Rainy Day Schedule

(Originally published 9/30/23)

When I attended seventh grade at St. John’s Middle School in the Bronx, there was an unusual policy in effect. It was dubbed the “Rainy Day Schedule.” Based on the fickle whims of Mother Nature, it was an odd duck indeed. If our principal looked out her office window and spied raindrops falling from the clouds, she would take to the school intercom and declare, “Today, we will be following the ‘Rainy Day Schedule,’” which cast asunder the hour lunch break and augured an early dismissal, 1:30 p.m. instead of 2:30 p.m., as I recall. Personally, I liked “Rainy Day Schedule” days. Getting out of school at 1:30 versus 2:30 was very appealing to this twelve-year-old boy, who lived just a couple of blocks away.

Under sunny skies—on a more typical school day—I would venture home for lunch and return to school for the afternoon session. But not every kid did that. A fair share of my peers savored “hot lunch,” as it was known, in the school’s cafeteria. The wafting aroma of a Chef Boyardee-esque tomato sauce was quite commonplace around lunchtime, but not when the “Rainy Day Schedule” was in effect. Presumably, this policy saved some bucks on meals not served. What other reason could there have been for it? Being at the mercy of the weather must have truly inconvenienced some parents, who were now responsible for their youngsters arriving home an hour earlier than usual and, of course, hungry for lunch. And what about the lunch ladies?

If memory serves, Sister Estelle’s invoking of the “Rainy Day Schedule” was more popular than not. It, though, often seemed arbitrary—a close call, as it were—whether or not we would dash out into the rain or drizzle an hour before our standard dismissal time. Looking back on the whole affair, it generated more problems than benefits. If saving on the aromatic tomato sauce bill was the wind beneath the wings of this policy, I do not remember it ever being explained one way or the other.

And this was 1974-75, the heyday of Catholic schools in New York City, when their cups runneth over with cash and student fannies in every available desk. My classmates and I represented the tail end of the baby boom. Just a few years later, in fact, St. John’s Middle School, which housed seventh and eighth grades, shuttered its doors, and all eight grades crammed into the grammar school on Godwin Terrace, a hop, skip, and a jump away. Once upon a time, this building served kindergarten through the sixth grade only. And several years after that consolidation, the middle school was back in business, hosting the whole shebang. The Archdiocese of New York leased the empty buildings—first the middle school then the larger grammar school—to the New York City Board of Education.

As fate would have it, the noble experiment that was the “Rainy Day Schedule” vanished the following year, never to be seen or heard from again. It was an experimental time for sure. Also in my seventh grade, A, B, C, and D grades were jettisoned in favor of 1, 2, 3, and 4 grades. Our education was thorough enough, however, that we were not fooled by this sleight of hand. Getting a mess of Fours in lieu of Ds offered the recipient little solace. Being a straight One student was still preferable.

In tandem with the “Rainy Day Schedule,” the 1, 2, 3, 4 grading system was retired as well, a folly soon forgotten. The eighth grade for me was weatherproof with the venerable A, B, and C thing back in business. Blame it on the rain, if you want, but it was most assuredly a simpler time.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

 

 

Is That Me?

(Originally published 11/17/13)

As a nostalgia buff who has saved countless bits and pieces of my youth, I still have my two high school ID cards. And not unlike The Twilight Zone's Talking Tina doll, they speak to me—not only about the past, but the present, too, and life in general for that matter.

My original high school ID card picture was taken in September 1976, when, sartorially speaking, we were still in the hip, often garish 1970s. This goes a long way in explaining why I am wearing a pinkish-hued shirt in the photo. For the first few weeks of school in my alma mater, Cardinal Spellman in the Bronx, the boys were permitted to shed their otherwise required jackets and a ties. After all, it was still officially summertime for two-thirds of the month of September. In the increasingly colder climes thereafter, I sometimes wore a blue polyester sports jacket with that same shirt, a multi-colored tie from my father’s extensive 1960s and 1970s collection, and gray plaid pants. In a year or so, though, that kaleidoscope of colors and mix-and-match styles completely vanished as the late-1970s morphed into the less distinctive, staid 1980s.

