The Mariners Harbor Messiah

by Todd Daley

  As customary in crowded bars, the music grew louder and louder as the hour grew later. Joanie and Tom just sat on their stools, looking into each other’s eyes and holding hands. They had attained that level where conversation was not needed. As Joanie stroked Tom’s face, she began to cry. Tom asked her why she was crying.

  “I’m so sorry for leaving you. You were devastated when you found out. I never really liked Indiana. They made fun of my New York accent.”

  “Well, you do talk funny.”

  “You’ve become such a wiseass, Tom. Quick with the put-downs.”

  “When you teach high school kids, a sharp tongue is a necessity.”

  “It was just as hard for me as for you. My parents really liked you. They said you were the all-American boy, delivering newspapers every morning before school on your rickety red bicycle.”

  Tom started to say something, when suddenly Jake Gardello appeared next to them. Tom was stunned and didn’t know what to say to Joanie’s cousin. Apparently, he was there to take Joanie home. Kissing Tom good-bye, she said that she would be in touch with him soon.

  “Is your phone number the same?” she asked.

  “Yes. Same phone number, same address. Nothing has changed.”

  “That’s what I love about you, Tom. You live in the same place, wear the same clothes, and you’re just as nice as ever.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” he replied, causing Joanie to smile radiantly.

  Tom felt that he could travel the one hundred or more countries scattered across the seven continents of the world and never meet another woman like Joanie. Her beautiful brown eyes, full red lips, wavy black hair, flawless tawny complexion, voluptuous figure, graceful movement, and sweet demeanor had always captivated the skinny teacher. Alcohol, music, loneliness, and sentimentality added to his feelings for his high school sweetheart.

  Such is the halo effect of the beloved upon the lover. Adjectives for such a state of mind range from dumbstruck to moonstruck, from spellbound to love smitten, from captivated to enchanted. Love is an all-or-nothing state of mind; one cannot be partially in love. Tom stumbled out of Kaffman’s, greeting the mild night air with a loud “Whoopee” and a big leap, touching the ten-foot-high neon sign for the first time in his life.

  CHAPTER 71

  Messiah Attacked

  At the end of a busy teaching day at Curtis, Tom got a notice from the main office to call Mary, Amon’s girlfriend in Mariners Harbor. She had just arrived home from her teaching job at St. Mary’s to find him lying on a couch in his Victorian boardinghouse. He was badly bruised and battered, with some missing teeth, as a result of a beating administered by several thugs.

  Rushing over to the refurbished Victorian house in his old gray Pontiac, Tom wondered about Amon’s recent propensity to get into fisticuffs. Instead of turning the other cheek, the charismatic young man was prone to behave recklessly, rather than prudently, to achieve worthwhile goals. The goodwill built up in recent years from positive press reports was being squandered by his rash behavior. In addition, his faith healing, keen sensitivity, prophetic ability, and prodigious energy were waning. Indeed, Amon appeared to have aged noticeably in the past several months.

  Entering the small, dingy bedroom, Tom saw Mary tending to Amon, who was shifting restlessly on a narrow cot under some torn, faded blankets.

  “How are you doing?” Tom inquired, taking in the run-down state of the Victorian boardinghouse.

  “I’ve been better. I’m afraid I bit off more than I could chew today,” the young man replied in a slurred manner.

  “You look like they worked you over pretty good.”

  “Well, you should see what my attackers look like. It ain’t pretty.” Gone were the rudiments of his western accent. Amon now spoke in the fast, clipped New York vernacular.

  “Amon gave as much as he got. But he was outnumbered three to one,” Mary asserted grimly.

  She went on to explain that Amon had rescued a young girl from prostitution in Port Richmond. As expected, her pimp took offense and paid him a “friendly visit” with two allies, for the purpose of teaching Amon a lesson.

  “Amon, why didn’t you call the police about that situation? It’s their job to handle things like prostitution and drug dealing,” Tom replied.

  “That’s exactly what I told him myself. This isn’t the Wild West, where you can be a lone-wolf vigilante, rescuing the damsel in distress,” Mary said in an exasperated tone.

  “There’s so much bullshit going on in the world. Sometimes you just have to take a stand and let the chips fall where they may.”

  “There are injustices in the world you just have to accept. We can’t right the wrongs of the world in one day. Progress is incremental,” Tom asserted.

  “That doesn’t sound like you, the son of a Marxist,” Amon retorted.

  “My mom is an armchair Marxist. Her greatest joys are working as bookkeeper for the Royal Canadian Bank, reading the Staten Island Advocate, going to Great Books, and attending off-Broadway shows in the city.”

  “The point is I’m running out of time, and I must do what I can before my time is over,” Amon declared.

  “He keeps talking that way about dying, which upsets me so much,” Mary whispered to Tom.

  “What are you talking about? You’re a young man with your whole life ahead of you,” Tom said, in spite of his fears that his friend was in danger. It seemed that America had a way of knocking off its mavericks—social and political.

