A New Year...a New Focus?

In the fledgling days of the New Year, 1973, Sister Therese went up and down the rows of students in her fifth-grade religion class, asking each of us to name our favorite Christmas present. I remember telling her, “walkie-talkies,” only because she repeated what I had said, slowly and syllabically, as if walkie-talkies were, maybe, instruments of the devil or, more likely, something completely unfamiliar to her.

At the top of my Christmas list, 1972, were walkie-talkies, and when old St. Nick didn’t deliver the goods, I looked to a New Year’s Eve miracle as my last best hope. The ten-year-old me prayed that the walkie-talkies gift idea had been passed on to my godmother, who turned up on New Year’s Eve every year—an annual tradition—and actually bought me real presents. She was both a generous and kindly woman, and her husband was an incredibly nice man, too—born in Germany with a thick German accent. He couldn’t be my godfather because he wasn’t Catholic, which I thought was silly then as a little boy and even sillier now. He should have been my godfather. Two years later, though, he was gone. A freak accident, and an even more freakish blood clot, took his life at the age of forty-two. Both a good man and a New Year’s Eve tradition ended without fair warning.

Since that time—almost four decades ago—I’ve found New Year’s Eve more depressing than not. As a kid, it underscored that Christmas was over and, worse than that, Christmas vacation was nearing an end, too. There was nothing more disheartening than returning to school after a Christmas vacation. What was there to look forward to anyway? I know what—a long stretch of school days in the bitterly cold depths of wintertime.

So, another year is gone and I am a year closer to the end than the beginning. This is, in fact, the essence of the New Year. But then again, it is also—as this far-sighted manager I once knew at a place I once worked said—“a New Year, a New Focus.” Perhaps he was on to something there! Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve in My Home Town

Only seconds ago, I heard "the first lady of song" Kate Smith belting out Christmas Eve in My Home Town on one of my cable's Music Choice stations. While my personal "Christmas Eve in My Home Town" of the Bronx memories weren't nearly as bucolic or as syrupy special, they faithfully adhered to a venerable tradition—one that merits a mention and maybe even a song of its own someday.

For me, Christmas Eve has forever been rooted in the Italian’s “Feast of the Seven Fishes” dinner—assorted fish dishes served alongside spaghetti with garlic and olive oil (aglio e olio)—although I don’t think we've ever quite made it to the seven-fish mark. When my paternal grandmother was the culinary impresario of this evening, the fish were, without exception, baccalà (salted cod fish), calamari (squid), eels, and shrimp. She came from a mountain town called Castelmezzano in Southern Italy, where fish of any kind were rare birds indeed. Because it was salted to death, baccalà was the only fish product this impoverished sliver of geography—sans electricity and refrigeration—knew, with the one exception being fresh-water minnows of some kind that ran in the mountain streams after heavy rains and melting winter snows.

Ironically, my grandmother didn’t much like fish. Outside of Christmas Eve dinner, the only fish I ever remember her cooking were fried scallops, and not very often at that. Because they maintained somewhat more appeal to me than did eels and squid, I had long wished these rarely prepared scallops of hers would be added to the holiday menu. But, in the big picture, the specific fishes really didn’t matter. The one-night-a-year tradition trumped all else—even taste. My grandmother's spaghetti alone was always ace and enough for me. So what if the eels and squid were a far cry from roast beef at the Ritz.

I suppose what has long been unique about these Christmas Eve feeds of ours is that they consisted of fishy things few among us would—or even could for that matter—order in a restaurant. My fishmonger friend, and a longtime neighbor of mine, stocks and sells eels only at this time of year. Why is that? Foodies, I guess, just aren’t clamoring for eel appetizers, but then that’s okay. I have sampled eels through the years and they've typically been quasi-edible, creamy, and surprisingly bland. However, they've always been extremely fishy to touch. Still, I’ve watched relations of mine attack the scant meat on these slithering and bony creatures of the sea like they would spareribs.

Flash forward to the new millennium and fish cakes, fillet of sole, and—at long last—scallops, too, have been added to our Christmas Eve tradition. Without question, these are more palatable and benign fish dishes with appeal to a wider audience. Somehow, though, the Christmas Eves of yesteryear—with my grandmother doing the cooking—tasted a whole lot better to me.

A Christmas in New York Story

As I exited the subway at 66th Street and Lincoln Center on this very cold morning, classy Christmas decor surrounded me. Strolling south and then east to Columbus Circle and the southern entrance to Central Park, I laid eyes on more than a few humongous Christmas trees in corporate giants’ lobbies—holiday eye candy for sure.

When I reached my destination, I noticed the park’s entrance was glutted with peddlers of interesting things. There were shoppers aplenty in this tented holiday village, including many tourists. They seem enamored most of all with snapping pictures across busy and crowded sidewalks, and taking a very long time in getting it right. I was meeting someone at this location and had much too much time to kill. In the meantime, I didn’t browse these temporary, make-shift shops because that would have violated two critical life rules of mine: I don’t browse when I don’t intend to buy anything, and I don’t wade through crowds under any circumstances, and especially when I don’t intend on buying anything.

I couldn’t help but notice, too, that intermingled in all of this urban festiveness was a decidedly less appealing side of Christmas in New York. Perhaps I’m painting with a broad brush here, but tourist-dependent “special rides” of any kind seem to be operated by a smarmy lot. Observing unctuous pitchmen trying to ensnare tourists to ride in their hansom cabs, bicycle carts, and tour buses was painful. Their boorishness stood in sharp contrast with the local wealthy sophisticates just passing through with their Starbucks coffees, or whatever it is that outfit calls its five-dollar cups of headache-inducing sludge.

The piece-de-résistance of this Christmas in New York Story is the strange place I ended up in. When I finally met the individual whom I was patiently waiting for, he informed me that he needed to get something to eat in order to take a high blood pressure medication. The irony was not lost on him that we were headed to McDonald’s to fulfill this task. We patronized a McCafé actually. I hadn’t been to a McDonald’s of any name in quite a while, and for a very good reason. I have long been leery of this international hamburger conglomerate, which seems incapable of serving its staple hamburgers with nothing on them. It always seemed to me that, logically, preparing plain hamburgers would be the quintessential piece of cake in the burger business...but not at McDonald’s.

Anyway, I ordered a six-piece Chicken McNugget, which was the last main course I recall sampling at a McDonald’s, with French fries and a drink—and the bill totaled $8.35! I was remiss, I guess, in not searching hard enough for a special deal. But, for starters, I found reading the menu board difficult because it was both crammed with stuff and required 20/10 vision to decipher. I didn’t have 20/10 vision in my youth, and certainly don’t have it now. In the final analysis, I think my Chicken McNuggets cost me more than .60 a piece. This is my Christmas in New York Story, 2011.

A Christmas Rowe-Manse

Twenty years ago on the afternoon of December 24th, I plunked a blank tape into my radio-cassette-turntable combo player, which, by the way, I still have and occasionally use. Employing the finest technology of the time, I arbitrarily taped a radio program on WPAT “Easy 93,” and repeated this act several more times during the ensuing thirty-six hours. Beginning on Christmas Eve at noontime and lasting throughout the entire Christmas day, this AM and FM easy-listening radio station in the New York City metropolitan area furnished listeners with—yes—thirty-six of hours of commercial-free Christmas music every year. My intentions were to record this music for posterity. I reasoned that it would be nice to have tapes of this diverse Christmas music selection to play during times other than Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I sensed, too, that WPAT, its easy-listening format, and annual Christmas presentation just might not be around forever. And, as it turned out, I was right.

The station dubbed this longtime holiday tradition of theirs “The Spirit of Christmas,” and featured mostly instrumental versions of familiar seasonal favorites, and some completely unfamiliar. During these yearly music marathons, a deejay’s voice would periodically intone between tracks, “Our gift to you…thirty-six hours of your favorite holiday sounds on WPAT…Easy 93.” And mere words cannot do justice to the bona fide easiness of Easy 93. The only other occasional, and very brief, interruptions to this Christmas music extravaganza involved the station thanking its very generous sponsors—those who made “The Spirit of Christmas” possible.

