Daily News from New York, New York • 8

DAILY KEDftESDAY, MARCH.16, 1977 isfe As The whole South Bronx is burning down, Big Mac is going under Things sure aren't looking good, thinks Abe; It gives one cause to wonder The mayor pushes back his chair, Stands up, and looks" around; He switches off the light? it's dark; There's not the slightest sound. And then, so soft, the question comes, The words the faintest hiss: "What's a nice 71-year-old Brooklyn boy like me Doin' in a place like this." The lights are put in City Hall, The mayor's choice is clear; But if you wonder how he chose You'll have to check next year. So Happy Birthday, Mayor Beame, From 'one who admires your guts; And frankly, if you run again, You gotta be a little nuts. But still one single window glows, In one room something's brewing; -Who could it be at work so late? And what could he be doing? It's Mayor Beame, he's all alone, He's staring into space; Sunday's his birthday, and Next fall another race The candles on his cake add up To seventy and one, Will next year find him here again? Or in Miami's sun? The ship of state is foundering In seas of urban woes. The wolves are barking at the door, And hiring is froze, The teachers want another raise, Of strikes the cops are talking, And all day long 'round City Hall There's welfare workers walking, (Lost month, Britain's poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman, prompted a tempest in a teapot with his hymn in honor of the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth 2d's reign.

The Neivs asked Sir John to compose himself and try again with an ode to London-born Abe Beame who will be 71 Sunday. The London literary agent to Sir John, who ranks just above the keeper of the queen's swans in the royal pecking order, was indignant. "He's a poet." said Sue Freathy. "He cannot sit down and write a raem to order just like that. Why don't you get Wort Sahl to write a joke about' him?" So with rhyme, if not reason, we commissioned our own Donald Singleton who, on order, produced the following poem.

If it's a hit, some day Suigleton mavi play the Palace.) By DONALD SINGLETON The lights are out in City Hall, It's late, the town is sleeping; The politicians all have left, The janitors are sweeping. -At PETE t' Stranger i'ho Drove Qui 2 Snakes Every year, when the calendar started moving toward St. Patrick's Day, Malloy remembered the stranger who had come to the old neighborhood in Brooklyn that time, long ago. Bobby Malloy was 12 then, working after school in Roulston's grocery store on the corner of 11th St. and Seventh Ave.

His father had been dead a year, and this was' the boy's first job. And AmMMMttK' Jg Win Hill IIBll News photo by Keith Tome Carol and Bill McGuire stroll along Madison Ave. near 92d St. yesterday. An Air illala Sift Jor Carol What a LiHIe Letter Can Do Carol Cantwell sent the first letter.

On Dec. 9, 1965. From the apartment she shared with her mother in Brooklyn, just a Texas Leaguer away from where Ebbets Field used to reverberate to the madness of old-time Dodger fans. PETER COUTROS arrived, Bobby Malk. saw the shade go up.

The stranger was sitting there. He wore a black shirt, buttoned at the wrists, and his chin had. a pale blue look io it. He sat back from the window, so you could not see him easily from the street. When it got dark, he pulled the shade down again.

A few days later, Bobby came up from the cellar of Roulston's, carrying a case of peaches. When he went into the store, the stranger was at the counter. Bobby froze. The stranger felt the boy's eyes on him, and turned to look. He had an ivory-colored indoor face, with bright blue eyes.

He nodded at Bobby Malloy and then took his grocerie and went out. After that, Bobby Malloy would see him sitting at the window, smoking his Camels, reading the newspapers. And waiting. One warm Friday night, Malloy's mother worked late, and he went down to the street to wait for her. He was sitting on the step of a glazier's shop when he first saw the Packard.

Two Men Inside The Packard was long and black and highly polished, and there were two men inside. It moved slowly along the avenue, turned up 12th and disappeared. A few minutes later, it came down 11th turned on the avenue, and moved along, slowly and deliberately. When it came around for the third time, and disappeared up 12th Bobby Malloy ran across the street and into the house where the stranger lived. His heart was pounding.

He rapped swiftly on the stranger's door. Nobody answered. He knocked again and heard someone shift in a bed. "Hello in there," Bobby said. "It's me, from the grocery store.

I gotta talk to you." A key turned slowly in the lock. The (Continued on ptg 37 col. J) one- afternoon at the end -of winter, he looked up from the cellar of the store, where he was unloading soup boxes, and saw the stranger. The stranger was on the other side of the avenue, walking in a tight rolling swagger, the collar of his camel's-hair coat pulled up to his chin, a pearl gray broad-brimmed hat riding low on his brow, his polished pointed shoes jutting out from pegged pants. He was carrying a small leather bag of the kind that fighters used when they went to the gym, and he was looking at the numbers of the houses, obviously searching for an address.

