Who Took the Clown Pictures Down?

(Originally published on 4/4/13)

Many years ago, in a neighbor’s basement—a magical basement, I daresay—the walls were adorned with images of clowns. One was a standard print of the morose-faced Emmett Kelly, but the others in the ensemble were very different. They were not paintings per se, but made of some kind of colorful synthetic chips—rough to the touch and uniquely 1960s looking.

As a boy, I loved visiting this basement just up the street. It had a bar, too, on the premises, which was loaded with adult beverages and assorted bric-a-brac and memorabilia. The latter was of more interest to me. I recall the basement’s matriarch opening up a thirty-two-ounce aluminum can of Hi-C, pouring it into a sixty-four-ounce plastic pitcher, and filling the remainder up with tap water and a full tray of ice on top of that. I’d never before witnessed the watering down of a Hi-C drink, but it wasn’t half-bad. It was the power of the clown pictures, perhaps, that made everything in the basement look and taste good.

Indeed, nobody cared that the family cat slept on the dinner table and everywhere else for that matter. It was the basement after all. And the cat was yet another intriguing basement player. It was the only housecat without a name. The neighbors across the alleyway had a cat named “Sniffles.” Maybe “Cat” was actually the cat’s name. It remains a mystery to this day. Cat could often be spotted on a perch in the basement’s front window. One chilly afternoon an interior window in the basement was shut with Cat in between it and the exterior one. The family went on a frantic search throughout the neighborhood for Cat, when all the time he was resting comfortably on his favorite roost in the front window.

Like so many other things in life, the basement as I once knew it is no more. Cat is no longer roaming the place, nor are their clown pictures on its walls. The fashionable contact paper that was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s, and that was supposed to resemble wood paneling, has, too, been stripped away. However, the memories linger.

There was a man named Lou who rented the basement resident’s garage. He used to thank basement son Richard—profusely as a matter of fact—for opening the garage for him when fate brought the two of them together. “Sank you, Reeechard!” he’d say both loudly and sincerely. He spoke with some sort of accent, which I enjoyed mimicking as a young teen. It was okay to do that kind of thing back then. In fact for a spell, I must have uttered, “Sank you, Reeechard!” a few hundred times. Then one day, I decided to put some words into Lou’s limited lexicon—ones I had never heard him utter.

“Reeechard, who took the clown pictures down?” I asked. And so, with Reechard’s blessing, we snapped a photograph of a clown picture being taken down—by the devil no less. But it was not in our youthful, living-in-the-moment brains to press the fast-forward button and contemplate that the clown pictures were not, in fact, eternal and would one day come down. Perhaps they’re hanging up in other people’s homes as I write these words. I'd like to think so. Maybe, though, they weren’t thought as worth saving and put out with the trash. Such is the duality of life and everything that we value.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Memories...and Unsolved Mysteries

(Originally published 9/29/11)

When I was young boy of about six or seven years of age, I accompanied my parents to a party thrown in my father’s honor in the Marble Hill section of Manhattan, just a few blocks away from our home: Kingsbridge in the Bronx. Quirky geographical changes through the years have led to some confusion. It's part of Manhattan but not part of Manhattan Island, but—once upon a time—it was.

As I recall, Mr. and Mrs. L—the hosts of this get-together—were genial enough. The man of the house once ran a successful bar business in the big city, and his Misses—I subsequently learned as an adult—was both his second wife and his niece. Anyway, reminiscences from such a tender age are typically confined to disjointed snippets from a wide-eyed kid’s unique perspective—of moments good and bad; important and unimportant.

As I saw it from my six- or seven-year-old eyes, the L’s house was located in an incredibly atmospheric sliver of geography. It lorded over a piece of real estate everybody knew back then as "Shanty Town," a neighborhood with rows of old houses and some shacks, too—relics from a hardscrabble past. Hoovervilles. Some of Shanty Town’s residents raised chickens in coops, and even farm animals, in their front and backyards. But I was also a guest in a home not too far from a busy railroad, the Harlem River Ship Canal, and the elevated subway tracks of the Number 1 train. There was an intoxicating ambiance surrounding the L’s humble abode, with sounds emanating from nearby trains and boats. But beyond these rather general memories of welcome sensory sensations, I can remember only one concrete detail surrounding this Marble Hill experience of mine.

Mrs. L, the lady of the house, spoke in a throaty, Betty Davis-esque voice from—I’ve since concluded—one too many Marlboro's and an unquenchable thirst for the grape. She was pleasant enough on the surface, but—from my little boy’s view of the world—there was something of the night about her. She was quite petite, always wore bright red lipstick, and looked by day a little too much like the Joker from Batman—as played by Cesar Romero—for me to fully warm to her. By night, it got somewhat worse, and she resembled a vampire, which I know is rather hip now, but it wasn’t back then.

