The March Through Madness

It's been a wild-and-woolly month. With "the wearin' o' the green" now in the history books, it's time to think of things spring. Turning the clock back four decades, the fledgling weeks of this season were quite exciting. They saw the start of the baseball season, when hope always sprung eternal, even when your team sorely lacked pennant-winning timber. That would apply to my team—the New York Mets—in 1978, managed then by future Hall of Fame manager Joe Torre. The Mets' job was his first. And although it didn't show in the final standings, he did a pretty good job in my opinion with some pretty awful teams. 

Forty years ago, spring also signified the beginning of stickball season. I kept copious records at that time of our stickball endeavors, including the recording of temperature readings taken at game time from the big clock/thermometer on top of the Exxon station on W230th Street. Like so many things, both the Exxon station and its iconic clock/thermometer are mere memories now. And the John F. Kennedy High School—where we long ago played our crazy game—has morphed into a labyrinthine complex of learning institutions that would prohibit playing stickball on the grounds—that is, if anyone wanted to play the game anymore. 

A footnote here: I only recently learned that our stickball playing grounds at John F. Kennedy High School—several blocks from where I lived—were actually in Manhattan and not in the Bronx. Once separated from the Bronx by the wending Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the area in question is considered Manhattan terra firma. The creek was filled in during the early years of the twentieth century. The Marble Hill neighborhood is now attached to the Bronx and separated from the remainder of Manhattan by the Harlem River Ship Canal. So, to make a long story short, our hallowed stickball grounds were once upon a time covered by the waters of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, which flowed into the nearby Hudson River. Manhattan land remains Manhattan land.

Well, that was then and this is now...

Just my opinion, but Mine Spa is better than Yours.

You know you're in a bad place when there's a ubiquitous pink water pitcher on the scene.

While the Exxon station and its giant clock/thermometer are long gone, the Chinese take-out joint in the old neighborhood endures. It's changed owners and names a few times, but it remains an institution of fine dining and MSG overload.

And it's received an "A" grade from the New York City Department of Health. After getting some flack from harassed and overly-fined businesses, the bureaucracy seems to have backed off a bit.

It seems that Chinese take-out establishments have a thing for both MSG and truth mirrors, which one cannot help but stare into and ponder one's fate while waiting for the shrimp and broccoli and vegetable egg foo young.

Wow, free WiFi and an elevator to boot...

New York City straphangers are slobs. Subway station nooks and crannies tell me as much.

Apparently, there's a magic marker graffiti vandal on the loose at 18th Street.

As soon as his stuff gets wiped clean, he's back and reminding us of Agent Orange and our march through madness.

At the same subway station is the mysterious MR321 room, or is it Mr. 321's private entrance to somewhere unknown?

A surprise for some lucky girl...

It depends upon what your definition of "Is" is...

For some reason, this reminded me of a Monty Python's Flying Circus skit. I'm riding the train with an empty bottle of fruit drink, a ham sandwich, and a James Patterson novel.

Alone in a crowd...

Visiting a nursing home yesterday, I got to see the Super Soup live and up-close. It's what the institution calls its soups. Since they invariably all look like dishwater, I was left to guess what the St. Patrick's Day soup of the day was. I spied a hint of green and concluded it was pea, but definitely not the thick as fog kind.

The Harlem River Ship Canal as seen from the Broadway Bridge. Our stickball playing grounds were somewhere between the two buildings and at the tail of the Metro-North train pulling into the Spuyten Duyvil station.

A malformed delight...

April showers bring May flowers...

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)