The young couple moved into our tired apartment house off Fordham Road one humid Bronx summer, just about the time the twelve-year old me and my friend Larry started worshipping the publicity still of Sophia Loren in “Boy On a Dolphin”.

The husband of this couple was a trim, pleasant-enough guy in the Dick York-as-Darrin-in-“Bewitched” mode. But his wife! THAT WIFE!

Larry and I fell in love with this juicy peach of a person. The woman had fire in her eyes, wore fishnet stockings, high heeled pumps and tight skirts. A beehive hairdo completed her look. We were very confused: what was a woman LIKE THAT doing with a nothing like HIM????

She was our queen. We were two goobers ever-eager to please her. We held the door for her and smiled. We held her groceries as she fumbled for her keys. We looked at each other after she closed her apartment door behind her and widened our eyes. Did you see what she was wearing today??? OH MY GOD!!!

By Thanksgiving we saw her baby bump. The entire building was enthralled. A new neighbor was coming! By Easter the couple was wheeling their baby boy around the neighborhood. Yes, she was now a mommy. But “Darrin’s” wife still was our heartthrob.

By summer there was another baby bump. Then, another kid. Then, another baby bump. Then, another kid. One of the building’s wits said she wasn’t raising a family, she was feeding her litter. By the time I was a freshman in college, there were five or them. Or, was it six? It became hard to keep count, especially since I was distracted by my seventeen-credit course load.

Fast forward to New Year’s Day of my senior year. I hadn’t seen that “new couple” and their brood for what seemed like years. And I was never a fan of this time of the year — “the holidays” — and the pressure to spend extravagantly on over-priced, forced “gaiety”. That year, money was especially tight, since I was saving for my big move out of that west Bronx dump.

There I was, in front of the private house just south of my old apartment building, washing and waxing my very used, Earl Scheib-painted, ’66 VW Karmann-Ghia. I wore a sweatshirt, for the temperature had moderated to the low fifties, and all of the Bronx’s yellow and poop-studded snow had melted. Perfect car washing weather.

I paused to admire my work. There, trudging up the hill from the Jerome Avenue EL train, was the “new couple”. Clearly, they had had a rough night, but…my pre-teen heart-throb was not looking too good. It was like she’d aged fifty years since I’d last seen her. Oh my darling, what has become of you? Can six kids in less than eight years do that to a person? I guess so!

He, “Darrin”, forced a nod of acknowledgement as he passed. She, on the other hand, recognized the college-aged, now-athletic me and gave me a big wide smile. I gave her a big smile and a “happy New Year, guys!” But my heart sank. What happened to my dream girl? Her ravaged teeth, her complexion, her figure — how could this be?

I continued to detail my car and thought about how Larry and I once long ago carried on about our dream girl, in-between furtive glances at Sophia Loren’s poster taped to my friend’s bedroom wall. The promise of the new year and a new apartment stabilized my wobbling interior gyroscope, set off-kilter by the sight of the once-glamorous woman staggering into the building.

I vowed then and there, as I polished the chromed VW hubcaps, that should I be lucky enough to woo a woman like THAT, I would make darn sure that she was treated right, not — as the building’s super later commented — “like a horse ridden hard and put away wet.”

My work that day was finished, and my local drinking establishment — Durty Nellie’s, on Kingsbridge Road — awaited. Life goes on, I learned, as it will two weeks from now, when a new generation of revelers — or, alternatively, car washers — makes stories of their own to tell, and retell.

Wishing you all better things for 2024!

Today we had to say goodbye to our 15 year-old furry friend, Fizz the Cat. Here’s a photo of him as I choose to remember the little guy:

Fizz was rescued from a kill shelter in rural Pennsylvania by my son and his girlfriend at the time. Fizz survived college life with a bunch of rowdy kids. After my son graduated, he took Fizz, sans girlfriend, on a year-long VISTA program adventure in eastern Montana. There, my son was an EMT on a rig in the oil town of Sidney, and Fizz spent his days with another, lesser, cat in Section 8 housing.

