MANHATTAN COLLEGE

MANHATTAN COLLEGE

I began attending Manhattan College in 1962 and got out on parole in 1969.  Rudolf Giuliani, famed Mayor of New York City and James Patterson, famed novelist were in attendance at the same time.  I didn’t know them of course.  They were students.  I was an attendee.  I was totally unprepared for the independence and responsibility that college life offered.  I was a successful high school student in a structured environment but a disaster on my own in my first semester of Liberal Arts with a 21 credit load.  

I literally struggled for several years, just squeaking by and eventually was about to be thrown out when my older brother Bro. Greg Flynn, a member of the Christian Brother’s Order who ran the College, interceded and got me an interview with Bro Francis the Dean of the evening Business School. It was a short interview.  Bro Francis was a gentleman and he simply stated “Son, this is the last train.  Make the most of it.”

While I drove a school bus during the day and worked as a waiter on the weekends, I had found time to go partying while I neglected my school work. That was about to come to an abrupt change.  In my first evening class I found myself seated next to John Brennan, a guy I graduated with from Good Shepherd Grammar School in Inwood, Manhattan.  What a pleasant surprise.  John was a nice guy and he told me that he lived across the street from the school with his wife and child. I was floored.  I didn’t know guys my age who were married with a child.  John had a full time job during the day and was getting his degree at night.  He wasn’t the only one in class like this.  There were a number of family guys of varying ages and when it came to school, they were dead serious.  

It took several years but being in the presence of serious students had gotten me to the point where I had finally graduated.  So I thought.  I went to my senior advisor to get a final approval on my courses and was shocked when I found out that I didn’t have a required theology course.  We discussed it and it was determined that I should go and see the Dean and request a waiver.  This had to happen. 

Brother Francis was long gone and a layman, Mr Chambers had taken his place.  He was a pleasant man and of course I had seen him around the halls over several years.  I made an appointment and went to see him one evening.  I was nervous.  A lot was riding on his decision. I had a job waiting for me upon graduation.  I proceeded nervously to explain my plight and as I pushed forward with my request he stopped me.  “Wait a minute, are you saying you’re a student here.  I thought you were a teaching assistant. You’ve been here longer than me.”  I told him my request quickly and he waved his hand to give him the request.  He quickly signed it.  “If for nothing more than persistence Flynn, you deserve to be on your way.” He shook my hand and wished me well. 

I will always be grateful to Bro. Francis and Mr. Chambers and thanks to them, I too like Giuliani and Patterson before me, am a graduate of Manhattan College.

THE TANNERY

I was traveling in Ireland with my wife Linda and our good friends Ken and Sue Giel.  We had separated from a larger group and were headed to Cork to see my niece Christina Healy.  We only had two days before we had to be back in Dublin and spent the first night in Dungarvan, County Waterford.  I need to explain that my mother was from nearby Cappoquin in Waterford and I have many first cousins who reside in the area.  As a boy of 12,  I spent a summer on my uncle’s farm and had visited Dungarvan several times.  One of the visits was to a county fair and I had never been so close to a large array of farm animals and products.   It made a life long impression on me.

We stayed at a B and B where the proprietor was kind enough to make reservations at a restaurant for us called The Tannery.  She made the reservations in my name, Bill Flynn.  The Tannery it turns out was a five star restaurant owned by a renowned chef named Paul Flynn.  It was an actual tannery down by the wharf in town that was converted to a restaurant and had an unusual layout.  As it turned out it was very fine dining.  We arrived and were seated in short order when the owner came over to introduce himself and have a chat.  He saw my name on the reservation which of course was the same as his and led me to explain about my mother being from Waterford and my father from the adjoining county Cork.  We determined that we were not likely related and we really enjoyed the evening and chatting with Paul Flynn.

The next day we drove to Cork where we visited my niece Christina at her home near Blarney Castle.  When we walked in she greeted me in her beautiful Irish brogue  “And sure Uncle Bill,  How was the Tannery last night?”  Needless to say, I was very surprised to hear her question. “Christina, Ireland is a small country but it’s not that small.”  

Christina went on to explain that the girl who waited on our table was Una Ahearn, my first cousin Tom Ahearn’s daughter.  She overheard our conversation with Paul Flynn and surmised that it might be me.  What cemented it for her  was the that I resemble my older brother Greg Flynn, a life long African missionary who stopped in Ireland every year and who she knew.

The Ahearns reached out to Christina to confirm if in fact I was in Ireland.  I was beyond embarrassed.  Because of my limited time, I had decided not to contact any relatives.  I didn’t want to visit with one of them for a few hours and risk the chance of slighting another.  To this day, I don’t know if Tom Ahearn was slighted.  I suspect not.  He’s not that kind of person.  What I will never understand is why Una didn’t introduce herself.  It must be an Irish thing.  I can’t imagine any of my American nieces not getting fully engaged in a similar situation.

Oh yeah, the first thing I asked Kenny was “How was the tip?”  “No problem, good to go.” After all, that might have been the most important thing.

DUMB ME

I was at the Publix supermarket down the street from where I live in Vero Beach, Florida.  I had my shopping in the cart as I walked out of the market and looked for my car at the usual area where I parked.  Not there.  I looked around at the second area where I would park if it was crowded.  Not there.  It wasn’t anywhere.  I checked out the entire lot and my beloved Buick Enclave was gone. Oh shit.  This is a problem. I had my gun on the console.  That really is a problem so I decided to call 911 and get the information out as quickly as possible.  I called and a very pleasant woman took my information and said that they would send a unit over shortly. I ended the call and as I looked at my phone I realized that I had my wife’s car keys in my hand.  I felt like a moron. We brought Linda’s Honda Accord to Florida this year from North Carolina, our primary home.  I immediately looked up and there was her car sitting right where I normally parked. 

I was very relieved and realized I had to call 911 right away and call off the police.  I called back and got the same pleasant women on the phone.  I explained what had happened with the different cars and apologized profusely for my dumb mistake.  I kiddingly said that I had a senior moment.  She laughed and consoled me by saying Senior moments are a way of life around here and happen all the time.  After all, This is Florida.  

JIMMY BLESSINGTON

Jimmy Blessington was my very good friend Mary Abbott’s brother.  He was a laid back kind of guy who was a hard working iron worker.  He was a very good family man who was liked by all.  While he was a man of few words, when he spoke he was always worth listening to.  Unfortunately, Jimmy was diagnosed with late stage cancer and wound up in the hospital knowing that he was nearing the end of his life.  

John Blessington was Jimmy’s brother and a different kind of guy than Jimmy. John was a gentleman as well who was a school teacher who lived in Manhattan. John was a sophisticated man who enjoyed the museums and theaters of the city.  The brothers were quite different but equally respectable men. John was very distraught over Jimmy’s illness.  

When John went to visit Jimmy in the hospital, he found it very hard to keep his composure. He tried talking to Jimmy about his condition but kept breaking down.  Jimmy felt bad that his brother was having such a bad time and consoled him with the following words.  “John, it’s not that bad.  Afterall, it’s not like they told me I’m going to die and you’re not.”  

Like I said, Jimmy was a man of few words but when he spoke he was worth listening to.

The Grim Reaper

THE GRIM REAPER

Bill Bradbury was my very close friend from the early 1970’s when I met him in the New York Office of the FBI where we were Special Agents.  Bill was from Chicago and had the pleasant personality that many mid-westerners are blessed with.  I’m safe in saying that Bill Bradbury didn’t have an enemy in this world and I can also add, he probably never met anyone who didn’t like him.  Having said that, the thing that bonded our friendship was a dark humor streak that Bill had that only surfaced with people he knew really well.  I used to kid him and tell him if these people knew what you were thinking about they’d be amazed.  

Case in point.  When I retired in 1998 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  I knew it was coming.  Over the course of time, my father and three brothers all had prostate cancer.  I also knew that I wasn’t going to fool around with any of the alternate treatment options available at that time and that I was going to have my prostate removed.  I had confidence in my doctor and that was his recommendation as well and we set a date for the operation. 

My good buddy Bill came to visit me before the operation and he bought a greeting card with him.  Honestly, what man brings a card with him when he comes to visit another man?  Bradbury did and here’s why.  The card he gave me had a picture of the Grim Reaper on the front.  It was ominous with the black hooded reaper and his staff staring glumly at you.  When you opened the card there was the reaper again staring at you with a finger waving you closer saying “THATS RIGHT, COME TO PAPA.”  

I laughed of course.  It was hilarious and fit his real humor to a tee.  I went in and had a successful operation and you might think that this is the end of my story.  It isn’t. Years later Bill had an operation to deal with and it weighed on him because he was a hypochondriac. I went to visit Bill several times before his operation but the last time I brought him a greeting card. My wife Linda found the perfect card.  She had actually come across the card earlier on but instinctively knew she had to buy it.  The front of the card was the picture of a rear view mirror in a car and in the mirror was none other than a menacing  Grim Reaper leering at you.  When you opened the card it read, CAUTION: IMAGES IN THE MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK.  

Sadly, Bill passed away in 2014 and I never not think of him and smile.  He met the Grim Reaper, as we all will, and I’ll lay money on it, that the Reaper liked him.  

HOLA

HOLA

After I retired from the FBI I did  compliance anti-money laundering contract work. This amounted to working at different banks around the country for three months at a time.  Different banks failed Federal audits for poorly monitoring money laundering activity in their accounts.  As a remedy they would have to hire my friends company of ex federal investigators to come in and review accounts and usually pay a hefty fine. 

I was working in a bank in Miami on the famed Brickell Ave whose customers were almost exclusively South Americans and whose employees were mainly Cuban Americans.  It was really an enlightening experience. The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that the woman came to work dressed up everyday. I’m talking high heel dressed up.  I worked at a number of banks and the back room women employees were always very casually dressed.  These Miami women were a stand out.  I was in an office area with about a dozen other guys like myself and it wasn’t unusual to have someone come in and say “Did anybody see that girl with the red dress this morning?” You knew exactly what they were talking about because the was a “red dress” girl floating around the building everyday.

My story isn’t about the red dress girls but rather about a group of ladies in the office who were closer to my age and who I walked by every morning.  These ladies were friendly and the first time one of them smiled and said “Hola”, I was surprised.  It became the routine where I would walk by in the morning an say Hola and wave to everybody.  I got a kick out of it.  Look at me, I’m speaking Spanish. 

At this time I was in my early 60s with grey hair and a full closely white trimmed beard.  As I walked by one morning, one of the ladies waved me over to her desk.  I had never really spoken to the ladies and didn’t know what to expect.  She smiled and told me that she and her friends thought I looked like Kenny Rogers.  Of course I was flattered and and told them so.  

