Remember with Advantages

It’s hard to believe! The main players in a real-life on a real-block sitcom dear to my heart are all gone. The height of popularity for this reality show—before there were reality shows—occurred in the late-1970s, a simpler and more colorful snapshot in time. While its audience was infinitesimal, it was nonetheless extremely enthusiastic. The protagonists were the genuine articles—real neighbors and real friends, too. But something made this family stand apart from the pack. Let’s just say that they were true originals—uniquely and entertainingly peculiar in their seemingly humdrum day-to-day existence.

If given the choice, I’d pass. I just wouldn’t want to live my life—as it previously unfolded—over again. On the other hand, if I could pick and choose certain moments from my more than half-century of living, I’d welcome a second go at them. I’d happily return to the summers of 1977 and 1978 when the aforementioned real-life sitcom played out before my teenage eyes—live, uncensored, and in magnificent color.

Those on the block who were acquainted with the first family very likely witnessed conduct that was made for television. For instance, the youngest son, Tony—in his twenties at the time—profanely ordering his septuagenarian grandmother, Nonna, to “get back in the house” was downright surreal. On occasion he would physically usher her away through the family garage. Key the laugh track. Tony was also known to punch—for no apparent reason—his rather affable granny in her rather fleshy arms. One summer afternoon he literally kicked her out of the house. “Out of this house until we find that goddamn cat!” Tony bellowed for all to hear. He had assigned blame to his grandmother for the family cat's escape into the mean streets of the Bronx. Fortunately, the cat was found unharmed—inside the house and under a stairwell the whole time. Nonna had been wrongfully accused! But the old woman never seemed to mind the rough and tumble and rolled with the punches, as it were, which made such spectacles more humorous than malicious. Granted, a lot of folks in the neighborhood didn’t see it that way. 

We dumbfounded observers of the family dubbed a particularly strange behavior of theirs “feet rubbing.” In retrospect it should have been called “toe rubbing.” One summer's eve, Tony performed a thorough toe rub while sitting on the top step of his front stoop. I hadn’t seen anything like it before and haven’t seen anything like it since. With a clean towel at his disposal, Tony ferociously rubbed between each and every toe to remove itchy fungus or whatever it was that settled down there. Periodically, he slapped the towel down on the ground, which sent airborne god knows what. Looking back, it almost certainly wasn’t wise to stand down wind of that undulating towel. But, again, I was enraptured in my favorite local sitcom and am thankful for having been a member of the studio audience as often as I was. A footnote, if you will: According to a relative and reliable witness, Tony utilized a sock and even his bedspread to perform indoor toe rubs whenever he got the itch.

Then there was the family patriarch, Uncle Nino, whose head was slightly askew, the result of an on-the-job accident decades earlier. The man had frizzy hair that frequently assumed a life of its own, with strands jutting out in every conceivable direction. He absolutely loved grated—Parmesan—cheese and sprinkled it on everything, even ice cream. Well, maybe not ice cream. Uncle Nino attached pieces of tin foil to the bottoms of the pull-string light switches throughout the house. You could more readily see them in the dark that way. He liberally used words that struck me as funny, too, like “aggravating.” Uncle Nino often chided his son to not “aggravate” the cat who, by the way, didn’t seem to have a name other than “cat.” He played opera records and liked “ridiculous” shows, not “stupid” ones. When Uncle Nino waved to people, it was as if he had a mechanical Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em arm.

Finally, there was the family matriarch, Aunt Bobbie, a good-natured, heavyset woman who watered down the Hi-C fruit drinks—half and half—and gave tours of the upstairs quarters, which included Tony’s bedroom, to everyone and anyone. “There’s Tony’s hockey poster,” she would say, pointing at it on the wall. “And this is where Tony keeps his underwear.” When invited to a wedding reception, Aunt Bobbie brought along an unsealed card and blank check. She had to ascertain what the spread was worth before filling in the particulars. If you looked closely enough, the contours of Aunt Bobbie’s “real arm” could be deciphered underneath her blubbery “fake arm.” Four decades have passed now. When I see such arms on others these many years later, I remember with advantages when I first discovered the real arm/fake arm phenomenon. And I am grateful for that and for the first family—Nona, Uncle Nino, Aunt Bobbie, and Tony—whose likes I will never see again.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)