In the avalanche of Brooklyn born children immigrants

In the avalanche of Brooklyn born children immigrants…Bernie Sanders ‘s passionate interpretation of our Democracy,Yale’s School of Law  Hilary Clinton’s own grasp of the White House occupancy, in her lady like approach to what was once considered a masculine dominion…..Washington, Jefferson, Honest Abe Lincoln….Franklin Delano Roosevelt…  Harry Truman

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Yet the culture of football as ludicrous as it sounds relativity, also had a  pioneering hold on the immigrant children of parents,who settled in  Brooklyn.

One such immigrant family from Germany, was the Luckman , residing near Prospect Park, and the Bryna Apartments, their son, Sidney, attending Erasmus Hall High School, on Flat bush Avenue. Here Sid Luckman polish his ten year intimacy with the pigskin, playing out the roe of a single wing quarterback., calling the plays, dictating the flow of running and passing, mixing it up against the defense.The consciousness of a football prodigy named Sidney (”Sid”) Luckman, the Name Detective’s “What’s in a Name”?) Curtis 

Adler.

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He got the attention of Lou Little, the Columbia University coach. But the football touchdown standard barriers and the screaming mid field yard fans, were stagnant at Columbia, so Sid Luckman honed his craft at a campus where he could continue his life- long love affair with the pigskin. After two years, he and coach Little saw eye to eye and he continued his inevitability at the Columbia University field.

His plaudits gained recognition.  Hearing about Luckman, the Chicago Bears NFL , owner and coach George Hals, a son of Czech immigrants, came to the City that never sleeps and was invited with Mister Sid and Mrs. Luckman to their tiny apartment, near the Stadium..

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For the following twelve years, Halas and his quarterback, devised and mastered  the T formation, leaving the single wingin the dust..Thereupon the legends…Red Grange, Bronco Nagurski, Sammy Baugh of Texas Christian and the NFL’s Washington Redskins , came to the LA Rams Commissioner, a television prominence. 

No les Army’s Felix “Doc” Blanchard and Glen Davis, two running halfbacks from West Point. If Burlington, Vermont’s former Mayor Bernie Sanders of Brooklyn’s Madison High School, says he’s having a he’s having sweaty accounts for hisown Presidential run, one could mirror Commissioner Pete Roselle’s leadership, inthe same breathe sweats that Sid Luckman expended since the age of four,

39 year old retired Payton Manning of Denver, formerly of Indianapolis, in his winning relationship with the football, his own emancipation thru those grueling seasons in Indianapolis and Denver, I the NFL of Peyton Manning, retiring after his historic career and reaching the age of 389, with a record of the only quarterback, mastering a moneyed  amount of close to 300 million dollars..before or after taxes?.

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Father and mentor Archie Manning to both his sons… EIi, the younger, , a q/b with the New York Giants, his Tennessee drawl… out o the locker room, before and after the weekly Sunday  struggle, remembering all the plays, variations o the theme clock, the players names their formations, hand offs,fakes, feint moves, reversals..deception into first downs (a microcosm of the game),. Yardage into first downs  , enemy territory, relative abstracts of Picasso like yardage, essential to dominate the adversary, an d remain positive  with the “w” and  afterward…,the joy and distractions in  the locker room. 

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For ourselves, the typhoid fever coma limited our bodes well to the line of scrimmage….”hup hip hop” “the q/b calling the signals… The bench in an uproar. The fans screaming. The umpire and refs in a huddle,  High School principle Norm Schacter bending his ear.

Needless to  say in growing up, the Sid Luckman Sammy Baughrivalry… game of all games was the reigning memory   for another son of immigrant parents ,raised in Brooklyn.  

March  8, 2016  Brooklyn, New York  The City that never sleeps.

From the cradle to the grave

From the cradle to the grave, life is a mass of contradictions, buddy boy. Whattaya expect?, cruising yer way to the Hollywood Hills Coldwater Canyon and Mulholland Drive. You think you’re the real Cream Cheese Bandit from Booty Junior High near Coney Island, where he kissed up to Charlie Chan’s wife, getting the George Washington role, in the 8th6th grade Senior play.

He bullied, bluffed his way, a subsequent riveter “bsing” his riveting caper, pretending to be one of the boys. On and off the scaffold riveters on the Douglas Bombers, during WW2.

The boardwalk where Archie Leach before he metamorphosedinto Cary Grant, Mae West’s leading  contender for the inevitable…recognition by his peers and an convincing like acclaim for the roles he played out over his lifetime.. 

