Spring Clues

After a rather cold and snowy start to February, this past week turned relatively mild and winter precipitation-free. It’s a welcome annual ritual, I suppose. At some moment on the calendar—typically the last week in February or early March—clues abound that the beginning of the end is near. As the birds get louder, more numerous, and more active, winter slowly but surely transitions to spring. The snows melt and the earth shows itself again with increasing signs of green amidst the lifeless brown. And the days get longer and longer. Can the pansies be far behind?

Running my errands in fifty-degree temperatures this week—with a complementary light southerly breeze—brought me back to a time and place: the winter-turns-to-spring days of my youth. The sights, sounds, and smells—the clues—of those bygone days came attached to a fair share of excitement and high expectations. Yes, I realize that some bitterly cold days are still possible and, too, that some of worst New York City blizzards occurred in March. But even the most powerful last gasps of winters’ past never derailed or circumvented the inevitable changing of the seasons. Play ball!

What's missing now is the passion of youth. It can’t be retrieved or resuscitated because it exclusively belongs to the young. It’s just the nature of things. Once upon a time, I got high on the thought of Major League Baseball’s spring training taking flight. Hope always sprang eternal for baseball fans in March. Our favorite teams’ records were always zero and zero. My team, the Mets, was tied for first place with everybody else’s. Even though the spring training games didn’t count, I nonetheless loved tuning into them. Hearing the three voices of summer and spring as well—Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner—after a long winter’s slog—was especially exhilarating. Baseball was back and would be around for many months to come. Could the summer and summer vacation be far behind?

Then there was baseball—of the small “b” variety—played in every incarnation imaginable in the old neighborhood. From Wiffle ball to “Throw It Against the Wall” to stickball, March was the segue. A mild one meant the fun and games could commence sooner rather than later. I’ve got stickball scorecards from forty-plus years ago—in which my companions and I kept records of our games and cumulative stats—where our opening salvos occurred in March, usually in the final weeks and days when Mother Nature cooperated. Our scorekeeping chronicled the game’s date, its start and end times, and the temperature upon the first pitch. Visible from our playing grounds was an Exxon gas station clock/thermometer and area icon, which loomed like a colossus in the distance. It's sadly no more, too.

Those were definitely the days. When the first hints of spring ushered in a freedom of sorts. Honestly, I would not want to relive them hour by hour, day by day, and year by year, but I’d relish replaying the best moments, provided I could pass on the worst of them. But since none of that’s possible, I’ll just breathe it all in and remember when the seasonal change brought with it a special charge and singular anticipation. 

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

No Sound and Fury

 

Recently, my desktop sound deserted me. It happened once before—not too long ago as a matter of fact—but I resurrected it by following one of those “How to get your sound back on Windows 7” tutorials. This time, however, my sound played hard to get—really hard to get. Finally, I had to employ the nuclear option, System Restore, returning to an earlier date when both sight and sound were all around and—eureka—they were back in tandem! But then my browser wouldn’t open and I couldn't access the Internet. So, I fast forwarded to the quietude of the present and considered my options. Perhaps it was time for a new computer. After all, I had purchased a reconditioned one ten years ago from Overstock.com for $125. I suppose I got my money’s worth out of it. It’s difficult, though, to part with such an old and trusted friend that rarely—in all those years—gave me trouble.

Without computer sound for a couple of weeks, I realized how much I rely on it in my day-to-living. Not only do I watch a lot of YouTube videos, but every night an Amazon Prime or Netflix program. I also missed the Recycle Bin scrunching sound. What, pray tell, was I to do in the interim between the old and new? Fortunately, I had this obsolete laptop in the closet with a DVD player and some practically obsolete DVDs, too.

Several years ago on YouTube, I encountered episodes of two old TV westerns that I had never seen: Wagon Train and Rawhide. I binge-watched them before they were removed by the Copyright Police. When these two shows debuted—in 1957 and 1959 respectively—I didn’t exist, and when they rode off into the sunset, I was three years old. Neither show ever aired in reruns on local New York stations. Bonanza, on the other hand, was rerun ad nauseum. Anyway, I was impressed. They held up rather well, I thought, and eventually bought several seasons on DVD.

