Pier Pressure

Some of the fun of reading the Wall Street Journal is realizing when they're cute.

Take the book review headline from Wednesday. It says Pier Pressure. It is of course about the waterfront, On the Irish Waterfront, by James T. Fisher.

It sounds like a book that already repeats what we know a lot of, but it still sounds interesting. There's plenty that may not be familiar. The Pier Pressure is of course a pun on the code of silence, or never being a "rat." It lasted a while.

And what better timing for the book to emerge. The Waterfront Commission itself has lately been in the news, and not in a good way. It seems they became practioners of what they were put in place to remedy. Great stuff.

Karl Malden, who played the crusading priest Rev. John Corrigan, has just passed away. The screenwriter, Budd Schulberg, has also recently passed away. Turner Movie Classics goes into overdrive when someone like Malden leaves us, breaking the schedule and showing his films. On the Waterfront is an all-time classic. I know I re-watched it when it was just on again.

I remember Rod Steiger, who of course played one of the most famous passengers in a cab ever, telling the story that there was trouble trying to get the movie started. Trucks kept rolling through the shots they were attempting to film in Hoboken. "A trluck came by, then another trluck came by, we couldn't get anyting done." He further explains a call to Frank Costello seemed to work magic, and the next day there no "trlucks."

The book review is by Edward T. O'Donnell, who has written about other waterfront events. He correctly points out what becomes true about all things good and bad--they come to an end. The advent of containerized cargo quickly began to put an end to all that era was about.

Several years ago a New York Times reporter, Anthony DePalma, wrote a terrific story about the Hoboken waterfront he knew growing up. His exposure to it was through his father, who had been a longshoreman for nearly 40 years. It's a lovely piece and appeared in the Sunday Times February 21, 1988. It hardly seems dated.

While Mr. DePalma discloses he never spent a day working on the docks himself, he does know a lot because of his father, his grandfather, and three uncles. He lovingly describes the work ethic of his father who wasn't one of "those guys."

Things go missing on the docks. Everyone knows that. Containerized cargo was the reaction to the labor costs, time and pilferage that took place. Mr. DePalma re-tells a story he heard about the near old days before containerized cargo when an Italian shoe manufacturer would get so tired of losing portions of his shipment that he decided to send thousands of shoes over, but just the lefts.

The rights followed on another ship.

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