PLUNGING INTO THE NEW YEAR

The WABC Top 100 of the Year, played exclusively from the day after Christmas to New Year’s, was the 100 songs you spent the last year cheering on, hating or tolerating just to hear what was going to come on the radio next.

I have a CD with parts of Bruce Morrow and Bob Lewis’ shows from New Year’s Eve 1967 and the fun is in how random the playlist is. There are no algorithms here based on time of day or demographics. Sometime after 1 a.m. Bob Lewis plays To Sir With Love (#1), The Happening (#19), Somebody to Love (#55) and Winchester Cathedral (#77). While counting down to midnight, Cousin Bruce played, in order, C’mon Marianne (#73), Sunday Will Never Be the Same (#56), Pleasant Valley Sunday (#34), Portrait of My Love (#96), Release Me (#63) and To Sir With Love (#1). (Admittedly those aren’t great stretches of music, but it gives you some idea of how sprawling the playlist was. And apparently WABC’s broadcasting license was at risk if they didn’t play the number one song at least once an hour.)

I played Top 100 bingo. On a sheet of paper numbered to 100, I filled in the blanks as I heard songs played during the week. You could get the top 20 pretty quickly, since they were played most often, but I don’t think I ever ended with a complete list; there were always a few elusive songs that only seemed to be played when my radio wasn’t on.

As somebody, somewhere in the tri-state area was taping WABC that night so it could be played back on a computer in 2017, my family was visiting our friends, the Kannars, for a New Year’s Eve party. That afternoon I watched Green Bay edge Dallas in the final seconds for the NFL championship, although today the storyline is more about the weather the game was played in. Forecasts in Green Bay called for highs in the 20s, but overnight the temperature dropped nearly 30 degrees, from 13 above to 16 below. Factor in blustery winds, and wind chill dropped to 36 below zero at kickoff. (BTW, not a good month for Wisconsin weather. On December 10, Otis Redding was killed when his plane tried to take off in a sudden, fierce storm in Madison, 135 miles away).

New Jersey was having its own weather problems that night. Listening to the news on the WABC tape, it was snowing or sleeting depending on where you lived. The roads, said the newscaster, were “extremely dangerous.” When we left the Kannars’ party well after midnight, there were several inches of snow on the ground and no plows in sight as our Nova fishtailed home.

A day of eating crackers, dip and pepperoni put me in the bathroom when we got home and I promptly clogged the drain trying to flush too much toilet paper. It was nearly 2 a.m., tomorrow was a holiday, we had no plunger and only one toilet. A phone call to the Kannars. Yes, they had a plunger. My father and I were back on the road, where the plows still hadn’t come through. He didn’t seem happy with me as we swerved through the neighborhood. And while the party was long over, it didn’t stop him and Mr. Kannar from having a nightcap, while I sheepishly held the plunger and hoped to God it would work.

Finally back home, I anxiously stood in the doorway of the bathroom as my father plunged, then hit the flush lever. In the earliest hours of 1968, the reassuring whoosh of water making its way down through the house was a sound that was, for me at least, already at #1 for the year. 

LIVING WITH THE GIANTS, PART TWO

A couple of more adds to the last blog on favorite Giants from the past 50 years.  

FRED DRYER: The anti-Giant. On a team loaded with southerners and guys who worked as stock brokers or insurance salesmen in the off season, Dryer was a southern Californian who spent his time away from New York living in a van parked on the beach. He was vocal about the slipshod ways of the Giants organization, wouldn’t conform to front office dictates about hair and dress codes, and criticized the Giants’ sainted patriarch Wellington Mara. Whatever I said out loud, in my heart I knew the Giants were wrong in their inability to overlook the sandals and sideburns, and in letting that overrule the fact that Dryer was an exciting talent they could build their defense around. They traded Dryer as far from the beach as they could in 1972 (exiling him to the Patriots, back then the Siberia of the NFL). He went on to the Rams, All-Pro recognition and Hollywood.

HARRY CARSON: I’m sitting in a lounge area off the Giants locker room, working up the nerve to walk in, corral some player and interview him. And then Harry Carson walks in, sits across from me and starts talking, and talking, and talking, about how a chiropractor was helping him deal with his midseason aches and pains, and about a television interview he was going to be doing with Jayne Kennedy, and God knows what else. I only had to ask him a question or two and my article wrote itself. Thanks, Harry. (He was a pretty great player as well).

TERRY JACKSON: Jackson was starting at cornerback as a rookie when he came into Dresher’s Office Supply, looking to have business cards made. I played it cool, didn’t make a big deal about who he was and certainly didn’t ask for an autograph. We designed the card and I had the printer add an image of the Giants’ helmet, which he liked. Jackson said he would send some other Giants over for cards, but it never happened. I should have asked what he intended to do with the cards. Maybe use them to introduce himself to the opposing team on Sunday afternoon?  

GEORGE YOUNG: The Giants’ general manager credited with building the championship teams of the eighties hosted a luncheon for NJ business executives on the weeks following Giant home games and my Uncle Nick would occasionally attend and invite me. Young’s public persona, built up through appearances on Mike and the Mad Dog, was that of a sort of football savant/curmudgeon. In person he was a big, rumpled guy, who seemed to sweat a lot, but he possessed a dry wit and the luncheons were usually pretty entertaining. During one Q&A, Uncle Nick asked Young if the Giants were interested in signing a local-boy linebacker named Rob McGovern, whom the Patriots had cut that morning. Young seemed taken aback by the question, and after the luncheon he made a beeline to our table. “Is McGovern really available?” he asked. And how did Uncle Nick know? (He was friends with McGovern’s parents). Leaving the luncheon, I wound up following Young’s car out of the parking lot. At a light I could see him wiping down his face with a towel, probably wondering how the backyard grapevine worked better than the NFL waiver wire.

BILL PARCELLS: Two scenes that stand out. One is the December 1990 game when Parcells checked himself out of the hospital that morning to coach despite being in obvious pain from a dislodged kidney stone. It was a cold day and he looked absolutely miserable, but it was one of those moments of truth, of setting an example for the team. They won a division title that afternoon and Parcells checked back into the hospital after the game. The second was a soundbite on a TV interview in late December 1986. The Giants were crushing opponents and the Super Bowl just felt inevitable. An interviewer asked Parcells about how he was celebrating the holiday and he responded, “Christmas? I hadn’t noticed.” Right on, Bill. Let lesser coaches worry about decorating trees and buying presents. Here was a guy who was obsessed with winning a title. And he was a Giant.