Unforgettable, That's What You Were: Part II

(Originally published 9/30/15)

Here is additional material from an unsold book proposal of mine. Its working title was This ‘70s Book: Remembering the People, Events, Fashions, Fads, and Mores That Defined an Unforgettable Decade. Since shopping it around a long time ago, both Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore were released on parole. In a 2019 interview, Fromme asked and answered: “Was I in love with Charlie? Yeah, I still am.” Never understood the attraction. Moore died in 2025 at the age of ninety-five.

Femme Near Fatales

No American President, save the inoffensive Gerald Ford, has been the subject of two assassination attempts, let alone within seventeen days of one another. And what makes this snippet of historical trivia even more bizarre is that both would-be assassins were women—but hardly ladies. On September 5, 1975, in Sacramento, California, the initial try on the life of the thirty-eighth president was the handiwork of Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a slavish disciple of mass murderer and certifiable madman, Charles Manson. Hopelessly inept at currying favor with her by then incarcerated leader and fellow members of his freaky family, Fromme was promptly tackled by a Secret Service agent when she pointed her .45 Colt automatic at Ford. Despite the subsequent revelation that no bullets were in the gun’s firing chamber, she was summarily charged with attempting to assassinate the president.  

Seventeen days later, on September 22, 1975, yet another deranged woman lay in wait of the president. In stark contrast to the hapless Fromme, Sara Jane Moore carried a loaded .38 Smith and Wesson on her person. And when the inoffensive Ford commenced delivering a characteristically charisma-challenged speech to an appreciative throng of supporters in front of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Moore brandished her weapon. In the crowd, and hanging on the president’s every word, stood a burly ex-marine named Oliver Sipple. He spotted Moore with gun in hand and reached for her arm, deflecting a fired shot. The bullet ricocheted off a nearby wall and superficially wounded a cab driver awaiting his next fare. Quite possibly, Sipple saved Ford’s life that day by altering the trajectory of the bullet. He may well have altered American history, too. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller would have assumed the presidency. A bona fide hero, Sipple at once found himself in the media glare—his fifteen minutes of fame upon him with a vengeance. But, tragically, this man’s moment in the spotlight set in motion a chain of events that would augur his untimely demise.

Fromme Here to Eternity

Born on October 22, 1948, in Santa Monica, California, Lynette Fromme was a gifted dancer as a child and performed in an ensemble known as the Westchester Lariats. This talented troupe of kids was so highly regarded that they were booked on the squeaky-clean Lawrence Welk Show and displayed their varied talents on Pennsylvania Avenue for White House dignitaries. Unfortunately, little Lynette grew up and became subsumed by both 1960s radicalism and an unhealthy dose of madness. She landed in the clutches of the Manson family ensemble and eventually kept company with and moved in with the bloodthirsty brood. In the late-1960s, an elderly man named George Spahn was conned into allowing the Manson family to live in his mountain home. It was there that Lynette acquired the nickname “Squeaky,” courtesy of the sounds that emanated from her when the sightless, but still frisky Spahn ran his fingers up and down her legs. “Squeaky” was subsequently given a new nickname—this time by Manson himself. He dubbed her “Red” and assigned his protégé the not inconsiderable task of saving the California Redwoods. In fact, her ostensible reason for the attempt on President Ford’s life was to show the imprisoned Manson and other family members how committed she was to the environment.

Convicted in November 1975 for her crime, Fromme remains behind bars, but has not exactly been a model prisoner. She once hammered the head of a fellow inmate, Julienne Busic, a Croatian Nationalist sentenced for her role in a 1976 airplane hijacking. Fromme also escaped the brig in December 1987, desperately trying to reunite with Manson, whom she thought was dying of cancer. She was swiftly apprehended and returned to complete her sentence with a little something extra added to it.

Moore or Less

Sara Jane Moore crammed a lot of living into her life before entering the history books as a presidential assassin wannabe. Born in 1930, Moore married five times and had four children. Before she became a “revolutionary” and poster child for the counterculture, Moore dispensed tax advice as a CPA.

In 1972, she began drifting through the dark recesses of the underground. While there, the FBI propositioned Moore to obtain information on the Patty Hearst kidnapping, which she consented to do. However, life as an FBI mole didn’t sit too well with her radical brethren, who shunned Moore as a turncoat.

In Moore’s increasingly warped mind, she attempted to return to the good graces of her motley former friends by shooting the president. She pleaded guilty to the attempted assassination of President Ford charge and is today serving a life sentence for the crime. Moore once said, “There comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun.”

