Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stickball Bat

(Originally published on 6/10/11)

Stickball has been called the “poor man’s baseball.” An urban game largely associated with the streets of New York and some of its gritty metropolitan neighbors, like Jersey City, it’s the stuff of legend. Believed to have initially taken flight in the early 1920s, stickball was played on the streets with a broom handle and a rubber ball colloquially known as a “spaldeen.” Manhole covers served as bases and key game markers.

But like virtually every city street game from the past, stickball sightings are exceedingly rare these days. I can honestly say that my generation was the last to play it faithfully and informally in neighborhood after neighborhood—and in various incarnations, too—throughout the spring and summer months. My father and his pals played countless stickball games in the 1940s and 1950s on the local streets of Kingsbridge in the Bronx. In sharp contrast with today's mega-congestion, the streets were then lightly trafficked with very few parked cars to get in the way. From the photographic evidence in my possession, guys sometimes sported dress clothes and dress shoes while taking their cuts and sprinting around from sewer to sewer. Apparently, there was no such thing as going home and changing into more appropriate attire after work. It was play ball. And, also, people dressed up and remained dressed up on Sundays back then, stickball game or not.

By the time I came of stickball age, games were still played on the streets. Slowly but surely, though, a newer stickball incarnation took hold. It involved fast-pitching against a wall with a spray painted or chalk-outlined—and eventually even masking-taped—strike-zone box.

The combined one-two punch of youthful love of the game and corresponding lack of disposable income inspired my stickball compatriots, on occasion, to fish the neighborhood sewers for spaldeens—the ones that got away. Spaldeens on the streets were ubiquitous during my boyhood in the 1960s and 1970s and employed for a variety of purposes. Not surprisingly, a fair share of them inevitably found their ways into the four corner sewers at intersecting streets. Were it not for a long-handled fishing net, these landings might have been the spaldeens' final-resting places. Admittedly, the balls were foul-smelling and quite grimy to touch after we plucked them out of the sewers' putrid muck, and only marginally improved after we thoroughly hosed them down. Hand sanitizers would have come in handy in a time before hand sanitizers.

My stickball group eventually switched to tennis balls as our preferred orbs, but Bill Jr. of Bill’s Friendly Spot, a local candy store, chastised us when we returned broken bats bought from him. “How many times do I have to tell you guys!" he said. "You can’t use tennis balls with them!” The price we paid for purchasing stickball bats solely for their coolly painted yellows, reds, and blues were lectures from a cantankerous shopkeeper and no refunds to boot.

We once thought we had solved our stickball bat dilemma for all time with an aluminum broom handle taken from my mother’s mop. However, that thing was dinged, dented, and irreparably distorted in very short order. We likewise surmised that a super-thick wooden flagpole was a stickball bat godsend, but it, too, just wasn't up to the task. Shattering after only a couple of innings of play, the pole’s visible thickness evidently didn’t equate with its denseness. And one neighbor family was without a flagpole.

Eventually, a friend and stickball devotee discovered a very strong broom handle—as lean and mean as they came—at his family’s fish store. Our bat problems were forevermore solved—through, in fact, the very last game we played at nearby John F. Kennedy High School, the ideal locale for a stickball game. As is so often the case with so many things in life, we didn't realize at the time that our very last stickball game would be our very last—and the end of an era, too.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

It’s Not Your Grandfather’s School Cafeteria Anymore

(Originally published 1/20/16)

I have very few fond memories of high school. One, however, is the institution of fine learning’s cafeteria. Of course, I was a teenager back then—in the colorfully scintillating 1970s—with teen culinary tastes and peculiar gastronomic desires. I salivated over certain foods then that might very well leave me cold today. I truly don’t know if I’d appreciate the school’s exceptionally gooey Friday “grandma slices” of pizza or cardboard-textured Wednesday roast beef wedges (with optional Au jus)—personal favorites—as much now as I did when Jimmy Carter was president. I wonder, too, how my adult palate would take to the “Mashed Pot” served with the aforementioned roast beef wedge. Yes, that’s what the space-challenged cafeteria special board read every Wednesday. Were he still among the living, Cardinal Francis Spellman might have cried foul.