After his hitch, my son returned to Brooklyn just as my wife and I were making plans to pull up stakes and move to the northwest Bronx. It was a time of turmoil, as one can imagine, as we were ripping our lives up by the roots after 25 years in the borough of churches.

But there was another wrinkle. Our brave 12-year old boxer doggie, Genghis, was failing. He never made the trip with us to the promised land, but he did get to meet the youngster that was Fizz.

Genghis and Fizz did not hit it off that steamy summer of 2010. Genghis looked up from his green Cabela bed with an expression that said, “who’s this little jerk?”

Fizz looked at the 85-pound muscled monster that was Genghis and took a swipe at his face, switchblade claws out and ready to rumble.

The problem did not last long. On July 22, just a few weeks after Fizz arrived in NYC and days before we moved, we had to put Big G down. He was riddled with cancer. His demise was a shitshow. He fought off the narcotic with every last bit of his waning strength.

Finally he succumbed.

And we moved. Fizz loved Bronx life. He ran around the apartment like a nutball from the time we moved until just a few days ago. As The Doors famously sang, “No one here gets out alive….” True enough, for over the last few years, it was Fizz’s turn to incrementally fail. Now a senior cat, he had developed diabetes and I had to watch his weight, check his urine, and shoot him up with 2.5 units of insulin twice a day, making sure he ate his food first.

Our lives were enmeshed in Fizz’s medical metronome.

And things were pretty good until just last Sunday. As I said, Fizz had been in decline. He could no longer jump onto tables and beds like he used to but, hey, I don’t shoot hoops anymore. We age.

But the lives of our pets are so compressed. Sunday, he would not eat. Monday he refused food. Yesterday he wouldn’t even partake of his water-play at the kitchen sink. Not drinking OR eating? Not good. I made an appointment with our vet.

Last night he yowled all night. He would only stop when one of us would say “it’s alright, Fizzy; we’re here. Go to sleep.” Then he’d relax until the next round of yowling in a way that communicated: “Mom? Dad? Help me, I’m scared!”

Today was even worse. He couldn’t move about, had trouble navigating his litter box, hell — he could barely lift his head. This was Genghis Redux. We’d seen this movie before.

This morning I called the vet first thing. I mentioned that this may well be an end-of-life visit. They moved up our appointment.

In his transporter, Fizz — the little nut that once could hop from the dinner table to the high dining room window sill, and leap recklessly from chair to chair — just laid there, still as a stone.

We poured him onto the stainless steel exam table. The vet tech turned on some new age music that he said was to keep Fizzy calm. But Fizz was already beyond calm. The music was probably for me and my wife.

The vet talked about options, sussing us out to determine if we really were bound and determined to play God. My wife and I agreed to leave Fizz a shred of dignity. Modern medicine could have patched up his issues in the short term, but I suspected that in months to come we’d be lurching from crisis to crisis until the inevitable finally occurred. My thinking was that I’d opt for being a week early than a week late.

Fizz rested quietly as the music played and his fate in the book of life was sealed. I think (I hope!) he was good with it. Fifteen years, starting with an escape from a kill shelter, then on to dealing with college kids in their ratty dorm, followed by a cross-country schlep to Montana, then back to Brooklyn, then on to thirteen-plus years in the Bronx.

I marked today’s date, November 29, on my calendar. Now I have two pet Yahrzeits to commemorate. Genghis was on July 22, 2010 and, now, Fizzy’s.

“Take care of yourself today,” the vet said as I gave the cat that was Fizz one last kiss on his grey fur keppy.

And now, I stare about our apartment. I look for Fizz on the dining room table. Nope. I look on the terrace, where he’d find a sunny spot and snooze. Nope. I wait to hear his little bell as he comes over and meows: “Daddy, it’s dinner time. Gimme my grub and shoot me up.” Nope. Well, maybe the little asshole is sleeping on my bed. Nope.

There’s his scratching post. There are his toys. There’s his box of syringes. But no Fizz.

