I Can Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.

It was Friday night and the Spring Fling at Jamaica High School was just ending. I as the chairman of the ticket committee was the de-facto social coordinator of the cast party. I decided on Jahn's Ice Cream Parlor on Queens Blvd in Forest Hills Queens. I had my motives for having it there. Thomas McNeil, who went on to found Cyote Ugly, one of my best friends in High School and had graduated a year earlier, and I had a bet.

Here's some history about the real Coyote Ugly. It won't make the movie any better or any worse, but you will at least be armed with some facts:

Coyote stands alongside the best New York shots-n-beer saloons such as (in order that I like them): Doc Holliday's, The Patriot, and Duff's Brooklyn. There are other pretenders who copy these five saloons by letting girls dance on the bar, but forget them. All of these places, Coyote included, owe their existence to one man: Tom McNeil.

It was Tommy who owned the original Village Idiot from the 1980s until 1993 that introduced the concept of bars of this genre to New York. Tommy's formula for success is based on this concept: men will stick around a bar a hell of a lot longer, and spend way more money, if all the bartenders are female. (Gilbert claims that when Tommy needed new help, he would put out a sign that read, SHAMELESS SLUTS WANTED: NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY)

You have to realize Tom was twice my weight. At that time I was about 150 pounds and Tom was over 300 and played semi-pro football. Our bet was that I could out eat him. So thirty-four(34) of us went to Jahn's after the schools spring movie extravaganza.

We all got to Jahn's and I took charge and we got a table along the back center wall that was long and we could all sit at. You have to realize this table could be seen from the entire restaurant. Just what I wanted. Everyone was hyped because the show had gone great. I had enough from the party fund (I controlled the money) for everyone to pretty much get what they wanted. I sat against the center of the table with my back to the wall. Tom sat directly across from me. Everyone sat around us.

The bet was that we would each eat a Twin Jahn's Burger Delux and then a kitchen sink. We had to eat everything on the burger plate before we ate the Kitchen Sink. So everyone ordered their dinner and Tom and I ordered our Twin Jahn's Burger Deluxe. After we finished it we ordered two Kitchen Sinks. You have to realize that when they bring out the Kitchen Sink they have the whole staff parade behind making a racket with bowls and spoons. They wanted to make sure everyone in the restaurant knew that someone had ordered it. The waitress came with 34 bowls and started to place the two Kitchen Sinks half way down the table on each side of Tom and I. I said no one for him, pointing to Tom, and one for me. This got the attention of everyone.

The Kitchen Sink, a mammoth creation with twenty-two flavors of ice cream and eleven different toppings served in a huge tureen. The trick is to gather a crowd large enough - and it easily feeds ten to twelve - to finish it before it melts into a puddle of sugary goo. While the atmosphere suggests time has stood still, the price tag on this extravaganza reminds us it has marched on . . . what cost us $16.95 in our youth is now a whopping $42.65. The memories alone are worth five stars.

We started eating and the cheers went up. It was like a tournament. As we ate through about a gallon of ice cream each we gathered a crowd. I don't think anyone in the place wasn't gathered around our table. It seemed as each a cheer went up as each spoon went into my mouth. I heard a sigh and large exhalation of breath and looked up to see Tom slumped back in his chair and about a pint of ice cream soup in his bowl. Well I finished the last few spoons of mine and then took Tom's and finished his. Then I collapsed back into my chair and one of the loudest cheers I heard in my life went up. I paid the bill for everyone.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Racing the Day Away.

When I was 14 I started working at Bridgehampton Race Track. I should not have been able to work till I was 18 but that never stopped me. I was also doing surgery on dogs at fourteen and people at 16(much more on this in later posts) so why would I let a little age deficiency stop me. My brother-in-law Bruce Newman had the year earlier got involved in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). The SCCA ran auto races and road rallies across the country. They got members to volunteer to do all the jobs around the track during the races. The four main jobs were Pit marshal, Flagging and communication, rescue and Timing and Scoring. Bridgehampton was arguably the most dangerous racetrack in the United States. They ran local, regional, national races and the Trans-Am and Can-Am races. Twenty people both race drivers and spectators alike were killed over the 45 years the track was open.

Take a look at the race course on this video of the Can-Am of 1968(jump to 1 minute and 10 seconds) (those cars are going 180-210 MPH):




The race track was built by local racing enthusiasts when in the early fifties people were getting killed and very serious accidents were happening on the back roads of Bridgehampton. It became one of the fastest and most dangerous tracks in the USA.

Also among the drivers with a deep sense of respect for the place is Mario Andretti, who first drove at Bridgehampton early in a career that includes a world championship and an Indianapolis crown.

