Yesterday a great New York City club owner died. His name was Hilly Kristal and he thought he was opening a bluegrass club on the Bowery in 1973. Didn't work out that way at all. No, the club he named name for Country, Bluegrass and Blues was never a big draw for those types of music. CBGB's, however, was sure as hell no failure. He found out quick that his best customers and most talented pool of musicians were that new bunch hanging around the Village, a fairly wide range of characters called Punks.

They were later called New Wave, and then Alternative but at the time they were a new breed on the rock and roll scene, everybody’s red-headed step children and whipping boys. They were called no-talent malcontents, spoiled whiners, idiots, freaks, all sorts of unflattering names. So, what did Mr. Kristal do with his brand new club and sizable investment? He adopted the controversial Punks and made his club their home away from home.

And what did they do? They changed the face of rock & roll and popular culture, that’s what they did, and went on to produce some of the most exciting and memorable music to ever come out of New York City. I remember seeing a band there called Stiletto with a beautiful black-haired singer. She died her hair blond and the band changed their name to Blondie and Deborah Harry and her band mates did alright.

One night I was gigging with my band at a club down the street when a friend told me “you just gotta see this band over at CB’s!” So between sets I cruised over and caught an exciting show by a very tight trio with a decidedly quirky and frenetic lead singer. I decided right there that this band would either become major stars or get locked up in an asylum. Well, Talking Heads added a keyboard player and the quirky singer David Byrne wrote some incredible songs and they did okay too.

The Ramones shows at CBGB’s are legendary. The place launched a lot of careers, people like Patty Smith, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and Richard Verlaine’s innovative and influential group Television, to name but a few. Hilly Kristal booked them all and treated them decently. And any musician who ever played the place will tell you it had one of the best sound systems in any night club anywhere.

Many more punk clubs sprang up in New York and all over the county, some real decent joints and some deplorable dives. Hilly Kristal’s joint was both, and it was smack dab in the middle of New York’s skid row, home to thousands of street winos. It became an institution, ironically the kind of place that punk was invented to rail against. But Mr. Kristal kept on keeping on, oblivious to criticism and resistant to complacency. He was a bit of an irritable prick, just the kind of guy you like for a club owner.

He was a no bullshit kind of guy and he’d book anybody he deemed to have something original to say. He did not insist that every band had to be a big draw right off the bat, giving bands he thought worth the investment the chance to build up a following even after some near-empty houses at their first shows. He was in the night club business for the long haul and had an incredibly long run for a rock joint, closing only a couple of years ago when he lost his lease after a public battle with the landlord, some so-called charity group that supposedly helps the homeless (and a lot of success they’re having on that front). They really want to cash in on rising real estate prices on the Bowery so monied preppies can “gentrify” the area by tossing out the poor and ridding the area of colorful, original places like CBGB’s, likely replacing them with generic sushi joints and predictably hushed and chic white
wine bistros, like that vermin hasn’t ruined enough neighborhoods around the city.

He created a New York landmark, launched some great careers and gave New Wave music its first outpost, putting them on the map forever. Hilly Kristal lost his battle with lung cancer at 75 years young yesterday. Hilly and his club are gone but neither will be forgotten. For a guy who thought he’d operate a quiet bluegrass pub in a forgotten corner of the city, he created a sensational scene and provided the first stage for a movement. So long, pal, the city’s gonna miss you.

Dogs. People seem to love 'em. I like dogs just fine. Other people's dogs, that is. Don't have one myself. Doesn't mean I’m not sympathetic to dog owners’ love for their animals. A blind man can see how beneficial is the relationship between canines and humans, especially those blind men who are led around a black world by seeing-eye dogs.

These past weeks dogs seem to be in the news quite a bit. There’s a bunch of unlucky hounds and one very lucky dog indeed. The ones with all the bad luck were those pit bulls with the bad fortune to be cruelly exploited in the dog-fighting schemes of Michael Vick and his low-rent posse of “sportsmen.” Apparently their idea of sport is to watch two of these dogs tear one another limb from limb in a small fighting ring for their amusement. Just in case the bloody carnage was not interesting enough in and of itself to these ghouls, large wagers were placed on the outcomes of these fights.

Pretty sick, no? But wait, it gets better/worse. If some of these dogs lucky enough to survive one of these barbaric spectacles didn’t show these sportsmen enough “heart” in the heat of “battle,” they were coldly executed by strangulation, electrocution or drowning by so-called humans. Even the dogs rescued by the authorities will have to be euthanized (executed) since their training makes them extreme risks to humans. No upside to the story at all.

Whatever jail time the perpetrators of these crimes serve won’t save a single one of these hapless animals or stop other “sporting types” from running their own dog fighting operations. Apparently there’s a demand for this sort of thing. It takes a decent amount of money to run of these rings, from kennels and dog food to psychotic “trainers” to finding out-of-the-way venues to hold these contests and providing tight security from the authorities who tend to frown on such goings on.

The public is pretty pissed off at these people, understandably I suppose. The dogs themselves must be cursing their ancient ancestors for ever hooking up with humans in the first place back in the prehistoric mists. Life in the wild could not have been any more cruel and savage than the fate met by these dogs. At least they could claim to be their own masters and not the tools of human breeding schemes and exploitation. If I was a dog I’d be thinking: Let em’ fetch their own dead ducks out of the water and guard their own damned backyards from threats, who are almost universally human predators anyway.

Humans have been in control of dogs for thousands of years and have been served wonderfully by them. And what do the dogs get out of it? If they’re lucky, like one tiny Maltese, they get twelve million dollars. When Leona Helmsley died this past week, that’s exactly what she left to Trouble, her designer bred pocket pooch. And how dumb is that? The dog could give a crap less about the 12 mil, and there’s two grandchildren of the billionaire who got squat. I could almost understand if these grandchildren had an urge to strangle this particular dog. Not that I condone it, mind you, but I’d understand the urge to do so if I were the one stiffed out my inheritance by three and half pounds of fluff and attitude.

And I’m not crying the blues for the grandkids of a billionaire. Odds are they’re already set for life, and probably have their own designer pets that they dote on like they were children. It’s just that I’d like to see some of the public outrage shown towards Michael Vick and his cronies shown towards the killers and exploiters of humans. Where were these people with the signs and the slogans when Donald Rumsfeld was calmly explaining why he didn’t care about the body armor or vehicle shielding of our soldiers, our beloved sons and daughters? Why no outrage that the United States was torturing prisoners like the Gestapo? Do we love our dogs more than our fellow humans?

When nations in Africa practice ethnic cleansing (genocide), why do the body counts have to get up into the hundreds of thousands before anyone gets pissed off? And then what happens? Committees are formed to study the situation and months and maybe years go by before anything is done about it. Meanwhile people are being slaughtered no less cruelly than in the dog rings.