It’s amazing how attached one can get to an eleven-pound rescue cat. I think it’s because both fur babies and owners reciprocally provide 100 percent pure, uncut love, straight from our hearts. No wonder it hurts so bad when we go into sudden withdrawal.

The herd is thinning for us. This week we lost two members of the team.

My wife lost a long-ago, back in the nabe, friend, Bo. A great guy and talented musician from a neighborhood brimming with artistic achievement.

And just last night, we lost Uncle Petey. He wasn’t really our uncle. And he wasn’t really that old. But he was in bad shape for many years and, finally, he succumbed as the walls of poor health closed in.

He was a gentle Panda of a man who was like comfort food on two legs. In that sense, he was our “uncle.”

When I met the young woman who would become my wife, I was introduced to a world of energetic, creative men and women VERY unlike the meat-and-potatoes crew I grew up with, for I came of age in one of the bronxier sections of the Bronx. It was a place where you went to school, you joined the military, you got a steady job (Post Office, Board of Ed, Metro North — those would do just fine), got married, had kids, and retired at sixty-five. The “lives of quiet desperation” (thank you, Thoreau).

Not this crew. Nope. This new group was full of theater majors. At first, my opinion of theater majors was even lower than that of education majors. That is, “lazy, not-too-bright kids intent on securing their 2-S deferment and coasting for four years.”

I soon learned that these folks had energy, brains, ambition and talent up the wazoo. They pushed and pushed and became musicians, film directors, producers, and cinematographers, book publishers, disc jockeys, award-winning comedy writers, and actors, as was the case with Uncle Petey.

So many people give you the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” BS about their stillborn artistic endeavors. Here’s a typical one: “Yeah, I coulda written a book, but who has the time?”

Uncle Petey worked his butt off honing his craft, making connections, and pounding away on doors. It sounds corny but he was a “people person”, the kind of guy who methodically weaved webs of like-minded folks.

When I first met him and that post-collegiate crew, he held low stakes, nickel-and-dime, poker nights in his fan-conditioned, top floor walkup dump in the far East 90s, across from Knickerbocker Towers. It was Petey, me and my wife, and a rotating cast of their fellow theater majors.

I smile at the memory of those raucous nights. Lots of laughs in his cramped kitchen, back when we were in our twenties and giddy with good health. We barely had two nickels to rub together but our futures were before us. Through the adventures and achievements of Uncle Petey and that crowd, I found my own path out of my maze of mediocrity.

Uncle Petey was relentless in the pursuit of an acting career. No surprise, then, that over the years he got plenty of work. Work that took him to California where he became a beloved character actor who paired with bold-faced names. He got regular radio work. He came East and started a theater troupe. He earned his keep giving improv lessons to new generations of aspiring talent. From NYC, to London, to Indianapolis, a lot of people absorbed Uncle Petey’s passion and love of the craft.

Now he is gone but he’ll never be forgotten. He’s in my personal Hall of Fame, a pantheon of one-of-a-kind nut-balls, with others of blessed memory such as Uncle Kenny and Uncle Richie.

When I was a little kid, my sister and I would roll our eyes when my grandma would talk about life experiences and intone, in her heavy Yiddish accent, “…vell….as long as you have your health….” We’d snicker and laugh our bloody heads off.

Yeah, well who’s laughing now?

Alev hasholem, Uncle Petey. One of the good ones.

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today.” Wimpy! That’s the first thing I thought of when I read that a local bar, actually THE BEST local bar — An Beal Bocht — was using “cheeseburger” as a prompt in a Moth-adjacent Wednesday night event.

The second thing I thought of was my Uncle Arthur. Artie! My dad’s brother in law and the bane of my father’s existence. Arthur was a gratuitously cruel, uncultured arriviste.
Arthur sold home appliances. He was a commissioned clerk in a Fairfield County strip mall store. He and his family lived in my grandfather’s big old Victorian house in Bridgeport.

