Joseph Nolan's Blog

Merry-go-rounds, Steel Slides, Woodstock, Yasgur Road, Chick-A-Boom, Dick Monda and Popcorn

After a years-long blogging sabbatical, about ten days ago I posted an article that was inspired by a report of a Florida boy falling out of a roller coaster. (It has since been reported that he’s home from the hospital and is recovering.)

That incident brought to mind how dangerous amusement park rides were when I was a kid, which further reminded me of how dangerous school playground equipment was back then (Fifties and Sixties). The resultant blog has pictures of a seesaw, monkey bars, swings, and significantly, steel slides and a merry-go-round. Here’s a link to that post:

Wing (Winganhauppauge) School Playground, Islip NY

Within days of posting, I traveled to Bethel, NY, which is where the original Woodstock Music festival took place in 1969. Beginning in 1994, I started visiting Bethel where reunions of various sizes had been taking place nearly every year.

In the very beginning, they were held on the original festival site (without the owner’s permission), which was a nondescript and mostly forgotten cow pasture. Through the seventies and eighties hardly anyone came, but the 20th anniversary in 1989 sparked renewed interest in Woodstock.

More people came in the early nineties, and in 1994, a big 25th anniversary was scheduled for the original site. Though the formal concert was cancelled at the last minute, thousands of people came anyway, and a pretty big rock show was staged (on six flatbed semi-trailers).

In 1996, a recently minted cable TV billionaire named Alan Gerry (pronounce G like Gary), bought the property and declared the site off-limits. With no place for Woodstock celebrants to go, local businessman, Roy Howard, and his wife Jeryl, offered to allow the newly displaced revelers to camp on their Yasgur Road property.    

That was nice of them, and over the years, The Farm became the place to go in Bethel to celebrate the anniversary. Of note: The Farm is where Max Yasgur lived when he agreed to let the original 1969 Woodstock promoters use a section of his property for the festival (the festival site is about two miles from Max’s modest house, which is still there).

Some years the celebrations at The Farm were large, maybe a couple of thousand people. Others were small, maybe a hundred or so. Whatever their size, Roy and Jeryl dealt with lots of municipal permit and code issues that were unpleasant and costly.

When I go, I camp there. I am familiar with the property, but very soon after I arrived this year, I noticed something: Two Merry-go-rounds (one working, one not) and a steel Slide, both of which are very close in design to those shown in my recent blog.

Merry-Go-Round on The Farm (Yasgur Road)

This equipment has been on the property for a while, so I’ve seen it before. Still, it seemed significant that within days of writing about long-forgotten playground apparatus, I found myself camped right alongside it. Here’s are some photos I took.  

Steel Slide on The Farm (Yasgur Road)

A skeptic might say I wrote about the merry-go-round and slide because I knew I’d be going to Bethel and they somehow arose from my subconscious. I suppose, but I doubt it. It was the kid falling off the rollercoaster that prompted the post and recollections, so I’m chalking this one up to a very good example of Synchronicity.

Here’s another: WFDU, Daddy Dew Drop, and Chick-a-boom

During the very first week after my visit to Bethel, another odd coincidence occurred. It has nothing to do with Woodstock but makes a musical connection.

In New Jersey there’s a local radio station that is affiliated with Fairleigh Dickenson University. Its call letters are WFDU (listen on the internet: wfdu.fm), and they play a lot of obscure pop songs from the fifties, sixties and seventies. On my first Tuesday back from Bethel, WFDU played a 1971 song called Chick-A-Boom (Don’t Ya Jes’ Love It), by a guy who at the time called himself Daddy Dew Drop.

His real name is Richard “Dick” Monda, who started out as an actor and became a songwriter, performer and music producer. A photo of Mr. Monda if to the right: 

I remembered the song as soon as it came on. It was a massive hit in 1971, reaching number nine on Billboard’s national chart. The song was originally written (by Gwin and Martin) for a television show called “Groovie Goolies,” a program for which Monda had produced music.

I’m not sure if the song ever made it onto the show, but Monda rewrote the lyrics and recorded it with studio musicians. At the time, the story it tells was considered risqué. It recounts a dream where the protagonist follows a girl in a black bikini, who along the way removes parts of it, first the top, then the bottom.

He goes around corners and into rooms, finds himself at a party and comes upon early Rock ‘n’ Roll icon “Little Richard,” (deduced to be him because the lyric reads: “this really far out cat was screaming half-crazy: A-bop-bop-a-loom-op-a-lop-bop-boom,” which is from Richard’s signature song: Tutti Frutti). It might’ve been just some far out cat screaming Little Richard’s catchphrase, but people who comment on such things have assumed it’s Little Richard. Here’s the Chick-A-Boom song:

Daddy Dewdrop’s delivery reminds me of Dr. John, kind of a cool Louisiana drawl, though Monda was from Ohio and grew up in California. It also reminds me a little of Sam the Sham (of Wooly Bully fame, out in 1965) and Tony Joe White (Polk Salad Annie, from 1970, which is such a cool song). Some other internet commenter said Chick-A-Boom reminded him of Eric Burden, and it’s hard to miss the similarities between it and Burden’s “Spill the Wine,” from 1970.

Prior to last Tuesday, I don’t think I’ve thought about the Chick-A-Boom song in at least forty years. Not at all. Not once. The reason songs fade into obscurity is they stop getting played after their time in the sun. That’s what happed to Chick-A-Boom. There’s no explaining why some songs stay in the “oldies” rotation, and others don’t (but it did make it onto the “One Hit Wonders” wall at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of fame.)

A few days after hearing the song, I was at the local Stop and Shop picking up a few things—you know, dinner and stuff. Anyway, I had an urge for popcorn and went to the snack aisle. I am a careful shopper and am always looking for a bargain (as my mother used to say).