Anyway, while perusing my alma mater’s website recently, I came upon a link to its “cafeteria menu,” which I thought strange. When I clicked on it, a PDF file opened up with this week’s—Monday through Friday—menu. And it was the polar opposite of what I recall with such fondness. I remember that in addition to the daily specials, there was an always and every-day alternative: the ubiquitous hot dog. Frankfurters were thirty-five cents when I was a freshman; fifty cents, when I was a senior. Believe me: They were worth every penny and then some.

Suffice it to say: There are no dogs on today’s cafeteria menu. In fact, the place has been dubbed a “café” now and is run by a culinary outfit. (I won't hazard a guess as to what happened to all the cafeteria ladies.) This contemporary bill of fare features categories like “Chef’s Table,” “Jump Asian,” and “Tuscan Bistro.” Icons identify which foods are gluten free, vegetarian, and vegan. The vegetarian side dish for January 20, 2016 was “Risi e Bisi Rice, Roasted Zucchini, and Tomatoes.” The only thing resembling a vegetable—outside of potatoes—that I recollect eating in the school cafeteria was sauerkraut on my hot dog. It was the first and last time I sampled that shredded cabbage mush. Sauerkraut, though, taught me a valuable lesson: Appealing aromas don’t necessarily translate into taste sensations, particularly when they turn a perfectly edible wiener roll into a grotesque sponge. (The cafeteria ladies had to keep the lunch lines moving. Draining the sauerkraut before putting it atop the frankfurter didn’t happen.)

So, a long time ago on a Wednesday afternoon in wintertime, I enjoyed a roast beef wedge—with Au jus—and a mashed pot side in my school cafeteria. Today, I could have ordered “Chicken Scallopini Scampi,” “Hunan Chicken and Hong Sue Pork,” and “Fruited Barley Lentil Soup.” I could also have a refillable debit card to pay for it—a lunchtime E-Z pass. For sure: It’s not your grandfather’s school cafeteria anymore. Trouble is: I’m now the grandfather. How did that happen?

There’s a Man Down Here. Is He Okay?

Fifty years have passed since that blissful summer of 1975. My favorite team—the New York Mets—were bona fide contenders that summer, but their underperforming cost manager Yogi Berra his job in August. His interim successor, coach Roy McMillan, was touted by management as akin to the late and revered Gil Hodges—“a strong, silent type.” A local sportswriter quipped that McMillan was “just silent.”

For sure, it was a different time on a whole host of fronts from professional baseball to politics to youthful fun and frolic. Gerald Ford was president; Abe Beame, the mayor of New York City. There was an unprecedented fiscal crisis playing out in the Big Town, which didn’t concern me in the least. I was twelve. There were no electronic devices monopolizing our every waking moment in 1975. No Internet. No social media. What, pray tell, did we do with ourselves? As it turned out, an awful lot of things.

Permit me now to do a speedy rewind and recall John, a neighbor and friend, who owned an 8mm movie camera, which was a big deal back in the day. He, along with my older brother and I, decided to make a Batman movie that summer, a spoof of a spoof, if you will. We were fans of the campy television series, which aired in daily reruns on local station WPIX, channel 11. The show, which ran for not quite three full seasons, ended a mere seven years earlier. Many of the programs that we watched in syndication during the late afternoons and early evenings during the 1970s originally aired in the 1960s. Shows like The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie, and Hogan’s Heroes. They weren’t far removed from the primetime lineups.

Now, let’s add fifty years to that equation. Ditto the ages of the boys in Batman. I doubt the three of us—in 1975—gave much thought to one day being in our sixties and collecting Social Security. We lived then in multi-family homes with our extended families, including our grandmothers. In their forties and fifties, our parents were old; our grandmothers, in their seventies and eighties, were ancient.

