Special Memories

Since thirty full years have passed since my graduation from high school, I thought I'd elaborate on some of those very special memories, which I touched on in the previous essay. That is, memories of the not especially special special buses that chauffeured me to and from the place for four seemingly interminable years.

The special bus experience was unpleasant all around—an illuminating microcosm of the broader high school experience. As a bus pulled in close to the curbside, a select group of students—mostly brutes but some non-brutes, too—would literally attach themselves to its front and side doors. These brazen young fools sought to be the first ones in the bus when it came to a full stop and the doors opened. And right behind these fearless leaders of the wolf pack, a second tier of equally aggressive teens would jostle their way onto the bus, hurling articles—book bags, books, newspapers, hats, gloves, and pens—on top of as many seats as humanly possible. This daily onslaught was all about acquiring seats—not only for themselves but for their friends and acquaintances as well.

It was the accepted law of the special bus jungle that if somebody had an item of any kind on a seat, it was ipso facto saved. These bus rides were survival of the fittest tests—galootism run amok—where the weak among us more often than not stood for the duration of the trip from Broadway in Kingsbridge to Cardinal Spellman High School on the other side of the Bronx.

The buses, too, were packed like the proverbial sardines in a can; so, a seat was a cherished prize. It eased somewhat—for the twenty-minute or so ride—the all-encompassing misery of the school day ahead, particularly when the vastly overcrowded bus bended sideways and then back again as it careened around a dead man’s curve leading to the intersection of East Gunhill Road and Jerome Avenue and then repeated this extreme feat at another sharp turn onto Boston Road.

I am prone to wax nostalgic about many things from the good old days. But when I find myself fondly recalling the high school years, I resurrect these most special of memories and am promptly disabused of any and all warm and fuzzy feelings.

Up in Smoke

For all his good works in our company from September’s opening school bell to the Christmas recess, Sister Lyse took up a collection to purchase Father B a well-earned holiday present. Each one of us in her fifth-grade class was asked to pony up a quarter, or a little more if possible. I remember Sister Lyse announcing to the class what she had finally settled upon as the gift: Father's B preferred smokes. That's right: Sister Lyse's fifth graders bought the man sporting a Roman collar a carton of Marlboro's for Christmas, which I’m sure he appreciated on his fixed income. It was certainly more practical than a tie.

Fast-forward several years and it’s America’s bicentennial year, and I’m now a freshman in high school. The seniors in the school have a dedicated room of their own christened the “smoking lounge." It is a place for the school's fledgling adults to convene, should they wish to puff away on poisonous pleasures during their free periods. I distinctly recall passing by it on my way to a class. The room teemed with seventeen- and eighteen-year-old boys and girls; shadowy silhouettes of high school students who were difficult to distinguish through thick curtains of stagnant second-hand smoke.

The smoking lounge went up in smoke, if you will, a year later. It was no longer kosher in Catholic schools—or any other schools for that matter—to encourage, or even give the slightest imprimatur, to this dirty habit so blatantly bad for one’s health. But smoking on the "special buses," which ferried us to school and back, remained acceptable throughout my high school years. And although they would probably deny it, the powers-that-be turned a blind eye.

Interestingly, the special buses were actually New York City buses that were leased by the school. In other words, they weren't very special at all. And it was against the law to smoke on all New York City transit, even during the more libertine 1970s. Yet, we teens rode to school and back in a miasma of nicotine on overly crammed buses every single day. We reeked of the stuff at the start of each school day and end of each school day. Now that couldn't have been very healthy. 

Garden of Paradise

From the late 1950s through October of 1971, a rather expansive and diverse garden bloomed on the northwest corner of West 231st Street and Tibbett Avenue in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. My grandfather—and eventually my father—planted it in concert with several locals. There were fruit trees (fig, peach, and apple), vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants), and plenty of herbs (parsley, basil, and oregano). Marigolds, begonias, and sunflowers, to name just a few, added complementary colors to this vast field of green in a borough of mostly brick and asphalt. And courtesy of a makeshift well that tapped into Tibbetts Brook, which flowed undaunted beneath several feet of city landfill, the place never went dry. Employing a fifty-gallon drum with its bottom cut out, my grandfather knew exactly how to dig such a thing and make it work. These old timers from the old country knew how to do all sorts of things.

This sprawling "victory garden" actually sprang to life on somebody else’s property—land that was up for sale. A local realtor gave my grandfather and company the green light to plant on it with one proviso: Keep the place neat and clean. This sort of informal handshake wouldn't and couldn’t possibly cut it today. In essence, the garden’s days were numbered from the outset. Its demise could have come at any moment, without warning, and it subsequently did. Still, one and all in the neighborhood somehow assumed it would endure forever. It was so much a part our lives—an area fixture. Big parties were regularly thrown in the garden during summertime holidays and on weekends, while games of horseshoes were played in a makeshift horseshoe pit. The conscientious caretakers of this piece of earth not only converted a vacant parcel of urban terra firma into an oasis of green for more than a decade, but they also drank a brewery’s worth of beer within its confines.