Well, with the holiday season officially underway, I thought it high time for me to dust off these twenty-year-old cassette tapes of mine and start listening to them. Yes, I still play tapes but, sadly, a couple of my WPAT “Spirit of Christmas” recordings have self-destructed with the passage of time. Still, when I heard the dulcet tones of a WPAT announcer thanking, among others, Mr. Carmen Maggio of the “Romance Emporium” in Clifton, New Jersey for making the 1991 edition of “The Spirit of Christmas” possible—something I had heard hundreds of times while listening to these tapes—I paused and typed in the man's name in a Google search whim. Foremost, I wondered if the “Romance Emporium” was still in business. I had for a very long time assumed it was an independent  Victoria's Secret kind of place, and was sort of surprised it took me so many years to wonder enough about this business to check it out.

Sadly, the “Romance Emporium” is no more. Foremost, my search unearthed Mr. Maggio’s 2010 obituary and, it seems, I had gotten it wrong. It wasn’t the “Romance Emporium” after all, but the “Rowe-Manse Emporium,” a neat play on words. It also wasn't a Victoria's Secret-like outfit, but a specialty department store. The place fell by the wayside in the early aughts, a casualty of both big-box discount retailers, the Internet, and ever-changing tastes, I suppose. Rowe-Manse Emporium-type stores are pretty hard to come by nowadays, and Christmas shopping is indisputably less interesting and less exciting without them around. Once upon a time these little big retailers exhibited both heart and incredible uniqueness, something that's in short supply in the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target.

The Very Powerful Tool Meets the Squat Thrust

Some guy I know pretty well recently remarked how the “mind is a very powerful tool.” Now, call me cynical if you must, but I didn’t consider this particular proclamation anything close to profound. It was not one of those moments when I took a step back and exclaimed, “Yeah…yeah…man, that’s powerful.” Nevertheless, as I was talking the streets of the Bronx today, this very powerful tool of mine saw something that reminded him of something else…and the floodgates opened.

It all happened so innocently. After purchasing powdered iced-tea mix and Drain-o at a Rite Aid drug store—and receiving a three-foot cashier's receipt along the way—I stepped out into the mean streets and immediately spotted a man working on his car. Something was clearly amiss, so he decided to have a look-see underneath the vehicle. It was what he did next, in bringing his entire body down to the asphalt grounds, that greased the skids of that very powerful tool of a mine. Somehow his movements resurrected the squat thrust in my brain—a high school gym exercise I performed faithfully from 1976 through 1980. One, by the way, I have never executed since. In fact, I have never even heard the phrase "squat thrust" mentioned. Funny, but in the high school years, I always thought the exercise’s moniker a bit odd, and maybe even slightly suggestive of things beyond physical fitness, but then that was then and this is now.

Anyway, as I continued on my journey away from Rite Aid and their mostly high prices and uber-long receipts, the squat-thrust exercise, courtesy of that very powerful tool, was indelibly stamped on my brain. I heard now a certain gym teacher’s voice in my head counting out that infernal exercise: one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four. Everything it seemed in high school physical education was four-count. But it was that final four-count of what were usually ten repetitions of an exercise, including the squat thrust, which was particularly special and memorable to me. It went something like this: one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four...until the culmination—that number ten—one, two, three, FOOUUURRR! Galootish and ear piercing, the mettle of a gym teacher. That mind…that very powerful tool…can it ever take us places.

The Number 1 Looks Just Like You

When I checked the MTA website first thing yesterday morning, I was positively ecstatic. The Number 1 train was running through my neck of the woods without interruption. For the last year or so, it seems weekend service of this venerable subway line has been screwed over big time due to seemingly endless track work and station repairs. And so, Saturday began on a high note.

But when I requested a six-dollar addition to my MetroCard, the clerk at my local subway station couldn’t read it. He scanned it, scanned it again, and nothing. He even tried to bring it back to life with a spritz of some fluid and a Handi Wipe, but nothing. No problem, I’ll take a new card, I said. This very agreeable and helpful transit employee then informed me of the available options vis-à-vis my unreadable MetroCard. I told him I didn’t think there was much monetary value left on it anyway, so it didn’t really matter to me. In other words, I had no intention of taking the card to the transit authority’s version of a higher authority—wherever and whatever that was. I briefly considered trashing this old and unreadable card on the spot, but for some reason decided against it and put it back in my pocket.

After paying my fare with a new and workable six-dollar card, I walked to the far end of this Northwest Bronx subway station. A southbound train heading into Manhattan pulled in a few minutes later. I entered the first car that, when push comes to shove, is frequently the least crowded one for a trip's duration. This very special car is often spared the urban onslaught, even when trains are packed like the proverbial sardines in a can.

No such luck yesterday morning. The lead car, too, filled up rather quickly, and so there were a lot of my fellow New Yorkers and tourists, too, hovering over and sitting very close to me for much of the ride. A man with not the best hygiene in the world sat right beside me. He exuded not quite the forlorn homeless man smell, which subway riders are accustomed to, but a level or two below that on the odor-ometer. In other words, I wasn’t literally gagging, and his ill aroma didn’t make me nauseous. But I’d say it was one of those fine-line moments. That is, I didn't dare dwell too much on the olfactory nerves and what they were absorbing, because nauseousness wasn't out of the question.

Sitting directly across from me from the start of my journey was a businesswoman. She initially plopped down and placed her laptop bag on the seat beside her. This was okay at the get-go, when the subway car was mostly empty, but when it filled up to standing room only, she made no effort to place her laptop bag under the seat and let somebody sit down next to her. She actually pulled out a book during the subway ride and started reading. The title had something to do with making a small fortune—and rather effortlessly at that. No doubt, I surmised, at the expense of those standing above and around her who had been denied a seat. Oh, yeah, and then there was this father and young son tag-team combo. The subway milieu as a classroom setting for parent teaching child about the wonders of urban life in is pretty commonplace. Occasionally, they are precious moments; often they are embarrassing and intrusive. If we were living in the 1970s, I would describe this particular father and son's interplay as “Annoying City!” If the Herman Cain lookalike's facial expressions were any indicator, he seemed to be on my wavelength. But then he might have been more annoyed by the dead ringer for Madonna, who was constantly blowing her runny nose from 168th Street to Times Square—six miles or so—and was sitting nearer to him than me.

To end on an upbeat note: the MetroCard I very nearly tossed away…well, I tried it one more time on my trip home…and it not only scanned, but had a fare left on it and then some. There must be some New Age meaning to all of this…but what pray tell?

Diner Elegy

It’s been three weeks now since the sun, which held sway over my neighborhood solar system for a very long time, quietly passed from the scene. As I walked the surrounding streets this morning, where a small diner—the most special of greasy spoons—endured for some thirty-five years, I conceived this analogy. You see, every time I was in the area—alone or with family members or friends—the diner, even when not eating there, was the epicenter. It was a comforting constant in a sea of change.

For twenty years, I patronized this place. In fact, it had a different name for part of the time, and a very brief span when somebody else took over—the man responsible for the name change. But imagine, if you will, a diner in New York City run—more or less—by the same handful of people for decades. The owner of the place, who shouted a greeting when you entered, cooked your food, and then said good-bye was there for almost every single minute the place was open, which was seven days a week. The diner closed only on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Others who worked there were equally familiar and longstanding employees, including a waiter who would see you coming from across the street and have a piping hot cup of coffee on the table before you even walked in the door. And the bottomless cup of coffee was truly bottomless here from beginning to end, even when business was down. And when business was especially brisk, you never felt rushed. You could sit there all day, if that is what you desired, because that’s how regular customers were treated.

The reasons my all-time favorite diner, which will never again be replicated, shut down are multifold. It’s the kind of place that existed in New York City in the past, but cannot anymore. So much of what made New York great—what made it a wholly unique metropolis—just can’t happen in this day and age. The city now is both insanely expensive and intensely bureaucratic. It caters—above all else— to wealthy landlords and to wealth itself.

But, still, it’s the memories that endure of this extraordinary diner milieu, which are over-powering in so many ways I cannot chronicle here. Good food, good times, and all of those characters on both sides of the counter, including me. Along the way, a healthy share of bad things happened to one and all. But at least we had the diner—and the good people who ran it—as a life comfort station of sorts, which is irreplaceable.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

King for a Day

The richest 1% of Americans own 40% of the nation’s wealth; the least well-off 80%, a mere 7%. This disparity in income is the widest since the eve of the Great Depression. So, what exactly is wrong with this picture? Well, a local gourmet market, which practically everybody raves about in the neighborhood—mostly folks among the unwashed 80%, by the way—was charging $7 for a basket of strawberries today. And I could cite a few more examples…but I won’t.