He stopped a few doors past Ratti-gan's Bar and Grill, and went into the hallway between Bernsley's Heating and Appliance and a variety store. He did not come back out again. Tells His Mother That night, when his mother came 'home from work, Bobby told her about this stranger, dressed like a character from some movie he had seen once at the Minerva. She sipped her steaming tea, piling in the sugar, and told Bobby that if his father were still alive, they would soon find out about this stranger. "He never came out again," he said.

"Where do you think he went?" "Old "Kate Flanagan on the second floor still rents rooms," his mother said. "He's probably up there in one of them. Probably just a worker for the factory." But the stranger did not come out of the building the next day, nor the day after that. He was not a worker at the factory. At night, Bobby Malloy would stare at the drawn shades of the house across the street, looking at the second floor where Kate Flanagan kept rooms.

Then, eight days after the stranger William McGuire got the missive five days later, in his bachelor quarters in Inverness, Scotland, and before the moon edged the sun out of the sky that fortuitous day, he had put a reply in the mail. There were 212 more letters after that Carol and Bill have kept all of them and, faced with the prospect of writers cramp, the bonnie Brooklynite and the handsome Scotsman decided to cast their lot together. With benefit of clergy. "It all started at the Parker Pavilion at the World's Fair in 1964 I filled out an application for the pen pals club Carol recalled yesterday at the Wales Hotel, Madison Ave. and 92d St.

Matched by Computer A couple of months later, she received the addresses of three foreigners with whom she'd been matched by the computer. "The first one I wrote to was a man from India. He never answered me," said Carol. The next letter she wrote was to a German who, in his response, said he was color blind and worked in a bank. And that's all he wrote.

End of palship. Carol's third letter went to who joined the pen pals by filling out an application while waiting for his watch to be repaired in an Aberdeen jewelers's shop. Time well spent. "I told Carol I was interested in photography, languages and travel," McGuire remembered." "I also asked he to send me a picture of herself." Carol did. A picture taken when she was six months old.

The palship flourished, nonetheless. Letters flew back and forth across Carol boarded a plane herself. On a charter flight sponsored "by the New York police. (Carol's brother, Bob, is a detective.) "We decided we'd meet in Aberdeen," said CaroL "I was in the station on June 9 when the train pulled in from Inverness. Bill walked right past me, but I recognized him.

'And where do you think you're I yelled to him." It was the last time either one yelled at the other. On Dec. 30, 1967, Carol and Bill got married and set up house in an $ll-a-week cottage in Inverness: (As a pensioner, McGuire earns $40 a week). Prize a New York Trip Two months ago, the Inverness Highland, a loccl weekly, ran a contest. Top prize was a round-trip ticket for two to New York, to be awarded to the contestant who wrote the best letter justifying such a trip.

Last Thursday; they dropped in at The News Information Bureau to pick up brochures on the Big Apple. "This big fellow started talking to us and I felt like I was back home," said McGuire, referring to Bernard Tighe, a bureau staffer whose Scotch burr is 12 years old. As in Chlvas Regal. Tomorrow, McGuire will be seeing his first St. Patrick's Day parade (and him being Irish for 67 years) and, before they go home, they'll catch a play and the circus.

"She really loves her country," said McGuire of his wife, who has retained her American citizenship. "And I'm fast OK Cut in IV.Y.-Calif. Air Fare Washington (UPI) The Civil Aeronautics Board has approved an American Airlines proposal to slash the price of air travel between New York and California by up to 45 and said the company could start offering the new fares tomorrow. The board said yesterday that American can start offering "Super Saver" fares ranging from to $268 for round-trip coast-to-coast flights. The normal round-trip coach fare is $412.

American requested the low-cost fare on Jan. 31, saying that it was needed to compete with advance booking charter fares, which cost from $199 to $249 for coach round trips and must be booked at least 30 days ahead. The board, which in the past has taken months or even years to rule on air fare proposals, approved American's request after just six weeks, despite its own misgivings and opposition from other airlines. It said the fare could -remain in effect for one year on an experimental basis. Additional board action was expected soon on proposals by Trans World Airlines and United Airlines to match the new American fare.

becoming a convert. Then they excused themselves. To the Atlantic with the regularity of Pan Am transatlantic flights. In June. 1967...

write some letters,.