A Midsummer Day's Nightmare

(Originally published 7/30/13)

The waning days of July have a knack for resurrecting old memories, and not always the most pleasant ones. Like clockwork at this time of year in the late 1970s, an unwelcome packet arrived in my mailbox. Amidst all the fun and frolic that I was experiencing in those summers of my youth, these manila envelopes underscored that the good times wouldn’t last forever—that their days were surely numbered. The fun and games would soon be over, because new school years were right around the corner.

“Once again I am writing to you in the middle of the summer with materials and information concerning the opening of school in September,” the packets' cover letters invariably began. They were actually addressed “Dear Parents,” because the first order of business was establishing what the monthly tuition bills would be for the coming school years. For those of us who attended Catholic high school, this was no small matter. In 1978, Cardinal Spellman High School’s tuition was $730, and that sum covered ten months through June 1979. Today, the tuition at my alma mater is $7,250—a tenfold increase. I suspect that the “Once again I am writing to you in the middle of the summer” packets are crammed with even more apprehension than in the past. The $3 monthly tuition raise that occurred in the 1978-79 school year was probably not a budget buster for too many parents. The necessary tuition raises nowadays are, I suspect, packed with a more substantial wallop.

Honestly, I didn’t concern myself with high school tuition back then. The folks picked up the entire tab. College tuition was another story. But it was the “Once again I am writing to you in the middle of summer” packets’ detailing the school opening dates and various orientations that faithfully got me down. It always seemed a little too early to have this information in my possession and, worse than that, permanently lodged in my brain. The packets, too, highlighted how fleeting summer vacations really were. If the middles of summers could come around so awfully fast, the ends of summers could, logically, come around just as quickly—and they always did, including in 1978. In fact, thirty-four summers have come and gone since then, with a thirty-fifth one soon to be in the history books.

Happily, I don’t receive anymore “Once again I am writing to you in the middle of the summer” envelopes in the mail, although now I don’t mourn a summer’s passing like I once did. And that’s for a whole host of reasons, with the foremost being that I don’t have to return to high school in September. It cannot be denied that these annual summer reminders were bona fide bummers for those of us who loathed school. And I'd hazard a guess we were in the majority.

A neighbor of mine, who attended another Catholic high school in the Bronx, received similar materials in the mail at around the same time as I did. And from that day onward, he would incessantly intone that “summer’s almost over” and marvel about the speedy passage of time. In retrospect, time really didn’t fly by in my youth. The high school years seemed interminable. Now, four years go by in a heartbeat, and summers even faster than that. Thank you for reading this blog of mine—in the noble tradition of my old principal Monsignor White—in the middle of the summer.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

August Body

(Originally published 8/13/14)

Among my favorite scenes in the musical 1776 is when the Second Continental Congress debates the verbiage of Thomas Jefferson’s just completed “Declaration of Independence.” Suggestions for changes and deletions are bandied about in rapid fire. One member suggests eliminating a line that he feels unnecessarily takes to task the esteemed British Parliament. “Do you think it wise to alienate such an august body?” he asks. To which John Adams replies: “This is a revolution, dammit! We’re going to have to offend somebody!”

Anyway, this is my August body in blog form—reflections on happenings this month and in prior Augusts. Looking on the bright side of things, the summertime weather for both July and August has been as tolerable as I’ve ever experienced. Largely bearable temperatures and reasonable levels of humidity have ruled. Often New York City summers are brutal with seemingly endless dog days of disagreeable heat, humidity, and stagnant greenish-yellow air.

This year, a historical August anniversary was duly noted. Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. I was a mere lad when he exited the Washington scene—eleven years old—but I remember where I was on the night of his resignation speech. I was in Bangor, Pennsylvania. While my grandmother was away visiting relatives, my mother looked after my grandfather. After our new president, Gerald Ford, was sworn in, my mom informed her dad that the pair resembled one another. There was a bit of resemblance, I suppose. In August 1974, my grandfather also tasted lentil soup for the first time—my mother’s homemade version—and offered his opinion on the fare. “I’ve tasted worser soups,” he said.

Suffice it to say, August 1974 was a tad different than its progeny: August 2014. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but kids don’t seem to play much anymore. My every youthful waking hour was spent outdoors in those bygone summers. Now, who’s playing Wiffle ball, which I loved doing more than anything else as a young boy? Though there was no such thing, I think I imagined one day being a professional Wiffle ball player. Then stickball came along. In fact, we played every conceivable version of baseball from box baseball to punch ball to curb ball. The boxes on the concrete sidewalks and the curbsides are still around, but one would be hard-pressed to find a solitary soul utilizing them for sport anymore.

