The Minister, Tree Branch, and Me

(Originally published 11/29/11)

I share something in common with a certain man of the cloth. It seems we both reside in street-level bachelor pads in private homes on the same block. And that's the long and short of our similarities, I suspect. Everything else I know about this fellow is limited to our encounters—for lack of a better description—which have been numerous the past couple of years. When I see him in the early morning hours—presumably before he goes to work, if that's the right phrase—he is without fail walking a small dog and puffing on a cigarette. The occupational giveaway is the Roman collar, fuchsia-colored buttoned shirt, and black sports jacket.

I have long assumed the man is an Episcopal or Methodist minister. Having experienced a Catholic upbringing and education, I just never knew a priest who lived in a basement apartment, which doesn't mean such living arrangements are unprecedented. The priests in my past always called hearth and home a parish or resided somewhere on the school grounds where they taught. But then again, a friend of mine worked alongside a Catholic priest in a Barnes & Noble store. The man needed the money and had to both locate, and pay out of his own pocket, his accommodation. These are tough times for all.

Anyway, today—post-Hurricane Irene Day One—I was outside and picking up scattered debris, including a large tree branch that I dragged to the curbside. With my back unintentionally turned away from this approaching holy man, I heard him—quite uncharacteristically—say something. I swiveled around and momentarily considered asking, “You talkin’ to me?” As per the norm, however, he was staring straight ahead, cigarette in one hand, and dog leash in the other, fulfilling his morning ritual. I surmised he was speaking to his canine friend, because I never saw any technological device in his ear. This man is old school and, for that matter, pretty old.

But then I noticed that the tree branch I had moved was jutting out a foot or so onto the sidewalk proper. Had I seen this before, I would never have placed it in such a precarious position, and I immediately moved it out of harm’s way. I proceeded to do something of a double take at that point, realizing that this neighbor of mine, who always does his best not to make eye contact with anyone—and, by osmosis, speak to anybody—had indeed addressed me. In fact, as soon as I laid eyes on the branch partially on the sidewalk, my brain—without any prompting on my part—replayed the previous moment. Yes, this mystery servant of the Lord, whose holy threads no doubt reeked of nicotine, had chided me. Considering that I was cleaning up a big mess, the scolding was at once unnecessary and unappreciated.

Harking back to my boyhood, I was always turned off by the unpleasantness and sometimes outright nastiness of a fair share of religious sorts. The more innocent and less cynical child quite often cuts to the chase. How could some of these men and women who purport to do God’s bidding and adhere to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth be so disagreeable? I was never impressed with autocratic “good businessmen” known for running parishes with an iron fist and Wal-Mart bottom line efficiency. It seemed incongruous to me then, just as it does to me now.

I was literally both frightened and horrified by the fact that a Sister Lorraine-character passed nun muster and was permitted to teach children. She sported both a habit and a burgeoning mustache some four decades ago when she threw my friend Johnny down to the rock-hard marble at the altar’s edge in church. It was during "First Holy Communion" practice, and he received this body slam courtesy of the unforgiveable transgression of having a chewed up hot lunch straw sticking out of his shirt pocket.

Happily, Sister Lorraine was gone the following year—from my grammar school at least. Where she ended up after that, I don't know. Hopefully, she joined the Teamsters or was discovered by a talent scout for the World Wrestling Federation. All these years later in my adulthood—hopeless romantic that I am—I still prefer religious folk to be on the gentle side and not the Marlboro Man.

River, Take Me Away in Your Sunshine

(Originally published 8/21/11)

When my father was a young boy growing up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, the family and some friends would often hop on the Number 1 train during summer weekends for the short ride up to Inwood Hill Park. Upon their arrival, they would hike through the area’s primordial woodlands—on Manhattan Island to this day—to an off-the-beaten trail winding down to a tiny snatch of sandy beach at the scenic confluence of the Harlem River Ship Canal and the Hudson River.

On such excursions, the older Italian men, including my grandfather, brought along their homemade wines. They placed the bottles in an icy cold freshwater spring, which trickled down through the nearby hills. Opened in 1936, the Henry Hudson Bridge loomed like a colossus—an engineering marvel—directly above this Shangri-La. The Spuyten Duyvil railroad swing bridge operated below.

Provided one did not venture out too far, the waters off this obscure snippet of shoreline were shallow and free of the extremely dangerous currents farther out. My father vividly remembered those days at the beach—wading into the drink awash in, among other things, human excrement. Granted, this fun in the sun couldn't have been the healthiest of recreational activities, but it was the late 1930s and early 1940s, when raw sewage poured into the local waters. It was just the way things were.

Flash forward thirty years and I recall being at water’s edge in New York Harbor. The wafting breeze was a curious mix of sea salt and sewer, and unsightly flotsam in the Hudson River was commonplace. The cleanliness of the waterway in those days—in these parts—was a familiar punch line.

