It Is the Heat...and the Humidity

(Originally published 7/18/18)

Once upon a time, I lived on the top floor of a three-family home in the Bronx. I was one of five kids in a family of seven. Yes, there were two parents on the scene, and we all made do with one bathroom and no air-conditioning in the dog days of past New York City summers. I remember feeling somewhat cheated that I didn't have the option—like some of my friends with air-conditioners did—to cool off when the thermometer and relative humidity performed their suffocating duet. But that was then and this is now. I am today a party of one with an air-conditioner. And so, I can observe the sights and sounds of my surroundings in the stifling summer of 2018 and retreat—when the days are done—to the colder, drier climes of the great indoors.

Meanwhile, on the outside, I recently encountered this peculiar subway graffiti. It was the word "TATTOO" spelled out in dings. This sighting prompted me to silently exclaim, "De train, Boss, de train!"

Good to know that if you are tired of McDonald's old stale beef there is now an alternative. This sign also reminded me of simpler times in American politics. In the 1980 Republican primaries, Ronald Reagan misspoke in quoting Founding Father John Adams. He meant to say, "Facts are stubborn things!" but instead said, "Facts are stupid things! Not to be outdone, Ted Kennedy, running against incumbent President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries, addressed farm families in Iowa as "fam farmilies." Of course, nowadays facts are considered stupid things by an awful lot of people.

It's the "In New York We Don't Serve Teens and You Shouldn't Either" truck. Wonder what's inside? What delights they hide. By the way, I just quoted lyrics from the song Christmas Children in the movie musical Scrooge, 1970, starring Albert Finney.

If there's a tomato in distress, now you know who to call.

Maybe it's just me but I find this slogan of theirs on the unappetizing side.

In the Bizarro World, students make $10,000 or more a month and don't pay tuition...

This blue jay can confirm that it's been a nasty month of July.

If you don't know, that's Grandpa Stroehmann on the bread truck. I had a driving instructor who would regularly caution me—when the situations warranted it—to "Watch out for Grandpa!" He is still plying his trade as an eighty-year-old man.

You see that open window? That can mean only one thing: It's a hot car. At this time of year, subway conductors make announcements that advise riders escaping hot cars to make it snappy.

I saw this downed wire this morning and thought about some of the programs I've watched this year on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Breaking Bad, Ozark, and The Wire came to mind. Drug dealers and drug dealing make for better entertainment on-screen than off. 

If the shop's interior appearing trashed and pretty much emptied—with a chain lock on the front door—wasn't enough to convince you this eatery is shut down for good, the words "Closed...Closed...Closed" spelled out in black magic marker should have done the trick.

Hot and humid Fourth of July...the camera never blinks.

Not too long after this photo was taken, a protester scaled Lady Liberty, which shut down the island for multiple hours and cost the city a pretty penny. The bill is in the mail, I hope.

There are things around us that we overlook and take for granted for far too long...

Go North, young men...

Richard Kimble looked at the world for the last time and saw only darkness. These kids saw me sitting in Van Cortlandt's Tail, also known to a few of us as the Bum Park North.

A subway car I was riding in was chock-full of Klarna ads. I had never heard of Klarna before. It's not an ice cream manufacturer after all.

"Be it ever so crumble, there's no place like home." Referring to the 4077th, Major Winchester once uttered those words on M*A*S*H.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Mum’s Not the Word Anymore

When I attended Cardinal Spellman High School all those years ago, students typically had a “free period”—or two in some instances—each and every school day. We were confronted with several options during these much-appreciated respites from the educational grind. Visiting the cafeteria was a popular option, which I often did during non-lunch periods—the calm before or after the storms, as it were. Another possibility was the school’s library, where absolute quiet was not only the rule, but enforced without exception and with an iron fist by chief librarian Sister Mary Louise. What was dubbed “quiet study,” in a classroom with a faculty monitor, was a benign choice. Mum was the word, but without Attila the Nun waiting to pounce like a frog on a fly. Finally, students could attend the also monitored “loud study”—as I so cleverly called it in my witty teen years—and kibbitz with one another without fear of reprobation.

It was an era where quiet was expected in certain bailiwicks like libraries. I distinctly remember my local public library in the 1970s. You could hear a pin drop in that place. The librarians were quick to “shush” violators of the established protocols. Nowadays, of course, the library experience has changed. Kids use computers there to play interactive online games with sound and no earphones. Noise that everyone can hear. Multiply that by five, six, seven, or eight, and it’s disconcerting. Throw in personal phone conversations and it’s a raucous party room. There is no more shushing in libraries—at least around here—and talk is both cheap and earsplitting.