''It's a special track,'' Mr. Andretti said in an interview. ''It was one of the first race tracks I raced on in my career, in 1965. It was actually an awesome course. It was dangerous, in a sense.''

The first of the course's 13 turns, a right-hander that dives downhill, was infamous among racers. ''Turn One was an unbelievable corner because it was blind, and you just fell out,'' Mr. Andretti said. ''It could scare the bejesus out of anybody.''

If you look at the video and see there were no guard rails. Those men in white jump suits were me when I was on flagging and communication (when I both almost died and saved someone else's life) and also when I was on rescue( again almost getting killed and saving someones life)(these to be later posts). Over the pit area you will see a tower, that is were I spent most of my time the last two summers working there. I met some of the greats of racing and had a ball getting an award for my work. My brother-in-law Bruce worked Pit Marshal all four years and I was for most of my first year.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

The Lab Is Open. BOOM!!!!

I was fascinated with science from my earliest memories. I cannot remember as a child not wanting to be a scientist until I decided to become an exotic animal veterinarian (Zoo vet)(at age 9) and then a Vascular Surgeon(at age 15). The gateway drug for my jones on science was either a Gilbert or Porter Chemistry set, I've had both over the years and cannot remember which one was first. They were "safe" and "Tested" as you can see on the cover. Well I did everything to prove it was not safe and that they didn't test everything you could do with the enclosed chemicals. Even blow things up.

Our house had a finished basement that we used for entertaining. My sister had her friends over there. I played toy soldier with Joel Schiffenbauer down there. We had family gatherings down there when the first floor wasn't large enough. There was a laundry room about 20 foot by 15 foot that my mother told me to do all the science in. I eventually expanded to the entire basement after my sister Barbara got married when I was twelve. I was the talk of the neighborhood and all my cousins were afraid to go into the laundry room and later the entire basement.

I suspect that if you only did the experiments that were in the book that came with the chemistry set it was probably tested and thus safe. However, that was not fun. Plus there were lots of other chemicals around the house that made good reactions. Take Clorox (hypochloric acid) and mix it with Ammonia and you get a yellow gas that is heavier then air(very toxic chlorine gas) and hypochlorous acid . which I found burns a hole through the table, the tile on the floor under the table and an inch or two into the cement foundation of the house. I was lucky I only had a cough for a couple weeks. I do have since then chronic sinusitis and have always wondered if I caused it myself. The price we pay for our science.

I saw in the set a bottle that had a dull silver metal in oil. The label said magnesium and a warning to keep away from water. The instructions in the book said to take a small piece and place on metal pan and light with a match. It was an impressive very bright white light. I saw spots in front of my eyes for hours. I had to see what happened when you added water to the magnesium. Well that weekend my mother had to buy a new table to replace the one I was using. I understand they have taken a lot of the chemicals that came in my sets out.



This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Forbiden Love

I was the chair of ticket committee at Jamaica High school, The first Junior to hold that position. I inherited it from Bruce Brodsky. Now that may sound like a boring job in High School but remember he who controls the money pulls the strings. We sold the tickets for every school event that had tickets. This included all the sports teams, all the theatrical productions and all the special events. I was responsible for thousands of dollars in revenue. I was also the one who organized the post event parties for the participants. We were given a budget to pay for some of the expenses of the cast parties etc.. So it fell on me to organize all the parties and get togethers. Sometimes we would go to Jan's Ice cream Parlor (I have a major story about Jan's) sometimes we would hit pizza parlors and sometimes we would just go to a local park and hank around and smooze or some would do a little more. Keep reading, that's what this story really is about.

Jamaica High was unique among High Schools in New York City. It was the largest High School with 5800 students (1800 in my graduating class), it was the only High school in New York with a fifty-fifty Black-White ratio. It was fed by three very interesting areas: Jamaica Estates, possibly the wealthiest neighborhood in NYC; Jamaica, one of the three poorest areas in NYC; and Kew Gardens, a community were most of the permanent staff for the United Nations lived. So we had the most international, the richest and the poorest students in NYC mixed in one of the most fascinating melting pots there could be. We had the longest posted Principal, Dr Shucker and the only school in the United States who at that time had an unbroken record of a Westinghouse Science Tallent Search Semi-finalist every year since its inception. We had more PhD's then any other High School in NYC, almost all the Chairman were Doctorates. We were the first( in 1966) High School to have it's own Main Frame Computer an IBM 360 solely for student use. The school started on a staggered schedule between 7 A.M. for the earliest and 11:30 for the latest. The students were statified into seven academic levels from Industrial (non-raegents), General (non-reagents), General Reagents, two levels of Regular reagents, Honor and extra-honor. Overall an amazing school. I just learned they are closing it this year.