  As they left Amon’s room, Mary indicated that the city was getting ready to seize Amon’s tugboat as part of their renewal project on the Kill Van Kull waterfront. “They’ve already cleared the old ships and rusty hulks from the harbor. Notices to vacate have been placed on the tugboat, and the utility wires, which Amon himself put up, have been torn down.”

  On the following Saturday, Tom helped Mary cart their furniture, clothes, books, old newspapers, and other possessions to the Victorian boardinghouse on Simonson Avenue. He recalled his first meeting with Amon when he was connecting the electricity wires from the tugboat to the utility pole—a dangerous job in which Amon had received an electric shock, throwing him to the soft, rotted wharf below without injury.

  Tom was in awe of the strapping young man, whose concern for the poor and the downtrodden was Christlike. With the city’s help, Amon eventually converted the ramshackle twelve-room Victorian house into a much-needed shelter for down-and-out alcoholics, ex–drug addicts, the homeless, and other lost souls of Staten Island’s North Shore. His gifts of faith healing, surreal sensitivity to events of the past, heroic efforts in saving others in danger, plus his exceptional kindness and generosity earned him the pseudonym of Mariners Harbor Messiah—given by the local newspapers. But recently, the tide of public opinion had turned against Amon, with even the Staten Island Advocate publishing an article critical of the “so-called Messiah with his half-cocked vigilante actions and his run-down boardinghouse filled with ne’er-do-wells, misfits, drunks, drug addicts, and jailbirds.”

  CHAPTER 72

  Age of Aquarius

  Claire Haley had pointed out the article to Tom one Saturday morning as mother and son chitchatted over second cups of coffee. “What’s happening to your friend? The paper’s chastising him for taking on the local pimps and drug pushers. Of course, if the police did their jobs instead of hanging out in diners, getting their free coffee and doughnuts, the Island would be a lot safer.”

  “Mom, you’re so cynical. The cops enforce the law, but they can’t be everywhere at the same time. Einstein said that for event A to cause event B, they have to be separate points in the space–time continuum.”

  “You know what, McGee? You should have been a lawyer, because you could convince a jury that the moon is made out of chopped liver,” she retorted.

  “By the way, remember Larry Adamo?”

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p; “Of course, I remember that skunk. He was messing around with your sister back in high school,” she replied angrily.

  “Mom, he was very nice to her. Much nicer than the guy she’s married to right now—Phil, the sanitation engineer. Anyway, I heard Larry’s become a cop.”

  “Well, anybody can become a cop. And anyone can become president, like that crook Richard Nixon,” she snapped with disgust.

  “Actually, Mr. Nixon is in Red China, talking to Mao Tse Tung. You know Chairman Mao—the guy who said that war can only be abolished through war. And in order to get rid of guns, you have to take up a gun.”

  “The Red Chinese are crazier than those redneck Southerners, barring the schools from little Negro girls in pigtails,” she snorted.

  “Gee, Mom. You’re putting down the Red Chinese. You must be getting smarter in your old age.”

  “I’ve been smart enough to work and put food on the table all these years. With you going through a big pullman loaf every week, just about eating me out of house and home.”

  “Did you hear that California Governor Reagan said he was cutting welfare by sending the welfare queens back to work?”

  “That no-talent movie actor never did an honest day’s work in his life. Though he does look good in a business suit,” Claire replied, rustling her newspaper.

  “Anyway, I’m worried about Amon. He doesn’t seem like the same sensible guy. Now he’s become a vigilante, hell-bent on saving the world from itself.”

  “I’m sure he’s made some enemies in high places. But don’t believe everything you read in the papers, especially the Staten Island Advocate. By the way, I see that Al Shanker has gotten a raise for the teachers. Maybe I should increase your monthly board.”

  “Mom, as you just said, don’t trust that scandal sheet. Anyway, I gotta get to that front hedge,” Tom replied, gulping his coffee and getting ready to leave the kitchen.

  Years ago, the Advocate ran a front-page story about Thomas Haley’s nephew robbing a liquor store and leaving the bag of money at their white stucco house, complete with names and the address. It resulted in many months of ribbing from the neighborhood kids before the incident was forgotten. “Jailbird” is an epithet that’s not funny when you’re on the receiving end.

  “Incidentally, I met Joanie last night at Kaffman’s. It was great to see her after a year and a half. She had been very ill at St. Vincent’s Hospital, whom Amon helped by just touching her forehead.”

  “I thought she had married someone in Indiana,” his mom said, putting her newspaper down and staring at her son in amazement.

  “It’s the Age of Aquarius. Things like that don’t matter anymore,” he replied, getting up before she could query him about his old girlfriend. “I have to trim the hedge from hell before it reaches the roof.”

  Shrugging her shoulders, Claire Haley went back to her newspaper. “I never liked that Catholic school teacher—Martha, holier-than-thou hypocrite,” she said out loud, looking out the kitchen window.

  As usual, Mr. Caprino was puttering around in his flower garden. “Now that’s a good man—straight-shooting, hardworking, and sober. Not like Thomas Haley, the Elm Park boozer. Yet I miss the son of a bitch,” Claire intoned sadly.

