It was a big mistake to forego our Cape Cod beach vacation this year.  I’d reasoned that we were going on two overseas vacations this year, and we are not made of money.

But the daily disasters keep piling up, and my back aches from the 24/7 tension, and then the capper: today I read a  Verlyn Klinkenborg-style essay in The New York Times about the author’s unplugged vacation on Long Pond, in Belgrade Lakes, Maine (see photo above).

Ah, Long Pond.  Many years ago, when I was a twenty-year old Bronx primitive, I vacationed there with a school friend.  It was my first plane ride, LGA to Augusta.  Less than an hour, as I recall.  We rented an AMC Ambassador, and drove to Castle Island Camps.

We had use of a fourteen foot outboard, with a ten horsepower motor.  We fished for large mouth bass.  We ate them for dinner, with corn, salad.  We had blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.  After our evening meal, we repaired to the main house “living room” and sipped Jack Daniels from paper cups.  We were far from the war, from the draft, from the grit and daily danger of NYC life in the early seventies.

Those who remember those days as some sort of golden era are very much mistaken.

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Fast forward forty-five years. Cape Cod offered similar respite, albeit far less spartan.  Our rented house was deluxe, the appointments sublime.  We made new friends, new memories.  Lobsters, grilled steaks, fresh corn, all roasted on a grill large enough to host a Texas bbq.

We watched kids fish for fluke from the jetty.  We watched neighbors hilariously try their luck on paddle boards, with varying degrees of success.  We watched a wounded sandpiper deal with its bad leg, nibbling along the shore with his mates.  That gimpy sandpiper returned to our beach, yards from our door, every morning and evening.  One leg was bent at a forty-five degree angle and he hopped about with determination.  I’d watch him while lazing in the New England summer sun.  At first, I was sad for the little guy, hobbled.  I thought: if something happened to his other leg, he was done.  Done! Then, I realized how brave he was, how he coped with the hand he was dealt.  His buddies pecked at the sand with him and never left him behind.

It was a big mistake.  We should have taken the house again.

You can learn a lot while doing nothing.

News Item: Dan Ingram, Iconic AM Radio DJ, Dies

Dan Ingram, iconic DJ on New York’s powerhouse AM station WABC-AM, died today at 83.

Real New Yorkers will remember that the three big rock and roll stations here in the sixties and into the seventies were WMCA, WABC and WINS.  WABC had a punchy, irreverent approach, fueled by mouthpieces such as Cousin Brucie, Harry Harrison and Dan Ingram.

Before Spotify and file-sharing, before iPods and tablets and all manner of digital delinquency, we had tinny AM transistor radios. Every kid had his radio, powered by a nine-volt battery.  We carried them everywhere, even to bed.

We listened to them on our stoops, snapping our fingers, snapping our gum, drinking Cokes and enjoying Good Humor ice cream pops. We were pre-teen wannabe terrors, learning about love and heartache from the crooners of Motown, the Brill Building, Memphis and Liverpool.

And Dan Ingram was our pied piper. He would talk as the song started, right up to the precise moment when the lyrics began.  He spun Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, Ramsey Lewis, Petula Clark, the Supremes, Glen Campbell, the Monkees, Sly Stone, the Bee Gees, Mitch Ryder, the Stones, Aretha, the Doors, and of course, The King, and the Beatles.

And the commercials! They were as big a part of our lives as the songs.  Car dealerships.  Robert Hall clothes. National Speedway.  Palisades Amusement Park (“swings all day and after dark…”). The allure of fast cars, snappy clothes, and young love.  The soundtrack of our thirteen year old lives.

We grew up fast, though.  Assassinations.  Viet Nam.  The so-called Silent Majority.  Woodstock.  Altamont.

Around ’66 or ’67, free-form FM radio, in stereo, took us higher. True, the signals were weak, fading in and out.  But: No playlists.  Fewer commercials.  Serious discussions.  WOR-FM segued to WNEW-FM.  WPLJ.  WBAI. And lots more. The big name jocks moved over to FM, where we had Muni, Murray the K, Jonathan Schwartz, Allison Steele, Rosko.  Oh man — ROSKO!!!

Suddenly, AM radio seemed so….sad.  Like Jackie Paper, we left that rascal Puff.  The war burned.
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The big AM stations such as WABC-AM went all-talk, suitable for drivers of yellow cabs but not the cool kids.