The price of snack foods (potato chips, pretzels, corn puffs, corn chips and popcorn) have really gone up lately, and I was scanning the shelves for reasonably priced popcorn. I couldn’t find any. The cheapest was on sale for a little under $4.00, but I figured what the hell, you only live once, and threw a bag into my shopping cart. Here’s a picture of it:

Granted, it would be a more amazing coincidence if the popcorn was called Chick-A-Boom, but damn it, “Boom Chicka Pop” is close enough to put it squarely in the Synchronicity category.

A skeptic might say that the Chick-A-Boom song was floating around in my subconscious and that was what drove me to buy the Boom Chicka Pop brand. I would say I bought it because of its low price, but who the hell knows when it comes to subliminal motivations which nobody really understands. After all the brain is a pretty complex and mysterious thing.

But still, it seems the universe is sending messages. If only it would include next week’s lottery numbers.

Until next time patient reader, adieu.        

Winganhauppauge School Playground – Islip, NY

The subject of playgrounds came up the other day. It started with news of a child falling off a rollercoaster in Kissimmee Florida. We were surprised because people are usually “yoked” into modern rollercoasters. (From what I’ve since seen, I don’t believe yokes were used on this ride).

This led to my reminiscing over how inadequately I was held into Coney Island’s Tornado rollercoaster back when my mother took me on it when I was about five (around 1957 or so). The restraint was an approximately 3/8ths inch metal bar that was pressed and locked across both rider’s laps, which could be pretty far away from a child’s body. The coaster terrified me, but that didn’t keep mom from laughing like crazy as the two of us were tossed about in the rickety wooden cab.

The Tornado and the larger Cyclone were part of what is generally called Coney Island, which offered all kinds of entertainment, including “fun houses,” bumper cars, risqué burlesque shows, games of skill and chance, photographers (where my grandmother told me poor people went for family portraits, of which we have a couple), and a variety of places to eat (Nathan’s hotdogs are still sold there). Its boardwalk abuts a three-mile-long public beach.

It was also once home to a place called Steeplechase, which opened in 1897, had a couple of fires and as many rebuilds, and closed for good in 1964. Steeplechase was a very large building with mostly indoor rides, many quite dangerous.

After we moved from Brooklyn to Islip, Long Island, New York, I became a paperboy for Newsday, who arranged a visit back to Coney Island and Steeplechase as a reward for signing up new subscribers.

Inside Steeplechase there was what was considered at the time a giant slide, whose surface was like a “gym floor.” At the top riders were given pieces of burlap, and an attendant helped you arrange it into sort of a cloth toboggan. You were cautioned not to put your bare shoe against the slick floor as it might launch you into a painful tumble to the bottom.

If you made it safely down, you went sliding into large bowl, made of the same slick “gym floor” material.

This was supposed to be part of the fun, which rumor had it might include dresses flying up in the air. But it wasn’t all fun and games. There weren’t any pads or mats on the edges of the bowl, and you could easily conk your head against them. As more bodies came flinging into the bowl, it was smart to scamper out of their way as quickly as you could.

Another ride was “The Steeplechase,” which were these wooden or ceramic horses that you got on and raced around the outside of the building.

The only safety gear was a leather strap they put around your waist, and it was obvious that you could easily slide out of the saddle. At its best, the strap might tether your dangling body to the horse until it stopped. It was a different time.

Recollections of these dangerous amusements reminded of the merry-go-round that was on the playground of the Winganhauppauge School in Islip. I don’t think anyone has a picture of the actual ride, but I found one that I think is close.

I remember me and several other male class members running to get it spinning as fast as we could. We’d leap onto the wooden seats and jump off to get it going again when it started slowing down. This was fun, but there was another reason we did this, and that was to terrify the girls and impress them with our immature antics. I don’t think this worked very well.

If a rider somehow found themselves in the center of the spinning contraption, it could easily break their arm or leg, cut them or seriously injure their head. I don’t remember this ever happening, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t.

Other versions of these things were made in an attempt to make them a bit safer, like the one below where the spokes slope upward from the center, whereby they might pass harmlessly above your prone body. If you landed closer to the axel however, you were still in for a pretty thorough body of head thumping.

Some “safety fanatic” engineer, came up with the idea of covering the center of the whirling horizontal windmill, making it impossible to fall into its center. However, sitting on it looks like it would’ve been awkward and uncomfortable.

Nor did it address the issue of the centrifugal force flinging you off the spinning discus as prepubescent boys mocked you for your inability to hold on.

The halfway design change below strived to preserve a child’s ability to sit facing inward while protecting them from the treacherous spokes.

The problem is that the gap for legs is wide enough for a lot of kids to slide all the way through and get mauled by passing little feet or sections of the rotating iron beams.  

Another “safety nanny” thought up a solution where the whole thing was brought closer to the ground, so at least you couldn’t fall in or under it.

With this change, you had to stand as you spun, which I guess is okay. You could still get flung from the spinning platter, but you wouldn’t fall as far. If you stood at its side and leaned in, the iron handrails could whack you in the head—but you’re not supposed to do that!

But it wasn’t just the merry-go-round that was dangerous. Seesaws were plenty treacherous.

I loved them, until the day a fellow classmate thought it would be “funny” to slide off his end when I was at maximum height. This sent me into a spine-compressing deadfall that was excruciating and probably actionable.

And then there was the steel slide, that as I recall was probably over ten feet tall.

At the top, there was a moment when you briefly stood as kids behind you moved and jostled their way for the next position. When you sat down, you might experience the 160–175 degree temperature (some say 200 degrees) that steel slides reach when exposed to direct sunlight. At least us boys had pants on.

The objective was to go down as fast as possible, so some of us lifted our legs and slid on our backs, launching us off the end of the slide into a hard back landing. It was wise to quickly move aside as there were other kids coming in hot from behind.

And then there were the monkey bars, which at Wing had four poles in the center down which we slid. I believe this set is a perfect match for the ones at Wing.

