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Returned to his Queens home in 1970 after winning a Congressional Medal of Honor in Vietnam, Owney Morrison works at digging tunnels during the day and escapes with drink at night--from everything, including his wife Dolores and their child
- GenresFictionContemporary
608 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Jimmy Breslin
60 books94 followersJimmy Breslin was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American columnist and author. He wrote numerous novels, and pieces of his have appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City. He was a regular columnist for the newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004.
Among his notable columns, perhaps the best known was published the day after John F. Kennedy's funeral, focusing on the man who had dug the president's grave. The column is indicative of Breslin's style, which often highlights how major events or the actions of those considered "newsworthy" affect the "common man."
Among his notable columns, perhaps the best known was published the day after John F. Kennedy's funeral, focusing on the man who had dug the president's grave. The column is indicative of Breslin's style, which often highlights how major events or the actions of those considered "newsworthy" affect the "common man."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 26, 2022
I need to go wash my hair.
The first time I ever heard the term "sandhog," was when I read about workmen on the Brooklyn bridge. I was impressed with a job that looks horrifying, and it's probably much more so in reality. In this case, sand hogs are creating tunnels that will carry water to the billions of people that live in the New York City area. I say billions because it's an unthinkable amount of people living there.
The best parts of this book were accidents that happened because of the dangerous nature of this job.
It was a love-hate relationship with this book. The wife of the protagonist, Dolores, was an admirable character. She reminded me so much of myself when I was younger and I married someone who took my innocence, my youth, my heart, and gave back nothing. I hated the character of the protagonist, "Ownie," whose real name was owen. He was an alcoholic for whom the bottle meant more than anything: more than his marriage, more than his child. Willing to throw away what was so meaningful, to prove that no woman would tell him what to do. It was terribly triggering for me, as so many books are. I wish so much I could reach through the pages and slap the crap out of the son of a b.
Here's the first of the accidents that were so thrilling:
".. when at work one day, deep in the tunnel under the dam, Morrison's friend, Jerry barry, who was here 3 months from donegal, turned off his acetylene torch at the tip but left the tank open. Lit up like he deserved a good smoke for himself. Lit up in a tight chamber far under a reservoir. Barry blew straight up through the roof and into the water. Later, standing on the gravel shore, somebody spotted Barry out in the reservoir. The head was bobbing along, the face looking up, with sometimes no water covering the face at all, looking up at the sky as the water swept it toward the gate in the dam that led to the tunnel in the city. Somebody handed Morrison a pole with a small net on it and said, 'well, this is about all you'll need to fish Barry out of the water.' It was. When Morrison picked it up in the net, the man rowing the boat looked at the head in the net and said, 'I guess he sure left a sour taste in the drinking water.' "
Here's an accident that happened to Owen Morrison's ancestor, Jimmy Morrison. It was a pretty good accident, too:
" A year later, working in High Bridge, Jimmy Morrison and three others got on a lift that dropped like a flower pot off a windowsill, dropped down a 900 ft shaft with the four men on it trying to scream out but unable to make a sound. Jimmy was on his hands and knees and forcing an Act of Contrition through his Frozen mind when the elevator cable caught and the elevator stopped at once. The four were thrown against the steel sides of the shaft with bones breaking and the first cries coming from them. Then the lift broke Free again and dropped the last 50 ft to the bottom. It splintered and the four men were pulled out and had to remain in the shaft for several hours until a new lift was fashioned and sent down to them. One of the four, Gene Cooney, went berserk and, when healed, had to be put away. The other two left sandhog work. Jimmy Morrison, with fractured vertebrae, was in a ward in Bronx general hospital for 6 months."
Throughout the book, mentions are made of a woman named cindy. Cindy is a sex worker, though to her friends it's more like friends with benefits. What I disliked immensely was the author's attitude toward her, as if she's something dirty and smelly, instead of directing it back to the men that make the bad smells and the dirt.
