What's Fare Isn't Always Fair and Random Observations

Once upon a time Easter meant a vacation for me. It commenced on Holy Thursday and included Good Friday and the entire week after Easter Sunday—seven whole schooldays in the springtime no less. Trust me when I say this was a gift of providential proportions.

Nowadays, the Easter vacation and, too, the largess of the Easter Bunny are distant memories. There are no more popcorn bunnies, chocolate crosses, and triple-packs of baseball cards in my Easter baskets. There are no more Easter baskets. There are no more Easter visits, too, to the maternal grandparents in Bangor, Pennsylvania and hams from Speer's Meat Market. Nothing in life lasts forever, including meat markets. An Easter footnote here: Approximately a half-century ago, I actually spotted the Easter Bunny in my grandparents' Miller Street backyard. As soon as I laid eyes on the creature, he, she, or it hopped away with resolute alacrity. The official location of the sighting: under the newly-budding black walnut tree. Of course, it could have been an alley cat.

Well, that was then and this is now as Holy Week and Passover approach. It was a pretty chilly day yesterday—still colder than normal—but tolerable at least. The sun shone brightly on the "March for Our Lives" demonstration in Manhattan. In fact, the subway was overflowing with attendees and their placards. My favorite read: "Thoughts & prayers won't protect me from bullets." True dat.

My subway adventure began at the Van Cortlandt Park terminal, where I made my way to the first car, which is typically the least crowded on the southbound journey—Bronx to Manhattan. The first car being the last car on the northbound trip is also more apt to have homeless folks vegetating therein, and often in the Land of Nod. This was indeed the case yesterday, but the train operator would have none of it. He informed a prostrate man that sitting erect was required if he wanted to ride the train. This was too much to ask and the man exited the car to find another one where he wouldn't be bothered and could rest in peace. Before pulling out, the train operator exited his cab and sprayed the area previously occupied by the homeless man with an air freshener. It was the train operator's domain and he wasn't about to let any lingering body odor waft his way. Truthfully, I didn't smell the homeless man, but I did smell the air freshener, which didn't smell so fresh in an enclosed subway car destined for the land down under.

My day ended on a sour not with a visit to a nursing home at dinnertime. Considering what these institutions charge per day, one would think the fare would be at least fair, which most of the time it isn't. I won't say that what was served last night looked like dog food, because canine eats have taken a considerable turn for the better in recent years. Seriously, I don't think too many pet parents would feed the nursing home's Philly cheese steak and soggy French fries to their beloved canine companions. A nursing home is just not where you want to end your days, or even rehabilitate in for days or weeks. How about mandatory private rooms? Put up half walls where the curtains separating patients are. It's nice that every patient has a television set, but with two sets on in the same room—in hard-of-hearing central—it's enough to drive one to madness and a nursing home.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The March Through Madness

It's been a wild-and-woolly month. With "the wearin' o' the green" now in the history books, it's time to think of things spring. Turning the clock back four decades, the fledgling weeks of this season were quite exciting. They saw the start of the baseball season, when hope always sprung eternal, even when your team sorely lacked pennant-winning timber. That would apply to my team—the New York Mets—in 1978, managed then by future Hall of Fame manager Joe Torre. The Mets' job was his first. And although it didn't show in the final standings, he did a pretty good job in my opinion with some pretty awful teams. 

Forty years ago, spring also signified the beginning of stickball season. I kept copious records at that time of our stickball endeavors, including the recording of temperature readings taken at game time from the big clock/thermometer on top of the Exxon station on W230th Street. Like so many things, both the Exxon station and its iconic clock/thermometer are mere memories now. And the John F. Kennedy High School—where we long ago played our crazy game—has morphed into a labyrinthine complex of learning institutions that would prohibit playing stickball on the grounds—that is, if anyone wanted to play the game anymore. 

A footnote here: I only recently learned that our stickball playing grounds at John F. Kennedy High School—several blocks from where I lived—were actually in Manhattan and not in the Bronx. Once separated from the Bronx by the wending Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the area in question is considered Manhattan terra firma. The creek was filled in during the early years of the twentieth century. The Marble Hill neighborhood is now attached to the Bronx and separated from the remainder of Manhattan by the Harlem River Ship Canal. So, to make a long story short, our hallowed stickball grounds were once upon a time covered by the waters of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, which flowed into the nearby Hudson River. Manhattan land remains Manhattan land.

Well, that was then and this is now...

Just my opinion, but Mine Spa is better than Yours.

You know you're in a bad place when there's a ubiquitous pink water pitcher on the scene.

While the Exxon station and its giant clock/thermometer are long gone, the Chinese take-out joint in the old neighborhood endures. It's changed owners and names a few times, but it remains an institution of fine dining and MSG overload.

And it's received an "A" grade from the New York City Department of Health. After getting some flack from harassed and overly-fined businesses, the bureaucracy seems to have backed off a bit.

It seems that Chinese take-out establishments have a thing for both MSG and truth mirrors, which one cannot help but stare into and ponder one's fate while waiting for the shrimp and broccoli and vegetable egg foo young.

Wow, free WiFi and an elevator to boot...

New York City straphangers are slobs. Subway station nooks and crannies tell me as much.

Apparently, there's a magic marker graffiti vandal on the loose at 18th Street.

As soon as his stuff gets wiped clean, he's back and reminding us of Agent Orange and our march through madness.

At the same subway station is the mysterious MR321 room, or is it Mr. 321's private entrance to somewhere unknown?

A surprise for some lucky girl...

It depends upon what your definition of "Is" is...