The next morning on an impulse, I bought a dozen Dunkin Donuts and brought them into work with me.  I went over and placed the donuts on the desk of the lady who had called me over.  All the ladies were looking at me as I leaned over her desk and sang “You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille”.  Everybody laughed including me because it was funny.  I waved “Hola” and sauntered off to my desk feeling pretty cool.

I knew that everyday around 3pm a group of Latino employees gathered together in the break room and made Cuban expresso coffee.  They put it in little paper cups and sipped on it like it was whiskey.  A great idea at that time of the day because I was always falling asleep.  To my surprise that afternoon, my friendly lady friend walked into our office area with a donut and a Cuban coffee and put it on my desk, “Hola”.  My buddies were very impressed as was I and I enjoyed the notoriety.  

By the way, the Cuban expresso is like 5 Hour Energy.  It really gave me a lift. The ladies let me know that I was welcome to come in any day and have a Cuban coffee.  I often went in and got one to go and never got tired of our new friendships. 

FRANKY OUTDOORS

Out on the North Fork of Long Island in Jamesport, New York is a famous restaurant named The Elbow Room.  I frequented the place with my wife Linda in the late 1970’s and as far as I know it is still there.  It is famous for its marinated steaks and great cheeseburgers.  

It’s lesser know sister restaurant, The Elbow Too was located a little farther out on the North Fork in Laurel, a very quiet hamlet.  A guy named Cliff owned the restaurants and his brother Franky ran The Elbow Too for him.  

We frequented the “Too”, as we started calling it among ourselves, with our close FBI friends the Abbott’s and the Giels. Jimmy Abbott spent his summers growing up in the area and knew everyone and that included Franky.  Jimmy and his brothers came up with the nickname Franky Outdoors because they maintained that they had never been there when Franky wasn’t either behind the stick or sitting at the bar.

I remember going in to the restaurant one afternoon with our usual crew and Franky was sitting at the bar with what I call a birdcage brace over his head that was anchored into his head.  Naturally, we asked Franky what had happened and after some pinning down he confessed that he fractured his neck one night when he fell off a barstool. Somehow it seemed to be a natural accident for Franky to have.

While Franky was always there,  the person who really made the restaurant successful was his wife Ellen.  Ellen was a waitress who took care of all the important things that the restaurant needed.  She was a great asset.  Everybody loved her. She was organized and kept everything flowing.

My story really begins one night when we were sitting at the end of the bar away from the kitchen waiting for a table.  All of a sudden two cooks dressed in their kitchen whites came busting  out of the swinging doors punching the proverbial shit out of one another.  Ellen was standing right there and immediately got in the middle of the two brawlers.  We stood up but there was nowhere to go.  Franky had been standing right in front of us behind the bar and made a motion to go down towards the brawl.  He stopped, came back, looked at us and said “On second thought, they probably won’t hit Ellen.”  

Like I said, Ellen really took care of everything important at the “Too”.  

Marty O’DEA

I grew up with Marty O’Dea in the Bronx.  Marty was a couple of years younger than me and he was a roly-poly kind of kid who hung around with his friend Quinn.  They were ball players who were always on the street or in the park participating in whatever sport the season allowed.  Stick ball, touch football, hand ball whatever but it was basketball that dominated and was played year round.  They lived on the basketball court.

I lost track of Marty but he grew up to be a 6’4” monster of a guy.  He had acquired the demeanor of some one you simply did not screw with.  He played basketball at Iona College for awhile and I know he was a bouncer at a popular singles bar near Parkchester in the east Bronx.  It was the era of bar fights. The fights were always fist fights.  No guns.  No knives. No weapons.  With Marty around, the fights were fewer and very short.  You just didn’t push it with him.

Marty, while a tough guy was also a man of good character and he wound up on the Port Authority Police Department for New York City.  Port Authority cops are the people you see around the airports and tunnels and bridges.  It was on the George Washington bridge one afternoon as Marty travelled to work that my story begins.  

The traffic was at its usual bumper to bumper snarl.  Someone in a Mercedes’ behind Marty  blew his horn. In those days the Mercedes cars had loud obnoxious European horns and this made it even more annoying.  The third horn blast did it.  What did this moron think was going to happen by blowing his horn.  We’re the cars going to miraculously open up and a path would clear?  Not a chance but what it did do was to get Marty out of his car where he walked back to the cars driver side window.  He badged the driver and motioned him to roll down the window.  It took a moment but Marty recognized the driver.  It was Skitch Henderson, the band leader for the Johnny Carson TV show who was a well known personality at that time.  Marty acknowledged that he was surprised to see Henderson and they passed some pleasantries with Marty asking some questions about Carson.  It was a generally civil chat with Marty explaining that the traffic was situation normal.  He buttoned up the conversation and started to walk away.  He stopped paused turned around walked back and said, “Oh Yeah, by the way, BLOW THAT HORN ONE MORE FUCKING TIME”.  Up went the window.
Marty went back to his car. Mission accomplished. There was no more horn blowing.

On The Radio Bill Flynn

 

Sean Hannity is my cousin.  He is a Fox News commentator and celebrity.  I was on his radio show and here is the link.

Start listening at 56 minutes

Roman Rocket

 

 

 

ROMAN ROCKET
by
BILL FLYNN

 

In 1978 Robert Daley wrote a book called Prince of the City. In 1981 Sidney Lumet made a movie of the same name that featured Treat Williams and Jerry Orbach. The story line was based on the real life story of an NYPD detective named Robert Leuci who was a corrupt narcotics detective in the city’s Special Investigation’s Unit and who reluctantly became an informer. The movie is outstanding and not just because it is a great story but because it captured the flavor and atmosphere of what it was like being a young law enforcement person living in Manhattan during the 1970’s. The detectives of the SIU were special in the NYPD.

I was a single guy in my late twenties living in Manhattan during this period. I was a Special Agent for the FBI and worked Organized Crime investigations and lived in a studio apartment on 75th Street and York Ave. I was a lucky guy. Just like the detectives of the SIU, I had a special job in a special time and there simply wasn’t a lot of other people who had a more exciting and interesting law enforcement life than mine. My apartment was located in Manhattan’s exclusive Upper East Side neighborhood. The building was built as a studio building so the apartments were very livable units even though they were compact. The best attraction of the apartment was the parking space that I had in the basement and as anyone who knows anything about parking and who owns a car in Manhattan, it was virtually priceless.

The Organized Crime cases I worked were essentially Illegal Gambling and Shylock cases. They were a hot item in those days because they were big income providers for the mob and a source for assorted types of informants. I later went on to work some really good Union Racketeering cases but the gambling / shylocking cases, also known as loan sharking, were fun with surveillances and interviews that were always unpredictable and interesting. The official name for shylocking cases was Extortionate Credit Transactions but we always called them shylocking cases. I suppose it might be politically incorrect today to use the term Shylock because the original Shylock was a Jewish money lender from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, hence it may be offensive to some. Get over it. Like I said, I worked Shylock cases.

The gambling cases were usually centered around wire taps of bookmakers who kept regular hours taking bets by manning phones in some seedy business location or in a marginal apartment where odd comings and goings wouldn’t be noticed. The bookmaker would have to eventually meet up with his customers to settle up. We would follow them and identify the players. Later in an investigation you would approach these bettors and interview them and put pressure on them to flip. It was important at the time and it was fun. I worked with other young agents and we were very contemporary guys whose unusual hours allowed us to hang out in the Eastside singles bars. We were hip, we were Princes of the City.

 

The Manhattan FBI office was located in an office building at 69th St. and 3rd Ave. This was about a ten or fifteen minute walk from my apartment and it couldn’t be a better work circumstance. The neighborhood was a great neighborhood with mainly hi rise apartment buildings with lots of street level stores, restaurants and bars. The non surveillance suit and tie agents were easily spotted in the neighborhood and were welcomed by the locals for both their business and added security.

Manufacturers Hanover Bank was located directly across 3rd Ave from the office and this was a great convenience. ATM machines hadn’t made an appearance at this point and when I wanted cash, I would simply go across the street to the bank and cash a check. My partner at this time was my eternal friend Kenny Giel and before we would take off for a day’s work we would often go to the bank for my cash stop. This was always fun. We are both pretty outgoing but Kenny is an absolute showman when the circumstances are right. When we went into the bank we didn’t just go in, we made an entrance. Everybody knew us and we were greeted with verbal high fives from the employees. It was fun and the bank tellers liked us and we felt the same about them. The stand out was Ms Linda Griffin. Linda was several years younger than me, tall, slender with the greatest head of wavy long auburn hair. She was Irish all the way with a million dollar smile but the thing that really jumped out were the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen in any woman. Linda was fun. Linda was a fox. We always kidded her and her girlfriend, Phyllis. Phyllis was a light skinned Black girl who was also very good looking. The two of them together on the street literally had guys turning around to do double takes. They were the original Salt and Pepper.

On Friday nights Kenny and I would occasionally run into these girls and the rest of the bank people at the Sun Luck Restaurant that was located at 69th St. and Lexington Ave. We would meet my future Brother in Law Jack Maguire, who was a detective in the local precinct, and who was a virtual Mayor of the neighborhood. As the Crime Prevention Specialist he was in a Public Relations position with the PD and it was a perfect fit. This was also a hangout for FBI people who would have a couple of drinks before jumping on the subway to begin their commutes to the suburbs. The bank and the restaurant were all part of the Imperial House apartment complex that takes up the whole block. Linda told stories about Joan Crawford, the famous actress, who was a recluse who lived in the Imperial House and how she would go to Crawford’s apartment and handle her banking. The actress would only deal with Linda and treated Linda pretty well for her services. She also told stories about Calvin Klein, the designer, and another Imperial House dweller who she also dealt with and who she said was a nice guy. She knew him when he had nothing and Linda said he remained a nice guy as he became famous. Howard Cossel, the sports announcer, also lived in the Imperial House and every now and then would pass through the Sun Luck. We would chat about all sorts of things and buy the girls drinks. We were friends.

Joe Fanning was an old time agent that worked on my squad. He was mentor to a lot of us young guys. We initially started out working a lot of his cases and the trade off was we got to watch how an old pro worked. Joe would come into work early and leave in the early afternoon to go to whatever horse track was running at the time. He kept an array of informants at the tracks and generated a lot of gambling case leads as well as bunch of other work. Of course cigar chomping Joe played the ponies and was a Damon Runyon kind of guy who was meant to be at the track. This was his environment.

