Mad Max 2

Time flies these days—even, it seems, when one is not having fun. It’s closing in on a year now since a very special diner, and a secular holy place, served up its last grilled hamburger and bacon, eggs, and home fries breakfast platter. And the really sad thing is that we won’t see its likes again around these parts. Changing tastes, astronomical rents, high operating costs, and a business-unfriendly bureaucracy have seen to that. The owner of this gritty eatery was there seven days a week—on the physical premises all the time with the exception of a several hours on Sunday—and did virtually all the cooking himself. While he was plying his culinary trade, it was the norm to both greet and bid farewell to this classic diner impresario. I miss the thunderous “Hi!” greetings and equally booming “Take care!” farewells from grill side.

I was reminded of both this personal and societal loss when I bumped into the diner’s number two man for many years. Fortunately, he has found work in the area. While I chatted with him, an old blowhard got out of a car and yelled over, “Hey, Pete!” I asked, “Wasn’t he a diner customer?” Pete replied, “A long time ago.” I, of course, knew that Max was indeed a patron. He was unforgettable.

Almost invariably, Max would double park his huge boat of a car and have arguments with people on the street before entering the diner. He ordered the same thing all the time—like so many of us did—and executed his usual pre-meal ritual. Before eating his ham and egg sandwich, he swallowed a medley of meds and then swigged from a bottle of Pepto-Bismal, which he pulled out of his jacket pocket. Max was always loud and loutish.

What surprised me about seeing Max in the flesh today was that I presumed he was long dead. The man was old, obese, and red-skinned many, many years ago. He appeared then to be among the living courtesy of those pockets full of pills and bottles of Pepto-Bismal. But there Max was—all these years later and in living color—double parked in a heavily trafficked thoroughfare and heading off to purchase lottery tickets, which was where Pete was going, too. Somehow, though, seeing Mad Max alive and well—albeit still old, obese, and red-skinned—made my day.

The World We Knew...and Know...

Courtesy of a compelling post and image today in a nostalgic Facebook group, which I am a member, I was reminded of The World Book encyclopedia. My parents purchased a set sometime in the late 1960s from a door-to-door salesman. It seems legitimate door-to-door salespersons really existed once upon a time, and that regular folks occasionally even purchased the things they were peddling. People coming to my door nowadays are, foremost, looked upon with great suspicion and completely ignored if possible.

Anyway, back to more pleasant thoughts and The World Book encyclopedia redux, which resurrected countless memories of school reports researched entirely within these thorough sources of information. Since computers and plagiarism software didn’t yet exist, our teachers had to deduce the Holmesian old-fashioned way whether or not little Jimmy and Mary Pat were turning in someone else’s intellectual property and claiming it as their own.

The World Book didn’t end with its A to Z reservoir of facts on everything from history to science to sports. Annually, the company forwarded its customers a special yearbook, updating the major scientific and technical breakthroughs, watershed cultural shifts, big news stories, and more. I don’t know why, but the things that fascinated me most in those yearbooks were their “Death of Notable Persons” sections. As a youth, I recall combing these lists of recently deceased celebrities, politicians, scientists, businesspersons, et al. There’s no substitute for a dead person to spur interest in all that he or she did to be included in a “Death of Notable Persons” roster in The World Book encyclopedia. I am happy to report that The World Book lives on in the digital age. I fear, though, that kids today don’t give too much thought to dead people of note, because for most of them life began yesterday.

Channeling Uncle Kevin

While I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, it was commonplace in the neighborhood for multi-generations to be living under the same roofs. Three family homes in the Bronx's Kingsbridge often housed three tenant families who were blood relations. One such extended family lived on the next block. A bachelor named Kevin resided in the ground floor apartment; his brother and sister-in-law directly above him.; and Kevin’s nephew, wife, and several great nieces and great nephews above them.

It seems just about everybody in the old neighborhood had a moniker of some kind. While Kevin wasn't related to me in any way, he was known to a lot of people, including me, as “Uncle Kevin.” What distinguished the man in that colorful snapshot in time was his wooden leg and stilted gait. If memory serves, he had lost a good portion of his right leg in World War I. Naturally, Uncle Kevin’s story fascinated us local kids. He was, however, a taciturn gentleman with an emotional force field around him, which we respected. In other words, we didn’t feel we should badger him with questions about how he lost his leg, what it’s like to strap on a wooden leg every morning, and can we—just maybe—have a look-see.

Fast forward forty years and Uncle Kevin came back into my life. No, not physically or via a medium’s séance. Rather, I thought about him when suddenly, and without fair warning, when I found myself wearing a locked leg. Not the wooden kind like Uncle Kevin wore, but one that functioned similarly. My high-tech, computerized prosthetic knee—the vaunted C-Leg—at long last malfunctioned after four and one-half years of noble service. And when it did, the knee locked up and assumed its safety mode. Wearers can awkwardly—and very gingerly—maneuver around in the safety mode. But until they are serviced, the C-Legs are little more than pricey peg legs.

When I first got my C-Leg, I asked my prosthetist about the ramifications of a dead battery or a computer malfunction. Putting my capacity to walk in a computer’s hands didn’t come naturally to me. “What would happen if I were out and about and something went awry?” I asked. “You’ll be able to get home,” he replied. And he was right about that. As a ten-year-old boy, I pined to see what Uncle Kevin’s leg looked like and kind of wished he was my real uncle. Now, pushing fifty—and courtesy of life’s unpredictable and sometimes Byzantine twists and turns—I’d appreciate a gander even more. I will, though, have to content myself by walking in Uncle Kevin’s shoes today, tomorrow, and for the immediate future—and hope I don't fall on my face along the way. Uncle Kevin—veteran and amputee—didn’t have it easy but, in retrospect, he made it look so.

A Night to Remember

Thirty-nine years ago on this very night—June 25, 1973—I attended my first Mets' game at “beautiful Shea Stadium.” That’s how announcer Curt Gowdy described the place a mere four years earlier in a World Series highlight film. Anyway, it was more than beautiful to me as a ten-year-old boy. From the vantage point of my wide-eyes, it was awe-inspiring—Shea Stadium was the quintessential Wonder of the World. While I had been to Yankee Stadium on multiple occasions, I had only seen the "Big Shea" through the screen of my family’s black-and-white television set. So, to experience Shea Stadium live and in living color with its totally unique ballpark din—in close proximity to LaGuardia Airport runways—made it a night to remember.

An older neighbor of mine chauffeured a bunch of us to the game in a fire truck red Rebel, a classic AMC car from early 1970s. We had acquired the tickets by cutting coupons from the backs of Dairylea brand milk cartons, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Looking back, the actual ticket values were $1.30 a pop—grandstand seating in the stadium’s uber-high altitude upper deck. (They cost a $1.50 a couple of years later.) The Mets just weren’t doling out box seats to the area’s milk carton cutters. But it was a simpler time when free tickets of any kind mattered.

While I remembered this very special day in history—hence this blog—I didn’t recall the starting pitcher or the lineup. I knew for certain my boyhood idol, Tom Seaver, wasn’t on the mound, and was pretty sure the legendary Willie Mays didn't get into the game, either. Yogi Berra was the team’s manager—I knew that—and a not especially memorable Met named Jim Gosger was one of the outfielders that night. I don’t know why I remembered Gosger being in the game, but I did. I recalled, too, the tragic outcome. Entering the ninth inning, my team led two to nothing. The opposition Chicago Cubs, however, scored three runs and won the game. I was cruelly razzed by a couple of older males who accompanied me to the ballpark—fans, of course, of my home borough's team in that other league and the Mets' cross-town rivals. Crestfallen, my older sister, who also was along for the ride, bought me a Mets' helmet as we exited paradise—so all was not lost. And life went on—almost four decades and counting as a matter of fact.