"in the middle of the night or the start of the morning, or whenever it was, he sat on a wicker hamper in the bathroom of Fat's apartment. He knew it was Fat's apartment and he knew his throat throbbed. She stepped out of the shower and stood directly in front of him with the towel held up under her chin. 👉👉👉👉👉Damp seaweed neared his face.👈👈👈👈🤬 He put a hand flat against her stomach."
The smell of damp seaweed did not come from her, it came from the ugly body fluids that came out of his penis.
What was amazing to me, was the way the sand hogs drank, before and during their shifts in such a dangerous work environment. Besides the drinking, there was so much smoking in this book. I felt like I needed to wash my hair constantly.
It's true that in the 20th century, they let you smoke inside buildings, but I worked in a job where we had computer typesetting equipment, and we were not allowed to smoke near it.
".. in a small crevice over the ledge, covered by a piece of wood, was a bag of beers that ownie's father kept hidden there. The beer was warm and it sprayed when the tab came off; but Ownie covered the can with his mouth and sucked quickly. Then he started to swallow the can of beer and tasted it only after it was finished, and then he used the taste as a reason for opening another can quickly. He was almost through with this second can when his father and a surveyor walked past.
'We're short today,' Ownie said to his father.
'Why do you think I'm on the run all morning?' the father said.
When his father kept walking, ownie finished the second can, grabbed another, and walked up the face, where his father stood, reading from a diagram."
The father character is as much of an alcoholic as Owen is. The father is a lead on the crew of sand hogs, and he is involved with the dirty work of ghosting. Ghosting is when they use the names of people who are not really working, but they pretend they are so that a paycheck will be cut for them. Then this paycheck is shared by Owen's father, and two other chueco characters who are cheating the mafia.
Here's another accident where a man named meagher notices that the crew going down in the morning is short one. He's an extra, who is eligible to take over a spot shortage. But he's a terrible drunk:
" 'where are you going?' owney asked him. 'To work.'
Owney walked fast to get away from him. Delaney stood up at the top of the hill, talking to owney's father.
Meagher, walking with the loosest feet, called out, 'you go down one short.'
'be off with you,' Delaney said. 'The only thing we're short of here is people who can work.'
'Hey, Jimmy morrison. What do you say? The gang's one short. I fuckin' know it,' Meagher said.
Owney's father threw a hand at him in the air and walked off toward the equipment shed.
'Bullshit,' Meagher said as he approached delaney. 'I counted two gangs going down one short.'
'counted what? What you drank?'
'I counted heads. I'm claimin' one of these fucking jobs.'
Owney and Delaney walked slowly and meaghher brushed past them and went up the hill, and as he got closer to the shaft his stride improved and he walked up to the low gate and unhooked a length of wire holding the gates together and the click of this caused the gateman's head to pop out of the shaft. 'The lift's not up,' he called.
Meagher pushed the gate open and strode in for the lift, which was not there. He was about to step off into the air when he noticed this. He paused on the lip of the elevator shaft, standing on wood that looked like a floor, but was actually jutting out over the shaft. He had no balance and he held his hands out to steady himself. The wood under his feet shifted. Meagher's head was turning in alarm when now the wood tilted. Owney, walking up with delaney, walking quickly now, could see Meagher Paw the air as he dropped into the black hole that went deep into the ground."
"... Owney, on the ladder, arms full of wood, pulled out a plank and held it up. James wriggled his body into the space at the top of the ring and he had his face down, looking at owney, who held up the plank, and James reached for it and the rock gave a small scream. Owney dropped all the wood and he threw both hands at the rock ceiling, trying to keep millions of years and millions of tons from doing as it pleased, and he knew what it was but he still put both hands flat against the ceiling and then the rock flew open and here was the woman with the wind blowing her long skirt and her arms held out. As she moaned, owney's arms suddenly were jammed into his chest and he lost footing and fell from the ladder. The rock ceiling fell and crushed James against the iron ring and then the iron ring put its dull red shoulder into the rock and held it. Owney fell feet first and dropped hard on his hands and knees and looked up in pain and then closed his eyes against the shower of blood that came as the rock squeezed every drop out of James's body. First, the blood poured, and then it turned into a steady drip. And then owney was on his feet and he was back on the ladder, one hand out for James, but all owney could see above him was white rock on bent red metal that dripped blood. He kept going for the ceiling and there were shelves everywhere and he was reaching for nothing and he felt a hand clamp on his right leg.
