Shops, Stores, and the Family Doctor

My Grubhub restaurant delivery options are multiplying like rabbits. I do, though, find it hard to believe that more than a few of the newly listed eateries would actually deliver to me. Many of them are quite a distance away in the heavily trafficked Bronx and surrounding areas. Why would I order a pizza from a shop that’s closer to where I went to high school—in the East Bronx—than my front door? That’s a recipe for cold pizza! Still, I’m impressed that No. 1 Chinese Restaurant has been added to the Grubhub roster. New on The Block Deli has, too, along with Deli & Food, a winning retail moniker if ever there was one. While distance will probably keep us apart, Freaking Good Pizza and Best Italian Pizza in the South Bronx nevertheless intrigue me.

When I was a boy, pizza establishments were called shops. If we needed to buy fruit, we patronized the fruit store, not the fruit shop. My father was a long-time patron of the local beer store. It had an actual name, I suppose, but I don’t recall ever knowing what it was. Going to the beer store spoke volumes. The old neighborhood had a couple of record shops, not record stores. In those simpler days of funny phone calls, many a store and shop were on the receiving end of them. In response to a bogus telephone survey, Mike, who tirelessly labored at Pat Mitchell’s Irish Food Center, volunteered his occupation as “store clerk.” A neighbor up the street, who made his fortune in retail with a chain of pet food and supply stores, nonetheless disappointed his mother. She ruefully remarked one day that her son was “content on being a shopkeeper.” Mama believed that a suit-and-tie job made the man, not the millions accrued in a cloud of Hartz Mountain cat litter dust.

The passage of time has ushered in a whole host of changes. The funny phone call is largely a relic of the past. Anonymous trolling, I guess, has replaced it, removing the funny part in the process. The old neighborhood beer store is gone, but we can order our preferred brew online if we so desire. Shops selling LPs are a distant memory and so are shops—albeit less distant—selling CDs. I remember the big deal made when cassette tapes replaced records. Will wonders never cease, we thought.

From Grubhub in the here and now to the family doctor back in the day. My family called on a familiar neighborhood GP for decades. His office was on the ground floor of an old walk-up apartment building—grungy but somehow a reassuring presence. Playing outside with my brother on a winter’s eve before suppertime—that’s what we did back then—a wrought iron fence’s spike made acquaintance with the bottom of my chin. I was bloodied all right and a call was placed to the family doctor—not a request for an ambulance—just up the hill from home. Come right over, he said, and Mom and I did just that. Doc stitched me up for another go-round and I still have the scar as a souvenir. He made house calls through the years to my grandfather and grandmother and drove an aunt to the ER. I appreciate that medical science performs miracles nowadays, but I miss the old family doctor and, for that matter, record stores and funny phone calls.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

1984 and 1984

In the spring of 1984—the actual 1984, not George Orwell’s 1984, which is 2021—I was enrolled in a course called “Economics of Peace” at Manhattan College in the Bronx.  It was taught by one of my favorite professors, who referred to the course as “Economics for Peace” and preferred to be called a “humanist” rather than a “socialist.” Anyway, at some point in this rather intimate class setting of a dozen or so students, the subject of women’s increasing role in the workforce was up for discussion. I don’t recall the specifics of the back and forth, but a classmate—a Nigerian man named Leonard—offered his two cents on the matter at hand. He uttered something to the effect that women belong at home doing women’s work, not working alongside him at the office.

Now, you can imagine the reaction from the females in attendance, including our feminist professor, to Leonard’s offhand remark. They pounced on the poor fellow, informing him in no uncertain terms that he was in a college classroom, in America, in the year 1984. Essentially, the ladies laughed off Leonard’s antiquated thinking, which was probably quite commonplace in his native country. And guess what? Nobody on the scene required a safe space in which to suffer a life-altering meltdown—the Campus Ministry was nearby—or cried crocodile tears about how they now felt unsafe on campus. Nor was there any clamoring to cancel Leonard and ruin his life from that moment forward. And there was no Twitter mob outrage back then because there was no Twitter—the good old days.

I’m genuinely happy that I attended college in that simpler, saner, and more sanguine snapshot in time. When students of all backgrounds weren’t in intellectual straightjackets and didn’t live in fear of expressing a contradictory or even controversial opinion. Leonard expressed his opinion and was met with a forceful rebuttal. That’s the nature of free speech. And what better place to debate ideas—even unpopular ones—and to discover that not everybody thinks the same than in an institution of higher learning? Well, that was then and this is now.