Here now is my only definitive memory of being in that house more than forty years ago. Mrs. L very graciously gave the youngsters on the scene free run of the place. She asked only one thing of us—that we keep our distance from an automobile tire flatly resting atop the stairs in her two-story home. I admit to being fascinated by this car tire in a spot where car tires weren’t usually found.

Flash forward three decades and I recounted this peculiar memory, so etched in mind, to a friend of mine. He said, “That’s probably where she kept her stash.” While it does make some sense that a person might conceal his or her bottles of whiskey in a car tire—if secrecy is the name of the game—it seems rather illogical to do so in a tire sitting at the top of a staircase, where the logical question passersby would pose is: “What’s a car tire doing there?” But that's as good an explanation as any that I've heard before or since. Memories…and unsolved mysteries.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

This Old House

(Originally published 7/30/17)

This old house is no more. It stood in the same location in the Bronx for nearly a century and, it’s fair to say, witnessed innumerable and seismic changes all around it. If this old house could only have spoken before it was demolished, it would have had a story to tell. The home’s original owner built the structure with his own two hands, which wasn’t unheard of in the Bronx of yesteryear. People who had the privilege of entering its interior reported that the rooms were tiny and the ceilings, low. It was a dwelling for a different time and place. Pat Mitchell, an iconic local grocer for decades, rented a furnished room in the house’s attic in the immediate aftermath of World War II. While an average-sized adult couldn’t stand up straight there, rooms were really hard to come by then.

I am old enough to remember the builder’s then-elderly daughter living in the house with her grown son, known as “Buddy.” Buddy, who bore a striking resemblance to actor Jason Robards, had a faithful German shepherd often at his side. He was not what you would call a conversationalist. Outside of walking his dog or silently lounging around in his windowed front porch with a can of beer in his hand, the man was rather nondescript. The neighborhood’s nastier wagging tongues considered Buddy something of a slacker. He never appeared to be duly employed and was never sans beer money—a deadly one-two punch as far as they were concerned. And, too, the family had a summer place in the Catskills, where Buddy and his mother vacationed and eventually moved to after selling this old house.

Interestingly, the house's foundation was laid atop the recently covered-over Tibbetts Brook, which meandered through this area of the Bronx until the fledgling years of the twentieth century. When it was first ready for occupancy, there were still vestiges of the stream at the surface. Initially, the home's owner had a swimming hole in the backyard—water in which he actually swam, or at least wallowed in. The basement was quite often flooded.

When my grandparents moved to Kingsbridge in 1946, the old man's wife was still among the living. There were many empty lots in the neighborhood at that time and locals planted what they called “victory gardens” in some of them, even after the war and victory. My grandfather tilled a plot in close proximity of this old house. Approximately ten years later, he and fellow gardeners were asked to vacate the premises in the name of progress. The original developer of the property—directly behind this old house—went bankrupt after running into unforeseen and considerable water issues courtesy of the underground, but ever-tenacious Tibbetts Brook seeking daylight. Two tall buildings were subsequently erected, which were dubbed Tibbett Towers. And this old house now had a parking lot alongside it.

Happily, my grandfather and a few friends found a new site in which to indulge their penchant for gardening. It was not too far from their old garden space—walking distance in fact—and just to the north of this old house. A makeshift fence promptly enclosed the new space, and a well was dug that tapped into Tibbetts Brooks, which supplied the flowers and crops with a regular and generous source of water. It was this garden that I came to know during my youth, before it, too, was plowed under. I recently learned that the old man who built this old house planted the Sycamore tree in the backyard, which has long towered over the property. As of this writing, it’s still there and probably over eighty years old. No surprise though: the developer is going to cut it down—in the name of progress, naturally.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

With Mr. Denton on Doomsday

On more than one occasion, I have witnessed a passing car sporting the vanity license plate: DOOMSDAY. Ordinarily, it would have gone by unnoticed—just one among many vehicles traveling up and down the street where I live. But this automobile’s driver craved attention with his ear-splitting display of four-wheel barbarism. A ridiculously loud and revving engine with popping gunshot sounds doesn’t exactly complement one’s morning coffee and is no more pleasing at lunch or dinnertime. It’s off-putting morning, noon, and night, which, I suppose, is the point.

Doomsday it is. At least that’s the way it feels around here with the countless speed racers violating multiple New York City ordinances as they make their daily rounds. Then there are all those noisy electric scooters and their various epigones—many of them illegal and often operated by illegals—whizzing past stop signs and through red lights. Further adding to Doomsday is the $4.4 billion retail crime spree underway in the Big Apple. Every damn thing is locked up in stores because the thieves know they won’t ever be. There is this palpable sense of chaos and lawlessness run amok, which I’ve never experienced before—at this omnipresent level anyway. Local politicians appear uninterested in the problems or unwilling to address them in any meaningful way.