But a funny thing happened over the last three decades. The river’s gotten cleaner—dramatically so. There is even talk of a public beach on Manhattan’s West Side. And not far to the north of the city, Hudson River beaches are open for business. And as for swimming in poop in the future, I think it would be wise to Just Say No. We have been there and done that—and there's no turning back.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

(Originally published 5/21/16)

I recently purchased a few Banquet brand frozen turkey dinners at a local supermarket. Nowadays, “TV dinners” are not typically on my shopping list for a whole host of reasons—the foremost being that they aren't particularly good. Once upon a time, my youthful palate appreciated their ultra-sodium contents—but no more. Still, they were on sale, and the packaging underscored the fact that there was now “fifty percent more” turkey in them.

If nothing else, consuming these frozen dinners amounted to a stroll down Memory Lane. And I will concede, they were curiously edible. However, if there was indeed fifty percent more turkey in the dinners, their predecessors must have been sorely lacking—unsatisfying for sparrows, let alone for the human masses. Fifty percent more turkey notwithstanding, I could have effortlessly eaten the three I bought in one sitting. If there was a downside to TV dinners during my wide-eyed and insatiably hungry boyhood, it was, without question, the portions. Even Swanson’s “Hungry Man” versions were somehow never enough.

Nevertheless, this frozen dinner experience got me thinking about other grocery store products from my youth, some that still exist and others that are in the compost heap of history. I ate a lot of pizza in my younger days—and in a variety of forms, too, including an instant toaster version manufactured by Buitoni. Sadly, they are no more, but I fondly recall their gooey, reddish-orange puree of cheese and tomato sauce interiors, which were invariably blistering hot and prone to burn the mouth. My “Whatever Became Of” Internet search on these peculiar pizzas from yesteryear led me far afield to past comfort foods like Borden’s “Ready to Drink” Frosted Shakes in their heavy aluminum cans. We added milk to them at our house. They were that thick. Regrettably, the Frosted Shake has gone the way of the Buitoni toaster pizza.

And the death knell did not end there. Sometime around 1970, Kellogg’s introduced toaster pastries called Danish Go-Rounds. I distinctly remember the TV commercials for them. They featured a catchy jingle that went something like this: “A new kind of pastry, frosting, and tasty. New Kellogg’s…Danish Go-Rounds.” They were tasty all right but disappeared while I was still eating them. I had no choice. It was back to Pop-Tarts.

This former fare retrospective of mine found me in the end in Fudgetown. These were my all-time favorite cookies from a company called Burry, which also made Girl Scout cookies back then, when they were actually good. I had not thought of Fudgetown in a long time, but I see that they, too, are only a memory now, along with Burry’s other boxed cookies: Gaucho and Mr. Chips, the latter with the mysterious silhouette of Mr. Chips on the box. They were quality cookies. And since I never got the chance when Burry discontinued the products, I would like to finally say it—better late than never—“Goodbye, Mr. Chips.”

Laugh and the Whole World Laughs with You

(Originally published 7/1/10)

Once upon a time, I had a high school history teacher. His name was Mr. Downes. He taught a freshman-year course called "Asian and African Cultural Studies." Mr. Downes was a congenial and entertaining fellow who frequently tickled the funny bones of his young students. Sadly, though, I fear that this educator’s keen sense of humor and wry wit would bomb on the contemporary school stage.

At some point in the school year—1976-1977—we were studying the Southeast Asian country of India and its independent founding in 1947. The nation’s first prime minister was a man named Jawaharlal Nehru, a Mahatma Gandhi disciple. He is perhaps more renowned for inspiring a western fashion trend: the Nehru jacket. Throughout Mr. Downes’ lectures on the subject matter—India’s fledgling democracy, not sartorial predilections—he would speak in his normal tone of voice, and at his normal pace, until he came to the polysyllabic Nehru's first name. Our teacher would then pause—drum roll, please—and roll his tongue with consummate comic timing. I wish I could spell what I heard, but since it is near impossible, I will not even try. After this unique and brilliant pronunciation of “Jawaharlal,” Mr. Downes would immediately return to his natural speaking pattern and quietly say “Nehru.” It was something akin to the late Victor Borge’s phonetic punctuation routine—conventionally reading aloud from a book but supplying things like periods, commas, and question marks with their own individual and expressive sounds.

If Mr. Downes did any such thing today, a young snitch would no doubt turn him in. Above all else, schoolkids are trained in this duplicitous art at a very young age. He would then be reprimanded by the overly sensitive and feckless powers-that-be for not respecting another culture or even be accused of more nefarious crimes against humanity. An investigation would then be launched.

