Yorkville Is His Home

My Dad's best friend, Walter, 93 years old with severe memory loss, moved two weeks ago from his 1942 railroad apartment (yep, linoleum as old as Methuselah) to a beautiful one bedroom in Yorkville. Walter, 93 years in the neighborhood. St. Joseph's, Commerce High School, NYU, Navy,  48 years with Pan Am Airlines ending with a long ride as the Director of World Wide Maintenance. He's travelled to 35 countries with photos to prove it.

After losing most of his memoryWalter hoarded. His clean organized new space is unusual to him but he's getting use to it. The guy loves our neighborhood. 93 years in Yorkville. More to come. 

Walt with chums on roof of St. Joe's @ 1936

east river

517 E. 83rd where I grew up

Here are photos of Walt at St. Joe's in the 1930s, Carl Schurz, his favorite park and 83rd Street where I grew up.

Walter had a Sister Beatrice. No kidding.

Krusty Joins Stoops to Nuts at Ryan's Daughter This Thursday @ 7pm

Krusty says the only thing slowing his boozing is "Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts" Holiday Show @ Ryan's Daughter @ 12.4.14 @ 7pm - when he heard Michele Carlo, Abbi Crutchfield, Lincoln C. Chinnery, Walter Michael DeForest, Colin Dempsey & Eric Vetter were going to be in the same place at the same time with the International Silver String Submarine Band, well, Krusty near had a baby.

Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts

Thurs, Dec 4th @ 7-10pm

Ryan's Daughter

350 East 85th Street

between First & Second Avenue

FREE show

I'll sell and sign "I Hate the Dallas Cowboys- tales of a scrappy New York boyhood," at Ryan's Daughter. Thank you, six friends who bought my book yesterday in the East Village at We Three Productions Reading at 2A, 25 Ave A @ 2nd Street. Thank you, Tim O'Mara, Wayne Kral & Harold Dean James for inviting to your home.

Timeless Yorkville Sunset ~ 1964-2014

If you were to compare photos from tonight's Yorkville sunset on the East River with photos taken fifty years ago, few things have changed. Imagine yourself younger strolling the Drive on a warm autumn night. A timeless evening on the river.

Join me with St. Stephen of Hungary's 4th grade at "I Hate The Dallas Cowboys: tales of a scrappy New York boyhood" ~ Thomas Pryor's Book Event @ Barnes & Noble 150 E. 86 Street. We will share our ageless Yorkville memories.

Yorkville's Bread Wars

"Wonder Bread, again." Dad threw his hands up.

"Will you shut up!" Mom never turned from the stove.

"You never bring food home I enjoy."

"You're a liar. We eat friggin’ spaghetti six nights a week. If you came home seven nights a week, we'd never eat anything else."

Rory and I nodded our heads in agreement. Our eyes were bloodshot from eating gallons of Mom's marinara sauce. Having hamburgers or franks was a national holiday. That there was Wonder Bread in the house was one of our few food victories. We loved it. Dad loved Silvercup. Mom didn't care and hated food shopping. She'd never go to a second store and whatever bread was left on the shelf, was the bread she bought including the dreaded Taystee Bread.

I knocked off Irish sandwiches all week for snacks, Wonder Bread, Iceberg Lettuce and Hellman's mayonnaise. Mom taught us not to waste time with a knife when you could go straight to the tablespoon for a thick layer of mayo on the bread.

"Make sure there's clearance between the bread and the lettuce." She said with full eye contact.

Once, our Italian grandmother bought Miracle Whip and tried to pawn it off to Rory and me as mayo. We left the house in protest.

"If it ain't got a blue label, we ain't eating it."

Dad pouted over Wonder Bread, but used it to clean his plate. I think he secretly liked it. But anytime Silvercup came up, he'd start talking about when I was kid this, and I was a kid that, Silvercup was one of his comfort foods. I got that. But it tasted like crap compared to Wonder, and that made no sense to me that it was in our house.

We had relatives in Sunnyside. We'd take the bus over the 59th Street Bridge to visit. I always sat on one side of the bus with the window open even if it was ten degrees, so I could pick up the aroma coming from the Silvercup bread factory. This drove the bus driver crazy, but I didn't care, the heavenly smell of that bread was my favorite smell on earth, right up to when my first girlfriend started wearing Cachet perfume.

I'd watch everyone's face on the bus, most had pusses on, but once the smell of the fresh hot bread came through the window under their noses, those frowns melted and everyone looked like they were pining for a cup of hot coffee and a stick of butter to go with the warm bread. When I got back home, and tried Silvercup, it tasted like toilet paper. Wonder was the king of bread, it would build my strong body in twelve different ways and there'd be no substitutes.

When Wonder and Silvercup ran out in the grocery store, Mom would grab a loaf of Taystee, always the last milk bottle standing when it came to bread brands. I was convinced that the only people who bought Taystee bread willingly were survivors of electric shock therapy who missed it. I figured they put a couple of slices of Taystee bread in your mouth right before they juiced the electricity, so you didn't bite your tongue off once they lit you up. Taystee bread, drier than a communion host, could have no other useful purpose.

Dad, Rory and I never ganged up on Mom, except when she brought Taystee home. When she did, the loaf sat there like a lost soul. Toast, cold cuts, sticks of butter, nothing could entice the three of us to touch the outcast bread. Through the week it hardened. When we thought we'd defeated Mom, and the loaf would be replaced with an acceptable brand, she turned the screw. She made pot roast. Mom knew her best dish sent Dad, Rory and I into a frenzy. We begged her to pour a bucket of delicious gravy over our bread with thin slices of tender meat. Pot roast without bread wasn't pot roast. If there were such a thing as rat bread, the three of us wouldn't have cared, and would have welcomed yummy pot roast over our rat bread.

We surrendered and Mom rotated her stock.

My Book Release Party for "I Hate the Dallas Cowboys - tales of a scrappy New York boyhood" is Tuesday, October 14th @ Cornelia Street Cafe @ 5:30pm to 8pm - followed three days later by a book event at Barnes & Noble, 150 E. 86 St on Friday, October 17th @ 7pm in the Yorkville neighborhood on the Upper East Side.

Praise coming in for the book:

“Thomas R. Pryor has written a sweet, funny, loving memoir of growing up old-school in a colorful New York neighborhood.  A story of sports, family, and boyhood, you’ll be able to all but taste, smell, and feel this vanished world.”

Kevin Baker, author of the novels "Dreamland," Paradise Alley," and "Strivers Row," as well as other works of fiction and nonfiction

"Tommy Pryor's New York City boyhood was nothing like mine, a few miles and a borough away, and yet in its heart, tenderness, and tough teachable moments around Dad and ball, it was the mid-century coming of age of all of us. A rousing read."Robert Lipsyte, former city and sports columnist, The New York Times

“Pryor could take a felt hat and make it funny.”

Barbara Turner-Vesselago, author of "Writing Without A Parachute: The Art of Freefall"

“Pryor burrows into the terrain of his childhood with a longing and obsessiveness so powerful it feels like you are reading a memoir about his first great love.”
Thomas Beller, author of "J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist"

Move-in Day 1957 ~ Happy Birthday, Rory!

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.