The kid that was me marveled at how Dad, uncharacteristically, would hold his temper as Uncle Arthur bloviated. Artie berated his wife, Dad’s sister, sponged off his wife’s family, and trolled my father in issues related to World War II (they were both in the Army, European Theater, but my Dad saw combat and Arthur toiled in Graves Registration), politics and business. “So Mort!” he’d taunt, raising a glass of Wild Turkey, as my father’s blood pressure rose. “You make it? You make it yet? I made it! You?”

“Why don’t you punch him in the nose?” I’d ask my Dad as he drove our ten-year old Pontiac home from Connecticut to our Bronx dump, back when I was a little boy.

“Ahhh. Empty barrels make the most noise.” That’s all my Dad would say.

But, back to cheeseburgers! The Connecticut contingency invited us poor relations up for a BBQ once in awhile. One time, Uncle Arthur popped some pre-formed patties on his charcoal grill in his — or, rather, my grandfather’s — backyard. He split open a bag’s worth of Wonder Bread buns and unwrapped a package of Kraft Singles.

And then, he began to bloviate, oblivious to his culinary duties. And, as he talked smack, trying so hard to “engage” my father, he absently flipped the burgers.

One by one, our meal slipped through the grill to die a Viking death in the fiery ashes below. Uncle Arthur began to curse. It was somehow his wife’s fault. It was somehow Weber’s — the grill’s maker — fault. Then, the haymaker:

It was my father’s fault!!! Yes, he flipped the switch; my Dad distracted him and thus the protein perished. And as he screamed, the buns ignited in Wonder-ous fury and burned to black.

Everyone laughed at the sight of this obnoxious heathen, this…this…EMPTY BARREL of a man, flail about after cluelessly setting the burgers ablaze.

Everyone but my father. And I’ll tell you straight up: never in my life was Dad one to give advice. In fact, one time, my sixth-grade self asked him to help me solve a weighty life-strategy question and he said, simply: “I don’t give advice.”

But in not laughing at Uncle Arthur, I learned something. There’s a popular old Kenny Rogers song, “Coward of the County” and the payoff line is: “Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.” But Dad held it in, because he knew the full extent of Arthur’s backstory. Hardscrabble upbringing on the Lower East Side. A brother who was, well, today we’d say he was “troubled.” Select your own descriptor. He took a razor sharp shears from his mother’s sewing basket and stabbed the kid that was Artie in the neck.

And it was downhill from there. So the amateur shrinks among us can think of defense mechanisms such as compensation and displacement. Whatever it was, Uncle Arthur had a lot of psychic scar tissue. Enough that even my Dad, the six-four dreadnaught with the hair-trigger temper, knew who and what he was dealing with.

Very damaged goods.

Inadvertently, my father gave me sage advice after all.

That’s my “cheeseburger” story, and I’m sticking to it.

I loved to go out to dinner, I love to cook, I love to eat. I’ve been going to restaurants since I was a zygote. My earliest dining experiences were at Tower Deli on Kingsbridge Road, Diana’s (Italian) and Hom & Hom (Cantonese) on Fordham Road, and Stella D’Oro on Broadway (yes, they used to have two restaurants next door to their bakery).

Over the years, I’ve spent a small fortune on restaurants. The bigger my job, the bigger the tab, as client entertainment grew in importance. So, yes, I loved restaurants.

But restaurants didn’t always love me back.

The Italian fave in Brooklyn that my dollars supported in its early years accounted for nada when I was told they were no longer taking reservations. Rather, it was suggested by the co-owner that I queue up in the street at around 5 p.m., for a shot at a 6 p.m. table. Ummm….no!

At some hot Manhattan restaurants, I was asked to wait for hours at the bar. I had reservations but there was no table for me. Other times, prices soared while service and quality sunk to “meh” levels.

Another issue: between the impact of age (and lower metabolism), eating out with friends and family three times a week, and client breakfasts and lunches. I gained weight like a sumbitch.

Then, Covid came. You may have read about it. Lockdown. No gyms. No more restaurants. I was cooking three meals a day for a long long time.

A funny thing happened. I had more money in my checking account. My blood pressure went down (way less salt in my diet). I started losing weight (like a sumbitch; 55 pounds since Covid, and counting).