Guess what? Jawaharlal is an unusual name from our vantage point in the Land of Tom, Dick, and Harry. Bet you cannot say Jawaharlal three times real fast. If teachers in India or anywhere else on the planet want to make fun of American surnames in their lectures, I say: More power to them! Laugh and the whole world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone in your safe spaces!

(Photo number one from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Misadventures of Pizza Man

(Originally published 3/7/16)

He was oozing optimism when he first opened his pizza place’s doors. His little restaurant was poised and ready for what was certain to be a mad dash of salivating clientele. Initially, the shop was staffed like a bustling Midtown Manhattan pizzeria—its multiple employees festooned in matching logo-emblazoned red baseball caps and staff shirts. The upbeat new owner, who had succeeded an unsuccessful pizza peddler, who in turn had assumed the reins from still another failed pizza guy, had—it seemed—all his bases covered. This latest entrepreneurial endeavor was sure to prove—despite its cursed location—that a third time is a charm.

Long a pizza devotee and forever a Bronx denizen, the shortest distance from point A (home) to point B (a decent New York slice of pizza) mattered to me. Therefore, I would throw myself at the mercy of the new kid on the block and hope for the best. I was perfectly willing to tolerate all growing pains, including extraordinarily green employees, who did not, in the slightest, strive to be otherwise. So, I was not bothered when the two slices, plus a small fountain drink—the $5.00 lunch special—was not awarded me because I declined the free drink. (I didn't want to carry it home.) The clueless staff charged me $5.50, the individual cost of two slices, because I passed on the drink! And then there was the improperly wrapped pizza conundrum, where exceptionally oily slices saturated takeout bags beyond their capacity to function. On more than one occasion during this establishment’s fledgling days, my bag split open before I arrived home, splattering my clothes with mozzarella, tomato sauce, and scorching hot, orangey grease. I was nonetheless hopeful things would improve once the gang that couldn’t shoot straight got the hang of it. I would thus ignore the countless pizza slices that lost their tips when plucked out of the oven and when yanked out of the takeout bag. Call me naïve, but I was convinced the pizza man would soon appreciate that his pizza pies were usually too thin, often too crisp, and sometimes a deadly combination of both. I had been served pizza slices with burnt bottoms before in my fast-food culinary travels, but never this degree of burnt offerings.

This pizza shop in the Northwest Bronx began with both high hopes and a full showcase of every conceivable specialty pizza. Quickly, though, a conspicuous dearth of sales cut the pizza selections on display to a haphazard, mangy medley of slices. A portent of things to come occurred when the restaurant’s top pizza oven died and was not repaired for months. It was painful to behold the well-intentioned, formerly optimistic owner preparing his pizza pies in an oven that was practically on the floor. God knows the man tried. He inundated the surrounding neighborhood with fliers on several occasions. In fact, one of them heralded that the place would be open for breakfast. But—go figure—he never opened for breakfast. It would have been the opportunity of a lifetime—and a first for me—to sample “Mash Potato” on a roll to start my day.

When all was said and done, the pizza served was rather good—above average, in my opinion—even if the slice size and its mass fluctuated from one day to the next. My last takeout purchase of a couple of slices—with pepperoni on them—was weightless. It was as if I had bought them on the moon.

Unquestionably, there was a consistency issue. You could get the freshest, tastiest slice one day and a soggy muddle the next. Refrigerated pizza from the prior day is a definite no-no in this business. Pizza visuals matter! The place’s showcase was too often unsightly—empty with just a few petrified-looking options. Nevertheless, I genuinely liked the proprietor and hoped he would eventually turn water to wine. He never did. His almost two years of misadventures seemed like an eternity to me, a loyal customer. I can only imagine what it seemed like to him. And if this pizza man tries his luck someplace else—which is very possible—I pray his pizza slice tips stay put and if he advertises “open for breakfast” he does, in fact, open for breakfast!

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Beware of the Sponge

(Originally published on 7/11/11)

One of my fondest high school memories—or, quite possibly, my one and only fond memory—is the cafeteria. Cardinal Spellman in the Bronx served up some fine fare back in the day, including daily specials alongside a tasty, economical, always-available frankfurter. The school’s roast beef wedges, with their special cafeteria au jus, were otherworldly—better than anything Subway presently serves. On Wednesdays, the light-up menu board always read: “Roast Beef Wedge and Mashed Pot.” Potato was too long a word to fit.

I absolutely loved Friday’s special, which featured square slices of pizza with a unique consistency. All these years later, it is hard to describe, but I think a "soggy kind of savory" would do this pizza justice. Granted, I was a teenager with undeveloped taste buds. I am not certain my adult palate would so warmly embrace this pizza’s curious gooeyness, but memories of simpler times, I have found, are rarely simple.

