Hitting Some Out

(Originally published 9/24/21)

A few miscellaneous thoughts on a variety of unrelated things beginning with a blast from the past. As a boy in a pre-smartphone, pre-Internet age, a group of us would assemble on a summer’s day or early eve and one among us would pose the immortal question: “What do you want to do?” This would invariably prompt a follow-up query that on occasion would be: “Do you want to hit some out at Vanny?” I thought about that summer pastime the other day—and the peculiar phraseology, too—when I passed the very ballfields at Van Cortlandt Park where we, once upon a time, hit some out.

One of the main protagonists in this youthful adventure of ours has since met his maker. And time has done a considerable number on the rest of us. It was both a long time ago and not long at all—certainly not in the grand scheme of things. Hitting some out was a simple pleasure that required baseball mitts, bats, and balls—and that’s the long and short of it. It was simultaneously a vigorous workout and good old-fashioned fun—no state-of-the-art devices needed.

I remember one June evening while hitting some out, this kid I went to high school with turned up with a bunch of his friends. They wanted to play on the field we occupied. The ensemble asked us to move to another one nearby. Our fearless leader—older than the rest of us—refused the request as a matter of principle. My secondary school peer informed me the next day—in no uncertain terms—that we should have moved. He believed that his summer escapade—a planned game with more bodies involved—should have taken precedence over four individuals hitting some out. You see, the adjoining two baseball fields in Van Cortlandt Park were worse for wear—it was during the city’s fiscal crisis—and their outfields bled into one another, which created a unique set of additional problems. However, utilizing these mangy ballfields were on a first-come, first-serve basis. No reservations were required. And we were there first and got the pick of the not-so-impressive litter.

Fast forward to the present. While we were hitting some out all those years ago, climate change was not an issue, although In Search Of… hosted by Leonard Nimoy, aired an episode on an impending Ice Age. Exhibit A: Buffalo, New York had an awful lot of snow in 1977. Those were simpler times indeed when we accepted the results of elections, even the ones that didn’t turn out in our favor. And we felt free to offer contrary opinions and utter words like “woman” and “he” and “she” without fear of censorship and condemnation.

Did you see what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) did to a quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week? The organization employed her words—just not all of them—to underscore its support for abortion. Ginsburg said: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choice.” The ACLU, though, wasn’t content to let her words stand on their own. Instead, “woman” was excised and changed to “person,” in brackets, of course, with “her” changed to “their,” and “herself” changed to “people.” Follow the bouncing ball off the cliff. Now, this is the ACLU, mind you, rewriting history. What right do these people have in altering a person’s words? Yes, person, man or woman.

Considering this latest development in insanity, I thought I would look at some popular songs and how they might be sung in an Orwellian future. Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” would be “I’m Every Person.” Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” would be “Oh, Pretty Person.” Carlos Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” would be “Black Magic Person.” Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” would be “When a Man Loves a Person.” And, last but not least, John Lennon’s “Woman” would be “Person.” Let’s sing it together now: “Person, I can hardly express, my mixed emotions at my thoughtlessness…”

I liked the world better when we were hitting some out. Jimmy Carter was the president then and In Search Of… merely speculated on the various doomsday possibilities awaiting us or maybe not. On that scruffy ballfield more than forty years ago, I never could have envisioned where I, and the rest of us, would be headed in 2021: to Hell in a handbasket or maybe not.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Life’s Lemon Twists and Turns

Previously, I’ve written about the sprawling victory garden across the street from my childhood home. Somewhere, somehow, it endured for more than a decade during the tumultuous 1960s into the early 1970s, when empty lots were fast going the way of the dinosaur. The multiple lots that accommodated the garden space were up for sale the entire time but found no takers. In those less regulated and less litigious days, permission was granted to plant gardens and do whatever one pleased—within reason and the law—on properties owned by other, often unknown, persons. And so, sheds and shacks were built to store tools, provide cover from inclement weather, and catch catnaps, too. A well was dug to access the waters of Tibbetts Brook, which once upon a time flowed in the light of day. It was then still flowing, undeterred, but several feet beneath the surface. Within the garden confines, there were festive summer parties thrown on holidays and weekends, where adult beverages flowed unimpeded just like the brook beneath it.

Elsewhere in the summer of 1969, social unrest and Vietnam War protests raged. Fortunately, the New York Mets were exhibiting miraculous signs of the miracle yet to come. A New York City mayoral campaign was also underway, which would see incumbent Republican John Lindsay lose a close primary battle to John Marchi, a bland and benign state senator from Staten Island. However, with the Liberal Party line guaranteed in the November general election, Lindsay never broke his campaign stride. In a highly contested multiple candidate Democratic primary that year—which included former mayor Robert Wagner, Jr. and Bronx borough president Herman Badillo—New York City comptroller Mario Procaccino, a law-and-order candidate in an era of lawlessness, prevailed with 32.85% of the vote. There were as yet run-off elections for the top two candidates, if nobody surpassed 40%, which became law the following year. Now there’s this confusing, counterproductive rank voting—no more run-offs—until somebody attains 50%. But that's another kettle of fish.

Anyway, viewed by many left-leaning Democrats as something of a neanderthal, Procaccino lost their vote to the urbane, free-spending Lindsay, who won reelection with 42.35% to his opponent’s 34.79%. Comfortably ahead in the polls at the outset, the Democratic candidate proved something of a gaffe machine. Addressing an audience of African American New Yorkers, Procaccino exclaimed, “My heart is as black as yours.” Journalist Richard Reeves wrote how the man “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.” Gaffes notwithstanding, Mario Procaccino originated the phrase “limousine liberal”—a good one that has stood the test of time—to characterize the haughty Mayor Lindsay, father of the fiscal crisis yet to come. Mayor Wagner, his predecessor, was the grandfather.