We’ve become a zombie-like society. I see mothers pushing their children in strollers who are completely preoccupied with their iPhones, even when crossing busy streets. Fathers are equally oblivious. What, pray tell, are these folks checking out every single moment in time? That’s what I’d like to know. It’s at once creepy and dispiriting. Exactly how is this sort of behavior going to impact the future? Despite having lived through a “national nightmare,” as newly sworn in President Ford dubbed it in his first speech to the nation, I had a lot of fun in August 1974. I didn't get sidetracked—even for a minute—during that protracted nightmare and afterwards. I was too busy playing Wiffle ball.

(Photo 1 from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

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 sat as a juror in a criminal trial. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bronx County jury-duty experience was somewhat 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 recent 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 in fact 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 prior 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. 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 fellow 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 assembled: 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 players 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. At least 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. And did I mention the big screen TVs in the jury assembly room? I hadn’t seen a Family Feud episode since Richard Dawson hosted.

Sailing...Take Me Away

(Originally published 7/5/14)

During the summer of America’s bicentennial year, 1976, everybody in the environs of New York City was talking about “Operation Sail.” This special Fourth of July celebration slowly but surely got rolling in the weeks leading up to Independence Day. Hundreds of tall sailing vessels—throwbacks to a bygone age—navigated their way to New York Harbor and the Hudson River.

I was thirteen years old that summer and, as I recall, “Operation Sail” was a big deal. An aunt of mine, younger brother, and I hiked over to the Henry Hudson Bridge, which connects Northern Manhattan with the Northwest Bronx at the confluence of the Harlem River Ship Canal and Hudson River. In this rare instance—the only time in my memory—the bridge closed to traffic so that one and all could congregate on its span and feast their eyes on some of the ships on the river. It was quite a spectacle with New Jersey’s Palisades supplying a picture-perfect backdrop. Bicentennial fever raged in the heat and humidity of this memorable New York summer.

Perhaps the biggest difference with today’s Fourth of July festivities—as compared to the past in my old Bronx neighborhood—is the almost complete absence of firecrackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, and their various offshoots. These things were all illegal when I was a kid, but it seems that anybody who wanted them could get hold of them in Chinatown or someplace else. The police, for the most part, turned a blind eye to the possession of fireworks. Firecrackers popped weeks before the Fourth, and the day itself was one big bang. The morning after found the local streets covered with spent everything. I remember combing through the street debris for the occasional unused firecracker.

Can people even buy a box of Sparklers nowadays? Despite setting the family garbage can on fire by prematurely discarding one, they were generally harmless fun. It’s a good thing garbage cans in those days were made of metal and not plastic. The garbage men who had to lug those heavy things around are no doubt better off today, but those venerable cans survived Sparkler fires and lived to tell.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Summer Daze

(Originally published on 6/23/17)

Once upon a time, I relished summer days and nights. The heat and humidity one-two punch didn’t faze me in the least. No temperature or relative clamminess was too high to prevent a stickball game. In fact, playing on searing asphalt during a scorcher—sans water—was par for the course. There was no such thing as individual bottled water in the 1970s! Sure, the gang could have brought along a cooler, thermos, or canteen to games, but it just wasn’t on our radars. Looking back, we sometimes played doubleheaders in ninety-five-degree heat without liquid pick-me-ups. After game two, we were a parched lot in a mad-dash search for a non-contaminated watering hole—tap water from the kitchen sink or powdered iced tea. What American TV western didn’t feature its protagonists short of water and in a do-or-die hunt for it in super-dry desert climes?

Ah, but summer days just aren’t what they once were to me. It's more like summer daze. This week, the calendar officially noted that it was indeed summer with the longest days of the year upon us. As a youth in the third week of June, I was uber-active in the great outdoors until the last sliver of daylight disappeared. Now, I spend well-lit summer evenings inside and do all that I can to circumvent the infamous New York City heat and humidity. Air conditioning certainly has its place. For me, there is no more stoop sitting and chewing the fat with neighbors on poor Air Quality Index (AQI) days and nights. I don't recall whether the AQI was calculated in the good old days. However, I can say that the air quality in the 1970s was considerably fouler than it is today.

Bad air notwithstanding, the summers of my youth found the Good Humor man turning up every night at around the same time. Good Humor’s cola-flavored Italian ice—a favorite—was a rock-solid frozen block. In attempting to sliver off pieces of the ice with the tongue-depressor spoon supplied, its paper cup would get punctured beyond recognition. The only cola taste—if you could call it that—of their watery Italian ices was found at the bottom of the paper cups, which by then were sorry casualties of war. But what did we expect for twenty cents? They were worth every penny.