I’d rather bask in the glow—of my one brief shining moment—when I was among that illustrious 1%. A couple of weeks ago, I deposited a $150 check in a local branch of a really, really big bank. To make a long story short, I needed to check my bank balance. I had to see if that aforementioned $150 check had cleared, and whether some checks I had written had been cashed. I feared there might very well be a close call or two between deposits made and checks paid out, and very possibly a humiliating $32 overdraft charge—which I believe is the current fee—for me coming up an inch short and not beating the clearance clock.

Anyway, when the statement of my last five transactions appeared on the ATM machine screen before me, my $150 deposit was listed as $15,000,000—that’s, if you're keeping score, five more zeroes. My available balance also had five more zeroes attached to it. I became jelly-legged while poring over this astonishing visual. And, no, I didn’t go into the bank proper and withdraw a couple of million dollars—and not because it was closed for the day. In retrospect, I should have at least printed out a copy of my statement.

I felt, for some strange reason, guilty—like I had done something wrong—as I scurried out of the bank’s ATM alcove a very rich man. I returned the next morning to see if I had been relegated to pauper. I had indeed. Okay, so I didn’t have to go into the bank and inform them the $15,000,0000 was all a mistake…but not my mistake. I always wondered whether the bank would have given me a reward for my honesty. You know…like no overdraft fees for a year.

Food for Thought...Thought for Food

When folks from the old neighborhood gather together—in the cozy confines of virtual reality—to share their memories of all that transpired once upon a time, a heaping helping of food for thought is quite often the by-product. In fact, I’ve learned that more than a few former neighbors of mine, who worked in local eateries a long time ago, did some rather unsanitary, and occasionally downright disgusting things. For starters, they dropped food on floors, put it back on plates, and served it to customers.

That teenagers working in not especially well paying and largely unpleasant work environments will do such things is hardly surprising. My family rarely dined out while I was a boy. Foremost, there wasn’t sufficient surplus disposable income to make a habit of it—with five mouths to feed—and, too, it was considered positively sacrilege to waste money by paying through the nose for meals, when there were competent cooks at-the-ready on the home front. With respect to restaurants and take-out joints, from Chinese to fast-food burgers to pizza places, it was drummed into us all: “You don’t know what goes on behind the scenes and in their kitchens!” I must admit this homespun wisdom had a certain bite to it—food for thought then as well as now.

My one beef with this self-evident truism was that home kitchens, and the cooks therein, sometimes were as a bad, or even worse, in the Sanitary Department than even the nastiest restaurant transgressions reported on by this cross-section of primary sources—on the memory boards—and, too, from my first-hand experiences.

Okay, so my favorite pizza guy for so many years cleaned out his oven with the very same mop he used on the floors of his shop. In his defense, he claimed the extreme heat of the oven destroyed any and all germs and bacteria. I had heard about this mopping thing while I was a regular patron of the place. I just chose to accept my pizza guy's science. We had roaches in our Bronx apartment kitchen back in the 1960s and 1970s—a lot of them as a matter of fact. They were ubiquitous in the old neighborhood. Mice even found their way through a gas pipe into our kitchen stove—where my mother stored cereals and snacks—on one occasion. We never went hungry, though, and the kitchen stayed open. No city bureaucrat showed up to close it down.

It’s really all relative, I suppose. Fifteen or so years ago, my brother and I were in our all-time favorite diner for breakfast. And when he poured his maple syrup, from the small pitcher brought to him, onto three slices of French toast, several dead roaches peacefully floated atop them. They had evidently gone for an evening swim in the sugary Shangri-La, we surmised, and, alas, drowned in the process. It was a shocker for sure—we were briefly stunned and in a state of suspended animation—but since the place meant so much to us, it didn’t much matter in the bigger picture. We returned for another day—for a second act—and the syrupy-special roaches became part and parcel of a richer lore.

The moral of this story—if there is one—is that we make all kinds of allowances in this thing called life. I’ve always found it interesting that so many people in the kitchens of home sweet home pass judgment on eateries for both their real and, sometimes imagined, lack of cleanliness, but choose never to look in their own mirrors and their own pantries. All I can say is that with the NYC Health Department unleashed as it is today—inspecting with abandon and dispensing A, B, and C grades to food businesses one and all—I can’t help but wonder how many of my favorite cooks’ kitchens in homes and apartments, and countless others throughout the five boroughs of New York, would pass muster. I suspect many of them would be shut down for being downright unsanitary and outright health hazards.

Finding Ecstasy in the Strangest Places

Almost thirty years ago, which is somewhat alarming to entertain, I experienced one brief shining moment of pure, unadulterated bliss. You see, my team, the New York Mets, had been down and out for several years, a laughingstock in Major League Baseball, and, worst of all, playing second banana to George Steinbrenner’s Yankees—the quintessential Wall Street sports organization then as well as now. The parsimonious and increasingly incompetent Mets’ upper-management of the mid- and late-1970s had, in essence, killed the goose that laid the golden egg. So, when the old ownership at long last unloaded the team to individuals who intended on restoring the Mets to their former pluck, we fans heaved a sigh of relief and dreamed of better days ahead.

Show us, don’t tell us, was all that we asked of the new ownership. And in the winter of 1982, they did just that by trading for, and then signing to an incredibly lucrative long-term contract for its day, a slugger named George Foster—the last man in to have hit fifty or more home runs in either the American or National League.

When Foster accomplished this feat in 1977, it was a bona fide achievement. All one had to do was look at the guy. He was razor-thin but incredibly muscular with Popeye forearms. Foster’s Herculean deed was realized without performance-enhancing drugs and that ubiquitous, modern-day fat head so familiar on the mega-millionaire celebrities who play today’s game. It was a time when such grand successes weren’t even remotely suspect and records actually meant something.

For Met fans, the Foster trade and his subsequent signing to a long-term deal were big—really big. It was a moment of true ecstasy for me. But, alas, as is the case with moments of ecstasy in general, they are always just that—moments. In other words, they don’t last forever. Some, in fact, last for at least a measurable span of time, but most go up in smoke before you ever know what hit you—no pun intended. In the case of George Foster, the ecstasy moment was short-lived to say the least. It lasted until he took the field in a Mets’ uniform—or, to be fair, not very long after that. After a wretched 1982 season, and the sense that this fellow had not only seen better days as an athlete, but didn’t much care, the ecstasy moment seemed like a bad dream.

But what I wouldn’t give to feel the way I felt on that day some three decades ago—at the precise moment when I learned my beloved Mets had signed an All-Star slugger for a whopping sum of money. Sure, he would fast disappoint us all. Ecstasy, nevertheless, can be found in the strangest places. So, enjoy it wherever you find it...and while you can...because nothing lasts forever…nothing.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Hairy Junk Mail

An increasingly rare piece of junk mail arrived in my mailbox today—the old-fashioned kind delivered by a flesh and blood human being that can be handled, and eventually recycled and picked up by another flesh and blood human being on recycling day. It was a mass mailing from a hair replacement center—one that I’m familiar with, by the way, only because I’ve passed by it many times in my travels. I also knew a client of the place.

While I concede to qualifying as bald bait—their target audience—I did not request information on this business’s services. So, whether I landed on the mailing list as somebody’s not particularly funny joke, or some strange commercial coincidence, I couldn’t help but hark back to that acquaintance of mine who patronized this very hairpiece establishment. It seems that—when he put his John Hancock on the dotted line—he essentially took out a long-term mortgage on his scalp.

Fast balding on top at a relatively young age, this fellow looked perfectly fine when he went he went for broke on that fateful day. I recall the moment that, in a matter of a few hours, he went from being predominantly bald to having a luxurious head of hair. It was a peculiar metamorphosis to say the least. He promptly informed all who would listen of the satin pillows he now had to rest his weary head on—something about the unwanted effects of static—and the special shampoo lotions he had to use, which not surprisingly cost a pretty penny. This was all adding up to real money and real fast, I thought. Then, of course, there were the recurring readjustments—the $100 plus haircuts he had to endure every month. And, on top of all that, what remained of his real hair was still falling out. So, more and more of the horsehair—or whatever the hair replacement center employed—had to be added to the new weave.

Maybe it’s just me, but it all seemed like an awful lot to go through—even beyond the expense—to, at the end of the day, look like a guy wearing a hairpiece. This particular Manhattan outfit churns out a certain kind of rug, which I’ve seen on many others. Once upon a time a pizza place owner not too far away had a balding top, and he made a similar pact with the hair devil. The first thing a friend of mine, who hadn’t seen him in a while, said was: “When did the pizza guy get the rug?”