When, in the name of progress, the garden was plowed under in 1971, it was a body blow to an awful lot of people, including the nine-year-old me. Written by neighbors, a short obituary even appeared in the local paper, the Riverdale Press. It was headlined: “Bulldozers Plow Under Garden of Paradise…Last Kingsbridge Farm.”

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate the abiding garden ambiance even more. The mere fact that it survived for as long as it did, relatively undisturbed during the tumultuous 1960s, is remarkable in and of itself. Only a patchwork fence surrounded the place. And, too, empty lot after empty lot in the area were being developed.

I have mostly piecemeal memories of the garden and some pictures. But the photographers back then weren’t especially interested in posterity. They weren’t, for example, zeroing in on the well, the garden’s underground water source, nor were they snapping shots of the various shacks that were haphazardly constructed to accommodate tools, seeds, and such. In retrospect, these were all rather incredible things in a Bronx neighborhood.

On occasion, certain odors resurrect memories of the old garden. Smell memory. A combination of high summertime humidity, tomato plants, and the scent of marigolds do the trick every time. Talk about atmosphere! What I wouldn’t give to chow down on a couple of hot dogs and sample a few cold ones at a weekend barbecue amidst this leafy, aromatic sea of Bronx green, a sanctuary that is no more and will never be seen again. The bulldozers did indeed plow under a garden of paradise.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

I Love the 1980s...or Do I?

There’s something very special  to me about the 1980s. I was a spry, callow fellow back then—an innocent college grad with, as they say, my whole life ahead of me. Surely, this was the time to boldly go somewhere…anywhere.

Fast-forward a quarter of a century. Once upon a time, I was listening to 1980s pop music on New York City's local radio stations and then, presto, it’s now. How on earth did that happen? The 1980s were a time when the Twin Towers tranquilly loomed in lower Manhattan; a time before snowballing technology and job outsourcing; a time before laptops, cell phones, and iPods wholly occupied the masses. Culturally speaking at least, there is no denying the 1980s were a less complicated time. Personally, this decade found me on life’s launching pad—ten, nine, eight, seven—but I didn't quite blast off.

I suspect feelings of missed opportunities, of entirely too many wasted days and nights, is why I often hark back to this decade, the one where The Equalizer strutted his stuff every week. It is why certain 1980s pop songs strike such resounding, on-key chords with me. I am taken to, in one real sense, vastly simpler times. You know, when so, so, so many things seemed possible—I wouldn’t dare say all things. When, at least, there was no sense of urgency and those awful sensations of time imminently running out. Ah…to be young again…in the 1980s.

But now, courtesy of YouTube, and the ever-advancing technologies that weren't around in those bygone days, I return to the 1980s when I am so inclined. I regularly resurrect the sights and sounds of that optimistic decade. It was a great time to be alive. But I suppose a fair case could be made that it wasn’t especially great for me. I really love the 1980s…or do I?

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Not very long ago I attended the funeral service of a man who surpassed the century mark—quite an achievement. He was an extraordinarily talented and accomplished man in life—an artist, musician, and engineer. At his Mass of Christian burial, the local priest made passing mention of his impressive life resume, but it was pretty much a rerun of past services I have attended for decidedly different people.

Because he rarely attended church during the living years, the officiating priest didn’t personally know the guest of honor. He therefore received talking points from the decedent’s family, plugged them into a one-size-fits-all eulogy, and presto! Being in my late forties now, I don’t appreciate being treated like a fifth grader. From my adult perspective, these bon voyages are often inanely unsophisticated, with priests envisioning such silly scenarios as the deceased meeting his dead wife in heaven. In the case of this 100-year-old man, she naturally greeted him with the burning question, “What took you so long?” 

I think we merit better send-offs than this. Religious dogma, with its simplistic certainty, withers in the head winds of an unfathomable universe. Ironically, this unfathomable quality alone is enough to make a case for intelligent design of some sort. It's at least a spiritual foundation to build upon. So why not expound on this enduring mystery, which is really and truly beyond human comprehension? You know: why we live, why we die, and the reason for it all? Being told that when I shuffle off this mortal coil I’ll be hooking up with my dead relations doesn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy all over. Imagine renting a banquet hall for a family tree that could wend its way back to the Cro-Magnons.

Men and women of the cloth, come clean: There’s a whole lot you don’t know. And I think you know that, because I believe that you are smarter than fifth graders (most of you anyway). Furnish the former living with farewells they deserve—with words befitting their unique, mystifying, and incredibly brief journeys here on the third rock from the sun.

Walking Papers

A friend of mine recently lent me a book. It was authored by his doctor’s son, Francesco Clark, and called Walking Papers—a memoir of a young man paralyzed from the neck down in a freak swimming pool accident seven years ago. He was only twenty-four-years-old when it happened. Flash forward to the present and Clark's defied the odds. Although, admittedly, he’s got a long, long way to go, he's made monumental progress far beyond the original doomsayer medical prognosis that he would never breathe without a respirator or ever move from his bed.