Some of the more athletic kids liked to climb and stand on the very top of the jungle gym. Other kids (boys again) opted to thrill us with their Superman impersonations by jumping off the top rungs. Why weren’t they stopped?

And then there were the swings, which I remember as being pretty high, but nothing like the ones down at Islip Beach, which were fantastic! The ones below are like the ones at the beach. Wing’s were shorter but still pretty respectable.

I should mention that the playground at Wing was enclosed by a gated, four-foot, chain-link fence, and the ground was covered with sand, which I’m sure stray cats loved to visit.  

One night me and some friends were hanging out at the playground. We were probably in seventh or eighth grade, but still enjoyed riding the swings. One of my more daring friends displayed his acrobatic chops by swinging very high, and at the maximum of his backswing (that place where you’re neither rising or falling), he leaned forward and dropped onto the sand.

The first time he did it, he landed on hands and knees, but after a while, took it a step further. At that “still” section of the backswing, he somersaulted forward and landed this time on his feet.

I had done the relatively tame “drop” maneuver but left the flips to my more acrobatic chums. But another of them, however (and I will not repeat his name to save him from embarrassment), wanted to give it a go.

His attempt started reasonably well. At the maximum point in the backswing, he leaned forward and began his flip, but it stalled when he was completely upside down! My memory of this goes in slow motion.

As his body dropped closer to the sand, it was clear that he was going in for a full faceplant. If my friend was a female yoga teacher in a black leotard, the figure below shows about how he landed, except for the outstretched arms and the fancy watch.

There were a few silent moments after this, as most of us thought we had just watched someone die. Miraculously, soon after our chum’s inverted body toppled over, he was kneeling, appearing stunned, angry, in pain and mortified. With the tips of his fingers he was gently wiping sand from his somewhat rearranged face, and it was plain that getting it out of his eyes was going to be a problem.

Somebody asked if he was okay, and he must have heard the small measure of mirth behind the question, which threw him into a rage. Who’s laughing, he loudly demanded, which for me and the rest of the lads was invitation enough to begin a round of merciless and derisive laughter. It went on for quite some time.

The fenced-in playground is long gone, but even in light of what would now be considered a total disregard for our safety, it still holds many fond memories for me.

Yes, it was a different time. ‘Till next time. Cheers!

On April 24th, 2021, the New York Times reported that many CEO’s of American companies hit by fallout from the Covid crisis, received huge salaries and bonuses anyway. Here’s their list of the top twenty highest paid CEO’s in America, put to a beguiling tune by the Flying Lizards.

When an average CEO’s salary is compared to a typical worker’s, a steep upward trend is obvious. In the sixties, people were outraged by a ratio of 21-to-1. By 1989 the gap tripled to 61-to-1—but they were just picking up steam. In 2019, it went to 320-to-1!

Put another way, from 1978 to 2019, inflation adjusted compensation for the typical worker grew 14 percent, and for CEO’s: 1,167 percent. Good work if you can get it, but no one seems to care.

You seldom see people picketing company headquarters or loudly denouncing the self-dealing that leads to these remuneration travesties. Instead, more outrage is directed at how Mr. Potato Head will no longer be called “Mr.,” and the discontinuation of a couple of unpopular Dr. Seuss books. That the rich don’t seem able to get enough, well, that’s something that just can’t be helped.

An oft repeated lament is: The rich get richer, and the statistics bear it out. In 1968, the top-earning 20% of households brought in 43% of the nation’s income. In 2018, the same group was getting 52%.

In 2019, the top 1% of Americans had a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion, which is about a third of all household wealth in the U.S. Conversely, the bottom half of the population holds just $2.1 trillion, or 1.9%.

What’s Good for General Motors

In 1950, Charles E. Wilson, who was president of General Motors Corp., received the highest compensation paid by any public U.S. company. In total, he received $626,300, comprised of a salary of $201,300, $61,205 in GM stock, and cash payments totaling $363,795 to be paid out over the subsequent five years. In today’s dollars, that would be about $ 7 million, which at the time was an absolutely outrageous sum. Not so much when compared to today’s glutinous excesses.

Charlie’s pay took into account the income tax rates of 1950, which for pay over $200,000 was 91%, of which only $1,300 would be taxed at the maximum rate ($201,300 – $200,000 = $1,300). GM deferred another $363,795 in pay over the next five years, and whether or not that was a successful tax avoidance strategy would depend on future earnings or changes in tax law.

Beginning in the fifties, the federal government gave beneficial treatment to stock awards, which is reflected in Mr. Wilson’s $61,205 worth of GM stock. By the end of the decade, such awards and options would account for about half of all executive compensation.

In 1953, Mr. Wilson joined the Eisenhower administration as Secretary of Defense. During his confirmation hearing, his ownership of $2.5 million in GM stock prompted someone to ask if he could make a decision as Secretary of Defense that would be adverse to the interests of General Motors. Wilson said he could and added that he’d always believed that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.

In popular culture, the quip was shortened to “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,” which he thought mischaracterized his original, more nuanced meaning, but it was the shortened version of the quote that stuck. Ultimately, Mr. Wilson was forced to divest the stock.

Stock awards and options continued through the fifties and sixties, but fell out of favor during the seventies (due to a soft stock market). Stock options came back in the eighties, as a way—the theory went—to make CEO’s act more like entrepreneurs, i.e., tie rewards and penalties to performance.

Pay via stock options was further boosted in 1994 when the Federal government capped the deduction for cash pay to executives at $1 million, with no such limitations on performance-linked compensation. Companies quickly restructured pay plans, which resulted in large and ongoing increases in option grants to CEO’s.

These grants provided incentive for the executives to improve stock prices, which for the nation led to all kinds of adverse, unintended consequences. The worst of these was the closing of thousands of US factories and the exportation of millions of American jobs to China and other low labor-cost nations.