And what about North Korea? Everybody rants about their two-bit nuclear program but ignores the fact that the people of North Korea have been horribly suffering for decades. A goodly portion of their population is brain-damaged from starvation as youngsters. There’s no cure, either. Maybe because people in Korea eat dogs as part of their diet they get no sympathy from the kind of people who Michael Vick outraged. Only a guess, but the kind of outrage displayed over atrocities was a very heartening sign to me, an indication that America is getting over her numbness and shell shock and starting to care passionately once again. And if we have dogs to thank for the opening of our hearts, well then that’s one more service these loyal beasts have provided to humankind. Thanks, pooches, and sorry for the grief.

Author’s note: For a dog’s point of view, click on the stories and essays on this web site and read my short story “I’m Not Your Dog.” – Bob Crespo

I love learning. I consider it a poor day indeed that I don't learn something new. Unfortunately, my brain and the memory contained therein have no filter and no mechanism for getting rid of useless information. I'm starting to envy my computer. Anything I don't want it to remember I simply delete forever from its memory banks. A computer never has to learn that Pamela Anderson has had her breast implants removed unless I tell it so, and I have no intention of burdening an innocent machine with annoying trivia. (Whoops, I just did.) Now, as a reasoning being, I also know that Ms. Anderson had the implants in the first place. Now there's two useless facts I now possess using up valuable skull space that could have been reserved for something, anything else.

Nothing against Ms. Anderson or breasts, I like them both. It's just that I've been noticing that a prominent feature of the "Information Age" is a huge amount of ridiculous information coming my way that I did not seek. Short of becoming a hermit who shuns newspapers, television, radio, movies, billboards and computers, I see no way of stopping this flow of minutia. And so I worry about my brain. I like knowing things. I already have a head full of unrelated arcane facts. My head, and therefore my brain, is only average sized and I fear it is getting full. Anyone who's spent any time with an elderly relative knows that the human memory is a finite resource prone to breakdown in one's later years. And our grandparents learned most of their stuff before the saturation bombing of our skulls began. I’m now past 50 years old and for the past 20 or so of them I've been absorbing reams and reams of printed and audio idiocy that has nothing to do with anything at all. Will my memory fill up early? Senile at 55? Even now the thing I remember most about the first Bush administration is that the man hated broccoli and that fact upset the nation no end. That's not a good sign.

I find myself trying to tune out useless news. I do not care which blond young bimbo got locked up for what offense this week. I have no curiosity as to the identity or any actor or actress’ latest flame. Anything at all to do with hockey or tennis is an automatic eye-glazer. After all, any hockey trivia that sneaks in might push aside some important baseball statistics, for which I have an unabashed passion. I'm not interested in the latest figures on Bill Gates' net worth. I just figure it's a gazillion bucks by now and leave it at that. I don't think I need to know the latest trends among teenagers. I consider that their business, and the mass publicizing of it only takes the fun of it away from them, so why be a spoil sport? I sure don't want to join in. There's not too many sadder sights than thirty, forty and fifty-something year-olds trying to look and act like teeners. Spare me. I also don't want to know about the latest technological advances in shaving. I'm good with that, thank you very much. High-tech science it's not.

I have no whiff of interest in celebrities' sexual orientation, chemical dependencies or dysfunctional histories. Zero. If they perform well, that's enough for me. And that includes politicians and athletes. Besides, let us have our illusions and fantasies. Why burst everybody's bubble so you can get lightweight burdens off your chest? For the most part these people are rich, and nothing annoys the public more than hearing rich people whine. We don't, so you shouldn't either just because some hairdo buffoon with glistened eyes affords you a televised showcase to complain while he or she nods sympathetically for the camera. It just gives people the creeps, and more information than we need to know. Do like the rest of us do and find a friend or a bottle of red eye to hash things out with. And don't think you're helping others with similar problems by "coming forward" publicly. You want to help somebody, shut the hell up and quietly pay for someone's mental therapy or medical care. You are not some social innovator for admitting a problem nor are you anyone's savior. Misty eyes are for family, friends and acting roles.

I don't especially care for the Internet, although I know there is a lot of valuable information to be learned there. The problem is that, in order to find that good stuff you have to endure hours of unbelievably tedious tidbits of knowledge you could do better without. It's like a million phone books folding out of a single phone book and you must turn each page to find what you want instead of being able to flip through the book alphabetically. Who designed this thing? If it truly was Al Gore he shouldn’t be bragging about it. Or maybe he’s like me, a computer-challenged middle aged knucklehead trying to keep up with the times with mixed results. I happen to know firsthand that you can find 27 distributors of rubber galoshes on the Internet. Find them by accident, that is. If you were looking for them you'd never find them. I had no idea there were that many distributors of rubber galoshes. I had no reason to think about it one way or the next. Sears has all the galoshes I ever wanted to think about but there it is, more wasted human memory chips. I even forget what I was trying to look up in the first place, clear evidence of the power of useless information to nudge aside bunches of useful knowledge.

The internet is also full of people "chatting". The only chats I've ever had is face to face with another live human being or on the telephone, thus having no chance of passing myself off as "Candypants from Malibu." Typing lies to unseen strangers is not chatting, it's a bizarre indication that you have way too much idle time on your hands. Me even knowing about this strange phenomenon is using up even more brain space. I can only speculate on the brain drain involved in maintaining a fictional personality and multiple relationships with cyber chatters doing the same. It boggles what is left of my dwindling memory.

What was I talking about? There, see what I mean? The synapses and neurons inside my skull are being squeezed and juggled and scrambled by trivia. What I need is a good defragmenting. I don't remember algebra but I know that Elvis Presley died on the toilet. I loved Elvis and his work and why should I have to know that about him? It's demeaning to him and to me. Where's my delete button? I couldn't tell you what was decided at the Diet of Worms but I know about all kinds of silly fad diets and I'm a thin person. What gives? Why do I remember that Wonder Bread builds strong bodies twelve ways when you couldn't pay me to eat the stuff? Why do I know that so-called "Super-models" have tiny appetites for everything but heroin? Is this necessary? It only sidetracks me from pondering life's larger mysteries, such as: Who put the bop in the bop-shu-wop-shu-wop, who put the ram in the ramalamadingdong?
Am I supposed to care about a guy stealing and sniffing some famous lady's shoes? Is this legitimate news? Of course it isn't. But there it was, page 2 in the newspaper and bingo, it's locked in my brain. Great. I just know some important fact got shoved aside for the foot guy. Let's see, William the Conqueror subdued England in 1066. Okay, good, that's not lost. There's no way of telling, but I suspect I was groping for an answer that I used to know while watching "Jeopardy" the other day. Thanks, foot fetish guy. You replaced Kowloon in my memory banks. I also don't need to hear another word about Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco, all these years later. There never was any upside whatsoever to their tawdry tale and no moral lessons to be passed on to the kiddies. Ditto for the business news pages. Machiavellian power struggles over other people's money don't pique my interest and the meanness of spirit of some of these multi-billionaires is depressing, to say the least. You’d think these guys would spend their days singing and laughing and thanking their damned lucky stars. Give me a billion bucks and just see if you could wipe the grin off my mug.