Okay, this really isn’t an essay on past New York City politics, but soda pop instead. At one of those summertime barbecues in the garden, Reinhold, a gentlemanly German-accented fellow, brought to the festivities—potluck as it was—two six-packs of soda. They were a no-frills brand in no-frills cans. One was root beer and the other a 7-up knock-off called lemon twist. The always-conscientious Reinhold periodically offered the non-adults on hand—like me who couldn’t sample a Schaefer, Rheingold, or Schlitz—a root beer or lemon twist with its yellow lemons on the insipid can. I can still hear him asking: “You vanna voot beer? How about a vemon twist?”

While growing up, sodas were not typically in my family’s refrigerator. They were special treats for special occasions. Or when we youngsters saved up enough pocket change to visit Pat Mitchell’s grocery store. Twenty-three cents got you a coveted sixteen-ounce glass bottle of soda. Nedick’s orange and Royal Crown cola being favorites.

During one of those memorable youthful summers, a local oddball nicknamed “Red”—or the more mysterious "Cream Sam"—promised we kids that he would buy us all sodas from the neighborhood supermarket, Bohack’s, which had a sale on the Krasdale—no frills then and now—brand. Six cents a pop! Red reneged on this promise for some reason, but I’m certain that at the age of eight or nine, Krasdale sodas would have hit the spot—just like that lemon twist—on a hot and humid New York City evening.

Finally, on the soda pop front of yesteryear, there were those over-priced flat Coca Colas and Pepsi Colas enjoyed at the ballparks. They hit the spot for sure. Then, of course, there were the visits to the maternal grandparents in Bangor, Pennsylvania, who always stocked Coca-Cola in large glass bottles, which were enjoyed with Miller’s pretzels and ice cream. Sold to area watering holes, the pretzels came in large tins. My grandfather would ask the proprietors—Johnny and then Freddie—to sell him tins for home consumption. Bar none, they were the best pretzels I ever tasted. So, why exactly have so many things turned flatter than flat—like a Shea Stadium vendor’s soda in the seventh inning—in the here and now? That is the question.

When Meatball’s Car Went Missing

(Originally published on 8/5/13)

In early August 1978, a neighbor’s car—a dark brown Ford LTD—was stolen. It was parked on the street one night and gone the next morning. Courtesy of my youthful penchant for noting historical neighborhood events on pieces of loose leaf and assorted scraps of paper, the exact date of this Grand Theft Auto has been recorded for posterity. On August 8, 1978, the dark brown Ford LTD was gone for good. I even remember its license plate number: “418 KZY.” It’s funny, but we memorized by osmosis things like that back then. We were outside an awful lot, particularly in the summertime, and witnessed our neighbors' comings and goings day after day. Their vehicles were very distinct in the 1970s, and so were they.

This particular LTD, though, was more than just any old neighbor’s set of wheels. It belonged to “Meatball” and was the car that chauffeured a bunch of us neighbor kids—just before it went missing as a matter of fact—to Jones Beach on Long Island. “Meatball’s” son, an older mentor of sorts, was always taking us places. On this Jones Beach excursion, a friend of his tagged along named Frank. Our chaperones, as it were, were twenty-seven years old and we were teenagers. I was the youngest at fifteen.

Frank was known to a bit of a fusspot and whiner. He was, suffice it to say, a certifiable oddball. Frank once scrubbed his car down with AJAX and took the paint off of it. His day-at-the-beach attire included patent leather shoes. When Frank fell asleep in the front seat on the ride out there, he became a tempting target for one of the LTD’s backseat passengers. With his mouth agape while in the Land of Nod, a friend seated to my right and next to an ashtray, reached in and plucked out an old cigarette butt. He dangled it close by the sleeping Frank’s open mouth. I don’t think he planned on dropping it inside, which wouldn’t have been a good idea. A joke’s a joke, but a man choking to death isn’t all that funny. Our driver, Frank’s pal from his college days, was not amused by the backseat antics.

As we neared our destination—the Jones Beach parking lot—we found ourselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Frank remained in the Land of Nod when that same friend of mine attempted to snatch one of the two headrests from the front seats. His intention: to bop Sleeping Beauty with it. Navigating the heavy traffic, our exasperated chauffeur simultaneously tried to put an end to the headrest horseplay. In so doing, he rammed into the car in front of him. It was a significant enough hit that the sleeping Frank’s head crashed into the windshield. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt in the pre-seat belt law days of the past, which was commonplace. The windshield actually cracked—X marked the spot—where Frank's considerable cranium, as I remember, met the very solid auto glass.

Frank was understandably quite rattled at being awoken in such a violent fashion. “Is there any glass in my head?” he hysterically asked. Fortunately, the answer was no, and we eventually went on our way. With the exception of the windshield, damages were minimal to the dark brown Ford LTD. After our day at the beach with fussy Frank—anticlimactic after the accident—we returned home to the Bronx with a story to tell of how the accident really happened. Our driver’s flip flops slipped as he was hitting the brake in that snarling beach traffic. No mention was ever made of the headrest horseplay behind it. The true story of what happened on the fateful day in August 1978 was buried—and known by only the handful of people in that brown LTD—until now. I don’t know whatever became of Frank. In fact, I never saw him again. But I sincerely hope the headache that he complained about on the ride back cleared up.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Congratulations to Neil, Buzz, and Mike

(Originally published 7/17/14)

It was forty-five years ago this week that Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins touched down and then cavorted on our planet’s sole satellite, the Moon. “That’s one small step for a man; one giant step for mankind,” Neil Armstrong intoned upon first touching the Moon’s surface. I don’t remember all that much about this obviously newsworthy goings-on—I was only six years old at the time—except that my mother composed a makeshift banner from a rather large scroll of yellow paper that my uncle had purloined from his place of employment, the “phone company.” Yes, people back then worked for the “phone company” because there was only one of them. The paper banner proudly flew above our front door—fortunately, it didn’t rain that day—and read, “Congratulations to Neil, Buzz, and Mike.”  

