Spring Ahead, Fall Back

It’s Memorial Day weekend 2018.  Fifty years ago on Memorial Day weekend, I can say with certainty what I did. I was a mere lad—not yet six—and attended a barbecue in “The Garden”—as it was affectionately known—across the street from my house. For its lifetime, cookouts on the warm weather holidays were the rule. Prior to said festivities, my father would venture over to “Little Italy in the Bronx”—Arthur Avenue—and harvest the requisite fare: shell steaks, hamburger meat, and hot dogs. A keg of Schaefer beer was always on hand, too, along with assorted adult beverages.

After partying in this unique environment of sights, sounds, and smells, a fair share of the attendees exited the garden confines three sheets to the wind. Fortunately, many of the revelers walked home—if not exactly in a straight line—but some got behind the wheels of their cars and hit the highways and byways decidedly over the limit. The concept of a “designated driver” was pretty foreign back then.

Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine that a veritable farm existed—and a considerable one at that—on somebody else’s property in the Bronx. My grandfather and several others were originally given permission by a real estate agent to plant crops, dig a well, and erect a makeshift fence there. They had carte blanche to essentially play with fire and imbibe spirits in the space like there was no tomorrow. Sadly, though, tomorrow came. And the likes of the place will never be seen again. For more background on "Kingsbridge’s Last Victory Garden,”—as it was dubbed in the local weekly, The Riverdale Press—check out these past essays: Garden of Paradise, A Garden Grew in the Bronx, and Indisputably Simpler Times

This is a view from "the garden" of the newly built—and as yet occupied—Corlear Gardens. The year: 1968. The sunflowers tell us it was the dog days of summertime when this photo was taken.

Moving on to contemporary miscellany, I ran across this sign and wondered if a local ant population was responsible.

The first time I ordered food via GrubHub, it was pizza and delivered by a manic-eyed old geezer.

Pizza played a significant role in my youthful life and times. George, owner of Sam's Pizza, was a neighborhood icon. So what if he used the same mop on his floor as in his pizza oven. We were a heartier lot back then. This, by the way, is not Sam's Pizza.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is leaving no stone unturned these days. Now we positively know when we enter a subway car that we have three options: Turn right, turn left, or walk straight ahead.

New luxury apartments for lease with a choice view.

The Pigeon sisters.

Long sold by street vendors in New York City, Sabrett brand hot dogs are still readily available. Once upon a time, I loved these frankfurters. But that was then and this is now.

Vendor hot dogs typically give me agida, but I nonetheless crave Nathan's "famous" franks from time to time. Yesterday was such a time. Agida followed.

It's that tourist time of year again. Say cheese!

This ice cream truck parked at the southwest corner of Greenwich and Chambers Streets is just about where Lieutenant Kojak, in 1975, pulled into a sprawling Tribeca parking lot owned and operated by loan shark Joel Adrian (played by the incomparable Michael V. Gazzo). That parking lot in the environs of Wall Street is a distant memory now.

Kojak arriving at the aforementioned parking lot. Take my word for it: The area doesn't look remotely like this anymore.

A last nursing home food photo. How does one make a hamburger look this unappetizing?

Springtime in the Bronx.

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony here in Van Cortlandt Park's Tail.

Decades ago this very man was seen—in his words—"walking it off" in the vicinity of Van Cortlandt Park. It's good to know that somethings never change.

The MTA is endeavoring to make the New York City subway system more efficient, customer-friendly, and civil. Yesterday, a train conductor made an announcement: "If you see someone who is pregnant, disabled, or elderly, stand up and give that person your seat. By doing so, you will be standing up for what's right." Wouldn't it be nice if people didn't have to be told that?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

All Roads Lead Home

For too many people to count, all roads lead home—to a nursing home. As a frequent visitor to one particular institution in the Bronx, I am reminded of this harsh reality bite on a regular basis and in living color. It’s not quite Cinema 180, but sights and sounds are all around, including mysterious culinary concoctions, distant wailing, and television sets with the volumes on maximum. Considering the price tag of residing in the place—either temporarily or on a permanent basis—one would hope that both the service and amenities would be worth the hefty price of admission.

