Life Sketches by Terry Berkson Thor Dackin, A portrait The current attack on Ukraine reminds me of Russia’s invasion of Hungary back in 1956 and an army buddy who had been a product of the Hungarian Revolution. His name was Thor Dackin. His family upon fleeing Hungary and entering America, settled in Philadelphia. The first time I saw him was in June of ‘65 on the troop train that was carrying us and several hundred other guys down to Fort…
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Column by Terry Berkson A Miller’s Knot Bumped into Buster Whipple several summers ago at Joe’s Pizzeria downtown. He was up from Florida to attend his grandchild’s graduation. We hashed over old times, among them, days I used to work with him on his family’s farm. We were doing hay the year I was eighteen and headed for Brooklyn College in the fall. “You’re a good worker now,” Buster had said as I threw a bale onto the wagon. “But…
Column by Terry Berkson BEAR! There was an orientation video playing while Alice and I were signing in for a cabin in California’s Sequoia National Park. It gave a lot of information about bears. The narrator warned not to leave any food in your car. Then they showed a bear ripping off a station wagon’s door to get at the goodies some careless visitors had left behind. It was impressive how agile this lumbering animal was. I noticed that Alice…
Sunset Stolen: Key West By Terry Berkson After a visit with relatives in central Florida, my wife, Alice, and I headed all the way down to Key West to see one of those famous sunsets. The last 100 miles on the causeway were like flying low in a turquoise sky. We arrived in the late afternoon, paid through the nose for a room and headed over to Mallory Square to watch the sun go down. There was quite a crowd…
Add a chicken in a cherry tree! Life Sketches by Terry Berkson Late one afternoon several Christmases ago at the height of a driving snowstorm, I left my typewriter and looked out the kitchen window. There was a large bird roosting in our cherry tree. It wasn’t a crow or a pigeon or a morning dove. I knew those Brooklyn birds well. This was something much bigger. The tree stood at the back of the yard against the fence, which…
Life sketches by Terry Berkson: Too stuck up for Thanksgiving Several years ago, two friends from Richfield, Tiger Goodale and Rootie Marriot, came up the drive with what they thought was a good story for me to write. They had been in the Genesee, one of the local watering holes, when this guy came in and told how he or some other one-legged man — they didn’t make it clear — was up in a tree, building a stand for…
Life Sketches by Terry Berskon Peckulating Chickens The hens I finally found in late spring last year were now laying prolifically. I was feeding them mash but they were scattering it around the coop and yard so I switched to pellets that for the most part stay in the feed pail. Good egg production continued but I noticed that feathers were missing from the necks, breasts and rear ends of some of the birds. It wasn’t Romeo the rooster. He…
Life Sketches by Terry Berskon Remembering a Corvette summer, lifestyle Back around 1960, I religiously watched the television show “Route 66.” A fine formula: two guys traveling across the country, meeting all kinds of people, trying to leave things in better shape than they found them before moving on. Martin Milner was the collegiate type; George Maharis was streetwise and a little crusty. Their Corvette, not the most practical car to go cross-country in, was a symbol of freedom and…
Life Sketches by Terry Berskon Watching old western reminds me of shootout on Angel Hill I watched the movie “Shane” the other night and the shootout at the end brought back memories of a local shootout that used to take place every year in the middle of August: “Hold it,” Teddy Dziadik Jr. said quietly as he shouldered his shotgun. Chuckie Crist let his hand drop to his side. Dziadik swept his gun across the horizon several times. Then he…
Life Sketches by Terry Berkson Cultural differences can be bridged with care In December 1965, I and 1,400 other soldiers set sail from Brooklyn on the USS Darby, the last troop ship ferrying our soldiers over to Germany. After that, the military used planes and an eight-day voyage was reduced to an eight-hour flight. During the frigid crossing, there was little to do and we were shown a lot of frivolous movies. Looking back I see this would have been…
