The Uncle Kevin Channel

I had hoped not to channel Uncle Kevin ever again. But I suppose it’s inevitable that I do every now and then. In case you don’t know, Uncle Kevin’s not actually my uncle. And he’s been dead a very long time. Uncle Kevin was a veteran of World War I. The aforementioned is a personage from the old neighborhood—someone whom I remember well from my youth. You see, Uncle Kevin stood out from the pack—in what were very interesting times with an intriguing local ensemble—because he wore a wooden leg. Then as now, it was a pretty rare thing. Uncle Kevin was a very private fellow but a real gentleman, I've been told. In my presence, I don’t recall him uttering a syllable, but I’m certain—away from my prying eyes and ears—that he did.

It’s Uncle Kevin’s noticeably stiff and laborious gait—courtesy of that darn wooden leg—that I channeled again a couple of days ago. Without fair warning, my ordinarily reliable C-Leg decided to go south on me when I was a long way from home. In other words, my prosthetic knee didn’t bend when it was supposed to bend. And when this unexpectedly occurs in the act of walking, the tendency is for one’s upper-body to rush forward, leaving one’s flesh-and-blood leg in the dust. The lagging leg then valiantly endeavors to catch up—to where it was meant to be in the best of times—with an awkward and perilous thrust of its own.

So, before I channeled Uncle Kevin on Christopher Street in Manhattan, Monty Python’s Flying Circus sprang to mind. “Yes,” I said to myself upon the knee’s unanticipated and unwelcome locking, “I just affected a ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’ step.” Naturally, I hoped my newfound complication would be something minor—a glitch that could be easily remedied on the sidewalk where I stood. But, considering the age of the knee—now over five years and just past its warranty—I made peace with the fact that Uncle Kevin would accompany me home, which he did. 

In the waning hours of my functioning knee, I encountered a transit employee reading a book during a break. One doesn't see that too often nowadays.

When I entered the subway car, the sole passenger inside was perusing a newspaper. That's pretty uncommon, as well, in these uber-technological times. A staggering one-two visual!

This, by the way, is a mysterious cage at the 125th Street subway station. I have long wondered if this is where fare beaters get their comeuppance.

In the backdrop of these venerable water towers, the clouds were impressive. But, little did I know, my fluid steps were numbered.

A pleasant summer's afternoon with low humidity...the perfect day for a stroll. That is...

Until technology does a nosedive. Further evidence as to why I don't ever want to be a passenger in a computer-operated automobile or computer-operated anything else.

Strange, but approximately a year ago, I penned a blog entitled "Sex and the City," where I noted the peculiar advertisements on the front bumpers of New York City's fleet of buses. Drivers complained that the prominently placed "Museum of Sex" promos were making them the subject of ridicule and worse than that. The Metropolitan Transit Authority brass promptly acted and removed them.

But now they are back and in the same place as before. Go figure! And, again, how is it that the Museum of Sex can afford this massive ad buy? If you're interested, the museum's located at 233 Fifth Avenue at the corner of East 27th Street.

No dial tone...no kidding.

Place your favorite "Bill" here.

As a nation, I'd say, we're definitely going the wrong way. Skeptical? Pore over the past month's news.

Think of all the things that we once assumed were immortal that have largely disappeared. Like typewriters, camera film, and record players. While pay phones haven't vanished entirely, their numbers are fast dwindling. In many parts of Manhattan they are—quite literally—shells of their former selves. No dial tone...no phone.

The optimist in me is still clinging to an infinitesimal thread of hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The trashing of the environment for our every little convenience needs to hit the pause button, I'd say. Uncle Kevin not only valiantly served his country—losing a limb along the way—but left a minimal carbon footprint as well.

On my recent journey, I just knew that the reading of physical books and newspapers would be short-lived.

Oh, I remember when my favorite team, the New York Mets, lost an exhibition game to the expansion Toronto Blue Jays. The year was 1977 and this weird guy named Bob—not surprisingly a Yankee fan—ribbed me about it. That said, I've just finished reading Here's the Catch, Ron Swoboda's engaging and honest memoir of his life and, of course, the 1969 "Miracle Mets." I always liked Swoboda who was—after his baseball career—a sportscaster for WCBS-TV news in New York. Ron Swoboda also made the greatest catch I ever saw. Wow, it's hard to believe that it's been fifty years since the miracle!