No Good Deed

Ironically, the villains in this story endure and the hero is no longer with us. Oliver Sipple, the man who courageously and selflessly deflected Sara Jane Moore’s arm and gunshot along with it, deserved a better fate in life than what befell him. The honorably discharged ex-marine and Vietnam War veteran lived in San Francisco when President Ford visited the city in September 1975. Sipple was also a gay man living surreptitiously in an overstuffed closet all too familiar in the 1970s.

When the man became a newsmaker by thwarting a possible presidential assassination, the media minions combed through his personal life. The San Francisco Chronicle revealed that Sipple contributed to gay causes and speculated that he himself was gay. Sipple’s saga was only beginning, as other newspapers followed suit and ran with the story.

Sipple sued the San Francisco Chronicle for revealing his secret life but lost the case because he was deemed a “public figure” and therefore questions about his character were considered newsworthy and fair game for media hounds. He remarked at the time, “My sexual orientation has nothing at all to do with saving the president’s life, just as the color of my eyes or my race has nothing to do with what happened in front of the St. Francis Hotel.” Nevertheless, Sipple’s devoutly religious mother shunned him after the revelation of her son’s “other life” became known. When she died in 1979, Sipple’s father informed his son, Oliver, that he was unwelcome at his own mother’s funeral.

Gay rights groups grumbled with justification that Sipple was never once invited to the White House nor suitably recognized for his heroic act. News reports of his sexuality were seen as the reason for the snub. Sipple received only a personal thank you note from the president. In 2001, ex-President Ford denied that Sipple’s homosexuality had anything to do with how he treated him. Ford said: “As far as I was concerned, I had done the right thing and the matter was ended. I didn’t learn until sometime later—I can’t remember when—he was gay. I don’t know where anyone got the crazy idea I was prejudiced and wanted to exclude gays.”

The snowballing series of events broke Sipple’s will. He turned to alcohol for succor, grew increasingly obese, and wallowed in depression. In 1989, at the age of forty-seven, Sipple was found dead in his apartment. It was determined he had been dead for two weeks. On his deathbed, Sipple weighed more than 300 lbs. Gerald and Betty Ford sent their condolences to surviving friends and family but did not attend the service.

The Catnapping of the Century

(Originally published 2/22/15)

When I was boy growing up in the Bronx, there were bullies in the neighborhood. Nowadays, the subject of bullying, with its countless technological tentacles, is front and center—and rightfully so—but back in the 1970s, it was tolerated and largely ignored. In fact, all of us in the non-bully—and potentially bullied—class lived our lives with these individuals always on our radars.

There was one entourage that will forever define, in my mind at least, what bullies and bully-ism are all about. This was, of course, in an era before cyber-bullying, and these boys did their dirty work in the bright light of day—and, yes, at night as well. Naturally, bullies need a leader of sorts, and this crew had one—an archetype. This bruiser named Tony looked and acted his part. He was a scary fellow, as were his underlings, one of whom used to stick firecrackers in pigeons' anuses and blow them up.

I always thought Tony resembled an over-sized marshmallow—a “Mr. Marshmallow Head,” if you will, with curly locks and a porker’s nose. He was big, burly, and mean. One friend of mine remembered him as an Incredible Hulk-type. Another old friend, when asked if he remembered Tony, replied: “The bully?” So, take your pick, Mr. Marshmallow Head or the Incredible Hulk. He was the last person any of us wanted in our lives in that colorfully raw snapshot in time.

I appreciate now that when I was very young—grade-school age—I exhibited a fair amount of courage and willingness to “boldly go” and take on a bully and his bullyboy brigade. Perhaps it was more naiveté than actual courage—youthful exuberance unleashed and unafraid. Well, less afraid. And I’m talking about “taking on” bullies in a roundabout, clandestine way, because I weighed ninety-nine pounds at the time. From bullyboy Tony’s perspective, I was a ninety-nine-pound weakling. And years later—as a high-school kid who tipped the scales at a whopping 115 pounds—the thought of doing what I did as an eleven year old seemed extraordinary to me, as it does now. What was I thinking?

Along with bullies, there were a lot of stray cats in the old neighborhood. One of the more fecund females in town was named “Tiny,” and she belonged to a family up the block. Tiny had many male suitors and was the mother of a mother lode of kittens. My little clique of friends and I loved Tiny and her always-expanding family. We fed them pieces of white bread and saucers of milk—that’s what we did back then—and looked out for their well-being.

Then one afternoon out of the blue, Tony and his militia came down to our neck of the woods loaded for bear and began harvesting stray cats. They whisked away those they could catch in a burlap sack, as I remember, while claiming to be concerned “cat people.” They even accused those in their way of “animal abuse.” In one of their roundups, they snatched a young, very friendly cat named “Goldy,” based on her vivid color scheme. Tony and friends brought their collection of cats to a small lot wedged in between a pre-war walk-up apartment building and a neighborhood bowling alley near Broadway.