A favorite teacher of mine in high school—who simultaneously taught a senior year religion course and was dramatically thinning on top—once said of his hair: “I can’t cling to it.” I know there was some broader and connecting life point vis-à-vis the course’s subject matter, which I’ve long since forgotten after thirty years, but I’ve never lost sight of the big picture. No satin pillows, strange elixirs for the head, and regular haircuts that cost more than the gas and electric bill combined—and in perpetuity to boot—for me. I’d just assume not go broke in an effort to look like a pizza guy with bad hair. And, while I'm rooting for the post office to survive: Please, Mr. Hair Man, remove me from your mailing list.

"You Folks Farmers?"

A quarter of a century or so ago, I attended a breakfast buffet. It was in a farm building of some kind somewhere on the outskirts of Bangor, Pennsylvania. Accompanying me on this culinary adventure were my maternal grandmother, her long-time neighbor, and my two brothers. While the Bangor denizens were accustomed to these local get-togethers on farms and in churches and volunteer firehouses, the Bronx boys were not.

Such neighborly events in our neck of the woods were very rare. When they did occur, they bore little resemblance to the breakfasts and potluck suppers in the countryside. In fact, the one and only all-you-can-eat breakfast that I attended in my lifetime living in the big city served powdered eggs, which would be absolutely sacrilege in pastoral venues.

If memory serves, one also got a whole lot more bang for the buck out in the country, which is not really surprising. So what if I was repulsed by scrapple—a regional favorite and Spam-like product that consists of a mushy concoction of pork scraps—there was so much more to choose from, everything from pancakes to cornbread to home fries. We not only enjoyed the food but the hospitality, too, which was considerably more unfettered and more abundant in supply than what we were accustomed to on the mean streets of the Bronx.

As I sat down at a long lunch table with my breakfast plate brimming with bacon, eggs, sausage, and toast, a wizened old gentleman nearby turned to me and asked in his distinctive twang, “You folks farmers?” I informed him we weren’t and he smiled, returning to the business at hand—chomping down his hearty breakfast. This was the first and last time in my life that I was mistaken for a farmer. Just last week, though, somebody in a local diner thought I was a grease monkey from the nearby garage. I told him he must have me confused with someone else. He didn’t seem to believe me.

An "Out of Sight" Blog

A current writing project of mine finds me revisiting my personal favorite decade: the 1970s. While researching my subject matter, I decided to reacquaint myself with the lingo of the time, considering that more than three decades have passed, and I am no longer a teenager uttering, “Be there or be square” and “Take a chill pill.” Well, actually, I don’t think I ever spoke either of those two phrases. I was way too square for that. However, I know for a fact that I branded some people “chumps,” who were definitely worthy of the label, and I may possibly have even said “later,” as I parted with friends a time or two, which is embarrassing to admit.

I found a 1970s lingo listing—you can unearth virtually everything on the Internet—and noticed that “Who cut the cheese?” made the cut, if you will. This intriguing query resurrected a memory of a grammar school religion class taught by a hipster priest—and a very likeable fellow from my parish, I should add. He interrupted a lecture of his with that very question: “Who cut the cheese?” He just knew how to endear himself to seventh graders living amidst the grooviest snapshot in time ever recorded in the annals of history. However, I didn’t appreciate his follow-up query: “Nick, are you gagging?” As I recall, I wasn’t the guilty party. And as we know: Whoever smelt it dealt it.

Most of the 1970s slang on the list I remembered, even if I didn’t employ the majority of the cool jargon. “Far out” was John Denver’s thing. And I didn’t call cops “pigs” because I didn’t have a bone to pick with them and, too, Kojak was my favorite TV show. Even the “fuzz” was too pejorative for me. I may have said “fooey,” instead of “nonsense” at some point, and I’m certain I used the word “grody” to describe a variety of “disgusting” things in those days of yore. “Doofus,” well, I still like that word, and it is equally apropos in the twenty-first century, and I don’t plan on retiring it.

Yes, I recollect peers of mine being called “spaz” when they lacked athletic grace. And that’s really urban slang at its best, sounding like what it’s describing. I know some people said “you know” after many sentences in the 1970s when it was the hip thing to do. Now, some people say “you know” after many sentences when it’s not the hip thing to do. Many of the phrases that became the “rad” in the 1970s are hippie-inspired, and the hippies deserve their due for adding immeasurably to the English language. Wearing cool “threads” with no “bread” in their pockets had to be a real “bummer.” Do you catch my drift?

New York Really Is the City That Never Sleeps

This past Labor Day weekend—on an early Sunday morning—I noticed a meter maid walking around the neighborhood. Considering it was the day of the week that many New Yorkers call on their preferred houses of worship—and, too, that it was the "official end of summer" holiday—I thought it a very unusual time for a city employee to be roaming streets, checking up on parked cars’ registrations, and, of course, writing tickets. Perhaps the city fathers and mothers have the little guy and gal’s best interests at heart with this sort of thorough patrolling—after all, drivers should keep their automobiles’ registrations and car inspections up to date.

Forgive me, though, for being slightly cynical here. As part of my morning Internet ritual, I visit the website "EveryBlock" and search my zip code for local news items, which include the latest restaurant inspections in the area. It’s clear the city has both hired many more health inspectors and is making many more inspections of eateries, which is understandable considering rats and water bugs run amok on some of the richest real estate on the planet. However, some restaurants are being inspected every two to three months and racking up violation points that I presume are attached to considerable fines. While it’s a good thing that restaurants are being held to higher standards, forgive me—again—for being slightly cynical here.

Recently, I saw a man double park his car and get out to help a very elderly woman with her groceries as she exited a supermarket. He left his motor running and was only several yards away from his vehicle when a meter maid pounced and ticketed him. I believe this infraction comes attached to a $115 penalty nowadays. I know double-parking in overly congested metropolitan areas is a no-no, but once more: Forgive me for being slightly cynical here.

Is it possible the mayor and his dedicated bureaucratic army are foremost interested in adding money to the city’s coffers, even if it means fleecing the little people for more and more and more when they can least afford it? Perish the thought. What was I thinking? I know, of course, that he and his are looking out for me in the City That Doesn’t Sleep—just ask the meter maids and health inspectors.

Rocky's Road

I had a teacher in the sixth grade affectionately known as— courtesy of his surname—“Rocky.” The school year was 1973-74, and Rocky stood out from the pack in this parochial grammar school of mine for a host of reasons. For starters, there were very few men teaching in grades one through six back then. This, too, must have been his first teaching job. He was quite young and occasionally showed up for work on the disheveled and scruffy side, like he’d been out late the night before doing what some people do in the wee hours. And no, I don’t think he was moonlighting as a cab driver or a night watchman.

But there was something really right about Rocky, even if he didn’t always make time for the morning shave. Clear-eyed or bleary-eyed, it didn’t matter; he was the genuine article—a dedicated teacher. The school had its fair share of dedicated old school teachers, including Sister Camillus, who only a year before publicly humiliated me when I misspelled the word “paid” as “payed.” “Imagine a fifth grader who doesn’t know how to spell the word ‘paid’!” she bellowed in her less than dulcet tones. Rocky didn’t embarrass students in front of his or her peers over a spelling error. Private consultations were more his style. So, no, there was never an “Imagine a sixth grader who doesn’t know how to spell the word ‘paid’!” moment in Rocky’s classroom.

And Sister Camillus was also not the sort of educator to accompany her class to the park down the street after a late winter snowstorm. Rocky not only did, but commanded our attention at the park’s entrance. “Since this is probably going to be the last snowstorm of the season,” I recall him saying rather earnestly, “I thought we should assemble here to have our last…SNOWBALL FIGHT!” With these fighting words, Rocky proceeded to swipe snow off of a parked car’s front hood onto his momentarily startled students. Really, I just couldn’t see old Sister C initiating a snowball fight. Innocent as it all was, Rocky just couldn’t get away with throwing snow in the faces of eleven- and twelve-year-old boys and girls in the twenty-first century.

