You Can Call Him Al

For every action there is a reaction. In this instance, a contemporary pizza pie review resurrecting a man from my past. Submitted for your approval: Recently, I chanced upon “Barstool Pizza Reviews” on YouTube and began watching several from the prodigious series. Pizza has long been a fare favorite of mine and informally reviewing pizza shops, restaurants, and the frozen varieties, too, came naturally to me. Why, pray tell, did Celentano’s discontinue its frozen pizza, the best of the lot during my youth? Anyway, among his one thousand entertaining and informative pizza reviews, Dave Portnoy called on Johnny’s Pizza in Mount Vernon, New York, which is a veritable stone’s throw away from the North Bronx. He gave it an extremely high score, 9.1, the best that I have seen to-date in the videos viewed. And, yes, I remember sampling Johnny’s Pizza a quarter of a century ago—it’s a family business still, I’m happy to report, in the family. Suffice it to say, Johnny’s Pizza deserved the accolades then as well as now.

This is where Al comes in. Once upon a time I worked in a place called Pet Nosh on Central Avenue in Yonkers, also a veritable stone’s throw away from the North Bronx. A customer of ours, who regularly shopped in the store, purchased a weekly mother lode of pet supplies for his wife. She not only fed stray cats and dogs, but donated food to area animal shelters. Prior to learning his real name, Al, I had nicknamed him “John Gotti,” a moniker never uttered in his presence. Time and again, Al went home with piles of a bargain dog food—kibbled biscuit—called Quaker City, which he cleverly dubbed “the motor oil.” From my perspective and a few others, Al truly resembled mafia titan du jour, John Gotti, only his coiffure was not the genuine article, and he wasn’t quite as dapper as the Dapper Don.

As a friendly gesture, Al would periodically bring us Johnny’s pizza pies with their super-thin, delectably charred, crunchy crust. A younger employee referred to them as “tampon pizzas,” a peculiar choice of adjectives, I thought at the time. Al was a good guy on that little snippet of stage in which we cohabited all those years ago. I don’t know where we got the notion—or, perhaps, the inside scoop—that Al possibly consorted with some unsavory sorts. Maybe he told us, I don’t recall. After all, looking John Gotti-esque didn’t mean he was in the same line of work. My paternal grandfather resembled Marlon Brando as Don Corleone, and the former was an iceman who despised the underworld thugs who tried to shake him down. Al, in fact, once mentioned that he owned a fruit store nearby at some earlier date, but he wasn’t exactly convincing as a bloke who endeavored to live the American dream by selling broccoli, sleeves of garlic, and cantaloupes.

Well, with no forewarning one day, Al’s wife materialized to do the shopping for herself—Mrs. Columbo unmasked—and informed us that her husband had been arrested. On what charge or charges, we never learned. She said he was very upset that he had to remove his rug for a mug shot and couldn’t wear the thing in the slammer.

Eventually, Al got out on bail and was awaiting trial. He never returned to Pet Nosh, though, and Johnnie’s uber-tasty pizzas became memories from a simpler time. Word eventually got to us that Al wouldn’t have to stand trial after all. He died of a heart attack before it began. All I can say—regardless of his alleged transgression or transgressions—is that he was one of the good ones. Rest in peace and pizza, Al.

 

Yin and Yang

Walter Mondale died this week. He was a very decent man from a vastly different time—a more sanguine and saner one, I daresay. The politicians were certainly a better breed. The Congress was not then a haven for ambitious Ivy Leaguers with their fingers to the wind. Rather, there were a lot of men like Mondale in Washington, D.C., people from humble origins who lived through a Great Depression, served in the military, and viscerally connected with the common folk. These public servants were true patriots who put their country first, believed in the Constitution, and accepted the results of democratic elections.  

My first vote in a presidential election was cast for the Mondale-Ferraro ticket. Just out of college, I—along with my younger brother—attended a rally for the historic ticket in the New York City Garment District, when it still was literally the Garment District. Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro from Queens was the first woman on a national ticket. As a collector of political memorabilia, occasions, like rallies, inevitably delivered the goods. I came home that day with a treasure trove of fliers, stickers, and posters. Such large, enthusiastic gatherings, though, often gave attendees a false sense that their candidates were destined to win—despite strong evidence to the contrary—the whole enchilada.