And, now, our pre-pubescent leader, Dan Ingram, is gone.  Through the gauze of time, I have only fond memories of those AM radio days.  I remember soft summer nights, not unlike tonight, chasing fireflies, finally sitting on Millie’s stoop.  Me, Mark and Billy are surrounded by the older teen girls who light our punks and our firecrackers with their cigarettes, their hair in curlers, their tantalizing perfume wafting gently on each breeze. They patiently teach us lyrics to nonsensical tunes over the WABC-AM airwaves.

“Does your chewing gum lose it’s flavor on the bedpost overnight?”

“Hey there Little Red Riding Hood.  You sure are looking good, doing all the things a big bad wolf could want…AH-OOOOOOOOO!”

And, for us kids in the Bronxy Bronx, the dream of bigger things twelve or so miles south, as we all sing along under the streetlights, until Mrs. Donahue sticks her head out the window and yells for us to shut up:

“The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown, things’ll be great when you’re
Downtown, no finer place for sure
Downtown everything’s waiting for you.”

So long, Kemosabe.  I left you.  But I never forgot you.  How could I ever do a thing like that?

Egypt’s heartbreaking own goal in yesterday’s World Cup match against Russia reminded me of something. As you’ll recall, very early in the second half, the ball glanced off the leg of a defensive player on the Egyptian team, resulting in an own goal that opened the floodgates for two quickies by Russia.  In a span of sixteen minutes or so, Russia scored three times.  Egypt was deflated, and not even a laser of a penalty shot by Mo Salah could rouse the team.

But let me tell you a story.  A long time ago, I tutored kids, Mexican- and Middle Eastern- born Brooklynites, at 826nyc, the Dave Eggers-founded after-school literacy program.  The kids were so cute, and played so well together.  This group was mostly from Puebla and Yemen, and they earnestly did their math and spelling homework, boys sporting Mets caps (God help them, they were Mets fans) and girls in sparkly little sneakers and tee-shirts with funny sayings.

Four years later, the markets melted down, and in 2008, with the world economy teetering on the brink, I shifted gears and started working at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.  You know, the big Art Deco one on Grand Army Plaza.  People rag about “makers and takers” but, I’ll tell you, every damn seat in every damn study room was always filled.  The place was packed with kids and adults, doing their school research, working on projects, and trying so hard to better themselves.

My job was in adult education and, because the market tanked, and library patrons were out of work, or about to be laid off,  my primary task was helping men and women improve (or start) their resumes.

But there was one guy, from Montego Bay, Mike, who struggled with composition writing.  He needed to learn how to write basic compositions, for his remedial coursework.  He was a tall, fit guy in his mid-twenties, who worked light construction.  His jeans were worn, his pocketed Carhartt shirts had holes in them, and his hands were rough.

He always smiled at the start of our time.  Mike was very shy and said he could not write a little story, even a paragraph, with a beginning, middle and end.  We tried and tried, to no avail. It was tough.  He was tired from work, and embarrassed by his situation.

“I can’t do this,” he said, finally, one day.

“Bull,” I said. “I know you can.”

He shook his head.  I countered with: “I’ll prove you can.  Put your pen down, and just tell me a story.”

And he did.

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The ball was struck, a bullet straight at Mike.  He reflexively stuck out his foot to block and redirect the shot.

Terror of terrors: somehow the ball careened violently back towards Mike’s goal, and skidded into the corner.  It was an own goal.

Mike stopped talking.  He wiped away a tear, this big strong guy.  “No one talked to me.  No one said a ting. They all walked away.

“I will never forget that moment, Mr. Marty.  I tell you.  Never.”

I breathed deeply and regrouped.

“Mike, thank you for sharing that story with me,” I said.  “That was very brave. And now you’re going to do something even more difficult.”

“What?” he said, nervous.

“Pick up your pen, and write that story down, just like you told it to me, word for word.”

And he did.  And it was damn fine.

And I will never forget that moment either.

On this very day, forty-nine years ago, Crosby, Stills & Nash’s first album was released.

This is the one that included Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Marrakesh Express, Guinnevere, You Don’t Have to Cry, Pre-Road Downs, Wooden Ships, Lady of the Island, Helplessly Hoping, Long Time Gone, and 49 Bye-Byes.

This is the one that we all bought immediately, after hearing it, most likely, on WNEW-FM, that bold free-form station that played Jimi and Sinatra, back to back, and introduced us Bronx primitives to Miles.  Janis.  John Mayall’s “Beano” album. Sly.