Postscript: Due to the magic of the Internet and the unfathomable depths of the information superhighway, I resurrected that evening’s box score. I was right about Jim Gosger. Tug McGraw blew a save opportunity and Jon Matlack took the loss that night. The attendance was 31,984 and the game time temperature was seventy degrees, close to where it is as I write these words.

Touched by a Rat

Angels touch some people, or so I hear. No such luck for me today, who was however touched by a rat at the 14th Street subway station in lower Manhattan. I’ve spotted these creatures there before, running along not only the tracks but the narrow platform as well. Suffice it to say this is not a good place to shriek “eek” and panic.

I suppose it doesn't help that I always seek out the last car of the subway train, which usually gets me a seat for the trip home, but also happens to be near a considerable garbage dumpster of some kind. While resting my weary body against this thing several hours ago, a rodent with a very long tail scurried by me and then returned for an encore over my foot simultaneous with a northbound Number 1 train pulling into the station. I genuinely feared my new friend might join me for the ride. Happily, though, it had other plans. While I’m not a superstitious sort, this kind of close encounter in an excessively humid, urine-smelling underground subway lair did not bode well for the future.

Subway rides can turn on a dime into a ride from hell. All it takes is one passenger or multiple passengers to make this nightmare a reality. Foremost, you don’t want to ride with a deranged soul who could conceivably kill you on the train. That didn’t happen today. You also don’t want a malodorous individual, who hasn’t bathed since the Clinton administration, to sit nearby. That didn’t happen, either. No, this group from hell was a couple of boorish families who never missed a beat in their ill-mannered, shrill, and stupid ways. The subway car was their playground. If I printed out a transcript of what I heard on the train from 96th Street in Manhattan until when I exited in the Bronx several miles later, there would be no periods in it. One woman even painted her nails on the journey while standing only inches away from me. I still have a headache.

I could decipher the disgust on the faces of the rest of the subway car’s passengers—a New York City melting pot if ever there was one—even though most of them were, on the surface, stone faced. Generally speaking,  people, including me, prefer not to confront boors, who live by their perverse boorish codes. In other words, they’ll scratch your eyes out for telling them to tone down their boorishness.

As the train inched closer and closer to where I called home, and this unsavory brood didn’t exit, I grew increasingly anxious. I dreaded the thought they might actually live near me and that I might actually see them again. When I heard one of them inquire as to where they were getting off, the reply sounded a little too much like my station. I was prepared to stay on the train. Turns out, I was mistaken and exited where I intended to exit. Walking ever so gingerly down this elevated subway station’s steps, I was greeted by a woman I know from my neighborhood who regularly asks passersby for quarters, even though she insists on at least a dollar’s worth of them. I said rather testily, “Can you at least wait until I get down?” She said she wanted to get something to eat from a local fast-food joint called Popeye’s. I gave her multiple quarters and she promptly hopped on a bus that pulled alongside her. She didn’t use the change to pay the fare, I detected, and the bus was poised to take her a long way from Popeye’s. Damn that rat. Evidently, angels don’t ride the subways. And I don’t blame them.

Thrice Bitten

Sadly, Pedro Borbon died a couple of weeks ago at the not-so-old age of sixty-five. He was a pretty good relief pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds—the Big Red Machine—during the 1970s. What I remember most about him, though, occurred during the National League playoffs in 1973 against my beloved Mets. That’s when Pedro took a hearty bite or two out of a Mets' baseball cap.

It occurred during a famous bench-clearing brawl initiated by a Bud Harrelson-Pete Rose dust-up at second base. After order was restored, Borbon, who had his own cap knocked off in a brouhaha with Mets' pitcher “Buzz” Capra, reached down to the ground and placed what he thought was his own cap on his head, except that it wasn’t. It belonged to outfielder Cleon Jones of the Mets. When Borbon realized his faux pas, he either bit a fair-sized hole in it or shred it to pieces, depending on which accounts you want to believe, and tossed it to the ground in utter disgust. Capra claims he still has the cap as a memento of that wild and wooly occurrence in an amazing comeback season.

Via a Google search, I couldn’t help but take a stroll down memory lane into the life and times of Pedro Bordon. And, you know what, I never knew he was a serial biter. I thought the Mets' cap was the long and short of his Dracula-esque antics. A year later, it seems, during another bench-clearing brawl, Borbon took a considerable bite out of the side of a Pittsburgh Pirates player named Daryl Patterson, who was actually given a post-game tetanus shot. Fast forward a few years and Borbon, in a Cincinnati disco, took another considerable bite out of someone's hide—well, actually, out of a bouncer's chest. When the exasperated Reds' management traded him away in 1979, urban legend has it that Borbon put a voodoo hex on the organization. He later denied the allegation. Evidently, the big shots either forgave him or believed him, because he was elected to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 2010. All’s well that ends well. RIP Pedro Borbon, a true original.

Why Donut Holes Matter

The Hubble Space Telescope did not take the image accompanying this blog. It is not a snapshot from the mystifying ether in some light-years away locale in our unfathomable universe. Rather, it’s an ordinary donut—plain as plain can be—that I placed directly on my scanner glass and one that’ll probably eat for breakfast tomorrow morning.

I purchased a six-pack of these donuts from one of my least favorite retailers and one that I patronize all the time—Rite Aid, a pharmacy chain that theoretically should be providing its customers with economies of scale bargains. They are not. Nonetheless, I was peculiarly struck by this dollar pack of six donuts and couldn’t resist. As far as I was concerned, the holes in each one of them set a new and incredibly low standard. What must today's onion rings look like? The donuts seemed, in fact, to embody the times we live in—a less for more society with little hope for a turnaround anytime soon.

Alas, our toilet papers’ widths have been considerably shaved while the circumferences of their cardboard nuclei have noticeably expanded. The bars of soap in our showers are smaller and less dense than ever before. In other words, they self-destruct in very short order after only a few full-body cleanings. And when half-gallons of our favorite orange juices morph into 59-ounce cartons and cost more, too, one cannot help but envision even bigger and bigger donut holes in the offing.

Let's Go to the Correction Tape

I’ve seen them hanging on store hooks for many years now. But somehow today, I was taken aback or, more aptly, taken back to simpler times. It’s the little things in life that mean so much. I’m truly heartened that liquid paper—correction fluid—still exists in some form in these fast changing and highly technological times we live in. It’s called “BIC Wite-Out” nowadays and on sale at Staples and your favorite office supplies retailer, too, I suppose.

Contemplating this product’s role in my life and times, I recalled that Michael Nesmith of The Monkees fame had some familial connection with its inventor. So, what is one to do in this modern age, but Google. In this instance: “Michael Nesmith Correction Fluid.” Yes, it was his mother and a lowly secretary, Beth Nesmith Graham, who invented what was originally called “Mistake Out.” Mother and son lived happily ever after—financially at least. And this explains, also, why Mike Nesmith had no interest in Monkees reunions and appearances at autograph signings and nerd-populated conventions.

Anyway, this modern day liquid paper sighting of mine had some serious legs. It returned me to Cardinal Spellman High School, thirty plus years ago, and a senior-year typing class. It’s where I learned to type on a manual typewriter. We physically had to push a handle to advance our papers to the next line. We used a product called "correction tape" then—not the fluid—to mask our many errors, which we thought was simultaneously clean, cool, and a major technological advance. From what I’ve recently gleaned, it was indeed that. It covered over our multiple typing miscues, yes, and it could not be used as an inhalant, which liquid paper—evidently—was by some wayward and experimenting youth in those days of yore.