'That's it, lad,' Delaney, on the ladder, said. Owney followed him down. 'You'll be able to smell him a long time before you get to see what's left of him,' Delaney said."
And the last quote, is one of owney beginning to get the hallucinations that alcoholics get when they've had so much to drink:
".. after a while, owney heard a small noise, a pop, and felt something pushing out of his pulse. A worm had broken through the skin on the inside of his wrist and was starting to wriggle out of the vein. Dark brown, a hint of red, the worm bunched fat in the opening. Just a little of the worm was coming out of the skin. Then the worm was getting as much of its body as possible through the opening, pulling up its skin like a pair of socks, trying to get the rest of the body, down inside the vein, to just slide through the vein like a tail and come out through the opening in the skin.
Owney plucked at the head of the worm, trying to catch it so he could pull the whole worm out of his wrist. The worm began to roll inside itself, the outer skin running over the front lips and then going down inside. owney wondered how the worm saw his fingers coming. Does a worm see? Perhaps the follicles around the front lips serve as some kind of eyes. As owney got his fingers on the worm, the head withdrew into the body, the worm's skin rolling rapidly inside, the bunching of the worm's body becoming noticeably less in the opening of the skin at owney's pulse. Inside his wrist, owney could feel the worm going back through the vein, back up into his arm.... "
🤣
The first time I ever heard the term "sandhog," was when I read about workmen on the Brooklyn bridge. I was impressed with a job that looks horrifying, and it's probably much more so in reality. In this case, sand hogs are creating tunnels that will carry water to the billions of people that live in the New York City area. I say billions because it's an unthinkable amount of people living there.
The best parts of this book were accidents that happened because of the dangerous nature of this job.
It was a love-hate relationship with this book. The wife of the protagonist, Dolores, was an admirable character. She reminded me so much of myself when I was younger and I married someone who took my innocence, my youth, my heart, and gave back nothing. I hated the character of the protagonist, "Ownie," whose real name was owen. He was an alcoholic for whom the bottle meant more than anything: more than his marriage, more than his child. Willing to throw away what was so meaningful, to prove that no woman would tell him what to do. It was terribly triggering for me, as so many books are. I wish so much I could reach through the pages and slap the crap out of the son of a b.
Here's the first of the accidents that were so thrilling:
".. when at work one day, deep in the tunnel under the dam, Morrison's friend, Jerry barry, who was here 3 months from donegal, turned off his acetylene torch at the tip but left the tank open. Lit up like he deserved a good smoke for himself. Lit up in a tight chamber far under a reservoir. Barry blew straight up through the roof and into the water. Later, standing on the gravel shore, somebody spotted Barry out in the reservoir. The head was bobbing along, the face looking up, with sometimes no water covering the face at all, looking up at the sky as the water swept it toward the gate in the dam that led to the tunnel in the city. Somebody handed Morrison a pole with a small net on it and said, 'well, this is about all you'll need to fish Barry out of the water.' It was. When Morrison picked it up in the net, the man rowing the boat looked at the head in the net and said, 'I guess he sure left a sour taste in the drinking water.' "
Here's an accident that happened to Owen Morrison's ancestor, Jimmy Morrison. It was a pretty good accident, too:
" A year later, working in High Bridge, Jimmy Morrison and three others got on a lift that dropped like a flower pot off a windowsill, dropped down a 900 ft shaft with the four men on it trying to scream out but unable to make a sound. Jimmy was on his hands and knees and forcing an Act of Contrition through his Frozen mind when the elevator cable caught and the elevator stopped at once. The four were thrown against the steel sides of the shaft with bones breaking and the first cries coming from them. Then the lift broke Free again and dropped the last 50 ft to the bottom. It splintered and the four men were pulled out and had to remain in the shaft for several hours until a new lift was fashioned and sent down to them. One of the four, Gene Cooney, went berserk and, when healed, had to be put away. The other two left sandhog work. Jimmy Morrison, with fractured vertebrae, was in a ward in Bronx general hospital for 6 months."