This is the one with the impeccable three-part harmonies, alternate tunings, and moody, urgent lyrics that validated our sense of malaise, heightened daily, one body bag at a time.

About the car in this photo: this is the type of VW I drove back then.  It was well used, purchased from a curvy nurse in the Wakefield section of The Bronx for $735 saved from my part time job as an office boy in the bursting room, where I worked alongside 22-year old Viet Nam vets, just back from their tour and in various stages of re-acclimation to civilian life.

The car, like my co-workers, and like my country, was in serious disrepair.  Every fix was followed by a new problem until, finally, it ran aground on the 1st Avenue concrete divider in Manhattan, late one blurry night.
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But hope sprang eternal.  On all fronts, not just the car, of course.  Ah, the optimism of youth.  We kept trying to patch everything up, perhaps encouraged by the positive push of the Crosby, Stills & Nash song, Long Time Gone: “But you know…the darkest hour…is always…always just before the dawn…”

Forty-nine years later, here we are again, our country’s internal battle lines drawn.  A new generation has been passed life’s baton.  Millennials are full of idealism, energy and hope.  They volunteer, they connect, they plan.

Much is said about the Greatest Generation.  No generation is perfect; they sacrificed much, but gave the world McCarthyism, Viet Nam, environmental disaster, Jim Crow, union-bashing and Watergate.

As today’s young voters search for answers, they’ve given us new music, such as “Watch Over Us” by The Lone Bellow.  Think about the layered meanings of this song, on the anniversary of that first CSN album nearly half a century ago: “Watch over us…watch over us…when my hands are tired…when my strength is gone…momma, your baby…is shrouded in sorrow…you’ve had your time…but who has tomorrow?”

Hey guys, you’ve got the baton.  You’ve earned the baton.  Go for it, and we’ll follow your actions in words, deeds and music.

Owning a pocket knife meant adulthood in my corner of The Bronx.  And no knife carried more street cachet among members of my tribe than the K55 gravity knife.

They were balanced.  They were slim.  They were sharp.  They flicked open with a snap of the wrist, once broken in.  And they looked serious.  Very serious.

We kids were K55 connoisseurs.  Only the German-made version — with the iconic panther outlined on the handle in gold — would do.  These were far superior in quality to the Japanese-made K55s, which had the telltale marking of the gold-outlined panther with stripes. The Japanese K55s had malfunctioning locks, and rivets that loosened far too easily.

Pre-teens could not, technically, purchase knives such as the K55 on their own.  However, we knew that one store on Fordham Road, the crowded, hilly, shopping strip that snaked from the Harlem River to Southern Boulevard and that served as our 60s-era mall, would sell knives to virtually anyone.  Even eleven-year old kids.

And that store was Cousins.

Cousins was one of several stores packed floor-to-ceiling with the recorded music boomer boys craved.  Alexanders basement record department, along with Spinning Disc and Music Makers, all sold the 45s and LPs that changed the world.

But Cousins was very different.  Its window showcased all manner of boy-pleasing accessories.  A revolving lamp, which — as it turned — showed the flight of a farm boy’s pee into a pond, delighted the pre-teen me.  But even that treasure paled in comparison to the row, upon row, of sharp-bladed cutlery.

There, out for all to see, in the window of a Fordham Road store, were battle axes, dress swords, rapiers, scimitars, switchblades, Bowie knives, and gravity knives, of which my beloved K55 held center stage.  All were for sale.

After weeks of deliberation, I worked up the nerve to buy my knife.  One Friday, after school, I walked down the hill to Cousins, spied my prize in the window, and opened the door.

The store’s ground floor selling space pulsed with hormone-addled teenagers. The guys were all about the Brylcreem, white tee-shirts, black jeans and low-top Converse sneakers.  The girls rocked spray-on blue jeans, white Keds, and tight pink sweaters.

Over primitive speakers, Joanie Sommers, a sultry top-forty singer of the day, crooned: “I want a brave man.  I want a cave man.  Johnny, tell me that you care, really care, for me.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcLXs3Np93s

I knew then I was in way over my head, but I pushed myself to walk upstairs, where the home furnishings — and cutlery — were sold.

The section was empty, except for the single salesman who idly snapped his jaw and blew smoke rings at the end of the glass counter.

