Yep, this time I'm gonna do it, get myself completely organized, a place for everything and everything in it's place. That should please the lovely Louise. One less reason for me to exasperate her. Where do I start, where do I start? My tools? Nah, they're fine. My clothes? Not just yet, it's almost change of seasons time and I'll do it then, maybe throw some stuff out too. My dresser? I don't even know what half the stuff is on top of it, never mind organize it. My papers? No way, that'd take forever.

Oh, I know! I'll get my music things in order. I've just got a bunch of new stuff to record with and it's kind of sitting all over the living room. There's a lot to deal with but I'll get right on it. I sold the last home recording studio I bought, a state of the art technical wonder that I couldn't figure out how to use, nor could any of the so-called tech wizards that I consulted. This time I went with the I-Mac computer with the Garage Band recording studio built right in. It's a much simpler deal and the sounds are just as good as a regular recording studio.

The only problem is that I put my I-Mac on my computer desk, where my old computer had already taken up residence. And above it on some shelves are my monitor speakers run by my power amp, which is nestled comfortably in the bottom of my desk next to the hard drive of the old computer. And to plug my microphones, guitars, bass and keyboard into the Mac computer I have a little interface box that's got to be hooked to the computer and to the power amp. At least I think so. Then there's my guitar amp on the floor across the room, my booms stands for the microphones and my electric keyboard, which at the moment is sitting precariously on a tray table meant for nothing heavier than a plate of food and a TV remote.

And there's so many wires! I've got to make sure they're all connected to the right plug of the right device so the the music in my head and hands gets through all these circuits and microchips and into the computer. I already had a nightmare with the last recorder, which as it turned out was set up just fine but was way too complex to operate for somebody without an advanced degree in computer science. I can see right away that the MAC computer is pretty straightforward and user friendly so once I'm hooked up right with all my instruments and gizmos I can start recording pretty quick.

It's where to put all this stuff that's the problem. I have a small corner of our living room in which to work. Our house is pretty small and the only other space available is the garage, and that's already got a car in it and a washer and dryer plus it gets a mite chilly in January. So tomorrow I tackle my little corner of the world. I already have some guitars hanging from one wall, so maybe a wall rack for the keyboard is in order. I can make a little folding stand for it when I use It. I'm sure not going to buy one for 80 bucks. This set-up has already cost me more than I can afford. And I have to do all this so that the room still looks like a living room. Louise does draw the line with my clutter when it comes to the portions of the our home where our guests congregate. Women are funny that way I suppose, but not ha-ha funny if you know what I mean so I'd better come up with something acceptable.

Just the thought of makes me want to put it off, which is exactly what I'd do if I were not so eager to start recording and I like to stay on my wife's sunny side. And who knows, maybe organizing my little studio will be the start of a new phase of my life. Why stop there? I can build more shelves in the garage and organize my tools and hardware in neat little bins. Then I can tackle my papers and actually use that nifty oak file cabinet that Louise assigned to me years ago. At the moment I believe it holds some old mystery paperbacks I've already read so they're no mystery to me anymore since I already know who-dun-it and a bunch of warped vinyl records that I save for the record jackets but never look at anymore but I can't be certain because the cabinet's buried under a pile of shoes and clothes in the back of my closet. But I'll get started on that after I sort my tools and hardware.

Then once the file cabinet is out of the closet and filled with my crisply filed papers, I'll organize my clothes and shoes, hanging them carefully in the closet, lining up all my shoes and organizing my sock and underwear drawers and the two bottom drawers that have who-knows-what in them. I'll finally toss out a bunch of stuff I never wear anymore and maybe even some of the stuff Louise says I shouldn't wear anymore. I'll implement a fool-proof system for rotating the seasonal changes in wardrobe.

That done, it's time to tackle the top of the dresser and my night stand too, where I'm having trouble locating my alarm clock. I've accumulated a lot of junk there, an amazing amount when you consider we only bought this house four years ago. The part of the dresser top that I actually use is only a few square inches where I dump my money, keys and wallet when i come in before I ditch my pants across a chair. At least I assume it's a chair under the pile of stuff I've tossed there.

Well, that was fun planning all that. I'm already huffing and puffing. What are the chances I'll accomplish any of it? Not so good, I'm afraid. Oh, the music stuff I'll do because I pretty much have to. But all that other stuff? Organized? Tidy? The very thought of it makes me shudder. How would I find anything? Sorry, Louise, but I'll try to minimize the chaos with the music gear, but I need to have stuff handy when I'm recording, and maybe it won't look that way but I'll know where every little gizmo and adapter is. If I organized it I'd never find anything.

See, the music's the easy part for me, writing, playing, singing, arranging and mixing. That's the kind of thing I'm good at. I've recorded plenty and it's a gas. It's the equipment you need to record a song that gets a little unwieldy. I guess that's why I always liked recording studios, with you and the other musicians doing your thing in the big room while the engineer sits in a booth behind the glass worrying about the gadgets and wires. But recording studios are expensive, a real luxury for a financially challenged artist like myself, so it's the home recording route for me. Well, here goes. Watch the SONGS portion of this website in the near future for some new tunes, recorded in my living room amid the sublime chaos that I call my life. And if you're not a cheapskate, you can buy some. Satisfaction guaranteed.