Courtesy of computers and advanced printing capabilities, we can certainly turn out pristine-looking copy these days. The problem is that dummies and dumbness can look really sharp in the new millennium, without any liquid paper or correction tape, which presents a whole new set of problems for educators and entrepreneurs. You can’t judge a book by its cover…most especially in the here and now.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The New Call of the Wild

While sitting in the front passenger seat of my friend’s spanking new set of wheels yesterday, he announced that he needed to call his wife. Simultaneously, he wanted to show me just one example of his vehicle’s incredible technological prowess—an extra perk if you will. He informed me that he could now place the call without punching numbers into anything, or even locating a stored name in his cell phone address book. No, this phone call of his could be made exclusively with voice commands uttered in the general direction of the car’s dashboard.

I listened as my friend said, “Call.” Awaiting a response, he gazed intently at the magical dashboard. The ghost in the machine was, however, uncooperative and, evidently, couldn’t decipher this introductory salvo of his—the one that was supposed to get this hands-off phone call business rolling. It responded all right, but with words to the effect that it was unable to make heads or tails of the command. I don’t know why, but it sort of reminded me of a Marine sergeant chiding his underlings: “I can’t hearrrrr you!”

After a few more unsuccessful attempts, I said to my friend, “Why don’t you just place the call the old fashioned way?” But he would have none of it. “Call,” he said. The obstinate ghost in the machine again told him something just wasn’t kosher. “Call.” “I can’t hearrrrr you!” “Call!” “I can’t hearrrrr you!” “Call!!!” “I can’t hearrrrr you!”

After about half a dozen of these “Call” commands getting louder and louder and leading to dead ends each and every time, I excused myself. My friend, who is pushing eighty, was clearly under the bewitching spell of a computer chip somewhere in his car's dashboard. Were we both in a Twilight Zone episode? As I walked away from the car, I heard yet another “Call” of the wild, and then another one after that. I haven’t spoken to my friend since, but I sure hope that call went through and that he didn’t, in fact, enter the Twilight Zone for real.

Strange Things Are Happening...

It was eighty degrees in the Bronx today. It felt like summer but smelled like spring—and an accelerated spring at that—which is an unnatural fusion that always makes me feel a bit off, even melancholy (although not to the degree of Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut). I don’t exactly know why. I suspect it’s got something to do with body chemistry, or maybe it just reminds me of my schooldays, when fleeting whiffs of summertime were transient reminders of what was in the offing or, worse yet, what had just passed. Perhaps these false summers underscored the hell I felt was experiencing. Looking back, I guess I didn’t like school all that much, although higher education certainly had its moments. But then we were finished with all that college stuff in the middle of May.

As I write these words, the scents of lilacs and some other spring shrubs that I can’t identify are wafting through my open window—again much earlier than they normally would be. A big ash tree just outside is greener than I‘ve ever seen it at this time of year. And, my pansies are already getting that stringy quality—typically a late spring phenomenon and byproduct of the increasingly hotter days of May and June.

Very soon in this most peculiar springtime, the Mister Softee truck will materialize and pull into a nearby driveway. I will then be compelled to listen as the franchisee chums for business with the Mister Softee jingle playing on a loop—way too loudly and for way too long in my opinion. And on top of all that, the fumes from the idling truck will quickly consume the natural spring fragrances in the ether. Yes, even Mister Softee began making his appointed rounds earlier this year.

A couple of years ago, I got on a Mister Softee milkshake kick for $4.50 a pop and, if one is to trust the truck's calorie chart, 450 calories a serving. During that period, the Mister Softee ambiance didn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I welcomed the sight, sounds, and smells as part of the abiding Mister Softee experience. Now that I've sworn off the milkshakes as too rich for my blood, it drives me bananas. Honestly, the Mr. Softee jingle plays in my ears long after the truck pulls away. It's insidious. But I am not Mayor Bloomberg, nor a member of the New York City council, who seem to know what's best for us on a whole host of fronts. I can live with Mister Softee and his music, just as I can with this spring—where strange things are happening.

The Three Stooges in the New Age

As a boy, I recall watching The Three Stooges on local station WPIX, Channel 11. A genial host by the name of Officer Joe Bolton would introduce the shorts. Festooned in a police uniform, this affable authority figure would always tell us the stooges were only acting, and that we should definitely not poke our family and friends in the eyes or whack them over the head with hammers. I suppose there were a small percentage of kids who mimicked the stooges and slapped their peers’ faces with unrestrained force and blow-torched their backsides. The vast majority of us, though, knew it wasn’t real. Even at the tender young ages of six, seven, and eight, we had no problem distinguishing fantasy from reality.

A grammar school friend of mine had parents who wouldn't under any circumstances allow him to watch The Three Stooges. They thought Moe, Larry, and Curly (and later Shemp and Joe Besser) celebrated violence and encouraged bullying. In other words, The Three Stooges set a very poor example. My friend’s parents were—for lack of a better word—“progressives” at a time and in a neighborhood when that sort of thing was the exception to the rule. I’m not here to pass judgment on their parenting skills—one way or the other—almost forty years later. A case certainly could be made that The Three Stooges were definitely more suited for maturer audiences than second, third, and fourth graders.

When I watch The Three Stooges all these years later, I see them in a decidedly different light—a new light in fact. They are, really and truly, New Age. True, they aren’t for children in the new millennium—where fantasy and reality have become so blurred that even a contemporary Officer Joe Bolton couldn’t save the day. The Three Stooges nonetheless teach us so many things. We can live vicariously through Moe, Larry, and Curly. We don’t need to ever express our anger and frustrations with aggressive and callous acts when we have the stooges, who can do it for us. The Three Stooges are, I think, the quintessential New Age therapy, and we owe Moe, Larry, and Curly (and Shemp and Joe Besser, too) a monumental debt of gratitude.

Mr. Pathmark and Life Lessons

A Pathmark supermarket commercial from the past is the wind beneath the wings of this essay. I am pleased to report this northeastern chain of stores is still around, which is good news considering the demise of so many others, including Bohack, Grand Union, and Peter Reeves. I’m happy, too, to convey that “Mr. Pathmark,” the longtime spokesperson for the grocery store is alive as well, and still active at the ripe old age of eighty-nine.

While I’m pretty good in linking old and recognizable character actors’ faces with their names, this fellow always gave me fits. The face and especially the voice were as familiar as familiar can be in the New York City area. That's because he was ubiquitous on local television—for decades—as Pathmark’s genial and trusted pitchman.

In the final episode of the long-running and popular Little House on the Prairie television show, a super-greedy, unctuously creepy entrepreneur clandestinely but legally bought up all of the land in the town of Walnut Grove. He attempted to drive the locals—one and all—away. Left with little recourse, the townspeople decided to blow up all of the buildings, which they owned, with dynamite—painful as that was—to zing this bloodless, over-reaching capitalist. And the actor who played villain Nathan Lassiter was none other than “Mr. Pathmark,” James Karen.

This veteran of Broadway, television, and film took on the role of a scoundrel—the man largely responsible for the incineration of an incredibly warm and fuzzy, syrupy special TV town. But he was simultaneously “Mr. Pathmark.” I recall reading somewhere that the supermarket chain received oodles of letters demanding Mr. Karen’s firing. After all, how could they employ the ghastly man who forced the men and women of Walnut Grove to blow up their homes and businesses? Mr. Karen was understandably upset that he could lose a very good job because a certain percentage of the public couldn’t decipher fantasy from reality—couldn’t separate a television show depicting a town in the 1880s with a guy reporting on sales of toilet paper, frozen peas, and laundry detergent one hundred years later.

