I don’t refer to it much but the longest tenure at any job I ever had was as a compositor at the Times Ledger chain of newspapers at an office on Bell Boulevard at 41st Avenue in Bayside from 1996 to 2009. At the time, the paper published about a dozen editions tailored to many different Queens neighborhoods, and a staff was needed to create the issues. I flowed text into different spaces that designers had designated, as well as jumped long articles to the back of the paper on ad-free pages and wrote short “heds” atop the jumps. I was there at least one night per week (Tuesdays) and, when I wasn’t working a full time job, I’d report back on Wednesday morning to type in edits. It was good for about $90 a week which, at the time, was a major augment to what I was making as a compositor/proofreader/copywriter at Publishers Clearing House and Macy’s.
It all ended in May 2009 because I needed heart surgery to replace a valve, which required a month of recovery time (In reality I was in occasional fatigue and pain for 2-3 years afterward) and I was laid off because of that and also because the Times Ledger was shifting its compositor location to downtown Brooklyn, of all places. Since work ended some Wednesday mornings at 1 AM, this didn’t leave much time to travel and sleep before reporting to the full time gig at 9 AM, and I was unwilling to attempt it.
Every week before work began at 7 PM, or maybe it was every other week, I would have the burger special at the Gold Star Diner, a cozy spot at Bell Blvd. and 42nd Avenue. It is now an Indian restaurant called Masala Box.
The building where the restaurant is located was an empty lot at the corner, but right next to it was a “descendant” of the Gold Star, a rail car diner called the Bell Diner. This was one of hundreds of such rail car diners scattered around NYC, and indeed thousands around the USA, in 1940. Only a handful of them remain today. [Municipal Tax Photo]
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2/18/26