(Originally
published 1/21/19)
How cold
is it? It is so cold that my “Eddie lock” is frozen. More on that shortly. But
first, the weekend winter weather hype around here did not amount to more than a
soaking rain. However, phase two—the brutally cold aftermath—came to pass. This
past Saturday, the various subway platforms and subway staircases in New York
City were smothered in rock salt—or whatever ice-melting combination the
Metropolitan Transit Authority employs nowadays. In genuine fear of slipping, I
found myself gingerly navigating this precautionary measure of what might or
might not be. Honestly, descending heavily salted stairwells can be hazardous to
one’s health.
Happily, I
did not take a tumble on the overly salty surfaces. The subsequent chill,
though, resurrected memories of a past January cold spell. For some reason, I
have these evocative images in mind of a particular time and a particular
place. And courtesy of the wealth of information on the Internet, I can confirm
what I have long believed to be
that time, 1977, the winter of my first
year in high school. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I mostly
loathed the high school experience, cafeteria fare notwithstanding.
I vividly
remember riding our not very special “Special” buses across the
Bronx—west to east—on a series of brutally cold mornings. More than four
decades later, I can still feel the despair of those icy rides, which commenced
on Broadway under the noisy El. And as the buses rattled down Bailey Avenue, I
can see the rising seven o’ clock sun reflecting on the frozen snow remnants on
the passing sidewalks. At our rides' very literal high points on East Gun Hill
Road, glimpses of the Long Island Sound on the horizon were visible. In the dreary
depths of wintertime, such fleeting sightings made me pine for summer when our
“Special” buses were on ice.
Looking
back, there was nothing quite so depressing as venturing off to high school
during an Arctic blast. But I somehow made it through that frigid January of
1977 and lived to tell. It should be noted here that if my secondary education
was excised from my winter memory bank, the season had its moments. Honestly,
it all boiled down to snow in those days. It is what I—and many of my
peers—desired for a whole host of reasons, not the least being potential days
off from school. But in an age before hand-held devices kept addicted youth indoors
in winter, spring, summer, and fall, my contemporaries and I spent a lot of
time outside no matter the season.
As for
that
Eddie lock, I will make a long story short. It is a bicycle lock
used on the gate leading to a few descending stairs and my front door. The lock
came to pass after an unsettling early morning visit from a person unknown. At
that ungodly hour, 4 a.m., I opted not to inquire, “Who’s there?” Who, pray
tell, was ringing my bell then—off and on—for half an hour that felt like an
eternity?
I should have called the police.
I did,
however, have a prime suspect for the unwanted wake-up call: a neighborhood
local named Eddie. We knew each other as kids but were never friends.
Unfortunately, I am a familiar face. And Eddie has long been putting the monetary
bite on people he knows—even remotely. I made the grave mistake of
giving him a few dollars one time and it opened wide Pandora's Box. While it
solved my short-term problem, it created a vexing long-term one.
Eddie’s
story is a sorry one. Once upon a time, he was a quiet, unassuming youth. Now,
pushing sixty, he is loquacious and inclined to rave—his brain, no doubt,
scrambled by his decades-long addiction to heroin. In my most recent encounters
with Eddie, he came out with a couple of whoppers. He would be starting a job
in two weeks, he said on one occasion. That did not happen. The man also
reported that he would be receiving food stamps on the fifteenth of this month.
I wonder? And, yes, if I gave him a little something to tide him over until
then, Eddie would buy me groceries. Well, as of this writing, the Eddie lock
remains frozen, but a spritz of WD-40 will fix that. As for Eddie, his problems
are sadly not so easily fixable.
(Photos
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
