The Scent of a Postman

(Originally published 3-14-14)

In the late-1970s and early-1980s, the Nigro family's local mail carrier was a fellow named Louie. Never without a cigar in his mouth as he made his appointed rounds, he was a memorable postman from a bygone era. His cigar was his calling card and how we—fortunate enough to be among his route—knew that the day’s mail had arrived.

In fact, our front door was typically unlocked during the waking hours, and Louie would enter the hallway leading to the upstairs apartment and place the mail on a bottom step. In his wake was always that distinctive cigar bouquet. Occasionally, he’d ask to use the toilet. Our family dog, Ginger, didn’t care much for company of any kind, especially mailmen, but Louie’s fearlessness won the day. As he delivered the mail, he could regularly be heard exclaiming, “Shut up!” to the loudly barking Ginger. Eventually, Ginger accepted Louie’s familiar cigar wafts and cries of “Shut up!” as par for the course. Louie the mailman was not an unwelcome intruder after all and received a tepid wag of the tail from her as he made his presence known.

Recently, I thought about Louie and our past open-door policy. The late-1970s were a high crime time in New York City, my Bronx neighborhood included. Yet, vestiges of the mentality from a more neighborly past endured. As a little kid, I don’t ever remember using a key, because the door was always open. Neither Louie nor I needed one.

Back in the Louie the Mailman era, nobody could ever have envisioned the post office would one day be on the rocks. It seemed that post offices and mail carriers were eternal, and that generation after generation would covet taking the post office test for a job with security and good benefits. It’s where my father plied his trade for a quarter of a century. But this tax season revealed once more why Louie and his vaunted employer face uncertain times. While I still mail paper tax returns to the IRS, I didn't get the tax package in the mail, which once upon a time was the norm for everybody. Courtesy of technology, there's so much lost postal business in too many places to count. I fear the scent of a cigar-chomping postman may one day be only a scent memory. Fortunately, Louie retired to Florida in the early-1980s when the going was still good. I'm sure he's delivering mail now—with his old aplomb and cigar in hand—somewhere beyond the Pearly Gates. 

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Getting to Second Base

I just had a neighbor pretend not to see me and cross a street he wouldn’t otherwise cross to avoid an encounter. Sometimes the man likes to gab; sometimes he doesn’t. I kind of felt dissed, but then I do the same thing from time to time and have done it to him on more than one occasion. I also witnessed New York’s Finest flag down a GrubHub delivery guy on a motorized scooter. I overheard two officers asking him if he had the vehicle’s title. The answer was no, apparently, and his wheels were confiscated on the spot. One copper hopped on the thing and made a beeline to the precinct just down the block. The obvious loser here: the GrubHub customer awaiting his breakfast.

It’s rather insane in these parts with all the electric bicycles and scooter variations buzzing—entirely too fast—in the streets and on the sidewalks. It’s common knowledge that many of these contraptions are unregistered and illegal. Part and parcel of the times we live in, I guess.

While on the subject of the not especially uplifting here and now: Major League Baseball inaugurated another season this past week. Does anybody really care anymore? Once upon a time on opening day, April 6, 1973, the New York Mets and Tom Seaver bested the Philadelphia Phillies and Steve Carlton at Shea Stadium. Tug McGraw got the save in a 3-0 victory. I recall watching the game on WOR-TV, Channel 9. Left fielder Cleon Jones hit two home runs that day and went three for three, collecting sixty percent of the team’s hits. On the must-watch post-game show, Kiner’s Korner, venerable broadcaster Ralph Kiner asked the man of the hour if he ever recalled hitting two home runs on opening day. Cleon wasn’t a prolific home run hitter, never hitting more than fourteen in a season, so I thought the question silly—and I was only ten years old. The opening day hero nonetheless answered, “I don’t remember hitting two home runs in any game!” Questionable questions and malaprops were all part of Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner’s charm. And, by the way, the game was played in under two hours. Imagine that!

So, here I am almost fifty years later. I could never have envisioned then what the game would be like now—it’s decidedly worse on countless fronts. Putting a man on second base to commence extra innings is beyond absurd. It’s not baseball. The Academy Awards is likewise a mere shadow of its former self. The Will Smith slap heard round the world was the icing on the cake, the nail in the coffin, as it were, of what once was something to behold—an event with star quality and winners based on merit, not some cockamamie identity-equity algorithm.

Recently, I read where a college professor was suspended for saying that people get offended too easily nowadays. Point made there. A poll found that sixty-five percent of college students are afraid to speak their minds on campus. Just sayin’: You might want to consider investing your money in something other than a higher education. There are protests in universities of symposiums on the First Amendment! Freedom of speech is controversial on campuses and a lot of other places as well—scary stuff. Staff at publishing houses are throwing in with censors, too. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s prospective memoir even generated controversy with Simon & Schuster employees petitioning to quash its publication, claiming that it made them feel unsafe or some such baloney. Pence was branded a bigot—how original. Personally, I would give the groveling sycophant the benefit of the doubt on that charge and just not buy his book. As for the all-too-common unsafe clamoring, it’s an over-used cudgel that the woke wield to suppress opinions with which they disagree. Honestly, I can’t believe that the mere notion of publishing Mike Pence’s book would make any rational adult shiver in his or her boots.

Then again, I wasn’t being taught substitute pronouns “ze” and “tree” for “him” and “her” in Mrs. Rothman’s kindergarten class. When I chance upon lists of alternative pronouns, I think of—for some strange reason—mortal Darrin Stephens’ unsuccessful attempt to cast a spell on his witch mother-in-law Endora: “Yaga Zuzi, Yaga Zuzi, Yagi Zuzi Zim.” But thank heavens it’s April and the snowperson in the yard is no longer frozen hard. Thus, I am free to dream of Cleon and zis two home runs in that simpler snapshot in time.

 

The Salamander Lot

(Originally published on 11/2/13)

Sometime in the early 1970s, I went salamander hunting. The place: the Bronx. It was not too far from where I lived but, as a boy, it seemed like something of a hike. This geographical reality made it more of an adventure, like we were going someplace faraway and unknown. Interestingly enough the salamanders collected their mail in tony Riverdale, which was the more pedigreed neighbor to the west of Kingsbridge, my hometown.

There were still a few vacant lots around in those days and, I don’t exactly know why, but this particular piece of earth had oodles of pinkish salamanders under its rocks. Those of us on this salamander hunt intended on keeping them as pets—our motives were pure—and we did. I don’t recall what they ate or how long they lived in the fish bowl that became their new home after the Salamander Lot, as we called it, but I don’t think very long.

Just about every piece of available earth has been built on in the old neighborhood, but not the Salamander Lot. It is an odd piece of ground—a steep hill as a matter of fact—perched directly above a parking lot of a tall building in the valley below. The Salamander Lot is not a very big slice of property, so I guess it would be difficult to erect a structure there. However, I’ve seen more unlikely spots developed.

I noticed, though, that there’s now a very tall fence surrounding the Salamander Lot. We wouldn’t have been able to get into it with that thing there—not at our ages as salamander hunters. But then I don’t think there are very many kids in the vicinity of the lot today who would be interested in salamander hunting, unless of course it was a game on their computers.

The question that I have long wondered is this: Do the salamanders still exist in that snippet of earth in Riverdale? Theoretically, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t still be there. I don’t think our hunting them down for pets was sufficient to do them in as a species in this neck of the woods. But why am I confident if I lifted up rocks in that very same piece of property, there would be no salamanders to be found. Like so many things, they existed in simpler times in the Bronx, I suspect, and opted to get out while the going was good.

The Case of the Missing Mud Whopper

(Originally published on 6/26/14)

While walking the streets of the Bronx’s Kingsbridge last Saturday—the summer solstice—something monumental jumped out at me. Something, that is, which isn’t around anymore. For many years now, I’ve noticed the precipitous decline of honeybees. When I was a boy, they were everywhere from front-stoop flowerpots to grassy stretches in the neighborhood's parks. Not so anymore, and the same could be said for bumblebees and other species of bees and wasps. There are obviously some around, but the buzz is not nearly as loud as in the not-too-distant past.

There was this peculiar-looking wasp—metallic blue in color—that always seemed to frequent a certain kind of weed in the bygone days of my youth. Their sharp blue color and fluid wing motion were very noticeable in the thickets of their favorite weeds. Being wasps and all, they simultaneously frightened and intrigued me. I didn't want to be set upon by one, let's put it that way. They were definitely more interesting insects than their meaner-looking brown cousins, who always seemed to be on the warpath. Individuals who even mildly disturbed their routine were fair game. My friends and I called the blue wasps “Mud Whoppers.” Something, though, told me that in our youthful exuberance, we had, quite possibly, transposed a scientific name—or that we had given the insect a unique moniker made completely out of whole cloth. Kids can be creative in that way. But now—courtesy of the Internet—I found the answer to this nagging riddle when I Googled “blue wasps” and stumbled upon images of the “Mud Whoppers” from my past. They were not, in fact, called “Mud Whoppers” but instead “Mud Daubers”—close enough. And that explains a lot.

There were bees and wasps aplenty in my youth. Everybody got stung at one time or another. Small, bright yellow-and-black striped bees were sure to be in the vicinity of discarded soda cans in trash receptacles. I don’t see their kind anymore, either. More buildings and fewer empty spaces have no doubt been contributing factors to their demise around here. But when the wide-open spaces in the area’s parks aren’t teeming with bees and insects like in the past, it certainly gives one pause.