It was our worst day and our best day rolled into one. My wife Louise woke me up around 9 A.M. on a beautiful cloudless September morning. She was crying, and not because Regis Philbin wasn't on that morning. There was only one show on every channel that day, September 11, 2001. A passenger jet had struck one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. I knew right away what had happened in spite of the fact that the TV voices were speculating about a horrible accident. This was no accident, it was an attack. I'm from around here and I know where planes are allowed and not allowed to fly.

Then we watched another plane hit the second tower, two more witnesses to the instant deaths of all on board an who-knows-who else inside the building. The station we were watching went fuzzy and we flipped around until we found CBS, the only channel not broadcasting from the antenna on top of one of the Twin Towers. Who can ever forget the sight of those giant towers belching black smoke like some sad parody of factory smokestacks? I suddenly wondered out loud "Where are my sons?"

Mike the carpenter was working in a building across the street, one of the buildings I saw being pummeled with burning debris from the towers. Rob the computer graphics designer had been working for a magazine company in the immediate area and I wasn't sure if his freelance assignment was over yet or if he was still there. I went to the telephone and called their cell phone numbers but neither of them were working, cellphone service being another casualty of the tower
antenna. I called their mother who informed me that Rob was fine and on his way over to her place to hold her hand since his assignment was over but did I hear from Mike? "That's why I'm calling you! He's down there!"

"I know…" My ex-wife wept and I'm not ashamed to say that I did too. We agreed to let the other know anything about anybody we knew. One of her brothers and a cousin are firefighters working together in the same firehouse and no one had heard from them either. I hung up the phone so Louise could try to call her sister. She had heard on TV that the second flight to hit the towers was an American Airlines flight originating in Boston. The flight number told her the worst possible news; her niece and Goddaughter Elaina worked that flight as an airline attendant. Phone service to Boston was sketchy and phone calls to Elaina's mother in Florida provided no news. No one had heard from her.

Then a tower collapsed and so did my wife, her knees buckling beneath her, trusting me to catch her and I did. The scenes on the screen were indescribably horrid, with scores of people jumping from the sky high buildings rather than being burned alive. The downtown area was a tangle of refugees, emergency vehicles and smoke. When the towers came down the canyons of downtown were flooded with an eruption of volcanic-like ash that covered everything and everybody in its path. All this happened in the space of less than two hours. It only felt like a lifetime.

There were other people I had to worry about. My good friend and the drummer in my band Glen Johnson was a firefighter. Other relatives and friends work in the Wall Street area. What became of them? Why haven't we heard from Elaina? Where the hell is Mikey? Funny how I thought of him at that moment as Mikey, his childhood nickname, my funny, wiseass little boy with a big heart and a wicked sense of humor. Where was this big and strong grown man of mine now? The building where he was working was now covered with ash, burning debris and pieces of dead bodies. Please God let one of them not be him.

I felt helpless and wanted to do something to help but I realized that no trains were running, traffic was a nightmare and I'd only get in the way of the professionals. I possess no skills at all for search and rescue in a disaster area. Louise and I spent the day calling relatives and friends, people to we loved who were going through what we were going through, trying to figure out if anyone we knew was in harm's way. Judging by what we saw, we all figured that maybe thirty to fifty thousand people had to have died. It hurt all of us so bad.

About three o'clock that afternoon my son Mike called his mother who then called me. Fate saved him. His crew was on the roof of the building when their foreman told them to gather their tools and head uptown to another job site to finish up some odds and ends. They hadn't got much past Canal Street when the first jet hit, the debris from the crash littering that roof where they were gathered with a few tons of burning death. They were trapped in Manhattan most of the day and Mike waited on a long line at a pay phone to make his call. At least they didn't have to walk out of Manhattan like scores of thousands of dust-covered souls. They drove through New Jersey and Staten Island before making it back to Brooklyn late that night.

Then Susan, Louise's sister and Elaina's mother called to say that Elaina was not on the flight. She had switched assignments with another girl, something flight attendants do regularly. We said prayers of thanks for Mike and Elaina's lives and prayers for the souls of the slain, including the young lady who took our niece;s place on the flight. The stories of unbelievable heroism were beginning to emerge and how search and rescue professionals from everywhere were converging on lower Manhattan to battle the blaze that would burn for weeks and to try to save who could be saved.

It also was becoming apparent that the death toll was not nearly so high as it might have been. The New York City and Port Authority Fire Fighters, Police Departments and Emergency Service personnel had performed the most successful evacuation and rescue operation since Dunkirk, a great many of them losing their lives so that others would live. Through the anger and fear a fierce pride emerged, not only of being a New Yorker, but of being a human being. How magnificent and courageous were so many people that day, and on so many days that followed.

