A Fluttering Heart

While thumbing through boxes of old photographs recently (several of which are randomly included in this essay), I contemplated their future. And it didn’t look bright! I hope, at least, that when their time comes the individual snapshots are properly recycled. Shortly thereafter, I came upon a story with an accompanying picture of actor Jack Nicholson at a basketball game with his son. It has been speculated that old Jack may be losing it, and that we would all be we wise not to count on any future Nicholson movie. In my opinion, the best “meaning of life” film ever is About Schmidt starring the aforementioned. Relatively soon, I will die. Maybe in twenty years…maybe tomorrow…it doesn’t matter. You have got to see the film—and the aging Nicholson at his best—to appreciate the sentiment.

One thought couldn’t help but lead to another here. I recalled my father’s rather eclectic LP collection in an age when people bought vinyl records—because that’s all there was. It ran the gamut from Frank Sinatra to Doris Day to the Clancy Brothers. Tucked away in an old cabinet with a sliding door—in a front room known affectionately to all of us as the “porch”—I would periodically thumb through them as a boy. From my youthful perspective, the aforesaid recording artists—and others like Al Martino, Kate Smith, and Mantovani—seemed the exclusive province of old people. With the notable exception of the Christmas albums in the extensive mix, I never desired playing or ever played one of his albums on the family record player.

Fast-forward a quarter of a century and I personally owned Frank Sinatra and Clancy Brothers CDs, which had replaced the cassette tapes that had earlier replaced LPs. I also saw Ol’ Blue Eyes live at Radio City Music Hall when he was nearing the end of his illustrious performing career in the 1990s. With a noble assist from Shirley MacLaine, Sinatra—all things considered—put on an acceptable show. After that night, however, the Chairman of the Board’s remaining scheduled performances were canceled for health reasons. 

I also attended two Clancy Brothers’ concerts at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. The brothers Paddy, Bobby, and Liam were getting a little long in the tooth by then. Original member Tom Clancy had passed away a few years earlier. Hardly packing the Melody Tent on both occasions, the Clancy Brothers—with nephew Robbie McConnell—nevertheless gave everybody their money’s worth and then some.

Prior to seeing them live, I watched the documentary, The Story of the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. It debuted in 1984, which coincided with a series of reunion concerts of the original group. At that moment in time, they hadn’t performed together in fifteen years. In the documentary, oldest brother Paddy Clancy movingly speaks of coming to North America with brother Tom for the first time. He describes what bare essentials—like toothbrushes and whiskey—accompanied them on the trip. “But most of all,” he hastens to add, you bring a “fluttering heart.” Considering that when the siblings got off a boat somewhere on the shores of Canada—and hadn’t a clue what their next move was going to be—the fluttering heart thing makes a whole lot of sense to me. Turn left, turn right, or go straight ahead into the vast unknown were—as Paddy describes—their three options. 

So, what exactly happened to them after the fluttering heart adventure? A series of odd jobs, a lot of hard work, and eventual success and notoriety—beyond even their wildest imaginations, I’d say. In the documentary, Tom Clancy declares, “This has been a wonderful life for me.” He further adds that he has no life regrets and “wouldn’t change a thing!” Now, that’s a nice place to be in the sunset years! Still, when Paddy Clancy passed away in 1998, I read that he and his younger brother, Liam, had previously fallen out over some money matter. Happily, they had reconciled at the very end. The lesson: Never lose sight of the fluttering heart days.

This past year, too, an old friend passed away. The man was a one-of-a-kind oddball whose likes will never be seen again. Not everyone’s cup of tea—when young or when old—he was nonetheless at his most interesting in his salad days, when he wore nothing but old clothes and had a never-ending stream of new ideas. That is, dreams on how he was going to make his mark and fortune in life. Well, my friend turned out to be quite a monetary success, which was his ultimate goal. He achieved what he ostensibly so desired, but he wasn’t quite the same man at the end. I guess that’s typically how things work. We, though, would all be wise—no matter our individual pursuits—to never let go of the best of us. To never let go of that mind-set when we were most free of life’s baggage and when our fluttering hearts were not a medical condition.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

How cold is it? It is so cold that my “Eddie lock” is frozen. More on that shortly. But first, the weekend winter weather hype around here didn’t amount to more than a soaking rain. However, phase two—the brutally cold aftermath—certainly came to pass. This past Saturday, the various subway platforms and subway staircases in New York City were smothered in rock salt—or whatever ice-melting combination the Metropolitan Transit Authority employs nowadays. In genuine fear of slipping, I found myself gingerly navigating this rather intensive precautionary measure of what might or might not be. Seriously, descending a heavily salted stairwell can be hazardous to one’s health.