When combined with the passion of youth, love conquers all, I suppose, because my best friend and I ventured into Tony Town, which was just up the hill from us, and found Goldy the cat in that very lot. We coaxed her out of this feline sanctuary of theirs and brought her back home, which was only a couple of blocks away—but, really, seemed worlds apart. The bullyboys were down on us in short order, seeking the identity of the catnappers. I’ve always wondered what they had in mind for us, but fortunately the non-bully set had their version of omerta. So, while Tony and associates didn’t return home with my head on the platter, they, sadly, had Goldy the cat in their clutches again. Tony had renamed her “Judy,” and I can still hear him saying, “We’re going to bring you home now, Judy.” Frightened out of my skin, I still remember thinking that “Judy” was a silly name for a cat. And Tony’s tone of voice was also silly and stupid—stupid and scary, a toxic combination.

I don’t know whatever became of Goldy and all those cats that were rounded up. Tony purported to be a cat lover and maybe he was. It wouldn’t be unprecedented if a Neanderthal brute liked cats. But considering who he and his partners in crime were, it seems a long shot that their motives were absolutely pure. I’m just happy that I went into enemy territory—risked life and limb in a manner of speaking—to do what an innocent kid who loved a cat thought was right. And Mr. Marshmallow Head never did solve the Catnapping of the Century.

Note to Self

(Originally published 3/13/13)

Recently, while poring over bits and pieces from my school years, I encountered an uneven scrap of notebook paper with scribbling on it. Turns out it was a bona fide “Note to Self” and dated 2/26/80, which places its author—me—in my senior year of high school.

What I can say for sure about this day in February 1980: It was a Tuesday and a leap year, so there was a Friday, February 29. I had taken a school sick day but cannot say for certain whether I was physically ill or not. I’d hazard a guess it was the latter. I was, though, experiencing some measure of angst—the “I dread returning to that sickening place” is the giveaway.

I have no recollection of writing this “Note to Self” and headlining it “Feelings Tonight.” Likewise, I don’t recall what was troubling me thirty-three years ago on that late winter’s eve. Suffice it to say, I didn’t enjoy my high school experience all that much. If memory serves, however, my senior year was the least objectionable of the four. So, the timing of this “Note to Self” is surprising.

The most intriguing detail within this particular “Note to Self” is: “To be taken out on June 27.” This was the scheduled date for seniors to pick up our diplomas, I believe, and the last day I would ever again set foot in that “sickening place.” Strange, but I do remember authoring occasional notes with the “To be taken out on” tag. “To be read on” would be my suggested adult edit. Anyway, it was a teenager’s method of underscoring the reality that “this too shall pass.”

I must admit that there was an obvious glitch in the “Note to Self” series. My various messages ended up not being read—“taken out,” as it were—on the prescribed days. And this was integral to the whole "Note to Self" exercise. Still, the point’s been made, I guess—most problems come and go. Ditto for other “Notes to Self” that I have yet read and may never read.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

All Those Years Ago

(Originally published 8/29/12)

Exactly thirty-five years ago on August 29, 1977, simpler pleasures ruled. This day in history saw three Bronx denizens—aged twenty-six, seventeen, and fourteen (yours truly)—embark on an adventuresome itinerary that commenced just after sunrise.

Our first stopover was the Brigantine Castle in the shore town of Brigantine, New Jersey. In the mid-1970s, commercials for this haunted-house attraction on the Atlantic’s edge inundated local New York City television and radio. Despite it being a three-hour drive, the attraction was something we had to experience in the flesh—and we did. Castle employee-performers sprang out of shadowy niches, stabbed us with rubber knives, and flung rubber rats into our paths. More cheesy than scary, it didn’t quite live up to the hype. Not surprisingly, the Brigantine Castle’s days were numbered by then. Several years after our visit, it burned to the ground. Perhaps it really was haunted.

Next, our journey found us in pre-casino Atlantic City, where we traversed the historic boardwalk. I don’t remember why, but the three of us expected Atlantic City to be a sparkling jewel on the ocean and not a dilapidated and seedy eyesore. Nonetheless, it was nice to see that a Philadelphia Phillies' player, Greg "the Bull" Luzinski, and a former one, Richie Ashburn, were scheduled to appear at the legendary Steel Pier. We didn’t stick around long enough to uncover what they were going to do when they got there.

