“Eee…Snow?”

I know this fellow who is into “good stuff”—really into it. He once said to me, “Thoughts give rise to other thoughts—gotta be helpful!” Well, yeah, the first part’s a no-brainer. For example: I woke up this morning and wondered if it would be snowing outside my window. It wasn't but soon after was. The previous evening’s forecast had called for the white stuff to begin falling just after sunrise. It was expected and did transition to sleet, freezing rain, and then plain old rain in a matter of hours.

Well, the first thing that popped into my head as I rolled out of bed was this—and I said it aloud, too—“Eee…snow?” Why, you ask, did I say that? It’s actually a query lodged in my brain from—oh, say—thirty-five years ago. I was patronizing my preferred pizza parlor, Sam’s, on a winter’s day sometime when Ronald Reagan was president. And it began to snow outside. The counterman at that moment was a young chap that my brother and I had christened “Unis”— not Eunice, but Unis. He was an employee who materialized out of the blue and became a pizza-making fixture there for several years in the 1980s. But upon his arrival we were accustomed to seeing the same familiar faces: George, Andrew, and even "Eeeno." Eeeno, by the way, received his moniker for shouting to a neighborhood friend of mine, “Eee not for you!” My pal had committed the grievous mistake of assuming the greasy pizza bag placed in front of him by Eeeno was his takeout order. We never did learn Eeeno’s real name.

Anyway, back to Unis. He turned up as a completely unknown quantity in a business of very well-known quantities. And since the place was owned and staffed exclusively by Greeks back then, he was the Unknown Greek to us—or Unis for short—even after he became quite known. You see how thoughts lead to other thoughts. As for the process always being helpful—well, that remains to be seen.

While on this fascinating subject, I stumbled upon a sign this past weekend in the vicinity of Wall Street that read, “Danger…Open Pit.” What came to mind were two competing and somewhat diverse thoughts. One was of the barbecue sauce brand, Open Pit, and the second was of the Joker as played by Cesar Romero. It would have been just like him to invent a dastardly contraption to do away with his nemeses Batman and Robin. I can see the Dynamic Duo now dangling over a percolating pit of steamy barbecue sauce. 

Some more of the same: A fellow passenger on the subway this weekend resembled—as far as I was concerned—the actor Denver Pyle in his later years. He was wearing a Gray Line sightseeing tour-guide red satin jacket and nervously fiddling with his meds. I couldn’t help but wonder what his story was. I sat across from still another oddball, whom I’ve spied before on the train. He’s a dead ringer for the Monty Python guy—the hermit who appears in the opening credits and cries, “It’s!” When Eeeno the pizza man said, “Eee not for you!” he was really saying, “It’s not for you!” The Monty Python Guy, as I dub him forevermore, exited at Times Square. Perusing a local tabloid, he typically sits quietly for the ride. So, imagine my surprise when he got up to exit this past Sunday and bellowed, “Open the [expletive deleted] doors!” Apparently, they didn’t open up fast enough for the uber-impatient Monty Python Guy, who then headed off to somewhere unknown looking—for all the world—like the Monty Python guy…

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)