My son Mike, for example, went to the firehouse to look for his Uncle Jim and cousin Rich the following morning. They had both fought the blaze and but had lost a number of good friends in their fire house. Relieved to see they had made it through the inferno alive, Mike was eager to help if he could do something, anything. They threw a raincoat and fire hat on him and brought him to Ground Zero where he spent the day sifting debris for body parts. As angry as I am that my child had to witness such things, I am very proud of him. He wanted to go back for more but after that second day only authorized personnel were allowed on site.

There were few survivors of the towers' collapse. I knew a few people that died there, as did a great many New Yorkers. The ensuing weeks were spent dousing the blaze in the massive rubble pile that had been downtown's crowning glory. No pockets of survivors were found after the third day. The skies were emptied of non-military aircraft and our nation's military headquarters, the Pentagon, was partially destroyed. The White House or the Capitol might have suffered a similar fate if not for the heroic resistance of average citizens aboard a fourth flight that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania when the hijackers were attacked by the passengers. Our nation was suddenly at war and we had a lot of dead to bury.

At the time I lived in Brooklyn's Marine Park, a working class area where many fire fighters made their home. As it happened, I lived right across the street from Marine Park Funeral Home. For the next several weeks the skirl of bagpipes let me know we were saying goodbye to another brave young soul. Firefighters and Police in full dress uniforms would line Quentin Road and salute, tears streaming from eyes hardened by untold horrors. The Bagpipers in their kilts keened for our loss and our unspeakable grief. The pallbearers carried suspiciously light coffins, usually containing only a tiny bit of what had once been robust adults. Some coffins held no remains at all, only loving memories, perhaps a bit of a charred helmet or a burnt bit of rag that had been part of their uniforms.

So on this September 11 we celebrate an unhappy anniversary. Six years down the road the losses are still fresh, our scars not yet healed. We remember all who died that day, the heroes, the victims, the delusional killers themselves, our own innocence. We pray and remember. We can never forget what happened that day, and how very many of our people behaved majestically, heroically, selflessly. We won't ever forget you.

Author's note: I tried to say what I could today for all our lost brothers and sisters but it doesn't feel like enough somehow. I said it better once, in a song I wrote called about 9/11. It's called "See You In The Morning" and you can hear it by clicking on to the Songs part of this website. It was hard to write about such a monumental catastrophe so I did what most songwriters would do; wrote about individual people who were there that day, bring it down to a personal level. For example, the line "Leon was a great big man, he was mighty, he was brave…" is about Leon Smith, a firefighter from Jimmy and Rich's fire house who died there. There's a famous photograph of the truck he drove as it crossed the Brooklyn Bridge heading for the Towers. It was the last anyone ever saw of Leon Smith except for the people he saved. His remains have never been found. The song is one of my best, made all that much better by the beautiful background singing and vocal
arrangement of Detective Marianne Maloney of the New York City Police Department. She brought these people we sing about to life and for that I thank her always. Give it a listen today and remember, always remember.}

Author's note: Jack Hobbs, the man who dropped in on me from 1937, is still here after what he thought would be a half day visit to to future. He reports:

Jack Hobbs here. Still here, I should say. Thought by now I'd be back home. Well, I am home, sort of , since I live here in Brooklyn, but I don't live now, see. If you don't see, it's like this: old Doc Willoughby sent me here in a time machine a couple of days ago. Told me I'd be here for half a day, take some pictures, take a gander around and I'd zap back to my time and report back to him, easy as pie.

Well, I sure got egg on my face, joke's on me. Looks like I'm stuck here in the future. My new friend Bob who took me in when by rights he should have had me locked up in the loony bin with the story I told him, well. Bob showed me how to look up old newspapers on this internet thing you people have. I was wondering why Doc Willoughby wasn't world famous for having invented time travel, and yours truly too for being the first time traveller. So we looked up the good old Daily News archives on the computer and boy did I get a jolt.

We started with the day I got sent here, September 3, 1937. Nothing earth-shaking, the Dodgers lost a close one and nobody that I knew died. Next day, same deal, except that the Dodgers won a double header. Ditto for the next few weeks, nothing about the man who built a time machine. Then on the October 8th, 1937 Daily News obituary page there it is, one Doctor Warren Willoughby meets his maker in Kings County Hospital, his ticker finally giving out after a long bout with heart disease. It was short piece, stating that Doc Willoughby was a retired physics professor who was the heir to a great fortune but was the last of his line, having no family at all. It went on to say that after his retirement he secluded himself in his home laboratory working on "theoretical experiments" until his death. Not a word about him building the time machine that sent me here.

Now ain't that a kick in the head? I feel bad for the Doc, the old codger really grew on me in the four months I worked for him. I figure he probably had a heart attack when the time machine actually worked. He'd had a lot of false starts with the thing, which is why I figured it would never work. It was a little routine of ours at his lab, I'd strap myself into the seat, he'd press buttons and turn dials and the thing would rattle and smoke and break down like an old jalopy. Then we would take her apart and tinker around with this thingamajig and that and rewire the thing and Doc would say he's got it figured this time.