Onward to Philadelphia and Independence Hall, where we, finally, laid eyes on the Liberty Bell—with an up close and personal look at that famous crack. And with evening fast approaching, the icing on the day’s layer cake: a baseball game at Veterans Stadium. The Philadelphia Phillies versus the Atlanta Braves. And yet another first for us—witnessing live a game played on artificial turf. Veterans Stadium was among the multi-sport, cookie-cutter, synthetic-grass stadiums that were the rage in the 1970s. They’ve since become passé and most of them have been demolished, including Veterans Stadium. Happily, Greg Luzinski made it back in time from the Steel Pier and was in the starting lineup.

After a fourteen-inning game that took a little over four hours to complete, it was back to the Bronx in the wee hours of the following day. We were on a sleepy high from this thrill-packed, 1970s-style escapade. Unfortunately, the feeling didn’t have legs.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The School Bag Three

(Originally published 4/8/18)

Yesterday, on the subway into Manhattan, an affable Charles Manson-looking guy and, later, an HIV-positive female equivalent, were panhandling. Both assumed a grateful posture, with the latter exiting the train with a thunderous “Thank you, New York!” With Lady Liberty looming large in the damp and blustery distance, I met a friend in Battery Park—our old stomping grounds.

Along with yours truly, he was one of the “School Bag Three,” a trio from Kingsbridge in the Bronx who attended the same Catholic grammar school and high school. When we began our secondary education in 1976, school bags were still vogue. I bought mine—a black one—in a neighborhood luggage store. In the 1970s, Kingsbridge hosted mom-and-pop stores that specialized in everything and anything anyone needed. From luggage to hosiery to deli sandwiches—pets to art supplies to pork sausages—a shop existed within walking distance on the main thoroughfares of W231st Street and Broadway under the noisy El. Nowadays, it’s an unsightly mishmash and unpleasant reminder of what once was.

Interestingly, the school bag—which was quite utilitarian in transporting books, notepads, and pens from Point A to Point B—became increasingly passé in the waning years of the 1970s. One member of our threesome nevertheless soldiered on with his red-and-white Cardinal Spellman High School-insignia school bag for all four years. By senior year, though, its handle had fallen off, but he earnestly carried on with it under his arm. What a difference four years made. School bags were suddenly the accoutrements of nerds. My older brother was embarrassed that I clung to mine as long as I did, when—due to intense wear—I finally retired it. In the end, Ginger, a new canine addition to the family, teethed on the legendary bag's handle. It went out with a bang, not a whimper.

Unfortunately, we aren’t carrying our school bags in the 1978 picture that I christened the "School Bag Three." One of my regrets is not having any photos in my high school uniform, which for the boys back then was a jacket, tie, and dressy pants of their choice. These colorfully arbitrary mix and matches defined the time.

Anyway, that was then and this is now. Suffice it to say, the School Bag Three of 2018 aren’t as spry as they were when they patronized Bill’s Friendly Spot after a brutalizing school day for a “delicious egg cream.” At least that’s what the sign outside read along with an image of the famously frothy fountain pick-me-up. In fact, I—who wear a prosthetic knee—am the most ambulatory these days, with my old mates saddled with assorted maladies that impede their walking.

Yesterday, too, I was reminded of a peculiar teenage prediction regarding one of us. Sometime in the late-1970s, we were cavorting in my concrete backyard. For some strange reason, I proclaimed then that so-and-so would live to be fifty-seven. He will turn fifty-six this month and he is not doing very well. Of course, we were just having a grand old time and mouthing spontaneous and off-the-wall stuff in an age before the Internet and smartphones. At least my prophecy wasn't recorded! Of course, it was gallows humor and I know full well that any one of us could drop between now and then. And, really, fifty-seven, once upon a time, sounded really old. As a teen, I couldn’t conceive of being that age. My father was in his forties when I was in high school. Nevertheless, I’m closing in on that unholy number—fifty-seven—and don’t relish being a Teenage Nostradamus or, for that matter, dead as a doornail just yet.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Unforgettable, That’s What You Were

(Originally published 9/30/15)

Here are some materials from a proposed project that never saw the light of day. The grounds are littered with them. Its working title was This ‘70s Book: Remembering the People, Events, Fashions, Fads, and Mores That Defined an Unforgettable Decade.

It was the grooviest snapshot in time—the 1970s. At once colorful in fashion and remarkably colorless in politicians—from Presidents Nixon to Ford to Carter—the decade began with the nation mired in a contentious war and passed into the dustbin of history with Americans held hostage in Iran by a fanatical Ayatollah.

It was the decade that added both spice and controversy to television sitcoms, as the perfect TV family at last became dysfunctional—just like the rest of us. The 1970s also furnished us with a heaping helping of variety on the boob tube—quite literally—as a diverse cast of characters from Flip Wilson to Mac Davis to Howard Cosell hosted their very own “variety shows.”

