The Luna Park Gazette

Now it’s my turn to stand on the geezer line. So, there I was Union Station in Washington D.C. waiting to board the train to New York. I had shown up ridiculously early, as usual, and I was starting to get sick of the place. Finally, people started lining up outside one of the gates. Not wanting to board the wrong choo-choo and end up in Chattanooga—or Tierra del Fuego—I asked an Amtrak employee if this was indeed the train to the Big Apple. “Yes,” she said. “Are you over 65 years old?” I didn’t see the connection and I really didn’t appreciate the question. I have grown quite comfortable (delusional?) with people telling me (lying?) that I look much younger than I am. A guy told me this at the gym just the other day, damn it. Yet this woman had me pegged as an old timer in under five seconds and my ego was now a train wreck. “Uh, yes,” I muttered. “Well, then you can get on the express line.” She pointed beyond the curving cobra of humanity that was ready to bum rush...

I sure hope I got that salute right. I’m home now after a 5-day trip to Washington D.C. where I attended a meeting of the the 104th National Timberwolf Pups Associatin . The group is made up the sons, daughters, families, and friends of my father’s army unit, The Timberwolves, who fought in Europe during World War II. Let me say right up front that I had a blast. I met such wonderful people, heard fantastic stories, did some sightseeing around our nation’s capital—including a nighttime ride around town--and spoke with a 98-year-old veteran who had attended the conference. As usual, I hemmed and hawed about making the trip. It’s too much money, I have other projects to work on, I need to clean up my apartment—you know, the usual crap I put myself through. Well, I’m happy to report that I ignored all those irrational fears, booked a hotel room and Amtraked my butt down to Washington. And I’m so happy that I did. My dad’s unit, whose motto was “Nothing in Hell can stop The...

I always listen to the reading of the names. Today is September 11, some 22 years after the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. I was there on that day, part of a crowd that was standing across the street watching the North Tower burn, when the second plane slammed into the South Tower. My father turned 80 years old on 9/11 and the plan was for me and my sister to him to dinner after I got home from work. That was the plan. Instead, I spent that long, horrible day trying to get home after the subways were shut down and I joined a endless stream of people walking over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn while the towers burned behind us and fighter jets screamed overhead. If possible, I like to go there on each anniversary, stand on that same spot across the street, say a prayer for the victims and remind myself how lucky I was to have survived that day when thousands of others didn’t. I was there on the 20th anniversary, but that didn’t work out this year,...

How could he do such a thing? There’s this episode of The Fugitive that just cropped up in my mind a few days ago and it doesn’t seem to want to leave. It’s kind of an earworm variant. I don’t recall the title, and I’m not sure of the plot—I only saw it once—but I do remember the opening scene. Those of you in my age bracket will know The Fugitive , which ran from 1963 to 1967, and starred David Janssen as Richard Kimball, a doctor who is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to death. However, “fate moves its huge hand,” as narrator William Conrad tell us in the opening credits, when Kimball’s train to the death house derails and he escapes. Each episode sees Kimball working at menial jobs under fake names, trying to avoid the relentless Lt. Gerard, while searching for the one-armed man he saw fleeing his house on the night of the murder. I enjoy the show, particularly the earlier black and white episodes, and it’s great to the early work of actors, writ...

The text pinged into my phone early one evening. “Did we know each other before? ” Before? Before what? Are we talking about a particular time and place, or do you mean reincarnation? Maybe we fought side-by-side in the Punic Wars, or I was a carpenter and you were my lady. Or was it the other way around? It’s hard to say seeing as I don’t know who you are. “ I found the number in the phone book ,” the text continued, “ but there was no name, and I wasn’t sure we knew each other, so I messaged you. ” The phone book? Does this person really have an old-time hard copy phone book? I had one for years that I carried around in my wallet. It was a small, brown, and I was constantly crossing out outdated numbers. And I had far too many numbers without names. If I was interested in a woman, I held off on putting her number in my book as I figured this would be bad luck. I finally tossed the thing after the pages started falling out and cell phones came along and made the ...