Two Friends (and a Bicycle Thief)

My father, John Theofanis Sr., wrote this story about his friend Bill Shanahan. It goes as follows:

Dear Bill,
What you did for me many years ago when we were adolescents stayed with me and never left. Your aunt bought you a new beautiful Roll Fast bicycle and you said, John we have to get you one too. We were very poor in those days and I could not afford one. But you said John I know a shop that sells used bicycles cheap. It is a long way but I will ride you there on my bicycle. He rode me to the store for a hundred blocks. The owner said I can sell you one for three dollars. I was thrilled and still cannot remember how I raised the three bucks. We rode back to Washington Heights together. That bike enabled me to get a job in a laundry delivering washed clothes. A few months later someone stole the bike and I lost the job. I wen to the local police station and told the detective my sad story. He said here is my card. If you see the person who took your bike call me. What I shall remember forever Bill is you thinking of me even when you got your new bicycle. That is the meaning of true friendship.
You friend,
John

The bicycle story took place in 1942 when Bill and John were 16 years old. I asked my father for a few more details:

Bill lived across the street from John on 177th Street in Washington Heights, near the top of Manhattan. Bill's aunt was a well-to-do buyer for a department star and she gave him the bicycle. Bill got John up on the handle bars of the new bike and together they rode about 100 blocks to Germantown, a neighborhood "in the Eighties," meaning around 80th St., where they found the used bike for John, the one that cost three dollars. They both rode back uptown to Washington Heights.

The bike enabled my father to get a job with a laundry. In those days people sent their clothes to the laundry to be washed, but not necessarily dried. My father carried the wet laundry back to the customers on his bicycle-- well until that bike was stolen and he lost the job. The detective gave my father his card and said "Call me if you see anybody with your bike." John said he didn't even have a telephone.

Bill Shanahan tried to volunteer for the Navy when he was 17 years old. He was rejected for poor eyesight. He registered for the draft falsely, lied about his age, and was drafted into the Army. Bill was part of the invasion of Normandy Beach and died there around July 4, 1944-- just two years after the bicycle story. John and Bea visited Bill Shanahan's grave site in France many years later. The Normandy graves are well-tended and organized and French officials escorted John and Bea to the exact grave marker for Bill Shanahan.

I always enjoyed hearing my father tell this story when I was kid and am I'm glad he got his True Friends story down on paper.

Three Movies and a TV Show

Involved myself in several cinematic experiences-- four non-fiction studies-- Philippe Petit (Man On Wire) a documentary on the the tightrope walker who traversed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, Albert Einstein (Nova biography), Esther Berg (Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg), a documentary on the creator a very early TV sitcom, and Michael Moore's film (Capitalism: A Love Story), his musings on the economic meltdown. The tightrope worker and Einstein bio were taken in at home and the last two at the Arbor Theater.

You could say the first three were studies of individual genius at its best-- and the last effort portrayed large scale behavior of the worst kind.

Petit is a weird combination of physical dexterity combined with a poetic sort of concentration, the unique talent of a man who goes through life without a net. The image of Petit on the wire between two towers-- be it the World Trade Center, Notre Dame, or the bridge in Sydney, Australia adds a kind of magic, a weirdly, unifying visual perspective, tying together the architecture, the human history and the daily life going on just below the structures.

Einstein thought "outside the box" before the term existed, a scientist of prodigious ability and the sense of commitment to follow his ideas relentlessly until the truth of his hypothesis was revealed.

Esther Berg was a writing and performing wunderkind, actually creating a Jewish household for mass media consumption, at a time when there was great prejudice against Jews.

The meltdown of the American economy, on the other hand, is a story of wildness-- wild rumor, panicked borrowing and lending, large scale manipulation on a scale never seen before. I felt Moore made things a bit too facile. You had good-hearted workers on one side and mean capitalists in their pinstriped suits on the other. He likes to polemicize and make things entertaining but this may have been less successful than earlier efforts. I appreciate his taking on the topic and found myself moved to tears at times, though that is not always an endorsement as I can be moved to tears by a well-executed American Express ad. I didn't think his dichotomy-- a choice between democracy versus capitalism made complete sense.

The movies were fun!