Chapter 165

From a Friend of J & G

The hit-and-run victim was just getting to his feet when a policeman ran up to help.

“My mother-in-law just tried to run me over!” the shaken man told the cop.

“The car hit you from behind “ the officer said. “How could you tell it was your mother-in-law?”

“I recognised her laugh!”

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas. When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied “Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.”

You’ve all heard of the Air Force’s ultra-high-security, super-secret base in Nevada, known simply as ‘Area 51’?

Well, late one afternoon, the Air Force folks out at Area 51 were very surprised to see a Cessna landing at their ‘secret’ base. They immediately impounded the aircraft and hauled the pilot into an interrogation room.

The pilot’s story was that he took off from Vegas, got lost, and spotted the base just as he was about to run out of fuel. The Air Force started a full FBI background check on the pilot and held him overnight during the investigation.

By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really was lost and wasn’t a spy. They gassed up his airplane, gave him a terrifying ‘you-did-not-see-a-base!’ briefing, complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison, told him Vegas was that-a-way on such-and-such a heading, and sent him on his way.

The day after that though, to the total disbelief of the Air Force, the same Cessna showed up again. Once again, the MP’s surrounded the plane ... only this time there were two people in the plane.

The same pilot jumped out and said “Do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane and you have to tell her where I was last night!”

Ira Kaplan, hadn’t returned to the old neighbourhood since he went off to fight in Vietnam.

During a business trip to New York he visits his old neighbourhood on Kotler Avenue in the Bronx.

Everything has changed over the years.

Where once there was Edelstein’s Delicatessen, there is now a McDonald’s; where Fleischman’s Dry Cleaning used to be, a Korean nail salon and spa now is; where Ginsberg’s Department Store was, there is now a Gap.