Two Bios, One Obituary

(Originally published 9/2/19)

It being Labor Day, the unofficial end of yet another summer, I cannot help but hark back to those habitually awful first days of school. My earliest remembrance is—fittingly—the onset of my formal education: kindergarten at P.S. 7, which was a couple of blocks from where I called home. I hadn’t yet turned five in September of 1967, which made me ineligible to attend nearby St. John’s parochial grammar school. So, I didn’t get to experience the legendary Mrs. Fagan, who taught generations of kids and seemed both forever old and forever large. After this one brief shining moment of public schooling—in Mrs. Rothman’s kindergarten class—it was on to St. John’s and the first grade. 

I vaguely recall the first day of first grade and walking with my mother and my best friend, Johnny, and his mother, to the schoolyard on Godwin Terrace, which sat atop a rocky bluff overlooking the El and the perpetually passing Number 1 trains. A foreboding feeling was in the ether. While Catholic schools were changing for the better at that time—with the more sadistic nuns, brothers, and lay teachers slowly but surely falling out of favor—the fledgling days of school still amounted to the spin of a roulette wheel. One could get lucky, as I did, by getting Mrs. Victory for a teacher. She was a nice lady who drove a big car and lived on the next block from me. But in an adjoining classroom was another woman—with a Miss in front of her name and a reputation that wasn’t nearly as warm and fuzzy as Mrs. Victory’s—for the unlucky.

A year later in the second grade, Lady Luck shined on me once more when I got the especially kind Mrs. Kehayas as my teacher. But, sadly, some of my less fortunate peers were saddled with Sr. Lorraine, a paleo-throwback to the no-holds-barred bashing-and-trashing-of-kids era, which—peculiarly—is celebrated by a fair share of folks on social media. Sister Lorraine was Roseanne Barr with a bad habit and a pencil-thin but nevertheless visible mustache. My best friend, Johnny, once incurred her wrath and got body-slammed during First Holy Communion practice in the church. His transgression: keeping a chewed-up straw from “hot lunch” in his shirt pocket.

Fast forward now to the first days of high school—orientation—when Sister Elizabeth, a.k.a “Old Stone Face,” informed all assembled freshman: “Your days are numbered.” Our schedules were not Monday-through-Friday based, we learned, but One-through-Six instead. The intimidating Dean of Students refused to welcome us because, he said, we had done nothing as of yet to earn a welcome. At sophomore orientation a year later, he bellowed, rather theatrically as I recall, “Welcome to Cardinal Spellman!” (By the way, the photos included in this essay are a sampling of my high school ties, which were borrowed from my father's rather eclectic closet collection. In the hip 1970s, boys could sartorially express their individuality at CSHS. Now they wear a uniform.)

In my first day of freshman-year homeroom, a boy sat across from me who was right out of Central Casting. He was the stereotypical high school movie genius and nerd in appearance. Nicknamed “Poindexter” by galoots, he spoke in a high-pitched, squeaky tone. When he first perused his schedule, which had been passed out to all of us, Poindexter said aloud to no one in particular, “I have two bios.” I eventually deduced that he was referring to Biology class, which came attached—on one occasion in the six-day week—to an additional “lab” class.

This fourteen-year-old “genius” in my midst was genuinely smart. I remember him pensively sketching a complex, multi-dimensional cube at his desk as we awaited the sounding of the bell that alerted us that we had three minutes to get to our first class of the day. Detention, the dreaded “jug,” awaited the tardy. In the end, the kid with the two bios turned out to be a truly nice fellow. He parried his more oafish peers’ verbal thrusts with elan and grudgingly earned their respect.

And so today—in this vastly different day and age from when I attended P.S. 7, St. John’s, and Cardinal Spellman, too—I wondered whatever became of my former classmate? His name was very commonplace, but with a little Paul Drake and Jim Rockford ingenuity, I believed I could locate him. And I believe I did and that he's no longer among the living. I accept now that I am at an age with fewer and fewer guarantees of tomorrows.

