I often wonder what happened in Harry's life, that he feels it is necessary
to fabricate a Walter Mitty's life for himself. I think James Thurber did a
much better job:
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
by James Thurber




"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking.
He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled
down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling
for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said
the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going
through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased:
ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice
forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated
dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!"
repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the
Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their
various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at
each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one
another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you
driving so fast for?"

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him,
with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange
woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she
said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to
fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring
of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading
in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said
Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you
over."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went
to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my
hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her
mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting
out of the car. "You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a
little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter
Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but
after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a
red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as
the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.
He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the
hospital on his way to the parking lot.

. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty
nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the
case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr.
Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew
over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He
looked distraught and haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the
devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal
friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd
take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington,
Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book on
streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A brilliant
performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in
the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing
Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A
huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes
and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new
anesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no one in the
East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool
voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going
pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of
glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a
fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the
pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with
the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw
the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you
would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of
Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great
specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he
adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the
brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty
closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the
lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll
put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh,"
said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the
car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street;
they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off,
outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had
had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning
garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have
the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a
sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling and
they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the
slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking
for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under
his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had
told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their
house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town--he was
always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades?
No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and
referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the
what's-its- name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the
what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury
trial.

. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney
suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand.
"Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it
expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz
ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot
with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney,
insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that
the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his
right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty
raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. "With any
known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst
at three hundred feet with my left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the
courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely,
dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at
her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on
the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings
of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A
woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to her
companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried
on. He went into an A. & P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one
farther up the street. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said
to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in the
world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said
Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes' Mitty
saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes
they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first, she
would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather
chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy
biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank
down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" Walter
Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said
the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him
to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll fly alone." "But you can't,
sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle that bomber
and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is
between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump,"
said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the
sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and
battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through
the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. 'The box
barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant,"
said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another
brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man could hold his brandy like you,
sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up
and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers
through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy.
"After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon
increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere
came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter
Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He
turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . . .

Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel for
you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did
you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said Walter Mitty vaguely.
"What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name? The puppy
biscuit? What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have
put them on in the store?" 'I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it
ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm
going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive
whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot.
At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot
something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty
lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up
against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back
and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Waker Mitty
scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away.
Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the
firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the
Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

"John H" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 23:16:06 -0400, "Yes, it's me"
wrote:

Harry,
Did you take all those union bosses on your Lobster Boat and then have you
Dr. Dr. wife prepare dinner for all of them.

Harry it is so funny watching you try to impress people.


"harry.krause" wrote in message
...
Don White wrote:
Tuuk wrote:

"'""Konservative."'''''


krause I say because of Dumacrates like you the country's economic lie
on your two card carrying union fat ass. You can blame bush all you
want
krause the real problem is loser like you who claim they know Jimmy
Coffa personally,, lol,,, krause you lying old fool,,,



Harry .....did you know Jimmy Coffa too??? Wasn't he a delivery boy
for
local restaurants?


Yeah, he delivered sushi until the Thai Mafia rubbed him out.

I actually was introduced to Jimmy Hoffa once when I lived in Detroit.
It
was no big deal; it was at some dinner. I was doing consulting work for
the UAW back then, and the autoworkers were about a year away from
finalizing a short-lived "merger" with the Teamsters. Not long after
that,
Hoffa ended up going to the slammer.

I've known a number of Teamster presidents. I knew Roy Williams in
Kansas
City before he became general president of the Teamsters. Williams was
one
of KC's "colorful" characters (in reality, he was pretty bland
personally.
Some years later, Jackie Presser called me to do the ads for a campaign
the IBT was running in California. This was when Presser was on the
board
of the IBT, running "communications," but before he became IBT
president.
I've met the current IBT President, James Hoffa, a few times because of
my
union work. I like him. He is straight and honest.

The craftiest "union boss" I ever met, though, was Peter Fosco, who died
in 1975. I met him a couple of years before that. He was a charming old
man, and one of the last living business partners of Al Capone. He had
some great stories to tell, and I loved to listen to him. Once I went to
see him at the Laborers Union headquarters. When I got off the elevator,
two 6'6" "escorts" walked me from the elevator to his office. I also
knew
his son Angelo Fosco, who took over as Laborers president. He hired me
as
a consultant to help retain representational rights for one of ths
postal
unions that was affiliated with the Laborers. I managed to do that and
avoided a rep election altogether. This was in the late 1970s.

Interestingly, most of these old "mob" guys were pikers compared to
today's Enron-type corporate criminal/thieves, and not one of them ever
sent as many Americans to their deaths as George W. Bush has.