I carried around my first high school ID for two years. At some point during that time, the card cracked in half, and I taped it back together. A second serious crack is also visible. When I first examined it after years in storage, I wondered how such extensive damage occurred. After all, it was made of heavy plastic, like a credit card, and I do not recall having much need for it.

Today, as I pore over this antiquated, peeling, and badly mangled ID card with the tape on it now yellowed with age, I realize it is a metaphor of life. For I, too, am, metaphorically speaking at least, peeled, cracked, and yellowed. And this metamorphosis is not something that was on my mind, or even on my distant radar, when I was fourteen, wearing pink shirts, and consumed with youthful exuberance. In junior year, our high school ID cards took a serious hit and became cheesy, laminated photos with no pizzazz at all—a precursor of all too many things to come. The cheap laminate, however, did not split in half like its predecessor, the ID credit card. It was physically impossible.

Times have really changed—in a big way. I opened my first bank account with an expired college ID card. Imagine that! Nowadays—no matter our age—we are presumed to be up to no good and not who we say we are. I remember, too, in grammar school being taught how to distinguish between the words “principle” and “principal.” We were told that a living and breathing “principal” was our “pal,” which I never quite felt to be the case. Still, I absorbed the lesson. The "pal" on my 1976 high school ID card was—decades later—part of a Catholic Church lawsuit settlement for doing you know what. In fact, when he was our principal, I do not remember him being much of a pal to anyone. He was hot-tempered and disagreeable. The man only received acclaim from the student body when he declared a rare school holiday not on our original schedule—for selling a lot of fundraising raffle tickets, I think.

It is hard to believe that it has been thirty-seven years since that high school ID picture was snapped. In one respect, it seems like it was only yesterday, but a long, long, long time ago in another. It is a bygone era for sure. And who is that kid in pink? My life then amounted to fourteen years in total. Thirty-seven years have passed since then. I do not have another thirty-seven years coming to me. I cannot say for certain that I would want another thirty-seven years. There really is a lot staring back out at me from my two high school ID cards. Consider yourself warned: If you have your old high school ID cards lying around somewhere, be prepared at what they have to say.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

No More Perfect Storms

(Originally published 2/11/13)

My hometown dodged the worst of this recent epic snowstorm. I would estimate we received eight or nine inches in total, which is more than enough when you have to shovel it—but at least it was not two or three feet. Once upon a time, I loved snow and snowstorms—the bigger the better. I was a kid then and wrongfully assumed this heartfelt joy would last forever. After all, what wasn’t there to like about snow and its pristine blanket of white? I could not imagine an individual alive not appreciating the unique hush that big snows spawned—for one brief shining moment at least—when everything and anything came to a standstill.

A part of me still relishes watching snow fall from the sky. But it is an increasingly smaller part of me. Nowadays, any uplifting snowfall moments are remarkably fleeting and cannot compete with the stark reality of shoveling it, driving in it, and—most importantly—walking in it (sometimes for multiple days after the fact).

From my youthful perspective, snow inspired a heaping helping of fun and frolic in the great outdoors—and, it should be noted, welcome snow days, too. The Monday, February 6, 1978 blizzard is, for me, my all-time favorite snowstorm. Snow began falling on Sunday night, the fifth, and continued through Tuesday morning, the seventh. The seventeen inches or so that fell in New York City amounted to three full days off from high school, a considerable fringe benefit. This was the “Perfect Storm” in my book. As I recall, my high school re-opened its doors on Thursday of that week, but it was difficult getting there. Snow-cleanup technology and the New York City Department of Sanitation did not deal with snow removal in the 1970s as well as they do today. Our “special buses” did not show up that day, and we had to find alternate means of getting from the Northwest Bronx to Northeast Bronx—“non-special” buses as it were.

Fast forward thirty-plus years and here I am—a middle-aged man, still breathing thankfully, and shoveling snow with a weighty prosthetic right leg. I can still pull it off, which is reassuring—but for how long? There is a guy up the street from me—an overweight senior citizen who smokes like a fiend, and has difficulty walking even in sunny, warm climes—who was shoveling snow right alongside me a couple of days ago. Several snow-shoveling entrepreneurs offered to help both him and me, but we declined—courteously. I, for one, cannot afford these contemporary snow shovelers' rates. Nobody is shoveling snow for five and ten dollars anymore; it is more like fifty dollars or one hundred dollars for an average job—and I do not blame them. Five dollars buys two slices of pizza around here. Why break your back, or contribute to your chances of having a heart attack, for two slices of pizza in an over-priced metropolis and rotten, inflationary national economy?