In the sports section, playoff basketball and hockey has the sports scribes really reaching for stories in these tainted seasons of business page-like big money tales and steroid use that overshadow the athletic events. And guys, I may have forgotten algebra, but I know nobody can give 110% of anything, even something as intangible as effort. Thank God for baseball and Mike Lupica columns, neither of which puts unwanted trivia and cliches into my overtaxed head. Trivia, perhaps, but it's information that I seek, and therein lies the difference. Box scores and baseball guy stories. Can't get enough of them. Baseball wisely never lets two weeks elapse between the final playoffs and the World Series, ala football's two weeks of mind-numbing buildup to the Super Bowl. That's a dangerous thing to do to sportswriters and fans alike, and the lack of real news of actual games leads to some of the most tedious sports writing of the year, every year. Oh great, another profile of the guy who wear’s the dopey team mascot suit! Talk about eye-glazing.

To say nothing of the surreal exchanges on sports radio call-in shows, traditionally lousy with callers with way too much time on their hands. A good rule of thumb here is: if you find yourself getting involved in complicated discussions at midnight on the merits of small power forwards still available in the 5th round of the NBA draft and you are not a professional scout or general manager, you need to get a life swiftly. During the Super Bowl build-up, these shows only get worse, if you can possibly imagine that. In-depth interviews and biographies of team travelling secretaries are only one disastrous result of this down time. Only another story comparing the relative greatness(!) of Cal Ripken Jr. and Rafael Palmiero could be worse. These are games we're talking about here, no? These guys were superb athletes, true, but don't confuse them with Churchill, Roosevelt and Ghandi. Or Mickey, Willie and the Duke for that matter.

We are all in the same boat in this exalted age of information. We all love information and knowledge, but not all knowledge is created equal. Some of it is downright distracting and annoying and a lot of it is totally unnecessary. I don't give a damn how they created the special effects for Star Wars. What ever happened to trade secrets? Just let me enjoy the damned movie and marvel at your technical wizardry and artistry, please. Jimi Hendrix never did tell anyone publicly exactly how he was able to get those other-worldly sounds out of the same equipment every other guitar slinger was using and it only adds to his legend. Explaining away the technical details of the creation of art puts it in the category of an engineering project like a bridge or an automobile. Leave the technical shoptalk to the technicians and let us enjoy the magic. Besides, I need the skull space for my box scores.

I remember as a schoolboy reading the last chapter of the history textbooks, always titled: "THE FUTURE". The first page usually had a drawing of some futuristic city with air cars flying around fantastical towers and sky high parks. In the foreground was always a family riding some interminable escalator up to…where? They were dressed like Captain Kirk, even the kids in their mini-Starfleet duds, beatifically staring up at the sky at…what? The chapter, always the shortest in the book and with no quiz at the end of it, went on to describe how the omnipotent power of modern science would provide our nation and the world with untold wonders in the very near future. Undersea cities. Giant space stations. Mining asteroids for new and useful metals. Vacations on Venus and Mars. Moving sidewalks. Food pills (no, thanks). Aircars. Deserts turned into veritable Gardens of Eden. Fully automated homes. Robots. Cures for mankind's myriad illnesses. World peace. Elimination of poverty and hunger. One world government. Longer life spans. Lasers that do anything and everything. Travel by intrepid explorers to the farthest star. Not to mention my favorite prediction of them all, the evolution of our species into hairless beige gnomes. Can't wait! You name it or imagine it, that chapter had it all written down.

Well, all I can say is, get busy scientists. The new millennium is upon us and what have we got? Cell phones, microwave ovens and computers. Useful toys and wonderful conveniences, sure, but hardly all that exciting. Science guys and gals, you've let us down.

Our skies are still polluted with the foul waste of internal combustion, all the old diseases are killing folks unchecked and there's even a new kid on the block, AIDS, that none of you can make heads or tails of. Oh sure, we've got i-phones phones now, thank you very much, like we didn't have enough annoying gadgets. Beepers, hypnotic mindless game boys, talking cars alarms. Enough already! And I've got news for you, Brainiacs, CD's don't sound any better than cassettes. Why did I have to replace my whole music collection? Ever try to re-wind a CD to a favorite passage?

It's not that we're bereft of technology. No shortage there. But what are we using it for? Video cameras to record every glop of shiny drool our children produce. Complicated computers used mostly for playing zap-the-aliens-with- weird-noises games. Sophisticated surveillance devices turned mostly on our own honest citizenry. Microwave ovens to heat up day old pizza. Supersonic jets only the very wealthy can afford, and now they’re even obsolete and headed for the bone yard. Incredibly advanced machines that can map the entire human body, used all too often on people for no other reason that they've got medical insurance to pay for it, not that they necessarily require the treatment.

My grandfather entered a hospital in recent years for treatment of a torn hamstring muscle and was given a CAT scan, an EKG and a full body MRI. I'm sure there are thousands of poor children in dire straits health-wise who could have benefited from those tests. The tests didn't do a damned thing for Gramps' hamstring, but hey, the old boy was covered and the bills were paid. A week at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, with a few Broadway shows thrown in, would have been cheaper and would have done just about as much for his torn hamstring muscle, but at least he'd have had a good time.

Sadly, my Grandfather passed away shortly after that, a 90 year old man dead of an aneurysm before he hit the floor. His obvious lack of life did not dissuade the paramedics and the hospital personnel from subjecting his dead body to all manner of complicated medical procedures involving every machine at their disposal and subsequently billing his estate for twenty thousand dollars. True story. Meanwhile, HMO's are turning away gravely ill children who require the benefits of those same marvelous machines in order to be able to live a life half as full as Gramps led. So we've got a load of technology at our disposal, but why is so much of it disposable?

And what ever happened to the Space Program? What, was it boring or something? Where the hell did most of this new technology come from? Bingo! That's right, mostly developed for the space program. Sure it's expensive to blow out into outer space, but no space program, no microchips, no microchips… well you get the picture. The Queen of Spain hocked her jewels so Columbus could sail. Did her gamble pay off or no? Do the math. (The answer is YES.) Here we are staring down the barrel of the 3rd millennium endlessly circling our own planet with space shuttles like so many aging eighteen wheelers delivering more satellites that look right back at us or beam HBO into our homes. Where is the adventure? Where is the romance? There are a thousand challenges unmet and a thousand rewards uncollected because we for some strange reason decided that the moon's the limit. It's like Christopher Columbus (and all of Europe that followed him) was satisfied with leaving dusty footprints on the island of Hispaniola and calling it a day. Does that make sense? You tell me.

Some say that the money is better spent right here on Earth, solving our many pressing problems. Valid point, but did it happen? The space program has slowed to a crawl for years now and I don't see a hell of a lot of dough pouring into the elimination of hunger, poverty and disease. The rain forest, the planet's lungs, if you will, is being slashed and burned at an appalling rate. Anyone besides rock & roll singers looking for alternatives?

