The powerful storm left a deep accumulation of snow. It was dark, and downtown traffic was standing still. There were five of us left in the newsroom at 9 p.m., and the morning edition of the newspaper was "put to bed." But none of us relished the idea of joining the masses of stalled motorists.

"There's a vogue little tavern that's just opened up around the block," said Jack, the assistant managing editor. "Why don't we have a few belts and let this traffic clear out. Besides, the plows won't be through before eleven."

We all agreed that we'd rather sit at a warm bar for the next two hours than stare at the taillights of the cab in front of us.

With upturned collars and down-turned faces we stepped from the circulation dock into the billowy white expanse. After fifteen minutes of trudging and cursing, Jack pointed to a newly-installed neon sign. "There it is, that's it," he exclaimed, "it's the Hickory Dickory Dock."

As we stepped inside we stomped our feet and welcomed the rush of warm air. Carl, the editor-in-chief, led the way as we angled our way to five empty stools at the bar. None of us took note of the ambience or the constituency. It was a hard day and a freezing walk, and we wanted a pick-me-up. "I'll buy the first round," the chief said, withdrawing his money clip.

Bill, the cops-and-courts reporter, was first to notice the surroundings. He and Steve, the sports writer, began to scrutinize the other patrons of the establishment. Something was wrong.

Looking around the bar, my eyes locked on a corner table. There were two guys over there making out!

"Oh, hell, Jack," the boss said, "You've brought us into a faggot bar."

We should have thought twice about the bar's name.

"Well, it's new," Jack replied sheepishly. "How was I supposed to know? Besides, homosexuals have their own social contract and a right to conduct themselves as they please. Just so long as they don t have designs on our social contract."

Bill and I stared at each other in amazement. Had Jack really said that? Carl curled his lip and squinted his eyes in disapproval, the way he did when we turned in lousy copy or missed a deadline. We glanced at the chief and instinctively knew not to enter the conversation. He was going to pontificate, as often he did:

"Listen, Jack, queers have always had their own social strata. But they're never satisfied with that. They want their perversions accepted in civilized, heterosexual circles. They're like political zealots they want to impose their standards and limits on normal people. And doing so makes them feel legitimized. Homosexuals are part of a subhuman underworld that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche referred to as the 'many-too-many.'"

I quietly and approvingly mused at the boss' use of the term, "many-too-many."

"But homosexuals have so much to offer," Jack said. "Many of them are brilliant, liberated people with artistic license and a creative genius. If they bring so much to our culture, shouldn't we be tolerant of their sexual persuasion?"

Carl was livid. He threw back a swig of his brandy Manhattan and wagged his forefinger in Jack's face. "Artistic license! Creativity!" he shouted, "homosexuals are mostly liberals, Jews, non-Whites, communists, anarchists or counter-cultural insurgents. There are White queers, too, certainly, but in Western Civilization they have historically remained in the closet."

"Queers are not true musicians or artists. They are imitators and distorters. They promote race-mixing, cultural degeneracy and hedonistic decadence. They are not talented or funny. They mock our culture and our norms, and they seek to degrade Western art, music and literature to subhuman levels.

"Occasionally a prominent homosexual politician or businessman will come out, but you'll find he's almost always anti-White and a liberal. Lesbian feminists are misanthropic, and they attack conventional families. They pride themselves in turning little boys into effeminate powder-puffs and little girls into grotesque bull-dykes. Homosexuals seek to mentally and emotionally subvert heterosexual children and bend their minds to accept the gay lifestyle. It's a great conquest for them to turn a straight kid.

"More than that, queers seek legislation to give them protection above and beyond the American tenet of equality before the law. They seek privileges to which heterosexuals are not entitled. They campaign for public funding to expand their social contract and diminish the natural relationship between normal couples. Queers and lesbians breed their own kind among themselves and openly proselytize for their cause and they deliberately glamorize and misrepresent AIDS with in-your-face advertising and politically correct gay pride spin.

"White heterosexuals are made to feel guilty, ashamed and inadequate when confronted with homosexual issues. Homosexuals are made to appear downtrodden, victimized and deprived. To stand up against homosexuality has now become more than merely improper, it has become a hate crime. And you know as well as I do that if I printed any of this soliloquy in my newspaper tomorrow, our Jewish bosses would fire me. I'd be blackballed from journalism forever."

Jack was about to respond when he noticed a silence in the newly-opened Hickory Dickory Dock. Ears and eyes were tuned to Carl's bombast against homosexuals. Some offered disparaging remarks and rebuttals while others simply shouted vulgarities. We became aware of our predicament. We were outnumbered, and we had aggravated a militant homosexual demographic on their home turf.

The bartender, who as it turned out was also the owner, intervened on our behalf mostly for the sake of his bar and liquor license. He didn't want a brawl. Carl, Bill, Steve and I were invited to wait outside, pending the arrival of a cab. Jack, the defender of homosexuality, was invited to stay to make apologies for the chief and defuse the situation.

As years passed, Carl passed away and I graduated from beat reporter to become managing editor. I learned much from Carl in the interim, and he is responsible for introducing me to my pantheon of heroes. On my office wall are pictures of H. L. Mencken, the great journalist; Richard Wagner, the great composer; and Friedrich Nietzsche, the great philosopher. Few co-workers recognize the faces.

I recently gave my blonde, blue-eyed 14-year-old granddaughter a birthday present. It was Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra." She read it eagerly, and after a recent discussion on the evils of miscegenation and homosexuality, she sent me an e-mail: "I see what you mean, Granddad," she said. "Our culture is sick and inundated with the 'many-too-many.'"

Once again it's 9 p.m., snowing and cold outside. Traffic is standing still. A few of us will go around the corner for a pick-me-up. But the Hickory Dickory Dock closed last year, after a shooting and a drug raid. The bar is now the Golden Eagle, and they fly the American flag in the window. Carl would approve.

But the queers and their perverted life-style are still out there. Their new bar is now three blocks down the "strip."