Even as a junk food-loving kid, I never liked Little Debbie stuff. That's saying something and nothing at the same time.

Some years ago, an older man who lived in this building told a younger man that "sooner or later" he had to "face reality" and get a "real job." Well, reality bites! The now even older man was recently informed that he could not drive anymore because of his failing eyesight. From what I hear, he's had some difficulty facing reality.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Cold Stove Report

Yes, it’s summertime and hot around here—extremely hot. The pictures accompanying this essay are to not only be seen but felt as well. Feel the heat and humidity. Take a deep breath and the smell the oppressive underground. On Friday, I rode the subway to and from Manhattan—in air-conditioned cars this go-round. I didn’t see the gambling man on this trip—perhaps he hit it big with that dollar of mine—but I did encounter a fellow who claimed to be “God’s prophet.” From the outset, I prayed that his mission was to preach to—and convert—the entire train. That way his time spent in my presence would be relatively short. Unfortunately, he confined himself to one car—the one that he entered with me in it.

For multiple stops, this man didn’t come up for air. He quoted passages from the Bible and enumerated a whole host of sins—ranging from lesbianism to masturbation—for which transgressors would be consigned to eternal damnation. After processing this litany, I could say with some confidence—as I scanned my fellow passengers—that there was not one among us who was heaven-bound. God’s prophet mercifully exited at 50th Street, which put him in the heart of the theater district, near Radio City Musical Hall, and also Rockefeller Center. In the heat of the day, I’m certain he found sinners aplenty—from all over the world, too—to chide and relegate to the nether regions.

Several hours after my subway ride and religious experience—during the rush hour—a “network communications issue” suspended service for seven of the numbered train lines. That's a lot of miles. I can’t say whether it was an act of God or not. The powers-that-be professed that it had nothing to do with the excessive heat or an electrical failure. I don’t suspect stranded riders took much solace from that. In any event, this computer glitch left those at the command center—subway central as it were—unaware where all their trains were for over an hour.

This mechanical hiccup is further evidence that technology—even the most advanced—is quite fallible.  As I loathe driving—especially in the New York City area—I have long wondered whether or not I will live to see the day when I could be chauffeured to my destination by just asking Alexa—or some such thing—to take me there. Wouldn’t it be nice to just punch in some coordinates, I thought, and leave the driving to software in the dashboard? But now I can't help but think about the gremlins lurking in there.

Once upon a time, too, I appreciated the slogan: “Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us.” But I’ve since been on some very long bus rides where I left the driving to them—or a competitor of theirs—and they were pretty uncomfortable. In fact, the long rides seemed even longer than if I was behind the wheel myself, which says a lot. Of course, I had to sit next to a person unknown on a few occasions. You can choose your friends and not your relatives or fellow bus riders. Once I got stuck sitting beside an incredibly uninteresting blowhard eating a stinking sandwich. Perhaps, though, that is preferable to sitting alone in a computer-operated car that malfunctions on a heavily trafficked highway.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Master of His Domain…Not

(A reprise from July 2018. Proof that not all memories "sweeten through the ages just like wine.")

Forty years ago on the Number 1 train into Manhattan, I witnessed a robbery at gunpoint. An underground desperado snatched a woman’s purse while brandishing a firearm. And as the train sat in the station for a spell—deference to a crime having been committed—the victim cried out for police assistance. I was on my way that morning to see the movie Heaven Can Wait, which starred Warren Beatty when he was a star and not an octogenarian.

The 1970s were pretty gritty times in the Big Apple. The city actually breathed its last gasp as an affordable place to live back then, but it sported character—albeit a bit perverse—through it all. New York’s decomposition played out against a colorful backdrop of mom-and-pop businesses, including candy stores, record shops, and diners, which were still around in great numbers. But, sadly, their days were numbered.

Fast-forward forty years and I am on the Number 1 train once more. While I witnessed a first at the age of fifteen all those years ago—a robbery at gunpoint—I beheld another yesterday. While I had rather not been witness for either, yesterday’s episode was more disturbing. Give me a good old-fashioned holdup any day.

Entering the last car as I typically do on my return trip to the Bronx, I boarded the train at 14th Street. There were several passengers in the car, including a disheveled homeless man in the rear. Such a sighting is not unusual in the New York City subway system and the last car increases the odds exponentially. But what I subsequently beheld was a first—and hopefully a last—for me.