Happily, I didn’t take a tumble on the aforementioned overly salty surfaces. The subsequent chill, though, has resurrected memories of a past January cold spell. For some reason, I have this elaborate image in my mind of a particular time and a particular place. And courtesy of the wealth of information on the Internet, I am able to confirm what I have long believed to be that time, 1977, the winter of my first year in high school. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I loathed with a passion the high school experience.

I vividly remember riding our not very special “special” buses across the Bronx—west to east—on a series of brutally cold mornings. These many years later, I can still feel the despair of those icy rides, which commenced on Broadway under the noisy El. And as the buses rattled down Bailey Avenue, I can see the rising seven o’ clock sun reflecting on the frozen snow remnants on the passing sidewalks. At our rides' very literal high points on East Gun Hill Road, we caught glimpses of the Long Island Sound on the horizon. In the depths of wintertime, such fleeting sightings made me pine—as I recall—for summertime when our “special” buses were on ice.

Looking back, there was nothing quite so depressing as venturing off to high school during an Arctic blast. But I somehow made it through that frigid January of 1977 and lived to tell. It should be noted here that if my secondary education was excised from my winter memory bank, the season had its moments. Honestly, it all boiled down to snow in those days. It’s what I—and many of my peers—desired for a whole host of reasons, not the least being potential days off from school. But in an age before hand-held devices kept youth indoors winter, spring, summer, and fall, we frolicked outside no matter the season.

As for that Eddie lock, I’ll make a long story short. It’s actually a bicycle lock used outdoors on something other than a bike. The lock came to pass after an unsettling wee-hours visitation from a person unknown. I chose not to inquire, “Who’s there?” Actually, I believe I know the individual who roamed that night and rang my bell—off and on—for a half hour that felt like an eternity. I should have called the police. He’s a local from the old neighborhood. We knew of each other as kids. Unfortunately for me, we know of each other as adults. And Eddie has long been putting the monetary bite on people he knows—even remotely. I made the grave mistake of giving him a few dollars one time and it opened Pandora's Box. While it solved my short-term problem, it created a vexing long-term one.

Eddie’s story is a sorry one. Once upon a time, he was a quiet, unassuming kid. Now, pushing sixty, he’s loquacious and inclined to rave—his brain, no doubt, scrambled by his decades-long addiction. In my most recent encounters with Eddie, he’s told me a couple of whoppers. He would be starting a job in two weeks, he said on one occasion. That didn’t happen. The man also reported that he would be receiving food stamps on the fifteenth of this month. I wonder? And, yes, if I gave him a little something to tide him over until then, Eddie would buy me groceries. Well, as of this writing, the Eddie lock remains frozen, but a spritz of WD-40 can probably fix that. As for Eddie, his problems are sadly not so easily fixable.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

First Impressions...Lasting Impression

Recently, I got wind of a fledgling entrepreneur’s biggest surprise on the rough-and-tumble retail frontier. Navigating the highways and byways of the increasingly dog-eat-dog pet trade, she lamented the fact that the employee pool is in dire need of a booster shot of chlorine. Simply put, a responsible and committed employee is a difficult catch in its contaminated waters. Having a new staff member show up late for work every day during his first week on the job is a distressing harbinger of things to come, I'd say. First impressions...lasting impression.

And such behavior is hardly unique. When confronted about his habitual tardiness, the new kid on the block blamed heavy traffic for his recurring lateness. “So, you’re just going to have to leave earlier,” the young employee was told. “What am I supposed to do if I get here and the store isn’t open…sit in my car?” he replied. Well, yeah… Perhaps his next job, which he is now looking for, will be closer to home.

Without question, it’s a strange new world. Further evidence—albeit on a different front altogether— comes from an unhappy New York Rangers’ season-ticket holder. It seems that management of this professional hockey team has instituted tier-pricing. In other words, games against “big” teams—the chief rivals that generate more interest—cost more than games against the “little” guys. In some instances twice as much. So, an ever-loyal season-ticket holder—for decades—gets shafted along with everybody else. And we’re not talking about ten dollars versus twenty dollars here but one hundred versus two hundred, or three hundred versus six hundred for the better seats. And what’s the deal with a bottle of water at the concession stand costing $7.50! As my all-time favorite chef—from a local diner—would say, “It’s cri-min-aaal!” It's time now for some further observations and miscellaneous asides in this strange new world of ours.

Rumor has it that the next White House state dinner will be catered by 7/Eleven. By the way, the mannequin pictured above sporting fashionable 2019 glasses says a whole lot. Despite its mouth being sealed and sans a pair of arms, it imparts an invaluable lesson: Don't say anything and don't touch anything and you are good to go in the new year.