Summertime also meant a vacation on the seashore of New Jersey or Long Island. It meant day trips to the happening hot spots incessantly advertised on the New York City metropolitan area airwaves, like the Brigantine Castle—a haunted fortress on the Atlantic in Brigantine, New Jersey. A three-hour drive from the Bronx to the Brigantine Castle was a memorable summertime adventure. The equivalent for my peers’ kids and grandkids today—on the satisfaction front, I'd wager—would be two weeks in the South of France or Swiss Alps.

A final summertime footnote and memory from forty years ago. It’s a solitary snapshot kind not associated with anything monumental. I had completed a high school final exam during my freshman year. It was an afternoon in mid-June 1977. I was on my way home alone via mass transit—from the East Bronx to the West Bronx. Standing at a bus stop on Jerome Avenue across the street from two of the ugliest-looking buildings in the borough—Tracey Towers—I patiently waited for the BX1, which would take me on the last leg of my journey home. It was overcast, dreadfully humid, and I distinctly remember seeing lightning on the distant horizon—heat lightning, I think. This far-away hot flash nonetheless signified a lot to me—school’s end, summer, and a couple of months of incredible bliss. Enjoy it while you can!

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Charting Cars in the Bronx

(Originally published 4/10/21)

Once upon a time, I charted car comings-and-goings on individual pieces of construction paper. Sometime in the mid-1970s the teenage me plopped down on my front stoop, and occasionally at the front window, and recorded the manufacturers of the automobiles that passed me by. What an interesting boy I was. Back then, I knew car makes and models—be they Dodge Darts, Chevy Impalas, Buick Centuries, and most everything in between—because they were respectively unique and readily identifiable.

In those simpler times in the old neighborhood, everybody knew a whole lot more of their neighbors than city folk do nowadays, including the specific kinds and colors of the cars they drove. Locals distinguished themselves with their choice of vehicles and couldn’t, therefore, come and go incognito. Currently—with some notable exceptions, of course—what is parked along the streets, and in area garages, look blandly similar, despite all the amazing technological advances therein.

Automobile hues in the 1970s were also in sync with the fads and fashions of that groovy snapshot in time. Danny drove a dark-brown Ford LTD; Cathy, a pale-yellow Volkswagen "bug." Jack “elbows” had a sky-blue Plymouth Duster, and Jimmy and Desi next door, a bright-red AMC Rebel. There were folks who drove gas-guzzling “boats,” as my friends and I called them back then. Arthur’s father parked a metallic gold-colored Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight on the street that was the size of a stretch limousine Others sought out economy cars that were simultaneously affordable and fuel efficient in an age of increasingly high gas prices and, sometimes, outright shortages, courtesy of that awful cartel in its heavy-handedness heyday.

My father owned a 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne for fourteen years. It had an interior smell—a car-seat vinyl meets gassy residue kind of scent—that inspired carsickness, particularly without something called air conditioning. In fact, one member of my family would puke his guts out at the mere notion of getting into the thing—yards away from it—before every road trip long or short. The Biscayne was at long last retired in 1973 and we thereafter rode in style in a second-hand Buick Skylark, purchased from a guy on the next block. It was a set of wheels with the creature comforts of air-conditioning and a kneeling-bus quality before there was such a thing. A decade later, somebody convinced my father to get with the program and purchase a Chevy Chevette, a car that drove so many “people happy” with its incredible gas mileage. It had a stick shift, the back windows could only go down halfway, and no air conditioning. Sure, it got decent gas mileage, but there was no turning back. We were a spoiled clan by then.

Chevrolet, by the way, won the gold medal in my 1970s car-charting Bronx survey—by a considerable margin if memory serves. There were foreign cars around then, but they were foreign to most drivers who often were loyal to one American manufacturer or another. Times change and stoop statisticians—sad to say—have gone the way of the typewriter and countless classic automobiles with style.

Catching the June Bug

(Originally published 6/5/22)

Once upon a time, the month of June shined. It embodied a heaping helping of good: long days, the school year's end, backyard barbecues, baseball in its many incarnations, and imminent summer vacations in exotic locales like the Jersey Shore and the North Fork of Long Island. Thirty years ago in June, I regularly attended a poetry open mic at a now defunct eatery and gin mill called Sidekicks Café. A poet named Ron—who was especially entertaining and the exception to the rule—recited his original verse in a soothing Southern accent, a muted cadence not typically heard in the Bronx. One particular poem of his repeatedly referenced the “June bug.” It vividly brought to life this clumsy insect of the night. Listeners visualized the bumbling creature careening toward a light source, while crashing into windows, screen doors, and human heads in the process.

In the beetle family, the June bug was not a sight for sore eyes. And still isn't! Contrarily, its nighttime companion, the lightning bug, was a welcome summer visitor. Flashing on and off as the fledgling summer days of June grew dark, few insects could compete with its dazzling light show. Meanwhile, the June bug blundered along. I don’t imagine it was dangerous—not a carrier of malaria or sporting a lethal stinger—but it was ugly as all hell. Come to think of it: While the lightning bugs were impressive on warm summer nights, human contact was not recommended. Their inevitable calling cards: a nasty, lingering odor not easily scrubbed away. And, too, in the bright light of day, they were rather gruesome looking.