While American CEO’s pocketed enormous amounts of coin, and stockholders saw their net worth climb, the gains were paid for by low-skill, working class Americans who could no longer earn a living wage at the local mill because the factory had been sacrificed on the alter of higher stock prices.

It’s always been said that a corporation’s executives had to answer to only one audience, and that was its stockholders. That is pretty how it’s been, but in the days before low-cost ocean freight and instantaneous, world-wide communications, cost cutting meant moving a plant from New York to Wichita—or maybe decreasing how much cereal came in the box.

The advent of globalization however, gave the captains of many American industries new options that foreseeably wouldn’t result in positive outcomes for the nation. Companies no longer had to deal with stubborn labor unions who always wanted more. High-cost factories could be closed, and expensive labor could be replaced by workers making a tenth as much—and who knew if they had healthcare or decent working conditions. That was somebody else’s problem.

Nonsense was spun that the march of globalization was inexorable and would ultimately be a net positive for the country. Terms like creative destruction were bandied about as gospel, and people who should’ve known better nodded their heads. It was said that low-skill jobs would somehow be magically replaced by better, high-skill and more fulfilling endeavors, as company towns all over the country died and turned into places of despair and hopelessness.

Another quick way of driving up profits was booking profits in other, low-tax countries. If that didn’t goose the price enough, the entire company could be uprooted and moved overseas, eradicating more American jobs and profits that were once viewed as foundational to the country.

In the seventy years since Charles E. Wilson expressed his heartfelt opinion that what was good for American business couldn’t help but be good for America, it’s become clear that it’s no longer true.

Before these CEO’s cost-save the United States into third-world status, America’s policy makers need to acknowledge this reality so work can begin to repair the damage done to the nation’s economic engine.

Cheers!

Joe Nolan

In 2006, my older brother Phil C. Nolan ran for the position of Islip Town Supervisor, which is akin to being Mayor. It would be his third try.

Beginning with my father, Phil J. Nolan, the Nolan family had waged many political campaigns in Islip N.Y., and as Democrats in a heavily Republican area, we were defeated more often than not.

As we geared up for the race, I feared that it might be the last time my father would campaign with us and decided to document my brother’s somewhat quixotic pursuit. It resulted in my movie: Go Another.

Unfortunately, the feeling I had turned out to be prescient, and Philip J. died shortly after his son was sworn in. As the race recedes further into the past, I see this movie as a pretty good object lesson in the benefits of never giving up. At the same time, the movie is a tribute to my father—and mother—who built a family that stuck together and won a few—quite a few—along the way.

Cheers,

Joe

Over ten years ago, New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie cancelled what would have been at the time the biggest public works project in America, which was called “Access to the Region’s Core,” or ARC. For the first time in over a hundred years two new commuter rail tunnels would be dug under the Hudson River.

When the newly elected Governor Chris Christie cancelled it, he claimed that it was because the state of New Jersey couldn’t afford it—even though New Jersey was only paying for about 15% of the total, and the preceding governor had put in place funding for the state’s share. Almost immediately, public transportation advocates and political opponents challenged his explanation.

As a follower of the project and the fifteen years it took to get it started, I came to believe a major opportunity had been missed—and not for the right reasons. This documentary is my take on what happened to the project and the long term negative impact it’s cancellation had on the region and the environment. It’s effect on Christie’s Political career is examined, as well as his new role as a talk-show pundit who still has designs on the White House.

With a new pro-public transportation and infrastructure Administration in Washington, it now looks like some version of ARC will be built. That is a good thing.

For any prior readers of this blog, you might have noticed that I’ve dropped the tagline: “Everything Reminds Me Of Something Else” from the header. Everything still reminds me of something else, but I decided to make these posts about just one thing at a time. Who knows, maybe I’ll be moved to create more of them.

Joe

The Halloween Parade in New York City has been called by Festivals International, the best October 31st event in the world. It was started in Greenwich Village in 1974 by mask maker and puppeteer Ralph Lee. The parade began as a house-to-house walk in his neighborhood for his children and their friends.

Today the parade attracts 60,000 costumed marchers and about 2 million spectators.

I became aware of the parade beginning in the early ’80s, which by then was getting covered by the local New York television stations. During those years I’d watched the parade from my living room, probably with one or more of my children in my lap. The idea of dragging everyone into the City to see it seemed daunting, but I added it to my to-do list.

As the years progressed and those kids grew up, each year the thought of going flitted in and out of consideration. It couldn’t have been too high a priority because when the holiday arrived, I would again find myself seeing it on T.V.

I’d resolve to go “next year,” which brought back memories of my father telling me that Tomorrow Never Comes, which I now know is true and that Next Year arrives on exactly the same schedule, i.e. never.

But This Year does, and so it was in 2016 that on Halloween afternoon I drove to New York, parked at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and took the Subway down to the Village. Here are some of the sights and sounds I recorded—but make sure to come back and read about a mask my little brother Matty wore on Halloween a rather long time ago:

This parade is an amazing work of art—exactly as its organizers intend it.

Everything Reminds Me of Something Else

Hardly a Halloween passes anymore without my brother Matt regaling our family and his friends with the story of a hilariously absurd and stupendously incongruous Halloween costume donned long ago.

It happened when Matt was ten, which puts the year at 1965. We had moved to the Town of Islip, N.Y., which is on Long Island. Throughout the ’60s, Long Island and lots of other places underwent enormous development to accommodate the growing families of G.I.’s piecing their lives together after WWII.

This boom consisted of hundreds of single family housing developments, which were carved out of the Oak and Pine forests that covered much of the island. Ours was called Northwood Village, and was originally comprised of eight parallel streets that ended in cul-de-sacs. On each street were between 20 and 40 houses, with a choice of three floor plans built on lots of a little less than a fifth acre.

There were plenty of woods nearby to explore. There was a brook at the end of the street that had fish in it! Behind us was a swampy area that was habitat for frogs, turtles and other wildlife. You could ride your bike to the beach and swim in the Great South Bay. For kids from the five boroughs of New York—which most of us were—we felt like we were living in a gigantic wilderness playground .