So, when we filmed Batman—a silent movie—on location in our backyards and on the quiet urban terrain of our leafy neighborhood, it was, we thought, a creative coup. We fashioned a dummy with a Styrofoam mannequin head and shirt and pants stuffed with newspapers. Said dummy served as Batman and then Robin scaling a building and, later, as the Joker getting tossed out of an upstairs window. The old homestead and bedroom window—where Ma hung out the family clothes to dry—served as an evocative backdrop. Very few families had dryers in 1975. The bat phone was a retired rotary-dial phone vanquished to the garage—a final resting place for so many things before the trashcan. A sports-bobbing-head doll functioned as the desk statue in Bruce Wayne’s study. You know: the one whose head lifted, revealing a switch that furnished access to the bat cave and jiffy-quick wardrobe change.

Speaking of the wardrobes: Batman’s cowl was a multi-colored bathroom towel from the home linen closet, and the Caped Crusader sported New York City Department of Sanitation-issue gloves. Nobody in our respective families were ever “garbage men,” as we called them then and now, but they were the genuine article. Their provenance remains a mystery to this day.

For further information on the blockbuster summer of 1975, I suggest revisiting two previous blogs: Hello, Dummy...Goodbye, Dummy and A Bohack’s Injection. These essays fill in the blanks, as it were, of good times in a good place. And, as you will see, the dummy had a couple of more acts up his stuffed-with-paper sleeves. There actually wasn’t a man down there, but a dummy.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Do You “I Here” What I Hear?

Recently, while awaiting a grocery delivery, I received a frantic call from my “courier.” “I here…I here…I here!” he bellowed into the phone. “Okay,” I answered, “I’m coming outside.” My delivery guy and groceries were not, in fact, awaiting me. I promptly contacted said courier and explained to him that I was standing outside my home, and he wasn’t. He just repeated over and over and over: “I here…I here…I here!” Again, I patiently noted that he wasn’t, and I ought to know. The man and my stuff were clearly somewhere else.

The frustrated fellow finally conceded that his English was subpar, which I could have guessed. French was his native language, he said. Communication barrier be damned, the courier understood that one picture is worth a thousand words in any language. As proof that he was indeed here, he sent me a photo of my grocery bags resting on a doorstep with a clearly visible house number in the backdrop. I immediately recognized the door, and it wasn’t mine. It was on an adjoining street.

My task now was to make this individual understand the error of his ways—that he got the house number right but street wrong. And one out of two in this instance wasn’t good enough. Sometimes here is there. Mercifully, he eventually found the real here.

So, yes, I think this is a fine time to transition, to turn the clock back to the pre-Grubhub and DoorDash age of my youth. And I, like my courier, will employ images on this stroll down memory lane. Consider this a hodgepodge of people, places, and things from yesterday when I was young. You know: When the taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue.

Once upon a time on a fifteenth of June sometime in the mid-1990s, I purchased three LPs from the “Out of Print Record Specialists” in Manhattan’s East Village. I plunked down $41.02 for a couple of Perry Como albums and the Grease movie soundtrack. The place was called Footlight Records, an atmospheric basement shop down several stairs from the sidewalk. What a treasure trove it was before the Digital Age cast it, and anything like it, asunder. The joy of unearthing the Scrooge and 1776 musical soundtracks was profound. If memory serves, the former cost me $30. In those bygone days, I owned a cassette/record player combo and made audiotapes from the LPs.

Around the same time that I was patronizing Footlight Records, Ranch*1 fast-food eateries were ubiquitous in New York City. They were here today and gone tomorrow, it seemed. I don’t exactly know why, but I think the Ranch*1 powers-that-be were involved in some financial chicanery. I remember eating in the one on Broadway. A middle-aged man named Jerry worked there. He seemed out of place among the much younger staff. I often wondered what his story was and how the guy ended up as a Ranch*1 cashier performing double-duty passing out fliers in a giant chicken costume. The Ranch*1 chicken fingers were my go-to menu item, but nothing to write home about.