June was the ultimate anticipatory month, a time to get the summer ball rolling. We had the June bug, as it were, and it impacted all ages—from those of us who waited patiently for the Good Humor man to make his daily evening rounds to the adult set who commenced with their nightly stoop-sitting gossip-fests. Spanning generations, stoop sitting was an urban art form. It’s still practiced, but not as extensively as when I was a boy. Stoop sitting supplied a ringside seat for both the expected and unexpected. Like the time a new neighbor and homeowner was seen chasing his sister down the street while uttering a litany of profanities. I wonder what that was all about? Footnote: The man lived in the same house for fifty years before passing away last year. I don’t know whatever became of his sister, if she inherited his property, or if she's even among the living.

Just as Good Humor retired its fleet of trucks and became exclusively a supermarket brand, so many of those who caught the June bug along with me have gone the way of a funeral parlor’s laminated prayer card. It would be fair to say that I’m not quite as enamored with June as I once was. Still, the June bug endures in nature and in countless memories as well. I’ll have a grape-lemon-flavored Bon Joy Swirl please.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Braking Bad

(Originally published 3/9/20)

Governor Cuomo has officially advised his considerable and diverse constituency to avoid “crowded spaces,” like the subway. This is no small order, especially for New York City’s nine million inhabitants, many of whom use mass transit daily. Well, despite my esteemed governor’s counsel, I opted to venture out this weekend and descend into the underground—and so did a lot of other people by the looks of things! Without them, yesterday’s ride wouldn’t have risen to the level of a “crowded space.”

While I fully appreciate that the coronavirus is not to be taken lightly, I couldn’t help but reflect on the recurring electronic announcements in subway stations, which instructed riders to frequently wash their hands for at least twenty seconds and sneeze or cough—should the need arise—into their elbows. Surprisingly, I didn’t spy a solitary soul wearing a mask in my travels but did see a discarded one on the sidewalk.

The highlight of my downtown train ride was not the stuff of sneezing and coughing in a subway car. It was idly sitting for about twenty-five minutes at the 191st Street station. The reason: Somebody—or somebodies, actually—activated the emergency brakes on the two trains ahead of the one in which I was a passenger. Now, that doesn’t sound like a coincidence to me. I know there are times when these mysterious brakes are pulled in real emergencies. In my personal experience, though, the braking was courtesy of a lunatic, punk, or some combination of the two.

Anyway, after finally reaching my destination, I ventured out into the great outdoors—on a pleasant post-clock change morning—and encountered an incredibly angry man on his phone. He was informing a passerby of the wind beneath the wings of his rage. What was all the fuss, you ask? His civil rights were "violated,” he said, by a mall security guard with, naturally, no “proper cause.” And this fellow wanted to “press charges.”

I suppose the guy called 9-1-1, because New York’s Finest materialized in short order. Initially, two officers spoke with him for several minutes. At one point an officer got into the man’s face. This made me happy for some reason. Honestly, the complainant sounded to me like an annoying whiner—a victim poseur. From what little I could glean, the security guard wanted to look inside a shopping bag of his from another store, which can be humiliating, I know, if you’re an innocent party. But making such a big stink about it…

Eventually, the two policemen went inside the building where the violation occurred. They came out a couple of minutes later with some security detail, who watched with interest further interaction between the police officers and the aggrieved party. This tête-à-tête went on for more than a half hour, and a couple of more officers even joined in the conversation. But nobody on the scene took out a pad or notebook and wrote anything down. They were more than likely trying to convince the fussbudget to forgettaboutit. Less paperwork for them and, honestly, civil rights violations and pressing charges should—when push comes to shove—be the real thing or nothing. Of course, I’m only guessing here and filling in the blanks. Perhaps I’m violating this crybaby’s civil rights by reporting what I saw and what I didn’t see. I just don’t know.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

What's the Buzz?

(Originally published 8/24/19)

As I was wandering around this morning, I heard the harmonious buzz of cicadas. Cicadas by day and crickets by night can only mean one thing: another summer's swan song. While the sounds of crickets have thus far been faint, I nevertheless associate the somber chirping of these melodious insects with the incoming dread of that first day of school.

Happily, though, my schooldays are distant memories. So, I thought I’d tie up some loose summer ends in the here and now. Recently, my nephew e-mailed me a link to an article, which quoted former baseball players Rich “Goose” Gossage and Lou Piniella. They both spoke of the contemporary game of baseball in very unflattering terms. To them and many others—including yours truly—professional baseball has become unwatchable. And there are a host of reasons why. It’s just not the same game that we once knew and loved—not by a long shot.