I have an idea. In the Batman TV series, starring the indomitable Adam West, I recall an episode where the Joker captured Batman and Robin in a large fish net. Why don’t the big retailers that are being robbed blind place big nets by their entrances and exits and snare the shoplifters on their way out? Then lift them up in the air and encourage the non-criminal patrons to taunt them and, if available, toss rotten fruit at them. When all is said and done, ship the offenders en masse to an undisclosed wilderness location equipped, of course, with survival kits donated by Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot. Sounds like a plan, no?

Moving on to our national dignity crisis—self-respect sacrificed on the altar of ridiculousness and obeisance to unworthy people. As a youth, I had a poster on my bedroom wall with this Native American proverb: “To give dignity to man is above all else.” Sadly, a vastly different kind of tribal mentality has descended on much of the populace, particularly those who are addicted to social media and can’t get enough of bloviating talking heads, sky-is-falling commentators, and loony conspiracists. The ones, too, who also vote in primaries and supply us with the worst general-election candidates imaginable.

In fact, their names are legion—men and women who have cast dignity away to kiss Trump’s keister come hell or high water. Exhibit A: Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee. And on Side B: the minions who have been telling us that old Joe Biden was sharp as a tack—better than ever in fact—when are eyes, ears, and common sense told us otherwise. The best president since FDR—come on, man! It’s retirement village time, they now say. It takes a village, I guess.

Several months ago, the Los Angeles Times published an opinion column entitled, “Age Matters. Which Is Why Biden’s Age is his Superpower.” Around the same time, the New York Times ran the piece, “For Joe Biden, What Seems Like Age Might Instead Be Style.” You can’t make this stuff up. Did these authors actually believe what they were saying? If they did, they ought to find another line of work. Self-respect takes yet another back seat in 2024.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump repeatedly proves that he is meshuggeneh. His tweets, or whatever they are now called, are creepy crazy and certifiably looney tunes. I have little doubt the man, too, is suffering from cognitive decline, but it is hard to decipher in an individual who is bona fide fruit loops. Permit me now to turn my attention elsewhere—to an alternative to the two, manifestly unfit for the presidency, geriatrics. A third-party candidate. This option has had a worm devour part of his brain and—heaving a sigh of relief here—sampled barbecued goat and not barbecued dog cooked on a spit in Patagonia. “So many skeletons in my closet,” the man says. Now, I will concede, that’s quite an honest admission, but hardly refreshingly so.

In closing, there’s an old Kamalan proverb worth mentioning: “It’s time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.” Yes, then, I will just sit back and recall the better and saner days when Michael Dukakis was the Democratic presidential nominee and selected Senator Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate—two reasonable adults from a more reasonable and dignified time. I remember voting for them with pride at having done my civic duty. I wish that time were every day, but it’s not. See all of the above.

The Summers of Love

(Originally published 6/17/10)

Gaelic Park in the Bronx's Kingsbridge is a neighborhood institution. Bordering West 240th Street on its south side, it is now owned and operated by my alma mater, Manhattan College. The grassy expanse hosts college related as well as outside sporting events. It is an atmospheric piece of green, too, with a busy Number 1 subway train yard for a backdrop.

During my youth in the early 1970s, this snippet of terra firma hosted summertime rock concerts that attracted people from near and far. There were more than a few famous names who performed in Gaelic Park, but I was too young to know or to care. On those memorable summer nights, the back streets, including my very own, became clogged with too many cars in search of too few parking spaces. While neighbors sniffed at their overt violation of protocol, the Esposito family leased the available space in their concrete backyard for a welcome sum of money in what were hyper-inflationary times.

Locals of all ages sat transfixed on their front stoops, watching the recurring spectacles of not how many clowns could fit into the automobiles parking all around them, but how many hippies would pile out of them. A parade of peculiar looking sorts marched past us on their way to Gaelic Park. As I recall, neighbors debated the gender of many of the passersby. Other than the scraggly bearded, who were presumed to be the male species, the clean-shaven hippies with the long, scraggly hairdos often appeared as gender neutral as they were generally unwashed.

It’s a safe bet that these "flower children," who are now Medicare recipients, were looking with similar wary eyes at the urban ethnics passing judgment on them from the steps of their stoops, and on beach chairs on the sidewalks. They didn’t trust anyone over thirty—and the Bronx stoop-sitting brigades were as untrustworthy as they came.

Despite the peculiar smell that wafted up the stoop steps and into the sultry season’s open windows, and which seemed to linger especially long in the city’s muggy ozone, the species of hippie on parade were more Jim Henson than Weathermen. Except for a couple of guys relieving themselves against Mrs. Covello’s maple tree, the attendees came and went peacefully. The country at large may have been in turmoil, but these were the summers of love and tie-dye shirts, not iPods and iPhones.