I nevertheless take solace that “Mr. Pathmark” not only lives, but has left an enduring legacy for those of us who grew up in the northeast and watched television in the simpler times—with the simpler supermarkets—of the 1970s and 1980s.

Big Retailer Is Watching You

Not too long ago, I visited the retail shop of an old friend. Well, actually, the owner of a pet food and supply superstore successfully waging battle against Petco and PetSmart, the predominant national chains. Once upon a time, I worked alongside this very same man in the very same industry. I daresay it was a simpler time on numerous fronts. In my fledgling years in this business, the aforementioned big-box retailers didn’t exist. And even after they arrived on the scene, they were relatively few in number and not yet in the New York City metropolitan area. By and large, mom-and-pops ruled the roost in the 1980s and into the early-1990s in what was definitely a rapidly expanding trade.

In the early years of my affiliation with the business of pets, primitive computers played an infinitesimal role only. We didn’t scan merchandise at the point-of-sale and track store inventory with them. We actually handwrote product orders and called our suppliers on land-line telephones. As you might imagine, this process took an awful lot of time with hundreds of individual products having to be read out—one by one by one—and transcribed by hand on the receiving end. As far as we were concerned, the advent of the Fax machine was akin to the invention of the wheel and the printing press.

But what was most striking to me in my friend’s contemporary retail setting—in close proximity of where the old place conducted business—was modern technology meeting the modern consumer. Thievery is more rampant than ever, I was told. Sure, it was a considerable problem—with customers and employees alike—even back in the day. But now it’s off-the-charts. So much of the merchandise is locked tightly in cases, or on hooks that require a manager’s key to set them free. In the store’s backroom office is a wall of cameras covering every square foot of the place, including the cashiers’ stations. My old friend can thus watch all the goings-on from the comforts of his office and, he says, in his living room at home, too.

When I was on the retail frontlines, the pinching of stuff was largely for personal use. You know: Somebody would steal a flea collar for his dog, or a tube of Petromalt for his cat’s hairball problem. Now, apparently, stealing big-ticket items to sell on eBay and elsewhere is big…really big. It’s all kind of sad that it’s come to this: Big-box retailers driving out mom-and-pops—both small and not so small—and each one of them having little choice but to watch our every move, be we shoppers or hired hands.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Prose and Con

While combing through my vast personal archives recently, I encountered a mother lode of materials from my high-school days, including a junior-year English class essay. It was a character sketch of some sort on King Arthur that I wrote more than thirty years ago. I remembered only being very pleased when I got it back with a “great! 100” scrawled atop it. I showed it to a buddy of mine—an aspiring writer even as a teenager—who harrumphed and promptly informed me in no uncertain terms how really lame it was. Teens are a very competitive bunch.

Reading this essay all these years later made me cringe, which is what I typically do when visiting past scribblings from high school, college, and well beyond those years, too. I would like to believe this boyhood pal of mine was practicing a variation of tough love, and that he was merely prodding me to strive to do better, and then better than that, and not to ever rest on my laurels. Without him, I might still be wallowing in high-school prose like this: “Arthur was a weak man. He was weak in character and he was weak physically. He needed a cane to support himself, and when he spoke he sounded like a growling tiger. He loved to bark out orders and he loved attention.”

Thirty plus years ago at the callow age of sixteen, I wasn’t entertaining a dream of one day being a writer, or really anything else for that matter. When I entered Manhattan College a couple of years later, I initially planned on—for lack of a better idea—studying accounting. I took the introductory course, Accounting 101, required of all business students and fast ruled out that notion. I had an affable sixty-something professor who, if memory serves, returned his corrected exams to us in grade order—highest to lowest. I somehow figured that out. And I was not just one among the bottom feeders in the class, hopelessly trapped in the sediment at the bottom of the barrel.

At that point in my life, basic accounting was the most boring subject matter imaginable. Nevertheless, I had little choice but to sign on with part two of this opening salvo during a second semester. I can confidently say that not knowing what the hell has gone on in act one is a harbinger for bad tidings during the second. Still, I carried on with the very same professor, who didn’t instill accounting basics in my eighteen-year-old brain on the first go-round, because he was at once very genial and—apparently—graded on a warm and reassuring curve. In other words, as long as you showed up for his class, being completely clueless merited a “C.”

I would very likely be in better financial shape had Accounting 101 and 102 struck my fancy in 1980 and 1981, but it just wasn’t meant to be. And that friend of mine who unmercifully scoffed at my high-school essay subsequently served as one of my writing mentors. He still scoffs on occasion but—in the big picture—destiny’s child is spawned in some of the oddest places and under the strangest of circumstances.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Death Be Not Proud...in the Twenty-first Century

Prior to the new millennium, I didn’t give that much thought to serious illness, medical matters, and the possibility of shuffling off this mortal coil in the blink of an eye. The only time I had called on a doctor in my adult life up to the age of forty, and somewhat beyond that, was for waxy build-up in an ear. A summer vacation's sea water compounded the problem, which I made considerably worse with my repeated attempts to clear out the thing. The ought years, however, altered my thinking patterns on the subject of life and death, and not just because of what happened to me but to so many others as well.

We should all have living wills. Perhaps I will make one someday. We should also make absolutely clear whether we wish to be waked at a funeral parlor at quite an expense, and have all too many people feel obliged to send costly flower arrangements that will find their way into the undertaker's trash in under twenty-four hours. I should, too, attend to this matter.

But right now, I’m more interested in the phone call or Internet announcement of my death. One of the most difficult things for family members and friends to do upon a death of a loved one is to notify others of the passing. Obviously, certain folks merit notification that a close relation, or good friend, is no longer among the living. This is not something the human species enjoys doing as a rule, and I was thinking of those who might someday have to pass along this final word vis-à-vis me.

So, here’s my proposal in this technological age of ours with iPhones, Flip Cams, and social media outlets like Facebook, to make everyone’s life a whole lot easier. Why don’t we all—in addition to preparing our living wills, etc.—record our “I’ve just died” or “I’m dead” YouTube and such videos right now, so that others in our lives can place them on social media sites, or use the audio portions to make robo-telephone calls to those who really and truly merit one. This would not only benefit the living compelled to both sorrowfully and awkwardly announce a dearly departed’s death, but also add a special touch, too—from you and from me. Now that it’s so possible, we should, in fact, be the ones who announce we are dead as a doornail—and not somebody else. I, for one, will be recording my “I am dead” proclamation and I hope you will join me.

Goodbye, Mr. Fence

Some four decades ago, a family moved into the old neighborhood. They purchased a Tudor-style single-family house. It bordered on the extended communal backyard of three-family homes where I grew up and where I played wiffle ball, catch, and touch football.

The new family on the block was an odd one. The parents were older and so were their three sons. There were thus no tailor-made bonds between them and us. The patriarch of the family was actually kind of scary. I think he liked to drink a little more than he should have, and also suspect he was a bit off. It seemed the man’s abiding obsession was tending to the fence at the end of our shared backyards, so that no one could even look into—never mind enter—his. He was constantly patching it up. In those days in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge, patchwork fences were pretty commonplace. Aesthetic appeal took a back seat to utilitarianism almost every time. Still, it just couldn't be helped. Our various spaldeens, hockey pucks, and rubber hard balls from our lengthy concrete play land often pelted his revered fence and the fence owner did not like it—not one bit.

The ten-year-old me assigned our mysterious neighbor the moniker: “Mr. Fence.” The family was so detached and secretive that most of us on the block didn’t even know their surname. So, some of the locals came to believe the family’s last name was actually “Fence.” I recall overhearing an elderly neighbor of mine saying that she saw “Mr. Fence” at Sunday Mass, and the little me felt sort of proud at having infused this almost-sinister local character with, if you will, character.