The global warming thing? Just maybe scientists and explorers can cook up an answer when they’re looking at the globe from the outside in. Lots of the technology invented for the space race was developed for other reasons than are being applied now and society reaps the benefits. Maybe they’ll find something out there, just like the early settlers in North America found corn and potatoes and fed Europe for centuries, as well as gold and silver and timber and many other seemingly endless resources. Well, not quite endless as we’re finding out as we hurtle past the six billion mouths to feed mark. Let’s look upstairs.

Wars, large and small, declared and undeclared, continue to devastate humanity. So I guess none of the space money we saved went into advanced diplomatic techniques. As it always was, the fat old guys responsible for prosecuting these wars remain miles and miles from harm's way while thousands of dedicated, valiant soldiers and innocent civilians of all ages perish horribly. For what? So we all have to buy new maps every couple of years? Perhaps if we viewed the Earth on a regular basis from outer space we'd notice the seamless, beautiful wholeness of our world. The view of the globe from space shows us clearly what a unique, gorgeous planet we inhabit. You can't see borders and you can't see human stupidity. As a matter of fact the only man-made thing you can see from orbit is the Great Wall of China, a structure designed to keep out Mongol invaders. That didn't work out at all, but there it is, a tribute to human folly visible from outer space

Of course I'm not speaking from personal experience here, but I wouldn't mind taking a spin on a rocket. Hell, if John Glenn at age 77 can do it then I can't help but think that I too have the right stuff. Float my skinny butt in weightlessness for a couple of weeks. I'd perform those dinky high school lab experiments or change the lens on the Hubbel telescope, no problem. Bring my own tools, too. Maybe I could talk the pilot into a side trip to Venus for a nice barbecue or something. Bring back something other than a rock, maybe. We've still got plenty of those from the moon. I could bring my family some snappy "My Dad went to Venus and all I got was this lousy shirt" T-shirts. Cool stuff like that. Maybe a Venus beer mug for my brother.

See what you're costing me, Science Guys? My history book told me that by my age I’d be vacationing in at least some Hilton hotel in the sky. You're making liars out of the Dominican nuns who taught me, and believe me, you don’t want to get on their bad side. So get busy and deliver us a future worthy of the name. Life is pretty much the same now as it was when I was a boy, only more annoying. Don't make me come down to your labs with a couple of angry nuns…

Did you know that less than 1% percent of American citizens own more than 90% of America's wealth? I guess that's what happens when we cast more votes for American Idles, slacker housemates and venal castaways than for political candidates. Goes a long way towards explaining two terms for Bush the Younger and his Merry Men. We were just too busy to ask what these jokers had in mind or what qualifications they brought to the highest offices in the most powerful nation on earth. So instead we’re stuck with the worst dog and pony reality show ever.

Speaking of which, did you know that 95% of Congressman get re-elected every two years? Are 95% percent of these men and women doing such an outstanding job that they are rewarded with jobs for life? Looks that way on the face of it. So why should they pay attention to what you, their employers, expect of them?

Did you know that the largest measure we have for water is a gallon? Seems pretty insufficient when you consider that water covers 2/3 of the planet and there’s more of it than any other stuff around here. Scientists, get busy here.

Did you know that on September 11, 2001,our president’s father, Bush the Elder, was in New York City? What was he doing here? Entertaining Osama Bin Laden’s brother at one of our finest hotels. It seems the Bush and Bin Laden families have a long history of doing business together, all good buds and big oil money. Isn’t that sort of like FDR’s pop hanging around Pearl City in Hawaii with Emperor Hirohito’s brother Fredo Hirohito on December 7, 1941? Odd, no? And so far unmentioned and unexplained by the United States government. You see, in the weeks following 9/11 when you and I weren’t even allowed to fly a kite many members of the Bin Laden family were secretly flown out of the United States, with a military jet escort, no less. How’d you like to be a N.Y.C. Police Detective or an F.B.I. Agent assigned to investigating the attacks and watching your best material witnesses flown out of reach of your questioning by your own government? Would you have mixed feelings and maybe wonder who was on whose side and who didn’t want certain questions asked? These brilliant and dedicated investigative professionals are, after all, only human and must wonder about such things, and naturally have a whole other set of questions pop into their heads.

Did you know that my son’s friend Mike Kaplan has rebuilt more private property in New Orleans that the Federal Government, home by home? He’s been living there for about seven years and is a writer and an activist. He did however, train as an electrician under his father back home in Brooklyn and is now a builder by necessity, keeping pretty busy indeed. Doesn’t petition the government for contracts, just works for people who need a reliable contractor and apparently there’s lots of them, people also not holding their breath for Uncle Sam to walk in and save the day. So Mike’s an odd duck, an activist actually taking action. Most “activists” only talk and talk, the action part of their activism being what they expect others to do.

Did know that more than half the people in this nation can trace an ancestor to Brooklyn? Makes sense to me. Did you also know that Brooklyn is the geographic center of the universe? Now you do.

Did you know that roses are red and violets are blue? Some things you just can’t point out enough.

Did you know that Led Zeppelin almost hired as its singer Paul Rogers of the group Free and later on the leader of Bad Company? Wonder what that band would have sounded like? What would Robert Plant have done with his life? Maybe opened up a bakery with Pete Best.

Did you know Philips head screws are infinitely better than slot head screws? Makes me wonder why slot heads were ever used on anything once Philips heads were invented. And kudos to Mr. Philips, whoever he was. Probably a guy tired of skinned knuckles whenever the screwdriver slipped off the slot.

Did you know that nobody owns the internet? How did the 1% of us that owns practically everything let this bad boy slip through their sticky fingers? Why isn’t it called the Exxon-Mobile internet of the Rupert Murdoch web? Fat white guys in corner offices the land over must be kicking themselves over that lapse in acquisition, firing underlings left and right and switching law firms, having “their people” look into a hostile takeover and the like. But alas, it’s too late. It’s a freebie for everyone and they’ll just have to stew in it. Did you know that life holds many disappointments?

Readers: Got any oddball facts floating around in your grey cells? I’ll be doing this “Did You Know” blog from time to time and I’d like to share your arcane knowledge. I’ll attribute the facts to the sender and print what you know for everybody’s edification. Simply e-mail me in the form provided on the web site. It doesn’t matter what kind of information you’d like to share, so long as it’s true. I love useless but interesting knowledge. Let’s have some fun and learn stuff in the process

Cancer. Scariest word in the language when it applies to you. For centuries a death sentence by a slow, horribly painful ordeal, it strikes at random across every social strata you can think of in this counted and sorted world of ours. In this past year alone I have lost several relatives and friends to this plague and am currently witness to a few valiant battles against the demon by people I know and love. The sting of raw fear you feel in the core of your soul when you hear of a dear one getting this disease has become all too familiar. Win or lose, you know that the victims’ lives and the lives of those close to them are in for some serious devastation. The non-cancerous symptoms of cancer are fear, helplessness, anger, disbelief, grief and in far too many cases, financial ruin, as if the disease itself and its wake of physical and emotional destruction weren’t terrible enough. Nothing you can do about it either.