It absolutely astounds me that the college-aged woke have no regard for free speech. In fact—like all good totalitarians in training—they see it as dangerous and desire muzzling one and all who don’t walk the woke. They feel empowered in the here and now because they’ve gotten people fired from their jobs and ruined innumerable reputations. They’ve extracted countless craven apologies from folks who have committed no sin other than deviating—even slightly—from woke orthodoxy. And the woke wear their destruction like a badge of honor. Pretty sad, isn’t it? I think so.

These men and women who purport to be on higher moral ground than the rest of us mere mortals are bad apples. This is still the Land of the Free—if only barely—and we must be ever vigilant in protecting what remains of our basic freedoms. Standing up to the woke mob and the march to madness is job one. So, I ask: Are we better off today because a classic sitcom like Seinfeld couldn’t get picked up by a network? Are we better off today because the Indian maiden is no longer on tubs of Land O’Lakes butter? Are we better off today because the movie classic Dumbo now comes with a didactic disclaimer from some pompous oaf? Are we better off today because Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is no longer must-read for high school students? And, finally, are we better off today because a comedian like Don Rickles, who insulted my father at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in 1996, couldn’t exist? I don’t think we are.

Finger-licking Good Times

(A reprise from 2010: Another Pat Mitchell's Story.)

I sometimes feel the New York City Department of Health, via its eagle-eyed restaurant and food-related inspections and recent letter grading, is a wee bit excessive and punitive to beleaguered small businesses. Once upon a time, in a decidedly less regulated era, there was Pat Mitchell's Irish Food Center. The place: Kingsbridge in the Bronx.

Every Sunday morning after Mass at St. John’s Church, it was the tradition of an awful lot of us to call on Pat Mitchell’s near the northwest corner of Kingsbridge Avenue and West 231st Street. After offering one another the sign of peace, the race was on to the place with the fresh donuts delivered from Willow Sunny Bakery in various trays, including repurposed beer-box trays and an especially large one—like a tub you would mix cement in—resting on the unwashed floor. The latter accommodated the heavily powdered-sugared mini-jelly donuts, crullers, and crumb buns, while the former contained the young fan favorite: frosted chocolate donut.

Now, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the contemporary health department bureaucracy would find fault with this retail arrangement. For starters, the donuts were completely exposed to the shop's hustle and bustle and—it should be noted for the historical record—the establishment wasn't renowned for its cleanliness. Post-Mass crowds cramming into cramped Pat Mitchell's to purchase donuts and rolls no doubt contaminated the whole lot of them with their wagging tongues, competing body odors, and general disorderliness.

One particular Sunday morn, I recall handing several frosted chocolate donuts from an aforementioned beer-box tray to a local kid working behind the counter. He grabbed hold of them with his two bare hands. From mine, which weren’t likely the cleanest, to his—the same hands that had been conducting numerous transactions that morning, including taking customers' money and making change. Evidently, there were no disposable plastic gloves around back then.

The icing on the cake, if you will, to this stroll down memory lane: When dropping the donuts into a paper bag, this teenage employee left his fingerprints in the frosting. He then did something that many people would have considered beyond the pale—even by Pat Mitchell's rather liberal standards. Just before Johnny on the spot took my cash, he vigorously licked chocolate frosting off his fingers. While they were finger-licking good times, for sure, this parting salvo took an unhealthy bite out of a one Sunday morning's breakfast a long time ago.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Operation Pig's Foot

(A reprise from 2011: A Pat Mitchell's Story.) 

When I learned the news this week concerning the consumption of black licorice and a certain drug therein called glycyrrhizin—which the FDA says lowers potassium levels that in turn can cause abnormal heart rhythms, high blood pressure, edema, and congestive heart failure—I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I don’t like black licorice. But interestingly enough, when I have consumed black licorice in the past, it always gave me a headache. I didn’t, though, realize I was a couple of pieces away from a coronary thrombosis.

Happily, from where I sit, red licorice was not included in this indictment. For it was red licorice that I used to buy as a penny candy in Pat Mitchell’s Irish Food Center in the old neighborhood during that simpler snapshot in time known as the 1970s. I recall Pat’s brother, Mike, thumbing through and pulling apart individual pieces from a super-sized pack of Twizzler’s red licorice. Ten red licorice strips cost a dime—a bargain if ever there was one. And it didn’t matter to we wide-eyed youths that Mike had been both making sandwiches and change all day long without washing his hands. I can’t ever recall getting sick from a piece of Pat Mitchell’s red licorice.