To make a very long story short, Clark’s dogged determination to skirt the health bureaucracy’s rock-bottom expectations and money-matters-most-of-all approach to medicine made all the difference in the world. With the help of his amazingly supportive family, he is in a far different place than his initial life sentence decreed. Clark had what would be considered real “good insurance,” too. Yet, there were various points in his convalescence when his physical therapy was no longer covered. And, as you can imagine, his grave circumstances necessitated intensive therapy for as far as the eye can see. Clark was told point-blank that he was deluding himself with any wild dreams of progress beyond wiggling the tips of his fingers. In other words, it was time for him to “get on with his life” and accept his sorry fate as final and irreversible.

While Francesco Clark is still paralyzed these many years later, he nonetheless is markedly less so than seven years ago. He has every intention, too, of walking again, and is living proof that the spinal chord can regenerate. With the help of his family’s wherewithal—which sadly is not available to majority of the population—he’s undergone an experimental stem cell operation. His unfailing efforts and utter unwillingness to accept the prevailing doom and gloom scenario of the medical consensus now finds him working a computer on his own. He's also started a skin-care business called Clark’s Botanicals. Not inconsiderable achievements!

My friend actually lent me Walking Papers because he thought I could identify with the book’s author. Sure, I had my medical moment, lost a part of my leg, but I’m hardly paralyzed. I have, by and large, fully returned to doing what I was doing before, albeit with the help of my trusty friend, the C-Leg. And, yes, I’ll concede that my life is a wee bit different from what it was. But, really, it’s not all that bad. And, I know, some people find that hard to believe. I’m not complaining and seek no sympathy. I certainly can identify with Clark in one respect—the very low expectations of the medical establishment. Upon my discharge from the hospital four years ago, the occupational therapist who visited my apartment was fixated on the fact that I had to climb a couple of stairs to get into it. I needed to move to a place with ramps accessible for a wheelchair—and fast!

Well, I am happy to report that a few months after this professional's grim harping about my future, I bid adieu to my wheelchair, which I hardly used anyway. In fact, when I first received my prosthetic (not the computerized C-Leg, by the way), I was informed that I would very soon be fitted with a pair of wrist canes. That is, after I felt comfortable enough to dispense with my training wheels—my walker.

No way was I going to be seen in public with those hideous devices. Heaven forbid! Almost immediately, I walked with my prosthetic and a simple cane. And I lived happily ever after. My prosthetist told me that walking on one is “all about confidence.” Permitting even a whiff of fear to wend its way into my subconscious could send me to the ground in a heartbeat. And so it is with life in general, I suspect.

Why Not In the Living Years?

The human species is a peculiar breed. From all that I have observed in my little corner of the world, and in my own life and times, earthlings typically assign extraordinary value to attending wakes and funerals, but not especially high value in visiting, and spending quality time with the dearly departed during the all-important living years.

So many of us drop what we are doing, and sometimes travel great distances, to pay our respects to the grieving families of old friends and relatives, many of whom we haven’t seen in a dog’s age, or even longer than that. And quite often it’s a real friend from the past reposing in that pine box, or a close relation from days gone by. We can't, therefore, miss these celebrations of lives lived—these fond farewells—for anything in the world.

But, may I humbly pose this question: Where the heck have you been in the last ten, twenty, and thirty years? Come hell or high water, you can make it to a wake or funeral service, but you just couldn't find the time, or generate sufficient desire, to call upon the genuine article over the last quarter of a century.

Okay, by all means, check out those easels scattered about the hallowed rooms of the funeral parlors—complex lifetimes reduced to cheery photo storyboards thrown together in a couple of days at best. Then kneel before the formaldehyde-filled Madame Tussauds wax figures of those you remembered as flesh and blood. That’s all well and good.

Really, though, you could have visited these stiffs a time or two in the not-too-distant past. Yes, I know you must attend these wakes or funeral services, lest you get on somebody’s shit list. We are a wacky bunch with wacky priorities. But if there is a moral to this story, it’s this: If you know someone whom you would absolutely attend his or her funeral, maybe now’s the time to organize a get-together, or at least place a phone call. Stay in touch when it actually counts for something. The Last Picture Show can wait.

East Side Story

While traversing the lower east side of Manhattan on this sunny but very windy first day of the Labor Day weekend, I was foremost struck by its general seediness—stretches of grunge and malodor commingling in an unsightly mishmash. It’s no doubt a few notches more habitable than it was in its storied past. For this area that I now trod hosted European immigrants en masse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Millions of people lived in vastly overcrowded, filthy, and ramshackle tenement houses—hardscrabble first experiences for countless people in the land of opportunity.