So, now, permit me to resurrect one final first day—at Manhattan College—when I encountered for the very last time my high school classmate. We met outside of the school's Bursar’s Office and he said to me, “It was so much easier for us at Spellman, when everything was taken care of for us.” In other words, when our parents paid the tuition through the mail and that was that. And so there we were—suddenly and without fair warning or fanfare—young adults. Two bios and one obituary later, that’s life in a Petri dish. And Old Stone Face was right: Our days really are numbered.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

All Those Years Ago

(Originally published 8/29/12)

On August 29, 1977, exactly thirty-five years ago, the world was a decidedly different place from my youthful perspective and, too, in practical reality. Simpler pleasures ruled the roost. This day in history saw three Bronx boys—Kingsbridge denizens aged twenty-six, seventeen, and fourteen (me)—embark on an adventuresome itinerary that kicked off just after sunrise.

Our first stopover was the Brigantine Castle in the shore town of Brigantine, New Jersey. In the mid-1970s, the commercials for this haunted-house attraction on the Atlantic’s edge inundated local New York City television station airwaves. It was something we just had to check out and we did. But the overall experience didn’t quite live up to the grand hype. It seems the castle's employee-performers were phoning it in that morning while springing out of shadowy niches, stabbing us with rubber knives, and flinging rubber rats into our paths. The Brigantine Castle was out of business several years later. It burned to the ground before a developer could demolish it. Perhaps it really was haunted.

Our journey found us next in pre-casino Atlantic City, where we strolled the historic boardwalk. I don’t remember why, but the three of us expected Atlantic City to be a sparkling jewel on the ocean and not a dilapidated and seedy eyesore. Seaside Heights was eye candy by comparison. Nonetheless, it was nice to see that a Philadelphia Phillies' player named Greg "the Bull" Luzinski and a former one named Richie Ashburn were scheduled to appear at the legendary Steel Pier. We didn’t stick around long enough to uncover what they were going to do when they got there.

Onward to Philadelphia and Independence Hall, where I at long last laid eyes on that crack in the Liberty Bell—up close and personal. Finally, with evening fast approaching, the icing on the day’s layer cake: a visit to Veterans Stadium and a Phillies versus Atlanta Braves baseball game. And yet another first for us—witnessing live a game played on artificial turf. Veterans Stadium was among the multi-sport, cookie-cutter, synthetic grass stadiums that were the rage in the 1970s. They’ve since become passé and most of them have been demolished, including Veterans Stadium. Fortunately, Greg Luzinski made it back in time from the Steel Pier and was in the starting lineup.

After a fourteen-inning game that took a little over four hours to complete, it was back to the Bronx in the wee hours on a sleepy high—a thrill-packed, 1970s-style adventure and one that cannot be replicated in the new millennium. Whereas both the Brigantine Castle and Veterans Stadium are gone with the sands of time, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell endure. And the Bronx boys—now sixty-one, fifty-two, and forty-nine—humbly accept there will not likely be another thirty-five-year anniversary to commemorate.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Different Strokes

In the fledgling years of the new century, I pitched many book ideas to publishers, some via literary agents and some not. Perseverance in the publishing business is a must. Rejection, too, is part of the game, so get used to it or pick up your marbles and go home. The snippet to follow is from an unsold project of mine entitled 115 Who Had Their 15—fifteen minutes of fame, as it were. One of the sample chapters included in the proposal was headlined Different Strokes and recounted the story of Michael Fay. These many years later, I hadn't remembered who he was or his particular moment in the spotlight, proving that —yes—he really did experience fifteen minutes of fame.

Michael Fay

In some instances, a person’s fifteen minutes of fame can be a very painful affair. Certainly, Michael Fay’s fleeting moment in the public eye stung and then some. In fact, had his criminal sentence not been commuted, it would have hurt a great deal more.

