Tell Me a Story!

I'm asked the same questions over and over.

..how tall are you, anyway? (6' 5")

..have you really been happily married for 35 years? (as Paul Harvey would say, on our way to together forever!)

..why do you wear shorts in the winter? (my legs do not get cold.)

..what's the matter with you, you think you're such a wise guy? (mild neurosis, a smattering of OCD, an unfettered sense of humor)

...where do you come up with the stories you spin on this blog?

To that one, I can only reply that, unlike the fables of Larry King, my stories are true. It still cheeses me quite a bit to know that the stories that King used to ramble on with, on his overnight radio show, were 99% balloon oil. For instance, the Carvel ice cream story, the one that he would tell only by special request for some insomniac calling from Dubuque, features a long trip to get ice cream for some rough 'n' ready Brooklyn boys, one of whom is supposed to be Sanford "Sandy" Koufax , but is not. Maybe Larry thought that "Sonny" Koufax from "Big Daddy" was in that car with him, except that "Big Daddy" didn't come out until 1999, by which time Larry was busy hauling his 8^th wife (if you're scoring at home, and you have to wonder if Larry is) off to a much nicer ice cream place. What could be sadder than claiming to be friends with someone who later says he never even met you? Next time we have the Cheneys over dinner, Dick and I will discuss this at length.

Ahem. I will now tell the absolutely true New York story, which concerns my friend named John.

Come back with me to the early 1960's, when the New York Giants football team actually played in New York. My buddy and his date and another couple went up to Fun City to see the Colts play the Giants.

After the game, they all went to "21" or some other such hoity-toity Manhattan hot spot for dinner. They went in and saw a thin guy leaning up against the maître d's station, wearing a tuxedo and smoking a cigarette in that languid fashion so popular among the ultra-cool.

(In my mind's eye, I have always seen this character being portrayed by Joseph Campanella.)

So here they are, four Baltimore youngsters in the Big Town, looking for a Big Time, and the guys, having seen dozens of Adolphe Menjou films, know the surest way to get around a surly NY maître d' is to slip him a finsky. You know, a five-spot, a half a sawbuck. "My eyes start to blinkin' when I flash on some Lincoln," said Little Richard, and we can only pray that he was talking about the five-dollar bill, and not the 16^th president.

So my buddy's buddy buddies up to the tux and backhands him a folded-up fiver.

The guy looks at the bill, sneeringly, pockets it, draws deeply on his Winston and exhales both smoke and words that, even now, echo through the ages:

"I don't work here, you stooopid baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaastid!"

And that's the way it was.