For two whole weeks—while contemplating my next move—I watched various episodes of Wagon Train. They didn’t quite hold up as well as I previously concluded. It’s the inevitable by-product of viewing contemporary period piece westerns like Godless, Deadwood, and Hell on Wheels. The happy endings—with everything tied up neatly in a bow—of every Wagon Train episode just didn’t do it for me anymore. Granted, there was still something relaxing about watching the show’s formulaic plots, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the sanitation and the body odors of every man, woman, and child on those long and often treacherous journeys through rain and wind and weather. Season after season, there were feverish, badly wounded, or otherwise seriously ill folks in bed in the wagons, but nobody, it seemed, oversaw the changing of soiled clothing and linens.

Yes, the return to normalcy has begun. Hopefully, my spanking new reconditioned desktop will last ten years like its steadfast predecessor. It certainly is faster. I had gotten so used to not especially fast that I assumed it was the norm. In other news on the normalcy front, I patronized a local diner for the first time in almost a year. Recently, the Emperor of New York State gave New York City eateries the greenlight to open at twenty-five percent capacity. They had, in fact, reopened at that capacity for a spell and got shuttered again during a virus spike in December. Next week, it’ll be thirty-five percent capacity. Do I hear fifty percent!

It was a somewhat unusual dining experience that commenced with a temperature check and the signing of their guest book—the tracer as it were. But it was the beginning of a long and winding road back to normality, I reckon. I was in that very diner on the eve of the original indoor dining ban last March 16th. Still fixated on Donald Trump a year later, my dining companion then and now wanted to rave about him some more. Enough of all that, I told him, the man’s gone and the diner is serving food indoors again. Let’s talk about the chicken parmigiana hero and fish cakes and spaghetti specials instead and, with some luck, the happier days ahead.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)    

The Winter Blahs

A longtime friend of the family died recently. He was a good man. His wife passed away not too long before him. She was a good woman. Their deaths triggered a distant memory. Connecting the dots back in time, I found myself resurrecting a ghost from the past—this girl called “Blah” from the old neighborhood. Well, actually, Blah wasn’t her real name and nobody ever called her that to her face. Blah was a nice enough person as I recall, but her general demeanor was—how should I put it—blah.

It was my mother who was the wind beneath the wings of this moniker. Some four decades ago, Mom described a young neighbor of ours as “blah” and it seemed so spot on that it merited a nickname that would stand the test of time. As the years passed, Blah became a young woman with a steady boyfriend who was—how should I put it—similarly blah. They were thus the Blahs—plural. Their courtship and subsequent marriage turned the notion that opposites attract on its head.

Anyway, here’s the connection to the deceased family friends. When the newly married Blahs were shopping around for their very first home, the family friends had their house on the market. Located in a suburban hamlet in neighboring Connecticut, it was still a long way from the Bronx, which is where both the Blahs and I resided. Yes, in a country with hundreds of millions of people, the Blahs ended up buying that home—a place I had visited once or twice as a boy. The family friends, who had a big family of their own, also had a swimming pool in their backyard. There weren’t too many of them in the Bronx. I don’t suppose the pool was still there when the Blahs assumed ownership of the property—it was one of those above ground, rather commonplace, circular things. Nevertheless, the moral of the story is this: It’s a very small world that we live in.

Okay, on to more contemporary winter blahs: Garbage is piling up all over town. Recent snowstorms have found the Department of Sanitation otherwise engaged. With picking up trash taking a backseat to snow removal for a spell, it’s now catch-up time. It’s pretty shocking, though, to see the mounds of garbage on sidewalks. It makes one ponder: Where does it all go? How long can we keep this up? Are those recyclables really getting recycled?