And so it was: On November 2, 1984, Walter Mondale told the assembled: “Polls don’t vote. People vote!” We cheered! The excitement was palpable—maybe, just maybe, a miracle was in the making, I thought. Four days later, the people voted and Mondale-Ferraro lost forty-nine states, including New York, which today is bluer than blue.

I was not a supporter of Walter Mondale during the 1984 primary season. In the waning months of my higher education, I threw in with Gary Hart, a politician tailor-made for the idealistic—not woke nutty—younger generation of that day. Columnist Murray Kempton wrote of 1965 New York City mayoral candidate John Lindsay, “He is fresh and everyone else is tired.” That’s how I felt about the Democratic candidates running for president in 1984: Hart was fresh and everybody else was tired, particularly the front-runner Mondale.

Walter Mondale believed in a big-tent Democratic party. Today the big tent is smaller than a pup tent—think one way and watch what you say. And if you don’t think our way—to the letter—you’re a hater, naturally, who should be cancelled and your life rendered null and void. Sadly, when American political life desperately cries out for a reasonable opposition party to an increasingly batty one, there is none to be found. It’s the worst of all worlds and makes me miss Walter Mondale, his Democratic party, and 1984—the year, not the book—even more.

A footnote on the “He is fresh and everyone else is tired” label. Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang is currently the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race for New York City mayor. The tired bunch of woke local yokels running against him—and their acolytes—are really gunning for Yang now, which makes him increasingly appealing to me. Time will speak volumes.

It’s a Meatloaf World That We Live In

Recently, I made the colossal mistake of ordering the “Meatloaf Special” at a local diner. I ignored my years of accumulated experience and threw what amounted to a culinary Hail Mary pass. The diner is a high-quality eatery, I reasoned—the hamburgers are especially good—so why wouldn’t the meatloaf smothered in mushroom gravy hit the spot?

As a boy, I was served my mother’s meatloaf too many times to count. The challenge with that particular fare from yesteryear were the onions therein. They were not sufficiently sweated, soft, and sweet. My meatloaf phobia was thus ingrained at a tender age. Things that go crunch in the night were to be avoided at all costs. I could only abide a smoother than smooth meatloaf—and the same could be said of meatballs.

My maternal grandmother—an accomplished cook on many fronts—made meatloaf every now and then. While her signature dish—meat pie—was chock full of onions, they were caramelized and succulent. But not so with the meatloaf, which also included crunchy red and green peppers—multiple horrors in one frightful dish. During our summertime visits to Bangor, Pennsylvania, my brothers and I often dined on my grandparents’ back porch. One meatloaf night, my father sensed treachery afoot. His boys would be dining outside downwind of the trash cans on the side of the house. Disposing of the meatloaf without a trace would therefore be a piece of cake. I don’t recall that dinner’s precise denouement, but I suppose we were thwarted and compelled to pick apart the meatloaf, removing the onions and peppers one by one by one. Trust me: That kind of thing gets tiresome real fast, and you go to bed hungry as well.

An aunt of mine also made a meatloaf that was more or less edible. The onions were highly visible but adequately melted. Her secret meatloaf ingredients were oatmeal and a unique spice that I only remember tasting in that meatloaf. The final product, though, had a rather odd consistency. While it was appetizing enough, you could—if so desired—eat the meatloaf with a straw. It would have made a great baby food.

Interestingly, I sampled a fast-food joint’s meatloaf—Boston Market—not too long ago. It was sufficiently smooth for my tastes and covered in an appealing barbecue glaze. No crunchies to speak of and flavorsome, but—in the end—everything from Boston Market leaves my stomach feeling sour. It comes with age, I guess. All those wonderful take-out restaurants that I loved so much as a kid just don’t cut the mustard anymore.