In 1994, an American named Michael Peter Fay achieved international renown after being arrested and charged with numerous counts of theft and vandalism. Despite a defense plea that a diagnosed attention-deficit-disorder was the wind beneath the wings of his lawlessness, a court of law found him guilty. However, this layered legal state of affairs unfurled not in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, but on the faraway topography of Singapore, where the teenaged Fay resided with his mother and stepfather in the early 1990s.

Fay’s trials and tribulations took flight as a news story when it came to light that the eighteen-year-old’s punishment included a series of canings—six strokes to be exact—along with both jail time and a not inconsiderable fine. That is, the teen was to be lashed in the buttocks with a thirteen mm-thick rattan rod. True to form, America’s posturing politicians and many in the elite chattering classes complained that the nature of the offenses—vandalizing cars and stealing road signs—did not jibe with the excruciatingly painful sentence meted out. On the other hand, a fair slice of the crime-weary American populace was anything but exorcised about a juvenile delinquent getting thrashed several times where the sun didn't shine. And since Singapore justice flogs its convicted vandals—it's their thing—the nation’s government wasn’t too keen on getting lectured by American bureaucrats and its sanctimonious fourth estate. 

Via diplomatic channels, the Clinton White House nevertheless got involved, calling the caning “excessive” and trying to spare the young American a hiding he’d not soon forget. Publishing multiple editorials on the barbarity of caning, The New York Times editorial board was positively heartsick over the matter. Responding to the tidal wave of negative publicity generated, Singapore President Ong Teng Cheong, in one broad stroke of generosity, commuted Fay’s caning sentence from six strokes to four strokes.

On May 5, 1994, Fay’s commuted sentence finally came to pass. Stripped of his clothing, he was ushered into Caning Central, if you will, where he was asked to bend over. His various limbs were then strapped to a trestle, with the area of the kidneys protected from the rattan rod, which was to do the handiwork in concert with the designated caner.

Fay took his lumps and, it was reported, walked unassisted back to his jail cell. He behaved like a mature adult. But unfortunately for Fay, the literal moment of his fifteen minutes was a decade or so too early. Had his saga occurred today, he’d most assuredly have landed on a reality TV show, perhaps have gotten a book deal, or possibly had a movie made about his life. Instead, his post-caning life as a young adult landed him in Hazelden with a substance abuse problem—the agonizing experience having not put him completely on the straight and narrow. His vandalizing and petty thieving antics, though, appear to be a thing of the past.

Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard

Remember the autograph books that were once upon a time the rage at graduation time? The books our classmates both signed and penned such profound and heartfelt sentiments as “Good luck in high school.” Some boys and girls—sorry Microsoft Word for not being inclusive here—expressed sadness at the passage of time and bid wistful farewells in one form or another. Others celebrated the achievement: graduating from grammar school or high school. I must admit that achieving a primary or secondary school diploma seemed a middling accomplishment to me. One hundred or more years earlier this may not have been the case. Still, graduation parties in my honor occurred with the always-appreciated cash in the congratulatory cards.

In fact, I purchased my first aluminum baseball bat with a portion of my grammar-school-graduation windfall. The aluminum bat was a relatively new product at the time. A friend of mine advised me not to buy my preferred choice, because, he said, I would soon grow out of it. I took his advice and opted for a heavier model that remained too heavy for me into my adulthood. Shopping locally at the Van Cortlandt Sporting Goods Center, the bat’s price tag was a whopping nine dollars, a luxury that I could only afford courtesy of graduation. An inflation calculator puts that amount in today’s dollars at $51.10.

Back to the autograph books: As I recall, there was a publication circulating, which furnished ideas on what to write in them. For whatever reason, this gem is lodged in my brain and has been since America’s bicentennial year, 1976, when I graduated from grammar school. Among the autograph-book suggestions was the memorable, “In your ocean of friends, count me a permanent wave.” Of course, such syrupy special sentiments seemed ridiculous to most of us. We were, after all, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds.