Rocky’s last hurrah involved a class trip to Bear Mountain State Park on the Hudson River Day Line, which back in the 1970s sailed north from Manhattan’s West Side. I remember only a few snippets from this trip. Foremost, I almost fell to my death—or so it seemed at the time—while mountain climbing, or whatever the peewee-equivalent of that is called. If my memory is correct, we went off with our friends—rather loosely supervised—to wherever we wanted to go, and were instructed only to return to the dock area at a prescribed time. Imagine a school trip like that today. I remember, too, a couple of kids passing around a lit pipe on the boat, which wasn’t burning tobacco. They were also brandishing assorted pills, which weren't Tylenols. Simpler times in the sixth grade of a Catholic grammar school when Richard Nixon was the president. I may have been rather innocent at the time, but it appeared some others were a lot less so.

Thanks to the sprawling Internet, and Rocky’s atypical last name, I tracked the man down in the virtual ether. He’s still a teacher. It’s been his life’s work. And, wow, he must be sixty by now. While there are likely no more snowball fights, or minimally supervised field trips, in Rocky’s profession today, it appears he’s adapted nicely to both teaching’s new world order and the world we live in.

A Parable: the Minister, Tree Branch, and Me

I share something in common with a certain man of the cloth. It seems we both reside in street-level bachelor pads in private homes on the same block. And that is the long and short of our common ground, I suspect. Everything else I know about this man is limited to our encounters—for lack of a better description—which have been numerous the past couple of years. When I see him in the early morning hours—presumably before he goes to work, if that is the right word—he’s always walking a very small dog, puffing on a cigarette, and sporting a Roman collar.

I have always assumed he is an Episcopal minister. Having experienced a Catholic upbringing and education, I just never knew a priest who lived in a basement apartment, which doesn’t mean such living arrangements are unprecedented. The priests in my past always called hearth and home a parish, or resided somewhere on the school grounds where they taught. But then again, a friend of mine worked with a Catholic priest in a Barnes & Noble store. The guy needed the money and had to both locate, and pay for out of his own pocket, his accommodations. These are hard times for all.

Anyway, today—post-Hurricane Irene day one—I was outside and picking up scattered debris, including a large tree branch that I dragged to the curbside. With my back unintentionally turned away from this approaching holy man, I heard him—quite uncharacteristically—say something. I swiveled around and momentarily considered asking, “You talkin’ to me?” As per the norm, however, he was staring straight ahead, cigarette in one hand, and dog leash in the other, fulfilling his morning ritual. I surmised he was speaking to his little canine friend, because I never saw a Bluetooth, or any comparable technological device, in his ear. This man is old school and, for that matter, pretty old.

But then I spied that the tree branch I had moved was jutting out a foot or so onto the sidewalk proper. Had I noticed this before, I would never have placed it in such a precarious position, and I immediately moved it out of harm’s way. I proceeded to do something of a double take at that point, realizing that this neighbor of mine, who always does his best not to make eye contact with anyone—and, by osmosis, speak to anybody—had indeed addressed me. In fact, as soon as I laid eyes on the branch partially on the sidewalk, my brain—without any prompting on my part—replayed the previous moment. Yes, this mystery servant of the Lord, whose holy threads no doubt reek of nicotine, had chided me. Considering that I was cleaning up a big mess, the scolding was both unnecessary and unappreciated.

Harking back to my boyhood, I was always turned off by the unpleasantness and sometimes-outright nastiness of a fair share of religious sorts. The more innocent and less cynical child quite often cuts to the chase. How could some of these men and women who purport to do God’s bidding and adhere to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth be so disagreeable? I was never impressed with autocratic “good businessmen” known for running parishes with an iron fist and Wal-Mart bottom line efficiency. It seemed so incongruous to me then, just as it does to me now. I was literally both frightened and horrified by the fact that a Sister Lorraine character actually passed nun muster and was permitted to teach children. She sported both a habit and a burgeoning mustache some four decades ago when she threw my friend Johnny down to the rock-hard pavement at the altar’s edge in church. It was during First Holy Communion practice, and he received this body slam courtesy of a chewed up hot lunch straw in his shirt pocket. There’s something wrong with this picture.

Happily, Sister Lorraine was gone the following year—from my school at least. Where she ended up after that, I don’t know. Hopefully, she joined the Teamsters, or maybe was discovered by a talent scout for the WWF. While I am the antithesis of a cheerleader on the God Squad, if you will, I still prefer religious folk to be godly—hopeless romantic that I remain—even in adulthood.

River, Take Me Away in Your Sunshine

According to a newspaper story I just read, several candidates aspiring for the highest office in the land want to gut—if not entirely disembowel—the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They claim the agency’s myriad strictures are—in the big picture—job killers. One would-be president more or less believes businesses can regulate themselves vis-à-vis pollutants—just as big banks and investment houses, I suppose, are looking out for, first and foremost, you and me.

When my father was a boy in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, the family and some friends would regularly hop on the Number 1 train during summertime for a short ride up to Inwood Hill Park. Upon their arrival, they would hike through the area’s primordial woodlands—on Manhattan Island still—to an off-the-beaten trail leading to a tiny snatch of sandy beach at the scenic confluence of the Harlem River Ship Canal and the Hudson River. The older generation of Italian men always brought their homemade wines along with them and placed the bottles in an icy cold freshwater spring, which trickled down through the hills. The Henry Hudson Bridge, opened in 1936, loomed like a colossus directly above this Shangri-La.

Provided one didn’t venture out too far, the waters off this obscure snippet of shoreline were shallow enough. My father vividly remembered these beach visits and—most of all—wading through waters awash in, among other things, human excrement, which frequently had to be pushed aside while frolicking in the drink. Granted, this couldn’t have been the healthiest of recreational activities, but it was the late 1930s and early 1940s, when raw sewerage was poured into the local waters.

Flash forward thirty years and I recall being at water’s edge in New York Harbor. The wafting breeze was a curious mix of sea salt and sewer, and flotsam in the Hudson was the rule. The cleanliness of the river in those days—in these parts—was a standard joke punch line. But a funny thing happened over the last three decades. The river’s gotten cleaner—dramatically so. There’s even talk of a public beach on Manhattan’s West Side. And not very far to the north of the city, Hudson River beaches are open for business.

The EPA was the brainchild of the Nixon Administration, circa 1970. And as for swimming in poop in the future, I think would be wise to Just Say No. We’ve been there and done that—and we’re not going back.

Signs of the Times

If I had to select one street barometer that reveals how tough times have become, I’d note the conspicuous increase in the numbers of men and women foraging through garbage cans and bags in search of discarded cans and bottles. Not too long ago in the scheme of things, there was a more predictable order to this pursuit of nickel deposits, with particular areas of the neighborhood considered conquered territory. That is, can and bottle hunters respected others’ turfs. But both this overall tranquility and general courtesy have fallen by the wayside.

A petite, antiquated Chinese woman used to have first dibs on the refuse tossed out by the building across the street from me. Once upon a time this venerable old lady patiently waited for the building's super to cart out the recyclable trash each week. For years, I handed over my deposit-worthy cans and bottles to her. The super christened her “my lady,” and asked only that she neatly close the bags she rummaged through, which she always did. On multiple occasions, this tiny spitfire exhibited real chutzpah, literally hissing at interlopers who dared trod her hard-won territory. She chided me in a sign language of sorts one time—I don’t think she spoke a word of English—for using brands that were being tossed back to her in the local Stop & Shop supermarket’s redeem machine. But this wretched economy—coupled with her super friend losing his position—conspired against her. She was driven away by a dog-eat-dog competition that is no longer willing to play by the former gentlemen’s and gentlewomen’s rules of street. Under the new world order, no turf is ceded to anyone or anybody.

Really, it seems that nothing is sacrosanct anymore. A ragtag army has replaced the little old lady who most certainly could. And they are unwilling to accept that curbside garbage belongs by right to one individual and only one individual. It’s every man and every woman for himself or herself. My can and bottle gal thus disappeared from sight and sound. For a brief spell, I turned over my loot to a pleasant elderly woman from the area who, very tragically, got killed by a drunken driver while on her rounds.

I am nonetheless happy to report that the little Chinese lady has resurfaced, older but apparently undaunted, even in these less forgiving times. I’ve spotted her on several occasions recently. It appears she has found other very fruitful locales to scavenge. Her shopping carts are always chock full of gargantuan black garbage bags brimming with cans and bottles. Somehow these sightings always remind me of the Grinch’s sleigh after he pillaged Whoville. This lady, who probably weighs no more than eighty pounds, and is well into her eighties, pushing an overflowing shopping cart up the steepest hill around in a place called Ewen Park, is downright surreal. But then again, we live in downright surreal times.

