One horse, Anees, in the 1990 Juvenile race their last race described in the Daily Racing Form as being "timed by a calendar." Man that's a slow horse. Until the gates popped open on the running of that year's Juvenile race and Anees won and was declared the 2 Year-Old Champion of the year. Time is relative.
Another favorite of mine for anchoring someone in an era was the Wall Street Journal's front page story in 1980 that asked the question if Ronald Reagan was too old to be running for president. After all, when he was born (1911) the flag flying over the courthouse in Tampico, Illinois had only 46 stars in it. And of course now, 1980, we have 50 stars in the flag. Man, he must be old. Good question.
It was such a well-poised question that I remember NBC's John Chancellor on the evening news echoing the story and asking the same question: is the candidate too old to be running for president?
And since Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, and my mother and her two brothers were born there, and my mother's oldest brother Howard (Cook) went to school with young Ronald and appears in the famous picture of the class from the one-room schoolhouse, that meant my uncle was born when that same flying flag had only 46 stars in it. (My mother came along in 1918, so she came under the nearly modern version of 48 stars.)
Ever since that WSJ story I've used something in time to associate with someone's life. Sometimes the flag. As for myself, I came around when the flag still had 48 stars. As a kid I remember writing to Ike suggesting how the flag's stars should be arranged now that we were at 49, and soon to be 50, (1959), Hawaii 5-0. I did get a response. I wish I still had it.
We had a history teacher in high school who was a legend. She was the first female to teach at Stuyvesant High School, and was the author of some history/civics books you can still order. She was born in 1907 and passed away in 2000. I know that because you can find her via Google and there is a plaque in the current school building on the floor where the history classrooms are. If Marjorie were born before November 16, 1907, then when she was born Oklahoma hadn't yet been admitted to the Union, and there were only 45 stars in the flag.
When the calendar flipped to 2001 and we were then accurately in the 21st century, the NYT noted that there was someone who passed away who was born in the 19th century. Thus, they straddled three centuries. a matter of timing and certainly a long life.
This lead me to start to think of those who I might have grown up who might have been born in 19th century. Easily my grandparents and their brothers and sisters, my great-Aunts and Uncles.
Barney Greene , the retired NYC police detective who would stop by the flower shop every day, take a seat, and just watch people go by was a 19th century person. Barney was always dressed in a three-piece suit, topped with a fedora. He still carried his .32-caliber service revolver hidden in the folds of his clothing. It was only visible when he can out of the bathroom without his jacket on.
His younger brother Eugene, and my father, apparently grew up together and played handball somewhere in an East Side school yard. Barney went so far back with the police department that he described the era when the cops had to sleep in the station house. I never knew the year Barney was born, but the flag could have had only 44 stars in it.
I don't think any of my high school teachers were born in the 19th century, but there was one chemistry teacher, Mt. Lieberman who was still at the school and who was one of my father's chemistry teachers. Surely he was born in the 19th century, retiring probably just as I was getting there.
Another measurement of longevity is how many presidents have you been alive for. Right now, I'm on my 13th president. I was too young to have a direct opinion of Harry Truman from sources other than history, but I can speak to what daily life was and is like under all the others. It's what I call the depth of memories. It comes in handy when there's an election.
I'm not the only one who thinks of the passage of time a bit abstractly. Bob Wolff, a legendary New York sportscaster, who broadcast games so long ago he did the play-by-play for Don Larsen's 1956 (and games before that) perfect World Series game (my father was there).
Bob Wolff was 96 when he passed away, and had worked as recently as 2017 for a Long Island cable news station.
There, in the third paragraph of Mr. Wolff's NYT obituary by Richard Goldstein is Bob's own perspective of how long he's been around and how long he's been associated with sports.
“If you added all the time up, I’ve spent about seven days of my life standing for the national anthem,” He probably did the math.
As any Ranger fan of a certain age should remember, Bob Wolff used to do their games from the Garden. Bob Wolff once called me up after I wrote him a letter that expanded on comments he made during a telecast about left and right-handed shots in hockey. Being left-handed myself I wrote that the hand closest to the blade determines the "handedness" of the shooter. Left handed people tend to hold the stick, even a broom or a shovel, with their dominant hand at the top.
When Wolff called my mother answered the phone and I remember Bob asking me if he first got my wife, and was he interrupting dinner. This was early 70s and I years way from being married and living anywhere else but home.
And the Rangers, as usual, were years and years away from winning the Stanley Cup, as they are again, 1940 and 1994. Anchors in time. Who were the presidents? Who will it be whenever they win the Cup again?
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