star-savior until one of her professors sent her a link to Twitter. Now she’s into her 15-minutes of fame and has appeared on television.

I bring this to your attention because of my own quest to return a picture of a comely looking college student I found as I walked across the quadrangle of Brooklyn College one day in the fall of 1969. She appeared attractive enough to ask out (this transpired just weeks before my Gilda Days began, so please don’t think I was two-timing my future wife). 

Back then not everyone could marshall the resources required to find the pictured coed, whose name was either Judy or Linda—both monikers were written on the back of the photo. I, however, was editor-in-chief of Calling Card, the newspaper of the House Plan Association. I had the means and the moxie to print the head shot on the front page of our next issue under the headline “Lost & Found.” 

Sure enough, my scheme produced the intended result. Judy-Linda showed up a few days later at the Calling Card office. Alas, I didn’t ask her out. Her picture did her more than justice. 

No word on what she thought of how I looked.

Time to catch up on some recent newsworthy events:

Our long (two years, a looooong time for Yankee fans!) national nightmare is over. We are back in the baseball playoffs. Well, by the time I got around to actually posting this brief, our time in the playoffs was mercilessly brief. We succumbed 3-zip to the Houston Astros. 

Our beloved Bronx Bombers were flawed in more ways than I care to recount. But we still won more games than 11 other teams in the American League and 10 in the National League and that is good enough for me. Twenty of those other teams failed to make the playoffs.

Did anyone else see a similarity between the head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, when she testified before Congress recently and Claire Underwood, the wife of the fictitious Frank Underwood of House of Cards? Tall, with short blonde hair and a self assurance that refuses to fade when confronted by men of intolerance and ignorance.

As the saying goes, it is hard to put the cat back into the bag once it is out.

It doesn’t matter who arranged the meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the rogue Kentucky county clerk who has denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Plenty of ill-informed people will believe the pontiff endorsed Davis. Like corrections buried deep inside a newspaper, the story line too many people will remember is the pope greeting Davis and giving her a crucifix, not that he was duped into meeting her by his representative in Washington. 

The lesson we can all take away from this affair is that even the Vatican is not off limits to political machinations (of course we knew that already but this was a very public display of a subjective agenda meant to undermine and embarrass a popular pope while advancing rigid church dogma not sufficiently supported in public by the leader of the Catholic faith).  

Let ’em Go: Government officials have admitted it is hard to stop American zealots from traveling to ISIS-controlled regions to join the Islamic terrorists. I say, “Let ’em Go.”

But with a caveat—revoke their American citizenship so they can’t return easily to the United States, or, at the very least, incarcerate them if they show up on our shores. 

Let them go to get killed in the desert. If they find living in this country so terrible, let them discover what life in the caliphate will truly mean. Let them go inflict mayhem on other Muslims if they can, not as some sleeper terrorist on unsuspecting Americans inside the U.S. I am not anti-Muslim. It’s just that it is time for the vast majority of Muslims to stand up for their religion and exterminate the cancer from within. Outsiders cannot do it without fomenting anti-Western civilization hatred.  

Volleyball's Been Very Good to Me

Spent Friday rearranging Ellie’s bedroom furniture in anticipation of Donny and her visiting after delivering our third grandchild in the next month or so. It’s another transition mark. Last week I reluctantly accepted that a link to part of my athletic past had to be discarded to make way for solar power equipment monitors inside our garage: I threw out my volleyball net and eight foot poles.

Since my teenage years volleyball has been an important part of my life. From the ages of 14 through 22, I played in intense, invitation-only games every Saturday afternoon at summer camp. More significantly, I courted my wife playing volleyball, or rather she courted me.

Gilda and I formally met late spring 1969 at a meeting of incoming presidents of various Brooklyn College house plans. She was the next president of Russell House and one of, if not the first, female representatives on student government council. Aside from being the newly elected president of Knight House I was the editor-in-chief of Calling Card, the House Plan Association newspaper. We agreed that night she would contribute articles on the happenings of student government.

But she had her sights on more athletic happenings, as well. Russell was known for its beauty, not brawn. Gilda wanted to expand Russell’s appeal. Her goal was to hook up with Knight House during the fall co-ed volleyball season. I was part of the Knight House team that was a powerhouse in men’s intramurals and co-ed play. Gilda, on the other hand, was a gamer but not a very good player. Indeed, during one game, after she took a hard spike to the chest, I benched her, and not just for her own safety. 