Throughout the book, mentions are made of a woman named cindy. Cindy is a sex worker, though to her friends it's more like friends with benefits. What I disliked immensely was the author's attitude toward her, as if she's something dirty and smelly, instead of directing it back to the men that make the bad smells and the dirt.
"in the middle of the night or the start of the morning, or whenever it was, he sat on a wicker hamper in the bathroom of Fat's apartment. He knew it was Fat's apartment and he knew his throat throbbed. She stepped out of the shower and stood directly in front of him with the towel held up under her chin. 👉👉👉👉👉Damp seaweed neared his face.👈👈👈👈🤬 He put a hand flat against her stomach."
The smell of damp seaweed did not come from her, it came from the ugly body fluids that came out of his penis.
What was amazing to me, was the way the sand hogs drank, before and during their shifts in such a dangerous work environment. Besides the drinking, there was so much smoking in this book. I felt like I needed to wash my hair constantly.
It's true that in the 20th century, they let you smoke inside buildings, but I worked in a job where we had computer typesetting equipment, and we were not allowed to smoke near it.
".. in a small crevice over the ledge, covered by a piece of wood, was a bag of beers that ownie's father kept hidden there. The beer was warm and it sprayed when the tab came off; but Ownie covered the can with his mouth and sucked quickly. Then he started to swallow the can of beer and tasted it only after it was finished, and then he used the taste as a reason for opening another can quickly. He was almost through with this second can when his father and a surveyor walked past.
'We're short today,' Ownie said to his father.
'Why do you think I'm on the run all morning?' the father said.
When his father kept walking, ownie finished the second can, grabbed another, and walked up the face, where his father stood, reading from a diagram."
The father character is as much of an alcoholic as Owen is. The father is a lead on the crew of sand hogs, and he is involved with the dirty work of ghosting. Ghosting is when they use the names of people who are not really working, but they pretend they are so that a paycheck will be cut for them. Then this paycheck is shared by Owen's father, and two other chueco characters who are cheating the mafia.
Here's another accident where a man named meagher notices that the crew going down in the morning is short one. He's an extra, who is eligible to take over a spot shortage. But he's a terrible drunk:
" 'where are you going?' owney asked him. 'To work.'
Owney walked fast to get away from him. Delaney stood up at the top of the hill, talking to owney's father.
Meagher, walking with the loosest feet, called out, 'you go down one short.'
'be off with you,' Delaney said. 'The only thing we're short of here is people who can work.'
'Hey, Jimmy morrison. What do you say? The gang's one short. I fuckin' know it,' Meagher said.
Owney's father threw a hand at him in the air and walked off toward the equipment shed.
'Bullshit,' Meagher said as he approached delaney. 'I counted two gangs going down one short.'
'counted what? What you drank?'
'I counted heads. I'm claimin' one of these fucking jobs.'
Owney and Delaney walked slowly and meaghher brushed past them and went up the hill, and as he got closer to the shaft his stride improved and he walked up to the low gate and unhooked a length of wire holding the gates together and the click of this caused the gateman's head to pop out of the shaft. 'The lift's not up,' he called.
Meagher pushed the gate open and strode in for the lift, which was not there. He was about to step off into the air when he noticed this. He paused on the lip of the elevator shaft, standing on wood that looked like a floor, but was actually jutting out over the shaft. He had no balance and he held his hands out to steady himself. The wood under his feet shifted. Meagher's head was turning in alarm when now the wood tilted. Owney, walking up with delaney, walking quickly now, could see Meagher Paw the air as he dropped into the black hole that went deep into the ground."
