Bob and I had one more piece of business to attend to before leaving New Jersey and heading back into the state of New York, where, with one brief international exception, we’d be spending the rest of trip before driving back to my house. Naturally, that one piece of business on the morning of Saturday, June 1, 2013, was breakfast. We left our Howard Johnson hotel in Newark and headed to Jersey City for dining at the Brownstone Diner.
The joint had been featured on the Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives episode entitled Big Breakfast – and for good reason. The place smelled pleasingly of pancakes and that’s what nearly everyone in the place was eating. It’s always nice when the featured food is named after Guy Fieri and his visit, as it makes it easy to know what to try. The particular item I went with was called Guy Fieri’s Triple “D” Buffalo Chicken Pancake Wrap. And yes, it was as interesting as it sounds
It was made up of buffalo fried chicken, mozzarella cheese, roasted peppers & bleu cheese, wrapped in an oversized pancake – and then covered at will with pancake syrup. It was very tasty, but three was something odd about bleu cheese and pancake syrup that didn’t settle completely. I still enjoyed it in small doses, but ultimately there was no way I could finish it – mostly due to the massive size of it.
DD&D #65: Brownstone Diner in Jersey City, New Jersey
Buffalo chicken wrapped in pancake…mmm…hmmm?
Bob and I start the day of grave huntin’ with a rather large breakfast
Full of an odd assortment of food, we pressed on and headed back to New York, passing through the Holland Tunnel. It was fortunate that Bob had purchased the EZ Pass box to mount in the car, which was a one-price option for passing through the numerous tolls that we’d encounter.
A scenic drive through the Holland Tunnel
On the other side of the bridge, we found ourselves close to the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant – which you may recall we had tried to visit earlier in the week while it was closed. This was a nice unplanned surprise, as I was feeling conflicted as to whether I had ‘officially’ visited it or not since we couldn’t get in. We spent about ten minutes checking it out and getting photos and then we moved on. You can see more about Grant and this visit here.
Another go-around with Grant’s tomb
Grant’s grave was the start of a day that would be riddled with bodies…that is, graves. I’ve tried to explain my love/hate relationship with graves in the past, but it usually sounds hypocritical – because ultimately I’m happy that I have photos with most of the graves that I visit, and I go out of my way at times to visit graves even when I’m not with Bob. Still, when we spend basically the entire day in cemeteries it ultimately feels unfulfilling. If I had my druthers, they would be sprinkled throughout the road trip amidst other sites and activities. But – oh well – it is what it is. This was such a day.
Regardless of how I felt about grave hunting on this particular day, our first cemetery was a must-see for me as it housed not one, but two signers who happened to be half-brothers: one signed the Declaration of Independence and the other the United States Constitution. We arrived at St. Ann’s Church in The Bronx shortly before 11am.
There were pretty easily located monuments that had been put for both Lewis Morris (who signed the D.O.I) and Gouverneur Morris (who had both helped pen and signed the U.S. Constitution). It appearred though that their actual resting places were inside a crypt under the church. It was a bit of a spooky cemetery, overgrown, dark, and not in the best neighborhood. But those are the kind that I like.
The stone erected for Declaration of Independence signer Lewis Morris
The stone erected for United States Constitution signer Gouverneur Morris
Marker for Gouverneur Morris near the crypt where both he and his half-brother Lewis are interred
Entrance to the crypt below the church
It was around noon when Bob and I arrived at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. I can tell you that this one had me a bit bothered as the list of interments here was monumental, and I only cared about visiting maybe half of them. In order to not keep you in suspense, I will tell you that we were in this cemetery for no less than four hours. My friend Peter met up with us so that he could see Bob and I in ‘action’. But after an hour, he had to take off, following our visit to the grave of Smith & Dale. I’m not sure how much ‘action’ it really we really showed him…
Below are the photos with the graves that I took. Naturally, there were lots more that were on Bob’s want list – namely jazz percussionist Max Roach, railroad developer Jay Gould, business tycoon F.W. Woolworth, actress Antoinette Perry (whose name was lent to the ‘Tony’ Award), journalist Nellie Bly, and recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor for acts of service during the Civil War: John Darling Terr, John Henry Cook, Julius Langbein, and Theodore W. Greig.
Three fellas begin their quest
Bob and Peter at the grave of Miles Davis
With the grave of jazz legend Miles Davis
The grave of jazz legend Duke Ellington
Lionel Hampton too was into all that jazz
Composer and lyricist whose songs are still performed the world over…Irving Berlin
Vaudeville and screen comedy team Joe Smith and Charlie Dale. They starred in the film Two Tickets to Broadway, which had originally been slated to star Laurel and Hardy. Note the inscription “Booked Solid” under Smith’s name.