In my four months with him that happened maybe a dozen times and I went along with it, since I come from a time where work was scarce and the Doc gave me a steady job at good wages. He also taught me a lot about science and kept me entertained with how peaceful and easy life in the future will be. Well he got that one wrong. I'm here only a few days and I can see for myself that life is pretty much not so different than it was 70 years ago. Matter of fact, it 's a lot more hectic from where I sit. People seem to be in an awful rush to get places today, not much chatting with the candy store lady or the barber or your neighbor. There's a whole lot more going on these days with those TV's, cell phones, computers and some little tiny boxes that are all three combined plus a movie camera to boot. On your house phone you can put somebody on hold like an operator or even have a three-way call.

That's a lot to keep up with. I even see some little kids with their own pocket phones. What pressing business could these peewees possibly have? Can't you let them just be kids? They'll get their share of the grief of being an adult soon enough. They'll wise up quick to the hard facts of life when their time comes, just like we all did, but at least we had that golden time of being a kid, oblivious to everything mean and hard in this world. The business of being a kid is to be a kid and monkey around and enjoy life without worrying too much about the how that bread got on the table or where that warm blanket at night came from. Why would you take that away from them so soon? Why rush it?

And stuff now is real pricey. I'm a guy who until a few days ago rode the subway for a dime and paid maybe fifteen cents for a loaf of bread, a quarter for a whole chicken. My rent is only twelve bucks a month, and to think I groused about it! In my apartment I have a radio, a two-burner gas stove, an ice box, a decent electric fan for hot nights and my collection of books. Don't have my own telephone. There's a pay phone in the lobby that everyone uses. There's ten apartments in the building, most of them pretty big except a couple like mine, a two-room job that's plenty for me. Whoever's near the phone picks it up and goes to fetch whoever the call is for. Not that I get many calls but if you need me you can find me.

Or I should say I had these things, past tense, over and done with. I came to the realization that I'm in this future for good. Old Doc Willoughby who sent me here isn't spinning any more dials. Too bad he didn't send himself to the future. I hear that they can replace parts of a bum heart as easy as putting new spark plugs in a De Soto these days, even replace the whole thing with someone else's who's not using it anymore, or put one of those mechanical ones in your chest. I guess there's a lot more modern stuff around than I realized when I first got here. I was glad to hear they cured polio, but Bob tells me that was like fifty years ago.

So I'm thinking I have to pull my own weight around here, I can't mooch off Bob forever. He did manage to get me an offer for the camera I brought with me to the tune of something like forty grand, a bigger pile of dough than I ever saw before. Seems the camera the Doc and I bought for taking pictures of the future is a rarity these days, a bona-fide collector's item, especially since it's in such good shape. Well it should be because we only bought it the other day for my time trip. Ain't a nick on it and is still in the box it came in, along with the soft wrapping paper and the instructions too. That's what really sets it apart from other old cameras, plus the fact that I still have thirty fresh rolls of film that they don't even make anymore (The snaps of the future I took for Doc Willoughby were done on Bob's digital camera since nobody these days can develop the kind of camera film I have unless they're old school camera buffs with their own dark rooms.). Bob put the thing on
something called e-Bay and the bidding keeps going up. He just told me it's past forty-one grand and there's still a day to go in the bidding! Figure that one out.

I read about e-Bay in the papers selling a home run ball that broke Hank Aaron's record. Where I come from the record was Babe Ruth's and nobody was ever gonna break that one, but I guess this Hank Aaron guy did and now some other ballplayer named Barry Bonds broke his record, although the papers say he cheated by taking some sort of miracle drug that makes you stronger and quicker and that's been banned by baseball and the law but this Bonds guy was too slick to get caught red-handed. Don't sound like this joker's on the level if you ask me, but without proof of a crime, you can't hang the man. I'll bet the Doc could have used some of that stuff too, maybe it would have helped his bum ticker. If I knew he was still around to get me back to '37 I'd take some with me for him and maybe some spare heart parts. Anyway, the kid who caught the homer stands to make himself about 400 or 500 Grand if you can believe that. That's movie star dough.

If I can get forty grand (and maybe a lot more) for the camera I figure that'll give me a good stake but Bob tells me that isn't all that much these days and I should spend it wisely. I tell him a guy like me who came up in hard times like the 30's don't spend a nickel
f1i un
f0i0 wisely. I'm thinking a little studio apartment and maybe get some sort of training so I can get a job. I was a terrific teletype operator before the hard times (what you people now call The Great Depression) put me out on the street, a job I'm told doesn't exist anymore. You mean nobody gets telegrams anymore? I guess fax machines and e-mails do the trick now.

So I guess those boys in the snazzy Western Union uniforms aren't knocking on doors anymore either. I hear there's a whole lot of jobs that don't exist anymore, and not just obsolete ones like mine. Word is that companies are moving their operations to other countries to get foreign guys to do their work on the cheap and with no safety precautions or overtime pay or anything like modern working conditions. I guess that once the government gets wind of that they'll crack down and bring the American jobs back to America. In my time, we made all kinds of things and sold them all over the world, in spite of the fact that American workers got decent pay and overtime and guaranteed safe working conditions. There was a war between industry and labor to get these rights. All in all, though, nobody made better quality goods than the USA. Nobody anywhere.