Exercising with Jehovah's Witnesses...Not a Quinn Martin Production

Residing in the Bronx has its benefits. Jehovah’s Witnesses periodically ringing my doorbell and trying to recruit me into their cult are not among them. Foremost, let me state at the outset that their encounters with me have always been unfailingly polite, which is why I can’t bring myself to slam my door in their earnest faces.

Nearing the end of an extended walk and a bit of grocery shopping this morning—part of my use it or lose it very soon exercise regimen—I was sweat-laden and plum tuckered out when I spied Jehovah’s Witnesses making the rounds in the vicinity of home. I made a mental note not to answer my bell after I was safely ensconced indoors, because I’d absolutely know who was calling. But lo and behold, as I turned the corner—seconds away from mission accomplished and a day’s exercise in the books—Jehovah’s Witnesses were hovering all too near my front door. I couldn’t enter my apartment without them noticing me and, worst of all, catching my ear. I opted instead to both keep walking and keep sweating, returning several minutes later to find them stationary and patiently waiting for someone or something. If nothing else, they are a persistent religious sect. I then walked completely around the block—and we’ve got pretty long blocks around here—and they had finally soldiered on.

The last time that I had conversed with Jehovah’s Witnesses at my front door, a question was posed to me: “We are asking people to name the person they most admire?” I kind of knew what the “right” answer was, as far as they were concerned, despite having a question of my own to ask them. I nonetheless said, “Quinn Martin.” Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t a very curious bunch, so not a one of them asked me who, pray tell, was Quinn Martin? Naturally, most people had told them the person they most admired in this world was—drum roll, please—Jesus Christ. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know He qualified as a person,” I said. Blank looks all around....

Both a close relation and devout Catholic once told me her foolproof method of getting rid of Jehovah’s Witnesses, as it were. She tells them she’s a pious disciple of her faith, which she is. I should say the same thing, she said, even though she knew I wasn’t. So, I tried it and it actually worked. But I felt kind of weird in employing the fib, and not because I was morally troubled by lying to Jehovah’s Witnesses to get them on their merry way. There was just something unclean about claiming to be a committed religious anything in order to squirm out of the grips of an even more zealous and delusional dogma.

Anyway, after I worked the ruse, one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses said, “Oh, okay—yes—Catholics believe in Jesus Christ, too.” Raised a Catholic and schooled in Catholic education—lower to higher—I still recall a few theological and historical matters. Too? I think Catholics were first in line on the Jesus thing, no? Well, I suppose if I believed Armageddon was imminent, I’d likely alter my modus operandi somewhat, although I doubt very much I’d go around ringing doorbells in the Bronx and Brooklyn. But then, Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t observe such pagan traditions as Christmas and even birthdays. Nevertheless, sincere thanks are in order to them for making me push the envelope a bit on my daily exercise routine.

It's Lights Out in the Political Theater

Thirty-seven years ago today, I know exactly where I was—in Bangor, Pennsylvania. My mother was looking after my grandfather while my grandmother was away. It was also the day in American history when Richard Nixon’s presidency officially ended at high noon. I recall my mother telling my grandfather he resembled our new president, Gerald Ford, “a Ford not a Lincoln.” I also remember he tasted lentil soup for the first time in his life. When asked for his appraisal, he replied, “I’ve tasted worser [sic] soups.”

I was not yet twelve then but nonetheless fascinated with political theater, although not political issues. Nowadays, I’d say, I’m decidedly less interested in the theater but very much interested in the issues. And it’s not solely the ravages of mind, body, and psyche that are behind this metamorphosis. No, something else is afoot. Contemporary political theater reflects the times and is more shallow, partisan, and wholly less interesting on numerous fronts. In fact, it’s downright nauseating on many, if not most, occasions, which is why I choose not to watch scripted pols and their flacks recite vacuous talking points on the boob tube. Once upon a time I faithfully tuned in to everything from CNN’s Crossfire—night after night after night—to Sunday morning network fare like This Week with David Brinkley. But no more.

At the tender age of six in 1968—that seminal year—I sported a Nixon campaign button on my little person as Election Day drew near. Very young kids roamed the nearby streets unchaperoned in the old Bronx neighborhood back then. I remember being all by myself—around the corner from home—when a couple of girls festooned in Humphrey-Muskie regalia approached me. They queried mini-me as to why I was wearing a Nixon pin, and then made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. If I turned over my pinback to them, they in turn would give me a bunch of Humphrey-Muskie tabs and some campaign literature. I accepted their offer straightaway, including their two provisos. I would disseminate the materials to adult family and friends and, too, urge them to vote for the Humphrey-Muskie ticket.

What happened next is sadly buried deep in my memory bank. Perhaps hypnosis could unearth what really went down. I can, however, say with absolute confidence that I didn’t move any minds or make any Democratic converts within the family. Still, that little boy sensed the palpable political drama in the ether around—in what were definitely volatile times—and he loved it.

On this day, thirty-seven years ago, Nixon not only got out of Washington town, but also delivered a largely extemporaneous farewell address to his cabinet and the White House staff. It was a captivatingly rambling speech chock full of psychological good stuff, insight, and strangeness from the lips of a disgraced politician in the throes of an emotional breakdown—the ultimate Greek tragedy playing itself out on an American stage. While interminable drama on the current political landscape exists, it’s largely of the lame variety. Regrettably, it's lights out for genuine and compelling political theater.

Mystical Manhattan Moment

Yesterday, on a mostly overcast and very humid summer afternoon, something downright mystical occurred on the island of Manhattan. I met a friend and, before we parted, patronized an eatery. One, in fact, that we hadn’t frequented in more than a decade. Time surely does fly. And not because we disapproved of its cuisine or its cleanliness. We just got into an unholy habit of pinching our pennies when we met, and typically called upon pizza places, where we ate a slice or two and saved a few bucks.

Anyway, the establishment was a diner called Joe Junior’s on Third Avenue and 16th Street. In fact, there used to be another place by the same name not too far away. But it recently lost its lease in yet another rapacious landlord situation, which is, sadly, the norm nowadays in New York City. This remaining location was nonetheless just fine. When we ate there in the simpler times of the 1990s, I dubbed the spot the “Jesse Orosco Joe Junior’s,” so as to differentiate it from its namesake to the south, where my friend and I had also enjoyed a few repasts.

Why, you ask, Jesse Orosco? Well, it seems a certain waiter-owner resembled New York Mets, Class of 1986, star reliever Jesse Orosco. And I never in my wildest dreams could have conceived that said person would still be on the premises—and doing what he did more than ten years ago—because there have been oh so many changes in that neck of the woods. Landlords have been running the truly genuine diners out of town, which just cannot afford the astronomical rents. Yuppie foodies, too, who prefer both artifice and paying top dollar for trendy mutations of perfectly fine fare, reign supreme in countless New York neighborhoods.

Sure, Jesse O was a little older—like us all—but as efficient and courteous as I remember him way back when, which seems like only yesterday. Bearing witness to this welcome continuity in a city that’s changed so much was an extraordinary moment for sure. Encountering Jesse O on the scene in a throwback greasy spoon with bona fide diner prices in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan—well, there really are no words. Joe Junior’s burger cost four dollars and change and was the genuine article. My friend and I couldn’t resist the temptation, and we ordered ours medium rare—risky as that sometimes is. They were deliciously raw in spots but no E. coli poisoning—I’m happy to report—more than twenty-four hours later.

Jesse O still laboring at Joe Junior's. Scrumptious hamburgers plucked from an authentic diner menu and, despite its very expensive address, priced accordingly. Now, come on, if yesterday’s culinary experience doesn’t qualify as a mystical one—or, at the very least, near mystical—then I really don’t know what possibly could. I can only say: Long live Joe Junior’s—with its steaks, chops, and seafood—and their ever-dwindling brethren.

What the Dead Fish Taught Me...

Approximately forty years ago, three young boys found a dead fish on the shores of the Manasquan Inlet. Actually, it was on an obscure, non-swimming sandy beach in what I’ve since learned is part of the fifty-five acre Fisherman’s Cove Conservation Area. But four decades ago this slice of geography was considered both off-the-beaten trail and sort of on the seedy side. Few people navigated it with its myriad byways through tall and thick sea grass—Tick Country. This sprawling space is a popular “dog beach” now and has been considerably upgraded and manicured.

It was early springtime when my two brothers and I—visiting family friends who owned a home in Manasquan—made a beeline to this stark stretch of beach whose shoreline looked out into a busy seafaring thoroughfare of chartered fishing boats, pleasure crafts, and Coast Guard vessels heading to, and coming back from, the Atlantic Ocean, a maritime stone’s throw away at the mouth of the inlet.