I recall, too, a neighbor—the local rabbi’s wife—querying a group of us playing on my front stoop as to whether we were related to the “Banner Woman.” I proudly answered in the affirmative. She appreciated the fact that my mom, without fail, recognized both holidays and historic national events with decorations and, in this instance, a somewhat crude banner celebrating the achievement of three trailblazing astronauts. After Neil, Buzz, and Mike's mission was a fait accompli, President Richard Nixon said, “As a result of what you’ve done, the world has never been closer before.” That may, in fact, have been true—for one brief shining moment at least.

In retrospect, though, what I find most fascinating about July 1969—and growing up in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge—is the evident duality. My youthful memories are of a gritty urban lifestyle organically commingling with a small town charm. The late-1960s and early-1970s were tumultuous times in the country at large and, to a great extent, in Kingsbridge as well: the Vietnam War, social unrest, drugs—the whole bit. I, though, was spared all of the above. Three men actually walking on the surface of the Moon—and my mother commemorating it—is just one of many fond recollections from my childhood. I don’t think there is anything that could occur today that would generate a banner of congratulations in the old neighborhood. A leisurely walk on Mars wouldn’t even do it; wouldn't come near capturing that singular Apollo 11 snapshot in time.

No Specific Location

(Originally published on 7/17/11)

Parish Day was an annual event at my high school. On this one afternoon set aside each year, the various Catholic parishes throughout the Bronx dispatched priests to speak with their teenage congregants who also attended Cardinal Spellman High School. As a graduate of St. John’s grammar school, and a parishioner of St. John’s Church (more or less), I assembled with my Kingsbridge peers.

In what was always advertised as an informal give-and-take with one of our very own men of the cloth, Father Borstelmann assumed the honors during sophomore year. He was a hip clergyman who nobly endeavored to connect with skeptical youth like us—a good idea and certainly better than the condescending, scolding approach employed by his boss, Monsignor Doherty.

When Father Borstelmann first arrived at St. John’s in the early 1970s, it's fair to say that he got off on the wrong foot with some people. At a faculty versus students’ basketball game, the new priest on the block removed his warm-up jacket and revealed a T-shirt that read, “Bitch…bitch…bitch.” Needless to say, this bit of public theater generated quite a fuss. But it was such a groovy snapshot in time that Father Borstelmann's colorful antics were tolerated. In fact, the old stodgy clergy of the past just didn’t jibe as well with the folk masses, female altar boys, and the "sign of peace" hand shaking that were becoming the rage. When my fifth-grade homeroom teacher, the benevolent Sister Lyse, took up a collection to buy Father Borstelmann a well-earned Christmas gift, she bought him a carton of his favorite smokes—Marlboro—from all of us.

At his Cardinal Spellman appearance—for reasons that now escape me—Father Borstelmann, the Marlboro Man, wanted to know where each one of us hung. No, not how it hung, but where we hung out in the neighborhood?

“Where do you hang?” he asked, going up and down the rows of students.

I recall being the first one questioned—or very close to it—and felt the weight of the world thrust upon me.

“I don’t really hang out anywhere,” I said, embarrassed that I hadn’t come up with anything more profound.

“So, when you’re home…you’re pretty much home?” Father Borstelmann countered.

“Yes.”

It fast became apparent that my St. John’s alumni were similarly perplexed by this hanging interrogation. Soon after my response—honest, if nothing else—some kid named the street where he lived, Corlear, as his preferred hanging spot. Hey, why didn’t I think of that one! And once the remaining lemmings in the room realized this response was copacetic with Father Borstelmann, out came all the street names on the neighborhood map: "Irwin...Naples Terrace...West 230th Street."

Finally, Father Borstelmann posed the same question, which he had asked at least a couple of dozen times, to a friend of mine.

"Where do you hang, Jim?” he queried.

“No specific location,” Jim replied to laughter and a few snickers from his schoolmates.

Most of his peers enjoyed this clever rejoinder to a question that had long since become a colossal bore and less than edifying. But there were a few detractors in the room, who didn’t appreciate what they considered a haughty answer to an inoffensive query from a well-intentioned priest. Oh, I don't know, but perhaps authority figures merit a wee bit of disrespect every now and again. Thank you, Jim.

I’m With Stupid: Life in the Here and Now

Several weeks ago, fate moved its huge hand, and I found myself at a scrap metal yard in the East Bronx. The business was not too far from where I attended high school many moons ago. Naturally, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to return to the hallowed grounds of Cardinal Spellman for a look-see, perhaps for the final time. While the building’s exterior footprint was largely unchanged from my time there, the facade appeared seedier. Forty-five years and counting will do that. Some of the school’s brickwork was painted over—a slap-job white, probably to mask graffiti. Even the school’s special-occasion-entry bronze doors had lost their luster. And, alas, the little chapel and convent out back looked forlorn. Once upon a time, the nuns who taught at Cardinal Spellman lived there. They were Sisters of Charity, an order which announced in 2023 the end of new memberships and thus its death knell.

The world has certainly changed since I rode the not-so-special “special busses” to and from high school. When I picked up my diploma after graduating in the waning days of June 1980, Mr. Cleary, dean of discipline, shook my hand and wished me well. Jimmy Carter was the president then and not anticipating losing his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan in November. And, I daresay, not anticipating living to be one hundred. Carter passed away in December. 