  Albert Shanker

  Albert Shanker was president of the New York City public school teachers’ union, called the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) from 1964 to 1985. Shanker then moved on to head the national teachers’ union, known as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1974 to 1987. While growing up, he remembered listening to Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, hoping to emulate them with regard to their roles in shaping history. As it turned out, Albert Shanker played a big role in the development of teachers’ unions—fighting for salary increases, better working conditions, and a greater role in shaping the teaching profession.

  Albert Shanker was born in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Russian Jewish parents, who immigrated from Eastern Europe during the 1920s. Later on, his family moved to Long Island City, in the borough of Queens. Shanker’s father delivered newspapers, and his mother worked long hours in a sewing factory. The poor working conditions, seventy-hour workweek, and meager wages motivated the young Albert Shanker to think about labor unions as a force to improve the lives of workers in all fields of endeavor. As a boy, Shanker was an avid reader of newspapers and history. He admired such American icons as Franklin Roosevelt, Senator Robert Wagner, lawyer Clarence Darrow, and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin.

  Albert Shanker graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, where he headed the debate team. Moving on to the University of Chicago, Shanker was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He was active in campus politics, including picketing segregated restaurants and movie theaters in Illinois. In 1949, Albert Shanker graduated from college and enrolled in Columbia University to work on his master’s degree. After obtaining his master’s degree from Columbia, Shanker began teaching mathematics full-time in an East Harlem public high school in 1952, remaining there until 1960.

  In the late 1950s, Albert Shanker began working as a union organizer, helping to form the Teacher’s Guild, which was originally founded by American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey in 1917. In time, the Teacher’s Guild merged with a high school teachers’ association to form the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in 1960. During the 1960s, Shanker got national attention plus considerable criticism for his aggressive union tactics and tough bargaining stance. But his strong bargaining paid off in sizable salary increases for underpaid New York City teachers. Like the transit union’s Mike Quill, Albert Shanker went toe-to-toe with New York Mayor John Lindsay in lengthy teachers’ strikes during the late 1960s. As with the legendary Mr. Quill, Shanker served a jail sentence for leading his teachers in a strike that lasted several weeks. By the late 1960s, Albert Shanker had left his teaching post to become a full-time union organizer.

  With respect to union philosophy, Albert Shanker believed that teachers must share common goals, as well as common tactics. As with all unions—industrial and professional—unity of purpose was essential for survival. In addition to fighting for better teacher pay, Shanker opposed the decentralization of New York City schools into community districts, where local politicians would run things. Consequently, the UFT went out on strike, effectively closing the schools for five weeks. In 1975, Albert Shanker held a five-day strike, which was settled by a pay freeze and the investment of $150 million from the Teachers’ Retirement System in municipal bonds. In return, the city canceled the fines assessed on the UFT for the strike.

  During the Vietnam War, Albert Shanker and other labor union leaders affiliated with the AFL-CIO refused to speak out against the unpopular war. There was extensive criticism of Shanker’s position from peace advocates of that era. With regard to charter schools, Shanker opposed them because they were largely run by for-profit businesses and were advancing the concept of school privatization. He believed that charter schools would eventually siphon off scarce resources destined for public schools. In the early 1980s, Shanker spoke out against President Ronald Reagan’s desertification of the air traffic controllers’ union as a result of their strike. President Reagan’s actions had a profound chilling effect on the labor movement throughout the nation in subsequent years.

  A lifelong supporter of public schools, Albert Shanker felt that the schools hold our nation together, bringing children of different races, languages, religions, and cultures together. Our schools “give children a common language and a common purpose.” He likened spending public money on private schools to spending public money on private pools. There was a quote attributed to Shanker: “When school children start paying union dues that’s when I’ll start representing them.” However, union researchers have never found evidence of that quote’s authenticity. Indeed, Shanker felt the duty of a union to preserve public e
ducation is as essential as its duty to negotiate a good teachers’ contract. After his death, Albert Shanker was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

  CHAPTER 73

  Playing for Fun

  “Oh, not again! I’m totally off my game,” Joanie exclaimed after throwing her second gutter ball in a row. Though the ball ran afoul, she threw with the same effortless grace that Tom remembered from years ago.

  “It’s all right. You’re just a little bit rusty,” Tom said, suppressing a smile.

  They were bowling at Gooley’s run-down alley, where Richmond Avenue intersected the Terrace a few hundred feet from the murky Kill Van Kull. He wasn’t doing particularly well himself. Unlike his former girlfriend Martha, Joanie was not competitive, immersing herself in the sheer joy of whatever activity in which she engaged. This noncompetitiveness was a trait shared by Tom, himself, whose approach to sports was to have fun. The obsession with winning at all costs—inherent in organized sports—did not appeal to him.

  Tom recalled a ping-pong game he had played with Martha when they were dating. It was a close hard-fought game when Martha smashed a shot that Tom somehow returned with equal velocity. The ball landed squarely on her left boob, causing the skinny teacher to giggle. This infuriated the tall husky woman, who threw her paddle at him. Unlike his barroom fights when he was an easy target for tough guys like Wayne O’ Toole, Tom managed to duck, avoiding the hurtling paddle.