The close proximity to the ocean and incessant boat traffic ensured that small waves perpetually crashed along the shore there. The beach was kind of difficult to access from our entry point—we had to climb down a haphazard pile of rocks—and a little bit malodorous, too, but in the most evocatively natural sense. Sea remains washed ashore there all the time, including every imaginable strain of seaweed, the ubiquitous horseshoe crab, and other creatures of the deep.

The beach was quite desolate when we touched the sand, which was the norm, but even more so because it was springtime and pretty cold outside. The Pea Coats we wore underscored both the temperature outside and the snapshot in time: the early 1970s. We also called our in-style sartorial winter wear “navy jackets.” Boys from the Bronx wearing navy jackets by the Manasquan Inlet in springtime—it didn't get much better than that! So, encountering an as-yet-decaying and as-yet-reeking dead fish was a real find for us—both exciting and cool in a seashore setting with fishermen everywhere and nearby streets named Whiting, Perch, and Pike. And just as a cat might bring home a dead mouse or cicada bug, we brought our dead fish—our catch—back to the house. We wanted this Kodak moment to be captured for posterity, I suppose.

Encountering a dead fish on a lonely stretch of beach wouldn’t really do much for me anymore. And as I don’t carry around a pair of rubber gloves and hand sanitizer, I very likely wouldn’t even touch one. Perhaps, though, we all need to awaken that inner-child in us again. You know, the one who would enthusiastically transport a dead fish—that, of course, had died of natural causes as part of the cycle of life—home. I suspect the world would be a better place if we did.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Indisputably Simpler Times

Often with my tongue firmly planted in cheek, but not always, I am wont to make reference to “simpler times.” However, in this particular recollection of what was, the jury is unanimous: Simpler times indeed.

Kingsbridge in the Bronx’s last remaining victory garden on the northwest corner of W232nd Street and Tibbett Avenue survived the tumultuous 1960s. Simpler times—in the antithesis of simpler times for the country at large—were still possible back then. It’s just the way things were, beginning with the real estate agent who gave my grandfather and a few locals permission to grow a garden on multiple empty lots up for sale and owned by two different people. "Keep the place clean" was all he asked of them.

So, yes, these men with the green thumbs had carte blanche. They could erect a fence around their desired garden space. It could be made of bits and pieces of everything and anything imaginable—and it eventually was. They could even dig a well that tapped into the waters of Tibbetts Brook flowing several feet beneath the surface. Utilizing a fifty-gallon barrel with its bottom cut out, my grandfather knew just how to bring the water to ground level without it ever spilling over. They could build tool shacks, a horseshoe pit, and a bocce court, too. They could bring in myriad metals and woods to construct benches, tomato-plant cages, and other structures like bleachers for horseshoe-game spectators. They could relocate old furniture and a non-working refrigerator freezer to accommodate liquid refreshments and big blocks of ice. And, yes, they could throw festive parties there during holidays and on summer weekends with free-flowing alcohol on the premises. Without question these were simpler times, when no city bureaucracies interfered with any of this, and no slip-and-fall lawyers advertised on television. Today, the mere whiff of lawsuits would not permit all of the above on one’s own property—let alone on somebody else’s in a densely populated urban milieu.

I recall one of the garden men, the genial Mr. Brady, maintained his own personal shack, which was painted green. It was practically a little cottage with an old leather easy chair and couch inside, and a glass picture window of some kind. Attached to the Brady shack in back was the garden’s “bathroom,” a makeshift Portosan that consisted of a toilet seat atop a wooden stand with the proper sized hole and a bucket down under to capture liquids and solids alike. With ample beer, wine, and spirits available during summertime parties, the bathroom was a busy place, and not for the faint of heart. And, yes, the bucket had to be emptied out on street level and into the city’s sewer system every now and then. A local who lived down wind of the garden often complained that she smelled more than marigolds and tomato plants wafting in the humid summer air. As a young boy, the less than savory aspects of the garden didn’t bother me in the least. Everything was an adventure. In fact, my friend Johnny and I made a concoction on the garden grounds, if memory serves, consisting of our urines, rotten tomatoes, and other truly disgusting stuff found in the garden—and the more awful the better.

It was simpler times at this Bronx locale when, during the daylight hours, I often heard horseshoes clanking against their stakes, and occasional cheers rising for the ringers. And after sunset, with a party still going strong on garden terra firma, I would gaze from my vantage point directly across the street into a pitch-black canvass punctuated by only a few flickers of candle light and lit cigarettes. And, every now and then, I’d hear a local bus driver named Jean singing to the night: “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” Jean was renowned for crooning the songs of Ireland, and also for the time he picked up my father in a snowstorm while navigating his Broadway to Riverdale bus route, and dropped him off at our front door—on a Kingsbridge back street a couple of blocks off his prescribed course. Yet another action, I daresay, lost to simpler times.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Why Hot Dog Johnny Matters

My maternal grandparents lived in the town of Bangor, Pennsylvania—approximately seventy-five miles due west of New York City. Prior to the mid-1970s, there were no I-80 roads extending this far east. Without the Interstate at our disposal, these treks over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house therefore took the family through many small towns and down intriguing main streets, which were ascetically at odds with Kingsbridge and the big city way of life that I was accustomed. There were so many fascinating sights along the way, and more than a few establishments from the Bronx to Bangor that the younger set so desperately wanted to patronize.

Honestly, it’s hard to believe that it’s been forty years since my siblings and I pined to stop at a joint called Hot Dog Johnny on Route 46 in Warren County, New Jersey. For starters, I am happy to report that Hot Dog Johnny is alive and well these many years later. In fact, it’s thriving in the new millennium as a popular landmark. But four decades ago, my father wasn’t one to call on roadside eateries, or other attractions like the Cherokee Trading Post in nearby Budd Lake. Only peeing pit stops were kosher with him, which—in those pre-Interstate little adventures of ours—typically amounted to pulling alongside the road somewhere and heading off into some brush or tree cover. My dad sprained his ankle on one such jaunt, tripping over a rusty old lawn mower that some irresponsible sort had illegally discarded. There were no public bathrooms, or even a McDonald’s around, on this route in that bygone time.

Eventually, we did sample frankfurters from Hot Dog Johnny. We consumed our tasty wieners on picnic tables with views of the Pequest River, which I had long assumed was nothing but a babbling brook—not a Delaware River tributary teeming with trout. The Internet is such a great source of information. I remember, too, that the place had tinted green coverings of some kind—maybe plexiglass—serving as both sun and rain blockers above the outdoor tables. Upon initially unwrapping my frank, I thought it a rather curious and unappetizing shade of green. Hot Dog Johnny served birch beer in frosted mugs, and, if memory serves, buttermilk as an alternative—something that always rang more melodious to my ears than it tasted on my palate.

By the way, Hot Dog Johnny is in the town of Buttzville. It is indeed. I always appreciated that in that neck of the woods there were so many -ville and –town suffixes. Hackettstown, for instance, not very far away, hosted another place we kids pined to patronize: Leo’s Lunch Stand, specializing in hamburgers and hot dogs. And just like Hot Dog Johnny, we eventually paid Leo's a visit. And I am pleased to report that Leo's, too, endures—although modernized somewhat—in the twenty-first century.

While Dr. Floyd Hess, my grandparents’ GP has long since retired and shuffled off this mortal coil, his shingle—the last time I visited Bangor—still hung outside his old office. And while I miss regularly visiting the town with local surnames like Buzzard, Kneebone, and Stucker, and senior citizens called Myrtle, Margery, and Florence, I can at least take heart that Hot Dog Johnny is timeless.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Twenty Questions, One Hundred Degrees, Two Dollars

It wasn’t really necessary for me to venture out today. Nevertheless, I did and called on my bank’s ATM, which is situated in a sliver of geography that has long been a magnet—the stomping grounds, if you will—for a cross-section of poor souls. A certain old-timer I know refers to these folks as being “not quite right in the head.” While this isn’t quite a medical diagnosis, I suppose it’s apt in the cold, cruel world we call home.

Speaking of this cold, cruel world, it was 104°F in New York City yesterday and forecast to be not much better today. As I walked the several blocks to my destination, a Rorschach test of sweat blobs appeared on my T-shirt. The continent of Australia materialized about mid-chest and a distinctive ampersand around my left nipple. Very, very interesting…but, sorry, no Jesus silhouette to report.