Funny, though, how this contemporary black licorice story resurrected memories of a little man named Mike from Pat Mitchell’s. He was a pleasant enough leprechaun. My friends and I had nicknamed him “Eh,” because, you see, he calculated customer tabs in his head with lots of expressed “ums” and “ehs” before arriving at a sum total. When the math became a little too involved, Mike—and all the Pat Mitchell employees for that matter—added up figures on paper bags. Plastic grocery bags didn’t yet exist.

In fact, my brother and I used to imitate Mike in his thick but agreeable Irish brogue saying this line: “Three papers…um…eh…dollar-five.” Ah...those were the days...when the Sunday New York Daily News cost thirty-five cents. Store clerk “Eh” even became part of a comic strip I created as a teen. I dubbed him “Eugene Herbert Mitchell,” turning his ubiquitous “eh” mutterings into initials. And, finally, while remembering “Eh,” I would be remiss if I didn’t recount “Operation Pig’s Foot.”

On the countertop at Pat Mitchell’s were jars containing pigs’ feet, which I always found supremely revolting for a variety of reasons. My father used to eat them—or whatever it is one did with them. Perhaps "gnaw on them" is a more apt description. Anyway, I had never witnessed a single person through the years purchase a single pig’s foot…and wondered what a transaction would look like. And so “Operation Pig’s Foot” was hatched. A friend and I went into Pat Mitchell’s with a tape recorder concealed in a paper bag and ordered a pig’s foot. This was the technology of the time—no Flip cams or iPhones. Mike, aka “Eh,” placed a piece of wax paper down on the counter, opened the jar, and reached into the cloudy brine with his bare hand. He plucked a healthy sized pig’s foot out and, dripping brine all over the place, laid it on the wax paper and wrapped it up tight. The recording for posterity of “Operation Pigs Foot” sounded mostly like a crinkling paper bag. But I had at long last witnessed the incredible: a pig’s foot purchase. And pity the poor boy or girl who came in after me to buy red licorice strips.

Sonny Weather Lover

Recently, YouTube recommended to me an interview of the late Sonny Fox, a television host and broadcaster. In the several-minute clip, the man discusses being a POW in Nazi Germany and how it dramatically altered his life outlook. Once upon a time, Sonny Fox hosted a local Sunday morning show for kids called Wonderama. I vividly remember the show with Bob McAllister, Sonny’s successor, as the host.

Anyway, I learned that he was drafted into the army as a teenager and captured in the Battle of the Bulge a year later. Having grown up in the more sanitized and sheltered 1970s, the notion of being shipped overseas and fighting a war was inconceivable to me and so many others of my generation. Compared to the World War II generation, we were a cosseted lot, but nothing quite like the current college-aged youth with their safe spaces, trigger meltdowns, and desire to destroy people who don’t tow the woke line hook, line, and sinker.    

As we near a complete year of COVID-19 disruptions, restrictions, and assorted mania, there is finally some light at the end of the tunnel. Multiple vaccines have come to the rescue! It’s been quite a roller-coaster ride from last March to this one—not especially uplifting but very enlightening on a whole host of fronts. The extremes on both sides of the political spectrum have been unmasked and it’s not a reassuring picture. The scary thing is that the extremists—right and left—appear to be pulling the strings of the two major parties. Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the good old days—pre-social media—when loony conspiracy theories, manufactured and misplaced outrage, and daily calls for censorship didn’t travel at the speed of light? When the loons among us were identified as loons and not in important positions of authority and pulling the levers of power?

Speaking of loons—or Looney Tunes in this instance—a New York Times op-ed columnist, Charles W. Blow, believes that the amorphous animated Pepe Le Pew “added to rape culture” by his aggressive behavior towards the opposite sex. Honestly, I thought the whole point of Pepe Le Pew was that he was a skunk—not a role model for the impressionable. In fact, Looney Tunes characters were, by and large, of very poor character, as it were, and always got their comeuppances. So, this is how far we’ve sunk. The Onion, the premier satirical source of all the news that’s fit to print, is nowadays competing against a reality, which increasingly feels like a lampoon of one.

And there’s no such thing as Dr. Seuss or Disneyland and Mother Goose. I just discovered that a nephew of mine’s favorite book as a child was And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I don’t remember reading that one, but shame on eBay for outlawing sales of the book and others on its auction site. It’s especially absurd considering the stuff that is permitted on eBay. I won’t bother reciting the litany. Thirteen minutes ago, Michelle Obama and the preponderance of the wider world didn’t have a problem with the books.

