StoryCorps 512: American Talkers Part 2

[MUSIC IN]

Michael Garofalo (MG): Last week, we kicked off a podcast series in which we look back at a long-running radio series produced by StoryCorps founder Dave Isay.

It’s called “The American Talkers” and it ran on NPR in the 1990s and early 2000s and American Talkers were these classic American storytellers speaking of their lives in their own words—a format that would help inspire the way we do things here at StoryCorps.

In part two of our series—stories from a place known for fast-talking, wise-cracking, and an accent all its own: New York.

Reggie Jones (RJ): Arnie, where’s my hot dog?

Weegee: I used to sleep in Bryant Park, not too long ago.

Joe Caracciolo (JC): So what do I look like? Gary Carter with the Mets?

MG: This is the StoryCorps podcast from NPR. I’m Michael Garofalo, and I’ll be joined by Dave Isay to get a little bit of the history behind these pieces of public radio history. That’s coming up, right after this short break.

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MG: Welcome back to the second episode our three-part series revisiting the American Talkers radio stories produced by StoryCorps founder Dave Isay and Sound Portraits Productions.

Now, let’s go back to my recent conversation with Dave.

MG: So, Dave, in this episode, we are doing just New York stories. And you explained last time about your partnership with Steve Zeitlin City Lore, and I think that’s how this next story came to you.

Dave Isay (DI): Yeah, almost all of the American Talkers were scouted by Steve and his team at City Lore. And this is one of them. and this is one of them. It’s a guy named Reggie, although it’s spelled reggie jones. Reggie jones who had been a lifeguard on Jones Beach since 1944, and he was still a lifeguard at the time

REGGIE JONES: I started lifeguarding in 1944, and I loved every minute of it. Fortunately, I was a Depression baby, and I knew what work was, and when I got a job out on the beach sitting on the sand, I said, ”Valhalla, I have arrived!”

[MUSIC IN – “Under the Boardwalk” by The Drifters]

There must have been 120,130 guys trying out for this job lifeguarding. I didn’t know how many jobs they were going to have, but at any rate, I started going through training down there. In those days, they didn’t just give one test. You had to go down and go through three or four weeks training—and you didn’t get paid. After a period of time, about two weeks or so, half of the guys dropped off, but I wanted the job so bad I stuck right with it.

Finally, after another couple of weeks, there were about seventy of us left, and the old captain, Hank Daly, with a big barrel chest, stood upon the bench, and he said, ”We’re going to take ten huskies.” We all looked at each other and nearly died. I says, ”Only ten of us, after all this . . . this labor camp we’ve been in? We’re getting ten?” And he started to read off the names of the guys. I’ll never forget it—Tommy McCormick, Moe Marrage, Billy Davoe—and with each name my heart dropped. I said ”Oh, no, no.” And finally number nine, my old buddy, Artie Wink. And I said ”Oh, gee, no.” And finally number ten, ’Reggie Jones.’ I thought I won the Olympics. I said, ”Yes, yes! There is a god!”

Artie Wink was a young fella that I went to high school with. It was my second year on the job. It was World War II and Artie and myself, we knew we would have to go into the service as soon as we turned eighteen. Well, that summer I was sitting on 2-West with Artie—that’s a stand that was two west of the west bathhouse. Artie got off the stand to go back for lunch and I said, ”Artie, will you bring me back a Jones Beach hotdog?” You know, I was getting hungry. And he said ”Okay, Jonesy,” and he went off. Well, somehow he never came back to that particular stand, and in a day or two, into the service he went.

Well, I lost track of Artie, and I often wondered what happened with good old Artie that went into the service. Forty years later, I’m sitting on 2-West, the exact same stand that Artie got off of. I look down, and—lo and behold—walking by in front of me was Artie Wink. Now, you understand, this is forty years later, and somehow I recognized him. He had come back to settle his mother’s estate and he was with his twenty-five-year old daughter, and he was pointing out to her where he worked as a young man. When I looked down and saw him I said ”Artie, Artie Wink! Where’s my hotdog? I’m sitting up here for forty years; where have you been?” Well, you ever see a guy take a double take? This was a triple take. ”Jonesy!” he said. He literally gasped for air. He said, ”I can’t believe it! You’re still here?” I said, ”Where do you want me to go? I’m getting hungry!”

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MG: That was Reggie Jones, lifeguard.

So, Dave, tell us about the next story.

DI: When you told me you were doing this episode, I think I requested that you put this one in. This is Miguel Algarín who is one of the founders of the Nuyorican poetry movement in the U.S., and he is remembering Mikey Piñero, who is a poet and who had also written the book ”Short Eyes,” which I read before doing this interview, which is about his time spent in prison. And this is Miguel Algarín telling the story of Mikey Piñero’s funeral procession.

