Publishing Insider

music

Put on a Joe South LP I had bought in a record store, just to hear Games People Play. A song that still holds up over time. And the next song? Hush!! The Deep Purple song..that South wrote. I didn't know. What a treat!!!

clinking glasses and broken hearts, part 1

It is said that Wall Street runs on adrenaline and alcohol.

Every evening for decades, an army of suits and skirts has descended on noisy pubs serving beer and shots to elegant places featuring the finest wines, looking to continue or burn off the high of another frantic trading day.  Many continue to discuss work, looking for some inside track on the next day, but most just want to wind down, gossip, or simply delay their commute home.

In the Fifties, The Caboose was a landmark, conveniently located just a hundred steps from the Exchange. The interior was typical, narrow and deep, with a thirty foot mahogany bar down one side and wood-paneled walls sporting pictures of old steam-engine trains down the other.

The character and clientele of any successful bar is the reflection of the head bartender, and this was especially true of The Caboose. Dennis Donahue was a legend, known around the area as The Pope of Pine Street. Some also called him St. Dennis for the way he forgave the sinners and soothed the angels, and for pouring liberally.

And his patrons drank liberally. Stopping in for one drink before the train home often became an evening of loud talk about work, sports, sex, or all three. Some stayed until closing time, but anyone who complained that the last drink Dennis served the night before had done them in got this reply: “Don’t go blaming me! When you’re run over by a twenty car freight train, it’s not the caboose that kills you.” 

Dennis was Black-Irish; dark hair, blue eyes and a tall, lean body.  He had been born and bred in New York’s Hell's Kitchen, where the requirements for survival were the ability to think fast and use your fists. Dennis was a master of both, although he preferred to live by his wits. He started out in the business at the age of ten, sweeping out a local bar on Sunday mornings.  The first thing Dennis did when he bought the Caboose, after years of working at other places, was remove the black-and-white television set and the juke box.  "This is a drinking establishment. I don't want beer sippers in here distracted by baseball games or listening to goddamn music."  The next thing he did was remove all the measuring devices on the bottles.  "That's like asking Picasso to use paint-by-number canvases," Fast Freddy noted.  His practiced hand and eye could gauge the proper strength for a regular's first drink.  Some needed a stiff jolt to loosen up while others needed to be brought down from their day more carefully. 

More on Monday on the habitués of this establishment.

Clinking Glasses And Broken Hearts, Introduction

A menagerie of characters can be found in Bob Petersen’s Wall Street stories: A lady’s man and his unbelievable safe deposit box contents. The mysterious beauty who stopped Wall Street in her tracks. Investors relying on racing results or astrological signs.

Bob worked on the New York Stock Exchange back in the Fifties, and he’d regale his wife and friends with tales of the shenanigans he witnessed on the Exchange Floor or ones he heard about after work at his favorite bar, The Caboose. His wife, Marilyn, found them all typed up in his desk upon his death. She sent them to a literary agent but Marilyn passed away before they could be published, but Bob and Marilyn’s daughter has given me the approval to share them here.

Bob was no John Cheever, whose lyrical eye captured the sometimes desperate lives of Fifties businessmen in hats and topcoats.  No, Bob’s stories are more Everyman, and they are funnier than Cheever’s while still quite poignant, and like Cheever, he brings that time alive again for us now. I suspect much of what Bob recounted still goes on, with only the width of the tie and length of the skirt having changed, many times over.

These stories reflect the times and they are not politically correct. You may smile and cringe in equal measure, but the legends of the regulars at the Caboose live on in these, at times, tall tales. Whether to cement their bonds or exaggerate their deeds, the men and women of bar known as The Caboose shared these stories with each other, and Bob got them down on paper.

These stories are supposedly based on actual events. In recounting these tales, Bob would tell his wife and friends, “And it’s all true. It really happened that way.” Let’s see, shall we? The first story tomorrow.

Cody's rocks re Chabon

Check this out on Cody's site re Yiddish Policeman's Union!

i started to hyperventilate

From Shelf Awareness and the SF Chronicle:

Literary terror at 35,000 feet! Trapped on a 16-hour flight without a book, John Flinn shared his desperate search for alternative entertainment with readers of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The meager alternatives? "Pray this never happens to you," wrote Flinn, "but if it does, you might want to pass some of those eternities the way I eventually did on this flight . . . Commit your passport number to memory . . . Try to figure out what all the fuss is about Sudoku. . . . Concoct an elaborate revenge fantasy about the guy two rows ahead of you . . . the Skymall catalog, of course. . . . Turn to the route map in the back of the in-flight magazine and memorize the locations of all the "stan" countries of Central Asia. . . ." Etc.

are you woofin' me?

More Dogfessions are posted!

we are devo

Home sick for a few days, and watched too much bad tv. But did enjoy VH-1's the 80's and the eye-opening Devo version of Satisfaction!

BEAUTIFUL photos of books + libraries...really!

Ok, you're a book nerd, like me, right? This will make you purr: amazing library photos

dancing cupcakes

Wonderful literary items await you at the Olive Reader..and a dancing cupcake video?!

poetry heaven

From Shelf Awareness: Poetry Month treat of the day: Billy Collins reads animated versions of his poems, produced by JWT-NY, and including classic versions of "Man in Space" and  "Forgetfulness."