Part 13

But the majority of his time these days goes to writing and performing special lyrics for special occasions -- usually parodies of his own hit songs. Sometimes he does this for profit, and sometimes for love. He was paid handsomely to prepare a birthday celebration for Ray Kroc, the head of Mcdonald's. But a couple of weeks ago, when a man wrote to Sammy telling him how much his songs had meant to him and his wife over the years, and asking him to please write some personalized lyrics for their 18th wedding anniversary, Sammy was "just enough of an idiot to sit down and do it."

He works exclusively at the typewriter. "I have become almost audacious. When I put a piece of paper in the typewriter, I know that the completed song will be on that page. I'm very grateful to the man who invented Correctotype and liquid paper. I start to type as soon as I get up, and I think about songs all day long. When I sleep at night, I sleep with an earplug in my ear, tuned to WCBS or WINS radio. They're both news stations. The radio distracts me: it stops me from thinking about lyrics."

As we are talking, Sammy keeps remembering telephone calls he needs to make, but he keeps them brief and to the point. As soon as he hangs up, our conversation jumps immediately back to the previous subject, as if there had been no interruption. He is extremely quick-minded -- to the extent that his thoughts sometimes race ahead of him, and his sentences lose their structure. In speaking of his son, a very successful jazz guitarist who performs under the name Steve Khan, Sammy comments: "Now, my son -- brace yourself -- my son -- this is one of my great, great achievements -- my fame is coming from a very curious source. People come up to me and say, 'You're Steve Kahn's father?'"

Asked about the satisfaction he has gotten from songwriting, Sammy insists that he can't imagine a more rewarding career. "I once told that to a college audience and a boy said, 'I'm studying to be a lawyer. What's wrong with that?' I said, 'Nothing, but who walks down the street humming a lawsuit?'"

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WESTSIDER HUGH CAREY Governor of New York state

9-16-78

It was 5 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day. Governor Hugh Carey sat alone in his office on West 55th Street, rubbing his forehead wearily with both hands when his assistant press secretary, Judy Deich, ushered me in. The introductions were brief, and the governor spoke very rapidly, keeping is eyes on the table in front of him, where he was scrawling pencil lines in geometric patterns on a piece of blank paper, as if to maintain his concentration.

The Governor had been up for 12 hours, and his voice occasionally faded to a whisper, but he answered all the questions with a flair and displayed a sincere manner throughout. Sitting kitty-corner to me at a conference table, he looked smaller and thinner than his photographs. He also looked like one of the tiredest, most overworked men I had ever met.

"I have been staying on the West Side a lot since last September," he said. "That's when my sons Donald and Michael got an apartment near Central Park. They're kind enough to put me up there. We have the usual tenants' complaints about the leaky ceilings and peeling paint. All in all, it's a good building. I find more and more advantages to living on the West Side. I like it because of the accessibility to work and because I jog in Central Park.

"One of my headaches is Central Park. Some of my colleagues would like to make it a national park. It's the city's biggest showplace. ... I want to get the automobiles out of there more and more. In the morning, I see all the New Jersey cars coming through. That's why I want Westway below 42d Street -- so it will take more pressure off the city. ... I wish everyone would realize that Westway is not a road. It's a recessed highway -- more of a tunnel."

Speaking frankly of the problem of ex-mental patients in parts of the West Side, Carey said that "we have indexed all the SRO's. That was never done before. ... The homeless people who live on the street are not the wards of the state. We can't just go out and pick them up. ... If they need some kind of health care, they should be taken to a shelter and given health care. If they resist, we will have peace officers to take care of them. That's something I'm doing with Mayor Koch."

Ever since he defeated Nelson Rockefeller's appointed successor, Malcolm Wilson, in 1974, Hugh Carey has become well known for both his conservative moral code and his unswerving fiscal restraint. Born on April 11, 1919, to an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn, Carey grew up with five brothers believing in certain principles that he has never abandoned. These moral principles have become the foundation of his controversial stands on the death penalty and abortion.

"I am against the death penalty," said Carey, "because the government can make a mistake. A sentence of life without parole is better. There are six people now walking around the state who were condemned to death and later proven innocent. One is named Zimmy and he works on the West Side in a garment factory. Somebody should ask him what he thinks about the death penalty. He's alive because somebody confessed.