One of the best things about being a kid back then was the presence of so many other kids. It was the height of the Baby Boom years and when we went out to play there were always other children around, usually enough to organize a game or join in some kind of adventure.

On Halloween all of us kids rushed home after school to put on our costumes and get to work collecting as much candy as possible. Kids back then did not go out Trick or Treating with their parents—they went with their friends! (If you were a baby you did not go Trick or Treating. You were a baby for Christ’s sake? What did you know from Trick or Treating?)

For the most part this unsupervised communion was great, but the downside was that far too many of those kids were judgmental little pugs who were always looking to find fault with someone and, once found, use it to ridicule them as viciously and unremittingly as they could.

Which brings us to Matt’s costume.

While Halloween was a huge holiday for kids back then, it was not one where great sums of money were spent. It was a holiday for kids to wear cheap costumes and eat cheap candy. This owed as much to the limited means of us our parents and neighbors as it did to the more constrained mores of the era.

In those days Halloween costumes were sold primarily at Five and Ten’s, like Kresgee’s and Woolworth’s. They consisted of a rigid plastic mask of some character or another, along with a matching “suit” that was made of something like rayon, which was probably highly flammable and could be counted on to came apart at the seams after a single wearing—if you were lucky!

If me or my siblings made it known in advance to our parents that we really wanted to be some character for Halloween, we could count on them—usually Mom—to help us get something together. However, if a special request wasn’t made, you were going to find yourself at the mercy of what Mom could find around the house.

Around the house primarily meant what could be found in a single cardboard box that was kept in the storage room and filled with Halloween stuff left over from prior years (unless you were going to be a hobo, see below). As the contents of the box had not seen daylight for about a year, nobody except my mother had any notion of what might be inside, but it was known that much of it would prove worthless and unusable.

On Halloween ’65, Matt admits to not giving much pre-thought to what he wanted to be for that year, so it was left to Mom to make something happen, which she did. Unfortunately, in the box, Mom was able to piece together but a single costume whose wearing would give Matt an early traumatic experience and the basis for what has become a funny memory and matching story.

The costume started with a black jumpsuit-like garment that you stepped into and tied at the back of your neck so that its front presented a single canvas onto which was printed the decoration, in this case the bones of a human skeleton. So far, so good. Matt was going to be a skeleton, but then…where the heck was the mask? After some digging and double checking in the box, it was determined that it was not there.

I have a vague memory of a search of the house being called, which included looking “everywhere,” but I knew—everyone knew—that if it wasn’t in the box, it wasn’t going to be found. It was gone. What could be done?

Well, there was a mask in the box, it just wasn’t a skeleton mask. What was it? A monster of some kind, or a ghoul? Either of those might have been passably okay, something for which a defense could be mounted should the pairing be challenged by one of those little wiseasses. But it was not a monster. It was this:

Yogi Bear! That mischievous denizen of Jellystone Park, who with his sidekick Boo-Boo poached picnic baskets and antagonized Ranger Smith. (He was smarter than the average bear.)

Matt was terrified at the thought of putting on such a laughably illogical outfit, but he had to get going. He had friends to meet and Trick or Treating to do. A serious negotiation commenced. It was too late to get a new costume. He could opt for the old “bum” or “hobo” standby, which was executed by marking your face with burnt cork to make you look unshaven, and putting on one of Dad’s old suit jackets.

For her part, Mom didn’t think the combination was nearly as heinous as Matt did. After all, with a mask on nobody would know who he was—and even if they did, why would they care?

As time ran out, Matt reluctantly gave way to Mom’s reasoning and donned the Yogi/Skeleton costume. I spoke to him today about what happened when he connected with his posse, and he reaffirmed prior accounts of the total and merciless attack and humiliation. Their reaction to the mismatch was immediate and brutal.

Everyone noticed it, he said. All his friends began laughing at him and making sure everyone around knew it was Matt Nolan in the ridiculous costume. Little kids were pointing and laughing at him, and he soon felt overwhelmed with panic. He said he knew he had “to get off the street,” and decided to make a run for it.

When he arrived home my mother saw that he was shaken and very upset. She set about burning a cork and blackening his face, and replacing the jumpsuit with one of Dad’s old suit jackets and sent him on his way.

As I was talking today about this story today with Matt I mentioned the Village Halloween Parade and how wonderful it is. After some discussion here’s what’s going to happen next year: We’re going to go and march in the parade. I’m not sure what I’ll be, maybe a Hobo, but guess what Matt will be wearing? You got it.

Until next time.

Joe

 

 

 

In 2008 I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer. As I educated myself about the disease and later underwent treatments, I decided to share what I learned with the 250,000 men who receive this diagnosis every year — all from a patient’s perspective.

I segmented the documentary into eight episodes of seven or eight minutes each, so total length is just under 60 minutes. The link below will take you to the play list, which will play them in order. They look better in HD.

If you want to watch them over a period of a couple days, just come back to my blog (getjoenolan.com) and after starting the video hit the “YouTube” button at the bottom of the video. This takes you to my channel where you can pick whichever episode you want to watch (and read older posts if you want).

Please share the series with anyone you think might be interested in this subject. If you have a moment and want to comment, feel free.

Everything Reminds me of Something Else

An important part of this documentary is the report that was put out by the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force. This report questioned the necessity for screening for prostate cancer and flew in the face of what was then the conventional wisdom.

This seems to be happening a lot lately. The most recent example of this was the report that Teeth Flossing might be unnecessary. The news broke when the latest dietary guidelines for Americans dropped prior recommendations for flossing. Somebody realized that they’d never fully researched it’s effectiveness.

The American Academy of Periodontology acknowledged that most current evidence doesn’t prove much because researchers had not been able to include enough participants or “examine gum health over a significant amount of time.”