Joe’s son Michael worked for a trainer at the Belmont Park Race Track and among his duties was the early morning timing of various horses workouts. Michael got very adept at spotting up and coming future winning horses. Of course Michael would pass along this information to Joe who would bet on them and quite frankly, clean up. Joe was truly a good friend to all of us but for the guys who were willing to work directly for him he would quietly pass along the tips. We in turn would go to OTB (Off Track Betting) and place our bets. All legal. We did pretty well too. There was one point where Michael had given us 7 winners in a row. Unheard of! When Joe called us it was like the EF Hutton commercial of the day, everyone listened.

It was a normal morning with Kenny and I at our desks catching up on whatever paper was due when Joe called. He told us not to bet the ranch on it but that he had one that looked pretty good. We lit up as we always did when one of these came in. Everything immediately was put aside and off we went to OTB. We needed a cash infusion for our bets so our first stop was Manufacturers Hanover of course. Our favorite teller Linda was working and as I gave her my check, I don’t know why, I kiddingly asked her if she wanted us to place a bet for her. She asked me to put $2 on the horse and said that if she won she would take us to lunch.

It’s funny how my relationship with Linda was one of friendship and had been that way for a couple of years. I would see her at the Sun Luck on Friday nights every once in awhile but I never asked her out. I have no idea why. As they say in today’s language, she was hot. Normally, if I thought I had a chance with a girl as good looking as Linda it didn’t take me long to try my luck. The Sun Luck was always crowded but the bartenders Norman and Bob would save Linda and her girlfriends seats at the bar. Linda served as the de facto private banker for the restaurant and they always treated her like a queen. I benefitted from her relationship with them because in an impossibly crowded bar, Linda was always able to get me a drink. We were friends.

Well Michael’s tip, by the way named Roman Rocket, came in and paid a whopping $2.80. He extended his streak but there was no real profit made. We won little but we weren’t complaining. We hadn’t lost and we were looking forward to the next one. We told Linda about her questionable good fortune and she said that the lunch was still on. Of course there was no way we were going to let her pay.

The big day came. I was sitting at my desk and it was getting close to the lunch date time with Linda. I went to Kenny’s desk to get us started over to the bank. Kenny sat back, looked at me and said “Are you out of your mind?” He made it clear that he was not going to tag along on a date between Linda and I. Bingo, the light went on. This was a date with Linda wasn’t it? Somehow or another I had compartmentalized this get together as just a lunch with some friends.

I went across the street to the bank to pick up Linda for our date and she seemed to be under the same impression. It’s incredible how quickly my attitude changed. I was looking at my friend with a whole new perspective. I was proud of the beautiful girl I had on my arm as we walked to Gleason’s Bar on 1st Ave. This was a regular hang out of mine and one of a number that I frequented in my neighborhood. It was an Irish pub with a world class hamburger and it attracted a nice crowd from the famous Sloane Kettering hospital around the corner. We had a good lunch and it was never difficult keeping conversation going with Linda, it just flowed, everything was right.

During the meal, I sat facing the rear of the restaurant. I never did this and still don’t. I’m like Wyatt Earp. I’ve got see whose coming in and going out the front door. It was fortuitous that I deviated from my pattern because as I sat looking at the kitchen a rat the size of you average house cat casually strolled across the floor. I almost pointed it out to Linda. This would have been a very critical mistake. As I found out later a roach would launch her and a rat would have required a 911 call. Strangely enough, as it turned out, it wasn’t a bad omen. After that date, it just seemed to make sense that Linda and I would get together as much as we could. I got in the habit of picking her up with my car after work and driving her home to Inwood on the northern most tip of Manhattan.

We dated for awhile and after some on again off agains we settled in and got engaged. We started out, broke of course, to have a small immediate family wedding at our very good friends Judy and Bill Bradbury’s home in Summit, New Jersey. At every turn, Bill “Boop” Bradbury expanded the guest list. Judy went with the flow and wound up doing a mountain of work with a great big smile. You have to have your cousins, your friends from work, your outside of work friends who you have known for years. Eventually, we wound up with about a 150 people in Boop’s backyard with the most dangerous element you can have at any wedding, plenty of alcohol and no time limit. In a catering hall, they throw you out. We wound up with people sitting in the back yard at 4:00am. A clean up party started again at 8:00am and day two of the wedding effectively started. In the end, nobody got locked up, nobody got hurt and property damage was minimal. Thank God for small miracles.

Before we got married, I bought a house in Oradell, NJ, based on the strength of my good job and a flawless credit history. It was also based on my knowledge of the bank mortgage vetting procedures of the time. In other words, I borrowed the down payment for my home mortgage from the Federal Credit Union knowing that there was no cross checking between the two data bases. To my mind, I knew that I could handle both payments and that my moral responsibility was to pay back my loans and I did. When Linda and I went to the closing in NJ we had just enough money to celebrate with 2 bottles of Michelobe Lite, a bag of beer nuts and the exact change for our return trip over the George Washington Bridge. Our life together got off to a great start and we both feel that we have been more than fortunate.

My single Prince of the City days came to an end but the trade off of finding my real Princess was a good deal. Who would of thought that Roman Rocket and a trip to OTB would be one of the the most life changing events of my life.

Me, Mom and Manhattan College by Bill Flynn

After graduating high school, I moved on to Manhattan College. That fact that Manhattan College was actually located in the Bronx should have made me suspicious of the whole experience, During the summers I worked at the Breezy Point Surf Club as a cabana boy and a bartender. This was a great job.  I literally made enough money from tips to pay my entire college tuition without taking any loans.  When I bragged about this years later at a family party, my mother, who had been a little “over served,” chimed in that not only had I paid my tuition but also half of my brother Pat’s.  What???  This was news to me.  Pray tell Mom, tell me more. My mother laughed.

The story goes that every Sunday night I would come home from my jobs at the Surf Club with pockets literally stuffed with money.  It wasn’t unusual to make four or five hundred dollars a week and I would leave the money on top of the dresser and go to bed exhausted.  Mom and I had an understanding.  She would deposit the money in the bank for my school bills and leave me with fifteen or twenty dollars for the week to come.  I never kept track.  After all, this was my mother who was taking care of things. Well, as Mom confessed, Pat and I both went to Manhattan and our bills came due at the same time.  Pat worked as a Parkie at Rockaway Beach during the summer making $67 a week sleeping under the boardwalk.  What I didn’t know was Pat was dependent on my parents and student loans to pay his tuition.  Mom didn’t always have the money to supplement Pat’s bills so, you got it, she would dip into that other pot of money. My money.  Of course, I never knew anything.  I didn’t even know what my bank balance was, much less that Mom was borrowing from it.  All I knew was that my bills always got paid and I had pocket money from my job as a school bus driver with the Riverdale Country Day School. (A little distraction here, this school’s most famous graduate was JFK.)  I never got mad about this.  Honestly, I laughed when I found out about it and spent the next twenty years telling Pat it was OK and there was no need to thank me.  Pat always said that I didn’t have to worry about getting either the “thank you” or the money.  I’m smiling now as I write this.  I would kid my mother over the years and when she was visiting at my house I’d say, “Sit tight Mom I’ll be right back, I’m going upstairs to count my money” We always had a good laugh over it.

Mom was the queen of just making things work.  There were seven of us in a two bedroom, five story walk up.  Dad had two jobs and Mom was the glue that made it all go. I loved her and Pat dearly and this is just one example of her inventiveness that helped us all get a good start in our lives.  Job well done Mom.

Just Some Quotes

JUST SOME QUOTES – Bill Flynn

I have assembled some quotes in order to establish a collection. The only criteria I ask for quotes that are submitted is that the quote has made you stop and reflect on its cleverness or profundity.  Please add as many as you like.

“He has no enemies,
but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
-Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”
-George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night,
will attend second… if you have one.”
-Winston Churchill, in response

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
Arnold Toynbee

“I feel so miserable without you;
it’s almost like having you here.”
-Stephen Bishop

“I’ve just learned about his illness.
Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
Anonymous

“In order to avoid being called a flirt,
she always yielded easily.”
-Charles, Count Talleyrand

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”
Forrest Tucker

“His mother should have thrown him away
and kept the stork.”
-Mae West

“Some cause happiness wherever they go;
others, whenever they go.”
-Oscar Wilde

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
-Billy Wilder

Friends are gods apology for relatives.
Malcom Mugridge

 

The Jackie Gleason Show

The Jackie Gleason Show

Bill Flynn

I know if you check out this blog you would think that it’s the Bill Flynn Blog. It really isn’t. It is a family blog and everybody can contribute. I just don’t want to be known as the Blog Hog. Jump in, it’s fun.

Now that my generation has taken a seat at the old peoples table at weddings one of the things we can brag about was that we were there when TV came to the common man. My cousin Margaret suggested that I might talk about old TV shows in one of these entries and I think it’s a great idea. After all, as kids in the Bronx we can remember when our families got their first televisions. While TV was invented in the 1920’s, it really hit the mass market in the late 40s and early 50s. I know in my house there were two immediate must watch shows that were there right from the start, The Jackie Gleason Show and Bishop Fulton J Sheen’s “Life is Worth Living”. I knew Bishop Sheen was very dramatic and used a blackboard like my teachers but I didn’t know what he was talking about. On the other hand, everybody knew what Gleason was talking about.

If there ever was a bigger than life guy it was Jackie Gleason. He was born in a tenement in Bushwick, Brooklyn where his father walked out on the family during the depression when he was nine years old. Gleason’s mother who had worked as a subway token booth attendant to support them died when he was 19 years old. He was already scrambling to make a living as a comedian in different clubs and formats around the New York area. Gleason’s rise to fame included his doing work in virtually all aspects of entertainment that were available to him at the time. Every thing from a failed Hollywood contract actor to a host of TVs Cavelcade of Stars that really launched his successful career in television. It was at this point that the mass television audience encountered the “Great One” as Gleason was later dubbed by Orson Wells.

I can’t explain how exciting it was to me to see Reginald Van Gleason saunter on to the set of the Jackie Gleason Show. With his top hat, cape, cane and mustache he simply took over and launched himself into the middle of some preposterous dilemma, usually of his own making, and it was nothing but laughter as he tried to extract himself. This was Gleason’s personal favorite role and mine too. There were others to choose from as well.

The cameras would push through the swinging doors to close in on Joe the Bartender as he wiped the bar and sang “They called her frivolous Sal, a peculiar sort of a gal”. Joes only customer every week was Frank Fountaine as “Crazy Guggenhiem” who spoke with a screwed up voice and face. He would always eventually accommodate Joe by singing a song. Fountaine of course would break out in a beautiful baritone voice that was completely inconsistent with the character.