Mrs. Fence, on the other hand, mostly stayed indoors. Eventually, she made a friend with another standoffish neighbor, who gleefully reported to one and all how Mrs. Fence believed what an unfriendly neighborhood, with very unfriendly people, we lived in. At some point in time, my brother and I were peddling on our front stoop smooth-looking rocks that we had amassed —I think along the Jersey Shore where we vacationed—and painted, adding slogans to a few of them like “New York, the Big Apple.”

When Mr. Fence plucked down a quarter for a “New York, the Big Apple” rock, I never again saw him in quite the same negative light. I was certain he didn’t really want a not especially special stone with the words “New York, the Big Apple” scrawled on it with magic markers. The man went out in style. I will thus remember my customer, Mr. Fence, and not the guy who had the trunk of his car searched by the police for a gun—that some Exxon gas station attendant down the block had reported seeing during a routine inspection. Goodbye, Mr. Fence…and thank you for the business.

Revenge of the Formerly Young Person...

Some time ago in the Internet’s infancy, and before the advent of social media, I was walking along the streets of the old neighborhood with an old friend from the old neighborhood. And when a generic, run-of-the-mill middle-aged man walked past the two of us, I thought nothing of it, but my friend paused and reflected on what he had just beheld. He turned to me and said, “I think that was a formerly young person” who just passed by.

He didn’t know exactly who it was, or even the person’s surname, but somehow he was certain it was someone from the neighborhood who was, once upon a time, a young person—a kid just like we were. And really, this is largely the way it was before the World Wide Web and things like Facebook. Formerly young persons were rare sightings—chance encounters, usually, with fellow formerly young persons. And it was the way we thought it would always be.

Conversation of the past went like this: “Do you remember that kid Billy Schmidt, who we went to school with? I wonder whatever happened to him? He was a bit off.” And, for the most part, Billy Schmidt from the old neighborhood and the old grammar school—well—his life and times beyond that brief window of youth would remain in perpetuity, with countless others, a blank entry in a “Whatever Became of?" This sort of anonymity had its place, too. It maintained a certain illusion of all that was that could not in the least be sullied by what is. It, in many ways, froze time and even turned back the clock in the best possible way.

Fast forward to the present and ever advancing technologically has undeniably let the cat out of the bag. We have little choice now but to acknowledge that the Revenge of the Formerly Young Person is at hand. As formerly young person myself, I must therefore welcome what this new technology has wrought, and accept the good, the bad, and the ugly of knowing what so many formerly young persons—just like me—have been up to over the last thirty or more years. And while this surfeit of information on people from my past is occasionally depressing, sometimes uplifting, but more often than not interesting, the formerly young person nonetheless lives. He is now eternal. She is now eternal. And this is worth celebrating…isn't it?

Rudy and Me

It’s been about a year and a half now since I at long last jettisoned everything and anything remotely attached to what, once upon a time, was called a “phone company.” I took possession of a new “phone” number—via the local cable—and bid adieu to over-priced bills for Verizon local service and ridiculously high long-distance tabs from AT&T. For a couple of years at the tail-end of my Jurassic Park days, I actually followed John Stamos’s lead and dialed 10-10-987 to save me a few cents on long-distance calls.

I have, not only saved a lot of money now, but gotten to know a man named Rudolph. I won’t reveal his last name, but this poor fellow has probably gotten as many calls as I have since I took receipt of my new number. What I definitely know about Rudolph is that he owes a fair share of money to a fair share of entities. I empathize with him on this count. I truly feel for Rudolph, who, I surmise, was the former owner of my number or one very close to it.

On a couple of occasions, I’ve picked up the phone and informed collection agents hunting down Rudolph that I was not, in fact, Rudolph. Further, I told them I didn't know Rudolph in any way, shape, or form, and therefore couldn't supply them with any leads as to where to find him. They told me in return that, by law, they must remove my number from their call lists in perpetuity, and wouldn’t be bothering me ever again.

I got the feeling, however, that these collection agents working for companies with names like American Credit, Credit Central, and Credit House International didn’t quite believe I wasn’t Rudolph or, at the very least, Rudolph's next of kin. Some of them no doubt thought old Rudy was sitting across the room from me on my futon as I lied to them, or perhaps in the adjoining kitchen making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But, really, I don’t personally know this Rudolph guy. We have become intertwined in some numerological twist of fate. Perhaps it's God's plan...anything's possible.

A New Year...a New Focus?

In the fledgling days of the New Year, 1973, Sister Therese went up and down the rows of students in her fifth-grade religion class, asking each of us to name our favorite Christmas present. I remember telling her, “walkie-talkies,” only because she repeated what I had said, slowly and syllabically, as if walkie-talkies were, maybe, instruments of the devil or, more likely, something completely unfamiliar to her.

At the top of my Christmas list, 1972, were walkie-talkies, and when old St. Nick didn’t deliver the goods, I looked to a New Year’s Eve miracle as my last best hope. The ten-year-old me prayed that the walkie-talkies gift idea had been passed on to my godmother, who turned up on New Year’s Eve every year—an annual tradition—and actually bought me real presents. She was both a generous and kindly woman, and her husband was an incredibly nice man, too—born in Germany with a thick German accent. He couldn’t be my godfather because he wasn’t Catholic, which I thought was silly then as a little boy and even sillier now. He should have been my godfather. Two years later, though, he was gone. A freak accident, and an even more freakish blood clot, took his life at the age of forty-two. Both a good man and a New Year’s Eve tradition ended without fair warning.

Since that time—almost four decades ago—I’ve found New Year’s Eve more depressing than not. As a kid, it underscored that Christmas was over and, worse than that, Christmas vacation was nearing an end, too. There was nothing more disheartening than returning to school after a Christmas vacation. What was there to look forward to anyway? I know what—a long stretch of school days in the bitterly cold depths of wintertime.

So, another year is gone and I am a year closer to the end than the beginning. This is, in fact, the essence of the New Year. But then again, it is also—as this far-sighted manager I once knew at a place I once worked said—“a New Year, a New Focus.” Perhaps he was on to something there! Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve in My Home Town

Only seconds ago, I heard "the first lady of song" Kate Smith belting out Christmas Eve in My Home Town on one of my cable's Music Choice stations. While my personal "Christmas Eve in My Home Town" of the Bronx memories weren't nearly as bucolic or as syrupy special, they faithfully adhered to a venerable tradition—one that merits a mention and maybe even a song of its own someday.

For me, Christmas Eve has forever been rooted in the Italian’s “Feast of the Seven Fishes” dinner—assorted fish dishes served alongside spaghetti with garlic and olive oil (aglio e olio)—although I don’t think we've ever quite made it to the seven-fish mark. When my paternal grandmother was the culinary impresario of this evening, the fish were, without exception, baccalà (salted cod fish), calamari (squid), eels, and shrimp. She came from a mountain town called Castelmezzano in Southern Italy, where fish of any kind were rare birds indeed. Because it was salted to death, baccalà was the only fish product this impoverished sliver of geography—sans electricity and refrigeration—knew, with the one exception being fresh-water minnows of some kind that ran in the mountain streams after heavy rains and melting winter snows.

Ironically, my grandmother didn’t much like fish. Outside of Christmas Eve dinner, the only fish I ever remember her cooking were fried scallops, and not very often at that. Because they maintained somewhat more appeal to me than did eels and squid, I had long wished these rarely prepared scallops of hers would be added to the holiday menu. But, in the big picture, the specific fishes really didn’t matter. The one-night-a-year tradition trumped all else—even taste. My grandmother's spaghetti alone was always ace and enough for me. So what if the eels and squid were a far cry from roast beef at the Ritz.