After completing four books this summer—timely published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the 1969 “Miracle Mets” season—I feel grateful that I experienced baseball as a fan when it was the American pastime, a game steeped in tradition and rich in history. I was a fan before analytics, home run-derby strategy (for lack of a better description), replay umpiring, and five-inning starting pitchers.

My nephew, who came around to baseball and the Mets decades after my sworn allegiance, admitted that even he is finding today's games almost unwatchable. But as the 2019 Mets have suddenly come alive—and are in contention—he’s swallowing hard and praying for another miracle. I’ve seen clips of today's Mets’ game-ending antics—players ripping off their uniform shirts after a win—and can’t help but wonder: “What would Gil Hodges say about all that?” Once upon a time, third baseman Ron Santo of the 1969 Chicago Cubs, managed by none other than the legendary Leo Durocher, performed a bit of theater after every Cubs’ victory. As he exited the field, he leaped high in the air and clicked both his heels. It was considered poor sportsmanship by most everybody in opposition back then—certainly by Gil Hodges and the Mets—and it eventually ceased as the 1969 Cubs imploded.

If nothing else, this summer also resurrected my interest in 1970s New York City politics. What an interesting time to be alive and a kid. With the Tappan Zee Bridge renaming in the news—as the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge—I purchased a couple of old books from that bygone era. When Mario Cuomo was mayoral timber. One book chronicled the fiscal crisis when my fair city very nearly declared bankruptcy. Yes, New York City was down for the count back then, but I didn't notice. After all, I was a boy and living through what turned out to be the last of the familiar urban childhoods, where all kinds of street games were played in the great outdoors and young and old alike hung out on stoops without—believe it or not—phones. The stoop supplied a box seat to countless cricket serenades. Their plaintive denouements to summer were repeat performances that were never quite welcome. But they were just doing their jobs.

A Summertime Sense of Humor

(Originally published on 7/21/17)

It’s officially a heat wave here in New York City—several days in a row of ninety-plus degree temperatures—and I’m not a fan. Yes, I romanticize the summertime of my youth every now and then—outdoors much of the time and playing the games that little people played for generations, which, by the way, they don’t play anymore. Admittedly, the one-two punch of summer’s heat and humidity was never something coveted and rarely, if ever, appreciated. My father always said that the discomforting clamminess and sordid air quality was a figment of our imaginations. He was a Buddhist at heart, I guess. Mind over matter.

Growing up in a seven-person household on the top floor of a three-family home with no air conditioning in July and August was—in retrospect—brutal. In the 1960s and 1970s, we also experienced recurring electrical brownouts. During the high-consumption months of summer, utility Con Edison’s answers to averting widespread blackouts were periodic brownouts. On the warmest of warm nights, the lights would flicker, which was no big deal. But brownouts were especially unforgiving when it came to ice cubes. Heat, humidity, and half-frozen ice cubes with a foul taste were an all-too-familiar summertime three-fer.

Nevertheless, those were the days my friend, I thought they’d never end. Regardless of the temperature or relative humidity of a summer’s day, stoop sitting was a hallowed evening ritual as well as—for a spell—a Good Humor truck passing by. These daily occurrences provided fleeting respites from the heat, particularly if something icy was purchased like a watery, cola-flavored Italian ice, lemon-grape rocket pop, or Bon-Joy swirl.

First there was Larry the Good Humor Man, who drove the classic little truck that required him to step outside and pluck the ice cream from its side-of-the-cab freezer. And then there was Rod the Good Humor Man, who conducted business in a stand-inside vehicle. Rod lived in the neighborhood. He would see us playing during the Good Humor off-season—parts of fall, spring, and the entire winter. Focusing on grocery sales alone, Good Humor sold off its fleet of trucks in 1976. And that was the end of that! The present owners of the brand recently resurrected the ice cream truck, I see, and—along with it—the ice cream man and woman. I suspect now they are stationed at parks and events, where ice cream peddlers are still spotted. But chumming for business on neighborhood side streets? I doubt it. If a Good Humor Man materialized around these parts, he would find few kids playing outside in the warmest of weather. And as for off-duty sightings, like Rod's, during the winter recess—fuggeaboutit!