My nursing home model costs about $15,000 a month, which includes rehabilitation. I appreciate the fact that one is quite expensive to operate and a heavily regulated nightmare as well. However, if profit is the bottom line, patients are going to get the short end of the stick. With a minimalist staff catering to predominantly elderly and—in many instances—very ill patients, how could it be otherwise?

A couple of days ago, I thought I was witnessing the last gasps of my relation’s roommate. When I first entered the room she was calmly sitting in a wheelchair with a table on wheels in front of her—not uncommon sights in a nursing home milieu. I was pleased when she put her head down on the table—naptime, I surmised, and better than the alternative, which was staring at me from across the room.

The woman was alive and well. Well…not so well...really. I don’t know what her myriad medical issues are, but she painfully grunts and groans as a rule. Apparently, the nursing home powers-that-be took away her emergency pull string because she had a penchant for summoning help morning, noon, and night. The lady may have cried wolf one too many times, but there’s always a first for everything.

Anyway, to get back to this tale of woe: When a nurse making her rounds came in to take the woman’s blood sugar reading—it’s always in the vicinity of three hundred (so much for medical privacy)—and administer meds, she was having quite a time waking up her patient. After several shouts of the woman’s name and assorted shakes, the nurse darted off to her mobile station for a stethoscope, thermometer, and blood-pressure sleeve. Diagnosis: The lady’s heart still beat, her temperature was normal, and blood pressure in the range of the living. So, she didn’t breathe her last in my presence. Still, the poor soul seemed pretty out of it after the scare. I don’t blame the nurse for moving on. She did what she could and had a whole floor of patients in which to tend. But it seemed to me that the place should be better staffed to keep watchful eyes on men and women teetering on the brink between life and death.

While on the subject of bang for your buck, I recently surfed on over to a favorite childhood summer vacation spot of mine. It was Manasquan, New Jersey and I was interested in a certain street named after a certain fish. Once upon a time my family rented a classic railroad-style cottage there and never paid more than two hundred dollars for a week’s stay. What a difference four decades make! Most of the old, inexpensive cottages from the past are two-story homes now. And this transformation began long before Superstorm Sandy did a number on the area in 2012. The going rate for rentals—a couple of blocks from both the ocean and Manasquan Inlet—is $5,500 a week in 2018. I’ll happily take three weeks in Manasquan—the price of a month in a nursing home with its singular room service—and let that be the end of it. 

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

“A” Day in the Life

Yesterday, I rode the A…the Brooklyn-bound A express train. This is not—and has never been—my preferred mode of transportation. Occasionally, though, when the Number 1 isn’t operating in my neck of the woods—due to ubiquitous construction—the A’s the best alternative in getting into lower Manhattan. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) supplies “free” shuttle bus service to the A train along the Number 1 line and an invaluable life lesson, too: Nothing in life is free!

The proof was certainly in the pudding Saturday afternoon. With the Number 1 train in service as far north as City College—in the neighborhood where my paternal grandparents originally settled in New York City—I thought I’d give the shuttle bus route a try. After all, how bad could it be? Silly question. The bus trip took me from 137th Street to 168th Street. It didn’t cost me a penny but I soon discovered that it wasn’t free by any stretch of the imagination.

For me to complete my homeward journey, I would have to take four different shuttle buses—on, off, on, off, on, off, on, and off. That’s way too much shuttling for me. Riding New York City buses on heavily trafficked roads—with relentless stops at traffic lights—is a rather unpleasant experience in and of itself. And having a prosthetic knee is a further complication. The city has many kneeling buses, but sometimes exiting requires a drop off of two feet onto an uneven street pavement. On the other hand, the subway has a certain perverse charm to it—even the subterranean A—with more predictable starts, stops, entering, and exiting.

Interestingly, the A line has some really antiquated trains still on the job. I was surprised to see the dangling Emergency Brake that I remember so well from my youth on the Number 1 train. I presumed they had all been retired a long, long time ago. The thing just hangs there, easily accessible bait for the untold nut-job passengers that ride the New York City subway. In the newer trains, the Emergency Brake is behind a plate of glass. Accessing it is a process that includes a sounding alarm and contact with the train’s conductor.

While on my joyride on this throwback train, I spied someone standing in the vicinity of the aforementioned brake. No, the guy didn’t pull it. He was holding something unusual: a book. But even more unusual was his choice of reading: Machiavelli’s The Prince. Niccolò, I have no doubt, would have a lot to say about the current state of affairs in the land of the free and home of the brave.