One final note on the meatloaf phenomenon. Wherever you encounter it, a surprise awaits. It’s uncharted territory—always: No two meatloafs are the same. This can also be said of chili. My mother and grandmother also made chili with the same gastronomic roadblocks for me: crunchy onions and peppers. Two of my favorite TV detectives were chili aficionados: Lieutenant Columbo and Chief Ironside, with the latter’s unusual kitchen stocked with cans of the stuff. 1960s canned chili…yum. Columbo, meanwhile, repeatedly ordered the stuff in greasy spoons while out and about. I have studiously avoided going down the chili path for the same reason I shouldn’t have ordered the “Meatloaf Special” at the diner. With one notable exception: I have tried Wendy’s chili, which is surprisingly tasty. But, just like the Boston Market meatloaf aftershock, the chili's fast-food finish leaves a lot to be desired. Life lessons learned, forgotten, and learned again.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

A Garden Grew in the Bronx

(Originally published on June 24, 2013)

With another summer officially underway and everything green and in bloom, I am reminded of “The Garden.” That’s what everybody in the neighborhood called it, and it was a rather remarkable piece of earth. In fact, as time marches on this garden in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx seems more remarkable than ever to me. Like so many things from the past, we took it for granted. It was there and a part of our summers. I consider myself very fortunate that the place somehow endured from 1958 to 1971. After all, this was a period of time when empty lots were slowly but surely vanishing from the local landscape. I was just nine years old when the garden was plowed under to make way for one more building, but old enough to remember its incredible uniqueness and beauty in an otherwise urban landscape.

  

The garden flourished on a sprawling empty lot—multiple empty lots as a matter of fact—on the northwest corner of Tibbett Avenue and W232nd Street. My grandfather and three other men enclosed the space with a makeshift fence comprised of assorted woods and metals. The fence was utilitarian—esthetics weren’t factored into the equation. Built into it, too, were both front and back entrances—doors that opened with actual keys that magically slid pieces of wood over to unlock them. Our Gang couldn’t have devised anything better.

Coincidentally, the garden location was directly across the street from the three-family brick house my grandfather had purchased and, too, the one where I grew up. When he originally moved his family, including my father, into the neighborhood in 1947, he had his heart set on a garden. In stark contrast from where he came from—Manhattan’s Morningside Heights—parts of Kingsbridge were downright bucolic back then. But while my grandfather pined for property with garden space, he needed tenants to help pay the mortgage and settled for a cement backyard and a couple of garages instead.

  

A friend of my grandfather's—already living in the neighborhood—told him not to worry about a garden. There were ample empty lots in the area, he said, in which he could plant one. “Victory gardens”—holdovers from the war—still existed in the environs of Kingsbridge, and my grandfather found a workable plot just up the block between W232nd Street and W231st Street. His garden was one among many garden plots there. When all were evicted so that ground could be broken for buildings that would subsequently be called "Tibbett Towers," it was time to look for another location, even with the pickings slimmer than ever.

  

Before the garden that I came to know was planted, the realtor who had the property on the market gave the gardeners his blessing. His one proviso was that they keep the place clean. It was a different world altogether in the late 1950s. The New York City bureaucracy, for one, wasn’t nearly as intrusive as it is today. Imagine a contemporary realtor—even with the consent of a property owner—permitting strangers to build a makeshift fence around the land for sale. And, too, allowing the construction of tool sheds, an outhouse, a bocce court, and a horseshoe pit with bleachers. Utilizing a fifty-gallon drum, my grandfather even dug a well on the property, which tapped into the formerly aboveground Tibbetts Brook just beneath the surface. This supplied the garden with all the water needed. My grandfather knew there was water to be found there, because just to the south in his former garden space the builders of Tibbett Towers were very literally waterlogged. The tenacious Tibbetts Brook was causing unforeseen and overly expensive problems in laying the foundations, which caused the original builder to go bankrupt. This debacle is possibly why the garden across the street from me survived as long as it did. Prospective buyers of the property were perhaps gun shy—and with good reason.  (The owner of the garden space reportedly hoped that the NYPD would build its new 50th Precinct station house there and, of course, pay his not inconsiderable asking price of $1.2 million. It didn’t happen. They found a more reasonably priced spot a few blocks away.)

  

The garden nonetheless was amazingly fertile. Tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce, peppers, beans, and onions were grown there. The tomato crop was so bountiful that my grandparents would make a year’s worth of tomato sauce with garden tomatoes. My grandfather once planted 148 tomato plants, which he grew from seed in a garden hotbox. The Irish contingent of gardeners grew lots of hearty cabbages because they ate lots of cabbage. Potatoes may have been the only vegetable tried in the place that came up lemons. There was something lacking in the Bronx soil.