Epilogue: Larry the Good Humor Man was last seen driving a New York City yellow cab. Oh, but that was more than forty years ago. And Rod the Good Humor Man suffered a heart attack in the mid-1970s and lived to tell. Rod told us at some point. Oh, but that, too, was more than four decades ago. Larry, as I recall, was on the younger side as a Good Humor Man, so he might still be among the living, but he would be pushing eighty. If he’s still extant, I pray he’s in good humor. Rod, I fear, is more likely among the angels. With any luck, he’s ringing the celestial equivalent of his Good Humor truck bells, an inviting sound for countless living and dead souls who bought ice cream on steamy New York City nights a long, long time ago.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

A Present for You

(Originally published 5/17/15)

Trust me, I am living in the present. Even though I post a lot of pictures from the past and sometimes wax nostalgic for the “simpler times” of my youth—when a New York Mets’ game and the warm and reassuring voices of Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner were otherworldly—I am fully present in the present. Okay, so I think the present isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. In fact, it stinks in too many ways to count. Suffice it to say, people walking around the streets with their heads buried in their iPhones and obliviously yakking on their cells is disconcerting, rude, and—really—dangerous. But this familiar contemporary grievance has become a cliché. Yada…yada…yada.

So, I thought I’d look on the bright side of the here and now for a change and underscore some of the things I think are better today than in those simpler times of my youth. For starters, recycling is a major step forward. Once upon a time, everything from ketchup to prescription cough medicine to peanut butter came in glass bottles, which were just heaved into the regular trash when empty. How many Hawaiian Punch and Hi-C heavy aluminum cans did we toss into the garbage that weren’t recycled? Plenty. Of course, what and how much actually gets recycled is a question for another day.

While I don’t like the trend of human beings being replaced by technology, I am nonetheless happy there are ATM machines. They are convenient and I use them for virtually every banking transaction. Withdrawals the old-fashioned way—with a flesh-and-blood bank teller at the other end—always make me feel guilty, as if I’m doing something wrong. I’ve never seen you before. What exactly are you trying to pull with this withdrawal?

I’m pleased, too, that my high school alma mater—Cardinal Spellman in the Bronx—has cast asunder “lunchtime sponge duty,” where the unlucky and the unwashed were compelled to clean dirty lunch tables with filthy, bacteria-laden sponges and pick refuse off the floor as well. No rubber gloves were issued, and no extra time was allotted to get to our next classes. We didn't even have time to wash our hands. If we were late for a class, an unsympathetic teacher could set the “detention” wheels in motion—and a few of them did—even if we had the very legitimate “sponge-duty” excuse. There are no students who are “sponge-worthy” in the present and this is a step forward.

As far as diagnosing and treating diseases, our healthcare is considerably better than its equivalent back in the day. I’m old enough to remember a neighborhood family doctor making house calls. And when my paternal grandfather was diagnosed with leukemia, nuns in the Catholic hospital where he lay dying remained at his side 24/7. Still, the disease he succumbed to came attached to a prompt death sentence. While the Marcus Welby, M.D.-doctoring and nursing approaches are sorely missed, one still must appreciate the advances in modern medicine. If living and longevity count for something, the present rules.

If the Hudson River is representative of waterways everywhere, I suppose Iron Eyes Cody would have less to tear up about nowadays. My father swam in the river in the 1940s and recalled pushing an unremitting stream of excrement away. As a boy, I recollect the river smelling more of garbage than salty sea. Currently, the Hudson’s odor in lower Manhattan is of a pleasing brine and not raw sewerage. That said, Iron Eyes, I’m certain, would still need a Kleenex or two.

Then there’s the Internet. I couldn’t have authored the books that I have without it—and certainly not in the limited time afforded me. I wouldn’t be writing this blog, either. At some point in the 1970s, I penned a lengthy missive to TV Guide asking the folks there an extensive roster of questions. Most of them were of the “Whatever Became Of?” variety. For some reason, I was fixated on death and who in the celebrity world had passed away. I remember asking, “Whatever became of character actor Larry Keating, who played neighbor Roger Addison on Mister Ed and, before that, Harry Morton on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show?” and “why was he replaced on the former by Leon Ames?” I was a curious kid. Now, all I’d have to do is Google “Larry Keating” to acquire the answers to such burning questions. Someone at TV Guide—it should be noted—personally answered my letter and supplied me with potential resources—books of all things—that could help me find answers to my many questions. Larry Keating, by the way, was diagnosed with leukemia and—like my grandfather—died from it in short order.

YouTube and Netflix have been gifts in the present. I don’t think I’d ever have watched shows like Rawhide, Wagon Train, and Stagecoach West without them, not to mention countless other television classics and historic moments, which might otherwise be buried in the archives at the Museum of Television & Radio. While on the subject, I recently watched several episodes of Adam-12, a Dragnet-esque show from the past created by Jack Webb, on Netflix. It didn’t hold up! I found it interesting that they played for laughs a domestic abuse call, like it was a complete waste of the police’s time. With smirks on their faces and exasperated meaningful glances, Officers Malloy and Reed asked only that a wife-beater—fittingly festooned in a wife-beater—be a little bit nicer. One more plus for the present. Drunks, too—even behind the wheels of cars—weren’t taken all that seriously on television and on the streets. Now they are.