Throwing out the Christmas tree stand with the Christmas tree is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Considering what some people I know have spent on therapy through the years—and their bang for the buck—I would recommend the beer as well.

The post-Christmas blues...

Exit stage left...

More post-Christmas carnage...

I was on the observation deck of the Empire State Building for the one and only time with my father's cousin from Italy and her young son, Alberto. The latter was about ten years old at the time and so was I. Simpler times and a decidedly different view from up above. Looking on the bright side of things, there is a lot less smog today.

Where there's a will there's a Way in New York City.

There's urgent talk now about upgrading the Big Apple's mass transit system. For starters, I would strongly recommend cleaning subway car windows every now and then. 

Yoo hoo! Ah...an obscure popular culture reference from even before my and Alberto's time. Still, I was aware of it as a kid. Once upon a time, we knew about things before our time.

While improving the subway system is a top priority of the powers-that-be, it behooves riders all to avoid the blues and be ever-vigilant in the Land Down Under.

While I didn't think too highly of Two Boots Pizza in the Village, I'm nevertheless sad to see it go—yet another victim of the insatiably greedy landlords transforming the city landscape for the worse.

Dream apartment available...

Descent from glory...

Fortunately, it's not the Citibank Empire State Building—not yet anyway.

If you want to see what's on the other side, sometimes you just have to plow undaunted through the miasma.

Thinking again of my trigonometry teacher in high school. He was the original "dim sum" specialist as I recall. 

That dream apartment is also near Wilson. What more could one ask for?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Very Good Whisperer: Part II

(Originally published on 4/15/16)

Working in a busy retail setting is a roller coaster ride—a never-ending series of ups and downs courtesy of the diverse personalities and mercurial temperaments of the clientele. Forgive the mixed metaphor, but to put the cherry atop this particular stroll down memory lane—begun in yesterday’s essay—I give you the “Hummingbird,” a Pet Nosh patron who, without fail, entered the store harmoniously humming an easy-listening melody, gathered what he came for while not missing a beat, and paid his tab still in tune. He resembled James Earl Jones.

But not all of our clientele were of Hummingbird class and caliber. Take the “Seamstress,” a woman who earned her well-deserved moniker because she surreptitiously tore open bags of her preferred dog food—a trailblazing line of natural diets known as Cornucopia—at the seams, then left them pour out on to the shelves. She claimed her canine companions could only stomach pellets of a certain hue, and that even the slightest color difference made all the difference in the world. The Seamstress said they got physically sick from the food if it wasn’t a very precise shade of gray, which only she could decipher. Under such exacting conditions, I might have just shopped around for another brand of dog food.

Initially, we accommodated the Seamstress’s idiosyncrasies and permitted her to open the bags. But one, then two, and then three inspired a retailer’s worst nightmare—no purchase and no more products to sell (to other Cornucopia consumers not as fastidious regarding pellet color variations). This rather over-generous policy of ours quickly became intolerable. And, too, the folks at Cornucopia informed us they would not accept any more returns of perfectly good bags of their foods. For they, too, were acquainted with the Seamstress, who regularly harassed them on the telephone concerning matters gray. Still, our new hardline policy couldn't keep her at bay. The Seamstress merely went underground, determined that it was best for her to enter our shop when it was very busy—preferably on a weekend—and where she could get lost in the crowd. She even took to wearing sunglasses and a kerchief—a disguise to enable her to reach unseen her targets. Her deception worked for a while, but when we found two and sometimes three opened bags of Cornucopia—at the seams of course—we knew in no uncertain terms who the culprit was.

From vandalism to out-and-out thievery, I submit for your approval an elderly man christened “Can’t See It.” He was a facial cross between Groucho Marx in his You Bet Your Life days and weather-beaten actor Glenn Strange, Sam the bartender on Gunsmoke. Upon being told how much he owed us, which was typically no more than two or three dollars, he repeated the phrase, “Can’t see it…can’t see it…can’t see it,” and occasionally threw in a “Can’t be” or two to break up the monotony. It was truly bizarre. Subsequently, we discovered that Can’t See It visited the checkout to both pay his nominal tab and to perform his madcap “Can’t See It” routine, while Mrs. Can’t See It over-stuffed a shopping bag of her own with cans of dog food—out of eye shot and bypassing the cashier altogether. We finally caught this senior citizen equivalent of Bonnie and Clyde with the goods one day, and they never again returned to the scene of the crime. This very old and very odd couple was last seen visiting a nearby psychic business. I can only surmise what vibes the psychic might have felt in their presence, but I can take an educated guess what Can’t See It told her when asked to pay for her services.

