Thursday, November 08, 2012

For people my age… Do you remember Jimmy Cannon’s wonderful occasional column in the NYPost? “Nobody asked me but…”? Richard Watts Jr. wrote an occasional similar amusing column. Remember the NYPost sportswriter who wrote an article in mock-Indian whenever that great pitcher, Allie Reynolds, won another game for the Yankees? (DiMaggio had been asked what pitcher the Yanks should buy. His answer: Reynolds.) Remember listening to Baby Snooks on the radio? The great Fanny Brice. I tnink Frank Morgan (the Wizard himself) was also on that program. What was the program’s name? Remember listening to the Lone Ranger on the radio…and waiting to hear the thrilling Lone Ranger overture? (The William Tell overture.) Toscanini loved to listen, too. (He also liked watching wrestling bouts.) Remember the rumors that Uncle Don had said, “That should hold the little bastards” on the radio when he thought his program had ended? (Probably not true. Do you think that that fact-checking site would write about that?) How about ads for that movie with Jane (Boom Boom) Russell? The Outlaw. (Never saw it.) Do you remember the movie lines several blocks long when you went to see Bambi? Pride of the Yankees? Do you remember movie houses offering THREE movies? (My brother Roger and I saw three pleasant Westerns at the Alvin Theatre in North Bergen, then decided to see them again. But we finally got tired and left…and met our mother on our way home. She’d gotten worried. Do you remember all the movie theaters of our youth? It’s fun to recall all their names. The Temple, the Colony, the Rivoli and Rialto… Do you remember when Cardinals pitcher Murray Dickson no-hit the Yankees in an exhibition game? I was so unhappy, I had to get out of my house. Remember coal bins? We lost a cat in a coal bin. Didn’t find the body until the winter was over and all the coal had been burned…