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)