Well, actually there is something. You can give of yourself and some of your hard-earned to help the devastated families. The ad above this blog for the past two weeks has been for a rock & roll show this Sunday. As promised, the night will be blast, a good old fashioned battle of the bands in a funky rock & roll nightclub, kicking out the jams and rocking your world up one side and down the other. Let the good times roll. The only difference is that this show is for one of our own, Tiberius Marty’s lady love Judy. Cancer did a number on her and their lives, and may not be through with them just yet.

Thankfully she’s still around to tell the tale, but her ordeal isn’t over by a long shot and Judy’s and Marty’s lives are in tatters. Fighting cancer costs money, real big money and those of us without health insurance simply cannot afford the super-expensive rounds of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and lengthy hospitalization, to say nothing of the loss of income when the victim cannot work and their spouse needs to be at their side constantly. The lives of their families are similarly devastated.

Now rock & roll musicians like ourselves, generally being a broke-ass bunch of characters, we feel kind of helpless and impotent since we can’t cure cancer or whip out a fat check book to cover their expenses. But what we can do is rock the house, and this time we’re doing it for free. I’m even paying my way in to my own show as are most of the musicians on the bill, and like I said, rockers are generally not exactly rolling in dough. Whatever money we raise will go to Judy and others like her who remain in deep financial and physical peril.

We’re only asking our audience to pay what they’d pay for this show if it were not a benefit. Twenty bucks at the door is cheap when you consider they’ll be five or six hot bands shaking the rafters on a summer night. If you can afford it you can contribute more but no one will ask you to do so. The only thing the music fans need to do is enjoy the music, and they’ll be plenty of it. Personally, The Big Spenders and I plan to practice a scorched-earth policy and I expect the other bands to do the same. We’ll bring the music and the passion and all the skills at our command. It’s the least we can do for Judy and others in her boat who have exhibited incredibly inspiring courage and determination in their battle against the beast we call cancer. We rockers will do our very damnedest to keep that slimy beast at bay for at least one smoking, sweaty night.

If you want to have a lot of fun and do some good in the process, join us on Sunday, August 26, 2007. Doors open at 5PM. Suggested donation: $20 admission at the door. The place:
DJ Ryder’s Rhythm & Brews (formerly The Funky Monkey)
3297 Long Beach Road
Oceanside, New York
(516) 766-9822

What Judy and Marty have done is to form a foundation, not specifically for their own benefit but to help other victims of breast cancer as well, women and their shell-shocked families going through the same hell she did. So in spite of facing a possible death sentence and bankruptcy, Judy’s heart opened wide for others. This display of love and selflessness must not go unnoticed. Help Friends of Judy. If you cannot attend Sunday there’s nothing preventing you from sending a donation to help these brave women. Make your check payable to Friends of Judy. You can send it along care of DJ Ryder’s at the above address. This rock club has long been a good friend to musicians and will forward any checks to Judy and Marty’s foundation (The donation is tax-deductible, they’re a legitimate charitable foundation.).

There’s not a single one of you reading this that do not know firsthand the devastation and fear that cancer brings to our lives. No one escapes the beast’s wrath, whether personally or through the experience of a family member or close friend. Like I said, Judy is the latest in a long line of victims I know and that’s only in this past year. I for one cannot turn my back or close my eyes. You don’t know Judy or any of the recipients of her foundation, but you sure as hell knew and loved somebody stricken with cancer. Remember that helpless feeling and the rage? Want to do something about it? Join us Sunday night and we’ll rock our blues away and sing our songs for Judy and all the victims of the beast.

Boy, when it rains it pours. After a lifetime of struggling to make ends meet and being constantly broke I’ve had the astounding good fortune to win not one, but two lotteries in the space of only three days. Eureka! And to think that I didn’t even buy a ticket for either one! How’s that for luck? I can’t wait to get my hands on the dough.

The first one was a lottery from Rotterdam, the Netherlands in which my e-mail address was selected at random to win 300,000 Euros. I don’t know how much a Euro is worth compared to the dollar but I’m thinking 300,000 of those bad boys has to be a nice pile of cash. That happened two days ago. Now today, just now as a matter of fact, I won a million dollars from a lottery run by the Construction Bank of China! They also randomly picked my e-mail address and I was one of ten lucky winners of a cool mil. I’m rich!

The Chinese lottery people asked me to keep it a secret until I provide them with my personal information to claim the prize, but I’m so bursting with joy I had to tell someone. The Chinese bank has what sounds like an American guy working there that I am to contact, one John Clark. Very considerate of them since I speak no Chinese at all, not even a little bit. He even gave me a phone # to call: 8613697479440. That’s too many numbers for a regular call so you know he’s just got to be in China waiting to hear from me and hand over my dough. I’m so excited!

Maybe they’ll fly me there to take part in the big ceremony, me and the nine other lucky stiffs on some podium in front of the great financial institution, flashbulbs popping and me shaking hands with the mayor of Guangzhou and the president of the Bank. Maybe even the governor of Guangdong Province, where Guangzhou is located. That is of course if it doesn’t interfere with the ceremony in Rotterdam for the lottery I won there. After all, they picked me first, and right is right. I’m still waiting to hear from them on the details for me getting me my money. I sure hope the Chinese lottery people are a little quicker in getting back to me. I’m starting to get antsy.

Maybe I’ll just e-mail Mr. Clark and get the ball rolling. He must be a really important guy since he has not one but 2 e-mail addresses. Let’s see, the e-mail came from a Ms. Rose. She’s just got be his beautiful and efficient secretary. Her e-mail is lottomailjackpot@yahoo.com.hk. Mr. John Clark’s are johnccbtt@yahoo.com and ccbtt@acountant.com. Who do I reply to first?

I guess I’ll go right to the top, Mr. Clark himself. I’ll tell him what he needs to know, give him my secret lotto winning serial number 652-66283 and my personal confidential winner’s code: 247751407/BV. I figure there’s no harm in publicizing those numbers now since the e-mail was addressed only to me and the 9 other winners and positively assured me that it is a done deal, I’m a winner. Maybe if it’s too much trouble to fly me to China I can just give Mr. Clark my bank account routing numbers so they can just direct-deposit the million into my account. I guess he’ll need my Social too, just to make sure the wire transfer goes smooth. They assure me that details are important. Who can disagree with that?

Now I’m sorry I criticized China’s government in yesterday’s blog. How bad can they be if they’ve got an official Construction Bank of China that’s giving me a million dollars American scot-free? I wonder exactly what sort of things the Construction bank builds? Maybe some of those giant dams China’s always building to correct the foolish mistakes that Mother Nature made? Maybe one of those efficient lead-battery factories on all that extra land that nobody wants to inhabit or farm anyway? Perhaps they have a hand in building a broad smooth highway to their newest province, Tibet, so that their soldiers can more easily bring a better way of life to those stubborn Tibetans. They must be one Jim Dandy of a construction bank, that’s all I can say.