Then of course there was the “Poor Soul” who Gleason portrayed in pantomime. The Poor Soul went haphazardly through life getting the short end of the stick in a tragic comedy fashion.

Finally there was the king of all comedy, Ralph Kramden, the Brooklyn bus driver and his eternally patient wife Alice, Audrey Meadows as “The Honeymooners”. There were only 39 episodes of The Honeymooners but they are still running to this day. There is a reason, they were great. They were true, non political, unedgy, clean family comedy that still make people of all ages laugh.

There were other Gleason characters and his personal biography is absolutely fascinating but in the interest of brevity, I want to wrap it up by mentioning some of the other shows that we watched in our house. The Ed Sullivan show was a must see on Sunday nights with everything from Topo Gigio to father Guido Sarducci and always the important hot entertainer of the night.
Cowboys and Indians were abound. From The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rodgers to Lash La Rue and The Cisco Kid. Howdy Doody and The Mickey Mouse Club help our rapt attention. American Bandstand showed you all the guys who had sisters, their the ones who could dance. Our Gang Comedy, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Lassie, Bonanza and Buster Brown. Oh my god, this could get crazy. There were hundreds of them and each had their own unique attraction. Feel free to add to the list and tell us about any fond memories you have. I loved them all. Superman, Sunset Strip, Beat the Clock, Super Circus, Life of Riley (Gleason had the role before William Bendix), Our Miss Brooks and Highway Patrol. I can’t help myself. Dragnet. I’m out of here.

Phil Mickelson

PHIL MICKELSON

Bill Flynn
I like upbeat positive stories about famous people and all the better if they come from some personal knowledge that I have and not just from the public record. Here is a cute one I have about the legendary golfer, Phil Mickelson. If you’re a golf fan you probably have good vibes about Mickelson. He has a natural humility about him and his gambling style of play makes him very, very popular. I know a young couple who live at the Muirfield Golf Club in Ohio which is the Jack Nicklaus course where the big time Memorial Golf Tournament is played every year. This couple live in one of the more modest homes and have two lovely daughters. The girls were 8 and 10 years old when the big tournament took place a few years ago. They set up a lemonade stand along a part of the golf path where each golfer would eventually walk by. Sure enough Phil Mickelson came by and stopped at the stand. He asked the girls how much the lemonade cost and they told him it was a dollar a glass. Phill said great and asked for a glass. The girls served it up and Phil gave them a bill and told them to keep the change.

Later on the girls excitedly ran inside to show their mother that Phil Mickelson had given them a $10 bill and told them to keep the change. Mom checked it out and said “No girls that was a $100 bill.”

Doesn’t it make you smile to hear this little vignette. There it is. A private act by a public figure who put a smile on the faces of couple of little girls. This story always cheers me up and I hope it did the same for you.

Jobs

JOBS

Bill Flynn

When I was a boy in the Bronx I always wanted to get a job. I wasn’t alone, pretty much everybody I knew wanted to get a job. Now, I’m not talking about a profession or a career, I’m talking about a 12 or 13 year old kid who would take anything that would bring in some cash. I made money running errands for people in the building once in awhile. My mother taught me how to paint and she started me off in our bathroom. Of course that was a chore and there was no money for that but it is a fond memory. I considered it a grown up chore and I felt like I was growing up and I was ready for a job.

I was 13 years old when my friend Jimmy O’Mara asked me if I wanted a job. Absolutely. He explained the job to me and it will take a moment for me to tell you about it. It seems Jimmy was working for a guy who owned vending machines that he had placed in candy stores and luncheonettes around the Bronx. He had candy machines, peanut machines, all sorts of machines but the ones that Jimmy was involved with were US Postage Stamp machines. They sat on a pole stand in the store and were totally mechanical, no electricity.  A picture of one is above.
The machine worked by putting your coins in the change slot as required and then pushing down one of the the appropriate levers that in this picture are located next to the 25 cents numbers. The stamps would come out of the slots on the bottom of the machine in a white cardboard packet. Now you know the process.

Jimmy’s job was to fill the white packets with stamps. He received $10 dollars on Saturday where he worked for about 9 or 10 hours. He didn’t want to do the job anymore and all I could see was the $10. Gary, the vending machine owner, had a storefront shop on Tiebout Ave. around the corner from Ryer Ave. where I lived and this was where Jimmy worked at an old desk. The shop was a dump. To make it worse than just clutter and disarray, Gary was breeding Siamese cats in the store as well. He kept them caged but he couldn’t cage the wonderful odors that went along with them. 13 year old Billy had no problem with this. I took the job and Jimmy trained me for two Saturdays. Believe it or not there was a learning curve to putting the stamps into the packets and it would be virtually impossible to explain the process here. I could sit down today and do it right now but I couldn’t guarantee any speed.

After two Saturdays I was on my own and I was intimidated. Jimmy made it look easy but it took me 14 hours on my first Saturday and there was a lot of sloppy work. Gary wasn’t happy about it but he was patient and understood that it would take awhile. I got better at it but I never liked it. I hung in there for a couple of months but I eventually went to High School at the Cardinal Hayes Annex, St. Bernard’s on 14th St. I was volunteered for the Cross Country track team and that involved track meets at Van Cortland Park on Saturdays. Adios Gary. Adios cats and adios stamps. I felt like a free man. After my freshman year at Cardinal Hayes, I went to the Christian Brothers seminary in Barrytown, NY where I was invited to move along to LaSalle Academy for my Junior and Senior years. I didn’t have a vocation, I was more interested in a vacation.

In my Senior year at La Salle another friend of mine, Gerry Drew got me a job working as a file clerk for the Hartford Insurance Company on Jay Street in Brooklyn. Gerry’s father was the office manager. I would go there right after school. The people were great and Gerry’s father was a gentlemen. It was only one stop on the D train and I would work from 3:00 pm to 6:00pm. I then took the D train home where I fell asleep on the train every night for a school year. I was able to do this and hold an 85 average in my school work. I’m proud of that. I often wonder what happened when I graduated and went to Manhattan College the next year. I had a six and a half year odyssey getting out of Manhattan but that would take a novella too explain.

I had a lot of jobs before I wound up with the FBI as a Special Agent which wasn’t a job. I loved it. I would of paid them. In the parlance of the 70s, it was a blast. That was the best of all my work ever. I have written stories about my FBI adventures and that too is another novella.

Let me tell you briefly about the worst job. I spent a summer shoveling sand for the Wilmarth Construction Company in Breezy Point. They were moving bungalows to new foundations and there was always hand shoveling involved installing the foundations. Believe it or not, this was not the worst job. I was outside, got a great tan and was really lean and mean. I only mention it to give you perspective. I wasn’t afraid of hard work. The job I liked the least was loading trucks for UPS at their West Side terminal on 42nd St. In Manhattan. The guys who built the pyramids had a better deal than we did. I worked at this job in college with a couple of my buddies from the neighborhood. We worked a 4 to 12 shift and it consisted of standing in the back of a semi truck that had a telescoping conveyor belt that delivered packages to you to stack. You could never stay ahead of it. I was Lucille Ball at the chocolate candy factory. It just kept coming and no matter how hard you worked you were waist deep in packages. The only defense you had was to build a “Hollywood” wall. You would start it about 6 feet from the existing packages at the rear of the truck and make a quick neat looking half wall of packages. You would then take the ever incoming packages and just rapid fire them over the half wall and when you filled up the cavity you finished the Hollywood Wall. If need be you would do it again. This was strictly forbidden because you didn’t fill the truck as tightly as possible and the load was susceptible to shifting. Every now and again a boss would come in and pull packages to check. You would get a couple of warnings and if caught again you were gone. Somehow, I managed to survive. Mercifully, you were laid off before 29 days elapsed because if you worked longer you were eligible to join the union. They would wait a week and rehire you. Not me. A month was enough. We used to walk to the subway after the shift hacking and spitting dust out of our lungs along the way. UPS paid the best hourly wage you could find for a college kid but I moved on to driving a school bus for the Riverdale Country Day School next to Manhattan College. This was much more to my liking and it lasted for a couple of years.

Thanks for putting up with my jobs tale. I think I had over twenty jobs in my life and it all came down to the same thing. My parents made it clear by their example. You paid your own way as did all our Bronx Irish relatives. Unemployment was not a goal and welfare was shameful.

Jackie Mason

Jackie Mason is the personification of the Jewish Comedian. While he was born in Sheboygan , Wisconsin, he grew up on New York’s lower east side in an orthodox Jewish family. He is an ordained Rabbi and he is simply hilarious. He perfected his trade on the famous Borscht Belt of the Catskill mountains in New York. It consisted of a series of hotels that were famous for their Jewish comedians. Jackie has a heavy Jewish accent which I find charming and political correctness is not his strong point.

I’m mentioning Jackie Mason in our blog because not only do I have a cute story to tell about him but I also had an Aunt whose name was May Mason. She was my father’s sister and her children were my first cousins, Danny and Francis Mason. Sadly, they have both passed away but were good honorable men with wonderful families that I simply don’t see often enough. I guess this begs the question, were they Jewish? A little research determined that Mason is a Scotch, English name with a branch in Ireland. It turns out that Jackie was born Jacob Moshe Maza and Mason is a stage name. Wouldn’t it have been fun if you found out that Jackie Mason was a distant cousin? No luck there but we proudly claim Sean Hannity of Conservative Television and Radio fame, as a cousin on my father’s side. My father’s brother Connie Flynn had a daughter Lilian, my first cousin who was Sean’s mother. Again, some more noble and decent people that I don’t see enough.

Back to my story, Jackie Mason is famous for his one man shows and it was some time in the mid 1990’s that he had one of these on Broadway. Someone had given me a video copy of this show and it was devastatingly funny. Jackie absolutely skewered all races and creeds. He was relentless on the Irish, Italians, Jews, Blacks, Women, Hispanics, I mean everybody. Here are a couple of examples of Jackie’s one liner witticisms.

“My father was a very successful businessman but he was ruined during the depression. A stockbroker jumped out of a window and landed on his pushcart.”

“I have enough money to last the rest of my life, unless I buy something.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen you can’t please everyone. Take my girlfriend, I think she’s the most remarkable woman in the world but that’s me. My wife on the other hand doesn’t see it that way.”

And finally, “It’s no longer a question of staying healthy, it’s a question of finding a disease you like.”