Say what? I have never had a dentist that didn’t tell me with 100% sincere confidence that flossing my teeth was going to save me a lot of trouble in the future and only a fool wouldn’t do it. I’ve even read that if you floss you will live longer — a lot longer, like six years!

I do it at least once a day, often twice and on my biannual visits receive compliments on my routine. You can be pretty sure your dentist is still going to encourage it, but it surprised the hell out of me that nobody ever fully checked this out.

Remember how eating eggs was going to kill you because they had a lot of cholesterol in them? Well, the latest information is that it isn’t clear to what extent the cholesterol that you eat raises cholesterol in your blood. For years researchers have attempted to link the two but with very little success.

And then there’s drinking. True, drinking too much will do damage, but recent research shows that lifelong moderate drinking can ward off cognitive decline and improve brain function. This was reported in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease where in a study of 489 women, moderate drinkers scored higher than the abstinent or heavy drinking ones on cognitive function tests. One thing that hasn’t changed though is how hard it is to know what “moderate” is.

Joe

The Commack Road School

I grew up on Long Island in Islip Township. When my family arrived in the late fifties the town was still developing, which meant a great deal of building to support the influx of new residents.

One such project was the Commack Road Elementary School, which became a hangout for me and my friends during the mid-to-late-sixties. I recently took a walk through the old school and it touched off a few memories.

Everything Reminds me of Something Else

We used to play a lot of games at the school, all organized by us kids and without adult supervision. Aside from the pick-up baseball and handball, we played a few unique games that probably trace back to NY City. I really liked  Johnny on the Pony. One team would form a line, with each member bending forward and grasping the person ahead of them around the waist. The guy at the head of the line would be pinned against a tree or a piece of playground equipment, usually the horizontal ladder, a.k.a. Monkey Bars.

Thusly arranged, each member of the opposing team would take a turn running as fast as they could toward the rear of the formation. As they drew closer, they’d leap as high as they could and slam down onto their opponents’ backs. The guy facing backwards was allowed to push the leapers off the pile. If they were rebuffed, they couldn’t get back on, so that element of the game could get pretty rough. As each player was added to the pile, the idea was to concentrate as much load as possible to the weakest section of the line and ultimately cause its collapse — which meant victory.

Don’t believe any of our guys would have allowed such inappropriate head placement

Then there was The Whip, which was more an activity than a game. Participants formed a line and held hands with the people on each side. The group would then start running across the field and through some dynamic I still don’t get, parts of the line would stop and reverse direction, which created a human whip with enough snap to send the kids at the end of it flying head over heels. Still not sure of its point, but it was a lot of fun, damn it — as long as you weren’t the guy at the end.

Another team sport was Ring-a-levio. One side would hide and the other team had to find them and escort them back to Home Base, which for us was a Jungle Gym that looked like the frame of a space capsule. The seekers would win by finding everyone, but if an uncaptured hider was able to run back to the base and tag it before any of the other team members tagged him, all the captives could escape and go back into hiding.

This game is particularly embedded in my memory because of what happened one night when I was making a move to free my captured teammates. I was able to get to Base unfettered and made the tag. With the other team coming from behind, I ran away as fast as I could but unwisely kept checking over my shoulder to see where my pursuers were coming from.

Just as I turned to see where I was going, my forehead struck a very sturdy steel pole that belonged to the aforementioned vertical ladder, a.k.a. Monkey Bars. I was momentarily knocked out, but for some reason didn’t fall. As the cobwebs cleared, I was aware of people standing around me. As soon as they saw that I was probably not going to die, I heard some laughter, which I wasn’t in the mood for.

“Who’s laughing,” I demanded angrily, which judging by their reaction was the funniest thing I ever said. Someone gleefully declared that my head striking the pole sounded like a church bell, which they found impressive and hilarious. Another observed that the bump on my forehead looked like a stack of about two dollars worth of quarters slipped just below the skin on my forehead. God, it hurt, and for years afterward, I could feel a little bump there. It’s finally gone — I think.

Tip for the day, friends: Watch where you’re going.

‘Till next time.

Joe

H.B. Rouse and Company’s Composing Stick

This is a photograph of me holding a composing stick, circa 2015. If you know what this is, chances are that you’re…ahem, getting on a bit.

I first held one around 1965. I was thirteen and in seventh grade, and for students that weren’t considered college bound, most high schools offered Industrial Arts classes. The guys called them Shop.

As an introduction, we were offered a sampling of classes that were broken down by quarter. There was Metal Shop, where I made a cool, tear-drop shaped ash tray that I texturized with a ball peen hammer.

In Mechanical Drawing I learned how to develop a three-view drawing, which shows the front, top and right-side view of an object. We drew blocks of wood with holes drilled in them, and a lot of attention was paid to how precise our lettering was.

In Wood Shop I made a spice rack with a little drawer, which I proudly gave to my Mom even though she did not bake. Still, she thought it was beautiful — and in a way, it was.

But I was especially interested in Print Shop, because a couple of my uncles were printers who worked in New York City and were proud union members who were said to make good livings. I had intentions of following them into the business, so it made sense to learn whatever I could about the trade.

It was there that I learned that a composing stick is used to set type. The Chinese were doing something like it around 1040 A.D., but it is  Johannes Gutenberg who is credited with refining the technology and popularizing it in Europe around 1439.

Everything about raised or relief printing is physical and by today’s standards woefully clunky. Each letter is cast from a special, metal alloy, composed primarily of lead with a little tin and antimony mixed in. It is actually this special alloy that was one of Gutenberg’s major contributions. Word and line spaces (called leading) are made from the same material, and are measured in arcane units called ems and ens and picas.

These are arranged in a shallow drawer that is divided into separate compartments for each letter or space, and is called a California Job Case. Everything is arranged in a maddeningly illogical manner. The compartments vary in size (supposedly in relation to how frequently a letter is used), and though we were taught long-forgotten mnemonics to help us remember where everything was, finding each piece of type was tedious and time consuming.