I suppose what has long been unique about these Christmas Eve feeds of ours is that they consisted of fishy things few among us would—or even could for that matter—order in a restaurant. My fishmonger friend, and a longtime neighbor of mine, stocks and sells eels only at this time of year. Why is that? Foodies, I guess, just aren’t clamoring for eel appetizers, but then that’s okay. I have sampled eels through the years and they've typically been quasi-edible, creamy, and surprisingly bland. However, they've always been extremely fishy to touch. Still, I’ve watched relations of mine attack the scant meat on these slithering and bony creatures of the sea like they would spareribs.

Flash forward to the new millennium and fish cakes, fillet of sole, and—at long last—scallops, too, have been added to our Christmas Eve tradition. Without question, these are more palatable and benign fish dishes with appeal to a wider audience. Somehow, though, the Christmas Eves of yesteryear—with my grandmother doing the cooking—tasted a whole lot better to me.

A Christmas in New York Story

As I exited the subway at 66th Street and Lincoln Center on this very cold morning, classy Christmas decor surrounded me. Strolling south and then east to Columbus Circle and the southern entrance to Central Park, I laid eyes on more than a few humongous Christmas trees in corporate giants’ lobbies—holiday eye candy for sure.

When I reached my destination, I noticed the park’s entrance was glutted with peddlers of interesting things. There were shoppers aplenty in this tented holiday village, including many tourists. They seem enamored most of all with snapping pictures across busy and crowded sidewalks, and taking a very long time in getting it right. I was meeting someone at this location and had much too much time to kill. In the meantime, I didn’t browse these temporary, make-shift shops because that would have violated two critical life rules of mine: I don’t browse when I don’t intend to buy anything, and I don’t wade through crowds under any circumstances, and especially when I don’t intend on buying anything.

I couldn’t help but notice, too, that intermingled in all of this urban festiveness was a decidedly less appealing side of Christmas in New York. Perhaps I’m painting with a broad brush here, but tourist-dependent “special rides” of any kind seem to be operated by a smarmy lot. Observing unctuous pitchmen trying to ensnare tourists to ride in their hansom cabs, bicycle carts, and tour buses was painful. Their boorishness stood in sharp contrast with the local wealthy sophisticates just passing through with their Starbucks coffees, or whatever it is that outfit calls its five-dollar cups of headache-inducing sludge.

The piece-de-résistance of this Christmas in New York Story is the strange place I ended up in. When I finally met the individual whom I was patiently waiting for, he informed me that he needed to get something to eat in order to take a high blood pressure medication. The irony was not lost on him that we were headed to McDonald’s to fulfill this task. We patronized a McCafé actually. I hadn’t been to a McDonald’s of any name in quite a while, and for a very good reason. I have long been leery of this international hamburger conglomerate, which seems incapable of serving its staple hamburgers with nothing on them. It always seemed to me that, logically, preparing plain hamburgers would be the quintessential piece of cake in the burger business...but not at McDonald’s.

Anyway, I ordered a six-piece Chicken McNugget, which was the last main course I recall sampling at a McDonald’s, with French fries and a drink—and the bill totaled $8.35! I was remiss, I guess, in not searching hard enough for a special deal. But, for starters, I found reading the menu board difficult because it was both crammed with stuff and required 20/10 vision to decipher. I didn’t have 20/10 vision in my youth, and certainly don’t have it now. In the final analysis, I think my Chicken McNuggets cost me more than .60 a piece. This is my Christmas in New York Story, 2011.

A Christmas Rowe-Manse

Twenty years ago on the afternoon of December 24th, I plunked a blank tape into my radio-cassette-turntable combo player, which, by the way, I still have and occasionally use. Employing the finest technology of the time, I arbitrarily taped a radio program on WPAT “Easy 93,” and repeated this act several more times during the ensuing thirty-six hours. Beginning on Christmas Eve at noontime and lasting throughout the entire Christmas day, this AM and FM easy-listening radio station in the New York City metropolitan area furnished listeners with—yes—thirty-six of hours of commercial-free Christmas music every year. My intentions were to record this music for posterity. I reasoned that it would be nice to have tapes of this diverse Christmas music selection to play during times other than Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I sensed, too, that WPAT, its easy-listening format, and annual Christmas presentation just might not be around forever. And, as it turned out, I was right.

The station dubbed this longtime holiday tradition of theirs “The Spirit of Christmas,” and featured mostly instrumental versions of familiar seasonal favorites, and some completely unfamiliar. During these yearly music marathons, a deejay’s voice would periodically intone between tracks, “Our gift to you…thirty-six hours of your favorite holiday sounds on WPAT…Easy 93.” And mere words cannot do justice to the bona fide easiness of Easy 93. The only other occasional, and very brief, interruptions to this Christmas music extravaganza involved the station thanking its very generous sponsors—those who made “The Spirit of Christmas” possible.

Well, with the holiday season officially underway, I thought it high time for me to dust off these twenty-year-old cassette tapes of mine and start listening to them. Yes, I still play tapes but, sadly, a couple of my WPAT “Spirit of Christmas” recordings have self-destructed with the passage of time. Still, when I heard the dulcet tones of a WPAT announcer thanking, among others, Mr. Carmen Maggio of the “Romance Emporium” in Clifton, New Jersey for making the 1991 edition of “The Spirit of Christmas” possible—something I had heard hundreds of times while listening to these tapes—I paused and typed in the man's name in a Google search whim. Foremost, I wondered if the “Romance Emporium” was still in business. I had for a very long time assumed it was an independent  Victoria's Secret kind of place, and was sort of surprised it took me so many years to wonder enough about this business to check it out.

Sadly, the “Romance Emporium” is no more. Foremost, my search unearthed Mr. Maggio’s 2010 obituary and, it seems, I had gotten it wrong. It wasn’t the “Romance Emporium” after all, but the “Rowe-Manse Emporium,” a neat play on words. It also wasn't a Victoria's Secret-like outfit, but a specialty department store. The place fell by the wayside in the early aughts, a casualty of both big-box discount retailers, the Internet, and ever-changing tastes, I suppose. Rowe-Manse Emporium-type stores are pretty hard to come by nowadays, and Christmas shopping is indisputably less interesting and less exciting without them around. Once upon a time these little big retailers exhibited both heart and incredible uniqueness, something that's in short supply in the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target.

The Very Powerful Tool Meets the Squat Thrust

Some guy I know pretty well recently remarked how the “mind is a very powerful tool.” Now, call me cynical if you must, but I didn’t consider this particular proclamation anything close to profound. It was not one of those moments when I took a step back and exclaimed, “Yeah…yeah…man, that’s powerful.” Nevertheless, as I was talking the streets of the Bronx today, this very powerful tool of mine saw something that reminded him of something else…and the floodgates opened.

It all happened so innocently. After purchasing powdered iced-tea mix and Drain-o at a Rite Aid drug store—and receiving a three-foot cashier's receipt along the way—I stepped out into the mean streets and immediately spotted a man working on his car. Something was clearly amiss, so he decided to have a look-see underneath the vehicle. It was what he did next, in bringing his entire body down to the asphalt grounds, that greased the skids of that very powerful tool of a mine. Somehow his movements resurrected the squat thrust in my brain—a high school gym exercise I performed faithfully from 1976 through 1980. One, by the way, I have never executed since. In fact, I have never even heard the phrase "squat thrust" mentioned. Funny, but in the high school years, I always thought the exercise’s moniker a bit odd, and maybe even slightly suggestive of things beyond physical fitness, but then that was then and this is now.

