Fred Sanford and Mark Sanford: Compare/Contrast

1. Fred Sanford, star of the 70’s sitcom, “Sanford and Son,” was played by the black actor-comedian, Redd Foxx. Mark Sanford’s SLED code name is Phil Anderer.

2. Fred would feign heart attacks, calling out to his deceased wife, “I’m coming to join you, Elizabeth.” Mark actually gave several of his staffers heart attacks, when they discovered an email to his mistress proclaiming, “Fathers’ Day, Schmathers’ day, I’m coming to join you, Maria.”

3. Fred kept his junk in his yard. Mark kept his junk in his pants except during visits to Argentina.

4. Redd Foxx was known for his x-rated joke albums in the 50’s. Mark (“El Grande Marco”) became infamous for airing his ribald e. mails in the 21st century’s first decade.

5. Fred’s nemesis, “the evil and ugly” Aunt Esther, often made his life a living Hell, trying to keep him in line. Mark has Jennie.

6. Fred’s business could have benefitted from a stimulus package. Mark’s obviously overactive package didn’t need stimulating, it was later revealed.

7. Fred stayed at home. Mark discovered a new route from the Appalachian Trail to Argentina.

8. Fred was the show’s biggest alcohol drinker. Mark’s devoted followers were heavy imbibers of his homemade cool-ade.

9. Fred could often be a first class jerk. Mark is a jerk who always goes first class.

10. Fred had “soul,” but no mate. Mark has a soul mate, but no soul.

Heat-Seeking Cabbies: A Walk in New Yawk

I had seen this backdrop in thousands of movies and TV shows over a lifetime, and here I was right in the middle of it—live! My mild anxiety that I would somehow lose my equilibrium, not to mention significance, from the immensity of this greatest of all the megalopolises was immediately displaced with awe and excitement. My God, here I was at 55th Street and 7th Avenue, or just “55th and 7th” as they say it in the scripts. It sounded good to hear myself say it. I sounded like a New Yorker. Well, except for the accent, maybe.

My wife and I began to walk away from out hotel, The Wellington. It was one of those old ones, built in the ‘20s, with lots of musty charm and ancient radiator pipes that expanded in the cold December nights and made loud clanging sounds like frenzied “steel-drivin’ men” were whacking them with 20-pound sledgehammers.

As we continued our walk, I looked upward toward the enveloping concrete, steel, and glass monoliths occasionally interrupted by “NYPD Blue” sky and adjusted gradually to my agoraphobic ant status.

Panning earthward once more, I saw unrelenting hordes of people marching from one sidewalk to another, melding into one another like out of uniform drill teams. They all seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere, except for the ones, like myself, who gawked at the skyscrapers, and as they passed by, I sometimes detected smatterings of other languages. And although these people were not in uniform, I did slowly begin to realize that most all of them did wear black coats of one sort or another, which my wife finally informed me was the Color de Rigueur for New Yorkers in the winter.

The noise of the crowds is non-stop, but it’s frequently overwhelmed by what you could refer to as the “NY Soundtrack”: car horns, every now and then interrupted by a siren, twenty-four hours a day. And New York traffic is not at all similar to Charleston’s—or anywhere else for that matter—it’s 85% cabs, nearly filling the streets with yellow, with the remaining 15% being made up of white or black, block-long limousines, buses, trucks, emergency vehicles and an occasional regular car.

The horn-blowing goes on and on, and even though some people might be annoyed by it, most New Yorkers seem to just ignore it. But beyond thinking his was all funny as hell, I actually enjoyed being an extra in this stereotypical NYC movie scene.

Everybody’s in a hurry, especially the cabbies, and if one car takes too long, the exasperated one blasts him with his horn. Since there is perpetual traffic, we have, in essence, the horns of infinity.

Which reminds me that if I were a New York cabbie, I would nickname my cab “Captain Hornatio.”

Strangely, however, in my many visits to New York, I have never witnessed an incidence of driver violence. It’s my theory that the New York driver’s violent impulse is channeled into the non-violent outlet of horn-blowing. Therefore, instead of yelling, flipping off, or slinging lead at a person who displays faulty drivership, you just bear down on your horn and pretend it’s a machine gun, or that you’re releasing two jerk-seeking missiles from just under your headlights.

If I may digress briefly, I think an item that would really sell, not just there (though, actually, if you can sell it there, you can sell it anywhere), would be one of those triggered joysticks that you used to see in planes in old war movies, complete with the taped sound effects: “Die you stop-sign running Honda jockey, brat-tat-tat-tat!”

Despite New York’s size and its traffic, its streets are terrific places to walk. Most all of them (in Manhattan) are numbered, so even directionally retarded people, like myself, can’t get lost, and even if I still manage to, there’s always a cab or a bus.

You won’t ever get to know a city unless you walk it, and in the “Big Apple,” walking is an intensely emotional experience—at least for me—for as I walk and observe, my mind is full of images: Tennessee Williams typing away in his Chelsea hotel room, Jack Kerouac stumbling out of Birdland with Charlie Parker’s horn still wailing in his ears, John and Yoko emerging hand-in-hand from The Dakota.

I still have an as-yet-unfulfilled urge to walk through Central Park, carrying my thirty-year-old Scrabble set, meeting up with Tony Randall or Dick Cavett and challenging either to a game, with the loser having to treat the winner to a three-year drinking tour of New York bars (I’ve been practicing for three months—not scrabble, drinking).

I’d also like to bump into Woody Allen, who actually responded by letter to a story I sent him in 1968 (“Your story was very interesting and long”), hard enough to knock him onto the third rail for causing me the anguish of having to decide whether to continue to idolize him as a cinematic and literary genius or condemn him as a moral moron.

Unfortunately, I can only afford this Gotham ambulation about once a year, so in the meanwhile I will have to amuse myself with some downtown Charleston after hours strolling and perhaps, if I should bump into Jeff Schwaner, careening out of the Music Farm, I could challenge him to a game of Trivial Pursuit at Jack the Ripper’s. I understand that as a bona-fide senior citizen, I will be permitted to bring reference books.