Baby, It’s Cold Outside

How cold is it? It is so cold that my “Eddie lock” is frozen. More on that shortly. But first, the weekend winter weather hype around here didn’t amount to more than a soaking rain. However, phase two—the brutally cold aftermath—certainly came to pass. This past Saturday, the various subway platforms and subway staircases in New York City were smothered in rock salt—or whatever ice-melting combination the Metropolitan Transit Authority employs nowadays. In genuine fear of slipping, I found myself gingerly navigating this rather intensive precautionary measure of what might or might not be. Seriously, descending a heavily salted stairwell can be hazardous to one’s health.

Happily, I didn’t take a tumble on the aforementioned overly salty surfaces. The subsequent chill, though, has resurrected memories of a past January cold spell. For some reason, I have this elaborate image in my mind of a particular time and a particular place. And courtesy of the wealth of information on the Internet, I am able to confirm what I have long believed to be that time, 1977, the winter of my first year in high school. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I loathed with a passion the high school experience.

I vividly remember riding our not very special “special” buses across the Bronx—west to east—on a series of brutally cold mornings. These many years later, I can still feel the despair of those icy rides, which commenced on Broadway under the noisy El. And as the buses rattled down Bailey Avenue, I can see the rising seven o’ clock sun reflecting on the frozen snow remnants on the passing sidewalks. At our rides' very literal high points on East Gun Hill Road, we caught glimpses of the Long Island Sound on the horizon. In the depths of wintertime, such fleeting sightings made me pine—as I recall—for summertime when our “special” buses were on ice.

Looking back, there was nothing quite so depressing as venturing off to high school during an Arctic blast. But I somehow made it through that frigid January of 1977 and lived to tell. It should be noted here that if my secondary education was excised from my winter memory bank, the season had its moments. Honestly, it all boiled down to snow in those days. It’s what I—and many of my peers—desired for a whole host of reasons, not the least being potential days off from school. But in an age before hand-held devices kept youth indoors winter, spring, summer, and fall, we frolicked outside no matter the season.

As for that Eddie lock, I’ll make a long story short. It’s actually a bicycle lock used outdoors on something other than a bike. The lock came to pass after an unsettling wee-hours visitation from a person unknown. I chose not to inquire, “Who’s there?” Actually, I believe I know the individual who roamed that night and rang my bell—off and on—for a half hour that felt like an eternity. I should have called the police. He’s a local from the old neighborhood. We knew of each other as kids. Unfortunately for me, we know of each other as adults. And Eddie has long been putting the monetary bite on people he knows—even remotely. I made the grave mistake of giving him a few dollars one time and it opened Pandora's Box. While it solved my short-term problem, it created a vexing long-term one.

Eddie’s story is a sorry one. Once upon a time, he was a quiet, unassuming kid. Now, pushing sixty, he’s loquacious and inclined to rave—his brain, no doubt, scrambled by his decades-long addiction. In my most recent encounters with Eddie, he’s told me a couple of whoppers. He would be starting a job in two weeks, he said on one occasion. That didn’t happen. The man also reported that he would be receiving food stamps on the fifteenth of this month. I wonder? And, yes, if I gave him a little something to tide him over until then, Eddie would buy me groceries. Well, as of this writing, the Eddie lock remains frozen, but a spritz of WD-40 can probably fix that. As for Eddie, his problems are sadly not so easily fixable.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)