Anyway, as I continued on my journey away from Rite Aid and their mostly high prices and uber-long receipts, the squat-thrust exercise, courtesy of that very powerful tool, was indelibly stamped on my brain. I heard now a certain gym teacher’s voice in my head counting out that infernal exercise: one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four. Everything it seemed in high school physical education was four-count. But it was that final four-count of what were usually ten repetitions of an exercise, including the squat thrust, which was particularly special and memorable to me. It went something like this: one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four...one, two, three, four...until the culmination—that number ten—one, two, three, FOOUUURRR! Galootish and ear piercing, the mettle of a gym teacher. That mind…that very powerful tool…can it ever take us places.

The Number 1 Looks Just Like You

When I checked the MTA website first thing yesterday morning, I was positively ecstatic. The Number 1 train was running through my neck of the woods without interruption. For the last year or so, it seems weekend service of this venerable subway line has been screwed over big time due to seemingly endless track work and station repairs. And so, Saturday began on a high note.

But when I requested a six-dollar addition to my MetroCard, the clerk at my local subway station couldn’t read it. He scanned it, scanned it again, and nothing. He even tried to bring it back to life with a spritz of some fluid and a Handi Wipe, but nothing. No problem, I’ll take a new card, I said. This very agreeable and helpful transit employee then informed me of the available options vis-à-vis my unreadable MetroCard. I told him I didn’t think there was much monetary value left on it anyway, so it didn’t really matter to me. In other words, I had no intention of taking the card to the transit authority’s version of a higher authority—wherever and whatever that was. I briefly considered trashing this old and unreadable card on the spot, but for some reason decided against it and put it back in my pocket.

After paying my fare with a new and workable six-dollar card, I walked to the far end of this Northwest Bronx subway station. A southbound train heading into Manhattan pulled in a few minutes later. I entered the first car that, when push comes to shove, is frequently the least crowded one for a trip's duration. This very special car is often spared the urban onslaught, even when trains are packed like the proverbial sardines in a can.

No such luck yesterday morning. The lead car, too, filled up rather quickly, and so there were a lot of my fellow New Yorkers and tourists, too, hovering over and sitting very close to me for much of the ride. A man with not the best hygiene in the world sat right beside me. He exuded not quite the forlorn homeless man smell, which subway riders are accustomed to, but a level or two below that on the odor-ometer. In other words, I wasn’t literally gagging, and his ill aroma didn’t make me nauseous. But I’d say it was one of those fine-line moments. That is, I didn't dare dwell too much on the olfactory nerves and what they were absorbing, because nauseousness wasn't out of the question.

Sitting directly across from me from the start of my journey was a businesswoman. She initially plopped down and placed her laptop bag on the seat beside her. This was okay at the get-go, when the subway car was mostly empty, but when it filled up to standing room only, she made no effort to place her laptop bag under the seat and let somebody sit down next to her. She actually pulled out a book during the subway ride and started reading. The title had something to do with making a small fortune—and rather effortlessly at that. No doubt, I surmised, at the expense of those standing above and around her who had been denied a seat. Oh, yeah, and then there was this father and young son tag-team combo. The subway milieu as a classroom setting for parent teaching child about the wonders of urban life in is pretty commonplace. Occasionally, they are precious moments; often they are embarrassing and intrusive. If we were living in the 1970s, I would describe this particular father and son's interplay as “Annoying City!” If the Herman Cain lookalike's facial expressions were any indicator, he seemed to be on my wavelength. But then he might have been more annoyed by the dead ringer for Madonna, who was constantly blowing her runny nose from 168th Street to Times Square—six miles or so—and was sitting nearer to him than me.

To end on an upbeat note: the MetroCard I very nearly tossed away…well, I tried it one more time on my trip home…and it not only scanned, but had a fare left on it and then some. There must be some New Age meaning to all of this…but what pray tell?

Diner Elegy

It’s been three weeks now since the sun, which held sway over my neighborhood solar system for a very long time, quietly passed from the scene. As I walked the surrounding streets this morning, where a small diner—the most special of greasy spoons—endured for some thirty-five years, I conceived this analogy. You see, every time I was in the area—alone or with family members or friends—the diner, even when not eating there, was the epicenter. It was a comforting constant in a sea of change.

For twenty years, I patronized this place. In fact, it had a different name for part of the time, and a very brief span when somebody else took over—the man responsible for the name change. But imagine, if you will, a diner in New York City run—more or less—by the same handful of people for decades. The owner of the place, who shouted a greeting when you entered, cooked your food, and then said good-bye was there for almost every single minute the place was open, which was seven days a week. The diner closed only on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Others who worked there were equally familiar and longstanding employees, including a waiter who would see you coming from across the street and have a piping hot cup of coffee on the table before you even walked in the door. And the bottomless cup of coffee was truly bottomless here from beginning to end, even when business was down. And when business was especially brisk, you never felt rushed. You could sit there all day, if that is what you desired, because that’s how regular customers were treated.

The reasons my all-time favorite diner, which will never again be replicated, shut down are multifold. It’s the kind of place that existed in New York City in the past, but cannot anymore. So much of what made New York great—what made it a wholly unique metropolis—just can’t happen in this day and age. The city now is both insanely expensive and intensely bureaucratic. It caters—above all else— to wealthy landlords and to wealth itself.

But, still, it’s the memories that endure of this extraordinary diner milieu, which are over-powering in so many ways I cannot chronicle here. Good food, good times, and all of those characters on both sides of the counter, including me. Along the way, a healthy share of bad things happened to one and all. But at least we had the diner—and the good people who ran it—as a life comfort station of sorts, which is irreplaceable.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

King for a Day

The richest 1% of Americans own 40% of the nation’s wealth; the least well-off 80%, a mere 7%. This disparity in income is the widest since the eve of the Great Depression. So, what exactly is wrong with this picture? Well, a local gourmet market, which practically everybody raves about in the neighborhood—mostly folks among the unwashed 80%, by the way—was charging $7 for a basket of strawberries today. And I could cite a few more examples…but I won’t.

I’d rather bask in the glow—of my one brief shining moment—when I was among that illustrious 1%. A couple of weeks ago, I deposited a $150 check in a local branch of a really, really big bank. To make a long story short, I needed to check my bank balance. I had to see if that aforementioned $150 check had cleared, and whether some checks I had written had been cashed. I feared there might very well be a close call or two between deposits made and checks paid out, and very possibly a humiliating $32 overdraft charge—which I believe is the current fee—for me coming up an inch short and not beating the clearance clock.

Anyway, when the statement of my last five transactions appeared on the ATM machine screen before me, my $150 deposit was listed as $15,000,000—that’s, if you're keeping score, five more zeroes. My available balance also had five more zeroes attached to it. I became jelly-legged while poring over this astonishing visual. And, no, I didn’t go into the bank proper and withdraw a couple of million dollars—and not because it was closed for the day. In retrospect, I should have at least printed out a copy of my statement.

I felt, for some strange reason, guilty—like I had done something wrong—as I scurried out of the bank’s ATM alcove a very rich man. I returned the next morning to see if I had been relegated to pauper. I had indeed. Okay, so I didn’t have to go into the bank and inform them the $15,000,0000 was all a mistake…but not my mistake. I always wondered whether the bank would have given me a reward for my honesty. You know…like no overdraft fees for a year.

Food for Thought...Thought for Food

When folks from the old neighborhood gather together—in the cozy confines of virtual reality—to share their memories of all that transpired once upon a time, a heaping helping of food for thought is quite often the by-product. In fact, I’ve learned that more than a few former neighbors of mine, who worked in local eateries a long time ago, did some rather unsanitary, and occasionally downright disgusting things. For starters, they dropped food on floors, put it back on plates, and served it to customers.