To begin setting type, the column width is first set by adjusting the movable portion of the composing stick. This is the smaller, triangular piece that has a lever that when pressed down, snaps it into the stick. A piece of leading is put at the base and then single pieces of type are placed, one after another, left to right. To insure proper orientation, one has to make sure the notches on the type are always facing upward.

When a line is pretty much filled, it’s time to justify it. This is done by inserting additional spaces between each word until everything is snug between each side of the stick. If it isn’t snug pieces will fall out later, which usually means having to start over.

When a line is justified, another piece of leading is added on top and the process is repeated until the stick is full. At that point, the type is transferred to a flat metal sheet called a galley where ink is rollered onto the raised letters, paper is placed on top of them and a proof is struck. If mistakes are found, tweezers are used to pull out and replace letters that don’t belong.

The slug of type is held together with a hoop of string, so you have to be careful not to knock it over and mix everything up, which is called Piing your type.

After corrections are made, the type is transferred into a cast iron frame called a chase, where blocks of wood or metal are arranged around the type. Devices called coins are added and expanded with keys that look like what was once used to adjust old–time, strap–on roller skates. If properly done everything is locked–up in place, which is what this process is called: Lock Up. The chase is then put into a printing press, which is another big cast iron contraption. Here’s an old one (and you can see California job cases to its left):

Old style Platen Printing Press

Except for mostly small craft printers that do wedding invitations and books that are themselves works of art, none of this is done anymore. Digital technology replaced all of it. The word processor in your laptop usually comes with a hundred or so font styles that easily would have filled a small truck with California Job cases and set you back thousands of dollars.

If you know how to type, it’s an easy matter to create line after line after line of perfectly justified paragraphs without even having to hit the return key.

Beautiful page layouts are easily accessible, coming in the form of templates that were once done by Art Directors who devoted their lives to book and magazine design.

Even the function of printing is handled by digital presses that download digital files and produce hard copies using laser technology. Where once it wouldn’t pay to print a book unless you needed thousands, Amazon and others now gladly take orders for one.

So in many ways, the accessibility of technology has democratized a growing segment of the publishing industry. There are now a 150 million bloggers in the world, churning out god knows how many articles a year. In 2014, about a million books were published in the U.S. — four times as many as there were in 2010.

How can anyone keep all of this straight? The answer is: they can’t. There’s too much content and most of it is crap — just like its always been. The difference is: much of the crap used to be filtered out by the owners of those big, clunky printing presses who hired smart men and women editors who separated much of the wheat from the chaff. They weren’t perfect, but at least somebody was watching.

I guess it’s a good thing that just about anyone can get their ideas into a publishable format (including me), but the trick is still finding someone to read it. With so many voices vying for attention, that’s probably harder than ever.

Everything Reminds Me of Something Else

One of the dirty little secrets about Shop classes is that they were used as dumping grounds for guys with behavior problems — which made for some pretty raucous classroom antics and lots of laughs. Another is that they were used to park guys — and there’s no other way to say this — who had I.Q.’s that resided over on the extreme left-hand side of the bell curve.

One of the first things we were given to do in Print Shop was to set a paragraph of type using the tedious method I described above. It was a gigantic pain in the ass, but I’d say most of us were able to bang it out in three or four regular class periods of about fifty minutes each.

There were exceptions, with most extending the required time by two or three periods. The guy teaching the class continued to move through the course material as some of the slower type-setters stood hunched over their California Job Cases, composing stick in hand, searching for the proper pieces of type.

Even without putting a dunce cap on them, they were exposed to a steady stream of merciless teasing by me and my fellow printers. Over time they would complete their task and get back in with the regular class. This was true of all but one: a nice, hard-working kid named Jimmy, who didn’t belong in any high school class because I’m pretty sure he didn’t know his letters all that well.

But he kept at it, way longer than he should have. Weeks actually.  Our teacher could have just had him pull a proof of whatever he had and called the thing complete. What harm could have come from that? None, right, but he didn’t. Maybe somebody should have just done it for him, or given him theirs when they were done, but nobody did.

Every day he’d pull out his galley and carefully transfer the type into the composing stick and set about the arduous task of hunting every compartment of the job case until he found a letter that matched the one on his sheet. Many of us began thinking that he might never finish, but he did — sort of.

The day it happened most of us were working on other projects, maybe cutting silk screens or learning how to strip artwork into pieces of goldenrod paper for burning lithographic plates (don’t ask). I guess he was transferring the block of type to the proofing machine when it happened. I remember becoming aware of someone softly whimpering, and by the time I looked for its source, it had already given way to full-throated sobbing.

Our teacher had already gone to his side and was looking down on the bed of the proof press. He might have had his hand on his shoulder — I think he did. “It’s alright, Jimmy,” he said while patting his shoulder. “It’s alright.”

We were all straining to see what had happened, and a couple of the guys were asking Jimmy what was wrong. At first he didn’t respond, he was crying too hard, but he wanted to tell us. “What is it, Jimmy?” “You Okay?”

And then he got it out: “I pied it. I pied it,” he said with such heartbreaking sadness and regret that no one rolled out any of the derisive mockery that customarily greeted anyone baring such genuine emotion.  He was inconsolable. I felt bad for him. We all did.

Sometimes I think about this, usually when working on something where a wrong move can result in ruin. Don’t Pi it, I whisper to myself. Don’t Pi it. I can almost hear Jimmy cry.

Till next time patient reader

Joe

My sister Margaret sent me a nice article by Newsday Guest Columnist, Tony Smolenski, who was reminiscing about commuting on the Long Island Railroad, and how his train was often delayed to allow the train from Speonk to “clear.”

Margaret sent me the article because it mentions the LIRR train station in Speonk, which figures prominently in an event that happened in June of 1970, which was when I graduated from Islip High School.