These days, I go to restaurants once in awhile. Just modest local places. I no longer travel far and wide to chase the hot, new, must-go, boite. I no longer plan reservations weeks in advance and/or settle for off-peak dining times (if I wanted to eat at 10 p.m., I’d travel back to Barcelona). When I do go, I eat way less, for I’m no longer used to restaurant portions. I’ve become one of those who split appetizers — and sometimes even entrees. And I order more club soda, as opposed to two, three, four drinks.

At home, I buy more quality protein, veggies, and fruit from local purveyors. I shop at wine shops that offer quality. As a result, I no longer open a vein for three-to-four hundred percent markups, the restaurant alchemy that transforms a $15 bottle of serviceable-but-hardly-great Sicilian red into a $60 investment. As we used to say back in the day: “fuck that shit!”

So when I see an article like this, I can only chuckle. “Restaurants Aren’t What They Used to Be (and That’s a Good Thing)”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/opinion/restaurant-industry-shutdown-inflation.html?ref=oembed

I mean, boo-hoo. I get it. Rents are high and margins are low. Newsflash: every industry paradigm is in flux. Figure it out, but don’t expect me to cry for you. I gave you decades of hard-earned cash. In return, I got indifferent waitstaff, screaming babies at 9 p.m. in “nice” restaurants, and wayyyyy more sommelier shade than I ever deserved.

The pandemic gave us many life lessons. Don’t waste a minute of time. Keep your loved ones close. Jettison those who give you grief. Support your passions. Eat and drink merrily, for tomorrow….

But consider the joys of home entertaining, and of portion control. Find and frequent quality, local purveyors of protein and produce. Watch Jacques Pepin videos and learn some kitchen technique.

And for God’s sake: go easy on the salt.

A dear friend — a gifted consultant and writer — reminded me of Hemingway’s short stories the other day. “So, what are you reading?” he asked. I told him I can’t really read other people’s fiction while I’m writing because I go all “chameleon” and morph my style into the style of the person I’m reading.

“Do you like Hemingway?” he asked. Of course! He was my North Star back when I was a kid saving up for a manual typewriter of my own. (I got one, an Olympia, on 23rd Street’s Typewriter Row, back when that was still in existence. That typewriter was smooth as silk.)

“Listen to this, then,” he said, reading from a Hemingway story that described a brown trout quivering in the silty stream, turning this way and that.

The story was marvelous. I read the Hemingway story and ten others. I was catapulted into a reverie of fishing tales, for I loved freshwater fishing as a kid and on into my 40s. At that point, after moving to Brooklyn, I added saltwater fishing to my repertoire. There’s a photo of my son and his first striped bass, above. Saltwater fishing meant more stories; more cool equipment and accessories to learn about and purchase.

Herewith, after a head-soak into Hemingway-land, a few fish tales (tails?) from the old mental hard-drive:

— Grandma Mimi Catches a Fish: We are deep in the woods surrounding the Ashokan Reservoir. I am with my eight-year old son, my wife, and her mother, Mimi. Mimi has never gone fishing. I show her how to cast, where to cast, how to bait the hook (“Marty…YOU do it, please!”). Patience was not Mimi’s strong suit. We spread out and cast. Two minutes later, Mimi screams. “I GOT ONE, I GOT ONE!!!” Sure enough the red and white plastic float is way underwater and her rod U-bends. I show Mimi how to reel it in. With my left hand, I reach for my net. “SLOW!” I admonish. “SLOW!!!!!” Mimi didn’t do “slow” but this one time, she listens. We see the fish as it struggles. It’s a nice one. A largemouth bass. “I CAUGHT A FISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Mimi screams as I carefully remove the hook from its lip. “CAN YOU BUST???? I GOT ONE!” she says, all the way home that afternoon. It was a very good day.