  

The garden, too, had fig trees, peach trees, and an apple tree on the premises. Flowers were everywhere. Big, bushy marigolds were scattered about because they repelled bugs worth repelling. Tall sunflowers were bee havens. But what I remember most about the garden were the parties thrown during holidays and on summer weekends. Yes, on someone else’s property there were festive barbecues and, as I recall, lots of adult beverages consumed. Somebody could have gotten hit on the head with a horseshoe, or fallen into the well and drowned. Just looking into the well scared me. But people weren’t conditioned to sue one another back then, so the realtor and the property owner had very little to worry about.

The garden was an oasis in a Bronx neighborhood in a tumultuous time for both New York City and the country at large. When my grandfather passed away in 1965, my father promptly filled his shoes. I always considered it my father’s garden and mine by extension. As a boy, I thought it would always be there, but that was not in the cards. From the perspectives of young and old alike, not only "The Garden" but an entire era was bulldozed on that sad day in October 1971.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Goody's...the Bad...and the Ugly

(Another reprise from ten years ago. Simpler times and fast food, too.)

As a seven- and eight-year-old boy in the old neighborhood, I had the good fortune of patronizing a fast-food joint called Goody’s. Located on Broadway near West 230th Street in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, Goody’s, from all that I’ve gleaned, was a small hamburger chain in the New York-New Jersey area in the 1960s, which fast fell by the wayside.

My fond memories of this place have very little to do with the quality, or the taste, of their hamburgers and French fries, which no doubt were mouth-watering delicacies to my immature palate. Rather, it was the giveaway—a hamburger flipper’s mesh hat with a Goody's logo on it—that I recall getting along with a meal, and that I wish I still had today to prop up on my curio shelf right alongside a Bohack’s supermarket set of matches. But, alas, both the freebie hat and the Goody’s chain of stores are in the memory dumpster.

When Burger King took over Goody’s location in the early 1970s sometime, their employees were bedecked in snappy uniforms—the womenfolk wore very cool and very big hats—and one and all were trained in customer service. Times have changed. But in all fairness, a Burger King hourly wage bought more than a Burger King supper forty years ago.

Calling on Goody’s, Burger King, or McDonald’s was considered a special treat for most of us, something akin to a day at the amusement park. There were no families that I knew of who fed at the troughs of these fast-food places for their daily fares. We all just sort of knew that fast foods and health foods didn’t jibe, and we didn’t need calorie charts to put us on the straight and narrow. And, really, many of the so-called “fat kids” in my grammar and high schools would be considered positively svelte in this uber-informed day and age of ours. I just don’t get it. We have so much more health info at our fingertips, but yet we just keep getting fatter and fatter, and more cholesterol laden, and blame Burger King and McDonald's for leading us astray.

I realize that the Goody’s era is considered the dark ages vis-à-vis health and wellness—the place could have had a cigarette machine on the premises for heaven's sake. But fast foods just weren’t on our plates three, four, and five times a week in those ignorant times.

The Kid Behind the Counter

(Another reprise...this one from 2010, when a mere thirty years had passed from that fateful summer.)

In the summer of 1980, which bridged high school and college for me, I worked my first real job in a place called Pet Nosh, a mom-and-pop pet food and supply shop located in the Little Neck section of Queens. It was owned and operated by my older brother and a neighbor named Rich. As part of Pet Nosh’s business plan, the first few years encouraged home deliveries from Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx. One boss man ran the retail store while the other was out and about on the highways and byways generating additional cash flow.

When one-half of the aforementioned pair vacationed during their first summer in business, the as-yet-eighteen-year-old me was left in charge of the store. I'll admit the pay wasn’t especially good, because the Pet Nosh boys weren’t quite awash in capital back then. And, besides, the whole thing was pretty exciting. It was a real adventure being part of a family-oriented business attempting to beat the odds and make a go of it. This was the American dream personified.