A few months back, I was summoned to jury duty, which eluded me somehow for thirty years. That, too, was a much louder experience than in the past. In the 1990s and earlier, there were no big screen TVs in the jury assembly room tuned into annoying game shows and obnoxious talk fests with the volume turned way, way up. My prior memories of serving were on the serene side. One could talk in the rooms, but there was no music or deafening televisions to intrude on the noble civic service waiting game. Prospective jurors brought books and newspapers with them.

Loud distractions are here to stay, I guess. But why, pray tell, do eateries or doctors’ waiting rooms need TVs? I’d rather not be subject to The View with my burger and fries or before learning that I have a terminal illness and only six months to live. A healthy portion of the masses fear quiet contemplation. In my neighborhood, modified cars, motorcycles, and scooters traverse once quiet—or quieter—streets and most people don’t bat an eye. Sports venues blast music—and not of the elevator or organist variety—to fill in every moment of inactivity on the fields of play. I suppose in this age of short attention spans, noise—and the louder the better—calms those afflicted.

Lastly, a footnote taking me back to that more peaceful age: Upon graduation from high school, I worked in a small retail shop called Pet Nosh—owned by my older brother and a neighbor—in Yonkers, just north of the Bronx. Often in its nascent days, I was the sole employee on the premises. One morning, two customers arrived together—two Sisters of Charity—that I knew from my secondary educational experience. It was none other than the librarian and an administrator/teacher, who I had for a course called "Finite Math." Only three years removed from high school, my legs got a little wobbly in their presence. They didn’t recognize me, though, and I debated whether I should declare: “I know who you are, ladies!” I didn’t because, after all, I was a quiet young man living in quieter times. In retrospect, I wish I had done the big reveal. They were very pleasant outside of the confines of Cardinal Spellman. Yes, quietude has its place in certain places and is sorely missed.

 (Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

This Day in History

(Originally published 7/13/13. It's now forty-eight years since the lights went out at the Big Shea and throughout the big city. A footnote: The lights permanently went out at Shea Stadium in 2008.)

Thirty-six years ago, the lights went out at Shea Stadium. Give or take a couple of minutes, the time was 9:34 p.m. Save a handful of Rockaway, Queens neighborhoods not served by local utility Con Edison, the rest of New York City also went dark. I was not in attendance of this historic Mets’ game versus the Chicago Cubs, but I always wished I had been on what turned out to be a night to remember. I happened to be a long away from home—on a family vacation in a place called Chadwick Beach along the New Jersey Shore—and listening to the game on my favorite radio of all-time. It was a durable Christmas gift that also picked up the audio of local television stations.

I vividly remember Mets’ announcer Ralph Kiner saying that he could see cars going over the darkened Whitestone Bridge in the distance. Ralph had mistakenly called it the Throgs Neck Bridge in the past, which is not visible from the radio booth. The man, a great storyteller who is sorely missed, had a charming knack for sometimes getting things wrong.

Riveted at this blackout that I wasn’t home to enjoy—history in the making—I continued listening to the suspended game. I figured it was a temporary glitch that would soon be remedied—but it wasn’t for twenty-four hours. It didn’t take very long for the Mets’ radio station to lose its signal—several minutes—leaving me in the dark concerning the goings-on back in my hometown. Awaiting the power’s return, I subsequently learned that New York Mets’ organist Jane Jarvis plowed through her entire repertoire and even started playing holiday carols like “Jingle Bells” and “White Christmas” to keep the fans entertained until the lights came back on, which they didn't that night.

Although not nearly as brutal as New York City’s infamous three "H" weather—hazy, hot, and humid—it was a rather steamy evening in Chadwick Beach, too. While the thermometer hovered close to one hundred degrees that day in the Big Apple, it was in the nineties in our vacation hamlet. That summer, our Bronx neighbors from just up the street shared the same shore house with us. They resided in the upper floor while we set up vacation shop in the lower half. Without air conditioning in this two-family rental, which they were accustomed to in the Bronx, it got a wee bit too hot for them a day or so prior to the blackout, and they returned home to bask in refrigerated indoor air until the heat wave broke. From their prospective, it was preferable to sweating putty balls on the New Jersey Shore. The fact that both Barnegat Bay and the Atlantic Ocean were a stone's throw away mattered little.

Ironically, as things turned out, our neighbors were back in the Bronx, instead of on vacation, when the city went dark and put their air conditioning on ice. I know they didn't see it that way, but I recall thinking how lucky they were to be back home, sweating and suffering, watching and waiting, for the lights and the air conditioners to come back on. Such was the passion of youth.