It is not just blizzards that are not what they once were; it is both my personal world and the world at large. Perhaps dropping dead of a coronary thrombosis in a snowbank is not such a bad way to go. You know—in that virgin blanket of white and clean, crisp, cold air. But not this year…

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Time of Your Life

(Originally published 3/12/19)

Once upon a time, I could switch on the family’s black-and-white television set—with my youthful adrenalin flowing—and hear these immortal words: “Meet the Mets…Meet the Mets…Step right up and greet the Mets…Bring your kiddies…Bring your wife…Guaranteed to have the time of your life.” They were lyrics to the catchy tune that opened—along with a fast-paced montage of action shots—1970s New York Mets’ games on WOR-TV, Channel 9.

Listening to games on the radio in those days was as satisfying as turning on the TV. Even more so because so much was left to the imagination as broadcasters Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner effortlessly painted the word picture. Sadly, now, they are all gone as is the long-time home of the Mets, Shea Stadium. Believe it or not, it was considered a state-of-the-art ballpark when it first opened in 1964 in the shadow of the New York World’s Fair. It did not take long, though, for the place to sink into utter disrepair and earn a reputation as a sorry spot to both play and watch America’s favorite pastime.

Despite its obvious flaws, I loved Shea Stadium. It was an incomplete circle in design—open beyond the outfield—and in the flight path of nearby LaGuardia Airport. Drafty and noisy, it seemed—on some days—that you could almost reach out and touch the passing jets. Listening to planes’ crackling engines from such a front row seat may have annoyed some spectators—and ballplayers on the field—but I thought it was all rather cool and added to the game’s suspenseful ambience. The passion of youth has a knack for turning lemons into lemonade.

A kid could really lose himself in baseball back then. He could immerse himself in the reality of what was occurring on the field and let his imagination take it from there. It was certainly a less complicated time—an era before over-analyzing broadcasters, boorish sports talk radio, and social media forever altered the landscape. Ballplayers, too, were not cossetted, mega-millionaire celebrities. Somehow, we fans identified with them and there were still vestiges of a thing called team loyalty.

Well, that was then and this is now, 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1969 World Champion Mets—the “Miracle Mets.” It is hard to believe so much time has passed. Its passage has surely done a number on people, places, and things. Both the 1969 Mets and my favorite team of all-time, the 1973 National League Champion Mets, featured Bud Harrelson, Ed Kranepool, and Tom Seaver on their rosters. “Tom Terrific” was my childhood idol, the only one I ever had. Naturally, the games in which he pitched assumed an even higher meaning. I proudly wore my “Property of the New York Mets” gray T-shirt, with the number 41 on its back, around my Bronx neighborhood of Yankee fans. There was only one local kid—with an adjoining backyard on the next street—who, like me, was a bona fide Met fan. I am sure it annoyed those in earshot, but he and I would sometimes yell back and forth in the cover of night after an exciting Mets’ victory. And we both revered Tom Seaver and worried about his ERA. If he gave up three runs, it was considered a bad outing for him. This Hall of Fame pitcher once completed twenty-one games in a single season and amassed 231 of them in his career. It ain’t the same game today.

In what was a competitive world of competing baseball fans, I remember my older brother telling me that I was a Tom Seaver fan and not a Met fan. Well, the unfolding long-term picture proved that comment off-the-mark. For when my idol was traded away in what came to be known as the “Midnight Massacre” of June 15, 1977, I remained ever loyal to the Mets. It was not easy watching a pompous, parsimonious patrician named M. Donald Grant, who was calling the shots by then, run a once lucrative and respected franchise into the ground—and in short order, too.