I grew up in a colorful era, and in a colorful part of the country. One
of
my first serious girlfriends was the niece or great-niece of Frank
Costello. When I was about 15, her family took me along on a vacation to
Florida. We stayed at a hotel near Ft. Lauderdale that Costello owned.
If
I had married her, I would have gone into the family's restaurant supply
and plumbing businesses!

While in college, I was close friends with a visiting professor from
Ohio
whose girlfriend at the time was the niece of Albert Anastasio. She also
worked as a bunny at the Playboy Club in KC. She had two college
degrees,
too.

Life seems so bland these days, eh?

Wow. What a worldly individual. This almost makes me wish I'd gone out on
the
Parker with Harry, just so I could sit back and listen to some of these
great
adventures of his. Imagine spending a day anchored somewhere, or drifting,
just
sitting back, taking in the sunshine, letting the breeze blow across your
sweaty
brow, and all the while listening to Harry tell one story after another
about
his adventures, the boats he's owned, the world leaders with whom he's
wined and
dined, the degrees his wife has accumulated, his experiences with his
Holiness,
the Dalai Lama, his trips around Cape Horn, and on and on.

Damn. I kick myself daily for missing out on all that!
--
John H

"All decisions are the result of binary thinking."

Lot's of similarities there, but I don't think Harry smokes.


On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:06:43 -0400, "Yes, it's me"
wrote:

I often wonder what happened in Harry's life, that he feels it is necessary
to fabricate a Walter Mitty's life for himself. I think James Thurber did a
much better job:
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
by James Thurber




"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking.
He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled
down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling
for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said
the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going
through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased:
ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice
forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated
dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!"
repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the
Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their
various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at
each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one
another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you
driving so fast for?"

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him,
with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange
woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she
said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to
fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring
of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading
in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said
Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you
over."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went
to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my
hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her
mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting
out of the car. "You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a
little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter
Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but
after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a
red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as
the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.
He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the
hospital on his way to the parking lot.

. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty
nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the
case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr.
Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew
over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He
looked distraught and haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the
devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal
friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd
take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington,
Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book on
streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A brilliant
performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in
the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing
Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A
huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes
and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new
anesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no one in the
East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool
voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going
pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of
glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a
fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the
pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with
the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw
the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you
would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of
Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great
specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he
adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the
brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty
closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the
lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll
put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh,"
said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the
car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street;
they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off,
outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had
had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning
garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have
the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a
sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling and
they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the
slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking
for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under
his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had
told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their
house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town--he was
always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades?
No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and
referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the
what's-its- name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the
what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury
trial.

. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney
suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand.
"Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it
expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz
ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot
with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney,
insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that
the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his
right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty
raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. "With any
known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst
at three hundred feet with my left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the
courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely,
dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at
her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on
the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings
of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A
woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to her
companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried
on. He went into an A. & P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one
farther up the street. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said
to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in the
world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said
Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes' Mitty
saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes
they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first, she
would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather
chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy
biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank
down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" Walter
Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said
the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him
to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll fly alone." "But you can't,
sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle that bomber
and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is
between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump,"
said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the
sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and
battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through
the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. 'The box
barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant,"
said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another
brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man could hold his brandy like you,
sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up
and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers
through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy.
"After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon
increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere
came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter
Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He
turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . . .

Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel for
you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did
you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said Walter Mitty vaguely.
"What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name? The puppy
biscuit? What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have
put them on in the store?" 'I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it
ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm
going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive
whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot.
At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot
something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty
lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up
against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back
and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Waker Mitty
scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away.
Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the
firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the
Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

"John H" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 23:16:06 -0400, "Yes, it's me"
wrote:

Harry,
Did you take all those union bosses on your Lobster Boat and then have you
Dr. Dr. wife prepare dinner for all of them.

Harry it is so funny watching you try to impress people.


"harry.krause" wrote in message
...
Don White wrote:
Tuuk wrote:

"'""Konservative."'''''


krause I say because of Dumacrates like you the country's economic lie
on your two card carrying union fat ass. You can blame bush all you
want
krause the real problem is loser like you who claim they know Jimmy
Coffa personally,, lol,,, krause you lying old fool,,,



Harry .....did you know Jimmy Coffa too??? Wasn't he a delivery boy
for
local restaurants?


Yeah, he delivered sushi until the Thai Mafia rubbed him out.

I actually was introduced to Jimmy Hoffa once when I lived in Detroit.
It
was no big deal; it was at some dinner. I was doing consulting work for
the UAW back then, and the autoworkers were about a year away from
finalizing a short-lived "merger" with the Teamsters. Not long after
that,
Hoffa ended up going to the slammer.