I like these wisecracking kind of quotes, I always have. His show was loaded with them.
I had recently viewed Jackie’s video so it was fresh in my mind as I walked down Lexington Ave. in Manhattan with my FBI partner, Ted Savadel. Our work frequently took us into the upper east side of New York and we loved the neighborhood. It was a sunny day with a lot of people on the streets. Of course who do I spot ahead walking towards me with his red dyed hair and a tall blond woman on his arm, none other than the one and only, Jackie Mason. As he approached, I shouted to him, “Jackie, I saw your show, it was great.” He smiled as we passed and I was glowing in the fun of having spotted Jackie Mason. After I passed him, I heard a loud shout “Hey, hey.” I turned around and it was Jackie saying to me “Really?”  I said “Really.” We stopped, he laughed, turned to the pretty lady and said “See, I told you.” I laughed and we all walked on. That was over twenty years ago and I’m still chuckling. I love Jackie Mason

Art Donovan

Art Donovan

 

 

My posts on this blog are replete with assorted Bronx tales revolving around family and life events. I’m breaking the mold and would like to tell you about an encounter that I had with a famous Bronx boy, Art Donovan. Sometime in the late eighties or early nineties I was returning from Ft. Mead where I had been on business with a group of my fellow FBI Agents. We made a detour to a country club on the outskirts of Baltimore that was owned by Art Donovan. Art was a Hall of Fame football lineman with the Baltimore Colts during the 1950s. Several of my friends were associated with the FBI Marine Corp Association and they had an award that they were presenting to Art who had been a private in the Marine Corp during WWII and who had fought in the battles of Luzon and Iwo Jima. I looked that up, Art Donovan wasn’t the kind of guy to toot his own horn, he didn’t tell me. On the contrary, he was the king of self deprecating humor. Check out his appearances on the David Letterman Show on YouTube, they’re a scream.

We arrived at the club at 11:00 am and they installed us in the bar while they went looking for Art. He came in shortly there after and he filled all the space behind the bar. This guy was massive. His playing weight was 275lbs. but he had to be 350lbs. when I saw him. I shook his hand and it swallowed my hand up. He was just a big boy. He offered the lads a beer and they accepted and he served them some Schaefer beer. Schaefer beer had been a New York staple years before but as far as Art was concerned it was a current delicacy. After they conducted their business with them, I mentioned to Art that I was from the Bronx. He perked up and told me that he went to Mount St. Michael’s and that he grew up in St Phillip Neri parish, which was located on the Concourse. He said that he got a scholarship to Notre Dame for football but that he had a problem with the famous coach, Frank Leahy. It seems Frank thought that drinking and partying weren’t helpful for your football career. Art said that things weren’t really working out, so he joined the Marines.

I told him I grew up just down the Concourse in St. Simon Stock parish and that I had played sandlot football at Harris Field in his neighborhood. He got a big smile on his face and asked me if the guy who had fingers missing on his hand still sold hotdogs when I played there. I said he did and he laughed saying they always wondered if they were floating around somewhere in the cart. I told him great minds think alike. We all thought the same thing too.

I asked him if he had been back to New York recently and he said he hadn’t but that the hotdog talk reminded him of his last visit from years earlier. He was with an old buddy of his and he described him as a guy who could give him a run for his money when it came to eating. They were down by the World Trade Center and they got a hold of a hotdog vendor and told him to get ready, they were really hungry. He said that they ate to capacity, washing it down with a bunch of Pepsi. He said we were with the guy for a couple of hours. When he got done he asked the guy, “What do I owe you?” The guy responded that he owed him $10. He looked at me and winked. He said “Hotdogs were a quarter then.” Hillarious, I believed him then and I still do now. I savor my contact with the great Art Donovan, a Bronx boy in every sense of the word. The world is short of true characters like Art Donovan and for certain the NFL of today doesn’t hold a candle to the simpler greatness of the footballers of Art Donovan’s era.

St Patrick’s Day Parade

The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade
Bill Flynn

If you’re an Irish American in New York you have some kind of a connection to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. My earliest memories of the parade were house parties on parade day where corn beef and cabbage were featured. Mom, Dad, Uncle Tommy, Aunt Maime, Uncle Eddy and Aunt Betty were the Irish stronghold celebrating our heritage. All my cousins were involved at different times. We played Ruby Murrays’ album “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and everybody watched the parade on WPIX TV waiting for County Waterford to pass by to see if we would recognize relatives. You knew who was marching and the Fennessey’s in particular were always well represented. We always marveled how American born broadcaster Jack McCarthy developed a brogue for the day.

I remember vaguely going to the parade with some one when I was very young but I remember much more vividly when I marched. You see when I was twelve years old I was a member of the St Simon Stock Sea Cadets. I proudly wore my navy uniform with its white gob hat and white leggings. I remember pestering my mother until she took me on the subway to somewhere in Manhattan to purchase the uniform. I had no idea what a hardship it must have been for her but I wanted what I wanted and that’s that. I felt so important. I went to meetings every week where Commander O’Shea and his wife were in charge. Mr. Mangum was the music director and he taught me how to play the drums. I played them all. The snare, tenor and base drum. They taught us how to march and they had a full time job keeping us behaved and organized.

I marched in the parade two times and it was at the largesse of one of the counties who followed the “give the kids a chance” dictum. We were irrefutably terrible and I am truly grateful to them for the opportunity and more importantly for not laughing at us. I loved it. We marched in a number of other parades but this was the big leagues. I was bigger than the other kids and played the base in this parade mainly because I could carry it the distance. Besides the drums, the other main instrument of the band was the glockenspiel.

The glockenspiel was played by the girls in the band and our big number was “The Wearing of the Green”. Commander O’Sheas’ red headed daughter was the lead of the girls and was oogled by the boys from afar but was unapproachable because she was an older woman, thirteen.

Later in life as an adult I would go to the parade with Linda and view it from the Central Park side of Fifth Ave. across the street from the Guggenhiem Museum. We would meet up with all our FBI friends and laugh and cheer at the unbelievable amount of people that we knew who were marching. When I was an officer in the FBI Emerald Society we would throw a party in the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Ave. I remember Maryellen, Margaret and a contingent of family showing up one time and there was no room in the inn. The place was a zoo. As a matter of fact the parade had gotten a bad reputation at one time for drunken behavior. Mayor Ed Koch cleaned the parade up by getting the Catholic High Schools to stop giving the day off and by making copious arrests.
To this day, no matter where I am, I still celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by watching the “The Quiet Man” with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. If I can get my hands on some some blood pudding I also make us an Irish breakfast. I love St Patrick’s Day With all its’ fond memories and I hope this story has triggered some of yours. Let me leave you with an Irish toast, one of the thousands.

“May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live”.

Gaelic Park

Did Your Parents Miss Your After School Activity?
By Bill Flynn

Did my parents miss my after school activities? Yes they did, almost everyone of them. For the most part, so did all my friends parents. I played organized football and basketball. Baseball games were pick up games. Bridie and Dave Flynn were far too busy working and taking care of our domestic well being to even consider spending an afternoon or evening at one of my sporting events. It didn’t even occur to me that they should be there. One exception I remember was a school play at St Simom Stock when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I had the esteem building privilege of singing a duet with a girl who I don’t remember. We sang “Chisolm Trail” donned in our cowboy and cowgirl outfits. I’m sure we were memorable and Mom was down front. It was bad enough to sing to an auditorium full of neighborhood people but adding Mom to the mix really made it an ordeal. I’m sure Bridie got a lot more out of it than I did.

Well I know it is a very different world and kids are transported to all their activities by a parent or two. It’s a necessity I know but our world was different and quite frankly the lack of total parent support made me a more independent soul early on. I traveled from the Bronx to Inwood Manhattan to go to school with the Christian Bros. at Good Shepherd school for the seventh and eighth grades. I needed the discipline and that’s another story. Now that I think about it, I was probably acting out because my parents didn’t come to my games. Just kidding.
I was 11 and 12 years old and taking two busses at the time. Safety was not an issue. It never was. There were twenty apartments in our building and maybe two or three locked their door.
I liked the independence.
Mom and Dad did come to one game and it was a big one. It wasn’t a championship football
game but it was an important game and what made it real big was that it was played at Gaelic Park near Manhattan College. The game was played at night and it was under the lights and it had a sound system and an announcer. A very big deal. The Tre-Ford Giants were in the big time. Normally we played all over the Bronx. We played at Harris Field near DeWitt Clinton High School, the Williamsbridge Oval, Rice Stadium in the Country Club Section and Macombs Dam field next to Yankee Stadium. Actually the Macombs Dam field is now the Yankee infield in the new stadium. The night of the game there were three Flynns playing. Little Billy Flynn and me Big Billy Flynn were on the same team and Eddie Flynn was on the opposing team. What this meant was that on almost every play there was a Flynn involved and our name was echoed around the stadium all night. I was proud. I have a pretty detailed memory about a lot of things but I can’t remember who won this game. I think we must have because we had a season where we beat everybody and this must have been part of that season.

I truly enjoyed Mom and Dad seeing me play. I was a tackle on offense and the middle line backer on defense. I made a lot of tackles. I was proud and I think they were impressed. Let me end this by saying that what impresses me the most was how well my generation got along often times with little or no supervision and how we almost all look back at those times with very fond memories. Having my parents at the big game was great but not having them around at most games in another way helped me to achieve an independence of character that has served me well.

A Christmas Glimpse

NA Christmas Glimpse by Bill Flynn

Christmas on Ryer Avenue was driven by my sister Kathleen. She was the one that set the timetable for the different things that we did and she was the one that created our family traditions. Like everyone else in those days we would get a real tree. Setting it up was a big deal. My father would set the tree up in a stand and that meant that he would take a hand ax and shave the base down so that it would fit. Making it stand so that it was stable and secure always seemed to take a lot of adjusting but he always got it done. This was the beginning.

The lights were next and they were colored bulbs that looked like the tear drop shaped bulbs that some night lights still use today, only bigger. Sometimes we had multi colored lights that were liquid filled and bubbled when they were on. They were awesome. I used to sit and just stare. They fascinated me. There was an angel at top of the tree and placement of the angel had to be just right and my father and my sister went to great lengths to make sure it was straight. When this was all done it was ornament placement time. The ornaments were made of fragile thin glass with wire hooks that you hung on the tree branches. Kathleen directed the whole operation and when the ornaments were finally on we had a magic array of lights and green, white, red and silver colors. We were almost there. The end was in sight and that meant it was time to put the silver tinsel on the tree. Tinsel is thin strips of aluminum and it was made to hang off the branches of the tree to give it one more layer of an eye catching sparkle. This was the most fun for us young kids because we got to throw the tinsel on the tree. We just had at it until the packs were gone and Kathleen straightened out the mess later.

