Shops, Stores, and the Family Doctor

(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)