I'm still young, only 30, so I can learn to do something else. I guess I'm really 100, but that can't be since I didn't get to live the past seventy of those years, just skipped right over them like Rip Van Winkle minus the white beard and the aging. Bob bought me some new clothes so I can fit in to today's style, if you can call it that. I can't believe men don't wear regular hats anymore and I refuse to wear a baseball cap like some little kid. And what's with all those sneakers on grown men? No, thanks, brother. Just because those things cost over a hundred semoleans doesn't mean they're not sneakers.They sure are and those things are uglier than Cinderella's step-sisters and certainly not appropriate attire for the well-dressed man. It seems that only office guys with real good jobs wear jackets and ties anymore, and a lot of fellas walk around the street a lot with only their t-shirts on. What gives?

Well, I guess I'll roll with the punches fashion-wise, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna look like a palooka just to be one of the guys. I'm sure modern ladies still like a well-groomed man. I've already met a couple of swell babes who liked my manners and the way I treat them. Told me I'm sweet and old fashioned. They should only know how old fashioned I really am. I don't let on to anybody but Bob that I'm really a hundred years old and dropped in from the past. That'd only give me a one-way ticket to Bellevue and the last thing I need is to be labeled as some kind of lunatic, although I realize my story has more holes in it than Swiss cheese on the face of it.

But let me tell you something: I can prove who I am. Got my discharge papers from the Marines in my wallet. The Marines fingerprinted me back in 1925 when I joined up right out of High School. That's another thing, I should be in the yearbook of good old Erasmus High School, class of '25. I also got me one of those brand new Social Security cards that FDR and his boys invented so old people wouldn't have to die poor after they couldn't work no more. Didn't have time to contribute all that much but I still have that card in my wallet. It's still so new you'd think the ink wasn't dry on it yet. That, plus my driver's license and honorable discharge papers should prove exactly who I am.

And then there's my kid brother Joey. He's probably long gone but he and his wife Nora had two swell kids when I left and who knows, maybe a couple more after that. They got hitched right out of High School, the classic girl and boy next door affair. I'll bet Joe Junior remembers good old Uncle Jack. He was eight years old and I used to take him to Ebbets field all the time to see the Dodgers play when I had a steady job. When I didn't I'd take him to the sandlots and teach him to play baseball the right way, hard and clean. Heck, I remember everything from when I was eight, so he should too I hope. If nothing happened to the kid he should be 78 now, not as ancient as it was in my day. These days the woods are thick with geezers, they live so long. And just like FDR planned, they're not broke. They seem to have plenty of dough socked away plus they get that Social Security check every month. Good to see that the government can do some things right.

My niece Marie might remember me too, she was five when I went poof. She loved her Uncle Jack no end and followed me around like a puppy dog. Who knows, maybe those two got married and had kids of their own and I have a bunch relatives somewhere. My next look-see at the Daily News archives is to see if my disappearance made any news. I kind of doubt it because in those days lots of guys took a powder. Some went wherever they thought they could get work. A few guys with families they couldn't support anymore buckled under the intense pressure and took it on the lam to who-knows-where. I can see clear as a bell now the hard times we had came to an end, but what replaced it don't seem like such a bargain, a World War like no one ever saw before.

I hear tell that fifty million people got killed in that fiasco. Wasn't there any way to talk everybody out of it? What do we pay these Fancy Dan diplomats for? To make windy speeches and wear top hats and tails? (Bob tells me ambassadors don't dress that way anymore but they're just as windy and useless as ever.) I don't get it, but like I said before, I never could follow the line of thinking of the high and mighty. It seems like a lot of regulars Joes got to pay for their crazy notions, and pay big. I know I don't have all the whys and wherefors about that whole mess due to my seventy year leap ahead, but fifty million people dead? That don't make any sense at all. There had to be a better way.

I've been getting around town and seeing all the changes, some of them pretty swell. My old apartment house owned by Mrs. Sweeney is gone, replaced by some big discount store. Ebbets field is now a bunch of giant apartment buildings and that hurts to see it gone forever. Manhattan sure got taller on the average. Lots of glass and steel buildings . They look nice, some of them, but pretty flimsy. No wonder the Arabs were able to knock a couple of them down. I see Mayor LaGuardia got himself an airport named after him and they changed the name of Idlewilde to Kennedy after a president that got shot for shaking things up and giving colored people their rights or trying to kill some guy named Castro who runs Cuba or fooling around with a gangster's moll. Can't really get a straight answer on that one. No one seems to agree on history these days.

There's too much to absorb in just a few days and that sort of bugs me. It's not like I jumped ahead a year or even a decade. Seventy years is a lot of time to ask somebody to fill me in on what I missed, like I got up to get popcorn at the movies and missed a scene. Hell, I missed the whole movie. I feel like a kid again, asking dumb questions a grown up ought to know automatic like, see, like just when did the government take over the numbers rackets from the gangsters? Things like that. I need more than the little tidbits you learn on the internet, I need some decent history books. I think I'll lay low for a while and try to find some relatives and sort myself out. I miss my family and friends, and the Doc too, even though he's the one responsible for the mess I'm in. What's happened is over and done with and it's up to me to take it from here.

