Windows on Our World

(Originally published 3/23/19)

In an age before Windows, there were windows—windows on the only world we knew. My father, for one, had a catbird seat—a front-window roost—looking out on his world for decades. He enjoyed sipping his morning coffee there and—during his leisure time—beer or wine. The man witnessed a lot of changes through the years from his unique perch, which had been outfitted by him with a one-of-a-kind elbow rest made of stuffed old socks.

For the entire decade of the 1960 into the early 1970s, a sprawling “victory garden” was seen—directly across the street—from that window. In the depths of winter, I remember gazing out of it and spying a glowing fire in the foreground. That could mean only one thing in those days of yore: the man my father called “the Greek” was in the stark nothingness of the winter garden. All alone—with a fire to warm his cockles—we kids knew him as “Papa.” I don’t exactly know why? He was very old, but he wasn’t a papa to any one of us. But then he wasn’t Greek, either, I learned many years later. The Greek was Albanian.

Such monikers, by the way, were commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, an individual who ought to know better—who grew up in the same Bronx neighborhood—chastised me for identifying a neighbor by his ethnicity. He said, “That’s so ‘70s!” Since I didn’t know this neighbor’s name—he never personally told me and speaks broken English on top of that—that’s how I distinguished him in conversation. Another neighbor of mine—a “progressive” in good standing—complained to me about a mutual neighbor’s penchant for over-using his leaf blower. He said, “The Asian guy across the street from me was driving me crazy with that thing!” When you don’t know somebody’s name—and he’s not about to tell you—what else can you do?

After that little digression into the crazy contemporary times in which we live, it’s back to the windows of our world. Once upon a time, my father dubbed a beer-bellied, sluggish super in the building across the street—on the grounds of the vanquished garden—“Humphrey.” I can’t say how he arrived at the name, but it seemed a good fit. From his catbird’s seat, he watched Humphrey in action—or inaction in this instance—for years. My father would also note the comings and goings of a guy who parked his car in the building’s garage. “There goes ‘Big Ass’,” he would say. The man did have an inordinately large one—in proportion to the rest of his body—as I recall. And finally, there was this strange fellow that my father dubbed “P.O. Pete,” who worked the same hours in the same post office—but in a different division—as him. They would often ride home together on the subway after their four-to-midnight shifts. My father, however, preferred not to be in the company of P.O. Pete—who lived in that very building as seen from his window—because he was a certifiable screwball. P.O. Pete looked for trouble, including antagonizing errant youths in the wee small hours of the morning, which is something my father could stand to do without on the mean streets of the Bronx in the middle of the night. He did enjoy catching glimpses of P.O. Pete, though, while safely ensconced in his front-row seat with the window on his world.

And now for something completely different: a back window view with a rather different perspective of our world. It’s where mothers hung out their wet washes in a time when most families didn’t own driers. Our back windows looked out at concrete backyards, which are now used—exclusively—as parking lots. But back then they were our playgrounds. The back windows are what my dog “Ginger” peered out of when she very much wanted to be in the Great Outdoors—and frolicking—with the rest of us.

These extraordinary windows—both front and back—were upgraded through the years. The newer models, though, didn’t appear to have the staying power of their predecessors. In short order the most frequently used windows could only remain open with a piece of wood or some improvisation holding them up. This fact of life proved worrisome. I didn’t want my mother, Ginger, or me to be decapitated. Fortunately, that never happened. But this reality reinforced a familiar theme of the older generations. You know: “They don’t make things like they used to!” True, because there was nothing quite like the windows that would frost up on the inside in wintertime. Of course, there was nothing like looking out all of them in all seasons—the windows on our world—when there was actually something to see.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The School Bag Three

(Originally published 4/8/18) 

Yesterday, I took the subway into Manhattan. An affable Charles Manson-looking guy and woman, who was HIV positive, were panhandling at different times. Both played the grateful part, with the latter exiting the train with a thunderous “Thank you, New York!” With the Statue of Liberty looming large in the damp and blustery distance, I met a friend in Battery Park—our old stomping grounds. Along with yours truly, he was one of the “School Bag Three,” a trio from the old neighborhood who attended the same Catholic grammar school and high school. And when we began our secondary education in 1976, on the other side of the Bronx, school bags were still the rage. I got mine—a black one—in an area luggage store. In the 1970s, Kingsbridge was replete with mom-and-pop stores that specialized in just about everything anyone needed. From luggage to hosiery to deli sandwiches—pets to art supplies to pork sausages—a shop existed within walking distance on the main thoroughfares of W231st Street and Broadway under the El. Nowadays, it’s an unsightly mishmash and unpleasant reminder of what once was.

Interestingly, the school bag—which was quite utilitarian in transporting books, notepads, and pens from Point A to Point B—became increasingly passé in the waning years of the 1970s. One member of our threesome nevertheless soldiered on with his red-and-white CSHS-insignia school bag for all four years. By senior year, its handle had fallen off, but he dutifully carried on with it under his arm. The three of us were something of a spectacle, I suspect, as we returned home festooned in our polyester sports jackets, gaudy ties, and school bags at our sides. Suddenly, old-fashioned school bags were the accoutrements of nerds. My older brother was embarrassed that I clung to mine until my last year at CSHS, when I at long last retired it due to intense wear. Ginger, our new pup and addition to the family, ultimately teethed on the legendary bag. It went out with a fitting bang.

By the way, the moniker “The School Bag Three” came to pass when I christened a JPEG shot of the three of us at Christmastime 1978. Unfortunately, we aren’t carrying our school bags in the picture. One of my regrets is not having any photos in my high school uniform, which for the boys back then was a jacket, tie, and dressy pants of their choice. The colorful mix and matches were a special snapshot in time.

Anyway, that was then and this is now. Suffice it to say, the School Bag Three of 2018 aren’t nearly as spry as they were when they patronized Bill’s Friendly Spot after an unpleasant school day for a “delicious egg cream.” At least that’s what the sign outside read along with an image of the famous frothy fountain pick-me-up. In fact, I—who sport a prosthetic knee—am the most ambulatory these days, with my mates saddled with assorted maladies that impede their walking in the here and now.

Yesterday, I was reminded, too, of a peculiar teenage prediction of mine regarding one of us. As fifteen-year-olds are wont to do, we were cavorting in my concrete backyard some four decades ago. For some strange reason, I proclaimed then that so-and-so would live to be fifty-seven. He will turn fifty-six this month and he is not doing very well. Of course, we were just having a grand old time and mouthing oddball and unpredictable stuff in an age before smartphones. At least my prophecy wasn't recorded! Of course, it's all gallows humor and I know full well that any one of us could drop between now and then. And, really, fifty-seven, once upon a time, sounded pretty old. As a teen, I couldn’t conceive of being that age. My father was in his forties when I was in high school. Nevertheless, I’m closing in on that unholy number—fifty-seven—and don’t relish being a Teenage Nostradamus or, for that matter, dead as a doornail.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)