Well, I guess I’ll get busy claiming my prize. Hope there’s not too much tax on it, but what the heck, I’ll still have a bundle left over. That, plus the 300,000 Euros from the good people in Rotterdam and I’ll be sitting pretty, my friends, my money worries at long last coming to an end. First thing I’m going to buy is a brand new wardrobe of stuff with labels inside that proudly proclaim: “Made in China,” just like the rest of my clothes.

Ah, America. What a place, what a place. No other like it. Invented by geniuses, populated by people from everywhere. Anyone can come here and become an American. Try that in France or Italy or Germany or England or China or just about every other place with the possible exceptions of Canada and Australia, two other nations peopled by immigrants, but still nowhere near as ethnically diverse as America. After several generations living in Germany, the descendants of Turkish immigrants will still be considered Turks, never Germans. You could never be Japanese if you lived there for a hundred generations. Yet in America any of these people could emigrate here and become Americans pretty quick.

Not that America's perfect, far from it, but to me it seems a lot less imperfect than other nations. Oh, I do my fair share of complaining about my country, mostly because I can. I also feel it is my duty as an American to point out when we fail to live up to our stated aims and goals. Our Founding Fathers set the bar pretty high, fairness and morality-wise, and I like to point that out from time to time. Thanks to them, I'm allowed to say what I think here, and nobody knocks on my door in the middle of the night to lock me up. That's not a universal condition in this world. Some governments are very touchy about what you can say in public and if they had their way they'd try to control your thoughts as well. The communists sure tried mightily to do just that with their various re-education camps and unceasing indoctrination of their hapless citizenry.

A lot of good it did them. The poster boy for Communism, The USSR, collapsed under its own ponderous weight. No one conquered them, no revolution toppled them. They just fell. The other Communist poster boy, The People's Republic of China, hasn't practiced actual Communism since the idiotic butcher Chairman Mao dropped dead. For a nation that spent untold energy in their early history condemning capitalism and ruthlessly indoctrinating their people into being good Communists they sure are world-class capitalist nowadays. The words and ideas they feared more than invading armies are now their operating credo.

But they still don’t quite get it. The Chinese government is still a bunch of murderous goons who repress their people and brutally punish any hint of opposition to their rule. While they still label themselves ardent communists dedicated to world-wide Marxism everybody knows it's only cynical lip service. Nowadays they know enough to let the incredibly energetic and industrious Chinese people engage in private enterprise and market competition, pretty much staying out of their way as they enrich a nation once impoverished by their policies. When they reclaimed Hong Kong, the Wall Street of the Orient, they didn't change a damned thing about it after yammering for years and how when the time came they would dismantle that decadent Western-influenced den of corruption and political incorrectness. The new

Chinese leaders didn't want to kill the cash cow.
They don’t rattle sabers their sabers at anyone now because if you go to war with someone, who will buy all the stuff you‘re manufacturing? So I suppose the decadent West comes in handy these days as valued customers instead of bogey men to scare your people, apparently none of whom were fooled by the gibberish the “Communist” overlords fed them. So today, I call them what they are, a repressive Capitalist regime of elderly cynical thugs whistling in the dark as far as the longevity of their regime. I have a feeling the People’s Republic (a misnomer of there ever was one) will go the way of the USSR if they get in the way of their billion and change citizens once too often.

There’s a ton of nations sharing this spinning stone we call Earth, 192 at the last United Nations roll call, probably more to come very shortly judging by the various wars and ethnic-cleansing campaigns that seem to never cease. There are governments in this world that seem to exist for no other reason than to exterminate a goodly portion of their own populations for no good reason at all. Not that there could ever be a good reason go do so, but these savages tell you with a straight face how it is their solemn duty to rid the world of (a.) people of a different tribe but who look just like their tormentors, (b.) people of a different religion or a slight variation of their own religion, (c.) people who actually have the unmitigated gall to have a different skin color, (d.) people with different political views than the powers that be or (e.) all of the above. Other nations, a whole lot of them, enslave and marginalize their women! How barbaric is that? How much of a weasel do you have to be to fear your women? What sort if issues do those guys have? I don’t really want to know.

Governments like the ones described above pretty much explain why people from all over the planet come here to live. It’s been like that since Day One here In the United States. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty even codifies our policy: “Give me your poor, your hungry, your wretched refuse, your yearning masses longing to breathe free…” Wretched refuse? We take wretched refuse here? Yeah, we do. Says so right there on the plaque, wretched refuse, come on in. Next! Doesn’t sound like too stringent of an admission policy, does it?

Don’t forget, a good many of our own foreign-born forebears were considered just that by people already in residence here. You could look it up. And guess what? They built this nation and produced presidents, statesmen, scientists, artists, generals, captains of industry, labor leaders, entertainers, inventors, engineers, authors, reformers, philosophers and the countless ordinary Joes and Janes who continue to build this place and keep it running. Wretched refuse, my butt!

Yet another reason to love America. This country is the most successful nation ever and its citizens enjoy an unprecedented portion of freedom and opportunity. This is the country that gave the world Rock & Roll, Jazz, Blues, aviation, microchips and George Foreman Grills. Okay, the George Foreman Grills are not exactly earth-changing concepts like Henry Ford’s assembly lines to provide the average man with an automobile, but they’re pretty neat. The ideas we have can’t all be winners. Lemon scented toilet paper and reality TV shows come to mind.

But I digress, as often I do. What I want to say is that the American people are an incredibly good bunch of people, as friendly and generous and caring as you could hope to find. While this country may have its flaws and problems and make some blunders along the way, we’re at least going somewhere. The journey and the goal is to attain the ideals outlined in our Constitution; liberty and justice for all. Historically we’ve not shied away from discussing our flaws and correcting them. No reason not to continue that habit.

The country that invented itself is always in the process of re-invention and discovery, the one sure way to avoid the social stagnation and spiritual inertia that plagues much of the planet. So call me a numbskull if you disagree with me, I often deserve it. It is also your sacred right as an American to do so, a right many people have laid down their lives to preserve. And let’s keep arguing amongst ourselves, tweaking the mechanisms of freedom and opportunity and enjoying the spicy gumbo of individuals that makes this country the true People’s Republic.

I was wondering what to write about today when I got an e-mail from a guy who visited my web site. Seems alright, this guy, Chris is his name. He says something about the Nigerian e-mail scams and how he missed out on that whole deal. Well, me too. I like to think I'm not that gullible to send a whole bunch of my hard-earned to some stranger claiming to be a prince or something, but who knows? The whole thing with scammers is that they tap into that secret little greed compartment inside our heads and if they hook you all your sophistication and street-wisdom flies out of your ears. The e-mails make it look like you can reap a windfall by just investing a few thou and bingo, you're ripped off as much by yourself and your little greed compartment as by the phony Nigerian royalty.