A couple of decades earlier, an entrepreneurial neighbor of mine and a college friend opened a home furnishing business that attempted to cash in on the trendy, colorful, and uber-cool 1970s. It was a colossal bust but an important learning lesson. To think that two young men with limited resources could open a place in that area of Manhattan. Now it would take a Brink’s truck delivery to pay the first month’s rent.

As far as I was concerned, Sam’s was the “Tastiest Pizza in Town.” How many slices did I consume through the decades? God only knows. The prior generations in my family—on the Italian paternal side—found calling on a local pizza place as often as I did sacrilege. My father referred to Sam’s Pizza as the “grease shop.” But what a great grease shop it was.

I met Mike and Ida in their final years in the printing business. They were an old-school elderly couple hanging on in a fast-changing business climate. Rapid Printing was a bona fide mom-and-pop establishment, the likes of which are rapidly disappearing in the big cities.

I learned to drive with the “Experience People,” I’m happy to say. Six weeks of intense lessons with my able and patient instructor, Eddie, and I passed my driving test on the first try. I was almost thirty at the time—and really loathed driving—so passing was a major feather in my cap. When I initially got into the car with Eddie, he pointed to this mysterious object in front of me and said, “This is the steering wheel.” It was indeed.

Old school diners are also a dying breed in New York City. Fortunately, Tibbett Diner lives on in the present, on Tibbett Avenue, not Tibbetts Avenue. It’s a classic diner if ever there was one and a favorite locale for shooting movies and TV shows!

As Exhibit A on the ravages of inflation, check out the diner prices from thirty years ago: Beefburger Deluxe, $3.95; Two Eggs with Ham, Bacon, or Sausage, $3.50; Broiled Lamb Chops with Mint Jelly, $11.75. Plugging in these 1994 prices—and adjusting for inflation through the years—and this is what we get in the here and now: $3.95/$8.36; $3.50/$7.41; $11.75/$24.87.

Jasper’s Pizza on Riverdale Avenue in the Bronx served a unique and tasty pizza pie. You knew you were eating a Jasper slice when you were eating a Jasper slice. It had a mellow garlic flavor, which, I know, is not everyone’s cup of tea. I had a friend who was Vampire-like when it came to garlic—an Italian American no less—repelled by its smell and positively weak-kneed by its taste.

For one brief shining moment in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, there was a Pudgie’s famous chicken joint. As I recall, it was decent fare for what it was—fast-food fried chicken. The chain is still around, I see, just not around here anymore.

Another vanishing breed: the mom-and-pop pet food and supplies store. I worked at this place some forty-five years ago, beginning while still in high school. Jimmy Carter was the president. To say that it was a different time and vastly different pet food and supplies industry would be an understatement.

Carolla’s Italian deli in Lavallette, New Jersey was a nifty place. My family once rented a cottage for a couple of weeks in the summer that bordered the back of the delicatessen. Separated only be a rickety wooden fence, the sound of seagulls competed with Carolla’s exhaust fans; the scent of the ocean—a block away—commingled with the aromas of pizza, pasta sauce, and roasted peppers. Sad to report: The deli is no more. Carolla’s corner lot is now occupied by condos.

From the Jersey Shore to Old Cape Cod and roast beef sandwiches. I never ordered a cold roast beef sandwich from a deli or diner in New York, nor would I ever. So, it was quite the find discovering eateries that specialized in roast beef that weren’t Roy Rodgers- or Arby’s-green sheen caliber. First there was Bill & Bob’s Famous Roast Beef, which morphed into Timmy’s for four decades.