"... Owney, on the ladder, arms full of wood, pulled out a plank and held it up. James wriggled his body into the space at the top of the ring and he had his face down, looking at owney, who held up the plank, and James reached for it and the rock gave a small scream. Owney dropped all the wood and he threw both hands at the rock ceiling, trying to keep millions of years and millions of tons from doing as it pleased, and he knew what it was but he still put both hands flat against the ceiling and then the rock flew open and here was the woman with the wind blowing her long skirt and her arms held out. As she moaned, owney's arms suddenly were jammed into his chest and he lost footing and fell from the ladder. The rock ceiling fell and crushed James against the iron ring and then the iron ring put its dull red shoulder into the rock and held it. Owney fell feet first and dropped hard on his hands and knees and looked up in pain and then closed his eyes against the shower of blood that came as the rock squeezed every drop out of James's body. First, the blood poured, and then it turned into a steady drip. And then owney was on his feet and he was back on the ladder, one hand out for James, but all owney could see above him was white rock on bent red metal that dripped blood. He kept going for the ceiling and there were shelves everywhere and he was reaching for nothing and he felt a hand clamp on his right leg.
'That's it, lad,' Delaney, on the ladder, said. Owney followed him down. 'You'll be able to smell him a long time before you get to see what's left of him,' Delaney said."
And the last quote, is one of owney beginning to get the hallucinations that alcoholics get when they've had so much to drink:
".. after a while, owney heard a small noise, a pop, and felt something pushing out of his pulse. A worm had broken through the skin on the inside of his wrist and was starting to wriggle out of the vein. Dark brown, a hint of red, the worm bunched fat in the opening. Just a little of the worm was coming out of the skin. Then the worm was getting as much of its body as possible through the opening, pulling up its skin like a pair of socks, trying to get the rest of the body, down inside the vein, to just slide through the vein like a tail and come out through the opening in the skin.
Owney plucked at the head of the worm, trying to catch it so he could pull the whole worm out of his wrist. The worm began to roll inside itself, the outer skin running over the front lips and then going down inside. owney wondered how the worm saw his fingers coming. Does a worm see? Perhaps the follicles around the front lips serve as some kind of eyes. As owney got his fingers on the worm, the head withdrew into the body, the worm's skin rolling rapidly inside, the bunching of the worm's body becoming noticeably less in the opening of the skin at owney's pulse. Inside his wrist, owney could feel the worm going back through the vein, back up into his arm.... "
🤣
August 21, 2015
Shouldn't list this as "read" as I couldn't finish, and that almost never happens. I felt it just dragged. Love Breslin, too.
September 15, 2022
Gravedigger
Renowned for his reporter's instincts to interview the individual assigned to digging JFK's grave at Arlington, Jimmy Breslin lived a writing life with a shovel in one hand and a drink in the other. Fascinated by the struggles and heroism of ordinary people surviving lives lived at the edge, all Breslin's skills as a writer and insighfulness as a human being are on display in this gritty tale of a working class Irishman on the drink and on the brink of dissipation, as he tries to hold onto to his small family threatened by his own self-destructive alcoholism.
Renowned for his reporter's instincts to interview the individual assigned to digging JFK's grave at Arlington, Jimmy Breslin lived a writing life with a shovel in one hand and a drink in the other. Fascinated by the struggles and heroism of ordinary people surviving lives lived at the edge, all Breslin's skills as a writer and insighfulness as a human being are on display in this gritty tale of a working class Irishman on the drink and on the brink of dissipation, as he tries to hold onto to his small family threatened by his own self-destructive alcoholism.
April 9, 2019
Jimmy Breslin writes with the same scope and pace as Steinbeck. 'Table Money' has the same feel as 'East of Eden,' not quite as epic but... It is, in my opinion, sneaky good if you have the patience for it. Some of the turns of phrase are just amazing. The kind of writing that makes you jealous that you didn't (or can't) think of something so apt and beautiful. I'm not sure how I've avoided reading Breslin for this long. This won't be the last one of his that I read.
August 28, 2019
Owner Morrison is chased by demons (alcohol) after a tour in Vietnam and his wife wants more.
June 18, 2007
First chapter is great. Writing is locally very good but globally disjointed (yeah, yeah life is random, but a book about it shouldnt be). Knows what he writes about: he himself is Queens, Irish, and all that means. 3.5 stars.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews