Bummer Summer Ramblings

Once upon a time, I loved summer, I really did. What, after all, wasn’t to like? Oh, sure, it could get ghastly hot and humid in the Bronx. And, too, I grew up on the top floor of a three-family house with seven residents sharing one bathroom, no air conditioning, and intermittent brown outs courtesy of our local utility Con Edison. That’s the way it was when I was a young and callow fellow. But, come on, summer was about a vacation by the sea—the New Jersey shore or Long Island—baseball, the Good Humor man, and incessant stoop chatter by young and old alike. School was also out, which counted for an awful lot. That fact alone made sleeping with a wet washcloth peachy keen.

Those bygone summers are distant memories. Nowadays, I see more pesky lantern flies than lightning bugs, which were ubiquitous in my neighborhood when I was a boy. Most of their former habitats have been built upon and their mating modus operandi has been simultaneously stymied by omnipresent lighting sources from home security cameras, streetlamps, and automobiles galore. I fondly recall sitting on the concrete grounds of the alleyway adjoining my home and enjoying a Good Humor cola-flavored Italian ice with a little wooden spoon. The ice and spoon cost twenty cents. It was, if memory serves, a solid ice ball, but I relished the thing on those warm, quiet, dark summer nights replete with lightning bugs and a reassuring calm. It didn’t matter to me that the spoon inevitably passed through the paper cup multiple times during the ice shaving. The sticky struggle to reach the bottom was well worth it. That’s where most of the cola coalesced, infusing the finishing bites with an incredible summer taste sensation. Of course, there were better brands of Italian ices around, like Marinos, but they, sadly, were not peddled by the Good Humor man.

Time waits for no Good Humor man. Oops, that sentence, I fear, violates many of today’s college and university speech codes. Nevertheless, I’ll soldier on and, when needed, use the phrase, “Kill two birds with one stone,” and not as Stanford University suggests, “Feeding two birds with one scone.” Also flagged as a violent turn of phrase: “Bury the hatchet.” But I digress, the streets of my youth are presently overrun with Grubhub and other delivery drivers on fast scooters and electric bikes, revving cars with tinted windows, and the occasional "dune buggies" that look like something the Joker rode around in on the Batman TV series. No more Good Humor trucks pass by—the fleet has long been retired. The ringing of the bells heralding their arrival are no longer heard. Mister Softee, though, still haunts the back streets with the familiar jingle playing ad nauseum and further disturbing the peace. I checked out the price of a Mister Softee milk shake: six dollars for a rather small cup in my opinion. I remember when it was served in a monster cup that had to contain at least a quart. The shakes cost around sixty cents sometime in the mid-1970s, which the inflation calculator puts at some four dollars in contemporary dollars, which doesn’t sound too out of whack, except that the shakes are half the size.

Contrast that with the tuition of my high school years (1976-80), which I recall as being around $800 for the year. Without fail, in the middle of the summer, a packet arrived with all kinds of depressing back-to-school information, including an apology from the principal for raising tuition by eight or ten dollars. That price tag seemed steep back then and it was for my parents, who sent multiple kids to Catholic grammar and high schools. Plugging in the inflation calculator again: $800 equals $3800 in 2023 dollars. My alma mater’s current tuition: $10,000. When I graduated college in 1984, my tuition for two semesters totaled $5,000. Today that money could buy me about $15,000 worth of goods and services. Manhattan College’s tuition for the coming year: approximately $50,000. What gives? All I can say is “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” Also, don’t take out the loan if you can’t repay the lender. I always thought that some of my college courses were a ridiculous waste of time, especially when considering the enormity of the tuition bill. Today, with higher education crazy expensive and increasingly Orwellian, that waste of time and money assumes a whole new meaning.

So, I look around at what has become an urban dystopia. A passing Grubhub guy is doing a wheelie while on his scooter. Hope he’s not delivering a pizza. All I can say is: This is now and that was then.

 

 

The Cough Drop Kid

(Originally published 2/13/13)

I knew a kid in grammar school whose favorite candy wasn’t candy at all, but a cough drop. It was, however, displayed and sold alongside the Sweet Tarts, Razzles, and York Peppermint Patties—so perhaps it was candy after all. The candy store proprietors in the neighborhood didn’t mind that ten- and eleven-year-old kids were purchasing and eating cough drops like they were Milk Duds and Mary Janes. They didn’t request purchaser evidence of a cold, allergy, or scratchy throat. And nobody suggested, then or now, that there was anything wrong with selling cough drops in the same fashion as Bubble Yum, Good & Fruity, and Starburst.

When it was time to graduate from said grammar school in 1976, graduates one and all were asked to share a fond, funny, or noteworthy remembrance—from their first-grade to eighth-grade educational experiences—for possible inclusion in the class yearbook. You know, for the montage page of fond, funny, and noteworthy remembrances—like the time the bee flew up Suzy Q’s uniform dress during recess, or the time Frankie McGuirk got bus sick—and lost his cookies—on a class field trip to an amusement park in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. I submitted the memory of the Cough Drop Kid, who was renowned for both loving a particular brand of cough drops and John Wayne. My special memory didn’t make it into the yearbook—the school censors, I guess, didn’t think it appropriate or interesting enough. And the memories competition was pretty stiff in my esteemed graduating class.

Fast forward almost thirty-seven years since grammar school graduation day—and forty years plus since the Cough Drop Kid indulged in his favorite candy. It’s 2013 and, as fate would have it, I spoke with the Cough Drop Kid today. He’s still alive and kicking. We chewed over his peculiar childhood addiction to a certain cough drop. Funny, but in middle age, we both couldn’t remember the brand name. It definitely wasn’t Smith Brothers—we were certain of that much.

Courtesy of the vast wealth of accessible information now at our fingertips, I Googled the phrase “soft cough drops.” I remembered the Cough Drop Kid’s preferred product was different from the competition. They were not rock-hard lozenges, but chewy. And, lo and behold, there they were: Pine Brothers. I recalled immediately their familiar 1970s box and the drops special shape and texture. While they were reasonably soft as a rule, sometimes they could be quite hard and they always stuck to your teeth. The Cough Drop Kid harked back to a lost love. I refreshed his memory, too, that a classmate, who had him as a “Kris Kringle” at Christmastime, bought him a box of cherry-flavored—his personal favorite—Pine Brothers cough drops.

The Cough Drop Kid and I were now left to wonder if Pine Brothers cough drops were still around. Neither of us had seen them for some time, but then we weren’t looking for them. Happily, we can report, they live on, although these unique cough drops evidently went on a hiatus for a spell. They are being pedaled in the new millennium as “Softish Throat Drops”—and oddish description. Perhaps the Cough Drop Kid will revisit the Pine Brothers cough drop—this “softish throat drop”—in the near future and report back as to whether or not the magic is still there.