I patronized Timmy’s almost every day when I visited Cape Cod in the 1990s—never had a bad sandwich. And there was nothing comparable to Timmy’s in the environs of New York City. Apparently, roast beef as the specialty is a New England regional thing. Alas, Timmy retired this past year, marking the end of an era of fine roast beef sandwiches and a personal dedication that is becoming rarer and rarer with each passing day.

Not too far from Timmy’s was—and still is—Giardino’s restaurant, which served personal pizzas before personal pizzas were a thing. Coming from the Bronx, this style of pizza was completely new to me. My family and I quickly discovered that pan pizza was the rule in those parts. While I wouldn’t rate it as a favorite style, Giardino’s served—once upon a time at least—awesome pizza.

On the fledgling trips to Cape Cod, the family choice of restaurants—of which there were many—was Fred’s Turkey House. As I remember, the menu was family-friendly with a lot more than turkey, but I don’t quite understand why we maintained such loyalty to the place.

Bloom’s restaurant was owned, if I remember correctly, by Fred of Fred’s Turkey House. It was a somewhat more upscale spot with a “Bountiful Bath Tub Salad Bar.” I’ll have the broiled bay scallops and pass on the salad.

And then there was Mother’s Booktique, an independent book seller in Christmas Tree Plaza, home of a big Christmas Tree Shop in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts. Regrettably, Mother’s Booktique is long gone and so, too, is the Christmas Tree Shop, which, like Timmy’s, Fred’s Turkey House, and Giardino’s pizza was so Cape Cod.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Unforgettable, That's What You Were: Part II

(Originally published 9/30/15)

Here is further material from an unsold book proposal of mine. Its working title was This ‘70s Book: Remembering the People, Events, Fashions, Fads, and Mores That Defined an Unforgettable Decade. Since shopping it around a long time ago, both Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore were released on parole. Moore is ninety-five. In a 2019 interview, Fromme asked and answered: “Was I in love with Charlie? Yeah, I still am.” Never understood the attraction.

 

Femme Near Fatales

No American President, save the inoffensive Gerald Ford, has been the subject of two assassination attempts, let alone within seventeen days of one another. And what makes this snippet of historical trivia even more bizarre is that both would-be assassins were women—but hardly ladies. On September 5, 1975, in Sacramento, California, the initial try on the life of the thirty-eighth president was the handiwork of Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a slavish disciple of mass murderer and certifiable madman, Charles Manson. Hopelessly inept at currying favor with her by then incarcerated leader and fellow members of his freaky family, Fromme was promptly tackled by a Secret Service agent when she pointed her .45 Colt automatic at the Leader of the Free World. She was summarily charged with attempting to assassinate the President, despite the subsequent revelation that no bullets were in the gun’s firing chamber.   

Seventeen days later, on September 22, 1975, yet another deranged woman lay in wait of the President. In stark contrast to the hapless Fromme, Sara Jane Moore carried a loaded .38 Smith and Wesson on her person. And when the inoffensive Ford commenced delivering a characteristically charisma-free speech to an appreciative throng of supporters in front of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Moore brandished her gun. In the crowd, and hanging on the President’s every word, stood a burly ex-marine named Oliver Sipple. He spotted Moore with gun in hand and reached for her arm, deflecting a fired shot. The bullet ricocheted off a nearby wall and superficially wounded a cab driver awaiting his next fare. Quite possibly, Sipple saved Ford’s life that day by altering the trajectory of the bullet. He may well have altered American history, too. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller would have assumed the top job. A bona fide hero, Sipple at once found himself in the media glare—his fifteen minutes of fame upon him with a vengeance. But, tragically, this man’s moment in the spotlight set in motion a chain of events that would augur his untimely demise.