Ah, but leave it to a fine Catholic institution of learning to cast a smothering pall over its five-star culinary hub, which is what the powers-that-were did—and with a pedestrian sponge no less. Yes, a sponge—a sopping, soiled, and bacteria-dripping one. In the waning moments of the school’s three lunch periods, a cursed lot of students were assigned either sponge duty or garbage pick-up from both the cafeteria tables and cafeteria floor. Student councilors would randomly select who would perform these messy tasks. On occasion, a general announcement might be made that any boys with red on their ties or girls with blonde hair—or some such thing—would have to clean up the spilled milk and splattered mustard with the dirty sponges supplied them after everyone else was dismissed.

Now, we weren't furnished rubber gloves for these tasks. Nor did we have time to wash our hands before returning to our next classes. In fact, some of us didn't even have the time to make it to the next class before the buzzer’s knell. And a few less than sympathetic teachers—the ones who no doubt hated kids and should have been in another profession—would send us to the dean’s office, where we would be given detention for being thirty seconds, or a minute, late because we were involuntarily cleaning messes off dirty lunch tables with grimy sponges or collecting refuse off tables and the floor.

I have since learned that sponge duty is a relic of the past at my alma mater. The more informed age in which we live puts a premium on both clean hands and clean thoughts—and it has cast asunder a vaunted tradition. And while I'm philosophically opposed to the nanny state of affairs, I'm not shedding any tears that the nasty sponge, and all that it wrought, has been retired for all time. In fact, I hope one has been bronzed and is on display in the school's Cardinal's Room, which celebrates the life and times of the less than savory man—so I have heard—for whom the school is named.

Are We Gonna Make It After All?

(Originally published 9/22/20)

Fifty years ago this month, The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted. It lasted for seven seasons and went out on a high note—on Mary’s terms. Arguably not the best season—with the iconic characters not yet fully in character—the first, which originally aired in 1970-71, is nevertheless a classic. I distinctly recall watching the show in its infancy in my grandmother’s living room—just a flight of stairs away—on her color TV, a hulking Zenith with legs, a light-up channel dial, and a picture that did not appear until the set sufficiently “warmed up.”

I own the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on DVD. For some reason, I find it oddly reassuring. It takes me back to a time and place that were decidedly simpler and more innocent. I appreciate that for the Vietnam War-draft-aged men, 1970-71 was anything but simple and innocent. Still, I was an eight-year-old kid in the second grade at St. John’s neighborhood grammar school. My teacher—a kindly woman—lived up the street from me. I remember—at a class show-and-tell session—bringing in a toy clock that I had gotten for Christmas. It counted the minutes and hours away with indefatigable alacrity. I had this thing for clocks and calendars—a youthful time fetish.

And here I am now, thinking long and hard about the passage of it. Fifty years ago, I was lying on my grandmother’s living room rug with a big fluffy pillow covered with a flowery pillowcase. The latter was my grandmother’s handiwork, just as were the heavy wool socks—a wintertime staple—that she regularly crocheted for her grandchildren. In fact, one of the most captivating things about The Mary Tyler Moore Show was Mary’s cozy studio apartment and her panoramic picture windows leading out to a deck. The fictional Mary Richards lived in the non-fictional Minneapolis, Minnesota with its notoriously cold and snowy winters. We television viewers were thus treated to ample fictional snowfall outside of Mary’s picture-perfect windows. As a youth, I considered snow an impressive weather phenomenon for a whole host of reasons, including outdoor hijinks, potential white Christmases, and—win-win—possible days off from school.

What an awesome time it was to watch prime-time television. Everyone had a favorite show on any given night and there was indeed something for everyone. When The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted, there were no reality shows with histrionic, insincere narcissists behaving badly or Love Islands with histrionic, insincere narcissists behaving equally badly. Once upon a time, the commercials served as welcome bathroom breaks or—in my grandmother’s presence—apple and grapefruit breaks. The commercial allotments were also reasonable in length, unlike today’s TV ads, which are at once ubiquitous and intrusive. You could cook a full-course meal during some of these breaks.

One final thought on that special time—1970-71: It represented the last year in existence of “The Garden,” as it was affectionately known, across the street from me. This sprawling “victory garden” was the last of its kind in my neighborhood, Kingsbridge in the Bronx. If I looked out my front window, or my grandmother’s below me, during the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I spied an elongated makeshift fence covering a sprawling patch of earth that sprang to life in the summertime and became starkly barren in wintertime. It was the end of an era in a city with fewer empty spaces and undeveloped lots for gardens and youthful adventures. The times they were a-changin’ then and then has gradually become now, which is quite a melancholy thought to entertain. Just gaze out your front window and contemplate where we were versus where we are. Love is not quite all around us.

 (Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)