Eve, I Can't Believe

Approximately forty-five years ago on the way to Sunday Mass with my younger brother and aunt, an elderly Italian woman from the next block uttered these apropos words: "Frosta...frosta." It was a bitterly cold morning when old Lizzy rather pithily summed up the weather situation. She is waddling now among the angels, I suspect. Yes, she waddled while earth-bound—at least when I knew her. And I have no doubt if Lizzy were around on New Year's Eve 2017, she would repeat her chilly mantra. On this frigid final day of the year, permit me in words and pictures to reflect on an eclectic hodgepodge of recent moments.

Yesterday, on a snowy morn that I wasn't banking on, I took the Number 1 train into Manhattan. Instead of riding in the first car—my typical modus operandi—I plopped down in the second. You see, the first was occupied by a passenger who looked more than a bit hung over. He even answered nature's call between one and two. (See above photo.) Apparently, the young man had started making merry early because on my return trip—when the first car magically morphs into the last at South Ferry—he remained unmoved and still sleeping it off. What better place than on the subway to visit the Land of Nod.

When it's "frosta...frosta," a trace of snow is enough to inspire bedlam.

Looks like a blizzard in the making, but the snow amounted to very little. Nevertheless, a dusting of the white stuff is all it takes to bring a never-ending series of ice melter pellets into my apartment.

In my adventures, I prefer a train with a booming and coherent conductor. My first attempt uptown found me in car with a malfunctioning PA system. I couldn't hear a word, which explains why I thought I was getting off at 28th Street when it was Penn Station. Had I not changed trains, though, I would have missed riding back with the drowsy reveler.

Got to love a diner with a choice of six soups.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Speaking of "gloom of night," I found my mail outside and on the ground in the gloom of the night before last. This happens sometimes on my trusty regular mailman's off days. 

The fuse has been lit. Ten...nine...eight...seven...

When I first saw this bird perched like this for an extended period of time, I thought it might be a hawk or some such exotic feathery creature. A hawk by any other name is a pigeon.

When I grew up in the Bronx's Kingsbridge, shopping malls weren't in neighborhoods. They were islands unto themselves.

If one wants to survive in the diner business, attention must be paid...to GrubHub.

I wonder what Crack Head Rick is planning for New Year's Eve?

Next year's MTA Christmas card...

A window on the world...

My cable's "Sounds of the Season" channel is pretty awful. Some classics are in the mix, but most of the selection—from artists I've never heard of—is grating to one's ears.

I imported from Pennsylvania some A-Treat beverages this Christmas. Highly recommended for pop aficionados.

My commemorative New York Mets World Champions 1986 Christmas bulb. It's hard to believe that more than thirty years have passed. As Christopher Hitchens said in his memoirs; "It's more and more subtracted from less and less."

The frozen tundra that is Van Cortlandt Park.

The December sun meets the January thaw? One can dream.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)