Nevertheless, our mutual affection for each other grew during the season. We started dating when Gilda asked me to accompany her to a Christmas party at the Brooklyn Heights home of one of her political science professors. 

During my years on Chain Store Age I played on our company’s co-ed team in the publishing division of the corporate volleyball league at LaGuardia High School on Tenth Avenue. I was, admittedly, no longer as springy a jumper back then. I adapted from being a spiker to set-up man, mostly for Dan Bagan and John Kenlon. Together with Milford Prewitt, Roni Iszak Townson and Crystal Broomes-Deane, we won the championship once, maybe even twice. For many years I sported a two and a half foot tall trophy on top of a cabinet behind my desk. 

After our family moved to our current house in 1984, I turned our side yard into a regulation-sized volleyball court for staff parties and get-togethers with friends. Gilda’s garden and an expanded patio cut into the court size, but what really killed off playtime was … age. I could no longer jump, twist and turn. The poles and net were relegated to hang along the wall of the garage for a decade or longer. They’re gone now, but not the memories. 

Junior's, Brooklyn's Original Cheesecake Factory

News broke earlier this week that the iconic Junior’s restaurant in downtown Brooklyn will sell its location on Flatbush Avenue so a high rise condominium could be built. Junior’s hopes to lease back ground floor space in the building but in the interim also hopes to open a nearby restaurant for its signature cheesecake and other delectables (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/junior-selling-flagship-location-brooklyn-article-1.1620413).

Junior’s opened in 1950, a year after I was born, but my experience with the restaurant didn't deepen until 20 years later when I was editor of Calling Card, a Brooklyn College newspaper published by the House Plan Association.

Calling Card came out every two weeks or so. We produced Calling Card the old fashioned way, through a hot lead process. Copy would be retyped by Linotype operators sitting in front of enormous clanking machines reminiscent of a Middle Ages torture chamber device complete with an arm suspending shiny lead bars slowly melting into a well that in turn were transformed into individual lines of words printed in reverse and then lined up on a page form based on a layout designed by one of our editors. 

Ink would be rolled over the hot lead to imprint a true version of a story or advertisement. But as anyone who worked in these pre-computer printing days could tell you, we didn't wait for the inked version to check copy. We all learned to read upside down in reverse, a skill that proved quite invaluable in the real world of reporting when one found oneself seated across from someone who was reluctant to talk, confident incriminating evidence on his or her desk was incomprehensible to prying eyes.

But I digress from Junior’s. The printer we used was located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. About half a dozen editors would drive to the printer. We'd arrive around 6 pm, not finish until well past midnight. We didn't get paid for this work, but we did get a communal dinner allowance— $40, which worked out to a princely per person sum back then. Often we'd go to Junior’s around 11 pm before returning to the printing plant to put the paper to bed.

We'd order strip steaks or hamburgers and always dessert. I wasn't a big fan of cheesecake at the time, so I usually opted for a wedge of banana cream pie or nesselrode pie. Believe me when I say a “wedge.” Junior’s’ portions were gigantic.

Heading back to the printer one misty night I got my first traffic ticket. I made what I thought was a legal left turn from Flatbush Avenue onto Lafayette Avenue. A few blocks later I pulled over to let a police car with its rooftop bubble gum machine ablaze in rotating blue and red lights pass me. Only the cop car stopped right behind me. “No, officer, I did not see the ‘No Left Turn’ sign.”

A few months later our printer moved to Great Neck, just barely inside Nassau County. It was too far away to eat in Junior’s. We discovered the Scobee Diner on Northern Boulevard in Little Neck, Queens, another landmark eatery that no longer exists (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/nyregion/04metjournal.html?_r=1&).

When my kids were young they'd ask if I believed in god. I'd tell them about a ride home to Brooklyn from the printer in Great Neck one winter night when I experienced the invisible hand of good fortune or god, depending on your outlook. 

At 2 am I had the Belt Parkway all to myself. I must have been going at least 70 miles per hour, maybe closer to 80. With no one else on the road, I traveled in the middle lane. Around Pennsylvania Avenue I inexplicably switched lanes, moving to my left. No more than a few hundred yards later I passed a deep pothole in the center lane. Had I not changed lanes I surely would have hit that pothole, doing untold damage to my car and possibly to me. 

Karma or Jehovah? You tell me.