Although my iambic pentameter was a bit off, I wrote original verse in a friend’s autograph book. I recollect only half a stanza of the rhyme scheme: “Carroll the Commie, A Ring of Salami.” This brings back memories of a simpler time indeed. America was in the midst of the Cold War back then, and we youths were aware of who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Occasionally, a kid would position himself or herself as a provocateur and swim against the tide. In this instance, a fellow named Carroll—his last name—proclaimed he was a communist. Thus, getting memorialized in an autograph book on the cusp of its fiftieth birthday in 2026.

I doubt very much that Carroll was Red. But, for sure, it was an unforgettable snapshot in time. Some of us dubbed Julio a “communist” because he was of Cuban descent. Julio knew it was a joke and would on cue exclaim, “I’m not a communist!” He, too, could dish it out in the schoolyard with the best of them. A footnote of sorts: We youngsters were, I guess, blissfully unaware that Cuban Americans were the staunches anti-communists around.

Julio’s claim to lasting fame is what he wrote in various autograph books and yearbooks. He obliterated the get out the handkerchief and wipe away the tear’s sentiment with such classics as: “Roses are red, violets are blue. I hate you. You blowhorn!” A personal favorite: “To Ugly, have a bad time in high school.” Julio also called the aforementioned Carroll “Merrill,” paying homage to model Carol Merrill of Let’s Make a Deal fame.

If they even exist anymore, I can’t imagine what teens write in autograph books today. Are there virtual equivalents? Probably. The autograph books, though, from my day were signed by unique people with distinctive penmanship. Like so many things, cursive writing is a lost art. Me and Julio down by the schoolyard. Those were the days.

The Very Good Whisperer

(Reprise from 4/14/2016)

I spotted this man on the street recently who reminded me of someone—someone from the distant past. The words “very good” immediately formed on the tip of my tongue, and I whispered it twice under my breath. “Very Good,” you see, was a nickname that we employees—some three decades ago at a place called Pet Nosh—dubbed a certain customer of ours. Behind the scenes of this very busy retail milieu, we did an awful lot of that sort of thing. It somehow kept us sane.

As it turned out, it wasn’t Very Good after all—in fact, based on his chronological age back in the 1980s, he might very well be on a very good cloud in the heavens right now—but the guy I spied nonetheless sported the same ill-fitting toupee and hangdog look. Very Good, you see, would repeat the phrase “very good” over and over and over as you packed his cans of cat food, took his money, and returned his change with a “thank you.” The response to each one of these acts was the very same: “very good,” “very good,” and “very good.”

The sighting of this Very Good mirror image inevitably commenced a stroll down memory lane to further former customers who were branded with comparable monikers. Most of the nicknames doled out by us were benign, like “Very Good,” but some were justifiably toxic. Privately always, we christened two siblings who regularly shopped together the “Grotesque Sisters” because—as you may have guessed— they were grotesque. They were involved, if memory serves, in raising Australian Cattle Dogs. They attended all kinds of dog shows and were, without fail, self-absorbed and insufferable. So, no, their nickname had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they also had mustaches.

Long before it was fashionable, I branded a patron “The Fifties Guy.” He was an affable bloke who wore his hair and dressed like he was auditioning for a part in Grease. Perhaps he’s "The Seventies Guy" now, I don’t know. Then there was this fellow whom we called “Beautiful, Wonderful Man,” and not because he was a "Beautiful, Wonderful Man." He was pleasant enough, I guess, but received this unusual sobriquet because—week after week after week—he would tell us what a “beautiful, wonderful man,” platonically speaking, our sexagenarian sidekick was.