The 1970s gave us a Secretary of Agriculture named Butz, a presidential brother named Billy, and a nightclub named Studio 54. It witnessed the rise of a thing called “free agency” in Major League Baseball, altering the face of the American pastime forever. In this inimitable decade, Volkswagen defined the “cheap car,” with the German automaker’s “bugs” crawling all over America’s highways and byways. So what if the trunks were on the wrong end of the car. And, lest we forget, 1970s automobile owners also cruised about in Dodge’s “Dart Swingers.” Meanwhile, two-legged swingers created a thing called “disco fever,” while gyrating the nights away to the latest Bee Gees blockbuster hit.

Yes, the 1970s were a decade to remember. From Richard Nixon and Watergate to John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever, the people, events, fashions, fads, and mores are lodged in the memory banks of millions of baby boomers. Their children are even caught up in the nostalgia of what came before them. For no matter what transpired three decades ago—from war abroad to scandal at home—it was unquestionably a simpler time. It was the end of the “good old days.”

In the 1970s, only those with acrophobia gave second thoughts to ascending high-rise buildings. Al Gore had yet to “invent” the Internet. Job outsourcing was not a political issue. With most Americans driving around in the same old heaps until the wheels fell off, car leasing was unheard of. And there weren’t more than four hundred-plus TV channels with nothing on, but a mere ten to twelve with something for everyone.

This ‘70s Book will chronicle the good, the bad, and the ugly of an epoch—from the birth of the disposable razor to cigarette vending machines dispensing the poisonous pleasures in high school cafeterias. It’ll recall Jimmy Hoffa’s mysterious exit from this mortal coil, as well as baseball players Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich swapping wives, children, and dogs.

This ‘70s Book will wear hot pants and attend college toga parties. It’ll get behind the wheel of a classic Plymouth “Duster” and American Motors “Gremlin.” The book will furnish readers with crash courses on the era’s economic highlights and lowlights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all-time high of 907 in 1979! Inflation topped 13% and the prime interest rate soared above 15% in the late 1970s. And the Chrysler Corporation received a highly contentious $1.5 billion worth of government largesse during this time period.

This ‘70s Book will cast its net far and wide over a unique and momentous period in American history. Readers will relish this enticing retrospective. They will learn things they never knew before about everyone from Louise Brown, the first test tube baby, to Tony Orlando, who turned yellow ribbons into gold nuggets. They’ll relive Argentine stripper Fanne Foxe doing her thing with a powerful Congressman. This ‘70s Book will recall when Superman was a guy named Christopher Reeve and when Ernest Borgnine and Gene Hackman sailed the extremely rough seas on a ship called the Poseidon.

A short sample chapter from the book that never was but could have been…

 

Rolling in the Hays

Every decade makes a celebrity out of a mistress or gal-pal of somebody famous or otherwise powerful. It’s part of our cultural heritage. The 1990s gave us Monica Lewinsky; the 1980s, the dynamic duo of Donna Rice and Jessica Hahn. And the 1970s were hardly devoid of sexual hijinks and scandal.

Famously quoted as saying, “I can’t type…I can’t file…I can’t even answer the phone,” Elizabeth Ray nevertheless found employment as a secretary on Capitol Hill. Despite her less than impressive administrative attributes, she landed a $14,000/year clerking position with influential Democratic Congressman Wayne Hays of Ohio. In our bicentennial year of 1976, the world discovered that the comely Ms. Ray’s job responsibilities had precious little to do with typing, filing, and answering the phone.

Congressman Hays chaired the House Administration Committee, which controlled the purse strings and myriad perks on everything from custodial help to travel allowances to parking spaces. This enabled the long-time Washington insider to wield considerable power with the most modest of mallets. In other words, he could cut off colleagues’ air conditioning if he saw fit or punish elevator operators for sitting down while he had to stand, which he in fact did by removing their jump seats.

So, when Ms. Ray went public with her story of having been hired solely as a congressman’s mistress, not too many folks in Washington felt sympathy for the beleaguered Hays. Ray said she spilled the beans because she felt snubbed at not being invited to her paramour’s nuptials. In 1976, Hays married Patricia Peak, a bona fide secretary from his Ohio office, not too long after divorcing his wife of thirty-eight years. Ray grumbled, “I was good enough to be his mistress for two years, but not good enough to be invited to his wedding.” She also wanted it on record that she did not enjoy her intimate moments with the flabby senior citizen for whom she worked. Ray said, “If I could have, I would have put on a blindfold, worn earplugs, and taken a shot of Novocain.”