But how can you mend a broken heart? Bring Tom Seaver back—as new ownership did in 1983—to finish out his career on the team and in the place he never, ever should have left. That reunification was an incredibly exciting time for me. But when management mystifyingly left him unprotected—in a free-agent compensation pool—at the end of the season, Tom Seaver was snatched away from us once more.

This past week, the Seaver family announced that Tom has been diagnosed with dementia and would be retiring from public life. It was sad news all around and a real gut punch. This was news in the wake of scrappy shortstop Bud Harrelson’s revelation that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and Ed Kranepool publicly seeking a kidney donor. Once upon a time, I imagined my ashes being sprinkled over Shea Stadium—tossed out of one of those spewing airliners. It would be fitting ending, I surmised. But Shea Stadium is not there anymore, and neither am I.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro

The IJ Network and My Marbles

(Originally published 9/3/18)

From the perils of social media file: You wake up in the morning, log on to Facebook, and visit one of the groups that you have joined. And, lo and behold, there it is: a crude, dismissive, quasi-literate comment to something positively benign. Case in point from a group devoted to my boyhood hero, a Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher: In a colorful Facebook box, a guy recounted how fortunate he was to have had said pitcher’s “MIL” as a grammar schoolteacher a half century ago. Why? Because she let her students watch baseball games. MIL stood for mother-in-law.

To make a long story short, this post did not sit well with an individual who responded to it with: “Whoop de do. Who cares?” This pithy put-down, however, was not enough for him. He added an acerbic aside, which claimed that people make up “ridiculous acronyms” to “feel superior.” He, by the way, did not use the word “people” but something vulgar beginning with “ass” and ending with “hole.” He also misspelled “ridiculous.”

Speaking of acronyms, I checked out this person’s profile and determined that he was an “IJ"—an Idiot...Jerk—and part of the expansive IJ Network. What makes an IJ an IJ? First, it has nothing to do with income, occupation, or geography. Rather, it is a mindset: aggressive, coarse, and arrogant. IJs are men and women who confuse boorishness with being clever. More than anything else, they love to pontificate. Where they are concerned, there are never, ever two sides to a story. The “IJ” marriage of the words was consummated forty years ago at a neighborhood swimming pool in the Bronx. Splashed with water, an angry youth exacted his revenge on the splasher by writing "Idiot...Jerk" in BIC pen on his locker.

It is because of the vast and growing IJ Network that I am typically loath to post on public groups. Recently, I had an inconsequential encounter with a fellow who obviously considered himself Joe New York. He thought what I posted would be of no interest to real New Yorkers, whom he deemed to speak. The man employed all caps at one point and concluded his loutish comment with “lol.” When the IJ Network comes calling, I promptly take my marbles and go someplace else. Like here:

For those considering visiting America and wondering what culinary delights to sample...

One cannot go wrong with tacos, burgers, and tossed salads washed down with refreshing Bud Lights. They are as American as apple pie.

I thought so...but now I know for certain...the Golden Age is no more...

New York may be the "city that never sleeps," but its bathrooms often do.

A remnant of old New York...

For some reason I thought of the game show: Can You Top This?

Everyone who is anyone rides around on a Citibike nowadays.

While growing up, my favorite pizza guy, George, would make a dozen or more pizzas before he even opened his shop. Ordering a slice later in the day was sometimes a crapshoot.

The Karate Kid of Kingsbridge...

This restaurant briefly appeared on my Grubhub roster of culinary possibilities. Since I have had a run of good luck of late when ordering via this online facilitator, the last thing I wanted was a Fiasco.

For a moment there I thought this was a yellow school bus.

I would like to toast a marshmallow in something like that...

Now this is American gourmet food...

All alone in the last subway car afforded me a catbird seat. With fellow passengers on the scene, taking such a picture might have prompted a see something, say something moment.

Some people have seen Him on burnt toast, in cloud formations, and in a window's condensation. I have seen Him riding a bicycle.

And He said, "Let there be light!"

If anyone deserves Labor Day off, it is Edy!

When veteran newsman David Brinkley was asked about the iconic closing of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report with co-anchor Chet Huntley—"Good night, Chet...Good night, David"—he said that the pair initially found the notion corny. But then Brinkley wryly added, "You had to end the show with something." So, why not? And the rest is history...

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)