Finally, I must say the present has at long last put a lid on smokers—as best that it could—who have literally taken our breaths away and stunk up our clothes, hair, and skin for far, far too long. Courtesy of riding in a packed-like-sardines bus, I began every single day of high school reeking of second-hand cigarette smoke. It cannot be denied: The present has its place.

Remembering Dr. Z...By the Way

(Originally published 6/19/10)

The efficacy of Keynesian economics is being debated once more in both polite and impolite society. But rather than stake out a position on the demand side versus the supply side in this dismal science argument, I’d rather just wax nostalgic and recall a college professor of mine, Dr. Amin Zewail, whom I'll affectionately call “Dr. Z” hereafter.

Dr. Z was an adjunct professor substituting for an ailing instructor in a course called Intermediate Macroeconomics. The place: my alma mater, Manhattan College. The year: 1984. Dr. Z was a lanky, dome-headed Egyptian fellow, who not only wore thrift shop threads that didn’t quite fit his gawky frame—high waters and hobo shoes—every single day, but a sartorial selection at least thirty years past its prime.

Despite the briefness of my Dr. Z experience, it was nonetheless quite memorable. This man rates as one of those classic college characters I will not soon forget—a professor primarily remembered for his idiosyncrasies, including a singular teaching style. From the get-go, Dr. Z warned us that because “there was no ‘P’ as in Peter and ‘B’ as in ball” in his native tongue of Arabic, he was apt to “make a mish, mosh, moosh of the two…by the way” throughout his lectures. And he didn’t disappoint on that score.

In fact, the good doctor frequently finished sentences with the throwaway “by the way” phrase. He couldn’t stop saying it during class, which he took very, very seriously, by the way, often working himself into a frenzied, sweat-soaked trance to explain that Keynes’s General Theory “contended that consumption was a stable function of disposable income.”

Dr. Z also subscribed to the educative power of repetition. He peppered his lectures with “I repeat again” pronouncements and recapped word-for-word what had just been said. Dr. Z took attendance every class because, he revealed, he desperately needed the work and didn’t want to be fired. The man informed us that times were tough for him as a part-time professor, and that he called home somewhere in lower Manhattan “between the muggers and the hippies.” This former neighborhood of his, by the way, has since been gentrified beyond recognition and is no longer home to peripatetic profs.

When the buzzer sounded each class’s death knell, the Z-man stopped in mid-sentence and profusely thanked the whole lot of us. “Thank you very, very much,” he would bellow at the top of his lungs and really mean it. No, Dr. Z: thank you…for the memories and teaching me about John Maynard Keynes, too.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

It Is Goodbye

(Originally published 8/31/18)

Recently, I thought of an essay that was published in my Manhattan College Commencement program. Its anonymous author, a 1929 graduate, eloquently expressed the melancholy of the achievement and what it augured. He ended his piece as follows: “The moon grows pale and drops down and down. The shadows encroach further and further. The breeze sighs mournfully. A subway train rattles away into the distance. I sit alone on the Chapel steps. It is goodbye.”

Last week an old friend, neighbor, and fellow Jasper passed away. Mere words cannot do the man justice. Suffice it to say, Richie was a one-of-a-kind personage—a true original—whose likes will never be seen again. When I was growing up in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge, he was a ubiquitous and enigmatic presence on the block. He had the X-factor.

Riche was considerably older than those who hung on his every word and relished time spent with him. But his inimitable personality and audacious spirit added layers of color to the childhoods of those who experienced him up close and personal. You just had to be there.

Richie was the guy who taped oak-tag signs to his father’s dark brown Ford LTD that read “Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians” and “Bob Hope in Car.” He would then drive around the neighborhood with his youthful entourage. We would watch people stare, often gasp, and occasionally laugh. On a whim, Richie might ask, “Do you want to give the fist?” I don’t exactly know the origins of this peculiar pastime, but it involved shaking fists from the moving car’s windows at unsuspecting passersby on the street. It was harmless fun that—on the very same thoroughfares today—would put one’s life at risk.

Forty-one years ago this month, Richie, my older brother Joe, and I traveled to Boston to see the Red Sox in Fenway Park. Believe it or not, this was a monumental adventure for a fourteen-year-old boy and for our fearless leader—eleven years my senior—as well. We scrupulously planned the trip in an age before the Internet as if we were going around the world in eighty days. Money was tight. By the end of the two-day journey, our coffers were depleted. In fact, Richie loaned me five dollars along the way, which I agreed to work off at a future date by washing and waxing his car.