Anyway, the icing on the cake of my journey into the unknown was that—after disembarking the shuttle bus—I took a car service home. The driver checked his traffic app and told me that the typical fifteen-minute ride from where we were to where I wanted to be would take at least seventy minutes. Courtesy of subway work, there was heavy traffic at the Broadway Bridge. And the Cross Bronx Expressway to the Major Deegan Expressway—option two—was a nightmare as well. The last best hope—option three—was the Henry Hudson Parkway with its toll. I gave the driver the green light to take the app’s good advice. In the big picture, the free shuttle bus cost me ten subway fares. It must be true: Nothing in life is free.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Times They Are A-Changin'

As a youth, my family and I occasionally visited friends at their apartment with windows overlooking a busy El. In fact, you could practically reach out and touch the subway trains passing to and fro. It was the Number 4 line to be precise. And the apartment dwellers in question lived in a walk-up at the intersection of Jerome Avenue and East Gun Hill Road—where west meets east. That is, where the West Bronx ends and the East Bronx begins. The address was actually not too far from where I grew up in Kingsbridge. It was only a ten-minute drive, yet it seemed like a different world altogether.

For a kid who liked both playing with and riding on trains, I considered this apartment the absolute coolest place a person could live. Watching subway traffic at all hours from a bedroom window perch was akin—from my ten-year-old perspective—to an urban paradise. Now, more than forty years later, I can better understand why people might prefer to live someplace else.

Residing in eye- and earshot of a heavily-trafficked El would typically be considered less desirable living quarters than someplace off-the-beaten trail—like a block away. But the times they are a-changin’ in New York. Recently, I stumbled upon a rather large sign at W242nd Street and Broadway that advertised luxury apartments. During its building stage, rumors swirled that the completed edifice would be dormitories for my alma mater, nearby Manhattan College. What an awful location for college kids to burn the midnight oil studying for exams, I thought then, not to mention for sleeping off a Natural Light Beer binge. With trains coming and going at that very spot all day and all night long, it’s a never-ending story of metal-on-metal screeching, earsplitting horn blowing, and—the pièce de ré·sis·tance—air-brake sighing when the Number 1 train comes home to roost. "Luxury,” it would seem, is in the eye and ear of the beholder.

If nothing else, they are "close to transportation."

And close to sprawling Van Cortlandt Park, too.

Every time there is a heavy rain, Tibbetts Brook "daylights" itself in the park.

In barbecue territory...

It's that time of year around this part of the Bronx. On weekends, buses become trains.

The luxury apartments will have a bird's-eye view of this sort of thing on a regular basis.

As a youthful passenger in my father's automobile, I remember requesting with a certain yanking hand-gesture that truck drivers blow their loud horns. The luxury apartment dwellers can mime something similar to passing train operators.

There once was a time when Dunkin' Donuts was "worth the trip." That is, pretty scarce and hard to find. Not so anymore.

An empty Natural Light beer can—a Jasper's preferred brew.

Groundbreaking at the college for its future state-of-the-art "South Campus." This locale once hosted a house on it that was owned by boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. When I attended Manhattan College, the house was still there and called Farrell Hall. For a reason that now escapes me, I visited Farrell Hall on one occasion.

Springtime on Broadway. A couple of days ago, I wore my winter jacket.

Today it's close to ninety degrees.

Tony Riverdale's haphazard building through the years would have made Ayn Rand proud.

When "The Century" building in Riverdale first opened, there was no covering on its tennis courts. For a summer or two, the woods surrounding it supplied us with bag loads of free tennis balls for our stickball games.

Stickball games that, by the way, were played down this block at John F. Kennedy High School. The school was built on land that previously housed an area we all knew as "Shanty Town."

"That's a fancy-looking apartment building over there. I wonder how much an apartment is?"

Elevated subway tracks were once the rage, even in Manhattan. Now, only the Number 1 train—and briefly at that—daylights itself in the northernmost reaches of the borough.

I grew up with the El on nearby Broadway. I waited for my "Special" bus, which took me to high school in the East Bronx, under the El. I enjoyed a snow cone at Woolworth's in the shadows of the El. It was an evocative area institution for sure. Nowadays, however, I can better appreciate the quieter and cleaner benefits of an underground railroad.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)