MG: And he actually recites a poem in the pieces that was written by Piñero. It’s the instructions for the funeral.

DI: I hadn’t heard that poem before and I completely fell in love with it. I have a terrible memory, but I memorized the poem. And at the time, I lived in the East Village on the Lower East Side, and I used to run through the Lower East Side, kind of, in my head reciting the poem to myself, and I love the way that Miguel Algarín reads it. You can almost hear Mikey Piñero reading it with the same tonality.

Miguel Algarín performing poem:
Just once before I die,
I want to climb up on a
tenement sky
to dream my lungs out ’till
I cry
then scatter my ashes through
the Lower East Side.

(Drumming fades in.)

So let me sing my song tonight
let me feel out of sight…

Miguel Algarín (MA): We began walking, spreading the ashes, and a lot of people came into the streets and joined. The procession was from Houston to 14th on D and from 14th to Houston on C, and so forth, until second and then we came back. But towards the projects, women—old women would fall to their knees and take the ashes and make the sign of the cross.

Poem:
A thief, a junkie I’ve been…

MA: To see the junkies bow their heads and almost bare their freshly wounded vein, you know, to the ashes. There is a very famous Puerto Rican singer who’s strung out, and he was on the street that day, and he broke down and cried. And when I spread some ashes, he threw himself on top of the ashes and wept into the sidewalk. And absolutely nobody disturbed him.

Poem:
This concrete tomb is my home…

MA: I took care that every detail in the poem was taken care of.

Poem:
I don’t want to be buried in Puerto Rico…

MA: That he didn’t land up in Puerto Rico like his family might have wished, but that he landed up in the asphalt and concrete and beer can roses at the Lower East Side.

Poem:
So please when I die
don’t take me far away
keep me nearby.
Take my ashes and scatter them throughout the Lower East Side.

(Drumming fades out.)

MG: Something that we’ve done a lot of at StoryCorps is remembering people who have died in the 9/11 attacks. Actually, you started doing that before StoryCorps even happened, back in 2001, with a firefighter.

DI: You know, some people think that StoryCorps started because of September 11th, which it actually didn’t. Although our first big initiative with StoryCorps was with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum to give everyone who lost a loved one the chance to remember the person who had been lost. I was going to work on September 11, 2001 and Harvey Wang who we talked about in the last episode, who is a photographer that I worked with for many years, was best friends with a guy named Bill Feehan. And Bill Feehan’s dad, whose name is William Feehan, was the highest-ranking person in the fire department who died on September 11th. He was the only person who ever served in every single position in the fire department. He was a legend in the fire department. It was said he knew the location of every single fire hydrant in the five boroughs of New York. And on September 11th, Harvey called and said that he had done an interview with Bill’s dad. He came to the office which was just above where the barricades were, that you couldn’t get below, and we started editing it. And we put it together for Chief Feehan’s funeral, and then it went on the the F-D-N-Y’s website as their official 9/11 Memorial.

[MUSIC IN – “Ashokan Farewell” by Jay Ungar, Evan Stover, Matt Glaser, Molly Mason, Russ Barenberg]

WILLIAM FEEHAN (WF): In any given year the New York City Fire Department responds to more working fires than the fire departments of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia combined.

The whole department exists for one reason. The whole department exists simply to serve the people of the city. And I know everybody hears those kinds of things and it sounds pretty corny, it sounds a little of hackneyed, perhaps, but that’s the reason this department exists. Now, the thing that sets the firefighter apart is that it’s he or she who, when the bell sounds, has to go and be ready at any moment to go in harm’s way and to do whatever is necessary to help the person who called them.

My father came into the department in 1926, I think, and I was born in ’29. My father retired before I came into the department. I came into the department in ’59. He retired in ’58.

There is a, maybe not a firehouse culture, but a fire-department culture, and it’s a very special culture. When you have a department whose men and women are expected to be ready at any moment to put their life on the line, to go to the aid of a stranger, even when it means that you may put yourself in dire peril, I don’t think you can pay people to do that job. There has to be something beyond money that makes them do that.

This department is rich in tradition. It’s rich in history. We have a memorial day, where we go up to the firemen’s monument on 100th Street, and we honor all those firefighters who died in the last year, either in the line of duty or from natural causes. But we have this every single year. You know, we’ve had 127 years of paid fire department in New York City, and in that 127 years, we have lost 752 people. That’s an awfully large number. And I don’t think that anybody who understands this business and understands this department—I mean, I think we all have the same wish: that that’s the last, that there’ll never be another. But I know, I know as sure as I’m sitting here, that no matter what we do, no matter how well we train, no matter how good our equipment is, no matter how hard we try, no matter– no matter what, there’ll be a 753rd.