"I oppose abortion personally. But the Supreme Court upheld that it's the choice of a woman of her own free will, and I support that ruling. In New York, the state pays for it if it's a matter of medical necessity. Otherwise, there might be a mangled body in a back alley. ... I'm also advocating an alternative -- a teenage pregnancy bill, where girls can have a baby without shame and go back to school. It's the most common reason for dropouts among teenagers."

During World War II, Hugh Carey fought in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, and attained the rank of major. After the service, he worked for many years as an executive in his brother Edward's Peerless Oil and Chemical Corporation. Not until 1960, when he was 41 years old, did Carey decide to run for political office. He won his first congressional race and during the 1960s developed a national reputation for his liberal attitude on education, and programs for the elderly and handicapped.

His life has twice been touched by deep personal tragedy in recent years. An automobile accident in 1969 took the lives of his two eldest sons, and cancer claimed his wife Helen in 1974. A man who loves the company of other people, Carey enjoys such simple pleasures as cooking with friends and singing with his children.

Asked about the chief difference between himself and Republican challenger Perry Duryea, the governor replied with obvious glee: "I can't think of anything we have in common. ... I'll knock the Y right out of his name before I'm finished."

Generally known to be at his best in times of crisis, Carey said that whenever the pressures of his office become too great for him to handle alone, he drops into the chapel and asks for help. "It's a matter of privacy to me; I go where I'm not seen," he said. "I need help quite a lot. Also, I believe that New York is a very special place, with a resourcefulness that can't be matched anywhere in the world. When people have come together as New Yorkers, they have done amazing things."

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WESTSIDER CRAIG CLAIBORNE Food editor of the New York Times

3-10-79

"To be a good restaurant critic, you shouldn't have a conscience," says Craig Claiborne, food editor of the New York Times. "I used to visit restaurants twice a day, frequently seven days a week, and lie awake brooding about whether my reviews were honest -- whether I was hurting somebody who didn't deserve to be hurt."

Recognized throughout the United States as the father of modern restaurant criticism, Claiborne joined the Times in 1957, and shortly thereafter was given the go-ahead to write reviews based on a four-star system. "The New York Times made the decision. I was the instrument. It was the first newspaper that allowed a restaurant critic to say anything he wanted. It took a lot of guts, when a newspaper depends on advertising."

A 58-year-old bachelor whose soft voice still carries strong traces of his native Mississippi, Claiborne has few of the characteristics generally imagined of a Timesman. He is a true bon vivant, and does not appear to take himself or his work too seriously. He prefers to be called by his first name, is not a particularly fashionable dresser, and spends as little time as possible in Manhattan. In his lighter moods, such as that in which I find him on the day of our interview, he delights in telling jokes that are classics of schoolyard humor. The punch line, more often than not, is drowned by his own uproarious laughter.

Although he has maintained a Westside apartment for the past nine years, Claiborne spends most of his time at his house in East Hampton, Long Island, next door to Pierre Franey, one of the greatest French chefs in America, who, since 1974, has co-authored Claiborne's food articles for the New York Times Sunday magazine. Recently he purchased a larger, more modern house about 15 minutes from Franey, which he plans to occupy shortly. The pair cook together about five times a week. Claiborne calls the house "my Taj Mahal -- my Xanadu."

He explains his jovial mood by saying that the night before, he attended a big dinner party for restaurateur Joe Baum at the Four Seasons. "It was an everybody-bring-something dinner. Jim Beard brought bread. I brought saviche (marinated raw fish), and Gael Greene brought some chocolate dessert. I got roaring drunk."

In spite of his earthiness, Claiborne unquestionably ranks as one of the leading food authorities of his time. His articles, which appear in the Times each Monday, Wednesday and Sunday, cover every subject from the particulars of a dinner for Chinese Vice-Premier Teng Hsiao-ping in Washington (where Claiborne saw a rock group he had never heard of called the Osmonds) to the six most creative ways of preparing scallops. He has written numerous best-selling cookbooks, and he often travels around the world on fact-finding missions.