During my school years, I was an inveterate collector of countless things, including autographed photos of politicians—members of Congress, governors, mayors, and more. Typically, I would write a brief letter of praise—often faux praise—to a public servant and climax with a request for an autographed picture. I was absolutely non-partisan in my collecting. At the time, I could have named every United States Senator and every state’s governor. Nowadays, I can’t make that claim, largely because I’ve zoned out and lost respect for most office holders. The men and women that I do know are often infamous in my eyes for one reason or another. Hanging a photo of Josh Hawley, Chris Murphy, or J.B. Pritzker on my wall is the last thing I’d want to do. I even wrote to Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and got an autographed photo back. Marco Rubio’s John Hancock? I’ll pass on that.

We live in stupid times now. I wish I could say otherwise. In 1980, I couldn’t imagine the world of today, nor would I have wanted to. Every day brings something new and stupid. In fact, the roster of stupid defies belief sometimes, but it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Today’s leading idiocy is courtesy of Taylor Lorenz, who was recently employed by the New York Times—the "paper of record." She tweeted: “‘You don’t have enough respect for the sanctity of 9/11’ is such a ridiculously out of touch and frankly boomer ass take in 2025. 9/11 has been a punchline for over a decade, ppl are having 9/11 themed parties and there are 9/11 parody t shirts and memes all over.” Well, this boomer ass take of mine thinks you are pathetically uninformed, vile, and in need of major psychological help. Does anybody know of anyone who has thrown a 9/11 themed party? A punchline? Sadly, this woman speaks for a lot of dunderheads out there.

Okay, so maybe Joe Biden wasn’t one of the worst presidents of all time—because he wasn’t actually functioning as president. Yes, the Biden family has fed from the influence-peddling trough for a long, long time. But many of the same folk who rightfully cited the Biden brood corruption think it’s peachy keen for Donald Trump to accept an airplane from a foreign country that sponsors Islamic terrorism. Not a peep about the peddling of pardons of no-goods for cash. It’s out in the open for sure, but corrupt and unethical just the same. I won’t mention the sale of worthless meme coins with Trump’s scowling image on them, which will enrich his family and few others. You can’t make this stuff up.

On the local scene in these incredibly stupid times: I just voted by absentee ballot in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. We have rank-choice voting now—one through five. The candidates running who I knew something about, I deemed—by and large—unacceptable. Brad Lander, Scott Stringer, and Zohran Mamdani didn’t rank with me. The latter—a state assemblyman from Queens—is a card-carrying socialist proposing a series of unrealistic and ridiculous freebies, including a rent freeze, eliminating bus fares, city-run grocery stores, and raising the city minimum wage to $30/hour! In lieu of additional policing, Mamdani believes public safety can be enhanced by “dignified work, economic stability, and well-resourced neighborhoods.” Yada, yada, yada—where have I heard that progressive pablum before? I never thought it possible that I’d say this, but the disgraced Andrew Cuomo is the pick of a very bad litter. At least he understands the basics of governing. And to think when I was in high school, the 1977 Democratic mayoral primary featured bona fide heavyweights like Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo, incumbent Abe Beame, Herman Badillo, Percy Sutton, and Bella Abzug. Talk about a real choice.

What stupidity will tomorrow bring? It’s hard to top the Homeland Secretary being unaware of the meaning of habeas corpus, or the latest kooky conspiratorial podcaster getting an administration job. Love this headline: “GOP Bill Would Force D.C. to Call Its Metro the ‘Trump Train’.” Rest assured, the sun will rise tomorrow and further stupidity with it.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer

(Originally published on 6/6/21)

When we have a cup of coffee in the afternoon, it doesn’t taste quite the same as that coveted morning brew. It’s something akin to the unforgettable, evocative, and ubiquitous hazy, hot, and humid nights of summers during our youths. The uncomfortably stuffy evenings of our adulthoods just don’t pack the same allure. Once upon a time, being a kid in summertime had its benefits—school being out for starters—and we expected and more-or-less embraced the inevitable heat and humidity one-two punch. And, of course, there was baseball, the quintessential summer game—both the professional variety and the personal variations of the sport that we played with abandon in the warmest of warm and sticky air masses.

There, too, was nothing quite like attending a baseball game at night during the hottest of dog days. Dog days and hot dogs at the ballpark—who could ask for anything more? In the grips of pre-game exhilaration—days before as a matter of fact—a friend of mine would proclaim, “First round of hot dogs is on me!” The frankfurter in that singular time and place mattered. And as our sneakers stuck to Shea Stadium’s concrete stands, runways, and bathrooms as we exited into the soupy nights—courtesy of countless spilled watery beers and flat sodas—fond memories were made. I never minded coming home from a ballgame reeking of second-hand cigarette smoke. On the other hand, beginning and ending each day of high school stinking like a dirty chimney—from smoking teens on sardine-packed school busses—elicits no such nostalgia.

Recently, I watched the Netflix documentary The Sons of Sam: Descent Into Darkness. The series of murders and shootings by David Berkowitz—and probably others—occurred in 1976 and 1977, when the latter’s New York City summer also featured a brutal heatwave, blackout, and widespread looting and vandalism. The serial crimes were recurring headlines in the local tabloids and young people—who fit the targeted profiles—were understandably apprehensive to be out and about at night. When Berkowitz was finally apprehended, I was in Boston with an older neighbor and brother. We spied the front-page story on a newspaper in a then commonplace sidewalk machine and had to secure one to commemorate our trip and the huge news from our hometown—the “Son of Sam”capture.