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MG: So, I always thought that there was a relationship between the radio that we make here at StoryCorps and the radio that you made with Sound Portraits and photography and documentary photography, like you said you worked with Harvey and there’s just something–

DI: –I never thought of that, but yeah, I agree–

MG: This next piece is actually an archival interview with one of New York’s greatest photographers.

DI: You know I’ve always loved documentary photography. In some ways, I guess I’ve been influenced by photographers more than almost any other profession, even though Harvey says I have a wooden eye. Like, I’m totally not a visual person at all. But Weegee was one of the photographers that was an influence because of the immediacy and the way that the pictures are kind of like an adrenaline shot right to the heart, which is kind of like what we are trying to do with the audio also.

You know, Weegee was one of those photographers, and I think this interview was from a radio broadcast?

MG: Yeah, it was on W-E-A-F in New York.

DI: And somehow it ended up in the Library of Congress and because I was a big Weegee fan, I found it interesting, and we ended up making it a part of the archival American Talkers series.

MG: And in our next episode we will feature more of those archival interviews, but now here is Weegee.

ANNOUNCER: It’s one o’clock, and here transcribed is Mary Margaret McBride.

MARY MARGARET MCBRIDE: Who’s always been madly in love with New York City, but maybe Weegee, I’m not quite as much in love with it as you are. The way everybody talks about you and this book, this beautiful book that you’ve done, I think maybe you not only love it better than I do, but you know it a doggone sight better than I do. You’ve been studying it how long?

WEEGEE: Well, all my life, down on all the streets, I know ’em all because I drive all night long. I know every block, every sign-post, every cop, every beggar, every . . . everything

MCBRIDE: Weegee, you must have another name and even I don’t know what it is.

WEEGEE: Well, let me see now. Oh yeah, my name, my real name, is Arthur Fellig, but nobody knows me by that. It’s Weegee.

MCBRIDE: I must tell you about Weegee — that’s a funny name, isn’t? W-E-E-G-E-E. He got it, I’m told, because somebody said ”That guy acts as if he were propelled by a Ouija board.” Is that what they said?

WEEGEE: Oh yeah, I was named right after the Ouija board.

MCBRIDE: But they spell it differently?

WEEGEE: Well I used to spell it O-U-I-J-A, but I changed it to W-E-E-G-E-E to make it easier for the fan mail, which I sometimes get.

MCBRIDE: Well, the reason they said he was like a Ouija board, it is because he’s psychic, he can pick up crime where there are no indications at the moment. He’ll just go to a spot, and there’s a feeling inside him. Isn’t that it, Weegee?

WEEGEE: That’s right. I can sense it. I hover around a neighborhood knowing something is gonna happen.

MCBRIDE: You don’t know what exactly?

WEEGEE: No—I can’t—I don’t know what, but I’m all ready with my camera, just in case.

MCBRIDE: I know in “Naked City,” that picture of a man just sitting on the curb. You took that and then suddenly he gets up to walk across the street and an automobile knocks him down and he’s killed right there before your eyes, and your camera records the whole thing.

WEEGEE: Yeah, it was a very sad thing, I mean, sometimes. I cry, I mean, but I can’t help it. I figure it’s my job to record these things, the same like the cops and ambulance driver arrive on a scene, I’m there too. Incidentally, if I arrive at the fire after the fire engines do, I feel disgraced and hurt.

MCBRIDE: Remember the time you were in Chinatown and you insisted on taking the picture of a hydrant and everyone thought you were a little crazy?

WEEGEE: –Oh yeah, let me tell you about that. It was two o’clock in the morning. I had nothing to do, so I went down to Chinatown, right in the heart of Chinatown. I aimed my camera and the two cops looked at me and they hollered over from across the street, ”Why waste the film on us?” Well you won’t believe this when I tell you: the whole street blew up the fire started because the gas main caught fire.

MCBRIDE: And you don’t know what led you to go there?

WEEGEE: No, I just had nothing to do. It was just a nice morning. It had been too quiet I mean, or something.

MCBRIDE: Did you ever hear of anything so fascinating? And wait ’til I tell you– I understand that in this book, there’s a picture of a park bench that you yourself have slept on.