The final touches were the manger and all its figurines. It was a wooden stable with 5 or 6 inch figures. There was nothing spectacular about it but it added the appropriate Christmas sacredness to the whole setting. This sacredness was challenged by the set of Lionel trains that surrounded everything on the floor.

As I write this remembrance I’m looking at the trains that are mounted above a door into my TV room. My brother Pat and I played with these trains endlessly and only during Christmas. They were faithfully packed up and put away for next year. I remember that you could put a pill in the stack of the engine and as it ran along simulated clouds of smoke would come out. The transformer control allowed you to ring a whistle that sounded remarkedly similar to a trains long whistle sound. I never tire of glancing up and seeing these reminders of wonderful times.

Let me end this by mentioning the other two things that were prominent in my childhood Christmases. They were midnight mass when I was an altar boy and the 1951 Alistair Sim version of Scrooge. Midnight mass was a very big deal. Not only did I get to stay up so late but the magisterium of the high mass with its elaborate decorations and incense filled air were truly awesome to me. I still have very distinct memories of it all.

Scrooge was always on TV at Christmas time and once again Kathleen made sure we never missed it. That wasn’t hard for me and it still isn’t. I love the movie. I just watched it on You Tube a couple of days ago. I was awed by the movie as a child and I still admire its message of hope and joy driven by Christmas.

I’m sure everybody has their own favorite memories of Christmas. I hope I triggered some of yours and I hope you always have very Merry Christmases. “God Bless Us Everyone”.

Little Memory Glimpses

I’m sure we all have many little memory glimpses into the past of small things that for no particular reason have stayed with us throughout the years. Here are some of mine in no particular order that I remember from our family days on Ryer Avenue.

One night my father came home having been over served at Sullivan’s on the Concourse. Apparently, the cupboard was bare and he was making due for something to eat. An onion and a slice of raw bacon appeared on the kitchen table. He neatly peeled the outer skin of the onion and cut it in half. He proceeded to wrap the onion with the raw bacon and ate it like an apple. Now, when you think about it, if you fried those two items they would actually work together. The man had a cast iron stomach.

On more than one Saturday I found my father and Uncle Eddie Cullinan siting at our kitchen table each with a knife and fork and one big pigs head on a platter. They were slicing meat off it and having a grand time eating and washing it down with Ballentine’s Beer. At least they had boiled it before they began. We children of course were horrified by the sight of the pigs head snout, ears and all. In no way could they induce us to try it and trust me they still couldn’t.

Uncle Eddie had ulcers and this played havoc with his drinking. Always a resourceful man, he discovered that a shot of scotch in a glass of milk helped to make the medicine go down. This made sense to me at the time as did his health food concoction of a glass of milk with a raw egg. Do you think Rocky Balboa got any ideas from him?

Aunt Betty and Uncle Eddie lived on the third floor of Ryer Ave after they left the basement apartment where they were the “Supers” of the building. Aunt Betty worked in bakeries for as long as I could remember and she always brought home bakery goods from wherever she was working. I can’t count the number of times that I would stop at the apartment on my way upstairs and it of course was always open. I would be greeted by her big smile and something really special to eat. She was great. Aunt Betty always made a fuss over you and made you feel special and that made Aunt Betty very special to all us kids.

There was a Christmas Eve that Aunt Betty didn’t think I was so special. Maybe I was twenty years old and my brother David and my cousin Thomas Maher both older than me decided that they would take me drinking on Webster Ave. I know Margaret and Maryellen when they read this will simultaneously say, “Was he out of his mind?” It was crazy but I remember arguing with Thomas that the Beatles were not a flash in the pan. Everybody was well oiled and as David and I worked our way home we took two free trees from a vendor who gave up on getting them sold at this late hour. Our brilliant idea was to plant them in Uncle Eddie’s living room which we managed to do amazingly without getting caught. That is until the next morning when Aunt Betty ripped my blankets off and told me to get downstairs immediately and get rid of those trees. She told me she thought I had more sense than those other two and as I dragged myself downstairs I told myself the same thing. It took Aunt Betty awhile to get over it because she was picking pine needles out of the furniture for weeks. Eventually it became something we laughed about over the years. She still thought I was a little special.

Thanks for checking in. Feel free to add your little glimpses from the past.

The River Club

The River Club
Bill Flynn

The River Club is a posh private club located on the East River at 52St. in Manhattan. Uncle Tommy Maher worked there as the tennis court attendant and in 1961 when I was 17 years old he got me a job. I was hired as a bellboy/elevator operator and it was an enlightening summer job.

A quick Google search says this;

“The1932 membership list resonates with the names of the great American families of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the Astors, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, the Pulitzers, and the Graces, among others. The club history estimates that there were “roughly 500 proprietary members, approximately sixty out-of-town members and about forty junior members, making a total of 600.”

This rarefied atmosphere continued into 1961 and some of the members or guests at the time included former presidential candidate Adlai Stephenson, Catholic Superstar Bishop Fulton J Sheehan, movie actors Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy. There were many more but my memory is rusty. The mention of Spencer Tracy reminds me that Uncle Tommy hung around the men’s locker room on his down time with a fellow attendant and friend named Leo. The two got along famously and shared a common interest, the bottle of Four Roses that Leo kept in his private locker. The two enjoyed a nip now and then and as I recall, Spencer Tracy who took a liking to them also indulged with them on occasion.

The whole experience was enriching for me. I worked with professional bellboys and doormen, bartenders and waiters and cleaning people. We were White, Black and Puerto Rican and I learned to get along with everyone. Of course being Uncle Tommy’s nephew greased the way because everybody loved him. It’s funny what stands out from the many things that went on. The elevator was one of these things. It was the old style elevator with a sliding door on the floor itself and then a sliding brass lattice style door that was attached to the elevator. The elevator control was a lever with a knob and you the operator used to land the elevator at the floor opening. It was your job to make it even with the floor, it wasn’t automatic. If you missed you had to bump it a time or two to make it level and of course the passengers were jerked around accordingly. It took me awhile but I eventually became an expert at gliding it in. I was very proud of this accomplishment. I could have been a Navy Thunderbird. I had potential.

The other big thing going on that summer was the magical home run derby being conducted by Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the New York Yankees. They were referred to in the papers as the M&M boys and they chased each other all summer hitting home runs at a record breaking pace. Eventually, Maris broke Babe Ruth’s record with 61 home runs although he played in an extended schedule of more games. Mantle had to pull out of the lineup in Sept because of a hip injury. Poor Maris was greeted with disdain by many fans because he beat the sainted Mickey Mantle.

I was hyper interested in the race of course. I figured out that when I was on elevator duty if I adjusted the glass door going into the restaurant/bar I could see the TV from my post at the elevator. The bartenders let me fool with the door because at times when they were short handed I would run drink orders up to the rooms for them. They were nice guys and would give me a glass of real lemonade every now and then. They also introduced me to coffee with real cream. I still love it.

Another memory was of the telephone operator, Julia Murphy. She operated a Lilly Tomlin style hand plug in board that was located in a booth next to the front door. Julia was probably in her 30s unmarried and full of life. She had a small silver reflector board that she would put under her chin when she was able to step outside the front door. It was the first time I encountered a reflecting board and what getting a tan was all about. Julia was a kick. She was fun.

Of course, I was a bellboy in a hotel in Manhattan and I learned other things. On more than one occasion a well oiled guest would ask me where the action was. The first time my know nothing response was, Huh? After a little investigation, the next time my response was, you’re on the wrong side of town pal. The River Club was a stodgy place and a prostitute would have lasted about ten minutes.

This job at the River Club was a great learning experience not the least of which was that all jobs can have a dignity associated with them. We all worked humble positions at the club but everyone treated each other with respect. I got a glimpse of how popular Uncle Tommy was and the respect he garnered even though he was the tennis court attendant. I walked away from the River Club with an appreciation for the working man. I never hassle the many service people that I run into and understand that people are just trying to make a living like that 17 year old boy many years ago.

ROCKAWAY

 

Mary Ellen Raab kicked off many memories with her Rockaway revisited blog. I moved to Emerald Isle, NC in 1996 and discovered that there was a small beach amusement area in town with a water slide, mini golf and bumper cars. To my surprise, I noticed that the signage for this complex was none other than a Rockaway “Joker” Clown like the one I have posted. I became friendly with a carpenter who had a business relationship with the owner of this complex and he told me that this owner indeed came from New York and was involved in the carnival business. He understood that the sign  came from Rockaway as did the bumper cars. It went down hill from there. My friend had a very low opinion of this guy and regretted his association with him. I laughed. I told him that this made it even more believable that the sign came from Rockaway. This area was cleaned up several years ago and the sign along with the bumper cars are gone.

Like Mary Ellen, Uncle Eddie Cullinan took us to Rockaway one summer and it was for several days. I assume it was with my brother Pat and my cousin Johnny but I don’t clearly remember. We stayed at the Fennessey’s Bar. I don’t know who in the Fennessey family owned it but I clearly remember sitting in the bar drinking “Shirley Temples”, ginger ale with a marischino cherry. The bar was located on a corner down the street from another bar that I think became McNulty’s. McNulty’s was a well known hangout of my college years and beyond. We stayed upstairs and actually got to the beach and Playland as well. No small feat considering the magnet that bars were in those days.

A little internet work turned up a reference to Fennessey’s in a Pete Hamill work called “The Cities of New York”. Hamill reminisces about going to Rockaway to drink cold beer and eat pigs feet at Fennessey’s, Gildeas, the Sligo House, McGuire’s and the Breakers, all bars whose names I remember. I found little else regarding the bar but this satisfies me that it was indeed Fennessey’s that we went to. Of course, when I was a teenager my mother and father bought their Breezy Point house and I have been in and out of Rockaway most of my life, to include many of its bars. A good friend of mine just sold his families bar, Rogers Hotel located on 116th Street, to a couple of industrious Irishman who have a successful Irish pub near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. They have plans to rejuvenate it and that would be a welcome shot in the arm for the neighborhood.

Our usual dealings with Rockaway were day trips and not exotic stay overs like our Fennessey’s vacation. My father and mother would take us to Rockaway in my father’s car and as we crossed the Cross Bay Blvd. Bridge you could clearly smell the salt air and feel the temperature drop. We had our bathing suits on and our rolled up towels with underwear under our arms, just like Mary Ellen said and we couldn’t wait to fight the waves and shells as we ran into the water. A blanket was set up as our anchor spot for the day and we hit the water immediately. We literally came out of the water for lunch and immediately went back in. My mother had a big thermos cooler with a spout and it was filled with lemonade and ice. The lemonade was made from frozen cans and she had little paper cups to dispense it. It was almost as good as the Shirley Temples. Cheese sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly were usually the fuel for the day. Sand permeated everything and no one escaped getting burned.