Then there was this college-aged customer of ours—who ended up working for the business at some later date—known as “Mr. Mellow.” It seemed that Mr. Mellow was in a cannabis-induced state of perpetual bliss. From the mellow-minded to the frenetic “Zorro,” a woman unceasingly masked and shrouded from head to toe courtesy of an allergic condition to—if I remember correctly—just about everything. Certain odors, including fresh air, would take her down in a heartbeat. As we kindly catered to her every whim, she was always demanding, distracted, and disagreeable. But in retrospect: Who could blame her?

In stark contrast to Zorro, “John Gotti” was a widely liked patron of ours affectionately known by his handle. Sure, he resembled you know whom. I once asked him if he knew how to crack open a safe. Our antiquated store safe just wouldn’t open, and I desperately needed change on a busy Saturday. He feigned total ignorance. Subsequently, he landed in prison—with no bail—awaiting trial on a series of racketeering charges. I can’t say if safe cracking was among them. Sadly, he dropped dead of a heart attack before ever getting his day in court. All who knew him at Pet Nosh felt bad when we heard the news, because he was a one of the good ones...I think.

Cream Sam Summers

(A summer reprise from 2011. Wow, I've been doing this blog for quite a while now. By the way, my e-novel, Cream Sam Summer, based in part on real characters from a very real and exceedingly colorful snapshot in time, the 1970s, is free along with its short-story prequel, The DeTestables.)

As a Bronx kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I’d say that, generally speaking, parents were less concerned about their kids talking with strangers—and strange people as well—than are contemporary moms and dads. They didn’t automatically presume that every area oddball was a potential predator or axe murderer. So, we youngsters sometimes kibitzed with a few folks that were—in retrospect—not quite right in the head.

A family lived up the street from me that had been there for decades. Their home had considerably deteriorated with the passage of time. In fact, its ramshackle state was the nearest thing we had to a haunted house in the neighborhood. And the residents’ sorry backstory added to the allure, beginning with an alcoholic mother and father who physically and psychologically abused their two sons. While in a booze-induced stupor, the family patriarch got run over by a subway train, and the matriarch became a recluse, venturing out thereafter only under the cloak of darkness for a daily beer run.

It was the youngest son whom the local kids got to know when he was a man in his early- to mid-thirties, I’d guess. His given name was Mike, but most people called him “Red,” homage to his hair color and heavily freckled face. He also had a peculiar sub-nickname that endured for a spell, particularly among the younger set: “Cream Sam.” Red himself had coined the term, along with another, “Furter Sam,” which he claimed were real things. Rather innocently, we imagined them as variations of ice cream sandwiches and frankfurters, but—looking back with an adult pair of wary eyes—Red likely had something else in mind.

Red, a.k.a. Cream Sam, was regarded as “simple,” but largely harmless by older neighbors familiar with his tragic family history. During the Cream Sam Summers of my youth, we would often ride our bicycles past his place and, if he was outside, stop by for a chat, knowing all the while that this mysterious, rarely seen spooky lady lurked in the nearby recesses. I spotted her once out on the front porch. She was dressed in all black and was ghostly pale with a long shock of white hair styled like Grandmama Addams. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old at the time and, I must admit, the visual unnerved me. By then, Red's mom was a complete shut-in.

One warm summer's eve, Red summoned a bunch of us into his garage, which he had fixed up as a personal bedroom of sorts, while the living quarters above it fell into increasing disrepair along with his aging mother. Red said he had something really big to show us that night. It turned out to be a one-hundred-dollar bill, which was worth something back then, and not a piece of currency we laid eyes on very often. How he came to have this bill in his possession is in the unsolved mystery file alongside the true meanings of "Cream Sam" and "Furter Sam."

Sitting on the seat of his gold-colored, three-speed stingray bicycle with a speedometer, my friend Frank snatched the bill from Red’s hand—an uncharacteristic act for him—and rode off into the night. With the bill raised high in the air, Frank pedaled furiously down the block and let out a few whoops and hollers for good measure. He returned it to Red after this brief exhibition, but the ordinarily genial Red was not amused and let us all know in no uncertain terms. Perhaps entering Cream Sam’s garage under the cover of night was unwise after all. Today’s more discerning parents might really be on to something.