Novelist Herman Mellville, who penned Moby Dick and Typee
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Pulitzer Prize?
The debate rages on as to whether John Wayne grabbed his arm at the end of the searches solely as a tribute to silent western star Harry Carey… or if there was more than meets the eye, as I believe
Bob snaps a photo at the giant monument to F.W. Woolworth
Geraldine Fitzgerald, actress from such films Dark Victory and Wuthering Heights, for which she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress
The best known of early Broadway producers, George M. Cohan
Friend and business partner to George M. Cohan, Broadway producer Sam Harris was also portrayed (as was Cohan) in the film Yankee Doodle Dandy
Theater impresario and founder of many New York Opera houses, Oscar Hammerstein 1 was also the father of the famous composer of Rogers and Hammerstein fame
I already had visited the grave of P.T. Barnum, so getting his circus partner James Anthony Bailey was a natural
Composer Victor Herbert has a bit of a Laurel & Hardy connection since his operetta Babes in Toyland was reworked into the L&H movie of the same name
The name Bert Williams is largely forgotten today, but he was the first black American to take a lead role on Broadway. Having often worked with W.C. Fields on the Broadway stage, Fields referred to him as “the funniest man I ever saw”
Bat Masterson is a famous gunfighter and lawman from the old West, who was the namesake of a TV series based on him and was often a character in Western films
Blues composer W.C. Handy is often referred to as the “Father of the Blues”
Bob places a Medal of Honor flag at the grave of Majro Theodore W. Greig, recipient for her services during the Civil War
One of the most frustrating searches, but ultimately the coolest was for Bobby Clark – half of the comedy team of Clark & McCullough. Since I had already visited the grave of Paul McCullough (as seen here), there was no way I was giving this one up even though it eluded us for a full 30 minutes. It turned out that it was located not a stone’s throw from another vaudeville comedy team that had transitioned into early comedy: Smith & Dale, who (like Olsen & Johnson) were buried together. And sadly, all of the above mentioned are largely forgotten today.
Bobby Clark, the fella whose glasses were painted on his face, was half of the unjustly forgotten comedy team Clark & McCullough
The proximity of the graves of Smith & Dale and Bobby Clark
We left the cemetery at around 4:30 and headed to a location that I was absolutely ecstatic to see: the house that was seen in the lead-in of every episode of of the classic TV sitcom All in the Family. The house itself was always a bit of an enigma, as it is clearly a duplex, while studio shots of the porch clearly indicate that the house is supposed to be a full residence. No matter, it was really cool to see even though the pastel colors and the location (across the street from a cemetery!) made it hard to believe that this was the same house.
The house on Cooper Avenue as seen in the lead-in of All in the Family
The duplex today
The Meathead returns
This was the highpoint of the day for me
As Bob and I drove away reveling in our find, I got a text from Peter that it had just been announced that Jean Stapleton had passed away. She had actually died the day before, lest I be accused of being the ‘kiss of death’ – but of course we didn’t know that during our visit. It was quite the coincidence, and it made the death of James Gandolfini not too terribly long after our visit to The Sopranos house the day before even more, shall we say, interesting.
With all of the graves and deaths that had surrounded us all day long, it was now time to eat. It should come as no surprise that we were shooting for as many DD&D restaruants as we could, so we headed on over to The Sparrow Tavern in the Astoria section of New York City, which had been featured on the episode Bar Food and Bon Bons.
I had to rely on the waiter to tell me what had been featured on the show, and I wound up with the Bifteki Burger. The description sounded pretty good: grilled beef patty stuffed with manouri cheese and mint, topped with tzatakik and tomato on baguette. Unfortunately it didn’t translate to anything all that spectacular. I think the coldness of the burger combined with the hardness of the baguette made this spot rank pretty low on my DD&D totem pole.
DD&D #66: The Sparrow Tavern in Astoria, New York
The Bifteki Burger, sounding and looking a bit better than it was
Relaxing at the Sparrow with my pal after a long day of grave huntin’
From there, there wasn’t much to do but head to the LaGuardia airport area in Flushing. We found a nice Holiday Inn Express where we crashed for the night. In the morning my beloved Carolyn would be arriving. I had missed her gigantically over the past week and I was looking forward to her joining our little adventure.
The New York road trip will continue, as Carolyn makes three…
My time in the Woodlawn Cemetery with both of you really showed me you two in action — thank you.
Peter
September 20th, 2013