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But with all the cyber space social media sound and fury, “Allthe world’s a stage. All the men and women merely players.They have their entrances and their exits” playing out their roles.

The incarnation of O J Simpson in that Brentwood, California murder of his divorced wife and Ron Goldman, was reincarnated by the L.A. police, recovering a knife, buried for some twenty years since O.J ‘s trial of 1994, acquitting him of the slaughter of the two victims, in the  surroundings of his Brentwood   manor, befitting a Mandrake the Magician hippedity wiggling halfback at USC and the NFL.

Mandrake the Magician…”now you see him….now you don’t.” 

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But for our interview with Phyllis Diller, the comedienne and Bob Hope regular (after Jerry Colonna and Vera Vague), Phyllisbecame a Brentwood lifer.

She described her notoriety, honing her comedic intelligence into guffaws  of absurdity…Living in Greenwich Village, disciplining her art and comic timing. “You see those bubbles in that glass. I like to think of myself, as those bubbles rising to the top” , resounding Norman Vincent Peale’s creed of positive thinking.

“Your character is your fate,” she said, her eyes resting on thechampagne bubbles, rising to the top.

March 4, 2016 The City that never sleeps.

The great Cleveland Indian relief pitcher Satchel Paige took a deep breathe

The great Cleveland Indian relief pitcher Satchel Paige took a deep breathe, inhaling…bases loaded, men on base  staring him down…. the sweat pouring down his face… looking up at the bleachers where the knot hole kids were ancient history…snapping crackerjacks, shelling peanuts, biting into mustached franks on buns brokered from Nathans on Coney Island’s Sur Avenue, but a an eyebrow from Trump apartments on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Saying to himself….. but staring into his manager Lou Boudreau’s dugout …

“Don’t look back! You’ll see something gaining o you.”

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Like all those stars in and out of the Negro leagues, this immortal pitcher reared back like a Michael Jordan in disguise, cooking those brain neurons, awakening them all, in his soul…

“Strike three. You’re out of here!,” cried the home plate ump, reminiscent of big time Brooklyn  Dodger ump named Majorkurth. “You’re blind as a bat,” howled  the batter, refusingto leave home plate.

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From time immortal, these dark pigmented heroes, have vanquished their own fears and insecurities  in contending in theauthority figure white man’s game(s) 

“Amos and Andy” broke the ice daily on radio under the surveillance of CBS and Colonel Paley. Jack Benny’s weeklysound effects trip to his safe deposit box, Rochester kibitzing..James Earl Jones left his stewardship in the Air Force, WW2,toacclaim on Broadway. 

Didn’t George and Ira Gershwin champion their “Porgy anBess”, recognizing the  ordinary routine of s of the denizens living out their dream s, in their shantytown.

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“Brother can you spare a dime?” asked Paul Robeson or Ethel Waters of “Cabin the Sky” and “Green Pastures”, the holy rollers into their emancipation  on this here Earth. The Reverend Sharpton from Tilden High, Harry Bellefonte of Harlem, Spike Lee of Brooklyn College graduate speech making odes, to Satchel Paige on their mound, all pouncing on their dream, making their pitch…skin pigment or not following their passion.

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“Jackie Robinson here,” said the sharecropper’s grandson, his voice into the receiver in UCLA basketballer’s music store on S.Western Avenue, part of the ghetto.

Intrepid Don Barksdale, six foot six center, drafted by Red Auerbach of the Celtics . Immortal John Wooden grandmastering 77 consecutive NCAA wins, Wilbur promoted to Athletic Director. Ourselves minoring ( Davage Minor)  inPhysical Education. (P.E) Bill Stout, our Daily Bruin editor, in an editorial, broke the fiction of skin pigment..

Dave Minor, post WW2 Toledo, into Ucla’s Wilbur Johns quintet before Michjel Jordan once of Brooklyn coalesced with Scotty Pippen chemistry, coach Phil Jackson into  coach Tex Winter’s triangle scheme of schemes on the weak side.

Free association on the political whirl wing, the candidates recognizing the saliva driven cacaphony, the “dog eat dog” skin pigment monkey, doomed to be buried in the coffins of man’s inhumanity to man.                                     I

“Open up yer eyes. It’s only pigment. ”                                                                 

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Peering in to the Cleveland Indian dugout, Satchel Paige  “Don’t look back, you’’ see something gaining on you,” musing on hiswish fulfillment in the Major Leagues.

“None of this Rosa Parks, sitting on segregated buses.” cried the  home plate umpire..

February29, 2016  The City that never sleeps.