June 20, 1957, on Rory’s first
birthday we moved into apartment #4R at 517 East 83rd Street. Mom let Rory and
me run straight into the apartment before my aunts and uncles brought the
furniture up. I dragged my brother by his arm. At the window was a fire escape
with a nest of baby pigeons. Rory squealed and said his newly learned word,
“Wow!”
I felt the same way. “Mom, got to
see it, birds, lots of them!” I yelled over my shoulder.
Mom came over in three strides,
gave Dad a look and said, “Bob, stay here. I’m taking Tommy and Rory for ice
cream.”
On the stairs, we passed Aunt
Barbara and Aunt Joan carrying our kitchen table and they gave Mom and us a
funny look as sweat dripped down their faces.
When we returned from the store
Rory and I ran to the window. No birds.
I asked Dad, “Where they go?”
“Their mom taught them to fly and
they took off.”
I said nothing but knew something
fishy happened. I had a good cry, Rory saw me, and he started crying too. Rory
didn’t know why he was crying; he just liked to cry when I cried.
When the furniture was in and the
move was over the adults started cracking beers. The next thing I knew a group
of friends and extra relatives showed up. Allie Cobert, Uncle Mickey and Uncle
Lenny put on Dad’s white dress shirts and made bow ties out of the ladies
kerchiefs and begin singing, “Sweet Adeline.” After the singing sung out, Dad
played records on his prized RCA Victrola. Bored, I retreated to the bathroom.
I sat on the toilet bowl and did some target practice with my water gun. Out
the window into the airshaft, a few quick shots off mom’s bra drying on the
towel rack, then up at the naked light bulb on the ceiling. That was fun. The
more I shot it, the more it sizzled. I could see smoke coming off it. I kept
going.
“CRACK, BOOM!”
The bulb exploded, the door flew
open and a half dozen people were in the bathroom with me before I could hop
off the bowl. Mom was on top of me pretty good but Barbara and Joan extracted
me before Mom could figure out what to do with me.
The next day, Barbara came over
the apartment to see how we were settling in. She sat in the kitchen drinking
coffee with Mom. When Mom wasn’t paying attention, Barbara went to the back
window by the fire escape and opened it. Then she sat back down in the kitchen like
nothing happened.
Within a few minutes we heard
birds, “Tweet, tweet, tweet.” Then it stopped. Two minutes later, “Tweet,
Tweet, tweet.”
Mom moaned and said, "Oh,
Christ, they’re back.”
I smiled. Then a big gruff voice
said, “Fire Inspector, Fire Inspector!”
Mom popped out of her chair. In
came Joan in my red fire hat with a big grin on her face.
Joan had gone to the roof and
came down to the fourth floor fire escape waiting for Barbara to open the
window to let her in. It was not the first, or last time someone came into our
Yorkville apartment using something other than the front door.
Happy birthday, Brother.
My book, "I Hate the Dallas Cowboys - tales of a scrappy New York boyhood," will be published by YBK, October 2014. If you like TV's "The Wonder Years," add tenements, loitering and a subway - you'll slip seamlessly into my world.
Our next "City Stories: Stoops to Nuts, show on Tuesday, July 8th @ 6pm @ Cornelia Street Cafe is a doozy.
Our amazing artists: "The Duchess and the Fox, aka, Andrea Diaz and Joe McGinty(standout and founder of The Losers Lounge), Jennifer Barrett (Living Loud), Nicole Ferraro (NY Times) and Harry Rolnick (WSJ). We're bringing the musical side of storytelling to our show in a big way with Andrea, Joe and Jennifer merging with two of my favorite tellers in NYC, Nicole and Harry.