Back to our story, There was this girl Michelle, she was the most beautiful girl at Jamaica High School. She was a Senior, a year ahead of me. She was also one of the brightest girls, being in almost all Honor or Extra-honor Classes. She had a bubbly personality. Yes I had a crush on her but felt she was out of my league. She was the type that if we had a Home-Coming Queen she would have been it. She was articulate, gregarious and outgoing. She was an officer of the Student Association and an athlete. It was after a a school event. I arranged for everyone to meet at Cunningham Park, there was a grove near 198th Street and Union Turnpyke that we liked to hangout in. It was about 9:30 and about 40 or 50 kids were there hanging out and doing what High School kids do on a Friday Night after letting off steam at a school event. The amazing thing was that about half the kids were black and half white. It was probably one of the only places in NYC in 1970 that there was mixing of the races to this degree. I was proud that I was a major catalyst of this. Well I was sitting on a bench and Michelle sat down on the other end. We started talking. As time went on I realized she wasn't on the other end of the bench but we were sitting next to each other. Soon we were holding hands and looking into each others eyes. The divides between us, her a senior and me a junior, her the class beauty and me a geek(yes even then we had geeks, I was one of the first), her popular with the opposite sex and me almost dateless in high school. I don't know how it happened but all of a sudden we were kissing. Time flew and the next thing I knew, almost three hours later, it was 1:30 and the last of the people with a car were leaving and we had to go. We both left with a touch of sadness because we both, wrongly, thought that we could not continue our puppy love since she was black and I was white.

Watch the Body

I arrived as a freshman at the University of Buffalo in the fall of 1971. When I walked into my dorm room (the only triple in the entire dorm) I immediately noticed the stain on the dorm wall over my bed and opposite the main window in the room. I quickly found out that the previous spring the university had student riots that dwarfed those at Kent State but fortunately no one was killed. However, a teargas grenade was shoot through the window of my dorm and permanently stained the wall. Every year for the three years I lived in the room they painted the wall shortly after we left in the spring and by the day we moved in the stain burned through the new paint.

Because of the riots the relationship between students and police was very rocky so the School of Management started the Pilot 100 program:

12. Pilot 100: Improving Relations With College Students
(Buffalo, New York)

Goals: To allow "Longhairs" to ride along with police to see problems police encounter and to allow "pigs" to learn many students are serious about their academic work.

Strategies: The School of Management/ SUNY Buffalo, through a liaison with Marine Midland Bank, secured cooperation of Amherst Police Department, Buffalo Police Department, and SUNY-Buffalo campus police. All program participants were screened and female students could ride only if accompanied by a male student. The pilot program anticipated 100 students, but in two and a half months, 250 students had participated. Both sides called the program a success, except that students expressed interest in riding only with City of Buffalo police.

I as a freshman rode more then any other student, riding over 75 times. I rode about one third of the time with a female senior sociology student Gretchen. I and Gretchen were featured in a series of news stories carried in both the Buffalo News and the Amherst paper. The headline was "No Those Students in The Back of the Police Car are not Under Arrest".

The rules were such that the police precincts were divided into five levels of crime level. You had to ride in each level once to go onto the next level, with the tactical patrol being the highest. In the next to highest level I actually enjoyed riding with two police officers. I unfortunately do not remember their names. They were a black and white team and the Black officer took home his car on a new innovative from the federal government. They were involved in a car accident while responding to a call and were critically injured. I could have been in the car with them since I rode with them almost weekly. With them I was involved in three episodes that I will write about in this blog. There were two other episodes with the tactical unit that I will also write about. The relationships I developed that year really came in handy both during my volunteer work with the FAST team and the Red Cross Disaster service.

It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and I arrived at the police precinc,t on Main Street about a half mile from Downtown, at 3:45 as ussual to ride with my favorite pair of police officers. They were walking down the stairs from their daily briefing session. They waved and I followed them to their squad car. I got into the back as usual. We drove around for about 45 minutes and it was pretty quite when the call came across the radio for silent alarm going off. With lights and sirens blaring we tore down Main Street and turned the corner to see a body lying on the sidewalk in front of a jewelry store and someone about a block down running. They pulled up and told me to jump out and watch the body. They took 0ff at about 100 miles an hour burning rubber and going after the person running away. When I got out of the car I immediately noticed the man laying there was not moving. I went over and realized he was dead. He was what in those days I would have called old (I was only 18 and anyone over 30 was old) he had a mustache and graying hair. There was a gun laying on the ground a few inches from his hand. Immediately a crowd was starting to form around the body. I did my best for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 2 or 3 minutes, until several more police units arrived and took over the scene. The perp got away.

Nothing like a nice quite spring day in Buffalo.