This happened in the early 80s, when the United States government had issued some kind of form that was supposed to be easy to understand - except that the general public was baffled by it.
New York Post City Editor Al Ellenberg told me to write a story about it - but first, he wanted to see the form for himself.
“Give me that thing everybody’s complaining about,” he growled, an unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lips. At this time Al was crowding fifty, and living a somewhat complicated life, which is to say he’d show up at work each day with a suitcase.
“Okay,” he said, taking pen in hand. “Let’s see - name, Albert Ellenberg. Address…”
He stopped writing, tossed the form aside. “They’re right! I’m stumped!”
And the rewrite bank exploded in laughter, as we so often did with Al at the helm.
I always considered Al a triple threat, because he was a Jewish man who looked Italian and could drink like an Irishman.
If that last sentence offends you, well, too bad. As I said up top, this was the eighties, long before the Politically Correct Police stormed the castle.
And Al, who has died at age 84, would not have been offended by that description. Hell, he used to call me “Goombah,” and I loved it.
He was brilliant, he was funny, and my God, what an editor. He had a way of making you solve a problem by yourself, and once you did that, you could do it for the rest of your career.
“You’re a good teacher,” I once told him. He laughed off the compliment, but he knew I was right.
One night after work we were unwinding at the Lion’s Head when Al turned to me and asked, “Do you understand what your job is?”
I thought I knew. “To report the news in a fair and balanced - “
“No, no.”
“Uh. To keep the public informed - “
“No, no.”
I tried to define my job a few more times, to no avail. “I give up, Al,” I said. “What is it?”
He smiled. “Your job,” he said, “is to make me happy.”
So simple, and yet so complicated.
Right around this time Al decided to run the New York City Marathon. He went for a check-up, and when the doctor took his blood pressure he gave it to Al straight:
“You run, you die.”
Which did not deter Al.
“I left his office, went to a deli and had a big corned beef sandwich,” Al told me. “Washed it down with a beer and finished it off with a cigarette.”
P.S. He entered and completed the marathon. And I’m betting he outlived that doctor.
The last time I saw Al Ellenberg was in the produce section of Gristede’s at Sheridan Square. We both lived downtown, but you know how it goes in New York - you can see your neighbor three days in a row, and then not for another twenty years.
His hair and eyebrows had gone gray, but there was no mistaking the twinkle in his eye. I was so stunned by the sight of him that all I could do was gawk.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said with a smile. “How you doin’, Goombah?”
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