— That’s One Sharp Knife: I’m a little kid with my dad and his friends. We are fishing in Putnam County. It’s a long time ago. I-684 wasn’t even a gleam in Rockefeller’s eye. We are stomping around the reservoir in search of a productive spot. We come upon a young guy. Army age. A local. We could tell. He has a beat-up pickup truck and wears work boots. rolled up dungarees and a red-checked flannel shirt. The guy is taking a break. He leans against his truck and whittles with a hefty fixed blade knife. I stare at the knife, for it is as big as the knife I’d seen on the TV show about Jim Bowie. “What?” he asks me. “Is it very sharp?” I stupidly ask. He rolls up his sleeve. He hocks up a loogy with a throat scrape that sounds like a road grader. He clams on his forearm. His other hand grips the knife. He shaves the hair clean off his arm and looks at me. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s sharp.” We soon find another spot to fish.

— Willie the Cop Beats the Crap Out Of His Son, My Friend Billy: Willie was a veteran fisherman. He took it seriously. So seriously that if rain came, he would open the trunk of his ’53 Ford and supply the gang with rain ponchos. The fishing would continue. On this particular day, me, my friend Billy, and my dad and Billy’s pop (Willie the Cop), had no luck. Willie puffed on his White Owl. He was getting pissed, for he picked this spot and swore to my dad that it was productive in past weeks. Me and Billy were little kids. And we got bored. We walked away from our dads’ casting spot and went downstream. We started kicking at a sunken log. For us, the fun of fishing was over for that morning. Finally, we managed to kick the log free. It floated onto the stream. We watched with horror as the current took it down to where a couple of other men were fishing. Our log tangled the men’s lines. They cursed. Willie saw what was happening. “DID YOU DO THAT???? WAS THAT YOU???” he screamed at Billy. He slammed his rod down onto the mossy shore. He ran to his son. A hail of punches pelted poor Billy. I backed up. After all, Willie was a cop. Billy started to snot-cry. Willie didn’t let up. My dad sauntered over. One eye was on his friend. The other was on me. “C’mere,” he said, motioning me towards him. “Get over here.” For once, he wasn’t enraged. He wanted to decouple me from the maelstrom. “It’s gonna rain soon. We’ll go and have lunch.” But it was not to be. It did start to rain. But Willie the Cop pulled rain ponchos from the trunk of his Ford. The fruitless fishing continued. Me and Billy were soaked, sad, and scared. Billy’s dad was out of control and even my giant father was loathe to stop him.

— Wake Up Maggie, I Think I Got Something To Say To You: It’s late September and we really should be back at school. I’m with college friends and the semester just started. Richie (alev hasholem) got his dad’s oxblood Chevy Impala and takes six of us fishing near Purdys, NY. To get to Purdy’s, you exit the highway when you see the sign for Plevka’s Grocery. We get Ring Dings, pretzels, coffee, and Twinkies at this little shop for breakfast. We find our spot near the East Branch. Richie pulls the big boat of a car off the road and glides to a stop on a canted pine needle carpet. It’s an unnecessarily precarious angle, parallel to the heavily wooded shore. I mention this to Rich. He shrugs. He is eager to fish. The last song on the car’s AM radio was “Maggie May”. The tune fit the cool, end-of-summer morning. We fish, and eat Twinkies. We drink coffee and pee on trees. In time, we give up our fishing, empty-handed. We joke about stopping to buy some fish to show our friends that we caught something. We pile in the car. Richie guns the engine. The car slides down the sloped shore. The rear flank of the car is headed into a pine tree. As one, we yell, “RICHIE!!!! STOP!!!!” We get out to survey the situation. It is grim. The car is his dad’s pride and joy. Richie gets back in the car and cuts the wheels. Again, he tries to rev his way out of ruin. No luck. I convince him to put the Powerglide in neutral, release the parking brake and steer, as we push the car out of danger and aim it uphill, at a suitable angle. Richie sees a pathway to the road. He starts the engine. “SLOW!!!” I scream, for Richie is curiously like Mimi. Patience is not in the lexicon. He feathers the gas pedal and coaxes the car up to the safety of the asphalt. We pile back in the Impala. Summer was most definitely over. Richie turns on the radio. This being the era of Top 40 playlists, the song that blares is “Maggie May”. Disaster averted. As one, we sang:
“I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school
Or steal my daddy’s cue and make a living out of playin’ pool
Or find myself a rock and roll band that needs a helpin’ hand…”

Oh, and that’s what happens when I read someone else’s fiction before I write. In this case, I got Hemingway’d. Worse things could happen, I suppose.

