The Winter Blahs

A longtime friend of the family died recently. He was a good man. His wife passed away not too long before him. She was a good woman. Their deaths triggered a distant memory. Connecting the dots back in time, I found myself resurrecting a ghost from the past—this girl called “Blah” from the old neighborhood. Well, actually, Blah wasn’t her real name and nobody ever called her that to her face. Blah was a nice enough person as I recall, but her general demeanor was—how should I put it—blah.

It was my mother who was the wind beneath the wings of this moniker. Some four decades ago, Mom described a young neighbor of ours as “blah” and it seemed so spot on that it merited a nickname that would stand the test of time. As the years passed, Blah became a young woman with a steady boyfriend who was—how should I put it—similarly blah. They were thus the Blahs—plural. Their courtship and subsequent marriage turned the notion that opposites attract on its head.

Anyway, here’s the connection to the deceased family friends. When the newly married Blahs were shopping around for their very first home, the family friends had their house on the market. Located in a suburban hamlet in neighboring Connecticut, it was still a long way from the Bronx, which is where both the Blahs and I resided. Yes, in a country with hundreds of millions of people, the Blahs ended up buying that home—a place I had visited once or twice as a boy. The family friends, who had a big family of their own, also had a swimming pool in their backyard. There weren’t too many of them in the Bronx. I don’t suppose the pool was still there when the Blahs assumed ownership of the property—it was one of those above ground, rather commonplace, circular things. Nevertheless, the moral of the story is this: It’s a very small world that we live in.

Okay, on to more contemporary winter blahs: Garbage is piling up all over town. Recent snowstorms have found the Department of Sanitation otherwise engaged. With picking up trash taking a backseat to snow removal for a spell, it’s now catch-up time. It’s pretty shocking, though, to see the mounds of garbage on sidewalks. It makes one ponder: Where does it all go? How long can we keep this up? Are those recyclables really getting recycled?

Aside from navigating around heaping helpings of refuse this morning, I passed the evergreen hedge that only a week ago—post-blizzard—was peculiarly teeming with flies. There didn’t appear to be any there today. Flies are literally here today and gone tomorrow. On my way to the bank, the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men were thwarted by one too many snow-inspired obstacles in my path. I had to alter my course and call on a different branch, which I generally prefer to avoid, even if it is closer to home. This bank typically has a doorman at the entrance of the ATM room—a doorman holding a paper cup. Today, there were two doormen on the scene, both with paper cups. Doorman Number One rested on his walker seat, while Doorman Number Two opened and closed the ATM entrance door for customers. Last week these same men were engaged in a heated quarrel, with Doorman Number One claiming that he was there first and accusing Doorman Number Two of cutting into his take. Looks like they resolved their differences—for today anyway.

And so I part with one final memory of Blah as a girl and her family. It was commonplace back then for neighbors one and all to hang clothes out to dry on clotheslines. Blah’s mother was wont to leave clothes out for days, including during inclement weather. It was not unusual to see stiff-as-a-board shirts, pants, and underwear lifelessly hanging on their clothesline in the dead of winter, soldiering on through the slings and arrows of the season. I am left now only to wonder whether the Blahs had any children of their own and, if so, did they turn out blah, too?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)