New Year's Eve

I see where CNN is reprising this year with the team of Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin at midnight. I always thought this was a strange match up and was disappointed that the potty-mouthed Griffin was back. Before there was Cooper/Griffin there was the ageless Dick Clark handling the countdown as the ball descended on Times Square. But I must be an old fogey as I recall an erudite gentleman named Ben Grauer, a seasoned broadcaster, wearing a black overcoat and homburg hat, who handled the mike solo and was never lost for words - in all kinds of weather. To paraphrase Adlai Stevenson, I found Grauer appealing and Griffin appalling - but each to his/her own taste. And at midnight the scene would shift to the Roosevelt Grill in Manhattan where Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians would be playing the sweetest music this side of heaven and the dancers actually touched each other. Happy New Year.
tjs
Next - O Dem Golden Slippers

My Kind of Town

Since my son immortalized me in the Chicago Tribune December 28th I feel the urge to salute the Windy City. I won't call it the Second City. In former days the U.S. Lines had their offices at 327 S. LaSalle St. a prestigious address in the Loop. When the passenger ships stopped running we moved the Freight Sales office to Oakbrook in the suburbs.Yesterday's theme reminded me of the following story: On one of my sales visits we were entertaining clients at Johnny Lattner's Restaurant - he of Notre Dame fame. It was a large dining room and there was a group there called the Turtle Society who were inducting new members in this very public forum. Their theme was that the turtle was a clean minded amphibian and any member had to be of a clean mind. One of the questions they posed to prospective inductees was as follows: What does a man do standing up, that a lady does sitting down and a dog does on three legs? If you didn't answer "SHAKE HANDS" you were not accepted.
We canvassed our tablemates on the same question and it appeared that none of us would be swimming with turtles that night.
tjs
Next - New Year's Eve

The Handshake

Before there were high fives, fist bumps or bear hugs there was the ordinary handshake - some firm - some soft and some in between. It was useful in sealing a deal, confirming an agreement, starting an athletic event, etc.  I once called on a customer in NYC who was a fitness buff - every morning swimming laps - his handshake almost brought me to my knees. A real macho guy - I counted my digits on the way out and couldn't write for the rest of the day - but I needed his business. Another time while on the South Jersey shore a friend suggested we drive down to the Delaware beaches i.e. Dewey Beach which was still unspoiled. LBJ's daughters used to hang out there - they let you have bonfires on the beach which Jersey would never permit. While searching for his friend's cottage we passed a fellow plucking his guitar on his cottage porch wearing a tee shirt and three day beard - he pointed us next door where the hostess had a visitor - call her Mary Byrd - after introductions all around, the guitar plucker appeared in the doorway - Mrs. Byrd introduced him as her husband Charlie - THE Charlie Byrd whose LPs I had played at home. He and his wife played the clubs around Annapolis Md. and Washington D,C. and his handshake was soft as silk. His hands must have been insured for big bucks. Lastly, back in Philadelphia I was introduced to a prominent female plastic surgeon who was doing pro bono work in Taiwan under the auspices of Madame Chaing Kai Shek.
Her hand was also soft and almost withdrawing. The message seems to be if/when you run into a musician or surgeon, go easy - or maybe just rub noses like the Eskimos do.
tjs
Next - My Kind of Town

Happy Trails

I read in last Friday's N.Y. Times that they shut down the Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Museum in Missouri and many of the artifacts have been sold at auction - some to the Gene Autry National Center. But several taxidermied animals were sold thru Christie's to an Omaha TV station owner - these included Roy's palomino horse Trigger for $266,500. and Trigger's companion German shepherd, Bullet for $35,000. This owner has sent the animals on a yearlong traveling exhibition, the "Happy Trails Tour." As they say, watch for it in your neighborhood - and Happy Trails to you.
tjs
Next- The Handshake

In the Hood III

Growing up we had several German American families in the neighborhood who had their own social clubs with the oompah bands and picnics on Sunday with names like Kanstatters and Schutzen park. With the outbreak of WWII there was a sensitivity on their part and they Americanized the names of these facilities. Obviously, they had families back in Germany but two families had sons drafted into our armed services and they were loyal citizens. When I walked to school I passed a building that was a National Guard Armory and I often watched them lower the Stars and Stripes at sundown. During WWII this building housed German POWS and circa 1943 they were probably captured in the North African campaign. The armory was adjacent to several athletic fields and in the afternoons they would be marched to a vacant athletic field and we could see them playing soccer with several U.S. sentries standing guard. But they weren't going anywhere - their war was over - and we housed and fed them until the war's end.
tjs
Next - Happy Trails

Boxing Day

December 26 is Boxing Day throughout the United Kingdom which usually gives our British cousins an extra holiday. The recent heavy snows did close Heathrow Airport but a bit of snow could not deter these hardy folks. I have always considered myself a closet anglophile ever since those twenty-year old R.A.F. pilots battled the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain in 1940 thereby, perhaps, preserving western civilization. And in the same year the heroic evacuation of the British army from the beaches of Dunkirk to fight another day. And these people endured rationing long after WWII. Today, I salute my English friends with a song Noel Coward wrote when asked to write something quintessentially English. He chose the subject of his pub called "The Rose and Crown." It goes like this:
"Saturday night at the Rose & Crown is quite the place to be - soldiers and sailors, tinkers and tailors, out on the town for a bit of a spree - if you're tired of life with your husband or wife, and the kids are getting you down - things will all come right on Saturday night - AT THE ROSE AND CROWN". Hail Britannia!
tjs
Next - In the Hood III

Christmas Spirit

On Christmas Eve morning I went into Borders Bookstore to buy a New York Times newspaper. The store was very crowded and I was about thirtieth in line.
The man behind me was wearing a fireman's sweater. We wished each other Merry Christmas. I said I wished they had an express line. He said if that is all you are buying I will take care of it when I reach the counter and you can go on your way.
I thanked him for his generosity and promised not to set any fires during the holidays. It was pure serendipity and perhaps one half an O. Henry story. Oh, and it was the last copy of the Times on the shelf.
tjs