I'll not soon forget Rich's encouraging words to an anxious and pretty shy kid that summer a long time ago. “You should be paying me for the experience you will be getting,” he said. At the time, I considered his remark a self-serving volley from a notorious miser. But lo and behold, Rich was right after all, although I do believe that even a teenager—and, in this instance, a relative—ought to be paid a fair wage for his respective toils. The man’s larger point was nonetheless on the mark.

Getting thrown into the shark-infested retail-help swimming hole without a life raft, as I was at the time, was an education for sure. I was compelled to do many things I had never done before, and had no place to hide, either. Servicing the sometimes impatient, frequently demanding, and occasionally very weird and even creepy public at large imparts one life lesson after another. It's a dynamic and unpredictable laboratory. For starters, it requires ample doses of patience and understanding.

Life on the retail frontlines can be simultaneously exciting and harrowing. It should be said that most shoppers just show up to satisfy their needs, pay their tabs, and are on their merry way. They seek no attention and desire, above all else, a certain anonymity. However, a distinct minority could best be described as consumer terrorists, the men and women who make retailers' lives a holy hell. Countless times I arrived home from a day at Pet Nosh physically exhausted—we carted around lots of cases of cat food and bags of dog food—and emotionally drained, too. Encounters with certain customers of ours—the bad apples in the barrel—could be at once mind-altering and downright depressing. It seems there are more than a handful of folks walking the streets with troubled lives and tortured psyches who aren’t content to check their psychological baggage at the retailer’s doorstep.

I was merely a kid behind a counter. But I got a crash course in what could best be described as the multi-hued nature of humanity—the good, the bad, and the ugly. While I wouldn’t advocate paying your employer for the privilege, it is an experience money cannot buy.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Charting Cars in the Bronx

(A reprise from 2011. Ten years have passed and charting cars would still be a major challenge for anyone game enough to try.)

Once upon a time I charted cars on pieces of construction paper. It was in the mid-1970s that the teenage me plopped down on my front stoop, and sometimes at a front window, and recorded the manufacturers of the automobiles that passed by. What an interesting boy I was. We knew car makes back then—be they Dodge Darts, Chevy Impalas, Buick Centuries, and most everything in between—because they were absolutely unique in appearance.

In the old neighborhood, we not only knew a whole lot more people than city folk know today, but we knew the specific kinds of cars they drove, too. Neighbors distinguished themselves with their choice of vehicles and couldn’t, therefore, come and go unnoticed. Now—with some notable exceptions, of course—what is parked along the streets, and in the area garages, look more or less the same, despite all of the amazing technological advances therein.

The colors of cars in the 1970s were also in sync with the fashions of the day in that groovy snapshot in time. Danny C drove a dark brown Ford LTD; Cathy R, a pale yellow Volkswagen. Jack H had a sky-blue Plymouth Duster and Jimmy S, a bright red AMC Rebel. There were people who drove gas-guzzling “boats,” as we called them back then. Arthur M Sr. parked a metallic gold-colored Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight on the street that was the size of a stretch limousine. Others sought out economy cars that were simultaneously affordable and fuel efficient in an age of increasingly high gas prices and, occasionally, outright shortages, courtesy of an awful cartel that is equally awful today, although happily somewhat more impotent.

My father owned a 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne for fourteen years. It had an interior smell—a car-seat vinyl meets gassy residue kind of thing—that inspired carsickness, particularly without something called air conditioning. One member of the family, in fact, would puke his guts out at the mere notion of getting into the car—yards away from it—before every outing. In 1973, the Biscayne was at last retired and the family rode in style in a second-hand Buick Skylark, purchased from a guy on the next block. We were agog riding in a vehicle with the creature comforts of this modern invention called air-conditioning. In 1983, somebody convinced my father to get with the program and purchase a Chevy Chevette, a car that drove so many “people happy” with its super-duper gas mileage. It had a stick shift, the back windows could only go down half way, and no air conditioning. Sure, it got great gas mileage, but we were a spoiled clan by then.

Oh, by the way, Chevrolet won the day in my car charting. There were some foreign cars around then, but they were foreign to most people. And I can’t help but think that most of us would be better off driving whatever the Chevy Chevette of today is—but with air conditioning—than the ubiquitous gas-guzzling behemoths that take up a lot of space on the street, polluted the air, and make us dependent on countries who don't like us very much.