During those two days in Beantown, we ascended the Bunker Hill Monument, trod the grounds of Harvard University, and toured Old Ironsides. We also saw a game at Fenway alongside a grandfather affectionately known as “Pops,” who was quite shaky on his feet, and his doting grandson. Sitting next to me, Pops was concerned that I might be a “California rooter” and antagonistic towards his beloved Sox. I assured him that I was a Met fan from New York who wouldn’t be rooting for the visiting Angels.

Two short weeks later—with the same cast of three—Richie plotted a fun-filled encore to the summer of 1977: a jam-packed day trip that commenced at the Brigantine Castle on the Jersey Shore. This haunted amusement was incessantly advertised on local television back then and Richie wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It turned out to be much ado about nothing, and we promptly headed south to nearby Atlantic City—in its pre-casino days—and finally to Philadelphia. There we checked out Liberty Hall and that cracked bell. Our nightcap—the icing on the cake—was a game at Veterans Stadium. The Phillies versus the Braves in that cookie-cutter monstrosity lasted fourteen innings and ended near midnight.

Upon our return to the Bronx, Richie was noticeably drowsy behind the wheel of his beloved Mustang. We had, after all, left home at six o’clock in the morning. To give him a much-needed break, seventeen-year-old Joe, who had just gotten his driver’s license, offered to take over for a spell. Allowing an inexperienced driver such an opportunity in the middle of the night—and in the middle of what seemed like nowhere—was hardly a slam-dunk decision, but an exhausted Richie relented. He would turn over the reins for fifteen minutes, he said, and take a brief catnap. After a two-hour snooze, Richie arose from his slumber, and we were ever so close to home.

These memories are just snippets from decades of them. But they are reminders that life is fleeting and, really, about moments. And when time draws to a close, the moments to remember are the freest ones—simple, innocent, and absent of drama. Richie…it is goodbye.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

For the Birds

(Originally published 9/20/18)

This past weekend I briefly shared a subway car with two pigeons—one black and one white. I live in a diverse part of the country. The birds entered the car at the Van Cortlandt Park station at W242nd Street a few minutes before the southbound Number 1 train commenced its run into Manhattan. I’ve experienced such close encounters with nature before and always worried the birds might become trapped in the train on an unexpected and unwanted journey to places unknown. The nastiest part of such scenarios is that they would be passengers alongside ever-increasing numbers of unsympathetic straphangers. Happily, this pair proved quite savvy—Bronx strong, if you will—and were aware of the drill. They briskly pecked away at invisible crumbs on the subway car floor and exited the train moments before the “all-aboard” buzzer sounded and the conductor exclaimed, “Stand clear of the closing doors!”

My cohabitation with these feathered urban travelers inspired a series of flighty thoughts. It jarred my memory, too. Society has really gone to the birds, I concluded. For starters, I’ve noticed more and more uncooked rice on the sidewalks of local businesses frequented by pigeons. Apparently, these entrepreneurs have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the canard that consumption of the rice—after it expands in their stomachs—will cause the pigeons to explode. This, by the way, wouldn't exactly be a pretty sight on their respective properties.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an admirer of large pigeon ensembles and people feeding them in the wrong places. For some individuals, a pigeon strike is considered a harbinger of good fortune. But for recipients of these plops from on high, it’s a major problem in the here and now. In my neck of the woods, I gingerly navigate through the various pigeon fallout zones and hope for the best. So far, lady luck has left me unsullied.

On the flip side of the pigeon-hating retailers in my neighborhood is a shopkeeper who liberally tosses birdseed on the front sidewalk of his business, which naturally attracts multiple species of birds. Not cardinals, orioles, and hummingbirds, but sparrows, starlings, and pigeons. But it’s the pigeons that rule the roost in this venue. Passersby must regularly wade through a bona fide mess with flapping pigeons in a perpetual cycle of ascent and descent. I suspect the nearby beauty parlor, restaurant, and cigar lounge don’t appreciate the feeding frenzies outside their doors.

When I was a youth, a notorious neighborhood bully was renowned for blowing up pigeons with firecrackers. Recently, I searched his name and came upon an arrest notice of this sadist from the past. It’s called karma. When I swerved to avoid a pigeon during driving lessons, my instructor told me in no uncertain terms not to do that again. I should make “pigeon soup” the next time. Fortunately, there wasn’t a next time.

One final pigeon story: It involves a great champion of progressive causes. When pigeons nested under his air conditioner, it disturbed his peace, tranquility, and routine. The chirping hatchlings eventually drove him to distraction. So, what does he do? No, he doesn’t call someone who could remove them humanely. Lock, stock, and barrel, the man with the bleeding liberal heart throws the nest down his building’s garbage chute. That’s the human species at work. It’s too often about us and only us. But you know what: There’s more than enough room for pigeons. We can co-exist.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)