The prior night—the night of the arrest, August 10, 1977—the three of us attended a game at Fenway Park, a slugfest in which the home team Red Sox eked out a victory, 11-10, over the visiting Angels. It was a night to remember, for sure, appropriately hazy, hot, and humid. And, yes, our footwear stuck bigtime to Fenway Park’s stands, runways, and bathrooms—the antiquated men’s bathrooms where one and all urinated into a long trough at our feet. But such once-in-a-lifetime experiences are the stuff of lasting memories. The “Son of Sam” denouement was colossal news and our trip to Beantown—from our perspectives at the time—was also a big deal. I was only fourteen during the adventure and Boston seemed far, far away from the world I knew in the Big Apple, which was then a mess but with a certain character and charm that it very definitely lacks in the here and now. The Democratic mayoral primary race in 1977—a heated affair in that sultry summer—featured the likes of Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo, Bella Abzug, Percy Sutton, Herman Badillo, and embattled incumbent Abe Beame. There were a few political heavyweights in that lineup vying to be mayor in what were troubled times. Fast forward forty-four years and troubled times are back with a vengeance. But where are the heavyweights? Perhaps they have gone the way of those hazy, hot, and humid nights—the ones we used to know.

All Hail, Cesar!

(Originally published 4/18/16)

Once upon a time, I was a collector of many things, including autographs. As a teen, I wrote letters to individual baseball players care of their teams and requested their signatures. I even bought mailing lists with players’ home addresses and sent them baseball cards to sign, which most of them eventually did. Asking for autographed pictures, I sent fan letters, too, to politicians in Congress and in state houses, and almost always got them. Granted, some of the John Hancocks were the work of autopens and, the worst of them all, rubber stamps. And there were even some very high-quality secretary forgeries in the mix.

However, most of the autographs were real and many of them personalized to me. As both a young man and a collector, I was completely non-partisan in this endeavor. I received autographs from everyone from Ted Kennedy to Jack Kemp; Henry “Scoop” Jackson to Tom Bradley. New York Governor Mario Cuomo personally inscribed a photo to yours truly, and so did Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, although he misspelled my name as “Nick Negro.” The Bush autograph was authenticated and—courtesy of financially hard times sometime later in the adult world—I sold it at auction for $175.

In the early 1980s, Louie, our cigar-chomping neighborhood mailman, used to open our unlocked front door in the Bronx, walk into the hall, and place the mail on the bottom step of the staircase leading to our upper-floor apartment. Aside from leaving his cigar bouquet calling card, he would sometimes cry out: “You got another letter from the government!” My autographed pictures typically arrived in 9”x 12” official manila envelopes with a piece of cardboard in them, so that Louie and his P.O. brethren would avoid their natural inclinations to bend and batter mail. I think Louie came to believe we were a family of spies or secretive government agents. My father, a veteran post office man himself, eventually assuaged Louie's worst fears.

Beyond baseball players and pols, I also purchased a mailing list of celebrity home addresses one time and was excited to send a couple of “Joker cards" from the “Bat Laffs” series to none other than Cesar Romero on San Vincente Boulevard in Los Angeles. I was quite surprised to receive a postcard a week or so later from Maria Romero, Cesar’s older sister. She informed me that her brother was doing dinner theater in Texas but would be more than happy to sign my "Joker cards" when he returned. Now this was going beyond the call of duty, I thought. And a couple of months later, I not only found the signed Joker cards in my mail, but two more autographs of Cesar as well—one a photograph of him as the Joker inscribed “To Nick Nigro, A big hello from The Joker” and another of Cesar as Cesar. And it was all in an envelope the man personally addressed himself. He paid the postage and affixed, too, a “Cesar Romero” return address label on the envelope—one he probably got as a "thank you" for contributing to a favorite charity. He also alerted the post office minions they would be handling a photo, which was to be treated accordingly. Of course, Cesar being Cesar said, "Please." I had always heard Cesar was a class act and liked by just about everyone—and the proof was in the Joker cards signing. All hail, Cesar!

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Rocky's Road

(Originally published 9/2/11)

I had a teacher in the sixth grade affectionately known as— courtesy of his surname—“Rocky.” The school year was 1973-74, and Rocky stood out from the pack in this parochial grammar school of mine for several reasons. For starters, there were very few men teaching in grades one through six back then. This, too, must have been his first teaching job. He was quite young and occasionally showed up for work on the disheveled and scruffy side, like he’d been out late the night before doing what some people do in the wee hours. And no, I don’t think he was moonlighting as a cab driver or a night watchman.

But there was something really right about Rocky, even if he didn’t always make time for the morning shave. Clear-eyed or bleary-eyed, it didn’t matter; he was the genuine article—a dedicated teacher. The school had its fair share of dedicated old schoolteachers, including Sister Camillus, who only a year before publicly humiliated me when I misspelled the word “paid” as “payed.” “Imagine a fifth grader who doesn’t know how to spell the word ‘paid’!” she bellowed in her less than dulcet tones. Rocky didn’t embarrass students in front of his or her peers over a spelling error. Private consultations were more his style. So, no, there was never an “Imagine a sixth grader who doesn’t know how to spell the word ‘paid’!” moment in Rocky’s classroom.

And Sister Camillus was also not the sort of educator to accompany her class to the park down the street after a late winter snowstorm. Rocky not only did but commanded our attention at the park’s entrance. “Since this is probably going to be the last snowstorm of the season,” I recall him saying rather earnestly, “I thought we should assemble here to have our last…SNOWBALL FIGHT!” With these fighting words, Rocky proceeded to swipe snow off of a parked car’s front hood onto his momentarily startled students. Really, I just couldn’t see old Sister C initiating a snowball fight. Innocent as it all was, Rocky just couldn’t get away with throwing snow in the faces of eleven- and twelve-year-old boys and girls in the twenty-first century.