With the help of a sympathetic neighbor, Red's dilapidated domicile was sold and he and his mother moved into an apartment not too far away. Upon the sale, considerable pieces of the roof were missing, and the place had no working plumbing and hadn't for some time. For sure, it was a hardscrabble life for Red. An older kid on the block once suggested that we never again refer to Red as Red, but other colors instead like Blue, Yellow, and Green when we encountered him on the street. If memory serves, I said, “Hi, Purple” to him on one occasion. Still, Red will always be Cream Sam to me, regardless of what game the man was playing all those years ago.

A Bohack's Injection

(Originally published 7/22/10)

While combing through a box load of miscellaneous relics from the past, I came upon a Bohack's supermarket matchbook. Bohack's stores were a New York City chain that went the way of the dodo bird sometime in the mid-1970s. In fact, there was a Bohack's a block away from where I grew up. It operated for many years on the southeast corner of Tibbett Avenue and West 231st Street in the Bronx. And after the Bohack's brand fell by the wayside, a Sloan’s supermarket took over the spot, then a C-Town, and then a Sloan’s again. Today, a health and fitness club conducts business on this formerly hallowed ground.

The Bohack's matchbook find lit a fire in my memory bank. Bohack's is where a sixteen-year-old friend and neighbor, my fifteen-year-old brother, and yours truly, not yet thirteen, shopped for our August 1975 camping trip to Harriman State Park, which is an hour or so north of New York City.

My brother, a Boy Scout at the time, purportedly knew the park's terrain and various nooks and crannies from past scouting trips. He was, for all intents and purposes, our fearless leader. We had the Boy Scout's handbook with us, too. And since this adventure of ours wasn't choreographed as a survival mission, we brought along a box of Bohack's matches, just in case the rubbing of two sticks together didn't do the trick.

To make a long story short: Dad dropped us off in an undisclosed location—an obscure, dead-end road somewhere on the periphery of a picturesque village called Sloatsburg. This spot admirably functioned as our portal into the forestland, where we had every intention of spending three full days and nights camped out under the stars on some off-the-beaten trail in the woods, and not some sissy campground. Unfortunately, we neglected to consult the weather bureau before our excursion, and day two in the great outdoors featured the heaviest rainstorm of the entire summer. Luckily, we had our Bohack's bounty with us: hot dogs, bread for peanut butter sandwiches, and Milky Way bars for snacks. While drowning in a flash flood or mudslide was always a possibility, we weren't about to starve to death.

We also brought along a radio, so we knew what was happening in the outside world. Yogi Berra was fired as the New York Mets manager on August 6th while we were one with nature. Rumors were that Brooklyn Dodgers great, Hall of Famer Roy Campanella, was his imminent replacement, despite being confined to a wheelchair. We had no cell phones. These devices were still a quarter of a century away from being in the hands, ears, and pockets of the multitudes. So, if anything, God forbid, happened to one of us, a long and meandering haul to find help would have been required. And, worse still, if a Jeffrey Dahmer-guy materialized, we were toast and could have effortlessly been disposed of sans a trace that we lived and breathed, except perhaps for a few Milky Way wrappers.

It was unquestionably a simpler time to be both alive and a kid. Nowadays, it's hard to conceive of parents permitting their teens to experience such a walk on the wild side—with or without a means of communication. Anyway, the footnote to this tale is that our respective fathers rescued us a day earlier than the scheduled pick up, surmising that the monsoonal rains had put a serious damper on things. Fathers knew best in this instance. And no social workers showed up at our doors, either, to place us in foster homes. 

Thirty-five years have now passed since this camping trip of a lifetime. It was the one and only time that I bedded down on roots and tubers, slept under both stars and rain clouds, and employed a decomposing log—home to a colony of ants and community of roly-poly bugs—as a toilet seat.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)