Louis Roney: Off we go

• At 58, I was back in New York after many years of singing opera and concerts in many European countries. I was in the state of being a bachelor, completely unattached. One day on the way home, I dropped by the deli below my New York apartment and among other things bought a box of Cracker Jack. Upstairs later, I opened the Cracker Jack and read the little slip of paper that purported to tell me my fortune. It read, “You have one big wish that will be granted — what is it?”

I laid the paper slip on my night table, and after several days I decided to go ahead and make a wish for the thing that would please me most. I said, “I want to find exactly the right lady for me.” Suddenly, I heard a, voice coming from the Cracker Jack box that asked me, “OK. What should she be like?”

“For starts, she must be smart, highly educated, about music and general knowledge. She would probably need to have gone to fine schools to learn theory and harmony, as well as her solo instrument. She must also like not only the greatest musical classics, but also Dixieland bands and Broadway. So you see, she must first be a damn good versatile musician and, I would hope, much better trained than I. I don’t care what her instrument might be, but I hope she can sing well too, so that we may amaze friends with our duets. She should be plenty pretty natch— a gal about 5-foot 6-inches, blond, natural looking, with blue eyes and a generous figure.”

“What other traits should she have?” asked the genie in the box. “Well, I’d be tickled pink if she really liked football. Just for lagniappe,” I added. “Let her be a great cook.”

“Any, last requirement?” asked the box. “Yes,” I answered, “she must handle all the money for us and do all the mess with checkbooks.”

Later that afternoon, I took a cab over to my piano accompanists apartment to practice. There was a gem of a gal waiting for the elevator. “You going to see Shirley too?” I asked. She nodded. Then I noticed that she was carrying an open box of Cracker Jack. “Have you read your prophecy yet?” I asked. “Yes I have.” “And?” “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I was, hoping your hair would be darker.”

She settled for me, hair and all. It’s been 33 years now, and I can tell you that on the day I met her, I got two Cracker Jacks — only one of them in a box!

• The TV informs us that Obamacare produces a disincentive to work and, at the same time, will cost us some 2 million jobs. I thought this guy was going to bring jobs, not cost them.

• I wonder how Peyton Manning slept at a time when he anticipated being heralded in a hero’s parade? Being highly praised before the end of the line is often dangerous indeed — the quirks of fate are never known until the final whistle blows. Another year for Peyton? To sports fans, the time between the Super Bowl and the pro-baseball season is a colorless, long wait.

• Are we saying goodbye to Tinker Field, Orlando’s most memorable sports setting since 1923 — the place where so many immortal sports, figures practiced and played? I remember seeing Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, there… What else has Orlando got that is a national sports landmark?

• I have always wondered why auto racing is classified as a sport. The cars do all the work. The drivers can be 200 pounds overweight and out of breath when they walk to their cars and take their places behind the wheel! A skill maybe, but a sport? What about archery, billiards, and target shooting— skills or sports?

• New York City’s much-photographed-while-snow-shoveling new lefty Mayor de Blasio is angering a scad of voters and his term is just beginning! Seems the mayor created a powerful job for his wife where she soon hired a “chief of staff” sidekick for a mere $170,000 in tax dollars a year!

• “A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for bad execution; and a government ill-executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.” — Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 70,” 1788