I summoned shallow reserves of sixth-grade nonchalance and breezed casually to the thirty-foot long knife display.  There they were, so close, after ogling them from afar, in the street-level showcase window.  The long, thin stiletto blades of the pearl-handled switchblades glistened under the lights.  I felt faint to think of one of these in the hands of a feared Ducky Boys or Fordham Baldies gang member.

I pushed on, past massive, stag handled hunting knives, to the tray of deadly K55s.

“Help you?” the seedy, bald-headed salesman asked as he ambled over in a maroon Banlon shirt.  He nubbed out his Pall Mall in a large, white ceramic ashtray.  In its center was the molded figure of a nude woman in a sun bonnet, lying face down, her legs akimbo.

I gulped and took a deep breath.  “K55.  German,” I sputtered.  Silently, the salesman opened the case and, with profound ceremony, pulled  a velour tray of K55s.  He opened one and, as he did, I heard the steel lock click into place.  The knife was now ready for business.

He held it out to me for inspection. With great reverence, I took the knife by the handle and hefted it.  I operated the lock and closed, then opened, then closed, the knife.  It was, to me, a model of precision German engineering, with a razor sharp carbon steel blade that measured just under the four-inch New York City regulation.

“I’ll take it,” I said, in a whisper.  I pulled a wad of singles out of my pants, paid, and put the change carefully in the coin pocket of my Wrangler jeans.  The transaction concluded with the startling bell of the store’s cash register.
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It was done.  I — an eleven year old in P.S. 86 — owned a deadly weapon.  A for-real German K55.

But not for long.

First, I accidentally punctured my index finger with the K55s blade tip while practicing my quick-draw, flick-to-open move. Luckily, no one was home, for it took fifteen minutes of compression to staunch the bleeding.

The very next morning, a neighbor saw me flip the opened knife into the dirt while walking Topper, my dog.  I was entranced by the fine balance of my K55, and kept flinging the knife down into the weeds across the street from my house, while holding Topper’s leash in my other hand.

The neighbor called my father, and that was all she wrote.

“Where did you get it?” he bellowed.

I looked down at my feet.  “Cousins,” I mumbled.

“Get your jacket.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Where d’ya think?” was his reply.

We marched all the way down Fordham Road to the store, and stopped.  He held out his palm and wiggled his fingers.  I handed over my German K55.

“You wait here,” he said.  “Do not move.”

I have no idea what he said, or how he said it, but my six-foot four, two-hundred thirty-five pound dad, a World War Two sergeant, got an immediate refund for my jet-black K55.

“You are not to go into this store ever again,” he said, as came out of Cousins and zipped up his jacket.  “Are we clear?”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m hungry.  Let’s get something to eat,” he said.

Together, we walked up the hill in silence, had two franks with mustard and kraut at Gorman’s, and never spoke of the matter again.  Adulthood would come,all too soon, to me and my friends,  but not by way of a black, German-engineered gravity knife.

Was it really 40 years ago this week that New York City was plunged into its own heart of darkness?

My now-grey beard would indicate that the answer is “yes.”

It is said that one’s memory is, by its very nature, a distortion.  Memories are not replicas of reality. Rather, they are modified and reconstructed during each recall. The “facts” of even our firmest memories drift mysteriously, ever-changing, like the dunes of the Sahara.

What I do remember is the oppressive heat and humidity of that Wednesday night, July 13, 1977. The high temperature that day was 93 degrees.  It was the start of a nine-day heat wave.

I do remember that my wife and I lived in Jackson Heights, which back then was a dull bedroom community that was the epicenter of the era’s Colombian cocaine wars.

I do remember that we just bought a seven-year old Toyota Corona from a gypsy fortune teller’s husband.  The car had no a/c, a four-speed manual shift, and 90,000+ miles on the clock.  I kept the car’s 8-track tape player/radio on a slide-out mount. I took it with me in a red plastic grocery bag every time I left the car.  On the car’s windows, front and back, I left cardboard signs: “NOTHING IN CAR!!! NO RADIO!!!”

I do remember a drug lord’s white Rolls Royce with smoked glass windows, double-parked across the street from our Jackson Heights apartment building every night, and the shell casings routinely found in the P.S. 69 schoolyard, where a few years later, a gay kid would get beaten to death behind a dumpster.

I do remember that Son of Sam had yet to be captured.

