Yorkville School Lunch ~ Then & Now ~ next Storytelling Show, Tuesday, Nov 13th @ 6pm

School Lunch  ~ Then and Now

Yorkville 1962: in 2nd grade the St. Stephen’s school lunch program was like a daily visit with a raging toothache to the dentist without anesthesia. The list of crimes is endless: brown meat, green meat, cheese with teeth marks in it, soup so bad it made strong kids cry. Wax beans, Yellow beans, rock hard beans and a room temperature boiled egg on every tray. There must have been a sale on aging celery cause it showed up in most foods. In the windowless lunchroom, a nun stood guard making sure you did not talk and ate everything on your tray, or you devised food escape routes (some more clever than Steve McQueen's).

Yorkville 2012: I’m sitting on an 82nd Street stoop a week ago. A stylishly dressed girl about 8 years old strolls past me with a cell phone and she’s frantically texting the Gettysburg address to a friend. Her mother in four-inch heels engaged on an iPhone trapped to her ear while carrying packages and a knapp sack was 10 feet behind the daughter when she broke off her phone conversation and yelled out to the princess, “Did you finish you sushi at lunch today?” 

That’s when my 50-year-old nightmare came back to me.  I’m still mad at my mother for two things: throwing my gorgeous Yankee Stadium model away (murdered while dusting) and sentencing me to school lunch.

Our next  "City Stories: Stoops to Nuts," storytelling show at  Cornelia Street Cafe is Tuesday, November 13th @ 6pm. Our artists: Michele Carlo, Julia Joseph, John Newell and Tim O'Mara. Admission is $8 and that includes a free drink. Come down to the Café, nuzzle in and let the telling take you away.

Dad Forgot Something On 83rd Street

Dad had a habit for coming back into the apartment after he left late for work. Most weekdays, Rory and I watched the act as we sat at the kitchen table late for school eating Kellogg’s corn flakes or burnt toast (not Mom’s fault. Toaster was on the fritz, everything came out dark). Like Dad, we were two lazy asses. Mom prayed we all would leave the house and talked to herself while Dad looked for his pants belt or his money clip. Dad didn’t carry a wallet because he didn’t like the lump it created that wrinkled his suit’s pant’s pocket. Dad usually didn’t need subway tokens in the morning because he used to sneak hail a cab on York Avenue to go to Battery Place during the same period he hadn’t raised Mom’s house money in 5 years.

When Dad looked for his belt or money clip, Mom yapped at the sink curse words scattering in air while washing the dishes she took away from us quickly during our last bite or spoonful of cereal. Dad wouldn’t talk to himself but he mumbled under his breath some personal language of disappointment.

Sometimes, Dad had a load on the previous night, and before he went to bed after looking for something to eat he took a money ball out of his pocket that never made it back onto his money clip, and he hid it instead of putting it on his dresser. Sometimes, Mom would find the money ball in Dad’s hiding place and change the hiding place. When these two things happened consecutively, Dad would spend a great deal of time looking for the money ball, but he couldn’t let Mom know he hid the money, at the same time he slowly came to the realization Mom took it and re-hid it, and he couldn't do anything about it because he knew he never should have hid it in the first place. I remember my neck hurting in school after spending early mornings at our 83rd Street family circus.

Lexington Avenue Love Affair

Long before I attended Hunter College I fell in love with Lexington Avenue. As a boy I regularly drifted over there for no reason at all. This intimate stretch is my favorite Manhattan walking avenue, especially at night when the streets are clear. Better, in the snow. Lexington was not part of the original 1811 Street Grid. It’s insertion as a narrow avenue allows it to retain an old world feel. It’s easy for me to imagine Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz moving into the Shelton Hotel at 49th Street in 1925. Their love for the avenue influenced their work and flows through their art. I never walk passed the 67th Street Armory without thinking about Douglas MacArthur being laid out there in 1964 when he died, and the picture of the crowds in The New York Daily News first seven cent edition. The newspaper was a nickel the previous day.

I walked the avenue last week and took some pictures of the armory, Hunter (the original school building facing Lexington turns 100 next year) and the storefronts (my father sold his miniature furniture out of two Lexington stores). Here are pictures and a link to a small photograph album of Lexington, Park Avenue and a couple of side blocks. The painting here is by Georgia O'Keefe and the b/w photo is by Alfred Stieglitz.

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The next City Stories: Stoops to Nuts storytelling show at the Cornelia Street Cafe is Tuesday, October 11th @ 6pm. This month’s artists: Tricia Alexandro,Kambri Crews, Nick Danger, Timothy O'Mara, Thomas Pryor, Barry & Brian Stabile. Admission is $7 and that includes one free drink. It will be a marvelous night for a Moondance.

Doing the Crime, Well Worth the Time

I spent a lot of time in the halls of St. Stephen's during class. An odd penalty the nuns applied when they had it with you. Sometimes, you went to the hall with no hit, and other times you were banished with a whack to the head on the way out. I was, and remain an excellent ducker.

I liked the hall. It gave me an opportunity to clear my head and plan the rest of my day. Mr. Beller's Neighborhood published a new St. Stephen's story yesterday. What did I do?

The nun caught me, but it was worth it.

Here's the link to the story.

http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2011/03/stuff-in-stockings

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