I'm glad I knocked on the right door when I came to 2007. Bob has been a good buddy when I needed one the most. Here I was one day a confident guy who thought he had things figured out okay and the next day I'm like some hayseed seeing the big city for the first time. Bob says don't be in a rush and don't think you have to jump on every bandwagon that rolls up. He's got a good point there. If you try to do keep up with all the new stuff coming at you these days that's all you'd have time to do, leaving zero time for living your life. Good advice.

A lot of things he tells me are the God's honest, like the fact that most of the stuff on TV is complete nonsense, but there's some quality stuff to watch here and there. I thought it was just me at first not being hip to the lingo and the modern culture. Bob tells me to trust myself since I've got good instincts and a good heart. Told me he saw right off that I was a decent Joe and not some wisenheimer trying to play angles on everyone. Funny, that's how I always tried to operate but being a fish out of water put a little dent in my armor. He tells me I'll be fine because it don't matter where you're from, it only matters who you are. I really needed to hear that.

Well, it's time to find out just who I am and where I fit in around here. I got at least one good friend so that's a start. Now I've got to look up whatever family I've got, but that might be a shock to them and they might not believe me. I can't count on everybody being like old Bob here, taking a guy at face value, but I like to think that most people are okay Joes doing their best in this world so I'm just going to be who I am and let people know it. Wish me luck.}

The other day I had the strangest visit. It was a guy in a trench coat and a fedora claiming to be a time traveler from the year 1937. He said he was working for a Doctor Willoughby and instructed to knock on the first door he came across and check things out and write a report. Well, here it is:

8 P.M., September 3rd. 2007.
My name is Jack Hobbs, see. The last thing I remember I was in this glass and steel booth in Dr. Willoughby’s laboratory. He’s a decent old codger and a real egghead, sharp as they come, but a little scatter-brained, if you catch my drift. Anyway, he gives me a job a few months back, sort of his Man Friday, doing this and that around his lab, helping him with his experiments and doing some errands, typing up reports and other paperwork. A little out of my regular line of work but that’s okay by me, any work you can get is good work these days, and like I say, the doc’s an okay Joe, the pay is good and the workload ain’t exactly breaking rocks.

Doc Willoughby tells me he’s perfected a time machine and I says yeah sure, Doc, a time machine, that’s a good thing. I figured the old guy’s a little off his rocker but I don’t let on what I’m thinking, see. No sense rocking the boat when I’m collecting a regular paycheck. Why not humor the old goat I figure. Besides, the way the guy went on and on about how rosy the future would be, well, I just didn’t have the heart to burst his bubble.

I have to admit that he sure made it sound like a thick slice of heaven with a cherry on top, all brotherhood of man and all kinds of scientific gadgets making life a snap for everybody, no poor people or bread lines or factories closing down or banks throwing granny off the family farm. I could listen for hours to the doc as he spun his tales. Kind of made me want to live a long time to see some of this stuff happen.

So one morning I come into work and the doc says I don’t have to wait until I’m an old man to see the future, his time machine was ready for a spin and he’s like me to try it on for size. He hands me a couple of hundred smackers and a brand new camera and says that ought to do the trick for the short time I’d be there. I says sure Doc, why not? I figure it’ll rattle and smoke and go dead like it always did when we worked on it every now and then. He’d been at this thing for years and I figured it’d never work cause even a regular Joe like me knows you can’t travel to a time that ain’t happened yet but that’s okay by me as long as the paychecks kept coming.

The doc inherited a pile of dough from his family and seemed like he had a lifetime supply of it so I wasn’t looking for the complaint department if you catch my drift. I figure I’ll park myself in the seat, he’ll spin the dials and poof, it’ll fizzle out again and we’ll go back to monkeying around with it again like always. The doc is a big tinkerer and loves fiddling around with wires and cathode ray tubes and all kinds of scientific gizmos. It was all Greek to me but I got pretty handy myself with a soldering iron and we’d have us a high old time taking the rig apart and putting it back together again. Then we’d try it out again and it’d rattle and smoke and go poof again and we’d go back to tinkering. A job’s a job, I figure, and the landlady’s happy she’s getting her rent on time and I’m happy I’m not cooling my heels out on the street.

So that day he gets all misty eyed about how he wishes he could take the trip with me but someone had to man the controls and besides he was an old man and wasn’t sure his ticker could take the strain. I says don’t worry doc, I’ve got the camera and I’ll remember to take some shots for you of all the modern marvels I run across. According to him I’ll be tripping over them in the future and he figures seventy years ought to do the trick, 2007.

Whatever you say, Doc, you’re the boss I’m thinking as he revved up the time machine again. I figured in a half hour we’d be under the hood again and talking about the sweet life I’d get to eyeball when we fixed the rig and he recalibrated the settings like always and he’d send me to 2007. Didn’t work out that way. Sure enough, the crazy gizmo worked this time and here I am.