That teenagers working in not especially well paying and largely unpleasant work environments will do such things is hardly surprising. My family rarely dined out while I was a boy. Foremost, there wasn’t sufficient surplus disposable income to make a habit of it—with five mouths to feed—and, too, it was considered positively sacrilege to waste money by paying through the nose for meals, when there were competent cooks at-the-ready on the home front. With respect to restaurants and take-out joints, from Chinese to fast-food burgers to pizza places, it was drummed into us all: “You don’t know what goes on behind the scenes and in their kitchens!” I must admit this homespun wisdom had a certain bite to it—food for thought then as well as now.

My one beef with this self-evident truism was that home kitchens, and the cooks therein, sometimes were as a bad, or even worse, in the Sanitary Department than even the nastiest restaurant transgressions reported on by this cross-section of primary sources—on the memory boards—and, too, from my first-hand experiences.

Okay, so my favorite pizza guy for so many years cleaned out his oven with the very same mop he used on the floors of his shop. In his defense, he claimed the extreme heat of the oven destroyed any and all germs and bacteria. I had heard about this mopping thing while I was a regular patron of the place. I just chose to accept my pizza guy's science. We had roaches in our Bronx apartment kitchen back in the 1960s and 1970s—a lot of them as a matter of fact. They were ubiquitous in the old neighborhood. Mice even found their way through a gas pipe into our kitchen stove—where my mother stored cereals and snacks—on one occasion. We never went hungry, though, and the kitchen stayed open. No city bureaucrat showed up to close it down.

It’s really all relative, I suppose. Fifteen or so years ago, my brother and I were in our all-time favorite diner for breakfast. And when he poured his maple syrup, from the small pitcher brought to him, onto three slices of French toast, several dead roaches peacefully floated atop them. They had evidently gone for an evening swim in the sugary Shangri-La, we surmised, and, alas, drowned in the process. It was a shocker for sure—we were briefly stunned and in a state of suspended animation—but since the place meant so much to us, it didn’t much matter in the bigger picture. We returned for another day—for a second act—and the syrupy-special roaches became part and parcel of a richer lore.

The moral of this story—if there is one—is that we make all kinds of allowances in this thing called life. I’ve always found it interesting that so many people in the kitchens of home sweet home pass judgment on eateries for both their real and, sometimes imagined, lack of cleanliness, but choose never to look in their own mirrors and their own pantries. All I can say is that with the NYC Health Department unleashed as it is today—inspecting with abandon and dispensing A, B, and C grades to food businesses one and all—I can’t help but wonder how many of my favorite cooks’ kitchens in homes and apartments, and countless others throughout the five boroughs of New York, would pass muster. I suspect many of them would be shut down for being downright unsanitary and outright health hazards.

The Foster Child

Almost thirty years ago, which is somewhat alarming to entertain, I experienced one brief shining moment of pure, unadulterated bliss. You see, my team, the New York Mets, had been down and out for several years, a laughingstock in Major League Baseball, and, worst of all, playing second banana to George Steinbrenner’s Yankees—the quintessential Wall Street sports organization then as well as now. The parsimonious and increasingly incompetent Mets’ upper-management of the mid- and late-1970s had, in essence, killed the goose that laid the golden egg. So, when the old ownership at long last unloaded the team to individuals who intended on restoring the Mets to their former pluck, we fans heaved a sigh of relief and dreamed of better days ahead.

Show us, don’t tell us, was all that we asked of the new ownership. And in the winter of 1982, they did just that by trading for, and then signing to an incredibly lucrative long-term contract for its day, a slugger named George Foster—the last man in to have hit fifty or more home runs in either the American or National League.

When Foster accomplished this feat in 1977, it was a bona fide achievement. All one had to do was look at the guy. He was razor-thin but incredibly muscular with Popeye forearms. Foster’s Herculean deed was realized without performance-enhancing drugs and that ubiquitous, modern-day fat head so familiar on the mega-millionaire celebrities who play today’s game. It was a time when such grand successes weren’t even remotely suspect and records actually meant something.

For Met fans, the Foster trade and his subsequent signing to a long-term deal were big—really big. It was a moment of true ecstasy for me. But, alas, as is the case with moments of ecstasy in general, they are always just that—moments. In other words, they don’t last forever. Some, in fact, last for at least a measurable span of time, but most go up in smoke before you ever know what hit you—no pun intended. In the case of George Foster, the ecstasy moment was short-lived to say the least. It lasted until he took the field in a Mets’ uniform—or, to be fair, not very long after that. After a wretched 1982 season, and the sense that this fellow had not only seen better days as an athlete, but didn’t much care, the ecstasy moment seemed like a bad dream.

But what I wouldn’t give to feel the way I felt on that day some three decades ago—at the precise moment when I learned my beloved Mets had signed an All-Star slugger for a whopping sum of money. Sure, he would fast disappoint us all. Ecstasy, nevertheless, can be found in the strangest places. So, enjoy it wherever you find it...and while you can...because nothing lasts forever…nothing.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Hairy Junk Mail

An increasingly rare piece of junk mail arrived in my mailbox today—the old-fashioned kind delivered by a flesh and blood human being that can be handled, and eventually recycled and picked up by another flesh and blood human being on recycling day. It was a mass mailing from a hair replacement center—one that I’m familiar with, by the way, only because I’ve passed by it many times in my travels. I also knew a client of the place.

While I concede to qualifying as bald bait—their target audience—I did not request information on this business’s services. So, whether I landed on the mailing list as somebody’s not particularly funny joke, or some strange commercial coincidence, I couldn’t help but hark back to that acquaintance of mine who patronized this very hairpiece establishment. It seems that—when he put his John Hancock on the dotted line—he essentially took out a long-term mortgage on his scalp.

Fast balding on top at a relatively young age, this fellow looked perfectly fine when he went he went for broke on that fateful day. I recall the moment that, in a matter of a few hours, he went from being predominantly bald to having a luxurious head of hair. It was a peculiar metamorphosis to say the least. He promptly informed all who would listen of the satin pillows he now had to rest his weary head on—something about the unwanted effects of static—and the special shampoo lotions he had to use, which not surprisingly cost a pretty penny. This was all adding up to real money and real fast, I thought. Then, of course, there were the recurring readjustments—the $100 plus haircuts he had to endure every month. And, on top of all that, what remained of his real hair was still falling out. So, more and more of the horsehair—or whatever the hair replacement center employed—had to be added to the new weave.

Maybe it’s just me, but it all seemed like an awful lot to go through—even beyond the expense—to, at the end of the day, look like a guy wearing a hairpiece. This particular Manhattan outfit churns out a certain kind of rug, which I’ve seen on many others. Once upon a time a pizza place owner not too far away had a balding top, and he made a similar pact with the hair devil. The first thing a friend of mine, who hadn’t seen him in a while, said was: “When did the pizza guy get the rug?”

A favorite teacher of mine in high school—who simultaneously taught a senior year religion course and was dramatically thinning on top—once said of his hair: “I can’t cling to it.” I know there was some broader and connecting life point vis-à-vis the course’s subject matter, which I’ve long since forgotten after thirty years, but I’ve never lost sight of the big picture. No satin pillows, strange elixirs for the head, and regular haircuts that cost more than the gas and electric bill combined—and in perpetuity to boot—for me. I’d just assume not go broke in an effort to look like a pizza guy with bad hair. And, while I'm rooting for the post office to survive: Please, Mr. Hair Man, remove me from your mailing list.