When all the dirt surfaced of the two-year-old liaison between Ray and Hays, the Congressman admitted to romping in the hay with his employee but emphasized that she was not hired to serve as his mistress. It wasn’t, after all, against the law to fool around. Hays immediately resigned from his committee chairmanship and a couple of months later from his congressional seat. He escaped any criminal charges, largely because Ray was certifiably flaky and completely unreliable. People from her past came out the woodwork and made a convincing case that she was the antithesis of a naive Girl Scout and, too, a far cry from the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

A former boyfriend—and a trial lawyer—told the media: “She wasn’t very intelligent. If I took her out somewhere, I’d tell her not to say anything. Now and then she’d forget and call me the next day to apologize.” A restaurant owner who once employed her as a waitress said that he had to let her go because “she was hustling.”

After Wayne Hays resigned from Congress, he disappeared from the limelight altogether into a well-earned obscurity. He succumbed to cancer in 1989 at the age of seventy-seven. His second wife, Patricia, survived him.

With more than thirty years of resume building since the scandal, Ms. Ray has posed for Playboy several times and tried her hand at acting and screenwriting. It has been reported she is a part-time stand-up comedienne.

Come to the Front Desk Please

(Originally published 4/10/25)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shopkeeper's Store Is No More

(Originally published 3/31/21)

My Grubhub restaurant delivery options are multiplying like rabbits. I do, though, find it hard to believe that more than a few of the newly listed eateries would deliver to me. Many of them are quite a distance away in the heavily trafficked Bronx and surrounding areas. Why would I order a pizza from a shop that’s closer to where I went to high school—in the East Bronx—than my front door? That’s a recipe for cold pizza! Still, I’m impressed that “No. 1 Chinese Restaurant” has been added to the Grubhub roster. “New on The Block Deli” has, too, along with “Deli & Food,” a winning retail moniker if ever there was one. While distance will likely keep us apart, “Freaking Good Pizza” and “Best Italian Pizza” in the South Bronx nevertheless intrigue me.

When I was a boy, pizza establishments were called shops. If we needed to buy fruit, we patronized the fruit store, not the fruit shop. My father was a long-time patron of the local beer store. It had an actual name, I suppose, but I don’t recall ever knowing what it was. Going to the beer store spoke volumes. The old neighborhood had a couple of record shops, not record stores. In those simpler days of funny phone calls, many a store and shop were on the receiving end of them. In response to a bogus telephone survey, Mike, who tirelessly labored at Pat Mitchell’s Irish Food Center, volunteered his occupation as “store clerk.” A neighbor up the street, who made his fortune in retail with a chain of pet food and supply stores, nonetheless disappointed his mother. She ruefully remarked one day that her son was “content on being a shopkeeper.” Mama believed that a suit-and-tie job made the man, not the millions accrued in a dusty cloud of Hartz Mountain cat litter.

The passage of time has ushered in a whole host of changes. For one, the funny phone call is a relic of the past. Anonymous trolling, I guess, has replaced it, removing the funny part in the process. The old neighborhood beer store is gone, but we can order our preferred brew online if we desire. Shops selling LPs are a distant memory and so are shops—albeit less distant—selling CDs. I remember the big deal made when cassette tapes replaced records. Will wonders never cease, we thought.

From Grubhub in the here and now to the family doctor back in the day. My family called on a familiar neighborhood GP for decades. His office was on the ground floor of an old walk-up apartment building—grungy but somehow reassuring. Playing outside with my brother on a winter’s eve before suppertime—that’s what we did back then—a wrought iron fence’s spike made acquaintance with the bottom of my chin. I was bloodied all right, and a call was placed to the family doctor—not a request for an ambulance—just up the hill from home. Come right over, he said, and Mom and I did just that. Doc stitched me up for another go-round and I still have the scar as a souvenir. He made house calls through the years to my grandfather and grandmother and drove an aunt to the ER. I appreciate that medical science performs miracles nowadays, but I miss the old family doctor and, for that matter, record stores and funny phone calls.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

This Old House

(Originally published 7/30/17)

This old house is no more. It stood in the same location in the Bronx for nearly a century and, it’s fair to say, witnessed innumerable and seismic changes all around it. If this old house could only have spoken before it was demolished, it would have had a story to tell. The original home’s owner built the structure with his own two hands, which wasn’t unheard of in the Bronx of yesteryear. People who had the privilege of entering its interior reported that the rooms were tiny and the ceilings low. It was a dwelling for a different time and place. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Pat Mitchell, an iconic local grocer for decades, rented a furnished room in the house’s attic. While an average-sized adult couldn’t stand up straight there, rooms were hard to come by then.