Fromme Here to Eternity

Born on October 22, 1948, in Santa Monica, California, Lynette Fromme was a gifted dancer as a child and performed in an ensemble known as the Westchester Lariats. This talented troupe of kids was so highly regarded that they were booked on the squeaky-clean Lawrence Welk Show and displayed their varied talents on Pennsylvania Avenue for White House dignitaries. Unfortunately, little Lynette grew up and got subsumed by both 1960s radicalism and an unhealthy dose of madness. She landed in the clutches of the Manson family ensemble and eventually kept company with and moved in with the bloodthirsty brood. In the late-1960s, an elderly man named George Spahn was conned into allowing the Manson family to live in his mountain home. It was there that Lynette acquired the nickname “Squeaky,” courtesy of the sounds that emanated from her when the sightless, but still frisky Spahn ran his fingers up and down her legs. “Squeaky” was subsequently given a new nickname—this time by Manson himself. He dubbed her “Red” and assigned his protégé the not inconsiderable task of saving the California Redwoods. In fact, her ostensible reason for the attempt on President Ford’s life was to show the imprisoned Manson and other family members how committed she was to the environment.

Convicted in November 1975 for her crime, Fromme remains behind bars, but has not exactly been a model prisoner. She once hammered the head of a fellow inmate, Julienne Busic, a Croatian Nationalist sentenced for her role in a 1976 airplane hijacking. Fromme also escaped the brig in December 1987, desperately trying to reunite with Manson, whom she thought was dying of cancer. She was swiftly apprehended and returned to complete her sentence with a little something extra.

Moore Or Less

Sara Jane Moore crammed a lot of living into her life before entering the history books as a presidential assassin wannabe. Born in 1930, Moore married five times and had four children. Before she became a “revolutionary” and poster child for the counterculture, Moore dispensed tax advice as a CPA.

In 1972, she began drifting through the dark recesses of the underground. While there, the FBI propositioned Moore to obtain information on the Patty Hearst kidnapping, which she consented to do. However, life as an FBI mole didn’t sit too well with her radical brethren, who shunned Moore as the worst kind of turncoat.

In Moore’s increasingly warped mind, she attempted to return to the good graces of her motley former friends by shooting the President. She pleaded guilty to the attempted assassination of President Ford charge and is today serving a life sentence for the crime. Moore once said, “There comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun.”

No Good Deed

Ironically, the villains in this story endure and the hero is no longer with us. Oliver Sipple, the man who courageously and selflessly deflected Sara Jane Moore’s arm and gunshot along with it, deserved a better fate in life than what befell him. The honorably discharged ex-marine and Vietnam War veteran lived in San Francisco when President Ford visited the city in September 1975. Sipple was also a gay man living surreptitiously in an overstuffed closet all too common in the 1970s.

When the man became a newsmaker by thwarting a possible presidential assassination, the media minions combed through his personal life. The San Francisco Chronicle revealed that Sipple contributed to gay causes and speculated that he himself was gay. Sipple’s saga was only beginning, as other newspapers followed suit and ran with the story.

Sipple sued The San Francisco Chronicle for revealing his secret life but lost the case because he was deemed a “public figure” and therefore questions about his character were reasoned newsworthy and fair game for media hounds. He remarked at the time, “My sexual orientation has nothing at all to do with saving the President’s life, just as the color of my eyes or my race has nothing to do with what happened in front of the St. Francis Hotel.” Nevertheless, Sipple’s devoutly religious mother shunned him after the revelation of her son’s “other life” became known. When she died in 1979, Sipple’s father informed his son, Oliver, that he was unwelcome at his own mother’s funeral.

Gay rights groups grumbled with justification that Sipple was never once invited to the White House nor suitably recognized for his courageous act. News reports of his sexuality were seen as the reason for the snub. Sipple received only a personal thank you note from the President. In 2001, ex-President Ford denied that Sipple’s homosexuality had anything to do with how he treated him. Ford said: “As far as I was concerned, I had done the right thing and the matter was ended. I didn’t learn until sometime later—I can’t remember when—he was gay. I don’t know where anyone got the crazy idea I was prejudiced and wanted to exclude gays.”