Which brings me to an e-mail I got last week from Rotterdam informing me that my e-mail address had been picked at random in some lottery I never entered and that I had won three-hundred thousand Euros. All I have to do to claim my prize is provide them with enough personal information to steal my identity. The thing originated in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and is called Bejijk Trekking Lotterij and the e-mail came from Marian@bejijktrekking39orangehome.co.uk, a mouthful if ever I saw one, and in Dutch no less. So, did I delete the thing and get on with my life? No, I didn't, which is why I have this information handy. Here I am a guy from Brooklyn with street smarts and a jaundiced eye and yet that greed compartment in my own brain was tickled just enough to save this massive missive from across the seas.

I Googled the outfit and got a whole bunch of similar sounding names with all sorts of lotteries originating in Holland. Of course everything is written in Flemish. At least that's what I assume it to be if my grade school teachers gave me the right dope on Holland, and I learned the hard way back then never to question the integrity of angry nuns, it just doesn't pay. So there I am fascinated by all these foreign language sites on the Google page, like any typical Google page announcing there were something like 13,782 different matches to my request. Who knew the Dutch had so much to say and ran so many damned lotteries? Or, to be more precise, lotterij. Needless to say, the fascination wore off quick when I found no matches in the first couple of pages. How much browsing can you do in Flemish, or Dutch, or Hollandspeak, whatever the hell it is. Like they say, it's all Greek to me…

So did I delete the thing then? Surely I wouldn't reply to such an obvious scam! Well, guess again. I e-mailed the contact dude, one Peter Friesenger, VN Kozijn, whatever that means. His e-mail is kozijnvn@mynet.com. I didn't provide any personal data, just basically asked him "Who are you and what do you want?" I then dared him to steal my identity. You want it, Dutch? Go ahead, take it. When you find out who I really am, you'll be begging me to take it back. Well, it's not gonna be that easy, Woodenshoes. You deal my debt, my lousy credit and my chaotic finances. You come over here and try to figure out where the leaks under my front stairs are coming from. You explain to the lovely wife why it's taking so long to re-do the damned kitchen or why I waited until the last minute to have the car inspected. You argue with my customers who want more for less and wail like banshees when I very slightly raise my bargain rates. These are all your problems now, pal.

And I got news for you too, cheese-breath, your right knee will be in constant pain and your right elbow will be balky as hell and your medical coverage will really suck. This ain't European socialized medicine over here, Lars. You want my identity you've got to take it all. You try to make money playing music in this town where every club owners' dream is having a DJ to spin CD's and calling himself an entertainer or a Karaoke machine where your customers entertain each other with horrible singing at no cost at all to yourself. All those years of training and experience and you're replaced by machines and amateurs. You want that? Careful what you wish for, windmill man. You don't have enough fingers to plug up the all the leaks in the dykes of my life.

Once this guy steals my identity I fiugure I'll chill down in Florida for a while at my brother's house, maybe soak up some sun and watch the near-naked girls on the beaches in Lauderdale. I figure it won't be long before Dutchboy comes crawling to me, begging me to take my life back already. I'll ask him how much is he willing to pay, and I don't want no stinking Euros. Or dollars either, for that matter. Hand me a bunch of gold Krugerrands and I'll take my life back and you can go back to sending dishonest e-mails from the comfort of your favorite internet cafe/hashish bar back in Holland. Truth be told, I'm not so keen on Florida after a few days and I really like my crazy life. I'll tell you what, Dutch. I'll keep my identity and my passionate Louise too and you stay where you are. I've still got stuff to do in this life, like go back to Google and see what other foreign languages I can find. Oh, and finish the damned kitchen already.

Yes I did. I once sold the Brooklyn Bridge. Made about twelve hundred bucks on the deal. I know that doesn't seem like a whole lot for the first and still the most beautiful major suspension bridge in the world, but it was split three ways, you see. It's like this:

For about two and a half years in the late 1970's and early 80's I had a job as a bridge oiler for the Department of Transportation. Seems there’s lots to oil and grease on bridges; expansion joints, roller bearings, the main cable anchorages and the plenty of other places. On the very top of these bridges where the giant cables pierce the towers of the bridge, they pass through a vat of fish oil as they slide back and forth, maybe six inches this way and six that way depending on the heat or cold. The bridges do move, you know. They expand and contract with the weather and also twist and sway in the wind.

Not that you’d notice the movement on these massive structures, it’s pretty much imperceptible. You would notice immediately if they didn’t move and sway and expand and contract, though. They’d snap apart and fall into the river with you and your car. That’s never a good thing. Ask the good people in Minnesota who had a bridge fall into the Mississippi recently. Hence the importance of a well-oiled bridge.

Anyway, on my particular crew were myself and two other men. We were assigned to the East River Bridges, The Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensborough. We’d spend a week on each bridge, covering the four of them every month and then starting over, greasing, oiling and trying to avoid falling into the East River. The want-ad for the job specified you had to have no fear of heights. I never gave it much thought one way or the next so I said no and got the job. Lucky for me it turned out to be true, the heights didn’t bother me.

I really liked the job, climbing all over these giant bridges in all kinds of weather, getting a birds-eye view of New York City from a distinctly odd-ball perspective. What I didn’t like about the job was the fact that three of the four bridges I worked on were falling apart. You had to step gingerly in a lot of places since a lot of the steel was rusted right through. There were places where you’d grab what seemed like a sturdy beam and it would crumble in your hand like a fistful of potato chips. Other places you saw a giant upright steel girder all painted and solid looking except when you poked your finger in a rust spot it went right through it. Disconcerting, to say the least.

When I first got the job the Physical Engineer that was our boss gave me a blueprint showing a hatchway that led to a catwalk. The catwalk led to some roller bearings high above the streets on the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge. I found the hatch alright, but when I lifted it the whole thing came off in my hand. I peered down to where the catwalk was supposed to be and saw only a half dozen rusty supports that used to hold the catwalk. There was no evidence of any ladder down to the catwalk either. So much for that assignment. I reported this to the engineer and asked him when we could expect it to be replaced. He laughed and crossed that job off our work schedule.

It seems the Agency for which we toiled put a low priority on bridge repairs and maintenance. I soon found out they put a similarly low priority on worker safety. We had a hard time scrounging up grease guns, oil sprayers, fittings and grease and oil itself, the lubricants these behemoths desperately need to stay limber and useful. We oilers were not unique. The steel workers were constantly short of rivets and steel beams to repair these steel structures. The electricians and plumbers and all the bridge workers were similarly equipment-challenged.

I stopped wondering why they made me, the new guy, the safety officer for my section when I found out there was literally no safety equipment. Department regulations mandated hard hats, safety harnesses, walky-talkies, special gloves to grip the slick steel, goggles and orange day-glow vests. Of these items we got the orange vests, period. A few guys who were there for years had some old safety harnesses in their lockers, as good a place as any for something that is worn out and useless. So you had to be careful out there, very careful indeed. It’s a long way down to the river, or worse, the streets.