Fortunately, I was in New York City, where discoveries and unexpected gems lurk around so many corners in so many neighborhoods. One encounter in particular added a little color to the mostly gray surroundings that I walked—a candy store called Economy Candy on Rivingston Street. While I didn’t purchase anything, I nonetheless traveled through time to the halcyon days of my youth—of bubble gum cigars and Sugar Daddies. In fact, many candy brands were here that I’d long since forgotten about, or thought had been consigned to the dustbin of history, including Bit-O-Honey, Turkish Taffy, C Howard’s Scented Gum, Candy Buttons, Charleston Chews, Charms, Chuckles, Double Bubble Gum, Gold Mine bubble gum sacks, Mallo Cups, Marshmallow Cones, Mary Janes, Milk Duds, Necco wafers, Nik-L-Nips, Pixie Stix, Pop Rocks, and Razzles.

If I were to place any of the aforementioned confectioneries in my mouth today, God knows what would would happen. I suspect these enchanting ghosts from my past would do a real number on me. All the chewing and sucking in my adult mouth would yank the fillings out of my teeth, break a few of them along the way, and give me a major sour stomach, too. I just can't abide heavy concentrations of processed sugar anymore.

One footnote concerning the Economy Candy stroll down memory lane: Bubble gum cigarettes and chocolate cigarettes are available there. Remember them. We put these faux weeds in our innocent mouths, blew, and white puffs of powdered sugar spewed out, simulating the genuine article: cigarette smoke. I thought political correctness had done away with these candies for all time. Hope Mayor Mike Bloomberg doesn't find out about this.

A God Awful Question

The precise causes of the dinosaur population’s extinction have long been a subject of scientific conjecture. A consensus opinion has held that a humongous asteroid crashed into Earth’s terra firma multiple millions of years ago and did quite a number on these gruesome creatures and their sources of sustenance. However, a recent study intimates that it may very well have been more than one big bang that cast asunder these celebrated masters of the prehistoric planet.

I will admit to never having been a fan of dinosaurs. Maybe that’s because I knew they weren’t warm and fuzzy like Dino, Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s faithful household pet. Even as a boy attending Catholic grammar school and weekly Sunday Mass, the dinosaur years didn’t quite jibe with my religious tutelage. I recall wanting to ask God, or at least a church elder, a very pertinent and, yes, perplexing question: Why dinosaurs? It seemed to me a rather circuitous and convoluted creation route. In fact, with the exception of some flighty sorts, apparently we have absolutely nothing in common with Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.

Dinosaurs literally roamed the earth for millions upon millions of years, evolving along the way. Did God Almighty conclude: "These creations of mine really suck. It's time for me to go back to the drawing board and get it right. So, I'll riddle Earth with meteorites and start anew." I don't know. Maybe Frank Sheed was on to something in explaining dinosaur's protracted existence. He wrote, “God knew that the discovery of such fantastical creatures would fascinate and delight us, and perhaps this was reason for their creation.” True, without dinosaurs, there would be no Barney. It's all one big mystery.

Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind

According to a recent e-mail I received, the planet Mars—the fourth rock from the sun—was supposed to be so close to Earth yesterday evening that it would appear as big as the moon in the night sky. This would have been quite something to behold, a fellow planet as colossal to our naked eyes as Earth's faithful hanger-on, the moon. The missive further elaborated that Mars's orbit would not bring it this close to our prying eyes—here on the third rock from the sun—until 2287. In other words: We could ill afford to miss this dramatic and uber-rare celestial moment.

While getting such an intimate peep at a fellow terrestrial planet would be a stargazer's orgasm unlike any other, a moon-sized Mars in the night sky would really portend only one thing: We are doomed! And don't bother heading for the wine cellar or bomb shelter. The sun must be in the process of imploding billions of years earlier than scientists had anticipated, and our solar system no longer so systematic. Forget about hiding under the bed, completing that bucket list, and employing the seven steps of forgiveness for those who trespassed against you. In fact: If the red planet, as Mars is known because of its distinguishing iron-rich hue, is this close to planet Earth—cast your fate to the solar wind and be done with it.

Happily, this Mars does the moon scenario was just another compelling Internet hoax that wormed its way through the virtual ether. And, as with all good hoaxes, many gullible sorts bought hook, line, and sinker this celestial fib of epic proportions. Of course, it would be nice to see the Man in the Moon share center stage with Mars among the cosmic players of the night, but not if it means our species is toast.

Grade A Pizza

For the first time in my life, I sampled a slice of pizza from a Grade A pizza parlor. Oh, I’ve had thousands of slices through the decades from this very shop, but today’s takeout came with the big city’s imprimatur. I had been reading of late that New York City’s Department of Health would be adding letter grades—A, B, or C—to their restaurant inspections. And by law, proprietors would have to prominently post their ratings. I can attest that restaurant report cards are now a reality in these parts.

But there’s something about this bureaucratic codicil that doesn’t quite pass the smell test. Essentially, it’s handing an additional cudgel to restaurant inspectors—men and women who make the rounds and assign points for health infractions that run the gamut from the trivial to the serious. However, the difference between an A grade and a B grade could be inconsequential where food safety and cleanliness are concerned, but very consequential in business gained or business lost. Ditto the difference between a B grade and a C grade. Restaurant inspectors have tremendous leeway and make some rather arbitrary decisions along the way. In other words: the city that never sleeps, led by its billionaire au pair, has just made the life of small businesspersons in the culinary trade more problematic.