I’m old enough to remember the builder’s then-elderly daughter living in the house with her grown son, known as “Buddy.” Buddy, who bore a striking resemblance to actor Jason Robards, had a faithful German shepherd often at his side. He wasn’t what you would call a conversationalist. Outside of walking his dog or silently lounging around in his windowed front porch with a can of beer in his hand, the man was nondescript. The neighborhood’s nastier wagging tongues considered Buddy something of a slacker. He never was duly employed and was never sans beer money—a deadly one-two punch as far as they were concerned. And, too, the family had a summer place in the Catskills, where Buddy and his mother vacationed and eventually moved to after selling this old house.

Interestingly, the house's foundation was laid atop the recently covered-over Tibbetts Brook, which meandered through this area of the Bronx until the fledgling years of the twentieth century. When it was first ready for occupancy, there were still vestiges of the stream at the surface. Initially, the home's owner had a swimming hole in the backyard—water in which he swam, or at least wallowed in. The basement was quite often flooded.

When my grandparents moved to Kingsbridge in 1946, the old man's wife was still among the living. There were many empty lots in the neighborhood at that time and locals planted what they called “victory gardens” in some of them, even after the war and victory. My grandfather tilled a plot in close proximity of this old house. Approximately ten years later, he and fellow gardeners were asked to vacate the premises in the name of progress. Courtesy of the underground, but still-tenacious Tibbetts Brook seeking daylight, the original developer of the property—directly behind this old house—went bust after running into unforeseen and considerable water-related issues. Two tall buildings were subsequently erected, which were dubbed Tibbett Towers. And this old house now had a parking lot alongside it.

Happily, my grandfather and a few friends found a new site in which to indulge their penchant for gardening. It was not too far from their old garden space—walking distance in fact—and just to the north of this old house. A makeshift fence promptly enclosed the new space, and a well was dug that tapped into Tibbetts Brooks, which supplied the flowers and crops with a regular and generous source of water. It was this garden that I came to know during my youth, before it, too, was razed. I recently learned that the old man who built this old house planted the Sycamore tree in the backyard, which has long towered over the property. As of this writing, it’s still there and probably over eighty years old. No surprise though: the developer is going to cut it down—in the name of progress, naturally.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Signs of the Times

(Originally published 11/13/16)

Growing up in the Northwest Bronx today bears little resemblance to its 1960s and 1970s forebear. The very same sentiment could be applied to growing up anywhere, I suppose. That’s because we now live in an ever-evolving Information Age. In fact, a case could be made that it’s a Too Much Information Age. The signs of the times are everywhere and impossible to miss.

When I was a boy, one and all would “go into the city.” It’s the phrase that was regularly applied to our Bronx to Manhattan sojourns. Despite the Bronx being a borough of New York City—and a pretty famous one at that—the expression was both used and understood by everybody. One would “go into the city to see a play” or “go into the city to Christmas shop.” Here, at least, is something that has stood the test of time. Bronx residents still “go into the city” and many of them take the Number 1 subway train—the Broadway-Seventh Avenue local, which cuts a neat swath through the West Side of Manhattan, the most recognizable slice of the city.

I ventured “into the city” on the Number 1 train last weekend. Fittingly, I began my journey at the beginning, the Van Cortlandt Park station, where I spied a sign—for the very first time—that informed me that pride in the subway line was back. Funny, but I never knew it existed in the first place. Still, I was happy it was back. In the 1970s and 1980s, subway trains were covered in graffiti and grime, including the Number 1 fleet. Nevertheless, I suspect the “Pride Is Back” is a contemporary brander’s brainchild—an advertising concern that couldn’t tell you what exactly happened to the former pride, why it existed in the first place, and—the burning question of the moment—why it’s back now.

In the city itself, more signs of the times were seen, including one at the entrance of a little park in lower Manhattan. It’s the first time I have ever been apprised of how many light poles, movable chairs, and trees were within a park’s boundaries. I only counted twenty-four movable chairs when the sign said twenty-five. I could have lodged a complaint with New York’s complaint hotline, 311, but took the high road.