The snowballing series of events broke Sipple’s will. He turned to alcohol for succor, grew increasingly obese, and wallowed in depression. In 1989 at the age of forty-seven, Sipple was found dead in his apartment. It was determined he had been dead for two weeks. On his deathbed, Sipple weighed more than 300 lbs. Gerald and Betty Ford sent their condolences to surviving friends and family, but did not attend the service.

The Bye-Nick Maneuver

The last few years have been “eye-opening” as it were. The grim reaper made its presence felt—and then some—in my little life circle. In fact, I was reminded of what Archie Bunker once said, rather wistfully, upon the passing of a neighbor, “Another victim of the grim weeper.” 

During this time frame, I lost an aunt, a sister, and my mother. In varying capacities, I was a caregiver for each one of them. My aunt made it to one hundred and Ma, ninety, despite being treated for multiple myeloma for more than twenty years. Life expectancy upon her diagnosis was three to five years. For sure, it was a roller coaster ride—ups and downs—with too many hospital visits to count. By and large, though, she lived a post-diagnosis life worth living. The last few years, however, were another story with neuropathy in her feet, absolute incontinence, and memory issues aplenty. Almost to the end, my mother kept a diary—for decades. Her entries are now a precious resource that detail an active life lived in an ever-changing world leading to the last chapter. I always thought that newsman Howard K. Smith had the best title for a memoir: Events Leading Up to My Death.

Sadly, I have been privy to variations of this sort of life finale. And it’s never been pretty watching once independent folks no longer independent and falling apart mentally, physically, and spiritually. I don’t know why, but I hear the voice of my childhood barber, Tony, calling out, “You’re next!” But it’s not for a haircut this time.

Remaining on theme, I also lost my two closest friends in the past couple of years. Bill was considerably older than me. A quarter of a century ago, he dubbed my other friend, Jim, and yours truly, the “Cryptics.” For Jim and I were ten years old when we first met in grammar school. We attended high school together, published a newsletter of political satire in the late-1980s, and founded a small press ten years later called—why not?—Cryptic Press. Shortly thereafter, the two of us wrote Everything Books for mid-level publisher Adams Media. Concurrently, Jim authored The Everything Philosophy Book and Everything Mafia Book; I, The Everything Collectibles Book and Everything Coaching & Mentoring Book. There was nothing quite like traversing Manhattan Island on foot in 2002, visiting every Barnes & Noble bookstore to see if our inaugural titles were on their shelves and how many of them were stocked. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Our mega-walk-a-thons all over the Big Town were commonplace back then. But nothing lasts forever.

Jim and I spoke often of a day when only one of us would be left—as a “cryptic for one,” we said. Initially, it was just idle, frivolous talk, not something we truly entertained because—naturally—we expected to live forever. But in the final years of his life, the reality of being a cryptic for one appeared more imminent than either of us would have liked. Courtesy of a medical moment, I almost cashed in my chips in 2006—leaving a cryptic for one—but, mercifully, the cryptics lived to fight and laugh another day.

So, here I am now, cleaning out a lifetime of stuff before someone does it for me posthumously. I came across a list that I had compiled years ago titled, “The Best of the Cryptics.” It’s thirteen pages long and contains categories: Observations/Sightings, Word Plays, Fill in the Blank, Physical, Song Parodies, Fantasies, Quotations, and Legend. It’s insider stuff with meaning only for two people, one of whom is now deceased. It is a document that underscores a half-century friendship; a lengthy listing of things great and mostly small that Jim and I observed and turned into cryptic fodder—laughs. Laughter that was profound, and the kind I will never know again. We were soulmates—confusing to some—in good times and in bad.