On the night of July 13th, we drove to our regular low stakes poker game in our friend’s walk-up apartment on Third Avenue and 91st Street, across from Ruppert Towers and just around the corner from where Jimmy Cagney was raised.  Our friend was just starting out in the acting world, making the rounds every day.  His apartment was hardly a showplace. But the monthly rent then was about half the price of a pair of Laboutins now.

We drove our Toyota over the 59th Street Bridge and up to Yorkville, got a spot, removed the radio, and clumped up the stairs.  I don’t remember if I was winning or losing after a few hours in that cramped kitchen.  I do, however, remember that we quickly ran out of ice, and juice and soda, and so we started to mix Georgi vodka with warm red Kool-Aid. The apartment was stifling. The window was wide open.  The wiring of those far-from-renovated tenements did not support air-conditioning.

I do remember thinking, as sweat dripped from my forehead onto the Tally-Ho playing cards and finally, onto the Formica kitchen table, that although our buddy lived in Manhattan, and my wife and I were recently cast out of Oz — that is, Manhattan — we lived large. I bought a used a/c with a broken thermostat for fifty bucks back when we lived in Chelsea just a couple of years earlier.  Because of the thermostat, the compressor was always on, and our bedroom was as cold as a meat locker in Western Beef.  We had taken the massive a/c with us to Jackson Heights, when our Chelsea landlord, Monty Cohen, jacked the rent on us, all the way from $260 to $285 a month for a one-bedroom on West 21st Street.

I remember that our friend’s place had only fan-conditioning, a small junk shop Vornado that valiantly tried to keep all seven of us poker players cool. The noisy fan whirled the cigarette smoke from our game.  The heat and the Kool-Aid/vodka cocktails made us cranky.

“This place fuckin’ sucks, man,” said Big Louie, who tossed another losing hand into the center of the table.

Louie looked like a large, even dopier version of Sonny Bono.  But Louie had been “away.” That is, “upstate.” That is, “incarcerated.” None of us fucked with Louie.

“Sorry Lou,” our host said.  “It’s hot, I know.”

And then the fan stopped whirring, the fetid summer air grew still, and the bare forty-watt bulb that dangled from the kitchen ceiling died.  The ambient hum of the broken-handled Frigidaire suddenly stopped.  It was just past nine-thirty p.m.

“Oh fuck me!” said our friend.

“Check the fuse box,” I said.

“Goddammit!” moaned Big Louie.

The room was now lit only by streetlight.  And then, one by one, even they went out. Seven of us got up from the rickety table and looked out the kitchen window.  Up and down the avenue, apartment lights were out.  Street lights were out.  Traffic lights were out.

“Put on the transistor,” said my wife.  Our pal got his battery powered radio and tuned in ten-ten WINS.
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“A fuckin’ blackout?” Big Louie said.

“Oh fuck me!” our host said, again.

And then, we heard it.  A rising crescendo of fire, ambulance, and police sirens.

And then, gunshots.

We got up and scrambled into the hallway, as our friend locked the illegal window gate, against FDNY code because it fastened from the inside with a key.  Then, he put the thick steel bar of his Fox Police Lock in place and secured the front door.

We bolted down the stairs and into the street and looked uptown, north, to Harlem, the source of the closest commotion. Only blocks away, we saw a sky pierced by flames. Smoke billowed.  Car alarms screamed.

“Let’s book,” I said to my wife.  “Now!”

“But there are no traffic lights,” she reasoned. “How will we get home?”

“Very carefully,” I said.

We hugged all our friends.  They wished us well. We suggested that they get back inside.  I do remember that we got in the car, and I slid the tape deck into its under-dash bracket.

We drove south on Second Avenue, and the shriek of the sirens receded, chaos now in our rear view mirror.  We were safe, unlike so many others.  The morning papers would bear witness to the smoldering neighborhoods throughout New York City, where bustling business blocks looked like bombed-out Beirut.

We drove slowly, and tippy-toed from the low nineties to the bridge entrance, being extra careful at each intersection. Volunteers with flashlights manned some crosswalks, waving people through.

I do remember that the air was still heavy and the Kool-Aid and vodka took a toll. I turned green.  On the far side of the bridge, Queensboro Plaza, traffic cops held us for a moment.  I reached for the car stereo’s red plastic bag, puked into it, and threw it out the window.

“Classy,” I remember my wife said. Feeling better, I depressed the clutch, eased the shifter into first gear, and pointed the old Corona east to Northern Boulevard and home.