At first I was a little leery ‘cause the future don’t look much different except that the cars all shrunk, at least on this street. So I do like the doc tells me and knock on the nearest door and this guy Bob answers it, a tall skinny drink of water but he seems okay, and understandably he gives me the fish eye when I tell him where I’m from. Can’t say as I’d be any less skeptical if a guy shows up on my doorstep claiming to be from 1867. I might have given him the bum’s rush now that I think about it but this guy Bob, he sees I’m pretty shaken up and so he sits me down and gives me a hot cup of Joe. Well, at least the future’s got decent coffee. So far, so good, right?

I ask the guy what year it is and he says 2007 and I says maybe Doc Willoughby ain’t so much off his rocker as I think. He shows me a copy of The Daily News, only with color pictures in it, and sure enough I’m seventy years ahead of my time but haven’t aged a bit. Naturally Bob thinks I’m a couple of jokers short of a full deck but I pull out my own copy of the Daily News, dated 70 years to the day beforehand. He scratches his head and gives me the once over, not knowing what kind of prank this might be.

I swear I ain’t no bill collector or tax agent, even show him my wallet. He takes a gander at my dough and gasps, saying it’s the genuine article from all those years and then checks the silver coins and says sure enough they’re real silver, whatever that means. Then he eyeballs my camera, calling it a perfectly preserved antique and I say antique my foot, I bought it with Doc Willoughby at Sears Roebuck just this morning. Showed him the hand-written receipt too, in case he thinks I swiped it.

He asks if I have any photo I’D> and I says they’re ain’t no such thing but I show him my driver’s license and some snap shots of my family. I got a kid brother lives over in Canarsie with his wife and two little brats so I show these off like a proud uncle. Me, I’m still single, which is why the doc told me he picked me for time travel, that no one would miss me if I turned up missing. I shrugged it off at the time, never for a minute figuring I’d actually get bounced into the future. Now what?

We never did discuss getting me back to 1937. Didn’t seem necessary but now I’m kicking myself for what a sap I was. Old Doc Willoughby didn’t seem like the kind of guy to play me for a sucker but now I’m not so sure. What if I’m stuck here? Now this Bob guy is starting to believe me, and what cements the deal is when I ask him what the Dodgers did today. He looks at me like I’m cross-eyed and says what Dodgers? I say the Brooklyn Bums, of course. Don’t tell me you’re a Giant fan or worse, a Yankee fan living here in Brooklyn, I says.

So he tells me he is a Yankee fan but only because the Dodgers don’t play in Brooklyn no more, they moved to Los Angeles when Bob was a little kid. The Giants moved out to Frisco the year before that. That really took the wind out of my sails, I’ll tell you. What’s Brooklyn without the Dodgers? Must have broke a lot of hearts around here is all I can say.

Bob says the Dodgers did some great things before they left, bringing black guys into major league ball. I ask what the hell is a black guy and he tells me African Americans and I’m still stumped but them it dawns on me, he’s talking about colored people! Well I’ll be damned, and about time too I says. I always wondered why Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and some of the other Negro League stars never got a shot at the bigs. I seen them play plenty and any dope could see some of these guys had the goods. Then he tells me the Dodgers beat the Yanks in the Series in 1955 and celebrated by taking it on the lam to Hollywood a few years later. Ain’t that the cat’s pajamas?

So I let that sink in, then I ask Bob to tell me about all the modern scientific gizmos that make life a walk in the park these days. So he tells me people fly around in airplanes like giant buses all over the world. He said we sent a man to the moon nearly forty years ago but then quit the space ship racket. Said most everybody has their own phone in their pocket and you don’t have to put a dime in it to make a call, no wires needed and works on sound waves like a radio. Tells me about fax machines and e-mails and all the instant communication we got here in the future so I figure everybody must be pretty important and have a lot of pressing business to be in such lickety-split touch with each other.

I ask what’s on the radio these days, maybe we could catch a ballgame and he tells me he only listens to the game on his car radio because we got television now and you can watch the game at home, in color no less. Okay, what else you got? Planes and flimsy cars and televisions and phones in your pocket. Oh, a microwave oven? Flip tops on cans of coke? Okay. That’s it? People still get around town in subways and buses? Nothing new there. You say the tallest building in New York is still The Empire State Building?

What’s that, there was a taller pair built downtown but some angry Arabs knocked them down? Arabs? With what, exploding camels? Well I guess the Feds hunted them down alright, no? What? They gave up on ‘em and attacked some other country in the Middle East instead that had nothing to do with it? I figure Bob’s pulling me leg here but he’s dead serious. I ask him who’s running the show down there in Foggy Bottom, President Moe, Larry or Curly?

I’m getting real confused here so Bob steers me over to his computer and shows me how to look stuff up. It looks like one of those television sets but with a keyboard sort of like my Underwood typewriter back at the Doc’s lab, but without the noise and the handle to reset the carriage. Anyway, in no time I get the hang of it and now I’m surfing the web trying to play catch-up ball for the last 70 years. Well, it seems that lots has gone on but by and large it’s the same old same old, if you catch my drift.