The little guys are the ones who suffer most from the increasingly hefty fines levied with ever greater regularity against them. And the little guys will be the ones who suffer most from B and C grades. Even if we the hungry consumer are blissfully unaware how the Bs and Cs came to be, the psychological effect alone will drive business away, especially when there are A competitors nearby.

In theory, the letter grading is not such a bad idea. It places legitimate pressure on lax restaurateurs to remain lean, mean, and clean. But where pencil-pushing bureaucrats are concerned—whose mission is not only the health and wellness of the citizenry, but to collect fines to fill the city’s insatiable coffers—I remain justifiably skeptical. And I'd eat at my favorite pizza place regardless of its report card.

A New York Minute

Yesterday afternoon by chance, I found myself in a small piece of real estate that the city mothers and fathers have graciously designated a peaceful stopover for the public at large. Located on the corner of East 46th Street and Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the United Nations, the place featured a little water fountain at its center, lots of colorful impatiens, healthy green shrubbery all around, as well as scattered benches for passersby to rest their weary bones and, in my case, and increasingly weighty prosthetic, which after several miles of walking felt like a ball and chain.

Earlier in the day, I had met an old friend and we had zigzagged around for a few hours, beginning our odyssey in lower Manhattan and ending up contentedly exhausted in this benign urban setting. There were no sorry souls sleeping it off here, a rare and welcome bonus in big city parkland. And soon after plopping ourselves down at the water fountain’s edge, we observed a very well-dressed elderly man shuffling his way into this sleepy alcove. As soon as he sat down, my friend said: “That guy looks familiar. He’s an old character actor. I’m sure of it.”

“He looks a little bit like William Windom,” I replied, but knew he wasn’t our man. We inconspicuously attempted to get a better gander at the gussied up geezer, but he nonetheless sensed our four eyes checking him out. Visibly showing his disapproval, he glared our way.

At that exact moment, a much younger fellow entered the stage. He was there expressly to meet and greet this possible old character actor—it was no chance meeting. But when he bowed down and kissed the man’s hand, the old character actor theory went up in a puff of smoke, unless, of course, this former thespian found another and decidedly different line of work. The attentive toady gently grabbed hold of the mystery man's arm and out the pair went, but not before one final and very piercing glower came our way.

I want those two taught a lesson. Is this what this aged Mafia don was whispering to his underling as he gingerly shuffled away across Second Avenue to God knows where? Or maybe it’s just that my friend and I have watched too much television and movies through the years. From Bill Windom to Don Corleone in a New York minute.

Down These Mean Streets

Stepping out into the mean streets of New York can be dangerous business. And I’m not speaking of getting mugged or becoming another crime statistic, which, while possible, is a long shot in a pretty safe town lorded over by the admirable men and women in blue. No, the danger I speak of lurks in the seemingly benign shadows, where unpleasant and unpredictable urban scenes await unsuspecting eyes.

Today, it was my unsuspecting eyes. While simultaneously running a few errands and accumulating invaluable walking time, I set my sights on Ewen Park, a rather steep grassy knoll that separates tony Riverdale from Kingsbridge, its less pedigreed neighbor. Approaching the traffic light directly across from the park, I came upon an elderly woman loudly berating a younger woman on a bicycle, who was planning to cross the same thoroughfare as me. “You don’t belong here!” she screamed, meaning on the sidewalk, I gathered, because the bicyclist responded, “I’m very careful.”

But this oldster was far from done in speaking her piece. Getting increasingly more apoplectic as the seconds passed, she eventually screeched, “I hope you get hit by a bus!” This rather vicious sentiment prompted the bicyclist to remove the baseball cap she was wearing, revealing a bald head and the telltale signs of cancer treatments. “I have cancer,” she offered, essentially imploring this ranting and raving old woman to put a lid on it and be on her unmerry way. But this plea for sympathy and a little understanding fell on deaf ears—both literally and figuratively, I think.

This ugly encounter turned downright surreal with the next toxic volley: "You can go to hell with your stupid bald head." As the bicyclist began crossing the street when the light turned green, the fusillade of vitriol continued, even as growing distance separated the two. “I hope you get raped in the park,” the old coot bellowed in her last shout, prompting the bicyclist to give her a flailing smorgasbord of well-earned one-finger salutes.

Having bore witness to this sideshow, the air was completely sucked out of my morning constitutional. I tried to imagine how this woman afflicted with cancer must have felt like in the wake of this bizarre encounter with a senior citizen, with a woman who wished her brutalized, and even dead, for the egregious transgression of riding her bicycle on the sidewalk.

I think the most unpleasant component of this city street snapshot was the individual’s state of mind. She just didn’t quite appear to be mentally unhinged, which could have at least explained her rabid performance. She seemed to be, first and foremost, a very mean person turned several notches meaner by the sands of time. But I don't really know. As for who really should get hit by a bus…well, nobody, of course.