Let me put it this way: This poor fellow was not the master of his domain. When I first laid eyes on him I thought he might be having a seizure or some such thing. But it quickly became apparent that he wasn’t. When an athletic-looking woman got on the train at the next stop, she headed for a place to sit in the direction of said man who was not the master of his domain. Stunned and disgusted, she didn’t hold back and angrily chided him for his unseemly behavior. He, though, was oblivious to the tirade. The woman then unleashed her fury on the rest of us in earshot. “Are you all so desensitized to this!” she cried.

I can’t speak for everybody there who plunked down $2.75 for the peep show, but I certainly wasn’t desensitized to the spectacle. I hoped initially that it would be a done deal in short order. When it became clear to me that it wasn’t to be, I plotted my escape. It’s just one of those things. What are passengers supposed to do when they enter a train and confront an unexpected and unpleasant unknown?

If the unknown is what I encountered yesterday, the best option is to move on to smaller and better things, which the justifiably livid lady and I—plus one other guy—did at the next stop. She and he scurried into a different car. I waited for the next train and hoped and prayed that every passenger therein would be the master of his or her domain. Thankfully they were.

Apparently, there is a first time for everything. Happily for me on New York City subways they occur every forty years. And I don’t suspect I’ll be riding the Number 1 train—or even be among the living—when I’m ninety-five.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

7-4-6

In a New York City summer, heat, humidity, and haze—the 3Hs—are the norm from time to time in July and August. As are random subway cars without functioning air conditioning. Typically, you can tell which ones are urban greenhouses by the open windows. The narrow rectangular ones that are opened to let in a little real air—foul as it sometimes is—when Mother Nature and failing machinery do the summer tango.

Well, today was a 3H day—hot as hell—from the get-go. Riding the subway was therefore bound to be an adventure. And, right from the start, it was. Sitting in the first car at the Van Cortlandt Park terminal—the Number 1 train’s blast-off point—the temperature seemed on the high side. But, then, the doors were open and what was outside—unbearable and unhealthy clamminess—consumed what was inside.

When I originally entered the car the train operator was already in her cabin. I saw her peering out the cab’s small window. There I sat alone—if you didn’t count the unconscious rider leftover from a previous trip. Spotting me, she opened the cabin door and exclaimed in a not particularly friendly manner: “There’s no air conditioning in this car. I would suggest you go into the next one.” I took her advice.

The second car seemed pretty hot, too, but occasionally there were brief teases of cold air that I could feel. Mostly, though, it felt un-air conditioned, which inspired a never-ending parade of passengers playing musical cars during the trip downtown. That is, hopping from one car to the next in search of a little relief on a bad air-quality summer’s day in the muggy and malodorous underground.

Also on my morning train ride was this deranged fellow—unbowed by the weather, it appeared—whom I’ve seen on multiple occasions through the years. He’s benignly scary, I’d say, and his spiel never varies: “Excuse me. I’m hungry. Can you spare some change.” The man recites it in a demented monotone—over and over and over—as he dashes through the car without a cup, hat, or even his hand out. I always want to give him something, but he makes it extremely difficult because he never—even for a split second—hits the pause button or looks left or right.

Well, this uncomfortable morn, I stuck a dollar in front of his furiously moving body during an unexpected encore performance. He thanked me in his inimitable style and said he was going to play the numbers with it—7-4-6. Apparently, the empty stomach could wait. He confessed, too, to being an unrepentant gambler who would never give it up. And he expects to win a billion dollars some day! The strangest moment in our encounter was when the gambling man down under pulled a smartphone from his pocket and scrolled  it with some proficiency. He informed me, then and there, that he had twenty-seven minutes to reach his destination, where he would play 7-4-6. So, into the crowded and stifling Times Square station this curious straphanger went. I can only hope that if he wins a billion dollars, he’ll remember me. Because I suspect we’ll meet again. Both he and I are men for all seasons.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Orange Fence Revisited

It had been a while since I called on Inwood Hill Park—or Inwood Park for short—in the northernmost reaches of Manhattan. As young boys, my brothers and I dubbed the place the “Orange Fence.” Why? Because there was a rather extended and quite circuitous iron fence in the park that was painted an unusually bright orange. The fence has since been repainted black and—by the looks of things—could use a fresh coat or two. Honestly, the venerable Orange Fence is showing some serious signs of age, revealing in spots its original orange paint along with a tenaciously competing rust.