Aside from navigating around heaping helpings of refuse this morning, I passed the evergreen hedge that only a week ago—post-blizzard—was peculiarly teeming with flies. There didn’t appear to be any there today. Flies are literally here today and gone tomorrow. On my way to the bank, the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men were thwarted by one too many snow-inspired obstacles in my path. I had to alter my course and call on a different branch, which I generally prefer to avoid, even if it is closer to home. This bank typically has a doorman at the entrance of the ATM room—a doorman holding a paper cup. Today, there were two doormen on the scene, both with paper cups. Doorman Number One rested on his walker seat, while Doorman Number Two opened and closed the ATM entrance door for customers. Last week these same men were engaged in a heated quarrel, with Doorman Number One claiming that he was there first and accusing Doorman Number Two of cutting into his take. Looks like they resolved their differences—for today anyway.

And so I part with one final memory of Blah as a girl and her family. It was commonplace back then for neighbors one and all to hang clothes out to dry on clotheslines. Blah’s mother was wont to leave clothes out for days, including during inclement weather. It was not unusual to see stiff-as-a-board shirts, pants, and underwear lifelessly hanging on their clothesline in the dead of winter, soldiering on through the slings and arrows of the season. I am left now only to wonder whether the Blahs had any children of their own and, if so, did they turn out blah, too?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

 

The Flies of February

There’s this hedge—some kind of evergreen—in the neighborhood. It is swarming with flies. Yes, in the month of February. I was, very literally, assaulted by these irritating insects as I passed by. From a fair distance, I had witnessed my mailman walk that very route before me. No doubt he was targeted, too, by the mob. Granted, the experience was not quite an Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds-style attack, but it was nevertheless as unpleasant as it was unexpected. And the time of year compounded the unpleasantness.

I was heading home from an errands’ run—just a few days after an unwelcome blizzard—and encountering myriad obstacles along the way. Somebody didn’t shovel his or her sidewalk. Okay, backtrack and locate the nearest cleared driveway. Venture then out into the street to bypass the obstruction. Walking, though, on snowstorm-narrowed streets with two-way traffic is a problem in and of itself. While New York City’s very generous salt spreading policy obviously has its benefits, there is a definite downside. You could get clipped by one of the spreaders or slip and fall on the massive amounts of rock salt on the road.

So, really, the Flies of February aren’t appreciated, particularly when they don’t keep to themselves. These irksome winged bugs don’t have a very long lifespan even in the best of times. Being hatched in the cold climes means they are in their prime and even their golden years—metaphorically speaking—without the best of summer’s stink at their disposal.

I see the Flies of February as emblematic of where we currently stand. Forty-three years ago today, I was enjoying the first of three snow days. Courtesy of the Blizzard of ’78, the high school grind came to a grinding halt for one brief shining moment. The city's Department of Sanitation didn’t throw nearly as much ice melter back then or plow the streets as often as they do now. From blizzard to blizzard, I could never have envisioned the depths of the changes in the world we call home. Jimmy Carter was the president in 1978; Joe Biden was in the Senate back then. He’s been around a long time.

I love what Senator Ben Sasse had to say upon being censured by Nebraska Republicans: “You are welcome to censure me again—but let’s be clear about why: It’s because I still believe (as you used to) that politics is not about the weird worship of one dude.” Not only were the blizzards better in 1978, but the political scene certainly was, too.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the crazy spectrum, woke insanity marches on undeterred. It’s unbelievable—and downright sad—what The New York Times, the Gray Lady, has become. If you haven’t heard the latest, search the name “Donald G. McNeil, Jr.” He was a reporter with the newspaper for a very long time. Read his apology letter for his alleged sin. The mob’s taken down another one. Does McNeil actually believe he committed a transgression? Probably not. He should, though, have gone out with his head held high, not with a coerced hostage-like confession letter.

The cudgel du jour is feeling unsafe, even—God help us—in the newspaper business. I feel unsafe, so I want you out of here, rendered null and void. This kind of thing—a new kind of McCarthyism being welcomed in journalism of all places—was not happening at The New York Times or elsewhere when that nor’easter struck with a vengeance in February 1978 and when Jimmy Carter was fifty-three, not ninety-six. Insanity to the right of me, insanity to the left of me, and the Flies in February—I say no thanks to all three.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)