I’m shocked to find out that that blowhard Hitler over in Germany started another World War and murdered 6 million Jews in the process. I figured he’d slink away after Joe Louis and Jesse Owens busted his “Aryan Superman” balloon in the boxing ring and on the Berlin Olympic’s running track. I’ve got to get word back to 1937 and my buddy Hymie. He’s still got a bunch of relatives over there and he better get ‘em out of there pronto. Also, my cousin Freddy is in the navy stationed at Pearl Harbor and likes it, thinking he might just make a career of it on the good old battleship U.S.S. Arizona. Once the Japs got involved I figure poor Freddy’s days are numbered.

And after that war, who gets to be the big cheese other than the good old USA but Russia? Now there’s another country I’d never have figured to make a big splash. Their bosses were nuttier even than Hitler. So then everybody’s got a whole bunch of those crazy A-Bombs we blew up a couple of Jap cities with to end Hitler’s war and our two countries play blind-man’s bluff for fifty years until the Russians fold, but thankfully no one blew up the world. At least not yet. It also seems that there’s still plenty of poor people around and no shortage of wars being fought all over the place. The European Empires finally collapsed and seem to have left a big stink behind them.

The two biggest economies outside of over here are Japan and Germany, the two countries who started that big war and who we destroyed and then rebuilt. I don’t get it, but at least I see we still keep occupying armies on their turf just in case they get frisky again. I never did follow the logic of kings and presidents anyway. Best to leave that alone.

So I ask Bob if that skinny wop singer with the Dorsey Band ever made a splash, that Franky Sinatra kid. He says he sure did and then some but we don’t call people wops and dagos and micks or kikes or spades anymore. I told him we didn’t mean nothing by it, just gave guys a little ribbing, see, find out what they were made of. If a guy’s of German descent we call him Dutch, if he’s Swedish then it’s Swede. You follow? My good friend Hymie’s name is really Morris, but he hates that name. Me, I’m called Hobbsy by my friends, just a sort of nickname, see?

It seems some good things have happened in this world, too. Jim Crow is dead and colored guys are playing in the big leagues and even running the show by being big generals or big shot businessmen and Senators and stuff. About time, I say. Women get a lot more say in their lives it seems, and I guess that’s a good thing. I figure they were saps to ever let themselves get pushed around in the first place, but that’s only my opinion. I also like the new styles the ladies seem to favor except in Arabia where they’re wrapped up like mummies for some strange reason. Wonder whose idea was that, theirs or some joker in charge over there, and what’s his problem?

And now the U.S has 50 states, Alaska and Hawaii making the cut after the Second World War. There’s a lot more cars and a hell of a lot more highways and people seem to drive all over this country all the time. And America looks like the new Great Britain, having army and naval outposts all over the world. I wonder what for? There’s just too much complicated dope for me to get through my skull in one sitting so I’m taking a break here. And there’s something nagging in the back of my mind that doest seem quite right but I can’t put my finger on it.

Then it hits me! I ask Bob if he ever heard of Doctor Warren Willoughby and he says no. I scratch my head and figure maybe Bob’s one of those ignorant dopes who’s not savvy to the famous scientists who made the big breakthroughs so I look him up on the internet and get squat, zero, nada, zilch, nil on the good doc. You’d figure the guy who invented tie travel would be right up there with Einstein and Newton, no? You’d think there’d at least be a statue of the guy somewhere.

Maybe the doc had a good reason to keep it a secret? I’m hoping that’s the case or else it looks like curtains for me. How can I stay here when I should be a very old man or dead by now? All of a sudden I get real weary. This time-travel stuff takes a lot out of a guy, to say nothing of learning about the missing seventy years since I left Willoughby’s lab. Bob invites me sleep on his couch for the night and I accept. Not that I want to impose on a decent guy I just met but the hard fact is that I have no where else to go. Everybody I know is either very old or long dead by now.

Bob assures me that tomorrow we’ll look up old copies of newspapers to see what happened to old Doc Willoughby, obituaries and the like. Maybe he traveled into the future himself, even shot past me to the year 2107. I was kind of counting on him to get me back home. He assured me my stay would only last for half a day and that’s long gone now and I’m starting to worry. Now what?

If any of you out there reading this have any information on Doctor Warren Willoughby, could you contact this e-mail address? I know the old guy didn’t have any family, but he must have left some word about his invention and hopefully about me, his human guinea pig. If not, maybe there’s some other scientist out there working on time travel who could send me back. Bob says he’ll lend me his blog again so I’ll keep in touch.

He’s already calling me Thirties Guy, a good enough nickname as any I guess, especially considering how I got here in his living room. To him and to you 1937 might sound like ancient history, but to me it wasn’t even yesterday, it was this morning. I still don’t need a shave again, that’s how close I am to it. Why is it starting to feel like a thousand miles away? Help a fellow out here, folks. I’ve got to report back to my boss, warn Hymie and Cousin Freddie and maybe invest some dough in some swampland around Orlando Florida where Walt Disney’s going to build some kind of Coney Island with a Mickey Mouse as its host someday. Meanwhile I’ll just take some snapshots of this big deal future…