“Lunch on a Skyscraper,” a photo forwarded to me by Klare Schmidt, shows a group of men on a suspended I-beam hundreds of feet above New York City.

Unless it’s a diabolical Photoshop job, in which a background is simply added, and the men in reality are seated on ground level, the scene is hard to imagine.

The photographer, Charles C. Ebbets, did a masterful job of catching the 11 men — apparently oblivious to the perils that are inherent below — earning their living. And smoking cigarettes and eating their lunch during the construction of Rockefeller Center.

The single beam has no back or foot support, and nobody appears to be fazed by it.

A glimpse of this 1932 photo gives me a chill. But I had a different reaction when I saw the photo while in my teens. Why are kids fearless of heights and oldsters quite fearful?

Back in the ‘60s, when I lived in Illinois, my girlfriend’s father, Bernard, was one of those who toted the proverbial black, dome-shaped lunch box as he worked high above most other people, in Chicago’s Loop. He felt at ease walking across beams often lacking safety nets. To be sure, there were safety nets in the construction zones more heavily populated, but, Bernie would say, “You fall off and let the net catch you, and you’re still in a mell of a hess. It takes an hour to bring you back up.” Continue reading →

The first time I felt the impact of big bucks was in my youth, while window shopping at the old J.C. Penney store in Las Vegas, exactly where Beall’s operates now.

I had been selling newspapers downtown and ran in to a fifth-grade classmate who I thought to be the richest kid in town. We began talking about finances. I’d been proud of having opened my own passbook-savings account, at the First National Bank, and, solely through sales of Optics, I’d built up a nest egg of about $7.

The incentive to save was great. At the time, one could request a bank book — literally. That handsome bank looked exactly like a hardback book. A slot on top was for coins, another in back for dollar bills, which I seldom saw.

I liked the thrill of taking my full bank book to one of the tellers, Charles Keyes, who used a bank-kept key to unlock the treasure and even counted the coins, deposited them and returned the book. Continue reading →

One of the classiest motivators, something virtually guaranteed to get people to pick up a book, appeared a few years ago.

It was a several-paneled cartoon which started simply with a kid’s beginning to read a book. The second panel showed the child expressing greater interest.

The third section showed some kind of monster on the page, and the young reader growing fangs, facial hair and claws.

The exaggerations continued, with the message that by the time the child got well into the book, the child herself had changed. She had become what she was reading. Continue reading →

One of the burdens of public school teaching is dreaded duty. There’s cafeteria, playground, restroom, hall, bus duty and probably a host of other punishments teachers get subjected to when they first sign on to “earn the big bucks and get three months’ vacation every year.”

Now, my English teacher would question the use of quotation marks above, so I need to stress they’re deliberate. By using the unattributed quote marks, I’m being ironic and saying teachers don’t earn much and seldom get vacations, as they’re too busy going to summer school to keep up their credentials.

Years back, I was sharing playground duty in a high school when I saw my co-teacher approach a group of freshmen with, “Don’t you see I’m in the area? I can hear the bad words. Don’t use them in front of me.” Continue reading →

What’s happened during my dotage to dash almost all interest in how things operate? Why’s it always easier, as I push 70, to push mechanical matters to a son or grandson? Let me explain:

Much more affluent than in earlier years, I’ve acquired much “stuff.” No home is without a computer, and I notice as I struggle on the treadmill at the City Recreation Center, that a number of people my age are wired, in the sense that they have music being piped in from a device the size of a quarter.

Twenty years ago, these same fitness buffs and I would have had a 60-pound Victrola record player strapped to our backs as we sweated to the oldies on a steam-powered treadmill.

But back to “stuff”: Either through the simple act of outgrowing it or my inability to keep up with the technology, I buy but don’t fiddle much with gadgets anymore. Of course, I will use my laptop computer until I expire, but will probably never cultivate a taste or tolerance for electronic gadgets found in Better Image catalogs. Continue reading →

Although most aspects to our recent trip to five European countries remain the highlight of all our travels, it’s good to be back. International travel can be stressful. I write this as a legitimate concern, not as one wishing to brag about all the places we’ve been. Only since retirement (mine) have we taken long trips, and unlike many others around us, we spend our money on trips, not fancy cars or houses.

That said, let me mention that the Trujillo-as-Terrorist factor this time was diminished. In 2003, I wrote a column titled “Do I look like a terrorist?” an honest question wrought by the constant delaying, prodding, poking, pummeling, patting, probing and pinching by airport personnel. Continue reading →

One of the things that make a reporter’s job difficult is the ever-popular “no comment,” uttered by politicians to reporters who make them squirm.

Even back in the ’50s, the TV producers of the popular sit-com “Dobie Gillis” were aware of the face-saving remark and had Maynard G. Krebs tutoring Gillis, played by Dwayne Hickman, in saying “no comment” before running for high school student council.

A recent issue of the Journal North showed three unrelated, side-by-side articles, each with the tell-tale no-comment. Generally, when reporters fail to get a response from the source, they write that the person “declined to comment.”

But lately, perhaps in their zeal to economize on words, writers have simply written “declined comment.” Curious about whether it’s common practice or a mere aberration, I Googled “declined comment” and unearthed far too many instances to present here. Continue reading →

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Much communication – or lack of it — comes in the form of merely believing we know what another has transmitted.

I was leafing through the Laugh-Lines section of a church publication and was struck by the fact that all eight jokes dealt with kids’ misunderstanding of certain words.

For example, a kid in church tells his parents he knows God’s first name. How come? “Well simple, Dad. In the Lord’s Prayer it says, ‘Our father, who art in Heaven, Harold be thy name.'”

Or the kid who asks about the fate of the flea when hearing about Joseph’s instructions to take his wife and child and flee to Egypt. Continue reading →

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – Anyone dissatisfied with almost-$4 gasoline prices can’t expect corresponding savings by flying. Our recent international flight cost my family . . . well, you don’t really want to know. Nor do we. Only our credit-card issuer has any interest.

To make the trip across the Atlantic, aircraft need to be big, bulky and commodious. The usual seating arrangement is two aisles, with two seats on the left, two on the right and three or four in the middle.

We tried to sleep upright, being crowded by our seatmate. The worst seat on a long flight is next to the window. Sure, it’s fun to watch the takeoff and landing, but the rest of the time, all we see are clouds. Continue reading →

A few years back, I got quite a bit of feedback on a column I wrote titled “La jura got there at the right time.” Some readers said they were well able to identify with some of the accounts of an aborted melee.

It dealt with an ambush of a few friends and me as we walked, minding our own business, on North Grand one evening.

We were on the lower side of our mid-teens at the time, and the two Freds, Leroy and I – clad in Levis turned up once at the cuff and a white T-shirt with a pocket – were made to jump even further onto the sidewalk as a passing car deliberately swerved our way.

We thought it was a trick being played by someone we knew, but we soon discovered they were serious. They armed themselves with sticks, bicycle chains and even a radio aerial, as they came toward us. Continue reading →