Doorway Manner

During the second week of August in 2006, a doctor gave me some pretty bad news. In fact, a case could rather easily be made that it was the worse news I'd ever received before or since. It was at this critical moment in my life that I experienced one doctor's unique brand of bedside manner.

Actually, I think doorway manner would be a more apt description. This particular sawbones informed me that the gutted and gored portion of my right leg would have to go. It was not healing and could not be saved as the medical consensus had initially hoped. Standing at the doorway to my room and surrounded by his team of medical interns, he rather nonchalantly told me that I was slated to go under the knife the following morning. “Okay,” I recall saying, neither shocked at what I had just learned nor frightened at what tomorrow would bring. And it wasn't because I was particularly courageous or anything like that. It had just been such an incredibly grueling and painful week filled with probing, poking, and getting shuffled around that I suspect I needed some kind of closure—a next leg on a journey, as it were.

This week in hell included a close call with the Grim Reaper due to massive blood loss, followed by two debriding operations to try to salvage the gruesome carcass that was now the lower part of my right leg. And, too, the pain was both unrelenting and intense, and intenser still every time the leg's dressing was changed, which it was several times a day. From where I sat propped up in my hospital bed, it was inevitable that a fourth time under the knife would occur, even though I was told similar wreckages had been salvaged and lived to walk again.

So, I received the news of act four from a distance with no one-on-one commiseration with a medical mind. There were also a couple of visitors in my room at the time, too—my sister and brother-in-law. It could have been the milkman and his wife who just popped in for a visit. Old Doc was completely oblivious to whose ears would simultaneously hear, along with yours truly, the news of my imminent amputation. Strange behavior exhibited in both the doorway and hospital bed several yards away, I'd say. But then I can attest from experience that hospitals are strange places to call home. A lot of strange goings-on come to pass there—things you couldn't possibly imagine during healthy times.

Where Is Everybody?

The pilot episode of Rod Serling's classic Twilight Zone series is titled “Where Is Everybody?” It stars actor Earl Holliman as an astronaut who, unbeknownst to him, is undergoing a mind game—a stress test of sorts to measure a human being's psychological tipping point. In his induced hallucination, Holliman emerges in what appears to be a quaint small town—a busy little hamlet going about its business. The only thing missing are its inhabitants. He walks into a diner and spies a percolating coffee pot and sizzling bacon on the grill; a church bell is ringing in the distance. He calls out “hello...hello...hello,” but nobody answers him—nobody's around. After an extended and futile search for a living soul or two, he finally flips his raspberry and cries out in a state of panic, "Where is everybody?"

It's kind of the way I feel on hot summer days and nights. "Where is everybody?” I ask myself time and again. For in my Bronx youth, summertime equaled activity and lots of it. The dog days meant stoop sitting, game playing, and constant commingling with friends and neighbors.

We played games morning, noon, and night. We always managed to find something to do as kids, and it was often based on who was out and about at any given moment. Greater numbers of us inspired more epic games like Round-up, Ringolevio, and Johnny Ride-a-Pony. The incredible, multipurpose spaldeen, as it was affectionately known, busily bounced in the heat of summer and supplied us endless hours of entertainment with games like Punchball, Boxball, Ace-King-Queen, and Spud. Without a ball, or any prop at all, we played Mother, May I?, Red Light-Green Light and In-the-Refrigerator. Even after dark, the game playing continued with what we, very cleverly, dubbed Flashlight—an offshoot of tag based on a beam of light, not touch of the hand. Flashlight commenced a little after sunset with the ritual "the odd number is It." The unlucky "It" was handed the flashlight, while the rest of us dispersed, plotted our strategies, and found hiding spots in the neighborhood's backyards, alleyways, and alcoves.

The summer scene was alive and well thirty and forty years ago, with both young and old sitting out on their front stoops. Neighbors kibitzed and gossiped every single evening. Even in the awful nighttime humidity teeming with lightning bugs, the locals were undeterred. They were a tougher breed indeed, preferring the great outdoors to basking in the cool of air-conditioning.

There are plenty of adults and kids in the old neighborhood now. There aren't very many vacant apartments around. So, where is everybody? Apparently, social networking instead of socializing is today's rule—in all seasons. Neighborliness has by and large vanished along with the iconic spaldeen, although Spalding, I see, is still manufacturing them. Today's spaldeen is the iPhone, I suppose, and stoops just aren't meant for sitting on anymore.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Collectibles Must Pay Their Dues

Resurrecting the happy childhood memories of owning and playing with a set of Klackers called to mind a more recent but decidedly different sort of fad: Beanie Babies. While researching and writing the Everything Collectibles Book in early 2001, Beanie Babies were a well-known and frequently discussed contemporary collectible. By that time, however, the fevered pitch of the Beanie Babies' phenomenon had noticeably waned, but I nonetheless thought it prudent to at least mention Beanie Babies in the book. They just couldn't be ignored in the pantheon of collectibles because they were just so popular—for one brief shining moment at least. What the heck happened?