I've known a number of Teamster presidents. I knew Roy Williams in
Kansas
City before he became general president of the Teamsters. Williams was
one
of KC's "colorful" characters (in reality, he was pretty bland
personally.
Some years later, Jackie Presser called me to do the ads for a campaign
the IBT was running in California. This was when Presser was on the
board
of the IBT, running "communications," but before he became IBT
president.
I've met the current IBT President, James Hoffa, a few times because of
my
union work. I like him. He is straight and honest.

The craftiest "union boss" I ever met, though, was Peter Fosco, who died
in 1975. I met him a couple of years before that. He was a charming old
man, and one of the last living business partners of Al Capone. He had
some great stories to tell, and I loved to listen to him. Once I went to
see him at the Laborers Union headquarters. When I got off the elevator,
two 6'6" "escorts" walked me from the elevator to his office. I also
knew
his son Angelo Fosco, who took over as Laborers president. He hired me
as
a consultant to help retain representational rights for one of ths
postal
unions that was affiliated with the Laborers. I managed to do that and
avoided a rep election altogether. This was in the late 1970s.

Interestingly, most of these old "mob" guys were pikers compared to
today's Enron-type corporate criminal/thieves, and not one of them ever
sent as many Americans to their deaths as George W. Bush has.

I grew up in a colorful era, and in a colorful part of the country. One
of
my first serious girlfriends was the niece or great-niece of Frank
Costello. When I was about 15, her family took me along on a vacation to
Florida. We stayed at a hotel near Ft. Lauderdale that Costello owned.
If
I had married her, I would have gone into the family's restaurant supply
and plumbing businesses!

While in college, I was close friends with a visiting professor from
Ohio
whose girlfriend at the time was the niece of Albert Anastasio. She also
worked as a bunny at the Playboy Club in KC. She had two college
degrees,
too.

Life seems so bland these days, eh?

Wow. What a worldly individual. This almost makes me wish I'd gone out on
the
Parker with Harry, just so I could sit back and listen to some of these
great
adventures of his. Imagine spending a day anchored somewhere, or drifting,
just
sitting back, taking in the sunshine, letting the breeze blow across your
sweaty
brow, and all the while listening to Harry tell one story after another
about
his adventures, the boats he's owned, the world leaders with whom he's
wined and
dined, the degrees his wife has accumulated, his experiences with his
Holiness,
the Dalai Lama, his trips around Cape Horn, and on and on.

Damn. I kick myself daily for missing out on all that!
--
John H

"All decisions are the result of binary thinking."


--
John H

"All decisions are the result of binary thinking."

John H wrote:

Wow. What a worldly individual. This almost makes me wish I'd gone out on the
Parker with Harry, just so I could sit back and listen to some of these great
adventures of his. Imagine spending a day anchored somewhere, or drifting, just
sitting back, taking in the sunshine, letting the breeze blow across your sweaty
brow, and all the while listening to Harry tell one story after another about
his adventures, the boats he's owned, the world leaders with whom he's wined and
dined, the degrees his wife has accumulated, his experiences with his Holiness,
the Dalai Lama, his trips around Cape Horn, and on and on.

Damn. I kick myself daily for missing out on all that!


Well...if you play your cards right, you might get a 2nd chance.

Don,
JohnH could pay him $40,000 to see his Lobster Boat.

That would buy one heck of a lot of gas.



"Don White" wrote in message
...
John H wrote:

Wow. What a worldly individual. This almost makes me wish I'd gone out on
the
Parker with Harry, just so I could sit back and listen to some of these
great
adventures of his. Imagine spending a day anchored somewhere, or
drifting, just
sitting back, taking in the sunshine, letting the breeze blow across your
sweaty
brow, and all the while listening to Harry tell one story after another
about
his adventures, the boats he's owned, the world leaders with whom he's
wined and
dined, the degrees his wife has accumulated, his experiences with his
Holiness,
the Dalai Lama, his trips around Cape Horn, and on and on.

Damn. I kick myself daily for missing out on all that!


Well...if you play your cards right, you might get a 2nd chance.

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 15:13:13 GMT, Don White wrote:

John H wrote:

Wow. What a worldly individual. This almost makes me wish I'd gone out on the
Parker with Harry, just so I could sit back and listen to some of these great
adventures of his. Imagine spending a day anchored somewhere, or drifting, just
sitting back, taking in the sunshine, letting the breeze blow across your sweaty
brow, and all the while listening to Harry tell one story after another about
his adventures, the boats he's owned, the world leaders with whom he's wined and
dined, the degrees his wife has accumulated, his experiences with his Holiness,
the Dalai Lama, his trips around Cape Horn, and on and on.

Damn. I kick myself daily for missing out on all that!


Well...if you play your cards right, you might get a 2nd chance.

If offered, Don, I'll sell the opportunity to you. You might benefit more from
the personal exposure.
--
John H

"All decisions are the result of binary thinking."