Until his last years, when ill health did a number on him, Jim and I spoke almost every day, and sometimes more than once. It was not unusual for him to look at his phone, which kept a running call time. and ask me: “Do you know how long we’ve been talking? Two hours and thirty-two minutes.” Transcripts of our calls would no doubt have confused the wider world. A former in-law of mine once said of the two of us, “You think things are funny that other people don’t.” A fair enough assessment, I guess. Some might even have thought our humor, on occasion, bordered on callous, cancelable material. It was uninhibited, yes, but always just between us—honest, free, and funny. No fish or wildlife were injured during our conversations and no feelings hurt.

In closing: On the aforementioned “Best of” list is the “Hi-Nick Maneuver,” which I, once upon a time, labeled our Cryptic Press’ accountant’s phone calls to me. They typically went something like this: “Hi Nick, it’s Allen Kale. I’ve completed your quarterly tax returns. I need two checks: One payable to New York State Sales Tax for $4.31 and another made out to me, Allen Kale, for $225.” And beep went the answering machine, often compelling Mr. Kale to imitate John Moschitta.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

 

Shirts and Skins

Recently, I read an essay penned by a disappointed and dumbfounded son, gut punched in learning of his mother’s vote in the past presidential election. She supported Donald Trump; he didn’t. From his perspective, this was reason enough to employ the familial nuclear option and cease contact with her—absolutely, forevermore, and without further ado. Personally, I thought the article’s point of view beyond absurd and not, in fact, the whole story. But it didn’t surprise me. All too many people now view politics as their religion. Choose your team—shirts or skins—and don’t fraternize with the other side. Oh—and this important—don’t ever deviate from the dogma.

For those unfamiliar with the shirts or skins reference, it was—and, I suppose, still is—a method of establishing and delineating two teams in informal male sporting competitions. I first encountered the shirts versus skins concept in high school gym class. When we played competitive games amongst ourselves, teams were organized and distinguished between shirt wearers and non-wearers.

Speaking of high school memories, I recall school TV sets tuned into the signing of the Camp David Accords, which were presided over by President Jimmy Carter and signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Considered a big deal in the fall of 1978—peace between two formerly mortal enemies—it was history in the making. High hopes were in the autumn air that this was the beginning—hopefully—of a sea change in the Middle East.

The very same Jimmy Carter passed away this past week—forty-six years later—and deserves his due for the good he did as president and ex-president, although it wasn’t all good. Yet another silly article that I chanced upon—in USA Today by David Oliver—was headlined: “Jimmy Carter’s Death Has Devastated the Nation. It’s OK to Grieve.” Get a grip, man: Carter led a long and productive life, for sure, and made it to one hundred—count ‘em. He was in hospice care and his death expected. When forty-six-year-old JFK died from an assassin’s bullet in November of 1963, the nation was indeed “devastated.” Still, I remember my father—years after the fact—recounting that day and when he got the somber news. He was on the job at a post office in Midtown Manhattan when word came down that President Kennedy had died. While on his way to work, my father had been informed by a neighbor that Kennedy had been shot. First and foremost, some of his co-workers wondered if they would get a day off for the anticipated funeral, which had yet to be planned, let alone announced. So, I don’t suspect that many of the federal employees—who will get the day off for Jimmy Carter next week—will spend their holiday devastated. How many of them even know who Jimmy Carter was? I just saw an X tweet from an individual who knows a Harvard graduate unfamiliar with the name Socrates. Taylor Swift ought to write a song about him.

Back to high school, I go, once more—to 1978 again. Pope Paul VI died in August of that year and his successor, Pope John Paul I, survived only thirty-three days on the job. Reports were that he succumbed to a heart attack and—as good fortune would have it in attending a Catholic institution of learning—my classmates and I got an unexpected holiday for his funeral: Thursday, October 4th. Now, I will admit to being grateful for this one brief shining moment away from the grind and any shirts versus skins skirmishes. That was primary in my teen psyche at the time. I wasn’t even all that interested in the rumors that John Paul I was really bumped off. And you thought conspiracy theories were something new? Yes, death never takes a holiday, but sometimes it provides one.