At least it was that way for three out of every four weeks. The Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensborough bridges were accidents waiting to happen, crumbling wrecks that carried thousand of cars, cars, buses, trucks and subway trains every day. Sometimes in a high wind when traffic was heavy and a train or two was rumbling over the bridge you felt the whole thing shudder and shake like a drunk after a stiff belt of red eye and you just hoped and prayed this wasn’t the day when the damned thing hit the river with you hanging over the side.

Since I worked on these structures the city has had to almost completely rebuild three of the four East River Bridges, spending billions in the process, and none too soon if you ask me. A different agency is in charge of them now. At the time I‘m referring to, The Department of Transportation was a cesspool of corruption and the head guy, Donald Manes wound up killing himself to avoid the indictments and convictions that found many of his cronies. The reason there was no grease or steel or rivets or safety harnesses was that the guys in charge of the agency were stealing all the dough, far beyond the limits of decency. Okay, I understand you’re a bigshot and there’s big money everywhere and the temptation to skim some off is great. But these guys put my skinny butt in danger, no big loss some might think. But they also put thousands and thousands of commuters in the very real danger of taking an unplanned dip in the river.

Well, that’s all water under the bridge now. Our crew was eliminated by the agency before the grease hit the fan but I’m assuming the new agency in charge has hired oilers and supplied the steel workers with extra steel and rivets and maybe a harness or two. And kept up on the painting of the bridges, I would hope, which is never finished, by the way. Never. The surest way to make these bad boys last forever is to keep them painted and lubricated, otherwise the salt air from our ocean breezes rusts the steel and corrodes the slip joints and then the structure can’t move freely and it warps and cracks. I’m a close-up witness to that. I drive over these things all the time and some of my tax dough was part of the many billions that went in to rebuilding them, so I hope they’ve learned their lesson.

The fourth East River Bridge (or rather, the first one) is one they did not have to rebuild. It was built so well in the first place that it didn’t rust and fall into disrepair, corrupt overseers or not. The guy who designed it, John Roebling, had to satisfy a whole world of skeptics before the thing was built. Don’t forget, this bridge opened in 1883 and the work on it commenced in the 1870’s, a time when there were no giant cranes or dredging machines or power tools or bulldozers or any of the modern equipment we now take for granted on our giant building projects. When the Bridge was finished it was the tallest structure in North America.

It was a huge undertaking for the technology of the day, a radical adventure that Mr. Roebling had to make happen or there wouldn’t be another large suspension bridge built for a very long time. So he over-designed it, building in a safety factor of something like 34 to 1. That means the bridge he designed was thirty four times stronger than it had to be. The spider-web cables woven from the main cables to the deck of the bridge that add so much to its beauty are actually unnecessary. They ware supposed to stabilize it from lateral sway but if you notice no other great bridge of its kind has them. Window dressing to keep the top-hat guys from City Hall happy.

So my week a month on the Brooklyn Bridge was one of relative safety. The fittings and roller bearings and catwalks were all still intact and functioning just fine and the extra hard steel used in the construction of the bridge has stood the test of time. The only thing that has had to be replaced regularly are the wooden planks on the fabled walkway that still spans the center of the bridge and where one of the best views of Manhattan’s breathtaking skyline can be enjoyed any time of the day or night. It is still the most beautiful bridge in the world to me.

On that walkway my sister-in-law Tina and brother-in-law Paul were married at sunrise one beautiful summer morning. They had only two witnesses, a preacher and a Russian accordion player squeezing out gypsy music at the orange dawn. How romantic is that? I took many a lunch hour stroll on that broad promenade meeting people from all over the world, all of them instantly in love with what I came to refer to in my mind as “My Bridge.” I knew every nook and cranny of her but my favorite spot was the wooden bench-lined walkway. It was directly beneath that walkway where I sold the Bridge.

About 20 feet below the walkway is a catwalk for workers also running the entire length of the bridge. You’ve probably driven by it a thousand times. It divides the two roadways and is strung with heavy, thick electric cables beside the walkway, artfully draped like the bridge cables themselves, but only in twelve foot spans between supports. My fellow crewmen and I, who I’ll call Joe and Walter since those are their names, never gave much thought to the cables or what they might be for. That is until one day Joe noticed that one of them had been cut and about a couple of hundred yard section of it was missing.

That was odd. Who would do such a thing? Our guess was the electricians. Nobody else would cut a three-inch thick electric cable and expect to survive. We guessed that one of them figured out the cable was no longer in use. We also knew there was no work order outstanding to move the dead cable, since in our fairly small world everybody sort of knew what everyone else was up to. We double-checked since all the current work orders were posted on a bulletin board back at the shop. Sure enough, no such work order existed. What to do, what to do…

To the hacksaws, men! It was Joe’s idea. He collected and sold scrap metal as a sideline and informed us that copper was at an all-time high just then. So for about an hour a day for that week we cut four-foot lengths of copper cable, enough to fill the trunks of all three of our cars. Every day on the way home we stopped at a scrap metal yard and sold the day’s take, hundred of bucks per haul. We didn’t think of it as stealing, only as beating the electricians to the punch. They had already removed the lion’s share of the half-mile long cable since we discovered that it was completely gone from the opposite side of the bridge from where we were working.

We didn’t worry about the bosses either since we had exactly no direct supervision. As long as the bridge was oiled when they came to inspect our work every couple of months or so, we were pretty much left to our own devices. We oiled everything we were supposed to, especially on the Brooklyn Bridge where your life was in not as much danger as on the other three.

As for myself, my love affair with the bridge motivated me to take extra good care of her, whereas my work on the other three bridges was done as a sort of grudging duty to try to keep the parts that still worked from rusting like the rest of the structures. It was always a relief to drive off those bridges at the end of the day, hoping that the damned things wouldn’t collapse on your watch or you wouldn’t fall through some flimsy catwalk into the river tomorrow. When they laid us all off it was a drag to lose a good-paying job but somewhat of a relief not to be playing Russian Roulette for a living.

But the Brooklyn Bridge I missed, without a doubt. I’ll never forget eating my lunch on the traveling platform that glides noiselessly beneath the bridge suspended on rollers and run by a silent electric motor. It was like being in a blimp far above the East River. We’d roll it out to the center of the bridge beneath the roadways and watch the harbor traffic or the doings on Governor’s Island, at the time a Coast Guard base. It was a surreal experience, the only sound being the slight whizzing of cars above you. New York harbor is breathtakingly beautiful, and busier than you might think if you study it for a while, but the doings on waterways are a stately business, almost slow-motion and graceful. And from far above it on our narrow steel perch it was a mesmerizing show, one I’ll never forget. Every time I drive over that bridge or see her from a distance in all her glory I think of that. And I’ll never forget that once I sold the Brooklyn Bridge.