If memory serves, July 13, 1977 was our last card game at our friend’s place.  Our gang broke up.  Our buddy gained traction in the acting world and moved to El Lay.  Big Louie went back upstate.  In a few years, me and my wife moved from Queens to a part of Brooklyn that had been badly bruised by the Blackout, but which was slowly on the mend. There, we raised a son.  There, we lived for twenty-five years, until our brownstone neighborhood became the city’s newest Oz, and we were once again cast out.

Back in ’77, I do remember, we all had Fox Police Locks on our doors.  Car radio brackets were de rigueur. Apartments were rarely air-conditioned.  Young kids starting out in life could find cheap apartments.

You could always find a parking spot on the street, if you were savvy and had patience.

On July 13, 1977, I do remember, the riots and looting were real.  The blackout of ’77 mugged a New York City already in ruin.  I do remember, this horror came less than two years after a sitting U.S. president refused to facilitate a bailout of our crippled city.

These things, I do remember.  That is, I am fairly certain of the position of these particular Saharan sand dunes. However, forty years is a long time. My wife and I have come a long, long way.  And memories are, by their very nature, a distortion.

Today’s New York Times tells the world about the fine Jamaican bakery on White Plains Road and 226th Street.  Could this be a boon for business, or the kiss of death?

Gentrification is a double-edged sword.  A fine balance of old- versus new-guard is easily upended once a nabe gets hot, written up as the “next big thing” and commercial and residential real estate prices soar.  Archimedes told us about displacement.

I remember frequenting Christie’s Jamaican Patties on Flatbush Avenue, from ’85 to ’10, in Park Slope.  A patty on coco bread, with some ginger beer, was a treat, before heading off to Mooney’s, for a pint or ten.

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Christie’s had to move, across the street, when the rents were jacked and a Crunch Fitness took over the space.  Crunch extended from the bakery’s spot on the corner all the way down the block.  But Christie’s hung on making patties for a few years, next door to the Asian liquor store, the one with the protective glass and the massive Rottie prowling the premises.

But, finally, Christie’s vanished, a sandcastle washed away by an incoming tide.

Will the same thing happen in the Wakefield section of The Bronx? It seems unlikely now, but I think Real New Yorkers know the answer.  Get your coco bread and beef patties while you can, kids.

HOLD THE DATE: I’ll be reading my story “Lower East Side Sunday” at:

* P r o s e P r o s *

hosted by Martha King & Elinor Nauen

Thursday, May 4, 2017, from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. (starts right on time!)

Martin Kleinman & Bradley Spinelli

at the SideWalk Café

94 Avenue A at 6^th Street, NYC        212-473-7373

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 WHERE: All readings are in the back room of Side Walk at 6:30 PM (sharp). Please buy a drink or some of their good food. No cover charge but we do ask for a generous contribution to fund our sound technician and supplement the sum collected for other readers.

There are hundreds of poetry readings in New York City every month, but until Prose Pros came along in 2007, no reading series dedicated solely to prose.  ”Friend” Prose Pros on Facebook or send us your email for our mailing list for 1 monthly reminder

Martha King: gpwitd1@gmail.com

Elinor Nauen: Elinor@elinornauen.com

Past readers include: Martha King, Elinor Nauen, Hettie Jones, Siri Hustvedt, David Wilentz, Ron Kolm, Lenore Skenazy, Sharon Mesmer, and many more.

It’s New York International Auto Show time here in The Big Apple’s Javits Center.

There are Real New Yorkers who have never had a driver’s license, and never owned — or driven — a car.

Outer-borough New Yorkers, however, frequently own cars, despite the constant battle for on-street parking, theft and vandalism, high insurance and parking lot rates, and filling-rattling pot holes.  One needs transportation options for those times when a quick trip to the beach, or upstate, or cross-town to visit a new “friend” is just the tonic.  Yes, the roads were — and still are — rather rough.  There is a reason why the Kosciusko Bridge is littered with hubcaps.

I love cars, and always have.  I could tell makes and models of cars before I could even read.  I knew the cars by the hubcap shapes, eye-level for a three-year old.

So as soon as I learned about the NY Auto Show, held at the long-gone Coliseum on 59th Street, I would beg my father to take us on the D train from Fordham Road to Columbus Circle every year, to “see the cars.”

Luckily for my Dad, he “knew a guy” who would facilitate our entry to the car show.  This was Henry.  By day, Henry was the Good Humor ice cream man in Devoe Park.

