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 stance, 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 the old neighborhood who attended the same Catholic grammar school and high school. And when we began our secondary education in 1976, on the other side of the Bronx, school bags were still vogue. I bought mine—a black one—in an area luggage store. In the 1970s, Kingsbridge was replete with mom-and-pop stores that specialized in everything 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 make. School bags were suddenly passe—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. 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. As fifteen-year-olds are wont to do, 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)