Passing Popeye’s chicken as I made my way out of the ATM alcove, a middle-aged man—pointing at my cane—said to me, “What happened to your leg?” Sensing oddness afoot in the wretched air, I mumbled a nothing response. But he wasn’t satisfied with that. He then asked if I was Jewish. I said no. “Irish-German?” I said no again. Why was I answering this stranger’s barrage of questions? And just who asks if anybody is ‘Irish-German’?

He then said, “But your leg’s going to get better?” In the negative swing of things, I guess, and with ever-unusual sweat shapes materializing on my clothing with each passing second, I said no once more. He was beginning to annoy me. However, this last no reply made him recoil and almost cry. “I hate hearing such things,” he said. I felt bad now and tried to reassure him I was as fit as a fiddle—just fine—but he was having none of it.

He actually looked presentable enough—not down and out—with a mild drinker’s face. Still, I knew where all of this was headed, even though he prefaced what he was about to say next with: “I’m not going to ask you for any money.” He informed me that times were tough and that he had recently lost his job. He proceeded to point into Popeye’s, telling me his wife was in there, and that the pair hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. It costs “four dollars for a piece of chicken!” he said, and let out a plaintive wail for good measure. Finally, he cut to the chase and asked, “If you can help in any way in getting us some food…and you don’t have to say yes.”

Despite not really believing his wife was in Popeye’s, and that the particulars of his tale were more than likely fabricated, there was little doubt in my mind that he was on hard times—genuine hard times. It was time for a yes. I had only a $20 bill—from the ATM—and two singles on my person. I gave him the two singles, which initiated a John Boehner-esque moment. He broke down crying and said, “Thank you...thank you...and God bless.” If I had a five dollar bill on me, which is my official maximum in such chance encounters—for these are hard times for me, too—I'd have given him that. And while I don’t ordinarily give much thought to where these little money exchanges lead to, I’d rather like to think he spent it somewhere other than in Popeye’s. In fact, I’d wager two more dollars that he did.

A Life Detour

I am still haunted by the memory of a life detour taken. It was a very literal detour—on I-95 in Providence, Rhode Island. To return to the Interstate past some roadwork, or whatever it was that necessitated the detour, I missed a critical turn. Instead of being where I wanted to be—heading south to New York on the highway—I found myself in what resembled the backdrop of a particularly seedy film noir: a labyrinthine wasteland of streets leading to nowhere.

If my car quit on me, I was certain I would never be heard from again, breathing my last as a piñata for some indigenous motorcycle gang. Oddly, there was this classic chrome diner smack dab in the middle of this urban back country. It had an “Irradiated Burgers” neon sign in its window. I’d never heard of any such a thing. And although the word rang unpleasant and even dangerous to my ears, I had to assume “irradiating” a burger was somehow a positive. Otherwise, why have a neon sign broadcasting it? But then again, I was lost in the Providence equivalent of Yucca Flat. Perhaps the apocalypse had occurred, or maybe I crossed over into a parallel universe when I missed that key turn.

After fifteen minutes or so of vainly driving through industrial badlands brimming with unsavory characters throwing me unsavory glances, I simultaneously spied a giant termite and heaved a huge sigh of relief. While this may sound like a scene from a bad science fiction movie, this big bug, a motorist landmark, sits atop an exterminator business that has long caressed this stretch of highway. I knew then I was close to where I wanted to be—out of harm's way, on the road leading to home, sweet home, and, happily, in a familiar dimension.

Irradiating hamburgers, by the way, kills the two most common foodborne bacteria: E. coli and Salmonella. But for some strange reason this process hasn't taken the country by storm beyond one health-conscious little diner both somewhere and nowhere in Rhode Island.

The Ongoing Borders Wars

As a youth, it was always a neat treat to call on Brentano’s on Fifth Avenue near Rockefeller Center. In the 1970s, it was the biggest bookstore in town with 31,000 square feet of space and more than 250,000 titles in stock. Founded in New York City, circa 1853, it had by then become part of the Borders Group, which operated various bookstores across the country under various names but none, as of yet, known as “Borders.”

When a larger Barnes & Noble store, with even more books to peddle, opened nearby in the 1980s—and in a lot of other places, too—Brentano’s fell by wayside. Such is the nature of dog-eat-dog business. Excuse the mixed metaphor here, but the bigger fish came to town and gobbled up the smaller fish, including a pretty big little fish like Brentano’s with its twisting wooden staircase—where patrons would sometimes plop down and peruse the merchandise—knowledgeable, customer-oriented staff, and pleasing ambiance. No, there weren't any La-Z-Boys on the premises.

Fast forward a quarter of a century and many more book superstores have opened up in the interim—in Manhattan and elsewhere—including numerous Borders stores, which I always liked courtesy of their low ceilings, library-like shelving, and—it seemed to me—greater likelihood of having oddball and otherwise hard-to-find titles for sale. But during that very same time frame, superstores have also been closing, particularly of late. And with the recent announcement that all Borders stores will shut down, the bookstore graveyard grows considerably larger.

Ironically, these bookstore giants that drove countless independents out of business have already seen their best days. A personal favorite of mine, the multi-storied, 60,000 square foot Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center on Broadway, closed its door for good in January. There are just not big enough profit margins to be realized in book selling anymore in sprawling spaces commanding humongous rents. The stiff competition from online retailers and increasing popularity of e-books compounds this bleak picture.

And just when I was getting accustomed to having all these stores around—great places for both consumers to forage far afield and for working writers to reach an audience. Poof. I shake, shiver, and shudder at what the next twenty-five years will do to books, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and writing opportunities. But then again…when one door closes....

No Specific Location

Parish day was an annual event at our high school. On this one afternoon set aside each year, the various Catholic parishes throughout the Bronx dispatched priests to speak with their teenage congregants who also attended Cardinal Spellman. As a graduate of St. John’s grammar school, and a parishioner of St. John’s Church (more or less), I assembled with my Kingsbridge peers.

In what was always advertised as an informal give-and-take with one of our very own men of the cloth, Father B assumed the honors during sophomore year. He was a hip clergyman who nobly endeavored to connect with skeptical youth like us—a good idea and certainly better than the condescending, scolding approach employed by his boss, Monsignor D.

When Father B first arrived at St. John’s in the early 1970s, it's fair to say that he got off on the wrong foot. At a faculty versus students’ basketball game, the new priest on the block removed his warm-up jacket and revealed a T-shirt that read, “Bitch…bitch…bitch.” Needless to say, this bit of public theater generated quite a fuss in the community. But it was such a groovy snapshot in time that Father B's colorful antics were tolerated. In fact, the old stodgy clergy of the past just didn’t jibe as well with the folk masses, female altar boys, and the "sign of peace" hand shaking that were becoming the rage. When my fifth-grade homeroom teacher, the benevolent Sister L, took up a collection to buy Father B a well-earned Christmas gift, she bought him a carton of his favorite smokes—from all of us.

At his Cardinal Spellman appearance—for reasons that now escape me—Father B, the Marlboro Man, wanted to know where each one of us hung. No, not how it hung, but where we hung out in the neighborhood.

“Where do you hang?” he asked, going up and down the rows of students.

I recall being the first one questioned—or very close to it—and felt the weight of the world thrust upon me.

“I don’t really hang out anywhere,” I said, embarrassed that I hadn’t come up with anything more profound.

“So, when you’re home…you’re pretty much home?” Father B countered.

“Yes.”

It fast became apparent that my St. John’s alumni were similarly perplexed by this hanging interrogation. Soon after my response—honest, if nothing else—some kid named the street where he lived, Corlear, as his preferred hanging spot. Hey, why didn’t I think of that one! And once the remaining lemmings in the room realized this response was copacetic with Father B, out came all the street names on the neighborhood map: "Irwin,” “Naples Terrace,” “West 230th Street”….

Finally, Father B posed the same question, which he had asked at least a couple of dozen times, to a friend of mine.

"Where do you hang, Jim?” he queried.

“No specific location,” Jim replied to laughter and a few snickers from his schoolmates.

Most of his peers enjoyed this clever rejoinder to a question that had long since become a colossal bore and less than edifying. But there were a few detractors in the room, who didn’t appreciate what they considered a haughty answer to an inoffensive query from a well-intentioned priest. Oh, I don't know, but perhaps authority figures merit a wee bit of disrespect every now and again. Thank you, Jim.