Here were these cuddly cute, pellet-filled, petite stuffed animals that were must-haves for thousands upon thousands of Americans, and not just little girls and boys. In fact, Beanie Babies were foremost marketed as collectibles. They weren't pitched as children's playthings like the pair of acrylic balls on a string known as Klackers (and so many other things). No, Beanie Babies were a well-orchestrated fad for a while with an investment endgame. They were a sign of the times, just like Pokemon and limited edition baseball cards. I constantly see gold investment commercials today claiming how gold is a precious asset that only appreciates and never depreciates in value. This apparent appreciation-lock is what purchasers of collectibles born and sold as collectibles, including Beanie Babies, expected from their investments. (One footnote for gold investors here: Pray that the Twilight Zone's "Rip Van Winkle Caper" denouement never comes to pass.)

In most instances the capitalists who tried to circumvent the immutable laws of the collectibles market lived to see their grand schemes go up in smoke. Of course, many of these entrepreneurs made their killings on short-lived but nonetheless fertile fields of green. The creator of the Cabbage Patch doll, for instance, made multiple millions in one maniacal year (1984).

Beanie Babies and countless other items christened collectibles upon their birth—and given birthdays, retirement dates, and the like—rarely live up to their billing. Collectibles need to pay their dues and age like fine bottles of wine, or something like that. I'd rather see kids clacking away with their Klackers than adults hijacking UPS trucks to secure the latest limited edition Beanie Baby—a stuffed kid's toy that they had no intention of ever giving to their kid. Not all fads are created equal. Some are remembered fondly, albeit a bit painfully (Klackers), while others we'd just assume forget. But then we already have.

The Summer of Klackers

I see kids of all ages out and about on the Bronx's summer streets who are completely mesmerized with their iPhones and engrossed in their iPods. This contemporary digital snapshot is a far cry from the way things were when I was a boy. You know: stickball games in the street; open fire hydrants cooling off the cool atop the blazing hot asphalt.

Once upon a time, we amused ourselves with outdoor games and objects. The walkie-talkie was high technology. The fads that blew in and out of our lives were at once less technical and less expensive. Ah...to be young again and carrying around a pair of acrylic or glass balls. I'm speaking, of course, of Klackers: two solid balls connected by a single string, which debuted sometime in the late 1960s. However, they made a tsunami-like splash in 1972 as a very visible—and very loud—fad.

Klackers were merchandised by more names than can be chronicled here: Popper Knockers, Click Clacks, Nik Noks, Whackers, Quick Waks, etc. But whatever name they went by, the toys, which featured a handle device in the center of the string between the two balls, worked with the yo-yo principle. The object was to get the two balls banging into one another with some aplomb, and, if you were any good, performing neat tricks in the process. For one brief shining moment at least, it seemed that every boy and girl on the block had a pair of Klackers. They came in a kaleidoscope of colors, too, ranging from orange to bright pink to lime green—you name it.

The Klackers’ craze, however, rapidly went by the wayside amid persisting rumors of the glass balls smashing to smithereens like buckshot into youngsters' eyes and faces—something akin to what happened to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s former hunting partner. And, naturally, when two rock-solid balls crash into one another with brute force in the vicinity of unprotected body parts, there are bound to be never-ending stories of bruised arms, hands, and knuckles. Kids will be kids, too. Accidentally, and sometimes intentionally, many a youth got whacked on the head with the uber-active Klackers' balls.

You can see the problem here. Klackers had to go…and they did. They remain, however, knocking away in the hearts and minds of the boys and girls—now men and women—who let them rip some four decades ago. Now, if you want to get your mitts on a pair of Klackers, eBay and not Wal-Mart is where to find them.

Steinbrenner's Legacy

I always admired Yogi Berra for standing up to his bullying, unprincipled employer the way he did. Berra vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium—in any way, shape, or form—as long as the blustering man upstairs, George Steinbrenner, owned the team. Bullyragged from on high, he rightfully felt dissed by his superior, who not only promised him an uninterrupted season as the Yankees manager, and then fired him after only sixteen games, but had an emissary deliver the knockout punch. From Yogi's perspective, it was this weaselly latter act that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Berra ultimately returned to the "House that Ruth Built" fifteen years later when the both larger than life and smaller than life Steinbrenner uncharacteristically apologized.

I'm currently reading Bill Madden's biography Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball. This compelling page turner underscores yet again how the truth really is stranger than fiction. Hollywood couldn't craft a more colorful bully boy to own and operate a professional sports team than King George himself. Nor could it create a manager for him to hire and fire five times as animatedly unpredictable and unstable as the scrappy Billy Martin. And intermingled in the decades of bluster and blather as the owner of the most famous sports franchise in the world are incredible acts of generosity and kindheartedness.

Quite often in the life and times of George Steinbrenner, the battered and bruised in the man's march to the sea returned for more abuse, and frequently they were rewarded with largess, and sometimes a lifetime's worth of it. There were individuals who left the Boss's employ with utter scorn for him and desired no second acts. But many came back for seconds and sometimes thirds and fourths, and fed out of the the multi-millionaire's deep trough in perpetuity.