Finally, I close with memories of a personal favorite—an inscrutable fellow assigned the nickname “Choo Choo Trousers.” Choo Choo Trousers typically materialized minutes before closing time, which was then seven o’clock. Festooned in pinstriped overalls, the kind a train engineer might wear, he spoke with a southern accent of some strain—wholly unique in our urban Yonkers, New York setting—and wore a stud earring that was, believe it or not, extremely rare in a man’s ear in the early 1980s. Choo Choo Trousers would always greet us with “How ya all doing?” and wink at the younger adult staff on duty, which occasionally was just me. After closing the store, we would sometimes spot him awaiting his bus ride home with a big bag of dog food at his side—a priceless and unforgettable visual. The unsolved mystery was whether or not this middle-aged man from somewhere in Dixie worked for the railroad. Or did the overalls represent some kind of fetish or fashion statement? We dared not ask Choo Choo Trousers. I can, however, say that the man never asked me to ride on his train.

So, I am left to wonder now where Choo Choo Trousers’ train took him in life…and where the Hummingbird’s flown off to in these past three decades. As for the Seamstress and Mr. and Mrs. Can’t See It…well, they’ve more than likely shuffled off this mortal coil…such are the sands of time.

The Very Good Whisperer

(Reprise from 4/14/2016)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New Year’s Baby and the Bathwater

It’s official. We’ve once again tossed the New Year’s baby out with the Old Year’s bathwater. And what a sorry spectacle it is to watch this now annual ritual in real time. Apparently, our once pretty sane and generally civilized nation is in an uncanny free-fall, where crazy and hysterical have supplanted rational and composed as the new norms. When exactly did our fourteen-billion-year-old universe take a backseat to the less than fourteen-year-old Twitter universe, which—by the way—regularly erupts in moral indignation? At what, you ask? At virtually everything it would seem, particularly words and even sounds that sound like words. Little bangs.

I approach the sad state of current affairs this way: An insult-comedian of past renown like the late Don Rickles couldn’t ply his trade in today’s straight-jacket, hyper-sensitive environment, but an all-too-real insult-vulgarian can ply his in the quintessential bully pulpit. It’s a strange world indeed that we now call home, where a television classic like Seinfeld couldn’t be made because it crosses too many of the new and unimproved lines of the politically correct powers-that-be.

Jerry Seinfeld—whose stand-up act is rather inoffensive—has even stopped appearing on college campuses because of today youth’s newfound sense of what is and what isn’t comedic fair game. I read a university newspaper’s student-editor’s rebuttal to Seinfeld’s decision. He spoke of his generation’s absolute lack of tolerance for anything with a whiff of intolerance. For what you ask? I think you know. He then went on to list the various boundaries and strictures that comedians must abide in this enlightened age of supreme tolerance. The irony of his argument—in which he repeatedly insisted his contemporaries have a highly sophisticated sense of humor—was lost on him.

Permit me now to switch gears just a bit. It being the New Year, I can’t help but recall a certain faux-inspirational manager in a certain retail setting that is no more. Once upon a time, he lorded over a diverse group of mostly underpaid and decidedly non-motivated employees. The calendar year was 1994—a quarter of a century ago. At its inception, said manager had his lady friend print out on her then state-of-the-art computer a then state-of-the-art employee handbook. Its cover read: “1994: A New Year, A New Focus.” I don’t remember anything between its two covers, but suffice it to say the new focus was more or less a carbon copy of the old one. It should be noted here that the young adults who find Jerry Seinfeld too controversial wouldn’t know what a carbon copy is.

Interestingly, a lot of what would make Seinfeld, the television show, controversial in the here and now involves the modern-day third rail of speech. Ethnic characters who speak in certain accents—actually funny by some people’s standards—are not acceptable anymore. In that aforementioned retail venue in the New York Metropolitan area, more than a few patrons of ours spoke in accents right out of the Seinfeld playbook.

Granted, it’s still allowable to make sport of European accents. Comedians can—with impunity—mimic my ancestors’ elocution. That’s Italian and German, by the way, and that’s good. But I say, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. There was a customer in the bygone days known to us on the inside as “Fifty-pound para-KEET.” He was an Italian fellow—with a very distinctive Italian accent—who raised caged birds. Among other things, he would purchase fifty-pound bags of parakeet food. Of course, he asked us every time for “Para-KEET” food. There were many other accented clientele with nicknames that I guess I shouldn't mention here in “2019: Another New Year, Another New Focus, And Less Humor Than Ever Before.”

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)