Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts

(A reprise from 2018, but as relevant as ever.)

When Piels came to the legendary Jimmy Breslin to do a commercial for its beer, he said, “I’m not Bert or Harry…I’m 

Jimmy Breslin, a writer.” Actually, that was part of the advertisement script, which Breslin delivered with urban aplomb. In the 1950s, Bert and Harry Piel were animated television pitchmen for what was then a very popular beer. Jimmy Breslin spieled for Piels more than two decades later. The ad aired repeatedly on local New York City stations in the late 1970s and it remains a classic all these years later. The gifted wordsmith initially described Piels as “a good beer” then "better than good" and finally as "a good drinking beer!" In other words: a bargain for those who valued quantity above quality.

This intro is my roundabout way of pitching a most recent publishing credit: Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts. The subtitle says it all: A Little Book of Wit, Wisdom, and Whimsy. What, you ask, does a comprehensive compilation of Celtic sayings and such have to do with a Jimmy Breslin beer commercial from 1978? Except for the fact that it danced like visions of sugarplums in my head, not much at all. You see, when I was initially offered the opportunity to amass and edit this wide-ranging pithy volume, I said to myself: I’m not Colm or Eamon…I’m Nicholas Nigro with a vowel at the end of my name. Ah, but in the writing biz: “Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.” Later, I amended the vowel thing. After all, Chief O’Hara, Jim O’Gara, Eric O’Mara, and Joe Donahue, too—all have surnames ending in a vowel.

Here’s the story: I grew up in Kingsbridge, an Irish enclave in the Bronx at the time. My paternal grandparents from Italy had originally settled in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights. When my grandfather had saved up enough money to buy a house—he had been an iceman and subsequently worked for Sheffield Farms, a milk company—he set his sights on the less populated Outer Boroughs of New York City. In 1946, he moved his family—including my father who was seventeen at the time—five miles north to Kingsbridge. My grandfather not only wanted a home of his own, he wished to settle, too, in an area that was not predominantly Italian. He reasoned that by doing so his wife—my grandmother—would master the English language more quickly and more adeptly. And so it came to pass: the Italian Nigros of Kingsbridge commingled with the Irish majority on the neighborhood’s business hub, W231st Street, at nearby St. John’s Roman Catholic Church run by the likes of Scanlan, Doherty, and Foley, and under the deafening El on Broadway.

The rest, I guess, is history. My grandfather would one day plant and harvest a post-war “victory garden” across the street from his Kingsbridge home alongside men named McGuire, Brady, and Reilly. My father would play stickball on the streets with guys named O’Neal, Gern, and Joyce. And one and all would congregate in front of Pat Mitchell’s Irish Food Center, a neighborhood institution for more than three decades. In fact, I dedicate Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts to “Pat Mitchell’s Kingsbridge.” For when I was a youth, a stopover at Pat Mitchell’s after Sunday Mass for fresh rolls and jelly donuts was a revered ritual. It was also the place to purchase brain-freezing Fla-Vor-Ice pops for a nickel, glass bottles of RC Cola for twenty cents, and—the pièce de résistance—penny candies for—imagine that—a penny.

Pat Mitchell’s Kingsbridge was a great neighborhood in which to grow up. It was an era before the Internet, cell phones, and even plastic shopping bags. In my father’s eclectic vinyl LP collection were Clancy Brothers albums. He once told me that his rallying mantra—with his many Irish drinking buddies—was “The Moonshiner” lyrics: “I’ll eat when I’m hungry, I’ll drink when I’m dry. And the moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live till I die.”

I close now with the vivid memory of a man named Gene Daugherty, a New York City bus driver. He was a fixture at the holiday cookouts thrown in the victory garden’s cozy confines. On more than one warm summer’s night, Gene belted out “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” From across the street where I lived, I could hear the Irishman’s dulcet tones cutting through the velvet darkness. The only lights visible were the tips of lit cigarettes, cigars, and pipes.

You can purchase Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts online from the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound. Paraphrasing Jimmy Breslin, permit me this parting salvo: "It's a good little book. Yeah, that's how I would describe it. It's a good little book!"

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)