My brothers and I frolicked in Inwood Park about a half-century ago. An aunt, who knew its interior like the back of her hand, was our adult chaperone. The park's 196.4 acres were approximately a mile from our Bronx front door. My aunt and her family—my future grandmother, grandfather, father, and uncle—first visited the park in the early 1930s. She was just a little girl at the time. My grandfather, I'm told, always brought along a homemade bottle of wine and cooled it in a freshwater spring running down the park's hilly terrain. One and all picnicked on an isolated but very picturesque stretch of sand near where the Harlem River meets the Hudson River. The Henry Hudson Bridge was eventually constructed at this confluence and cut off access to my relations' personal beach and little piece of heaven. During the bridge’s building, workers accessed icy cold freshwater from the very spring that my grandfather chilled his vino.

From a kid’s perspective, Inwood Park was idyllic: rivers, boat traffic, horn-blowing trains, a cool-looking bridge, and—last but not least—steep and wending trails into Manhattan’s last remaining virgin forest. The Lenape Indians once inhabited the environs of Inwood Park. Legend has it that Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island for a song in what is now the park. The Continental Army's Fort Cockhill was within its confines, too.

Crossing the rather ominous-looking Broadway Bridge, which is no Henry Hudson Bridge, indicated we were getting closer and closer to our destination.

Fifty years ago, there was a really nice bakery and a Carvel ice cream store along this strip leading to the bridge. Carvel's was a regular and always welcome stopover on our return from the Orange Fence. Well, that was then and this is now. I see that a Yelp reviewer posted a picture of JOHN'S from 2016, where its sign read "JHON'S." One correction at a time...

And a river runs through it...

The Orange Fence lives all these years later...

The Henry Hudson Bridge literally slices through the last natural forestland in Manhattan. Robert Moses didn't care about such things.

I neglected to mention that a very special part of Inwood Park's unique ambiance is the Columbia Rock, or "C" Rock. The C was originally painted on the rock, which was once part of the Johnson Iron Works Foundry, in 1952 by members of the Columbia University rowing crew. They maintain it to this day.

The rock's apex is also the stuff of legend, where generations of game youths have leaped some 200 feet into the treacherous currents of the Harlem River. Many of the jumpers in their adulthood incarnations refer to the act as a "Rite of Passage." Passage to what exactly, I don't know. The Columbia Rock is on railroad property and, officially, in the Bronx. On the silver screen, Leonardo DiCaprio jumped off of it in The Basketball Diaries.

The Circle Line cruise, which circles the entirety of Manhattan Island was and still is a regular sighting from the shores of Inwood Park. As a boy, I remember being on the Circle Line and desiring getting off right here, close to home. But, no, that's not the way it worked. The boat had to complete the circle to Pier 83 at 42nd Street.

Waterfowl, too, abound in the park.

Sorry, no soup for you!

I have always wondered why certain sea birds choose to call home where they do. Happily, the waters around these parts are a whole lot cleaner than they were back in the Orange Fence days. So, why not call home New York City?

A Robin and its worm on the Orange Fence.

It was a hazy, hot, and humid day in which I made my return to Inwood Park. A typical New York City summer day then as well as now. But no post-visit Carvel treat for me on this go-round.

The ascending, zigzagging trails into the Inwood Park woods are not for the faint of heart. Getting lost in Manhattan Island woodlands is still possible in 2019. They are also places where you don't want to run into a Jeffrey Dahmer-type.

In the distant haze are the Palisades in New Jersey. Yet another pleasing visual from the confines of this park.

Here is a Metro North train passing by the former John F. Kennedy High School in the backdrop. It's still a school or schools now, part of "campus." The school grounds are where many a fine game of stickball was played by me and mine. The Harlem River, by the way, does not mark the dividing line between Manhattan and the Bronx, like the original Spuyten Duyvil Creek did. Before its rerouting and such, the creek flowed on the other side of the high school and what is now W230th Street. It wended its way from there along what is now Johnson Avenue. So, the school and the asphalt where we played stickball on are in Manhattan. The "C" Rock, on the western side of the old creek bed, is in the Bronx.

Mutt Mitts are now scattered throughout New York City parks. This one in the wilds of Inwood Park has been commandeered by local birds.

Yes, time marches on. The fence that was orange, then black, is now a melange of black, orange, and rust.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)