For some reason, this reminded me of a Monty Python's Flying Circus skit. I'm riding the train with an empty bottle of fruit drink, a ham sandwich, and a James Patterson novel.

Alone in a crowd...

Visiting a nursing home yesterday, I got to see the Super Soup live and up-close. It's what the institution calls its soups. Since they invariably all look like dishwater, I was left to guess what the St. Patrick's Day soup of the day was. I spied a hint of green and concluded it was pea, but definitely not the thick as fog kind.

The Harlem River Ship Canal as seen from the Broadway Bridge. Our stickball playing grounds were somewhere between the two buildings and at the tail of the Metro-North train pulling into the Spuyten Duyvil station.

A malformed delight...

April showers bring May flowers...

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Eyes of March

As I write these words, a plainclothes policeman is staking out some local undesirables. He’s parked in the driveway just outside my door, peering down an alleyway into a backyard on an adjoining street. The detective clued me in as to what he was up to and flashed his credentials for good measure. He wanted me to know that he was the good guy looking to ensnare some bad guys. After all, seeing a fellow sitting in a car for hours—and occasionally pacing back and forth on foot—engenders suspicion in a suspicious part of the world (the Bronx).

As to what the bad guys are involved in, the detective left that to my imagination. He did, however, whet my appetite with the foreboding words: “You would be surprised to know what kind of lowlifes are living beside you.” Considering that a year-and-a-half ago, a house exploded on my block—the tragic result of a marijuana farm illegally taping into a gas line—I don’t think I would be. A firefighter on the street was killed by falling debris that day.

I would hazard a guess that the stakeout has something to do with illicit drugs. The odds favor that over a prostitution ring or counterfeiting operation. A certain landlord—a lowlife in his own right—owns the property under surveillance. His sole life purpose is—apparently—the accumulation of money. He actually brands himself a financial “whiz kid.” Trust me: The man’s no kid and carries around an unsightly spare tire to boot. The only exercise he gets is during his monthly rounds in collecting rent checks. Every square inch of his multiple properties is a cash cow. Cars are parked bumper-to-bumper in his backyards. His garages are ever-revolving—but always occupied—doors of mystery. What’s behind door number one? Door number two? I suspect what’s been behind them through the years hasn’t always been on the up-and-up. I remember when a garage was rented to a food street vendor who could be seen slicing and dicing meats in it. Now that wasn’t kosher!

As for the tenants in the man’s various apartments: They come and go and come and go again, leaving in their wake an unsightly mess of cigarette butts on front stoops and in patches of gardens. As a side note, it’s now against the law in New York City to smoke inside three-family homes and up. “No smoking” signs are required therein. Thirty and forty years ago—when people freely smoked in three-family abodes—neighbors knew who lived in the buildings. Sure, there were a fair share of lowlifes in the old neighborhood, but we knew who they were and called them by name. Now, a Walter White-type just might be plying his trade clandestinely in one of those garages.

Fifty years ago, an old woman named Lizzy, who waddled like a penguin, owned the three-family home under surveillance today. Lizzy and geriatric contemporaries from the block would meet and kibitz in that very backyard, which is now a parking lot and the sight of mystifying but nefarious goings-on.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

There’s nothing like a visit to a hospital’s emergency room to put life in perspective. I’ve been there and done that as both a patient and visitor. This past week I was the latter on more than one occasion. And working with the assumption that everything has a beginning, middle, and end, I did a little math while vegetating there. I concluded that based on my chronological age—fifty-something—I’m at the beginning of the end. And even that might be wishful thinking.

One stopover found me in the ER waiting room with a never-ending parade of walk-in business. Some of the people turning up looked quite ill and fatigued; others left me wondering what they were there for. A teenager was there with his mother. The entire time—hours—he was playing with his smartphone and jabbering like a car service dispatcher to God only knows.

Sitting in a curtained space in the thick of things a few days later, I momentarily thought actor Jonathan Banks was on the scene and pacing to and fro. As things turned out it was not him, but a dead-ringer for Mike Ehrmantraut. He was a visitor who, apparently, couldn’t stand still. It’s what I get for binge watching Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul. In my drowsy state of mind in that chaotic environment—with all the bells and whistles—life imitated art or some such thing.

On the ER drama front, a woman in an adjoining space was backed up big-time. Laxatives were the first order of business. When doctors asked her if she drank, she replied, “Moderately.” I took that answer to mean she was a lush. She was also repeatedly calling out for Grace, her sister, and some fellow named Emmanuel. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” I sang to myself. “And ransom captive Israel.” As a kid that last line always struck me as odd. I can’t say that it is any less so as an adult.

Suffice it to say, the hits just kept on coming in the emergency room. A man a couple of curtains down, I overheard, had a huge blood clot in one leg and considerable ones in each of his two lungs. The doctors attending to him seemed very concerned that time was of the essence. He didn’t speak a word of English and family members were on hand to translate. At one point the medical team was endeavoring to convince him that his lunch demands were out of order. An imminent procedure necessitated an empty stomach. 

Finally, there was this eccentric old gal walking around the ER, but unlike Mike Ehrmantraut, she wasn’t the strong and silent type. She was an impatient patient and demanding answers to this, that, and the other thing. At one point she was told to get back to her bed or security would be called. Her persistence paid off when she found a passing nurse to show her how to put on a neck brace. When it was time to take her the blood pressure, the wacky wanderer initially refused to take off her respectable Republican cloth coat. After some coaxing, she consented but then shrieked that the blood pressure sleeve was hurting her. And so it went in the emergency room. I am left only to wonder what became of all of the above.

(Photos one, three, four, and five from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)