WEEGEE: That’s right. I used to sleep in Bryant Park not so many years ago. That was in the summertime of course, at 6 o’clock in the morning. A cop would come around and hit the sole of your shoe with his club. I’d get up and go looking for a job. I always loved photography but I couldn’t get no work. That was during the days of the Depression and so forth and I started hanging around police headquarters at the teletype desk and took pictures. I had no business there, because you’re supposed to have police card or press card, but I did it two years on my nerve, then after I got a little bit known the editors of the different newspapers that I sold my pictures to helped me get a press card.

MCBRIDE: I understand the police tailors make zipper pockets so your pockets won’t be picked.

WEEGEE: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Listen, you can see it right here. This is no gag. I’ve got zippers in every pocket, also in a couple of secret pockets because around police headquarters, first thing you know, your cigars are gone, my drivers license may be gone, I take no chances.

MCBRIDE: I should think when you are taking pictures, you’re oblivious. You don’t really know what else is going.

WEEGEE: Oh absolutely not. I just look through the wire- finder in my camera and as a matter of fact, when I really see the picture is when I’ve developed the film. Then I really see what I’ve have done. I really seem to be in a trance when I am taking the picture because there is so much drama taking place or will take place. I mean, you just can’t hide it. I’ll go around wearing rose-colored glasses. In other words, we have beauty and we have ugliness. Everybody likes beauty, but there’s an ugliness. When people look at these pictures of people sleeping on the fire escapes, and kids and little girls holding cats, they just won’t believe a thing like that has happened.

MCBRIDE: You are going to love “Naked City,” published, by the way, by Dual Sloan and Pierce under their essential books title.

WEEGEE: That’s right.

MCBRIDE: And it’s worth every nickel you’ll pay for it because some of the pictures are unlike anything you’ve ever seen. I have never seen photography like some of this. It’s beautiful, it’s sad, its funny.

WEEGEE: Don’t forget it’s human.

MCBRIDE: Human, that’s the word.

WEEGEE: It’s the people of New York exactly as I and others have seen it.

MG: Legendary photographer, Weegee, interviewed on the radio in 1945 right after the publication of his book, “Naked City.”

Before we go, one last talker.

Joe Caracciolo (JC): They say there’s 8 million stories in the naked city and about 7 million of them happen on the railroad.

MG: Joe Caracciolo was a longtime New York City subway employee. His own favorite subway story happened in 1989 on the C train. Someone pulled the emergency break. Joe went to see what was happening, and found a very pregnant person in the first car of the train.

JC: I hear, “Oh my god! Help me!” I go over to her, and I says, “What’s the matter?” She says,  ”I’m having a baby.” I says ”Nah, you’re not having a baby.” Everything is fine, take it easy. I kneel down in front of her, she’s holding my hand. I say everything is going to be fine, and then she gets a pain. and she starts beating me up. I mean, pounding into my chest.

Now, I have no idea what I’m doing I’m ad-lib-ing everything. I said what’s your name she said my name is Kathy. I says don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Everything will be all right. She says, OK the baby is coming. I say, “It’s not coming. It’s not coming, and, all of a sudden, I turn around and I don’t know where –to this day, I still don’t know where this lady came from—I see a Black Jamaican woman, beautiful woman, pretty. She comes over and says to me, ”You got something to catch the baby, man?” Catch the baby? I says, “What do I look like? Gary Carter with the Mets? What do you mean catch the baby?”

She says you need something white. So, I had a white polo shirt on. I take my shirt. I say, “Is this good enough?” She says, “Yeah.” I take my shirt off and I’m standing there and everything just flew out. It was like catching a football.

And I grabbed the baby, and I smack him on his little hiney, and now the whole train –that side, because we were on the last car– somebody yells out, “It’s a boy!” And They’re hugging, kissing. It was unbelievable. It was like peace in the world. I mean, we were on the United Nations train. I mean, there was everybody there—Chineses, Blacks, whites, Puerto Rican—everybody is kissing and hugging. Everybody loved each other for ten minutes.

I give her the baby. I put the baby on Kathy. I says, “Congratulations! You have a baby boy.” I said, “Why don’t you name him Charles for the C train. He was born on the C train. She says, “No, what’s your name?” I says, “My name is Joe.” She says, “Joe or Joseph?” Joseph. She says my baby boy is named Joseph because I never would have done this without you.

That’s when I realized i delivered a baby, and my knees buckeled.

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MG: Joe Caracciolo in New York City.

That’s it for this episode. We will be back for our final installment of the American Talkers series next week with an episode full of archival recordings from the Library of Congress.

Until then, visit us at StoryCorps.org. Rate or review the show wherever you download it and leave a message for someone you hear on the show at 301-744-TALK. That’s 301-744-T A L K.

The StoryCorps podcast is produced by Elisheba Ittoop and me. I’m Michael Garofalo. Thanks for listening.

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