Even though everything was changing in the sixties, Islip tried to keep alive its long observed traditions. One that didn’t quite make it was Moving Up Day. Every spring we were marched onto the football field and corralled into separate class sections (freshmen, sophomores, etc.), where we were led in a goofy sort of Call and Response song, as each class Wove in and out the rows, physically Moving Up to the next class. I can imagine kids from the forties and fifties happily participating in such inspired silliness, but it was caput by nineteen sixty-seven or so.

By the time I was graduating, they were still sponsoring senior class trips. There was the winter daytrip to a Catskill resort (a separate caper), a trip to Washington D.C. (didn’t go), and as a final group activity, an entire train was let from the Long Island Railroad for an all–night excursion to and from Montauk Point.

We left at midnight, and it was widely known (and almost expected) that most passengers would already be fully intoxicated upon arrival. Furthermore, most were secreting enough contraband to last the night, which guaranteed there’d be a train full of drunken teenagers teetering between cars — which in those days were wide open.

The accommodations were impressive. There were club cars that were furnished with upholstered chairs, love seats and couches — but not what you would expect to see on a train; more like in a nicely appointed house. There were cloth curtains on the windows, and tables were set up with a pretty decent buffet.

A freight car housed a live band, in which there was dancing.

My high school classmates were generally a nice group of kids who enjoyed having fun — but they weren’t particularly unruly or destructive. But soon after pulling out of Islip station, I had revealed to me a side of many that hitherto had gone unobserved.

Remember those curtains? Studious, college–bound kids from good families were ripping them off the walls. That nice furniture? Torn open, upended and I swear to God, literally getting its legs broken off!

This went on for a little while, maybe an hour, when the train slowed and finally stopped. A couple of Suffolk County Policemen came on board and after some hushed discussion with the chaperones, they walked through the train giving kids a suspicious onceover.

I figured they were just trying to scare everyone into behaving better, but if one of them had given me his badge and gun and put me in charge of keeping the peace, I would not have been more surprised than by what happened next.

The policemen came back to where me and a few other guys were sitting — and they didn’t look like they had good news. This was confirmed when we were told that we would have to leave!

Oh, God. How embarrassing! There must be a mistake. Did you say we have to leave? The train? Is there some reason for this? Did someone accuse us of something? Who? What did we do? Why are we being singled out?

The questions weren’t answered, but it was suggested that resisting wasn’t wise. I was sure we were being arrested, and for nothing! I certainly hadn’t broken anything and I don’t think any of my comrades had either. Even so, further protestations would only prolong our public humiliation. We stood and disembarked and alighted onto the tarmac of, yes, the Speonk train station. Here is what it looks like today:

It was maybe one A.M., and the early summer night was getting pretty cool. As the train chugged merrily out of the station and I wondered how I was going to explain this to my father, I realized the policemen were starting for their car.

“Excuse me, Sir. Are you leaving?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not taking us in?”

“For what?”

“But you took us off the train?”

“We had to take somebody off.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“Take the first train home in the morning.”

“When’s that?”

“Five-thirty.”

Okay. So what had happened was that we had been made an example of for the rest of the senior class. You’re welcome!

The police cruiser rolled off, leaving us utterly alone under the few dim lights that illuminated the exterior of the small, then desolate station, which was locked up tight.

There were six or seven of us castaways, but we were no close-knit group. We were from the same side of the tracks (wrong), but I was tight with just a couple. In a nod to good old fashion racism, the only black member of our class was also ejected.

It was too chilly to sit outside all night, and we noticed that a couple of hundred yards up-track there were some rail sidings where a westbound train sat idling. We decided to go and see if we could get on and maybe ride it back in the morning.

We climbed a ladder near the front of the engine, and crept along a catwalk toward the cabin. As we neared it, a very fearful and ready-to-fight trainman leapt out from around the corner. In his shaking hands he held a large, cast iron wrench, cocked over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

Our hands sprang up and we stepped backward, assuring him that we meant no harm. After some tense moments we explained our predicament and nice guy that he was, he agreed to let us sleep in the next car. Not long after laying down, I heard someone grunt in pain. At first it was somewhat soft, but it slowly grew in intensity. Who could it be?

It was our Black friend, and it became clear that this was no case of indigestion. Something had to be done, so we went back to the engineer (very carefully), who after checking out the patient, called an ambulance which came and carted him away. He was having an appendicitis attack.

The next morning, we were jarred awake by the train beginning its run to New York. I’m not sure why, but the conductor didn’t ask us for tickets. Within an hour, we were back in Islip. All of us were tired, dirty and a angry over our unfair treatment. Still, we ended up with a good story, which made the injustice a little easier to bear — but just a little. I’m pretty sure ours was the final Senior Train Trip.

Everything Reminds Me of Something Else

I once had a parish priest, Fr. Jim McKenna, whose sermons I found particularly engaging. One of them dealt with discrimination and he recounted that he never realized how painful it was until he found himself on the receiving end. While making the rounds of a hospital and wearing his collar, members of another religious group literally turned their backs to him.

He asked if anyone had ever felt the sting of discrimination, and without any introspection on my part, the Speonk debacle leapt to mind. I was surprised because by then it was ancient history and not something I felt bothered by. I’d told the story without bitterness dozens of times and usually received plenty of laughs. Still, I guess it left a little scar; funny how things like that work.

When Fr. McKenna retired, the parish had a going-away tea that I attended. We chatted and he told me that in seminary school he’d learned a little trick for speaking to congregations. They told him to identify a few people in the audience that seemed to be interested, and to talk to them like it’s just the two of you. He said that I had been one of his guys over the years and he wanted to thank me for playing that role.

I said that it was me who should be thanking him. Thoughtful, relevant sermons are rare enough, but getting them with eye contact is especially uncommon. He was a good priest and I miss him.

‘Till next time patient reader.

Joe