Whitey Dudat

Yeah, I’ve been throwing some haymakers the last few weeks, so today I’m gonna goofball it up. 

I spotted this one called “Train Man” in the New Yorker. This 72-year-old bloke, Eddie Sporn, said, “This phase of my life, I’m not interested in hanging out in a hammock.” Atta boy, Eddie. He’s a former NYC hedge fund guy. He helped develop the Berkshire Flyer, which is a new Amtrak train service between Manhattan and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He’s an ambassador who meets and greets passengers and sells them in a quirky way on the Berkshire lifestyle as he hands out donuts. He’s called the Schmooze Master. That’s a good tag, Rocky Raccoon.

Eddie lobbied for this train route for years. I always say persistence pays off. Or as Kaz on that TV show used to say, “Don’t quit, that’s the trick.” If Eddie’s not on the train from NYC, he’s greeting people at the Pittsfield Terminal, yelling out, “Welcome to the Berkshires! Thanks for riding the Berkshire Flyer.”

Another neat story was the comeback of the Brookline Porchfest. This event had more than 90 musical groups performing on porches last Saturday night. Talk about a cool way to bring people together, Stanley Stickball. This should be going on all over America.

You know, James Patterson is the best-selling author in all the land, but I never read any of his books. I picked up his autobiography, James Patterson by James Patterson, recently. Great book. Fast read. Anyway, he had a good quote at the end of the book: “We need to start rowing together in this big boat of a country. If we don’t row together, the boat goes nowhere. Or worse, it just spins around in circles.” Good one, Jimmy.

Keep your dukes up.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN1ACh8lzHg

If you know someone who’d like these ditties in their inbox every week, have ‘em shoot us an email at darbyo@darbyobrien.com and we’ll add ‘em to the list.