A much bigger corporate concern is Google’s algorithmic behavior. John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” Google now asks, “If a representation is factually accurate, can it still be algorithmic unfairness?” Apparently, yes, when “it may be desirable to consider how we might help society reach a more fair and equitable state, via either product intervention or broader corporate social responsibility efforts.” If this doesn’t worry you, it should! Coming to a Google search near you—only the facts approved by the woke shirts and skirts. Sonny weather…stormy weather: Sergeant Joe Friday, where are you?

 

Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts

(A reprise from 2018, but as relevant as ever.)

When Piels came to the legendary Jimmy Breslin to do a commercial for its beer, he said, “I’m not Bert or Harry…I’m 

Jimmy Breslin, a writer.” Actually, that was part of the advertisement script, which Breslin delivered with urban aplomb. In the 1950s, Bert and Harry Piel were animated television pitchmen for what was then a very popular beer. Jimmy Breslin spieled for Piels more than two decades later. The ad aired repeatedly on local New York City stations in the late 1970s and it remains a classic all these years later. The gifted wordsmith initially described Piels as “a good beer” then "better than good" and finally as "a good drinking beer!" In other words: a bargain for those who valued quantity above quality.

This intro is my roundabout way of pitching a most recent publishing credit: Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts. The subtitle says it all: A Little Book of Wit, Wisdom, and Whimsy. What, you ask, does a comprehensive compilation of Celtic sayings and such have to do with a Jimmy Breslin beer commercial from 1978? Except for the fact that it danced like visions of sugarplums in my head, not much at all. You see, when I was initially offered the opportunity to amass and edit this wide-ranging pithy volume, I said to myself: I’m not Colm or Eamon…I’m Nicholas Nigro with a vowel at the end of my name. Ah, but in the writing biz: “Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.” Later, I amended the vowel thing. After all, Chief O’Hara, Jim O’Gara, Eric O’Mara, and Joe Donahue, too—all have surnames ending in a vowel.

Here’s the story: I grew up in Kingsbridge, an Irish enclave in the Bronx at the time. My paternal grandparents from Italy had originally settled in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights. When my grandfather had saved up enough money to buy a house—he had been an iceman and subsequently worked for Sheffield Farms, a milk company—he set his sights on the less populated Outer Boroughs of New York City. In 1946, he moved his family—including my father who was seventeen at the time—five miles north to Kingsbridge. My grandfather not only wanted a home of his own, he wished to settle, too, in an area that was not predominantly Italian. He reasoned that by doing so his wife—my grandmother—would master the English language more quickly and more adeptly. And so it came to pass: the Italian Nigros of Kingsbridge commingled with the Irish majority on the neighborhood’s business hub, W231st Street, at nearby St. John’s Roman Catholic Church run by the likes of Scanlan, Doherty, and Foley, and under the deafening El on Broadway.

The rest, I guess, is history. My grandfather would one day plant and harvest a post-war “victory garden” across the street from his Kingsbridge home alongside men named McGuire, Brady, and Reilly. My father would play stickball on the streets with guys named O’Neal, Gern, and Joyce. And one and all would congregate in front of Pat Mitchell’s Irish Food Center, a neighborhood institution for more than three decades. In fact, I dedicate Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts to “Pat Mitchell’s Kingsbridge.” For when I was a youth, a stopover at Pat Mitchell’s after Sunday Mass for fresh rolls and jelly donuts was a revered ritual. It was also the place to purchase brain-freezing Fla-Vor-Ice pops for a nickel, glass bottles of RC Cola for twenty cents, and—the pièce de résistance—penny candies for—imagine that—a penny.

Pat Mitchell’s Kingsbridge was a great neighborhood in which to grow up. It was an era before the Internet, cell phones, and even plastic shopping bags. In my father’s eclectic vinyl LP collection were Clancy Brothers albums. He once told me that his rallying mantra—with his many Irish drinking buddies—was “The Moonshiner” lyrics: “I’ll eat when I’m hungry, I’ll drink when I’m dry. And the moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live till I die.”

I close now with the vivid memory of a man named Gene Daugherty, a New York City bus driver. He was a fixture at the holiday cookouts thrown in the victory garden’s cozy confines. On more than one warm summer’s night, Gene belted out “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” From across the street where I lived, I could hear the Irishman’s dulcet tones cutting through the velvet darkness. The only lights visible were the tips of lit cigarettes, cigars, and pipes.

You can purchase Irish Curses, Blessings, and Toasts online from the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound. Paraphrasing Jimmy Breslin, permit me this parting salvo: "It's a good little book. Yeah, that's how I would describe it. It's a good little book!"

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)