Rocky’s last hurrah involved a class trip to Bear Mountain State Park on the Hudson River Day Line, which back in the 1970s sailed north from Manhattan’s West Side. I remember only a few snippets from this trip. Foremost, I almost fell to my death—or so it seemed at the time—while mountain climbing, or whatever the peewee-equivalent of that is called. If my memory is correct, we went off with our friends—rather loosely supervised—to wherever we wanted to go and were instructed only to return to the dock area at a prescribed time. Imagine a school trip like that today. I remember, too, a couple of kids passing around a lit pipe on the boat, which wasn’t burning tobacco. They were also brandishing assorted pills, which weren't Tylenols. Simpler times in the sixth grade of a Catholic grammar school when Richard Nixon was the president. I may have been rather innocent at the time, but it appeared some others were a lot less so.

Thanks to the sprawling Internet, and Rocky’s atypical last name, I tracked the man down in the virtual ether. He’s still a teacher. It’s been his life’s work. And, wow, he must be sixty by now. While there are likely no more snowball fights, or minimally supervised field trips, in Rocky’s profession today, it appears he’s adapted nicely to both teaching’s new world order and the world we live in.

Indisputably Simpler Times

(Originally published 8/1/11)

Often with my tongue firmly planted in cheek, but not always, I am wont to make reference to “simpler times.” However, in this particular recollection of what was, the jury is unanimous: Simpler times indeed.

Kingsbridge in the Bronx’s last remaining victory garden on the northwest corner of W232nd Street and Tibbett Avenue survived the tumultuous 1960s. Simpler times—in the antithesis of simpler times for the country at large—were still possible back then. It’s just the way things were, beginning with the real estate agent who gave my grandfather and several locals permission to plant a garden on multiple empty lots up for sale and owned by two different people. "Keep the place clean" was all he asked of them.

So, yes, these men with the green thumbs had carte blanche. They could erect a fence around their desired garden space. It could be made of bits and pieces of everything and anything imaginable—and it eventually was. They could even dig a well that tapped into the waters of Tibbetts Brook flowing several feet beneath the surface. Utilizing a fifty-gallon barrel with its bottom cut out, my grandfather knew just how to bring the water to ground level without it ever spilling over. They could build tool shacks, a horseshoe pit, and a bocce court, too. They could bring in myriad metals and woods to construct benches, tomato-plant cages, and other structures like bleachers for horseshoe-game spectators. They could relocate old furniture and a non-working refrigerator freezer to accommodate liquid refreshments and big blocks of ice. And, yes, they could throw festive parties there during holidays and on summer weekends with free-flowing alcohol on the premises. Without question these were simpler times, when no city bureaucracies interfered with any of this, and no slip-and-fall lawyers advertised on television. Today, the mere whiff of lawsuits would not permit all of the above on one’s own property—let alone on somebody else’s in a densely populated urban milieu.

I recall one of the garden men, the genial Mr. Brady, maintained his own personal shack, which was painted green. It was practically a little cottage with an old leather easy chair and couch inside, and a glass picture window of some kind. Attached to the Brady shack in back was the garden’s “bathroom,” a makeshift Portosan that consisted of a toilet seat atop a wooden stand with the requisite sized hole and a bucket down under to capture liquids and solids alike. With ample beer, wine, and spirits available during summertime parties, the bathroom was a busy place, and not for the faint of heart. And, yes, the bucket had to be emptied out on street level and into the city’s sewer system every now and then. A neighbor who lived down wind of the garden often complained that she smelled more than marigolds and tomato plants wafting in the humid summer air. As a young boy, the less than savory aspects of the garden didn’t bother me in the least. Everything was an adventure. In fact, my friend Johnny and I made a concoction on the garden grounds, if memory serves, consisting of our urines, rotten tomatoes, and other truly decaying and disgusting stuff found in the garden—and the more awful the better.

It was simpler times at this Bronx locale when, during the daylight hours, I often heard horseshoes clanking against their stakes, and occasional cheers rising for the ringers. And after sunset, with a party still going strong on garden terra firma, I would gaze from my vantage point directly across the street into a pitch-black canvass punctuated by only a few flickers of candlelight and lit cigarettes. And every now and then, I’d hear a local bus driver named Jean singing to the night: “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” Jean was renowned for crooning the songs of Ireland, and also for the time he picked up my father during a snowstorm while navigating his Broadway to Riverdale bus route and dropped him off at our front door—on a Kingsbridge back street a couple of blocks off his prescribed course. Yet another action, I daresay, lost to simpler times.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Of Late I Think of the Spaldeen

(Originally published 6/23/11)

During a recent stroll down memory lane, I unearthed an interesting tidbit of information. I knew that the Spalding Company, sometime in 1999, reintroduced to the marketplace what my contemporaries and I—once upon a time—fondly called a “spaldeen.” Sadly, this formerly ubiquitous and amazingly versatile, high-bouncing rubber ball was discontinued in 1979, a casualty of waning consumer interest and a baby boom gone bust. I was, however, unaware that the manufacturer had subsequently trademarked the ball’s illustrious nickname. So, technically—since I don't have a TM symbol at my disposal—I should be capitalizing Spaldeen.

But since this blog permits me to work from my own stylebook—unlike my corporate masters—spaldeen will remain lowercase in perpetuity as a well-earned tribute to the urban youth of yesteryear who played with the ball. To the generations of youngsters who coined the nickname more than a half century ago and followed this bouncing ball to so, so, so many intriguing places, the spaldeen belongs to you. But let’s give credit where credit is due. Upon the ball’s reintroduction after a two-decade hiatus, the Spalding Company valiantly endeavored to teach a new generation a few old tricks, as it were, by familiarizing them with the myriad games played in the past with this multifaceted rubber ball. (It is widely believed, by the way, that one particular New York City outer-borough accent perpetually mispronounced “Spalding”—the company named stamped on the pink and pleasantly rubber-scented ball—as “spaldeen.” And, as they say, the rest is history.)