At the end of the day with that burned skin that was waffled from being in the water for five or six hours and having shed a wet bathing suit from behind a beach towel, the back of the Buick was paradise for the ride home. Rockaway is almost always a pleasant discussion with people of my generation and we all have a fondness for it in our memories.

2243 Ryer Ave.

Bill Flynn

OK, it’s a picture of my elevator. What does it have to do with Ryer Ave.? Am I showing off? Yeah, probably. Actually, in my coastal tourist beach town of Emerald Isle, NC elevators are becoming pretty common. The big fancy beach rental homes are all having them installed for both a touch of luxury and to allow the top floor, with the best view, to be the main living area.

When I ride my elevator I can’t begin to tell you how many times I flash back to 2243 Ryer Ave. It is a five story walk up in the Bronx where we grew up and it came with its own free Cross Fit gym called stairs. I basically live my life being grateful and this elevator is just a small reminder for all the good things I have received. Let me tell you more of what our actual building and apartment was like. This won’t be the most exciting thing you ever read but if you want to know about a common frame of reference that the 60’s plus crowd in our family has, this is definitely a part of it. Most of us grew up in apartment houses. 2243 Ryer Ave was home to two families, the Cullinans and the Flynns. Aunt Betty and Uncle Eddie and their three children, Ellen, Edmond and John lived in the basement as Supers (Superintendents) and eventually moved up to the third floor. Aunt Bridie and Uncle Dave and their seven children, John, David, Kathleen, William, Patrick, Mary and Ann lived on the fifth floor which was the top floor. Apartment 18 was their two bedroom apartment. Jack Flynn had left for the seminary before Ann was born so there were only six children in the apartment for the most part at any one time.

Remember now this building was a walk up, no elevator. There was a stoop, an interior hallway stairway to the first floor and four floors with a turn around set of eight stairs each in between them. My best guesstimate is a total of 76 stairs. Can you imagine looking at 76 stairs every time you went home. How about Aunt Bridie with a brood of kids and an armful of packages tackling that challenge everyday. I remember her saying in her old age that she attributed her longevity to the stairs in Ryer Ave. I’m sure there was some truth to that. I remember on Saturday mornings my mother and father would go food shopping at the A&P on the Grand Concourse and we would go down to help them carry up all the food packages from the car to the apartment. We were like ants and I remember the reward was a box of Anne Paige (A&P) glazed donuts for us to fight over when we were done. By the way, we were an exception by having a car. My father had two jobs and his joy in life was his car. When he wanted to get away from it all, he would go downstairs and work on his car. I inherited this from him. I’m always putzing with my car. I’m forever washing it and rearranging my gear. It’s a getaway for me too.

Back to the two bedrooms. One was for girls and one was for boys. When you walked into the apartment you looked straight down a hallway that eventually opened up on to two rooms, the dining room and the living room. Immediately, when you stepped into the apartment there was the girls bedroom on the left and the next door after that was the one and only bathroom. Let me just say it simply. You never used the bathroom without knowing that someone else was probably waiting. To really make it interesting, outside the bathroom door was the hallway which was lined with bookshelves on which the dial up phone sat. The phone had a long chord that stretched into the bathroom. So, the only way to get privacy in a phone call was to sit in the bathroom. Going to the bathroom in this house was always a challenge.

The next room was the dining room that had primarily a big table and a high rise bed that slept two. The kitchen was to the left of this room and what made it different from living today was that it had a dumbwaiter. The dumbwaiter was used to remove garbage from the apartments. Uncle Eddie as the Super would pull the roped manual elevator on a certain schedule and eventually put the garbage at the curb for the garbage men to pick up.

As you moved toward the front of the building you came to the living room that had a pullout couch. This is where Mom and Dad slept and located off this room was the second bedroom. The living room is where we eventually got a TV and gathered around in the evening to watch. I remember the Jackie Gleason Show and the Ed Sullivan shows as being my favorites. Both the living room and the front bedroom had windows that looked out the front of the apartment. The view from the front windows was actually impressive. The Bronx is a series of hills and the apartment building sat on the top of one of them and there was no tall building facing it to hamper the view. If you looked to the south you could see the Tri-Borough Bridge and straight out you could see all the way across to the East Bronx.

Of course there was a fire escape attached to one of the windows in the front but as tempting as it was on some of the rancid hot summer nights to sit on it, this was a 100% no no. I never saw this rule broken and besides you would have been disrupting my mother’s garden. She was a farmers daughter and all her life there was some kind of plant growing going on and the fire escape was her green house.

The girls had the first bedroom and that never changed. The dining room high rise and the boys front bedroom was always subject to change. I don’t know what kind of a schedule my mother had but every so often you were reassigned to a new bed and that was just the way it was. I don’t know when I first heard of the concept that kids had their own room but I honestly remember being surprised by it. Your own room, really?

My father managed to hook up a clothes line from the kitchen window to the window of the girls bedroom. He also rigged up a washing machine in the kitchen and my mother’s life became a lot less arduous. I can’t tell you how many trips I made to the alley between the buildings to pick up a fallen piece of clothing. This was the same alley where homeless men would appear occasionally and start singing a song. My mother and other ladies would wrap up a coin in newspaper, put a clothes pin on it and toss it out for the down on his luck singer. I remember one guy who was a repeat visitor because he came with a ukulele and he belted out “Won’t you come home Bill Bailey, Won’t you come home. I cried the whole night long…” In the echo chamber of the alley way, he really sounded good.

This top floor apartment of course had the buildings black tar roof immediately above its plaster ceiling. In July and August you could have hatched eggs on some nights. There was a little relief with a couple of fans blowing air around the apartment but not much. Every now and then, I remember sneaking out on the roof after dark to try and cool off but the tar was soft under your feet and that didn’t last very long. I don’t have any, but I know there are a lot of photos floating around of all the kids that were taken on the roof. In particular, it seems to have been a ritual of your first communion to have a roof photo taken.

Marilu Henner, the actress from the TV show “Taxi”, has a photographic memory for the days of her life. I never heard of it but apparently it is a phenomenon that allows her to remember what she was doing on any given day of her life by simply recalling the date. I saw her doing this on TV and I was amazed. I mention this because I kind of have this for some of the artifacts in our old apartment. There is no logic to this but I remember a picture of a bird in a frame that was composed of real feathers. There was a stand ash tray. Boy would that be a novelty today. There was a full size mirror in the living room, a stand lamp in the dining room, a bird cage where that we constantly resupplied as the critters perished. There were spoke chairs in the kitchen that we used to flip over and sit in and presto, racing cars. There was the rough plywood closet that my father built in the boys bedroom and unpainted dressers as well. I could go on and on and make this piece even more boring than it is but it’s coming to an end.

The end did come in the mid to late 1970s when my mother and father moved to Breezy Point full time. It was time to move the furniture from Ryer Ave to Breezy Point and to close the door for the last time. I got a hold of four or five of my FBI buddies, a truck and the rainiest day we had had in six months. It rained the entire day and at both ends of the move. My friends were and are great people. They sucked it up and we just did it. By the way, one of my helpers that day was Louie Freeh who went on to become a Federal Judge and eventually the Director of the FBI. It is kind of a nice tribute to the apartment that served us all so well to know that it had at its send off a person of the import and quality as Louie Freeh.

I am a better person for the experiences I had in that Bronx apartment. I knew I eventually wanted out and it motivated me. I am able to savor what I have today because of the humble beginnings I come from and I will never get tired of riding my elevator.

 

Shoes

SHOES
Bill Flynn

Do you remember when you were a kid and shoes were a hassle? At least that was the way it was for me. I was always looking around the house to find them. The sock draw was a common drawer and only God knew what you might find in terms of a matching pair. I had very low standards in what I considered to be a matching pair. Basically, if the colors were close at all, it was a pair.

I remember on any number of occasions when I did my own little repair on a worn out pair of shoes. In order to fix a hole in the sole I would cut out a piece of cardboard to fit and go on my merry way. I know I’m not the only one to apply this therapy. I suspect most of the older crowd did the same thing. New shoes had the to wait a paycheck or two sometimes so you learned to make due.

Linda tells me she did the same thing and being a girl who cared about her appearance was mortified when after going to communion her friends were kidding her about having Tony the Tiger in her shoe. She says she showed them. She’s not a tiger anymore, she’s grew up and now she’s a cougar.

Actually, Uncle Eddie had a little repair shop in the basement and often made repairs to our shoes. He would glue flapping soles and put lifts on the heels. We called them taps and thought we were cool. Not to get sidetracked he also did haircuts. I’ve got to tell you this one. My brother Pat had light blond hair when we were eight or nine years old. I always had a dark thick mop and by comparison his looked scrawny. One Saturday afternoon Uncle Eddie and my father were doing a little celebrating and decided that in order to thicken up Pat’s hair they would shave his head. There was an old wives tale that said that if you shaved a head the hair would grow back thicker. So off it came. Pat survived during the day by wearing a little skull cap that Danny Mason, who was a Christian Brother at the time, gave him. It looked like a yarmulke and brought along its own special kidding. Every night my father would come in from the oil yard and heat up a little plate of olive oil. He would proceed to massage my brother’s head. We can’t say for sure, but this might have actually worked. Pat had a good head of hair.

Sneakers were a big deal. Not like Air Jordans today but none the less a bit of a status symbol. The elite sneakers were Converse. I can still here it today “You don’t slip and slide in the shoes with the stars on the side.” Of course I got to see them from afar. We were the cheaper PF Fliers people all the way. Hang your head and go sit on the bench. I survived and was vindicated when the Duncan YoYo man showed up with PF Fliers on and put on his YoYo wizardry show. Now who is cool.

Another battle I lost was my quest for a pair of Tom McCann Snap Jack shoes. These were the coolest and I had to have them. The big feature was a tongue that snapped into place where the laces would normally be. The only tongue that snapped into place was Mom’s when she delivered her final no. She said if I kept it up the old shoes were going down to Uncle Eddie and he would fix them and there would be no new shoes. Whoops, almost blew it. Honestly, I don’t remember what I wound up with but it was better than what I had. I told this story to a good buddy of mine and he said he went through the same deal and he never got them either. 60 years later, it finally eased my pain.