Downwind from this park with three-dozen trees was a peculiar-looking building, the handiwork no doubt of a Jenga fan and architect. This aesthetically unappealing edifice was also blue—the icing on the unsightly cake. I fear, though, that its design is something of a trend. While down by New York Harbor a short while later, a skyscraper on the New Jersey side sported the same Lego look. And I thought the pencil-thin, extremely tall buildings—which have been sprouting up in New York's skyline of late—couldn’t be surpassed for heinousness, but I was wrong. The signs of the times never cease to shock and awe.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

RIP Youthful Exuberance: 1977-2013

(Originally published 9/17/13)

With the 2013 New York City mayoral primaries mercifully in the history books—and no Democratic run-off required—I would like to return to the political contests that I remember most fondly. The year was 1977. I was fourteen, going on fifteen at the time and, admittedly, not especially interested in the hot-button issues of the day. For some reason, though, I was mesmerized by the game of politics—the theater of it all. As a youth, I collected political buttons, literature, and posters. I watched candidate debates on local TV, which were a whole lot more enlightening and entertaining than today’s overly scripted, media-hyped, canned answer snore-fests.

In 1977, New York City was in the throes of a fiscal crisis. It was crime-laden, dirtier than ever, and conspicuously in decline. The scuttlebutt was that the Big Apple’s best days had come and gone. From my perspective in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge, however, the 1970s were a golden era—a heyday that included playing stickball games at nearby John F. Kennedy High School, sipping tasty egg creams from Bill’s Friendly Spot after a grueling day at Cardinal Spellman High School on the other side of the Bronx, and chowing down on Sam’s Pizza, a greasy delight that mere words cannot describe. But even if I was blissfully unaware of it, change was very definitely in the offing—some of it good but most of it not so good.

The diminutive Abe Beame, a well-meaning but hapless clubhouse politician who inherited a train wreck from his predecessor, suave John Lindsay, was the sitting mayor and reduced to eunuch status vis-à-vis governing. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Smelling blood in the water, Beame was challenged in his bid for a second term by a diverse lot of notable and not so notable politicians: Bella Abzug, Mario Cuomo, Ed Koch, Herman Badillo, Percy Sutton, and a businessman named Joel Harnett. The Republicans even had a primary that year featuring liberal Manhattan Congressman Roy Goodman versus conservative radio talk show host Barry Farber. Both races were highly contested and combative spectacles. I loved the give-and-take so much that I taped several of the debates with my Panasonic push-button recorder. Audiotapes were made back then by placing the recorder nearest the television set’s sound speaker and demanding complete silence in the room, which was usually impossible.

As I recall, venerable local newsman Gabe Pressman hosted one of the feistier primary debates. The candidates were seated side by side and interacted with one another. Bella Abzug badgered Mario Cuomo for being on the Liberal Party line in November come what may, while insisting correctly that he was not and never was a member of the party. She wanted to know why he was awarded that ballot line. (Cuomo was Governor Hugh Carey’s anointed candidate to defeat Beame.) “I’d like to have an answer,” Bella repeated over and over as Mario tried in vain to answer. Exasperated, Cuomo interrupted, “Well, when you close your mouth, I’ll answer!” The live audience at the debate let out a resounding “Oooh” or some such thing. And, really, this was the tenor of the contest—contentious and genuine. In the current age of political correctness, Cuomo would have to apologize for implying a female opponent had a big mouth. But Bella Abzug did have a big mouth—it was her stock-in-trade.

Mario Cuomo visited Kingsbridge in his Cuo-mobile in the summer of 1977 during the primary campaign. Ed Koch, too, passed out fliers on W231st Street, the neighborhood’s commercial hub. I picked up some campaign literature and buttons for my collection on the local streets, which pleased me to no end. I did not exclaim, “Life is good,” because that New Age bromide had not yet been invented, but I was feeling something along those lines. Before the September primary day, I had in my possession posters of the candidates from both parties, apart from Roy Goodman and Joel Harnett, who may not have produced any. I snatched them off telephone and traffic light poles and they were covered in staples. Fiscal crisis notwithstanding—the politicians of the day plastered area neighborhoods with their posters. This is quite rare today. Campaign buttons are even hard to come by.

For what it is worth the teenaged me supported Mario Cuomo for mayor, even though I could not vote. He came in second, and since the winner, Ed Koch, did not achieve the requisite 40%—part of the New York City election law—there was a run-off election several weeks later. Koch edged out Cuomo once again. In the general election, Cuomo, running on the Liberal Party line, gave him a run for his money but came up short.

Thirty-six years have passed since the summer of 1977 and that gritty and always exciting campaign for mayor. I am a lot older—thirty-six years older—and more attuned to issues, but the youthful exuberance of that time and place has expired. I will vote in November—I always do—but it doesn't seem to matter as much as it did in 1977, when I could not vote and did not really care about the issues.

At some point in time, my mother threw away the posters I had amassed that year. They had been stashed under my bed for far too long, I suppose. It was many years later that I considered that act akin to throwing away a prized baseball card collection. There will be no more Cuo-mobiles passing through my life—ever—and no more chumming for campaign posters to add to my collection, which is sad.