Plucking out a fresh spaldeen from a plastic container atop the counter of Bill’s Friendly Spot—famous for both its delicious egg creams and not especially congenial atmosphere—was a familiar ritual for many of us in the old neighborhood. Aside from the legendary game of stickball, I could rattle off several others that I played with a spaldeen: Box Ball, Box Baseball, Curb Ball, Stoop Ball, Ace-King-Queen, SPUD, and Hit the Stick.

A couple of the games on a YouTube loop in my brain are true originals, unique to the concrete backyard lay of the land where I grew up. One was dubbed “Single, Double, Triple,” which involved tossing a spaldeen against the back wall of a three-family brick house on Tibbett Avenue, with an opponent stationed in the backyard of a three-family brick house on Corlear Avenue. A spaldeen that wasn’t caught in the air could either be a single (one bounce), double (two bounce), triple (three bounce), etc. Another progeny of our singular topography was simply called “Throw It Against the Wall.” It necessitated throwing—yes—a spaldeen against a patchwork cemented wall, with an opponent fielding everything that came off of it from pop flies to line drives to ground balls. It’s actually a little too byzantine to explain here without visuals, but, suffice it to say, it was the game neighbors and I played more than any other and longer than any other—into the early 1980s, in fact, even after the spaldeen was temporarily consigned to the ash heap of history and many of us were, chronologically at least, adults. We used tennis balls by then. Spaldeens, after all, were originally reject tennis balls sold dirt-cheap to wholesalers.

I really hate to end on a sour note here, but the Spalding Company's best laid plans of bringing back the spaldeen, and returning it to its former glory, have been largely unsuccessful. Most of the ball’s current sales end up on nostalgic baby boomers’ curio shelves, and not in the hands of boys and girls out and about on concrete or asphalt playing games that little people played for generations. I'm not likely to spy local boys playing Box Ball anytime soon, or girls playing Composition. “Composition letter S, may I repeat the letter S, because I like the letter S, spaldeen begins with the letter S.”

Come to the Front Desk Please

Once upon a time, I was summoned to jury service. Like clockwork every two years. I never shirked my civic responsibility and once sat as a juror in a criminal trial. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bronx County jury-duty experience was a bit different from today’s, I discovered, when I received a summons—my first in three decades—last month. For starters, twenty-first century technology didn’t exist back then. Clerks weren’t behind bullet-proof glass with laptops and scanners at their disposal. Fittingly, my service played out in a newer building—the glass-paneled “Hall of Justice”—and not the aging, main county courthouse on the Grand Concourse. The latter, where I previously served faithfully, is still operational, but no longer directly behind the since demolished and rebuilt Yankee Stadium. Changes on many fronts.

So, not only was I in a more modern location for jury duty, but I was subject to a more modern orientation. Thirty years ago, prospective jurors were lectured—hectored even—that jury duty was a duty. Employers were not obligated to pay their employees while serving—and don’t you forget it! Accept the responsibility and be responsible, including showing up on time. There was zero tolerance for tardiness. “You’ll be turned around and sent home,” the jury clerk intoned. “And marked absent and absent for the entire day.” Fast forward to the present and lateness, it seems, is no big deal. People were checking in more than an hour late without penalty.

Nowadays, when entering any government-related building, the first thing that leaps out at you is the pre-entry screening process: metal detectors and the wand. My last jury-duty date—before this year—was in April,1993, when folks came and went as they pleased at the courthouse. No metal detection required. In fact, a memorable line from yesteryear’s orientation was “Anyone carrying a gun, come to the front desk please.” This command never failed to elicit chuckles from prospective jurors. The orientation of the past, too, was devoid of contemporary identity gibberish and sans—believe or not—any mention of “non-binary.” The current male-female bathroom situations in the “Hall of Justice” mirror the times, I suppose—i.e., one can call on whichever biffy aligns with his/her/preferred pronoun “gender identity.” What could possibly go wrong?

This go-round, I was summoned for one voir dere, where the judge and respective lawyers ask questions of prospective jurors. A panel of sixty or so men and women was brought to a courtroom in pre-trial of a man charged with murder in the first degree. What was conspicuously at odds from past voir dere’s, I thought, was the initial query posed to the assemblage: Is there anyone who would find it impossible to sit for an approximate one-month trial? Save for twelve individuals, including yours truly, the remaining cast raised their hands and were excused no questions asked. This was once a pause-button matter. On a case-by-case basis, it necessitated approaching the bench and conferring in private with often unsympathetic judges and attorneys.

But that was then and this is now. After thinning the herd, the twelve of us were questioned—with the aid of a shared Ronco cordless microphone—for possible selection to the jury. In the end—out of approximately five-dozen people called for the panel—not a solitary soul was selected. We were all dismissed, too, after serving two days on jury duty and wouldn’t be summoned again in the Bronx for at least six years. That’s what the powers-that-be said.

What, pray tell, has changed? The numbers don’t add up. Two days’ service, mass dismissals without a fuss, and see you in six years. I served for nine days and sat through five voir deres—never picked for an actual jury—in my first jury-duty tour, then five days after that and three days after that. Lastly, I sat through a week-long trial as a juror. Pay was $14/day plus carfare back then. Today, it’s $40/day, no carfare, and the bathroom of your choice. Oh, did I mention the big screen TVs in the jury assembly room? I hadn’t seen a Family Feud episode since Richard Dawson hosted.

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stickball Bat

(Originally published on 6/10/11)

Stickball has been called the “poor man’s baseball.” An urban game largely associated with the streets of New York and some of its gritty metropolitan neighbors, like Jersey City, it’s the stuff of legend. Believed to have initially taken flight in the early 1920s, stickball was played on the streets with a broom handle and a rubber ball colloquially known as a “spaldeen.” Manhole covers served as bases and key game markers.