Exhibit A: Hall of Famer Bob Lemon was hired and fired a couple of times by the Boss. He was subsequently given a scouting position for life in the organization—at $50,000 per year, which was a nice piece of change for a player who plied his trade in the financially unrewarding 1940s and 1950s. Who could blame him for accepting such a sweet deal?

If somebody regularly lied to me, publicly humiliated me on occasion, and then offered me security for life, my pride just might have to take a back seat to this warm and reassuring pipeline of green until death did us part. I guess this moral and ethical conundrum is George Steinbrenner's lasting legacy.

Fred and Ted's Excellent Adventure

There are life lessons lurking just about everywhere, including sometimes in Hollywood and in the wayward winds of popular culture. The actors who portrayed Herman Munster and Lurch, on television's The Munsters and The Addams Family, respectively, came to resent their mega-popular on-screen characters. Ultimately, the pair felt typecast and unappreciated for the width and breadth of their thespian and artistic abilities.

Apparently, Fred Gwynne came to loathe, for a period of time at least, the genially naive Frankenstein monster he played with such aplomb on the small screen in the mid-1960s. And Cassidy desperately wanted his fans to know that he could do Shakespeare, too, and not just a hideous giant who grunted and mumbled in the richest of rich baritones. But these two characters were true originals given life by two fine actors. Their iconic popularity, which has stood the test of time, is the proof in the pilaf.

It's quite understandable how achieving monumental and longstanding notoriety for playing TV parts could get under one's skin, particularly when the public will not similarly applaud anything else the actors do. But what exactly are actors' jobs anyway? Entertaining the viewing public, I'd say. They are charged with touching us in some demonstrable ways, whether it's to make us laugh, cry, or think—or some combination of the three. To have breathed life into a character like the universally beloved Herman Munster should have brought Fred Gwynne a mother lode of joy, not misery, after the series ended. And Cassidy's charismatic Lurch ideally should have lifted his spirits for all time. The six feet-nine inches tall Cassidy died unexpectedly in 1979 at the age of forty-six, a not especially contented man from all that I've read.

Really, how many of us in our lifetimes will bequeath the world decades of unbroken entertainment? And with their timeless shows in syndication, there are no ends to the yuks in sight from Gwynne's "Herman" and Cassidy's "Lurch." That's quite a legacy and a powerful life lesson, too.

Nails in the Coffin

I recently read an account chronicling the latest chapter in the Lenny Dykstra saga. It was an ugly, bizarre, almost comical footnote to the life and times of a formerly feisty, tobacco-chawing, scrappy professional baseball player who traded in his romp through the green fields of America's pastime for a bull-headed charge through the green streets of Wall Street.

Just one year after the swaggering New York Mets of 1986 won 108 regular season games and a World Championship, I devoured a spate of memoirs about that crazy and wondrous baseball season authored by various players and their quirky manager, Davey Johnson, too. But there was only one tome among this library of anti-literature that stood apart from the pack, and it was Lenny Dykstra's NAILS: The Inside Story of an Amazin' Season. The "with" guy, who actually wrote the book in Dykstra's incomparable voice, was sportswriter Marty Noble. NAILS was in a class by itself, as Noble nobly channeled the memories, observations, and opinions of this short, lean, and gritty centerfielder affectionately known as "Nails." "Today we played the fucking Cardinals" was the kind of stuff interspersed throughout the book's narrative, as well as Dykstra's dismissing all things with which he disagreed with a pithy "I call bullshit on that."

Flash forward more than twenty years and this very same man is apparently broke, bankrupt, and living in the back of his van or something only slightly better than that. It is reported that he owes tens of millions of dollars to a whole host of people and entities who bought lock, stock, and barrel into the mega-hype that he, a former baseball player, was a financial whiz kid. Frequently wrong guru in the world of high finance, Jim Cramer, even sang Dykstra's praises on his CNBC program.

Once upon a time Lenny Dykstra hit a walk-off homerun against the Houston Astros in the 1986 NLCS. It was an extraordinary baseball moment and a Met fan memory of mega-import that we will not soon forget. In all of professional sports, there are few happenings more dramatic than walk-off, game-winning home runs, particularly in critical games and during the post-season. It's too bad Dykstra didn't walk-off into the sunset of positive memories that October day....

Instead, life went on, and Dykstra has since been fingered in the Mitchell Report as a steroid user—no big surprise here considering that he morphed into a major muscle head and power hitter, which he certainly wasn't with the Mets, in the later years of his career. And recently, of course, this celebrated financial genius inaugurated a magazine called The Players Club for a readership of well-compensated professional athletes, which embodied investment and brokerage counsel among its myriad services. And as they are so often wont to do, the moneyed lemmings came out of the woodwork and poured millions upon millions of dollars into what turned out to be a black hole with no there there. I, for one, just wish I could turn the clock back to 1986—for Lenny's sake.