When we actually went to buy shoes, it was not unusual to wind up in Alexander’s Department Store on Fordham Rd. When you went in the Creston Ave. entrance to the store you had to walk through the children’s shoe department. A salesmen would size your foot with what looked like an adjustable Martians boot and then bring out shoes to try on. When you settled on a pair of shoes he would take you over to the Fluoroscope machine where you stood at a podium and slid your feet into a box at the base. He then turned on what was an x-ray machine and he and my mother looked through viewers where they could see your feet inside the shoes and determine if they fit. No problem there. Today the technicians who use similar machines go in another room and wrap you in lead. Add it to the list of the “how did we survives.” I thought that maybe I imagined this machine but I was watching American Restoration one evening and there it was being featured as one of the repairs on the show.

What prompted me to start writing about shoes was the story my mother told about walking to school from the family farm, Tour, I believe. She said that a group of children went to a school that was located three miles away from the farm off of the hilltop that they lived on. What struck me about the story was that they tied their shoes around their necks as they walked to and from school. When they got to school they put their shoes on. They didn’t want to be seen as bumpkins without shoes at school but they also knew that they had to preserve the shoes as best they could. They too knew that there could be a wait when it was time for a new pair. This common sense frugality served my mother and father well throughout their lives and it spread to their children. The reward for our humble beginnings stays with me everyday. I live in circumstances that few people would be unhappy with. I have more shoes than I will ever need and I appreciate every good thing that I have in my life. That includes my cougar.

Breezy Point

Breezy Point Bill Flynn

My mother and father bought 126 Oceanside in Breezy Point, Queens when I was approximately 15 years old. This was quite a feat for a family that was used to sharing a magic $10 dollar bill with the Mahers. Margaret McConnell reminded me of this awhile back. We both shared in the money transfer operation that went on between Aunt Mamie and Aunt Bridie. It seems when things got tight I was tasked to run $10 over to Aunt Mamie’s and the reverse was true for Margaret. They were each other’s safety net.

While it was just a bungalow sitting in the sand still, how could Bridie and Dave have afforded it considering that at times they were $10 away from the precipice. Claire Booth Luce, a former Congresswoman and Ambassador had a famous quote, “No good deed goes unpunished”. While I believe this is true 95% of the time, my mother, Aunt Mamie and Uncle Eddie Cullinan managed on one occasion to find the 5%. It seems that they had two cousins Jimmy and Willy Brennick who were older bachelors. I don’t know exactly how they were related but they were American born and in need of care. Jimmy had been a New York cop and Willy had worked one day in his life. They lived with their mother in Manhattan. Willy lasted his one day at the A&P store and it was best determined that he should stay home and tend to mom. Eventually, mom died and they were living alone. It’s my understanding that Mamie, Bridie and Eddie took turns looking in on them. I remember when they were healthy, they would come to 2243 Ryer Ave. and visit my mother where they loved to watch baseball on our newly acquired TV. I was fascinated as a kid because they wore high starch collars with ties and ankle high shoe boots. Jimmy was a white haired distinguished looking man who had lots of opinions and Willy was less impressive and quiet.

Well it seems that Jimmy had saved some money during his life. He looked to Uncle Eddie at the end of his life for guidance and my mother told me that Uncle Eddie counseled Jimmy to make a will. My mother said that Uncle Eddie was careful not to tell Jimmy what to put in his will but rather explained to him that it would be split with the state if he didn’t have one. Jimmy listened and consequently upon his death he left Mamie, Eddie and mom money. As it turned out, he left my mother and father the down payment for Breezy Point.

Jimmy Brennick rewarded the people in his life who were good to him. He changed the lives for the better of my entire family. He couldn’t have foreseen all the wonderful years that we all enjoyed in Breezy Point. Most importantly he provided my mother and father with a retirement home that gave them some of the best years of their lives. There is much more to tell about Breezy Point but I’m glad to say, thank you Jimmy Brennick. May you and Willy continue to rest in peace.

Hard of Hearing Part 2 Bill Flynn

Please allow me to deviate from my Bronx tales to tell a story on myself. I was traveling with my beautiful wife Linda and my best friend Bill Bradbury from Charlotte, NC to our home in Emerald Isle, NC. This was back when Bill and I were FBI Agents and we had all traveled to Charlotte on business. We stopped at a Boston Market to have some dinner. While the food counter had no customers when we walked in, there were plenty of people sitting at tables. Bill and Linda stopped to read the menu but I knew what I wanted so I proceeded to the other end of the counter to place an order. The counter man said something that I didn’t catch and to which I responded by saying “Am I lonely? How nice of you to ask.” All of a sudden the entire restaurant broke out into laughter. Linda and Bill could hardly contain themselves. I looked around and strangers at the tables were laughing. Of course I found out what the counter man had said was “Are you alone sir?” I started laughing myself. Yep, this hard of hearing thing is a Flynn family disorder.

Hard of Hearing Bill Flynn

Hard of Hearing Bill Flynn

I went to a party one weekend afternoon at my sister Kathleen’s apartment somewhere around Moshula Parkway in the Bronx. Ellen and Kathleen were just babies at the time and I brought along a friend of mine who I was working with at Lincoln Hall, Ron Logan. Lincoln Hall was a reform school run by the Christian Brothers where my brother Pat and I both worked and where Jack Flynn also had spent a summer or two. Ron was a football big charming Irish guy whose mother lived on the Concourse and he fit into the family gathering with much ease. Ron had recently returned from a trip to Ireland and was talking to my mother. Of course Ron had no clue as to how hard of hearing Bridie Flynn was. “Mrs. Flynn, I never knew how many relatives I had in Ireland until we went to visit the Roaches.”  To which he received the partially indignant response “Roaches? There aren’t any roaches in Ireland.” A pregnant pause ensued and the room broke out into laughter. Mom was great. She laughed at herself as hard as the rest of us did and I told the story on her for years. Bridie Flynn was a very good sport.

The Oil Yard by Bill Flynn

The Oil Yard

Bill Flynn
The Berry Bros. oil yard was located on the East River at the very northern tip of Manhattan. It was about 200 yards south of the 225th St Bridge that connects Manhattan to the Bronx. Columbia University’s football Baker’s Field is located a couple of blocks to the west. The area is generally called Spuyten Duyvil (Spouting Devil or Devils Whirlpool) although Spuyten Duyvil is actually in the Bronx. There is a large C for Columbia painted on the cliff face on the Bronx side of the river. It has been there for as long as I can remember.

The yard was an oil transfer station for oil that was barged into large above ground holding tanks and then distributed to various small company oil trucks. The customers were the many apartment houses that filled northern Manhattan and the Bronx. The three holding tanks were located right on the rivers edge and would send today’s EPA into a dither. My father, Dave Flynn was the night watchmen for the yard, his second job.

The yard was also located just north of the large 207th St. Subway yard where my father’s first job was located as a Track Foreman for the NYC Transit Authority and where he would often end his day. My father was supposed to stay in the little concrete office building over night and provide both security and access to the pumps for any of the truck drivers who needed oil. I don’t know how it evolved but he had some kind of understanding that he could leave the yard late in the evening and go home. He would return at 5:00am in the morning to be available for the early morning drivers.

I remember that there were a couple of junk yard dogs that hung around the property to provide security. Jax and Rags were oil covered German Shepherd mutts and only kids could love them and we all did. Actually, there was a junk yard across the street and the dogs wandered back and forth between the two places. A friendly Black man named Elwood ran the junk yard and would come over and have a cup of coffee with my father every now and again. I remember Elwood because he was the first hunter I ever encountered. Make that an urban hunter. Along side the oil part of the yard was an abandoned coal hopper that had preceded the oil business and it was a multi story black heavy timbered structure that would enhance the scenery of any horror movie. To make it even more onerous, it was home for hundreds of pigeons. Elwood had a refined taste for these city squab and took to hunting them with a beebe gun. He took them back to his junk yard estate where he hot plated them into dinner. Can you imagine?

There were any number of nights that my father couldn’t make it to the oil yard and my older brother David before me and myself later were expected to go to the yard and relieve John Manter, the day man. I remember John as an older guy who always looked like he could use a good shower. My mother would always send him a big plate of food on holidays and he was a nice man. I always admired his newer Oldsmobile. My father’s cars while always well cared for were older and John’s late model Olds was the only new car I encountered among our circle of friends and family. David was the mainstay in filling in for my father but I eventually became old enough to absorb my share of the duty. I would take the bus back and forth from the yard to our apartment in the Bronx but sometimes on a weekend night my friends would drive over and we would play cards and drink beer at our private club house. That of course was when I was older but I remember when we were younger the oil yard was picnic central for the family on weekends. My father had made a long plywood table that we would set up viewing the river and he had found an old electric grill along the way. We had hot dogs and played by the water where it was a little cooler in the summers. My parents made the most of it and I know all the cousins came to visit our parties on different occasions.

I remember some summer Sunday’s we would stay until it got dark and the lights of the White Rose Tea Company warehouse across the river would come on. The light actually came from a beautiful sign that took up the entire top of the building. It had, of course, a white rose as its focal point and its multi colors cast pretty reflections on the river. This was my first and only art appreciation memory from my childhood. There haven’t been many more as an adult.

At some point, the city replaced the 225th St. Bridge. This was no small task because not only was it a car bridge but it also has an upper level that accommodates the A train. I remember being there when they floated in the bridge on barges and spent several days getting it in place. It was really quite impressive. The irony is, I suspect that it probably needs replacement again today.

My father told a story about two brothers, Jimmy and George Coppola who had a small oil company and who filled their trucks up at the oil yard. I remember both of these men and they were really nice guys. They always had a few minutes to chat.
It seems one snowy winter morning one of the brothers managed to slide his truck partially into the Bronx River. He got a hold of my father in order to let his brother know but my father took on the problem. The solution was to go to the subway yard and “borrow” a large truck and go over and pull the truck out of the river. Problem solved. Life was simpler then. Today, Jimmy or George would have been an environmental criminal who had put the eco system of the river at risk and who would have at the very least had to pay some stiff fines. Then, it was an accident. Of course “borrowing” the truck today would get you fired. While taking the truck can’t be justified, if it had been discovered It would have ended in a reprimand. Today, see you later.

As usual, I got sidetracked. I wanted to mention that I took a ride by the oil yard about two or three years ago and determined that it is now a fenced in parking lot for a cable company. The large ice house building that had been located across the street south of the junk yard is now some kind of a specialized school. There were no vestiges of the yard remaining. No tanks. No racks. No coal hopper. No concrete buildings.
It’s all gone but it lives on in my memory. My memories always seem to sanitize. I tend to remember the positive things and the oil yard had lots of these. Hope you have enjoyed some of them.