But like virtually every city street game from the past, stickball sightings are exceedingly rare these days. I can honestly say that my generation was the last to play it faithfully and informally in neighborhood after neighborhood—and in various incarnations, too—throughout the spring and summer months. My father and his pals played countless stickball games in the 1940s and 1950s on the local streets of Kingsbridge in the Bronx. In sharp contrast with today's mega-congestion, the streets were then lightly trafficked with very few parked cars to get in the way. From the photographic evidence in my possession, guys sometimes sported dress clothes and dress shoes while taking their cuts and sprinting around from sewer to sewer. Apparently, there was no such thing as going home and changing into more appropriate attire after work. It was play ball. And, also, people dressed up and remained dressed up on Sundays back then, stickball game or not.

By the time I came of stickball age, games were still played on the streets. Slowly but surely, though, a newer stickball incarnation took hold. It involved fast-pitching against a wall with a spray painted or chalk-outlined—and eventually even masking-taped—strike-zone box.

The combined one-two punch of youthful love of the game and corresponding lack of disposable income inspired my stickball compatriots, on occasion, to fish the neighborhood sewers for spaldeens—the ones that got away. Spaldeens on the streets were ubiquitous during my boyhood in the 1960s and 1970s and employed for a variety of purposes. Not surprisingly, a fair share of them inevitably found their ways into the four corner sewers at intersecting streets. Were it not for a long-handled fishing net, these landings might have been the spaldeens' final-resting places. Admittedly, the balls were foul-smelling and quite grimy to touch after we plucked them out of the sewers' putrid muck, and only marginally improved after we thoroughly hosed them down. Hand sanitizers would have come in handy in a time before hand sanitizers.

My stickball group eventually switched to tennis balls as our preferred orbs, but Bill Jr. of Bill’s Friendly Spot, a local candy store, chastised us when we returned broken bats bought from him. “How many times do I have to tell you guys!" he said. "You can’t use tennis balls with them!” The price we paid for purchasing stickball bats solely for their coolly painted yellows, reds, and blues were lectures from a cantankerous shopkeeper and no refunds to boot.

We once thought we had solved our stickball bat dilemma for all time with an aluminum broom handle taken from my mother’s mop. However, that thing was dinged, dented, and irreparably distorted in very short order. We likewise surmised that a super-thick wooden flagpole was a stickball bat godsend, but it, too, just wasn't up to the task. Shattering after only a couple of innings of play, the pole’s visible thickness evidently didn’t equate with its denseness. And one neighbor family was without a flagpole.

Eventually, a friend and stickball devotee discovered a very strong broom handle—as lean and mean as they came—at his family’s fish store. Our bat problems were forevermore solved—through, in fact, the very last game we played at nearby John F. Kennedy High School, the ideal locale for a stickball game. As is so often the case with so many things in life, we didn't realize at the time that our very last stickball game would be our very last—and the end of an era, too.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

It’s Not Your Grandfather’s School Cafeteria Anymore

(Originally published 1/20/16)

I have very few fond memories of high school. One, however, is the institution of fine learning’s cafeteria. Of course, I was a teenager back then—in the colorfully scintillating 1970s—with teen culinary tastes and peculiar gastronomic desires. I salivated over certain foods then that might very well leave me cold today. I truly don’t know if I’d appreciate the school’s exceptionally gooey Friday “grandma slices” of pizza or cardboard-textured Wednesday roast beef wedges (with optional Au jus)—personal favorites—as much now as I did when Jimmy Carter was president. I wonder, too, how my adult palate would take to the “Mashed Pot” served with the aforementioned roast beef wedge. Yes, that’s what the space-challenged cafeteria special board read every Wednesday. Were he still among the living, Cardinal Francis Spellman might have cried foul.

Anyway, while perusing my alma mater’s website recently, I came upon a link to its “cafeteria menu,” which I thought strange. When I clicked on it, a PDF file opened up with this week’s—Monday through Friday—menu. And it was the polar opposite of what I recall with such fondness. I remember that in addition to the daily specials, there was an always and every-day alternative: the ubiquitous hot dog. Frankfurters were thirty-five cents when I was a freshman; fifty cents, when I was a senior. Believe me: They were worth every penny and then some.

Suffice it to say: There are no dogs on today’s cafeteria menu. In fact, the place has been dubbed a “café” now and is run by a culinary outfit. (I won't hazard a guess as to what happened to all the cafeteria ladies.) This contemporary bill of fare features categories like “Chef’s Table,” “Jump Asian,” and “Tuscan Bistro.” Icons identify which foods are gluten free, vegetarian, and vegan. The vegetarian side dish for January 20, 2016 was “Risi e Bisi Rice, Roasted Zucchini, and Tomatoes.” The only thing resembling a vegetable—outside of potatoes—that I recollect eating in the school cafeteria was sauerkraut on my hot dog. It was the first and last time I sampled that shredded cabbage mush. Sauerkraut, though, taught me a valuable lesson: Appealing aromas don’t necessarily translate into taste sensations, particularly when they turn a perfectly edible wiener roll into a grotesque sponge. (The cafeteria ladies had to keep the lunch lines moving. Draining the sauerkraut before putting it atop the frankfurter didn’t happen.)

So, a long time ago on a Wednesday afternoon in wintertime, I enjoyed a roast beef wedge—with Au jus—and a mashed pot side in my school cafeteria. Today, I could have ordered “Chicken Scallopini Scampi,” “Hunan Chicken and Hong Sue Pork,” and “Fruited Barley Lentil Soup.” I could also have a refillable debit card to pay for it—a lunchtime E-Z pass. For sure: It’s not your grandfather’s school cafeteria anymore. Trouble is: I’m now the grandfather. How did that happen?