He pushed a rig like this, and pulled sandwiches, cones, ice pops and more from within the dry ice smoke within.

But, like many of our Bronx buddies, he held many jobs.  And one of Henry’s was as a Brink’s guard at the Coliseum.

My dad and I (mom would stay home, no doubt popping her black diet pills, smoking Old Golds, and watching Million Dollar Movie, typically a Tyrone Power picture) would exit the subway, buy hot pretzels from one of the vendors near the park, and walk around the corner to a side entrance.  My dad would give the “shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits” knock on the service-entry door. We’d hear footsteps.  The door would open and, silently, Henry would wave us in, quickly escorting us through a passage until we reached black industrial curtains.  It was a six-year old’s version of the Copacabana scene in “Goodfellas.”  But unlike Henry Hill, mobster, this was just Henry, the Good Humor guy.

The curtain would part and, voila!  Lights! Slinky models! Music pulsing through an overworked PA.

And cars…cars…cars!

I was in heaven.  I went every year, both to the car show and the separate Rod & Custom Show, where I would see the latest chopped, channeled and modded vehicles from the Kalifornia Kustomizers.

George Barris…Ed Roth…Gene Winfield!  All the dream-car guys I eagerly read about in the magazines. Oh how I lusted after a reworked ’32 Ford, with rolled white naugahyde seats, triple four-barrel carbs into an Edelbrock manifold, straight pipes, Hurst shifter, and more.  And while I never got the Corvette Stingray of my dreams, 

I did manage to mod a  blue ’69 VW Bug, with 2-barrel Holley carb, Hurst shifter, competition clutch, fiberglass fenders, low restriction exhaust and 14″ Chevy wheels in the back.

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My passion for cars and bikes drove my professional career arc, and as I progressed through the working world, I covered the car industry for a trade publication and was invited to all manner of new-car intro junkets.  And, once inside the world of public relations, I — at various times — represented Audi, Kia, Infiniti, Nissan, Peugeot and, yeah, Yugo. Don’t laugh.  I got to meet the smooth-talking, automotive entrepreneur, Malcolm Bricklin.

And, from time to time, I was asked to man the marques’ exhibits at cars shows, and talk to the dads and little kids, eyes agape at the lights!  Slinky models! Loud music!

I saw myself in the faces of every new crop of six-year olds, as the kids posed with their dads alongside their favorite cars, How could I not remember what it all meant.

Power!  Freedom! The promise of the grown-up world!

Today, for the Real New Yorker, it’s all about Uber.  Tomorrow, it will be the driverless car. But this year, the cars are still exciting.  They’re well-made.  Efficient.  They handle great and they’re fast.  And electric cars are coming and they will be super.

I know many New Yorkers will read this and shake their heads.  “Cars? Ugh!”  But to outer borough types like moi, cars were and still are a magic carpet.  Without a car, how would me and my buds have been able to trek across hundreds of yards of Jones Beach sand, in our tank tops and black Banlon socks (forever marking us as Bronxites), every summer?

How would we have been able to get to the track?  Go camping in Canada? Impress a special someone on an activity known as “a date”?

The New York International Auto Show closes April 23rd.  Go!  Even if it’s just an anthropological exercise for you.  Henry is long-gone and the hot dogs are way overpriced.  But that’s hardly the point.  Go with a kid.  Look at her or his face light up when they see the ocean of four-wheeled excitement. The dinosaurs won’t be here forever, you know, especially for Real New Yorkers.

Ed Garcia Conde is a Real New Yorker who knows The Bronx as few do.  Here is his Village Voice piece on Standard treatments for buying cialis in australia Erectile Dysfunction include lifestyle changes, such as: Training Lose weight Give up smoking Combat spirit consumption Men who have had a stroke or who have uncontrolled diabetes or low blood pressure should not take medication more often than directed. Like this medication gives you a chance to achieve or maybe deal with penile erection for an agreeable acquisition de viagra http://bananaleaf.com.ph/menu/ time span. Stress reduces the secretion of view description free viagra uk testosterone. buy viagra for cheap The high pressure inside the common bile duct frequently pushes the sphincter of Oddi to open at the wrong time when food is absent in the duodenum. the Melrose section.  Where it’s been, where it’s going, what do see and do there — it’s all in his story:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/your-guide-to-melrose-the-bronx-in-technicolor-glory-9796571