The third weekly Torah portion — that’s Lech Lecha. It will come this year in late October, but I wanted to address it now.

My sense is that the meaning is “Go with yourself – your beliefs, your way of life, your faith.” So, “go forth from your land, from your kindred, from your father’s house, to the land that I will let you see” (Genesis 12:1). This cryptic call from God to Abraham begins the sojourn of a lifetime.

For me it’s as much about an internal odyssey as a physical journey.

Exactly thirteen summers ago, we moved from our Brooklyn home of 25 years to a leafy, quiet (ok, a little boring), safe, affordable section of The Bronx. From my high-floor aerie, I can see for miles, as The Who once sang.

We pulled our lives out by the roots, and it was difficult. But it had to be done, for a variety of reasons. We got more space, and way less agita, for a lot less money. It was the right place for us at this stage in life.

The week we moved was swampy-hot and filled with grief. Our twelve year old dog was dying, and finally had to be put down on our dining room floor just days before we moved, because he was too weak to even take to the vet. Our valiant dog fought the toxic injection before he finally succumbed. It was wrenching, watching him fail among the boxes of stuff that would be loaded onto the truck later that week.

Our Brooklyn no longer existed, for us, anyway. It was very pricey and populated by an army of self-entitled young nabobs from other parts of the country. It was hardly the demographic we sought back in ’85, when we got there after eight years in the cocaine-war shoot-’em-ups in Jackson Heights.

Just days ago, we learned that another of the few allies we had in the building moved, to a more balanced part of Brooklyn. She finally couldn’t take the grief anymore, remarking on the inability of other residents in the building to even say “hi” to her on the street.

In weeks, we had more friends here than after 25 years in Brooklyn. So, yeah, it’s less “cool” here. But everything we need is here. Including multi-dimensional diversity. We have artists, writers, photographers, musicians — and public school teachers, retirees, military vets, young and old — of every background and orientation.

Oh: the kids hold the door for adults and say “good morning” in the elevator, and behave themselves in stores! In Brooklyn, little kids were allowed to run amok.

Lech lecha. We heard the call and went forth, north and west, to our new land, where nearly every man, woman, child and dog wears some piece of NY Yankees apparel.

We learned about ourselves, and we learned about what really counts in a neighborhood. It’s not about the trendiest restaurants, or boutiques selling $1,500 pocketbooks. Over the last thirteen years, we’ve come a long way, far more than the 25 miles we covered going from Brooklyn to The Bronx. We’re on firm footing, surrounded by hard-working, decent, solid friends playing nicely in the sandbox of life.

Otto was helping the rabbi up on the bimah and I, a newcomer to the congregation, whispered to a lady seated in front of me, “Who is that guy?”

“Oh, that’s Otto,” she said. “He’s rabbi Judy’s husband.”

His wife, my new rabbi, was whip-smart in that crunchy, Oberlin way, and from their knowing smiles at each other, I knew they were gloriously in love. My wife, a fellow Poindexter and Birky aficionado, immediately bonded with her. Otto was a regular Joe, and we hit it off as well. My wife and I were brand new to the neighborhood, after decades of Brooklyn, and this couple made us feel right at home. Which was great, for we knew no one.

I soon learned that Otto was a kibitzer in the kindly, but wincingly-bad, dad-joke way. Nevertheless, he was a gitte neshumah. A sweet soul, who never failed to ask about our well-being and slap my back in bonhomie.

When asked, Otto would say that he was in the “underground novelty business”. Alright, he was a Manhattan funeral director. His wife told me that he was in the war, ‘Nam, like a lot of guys in my new nabe. In fact, three guys on my apartment building floor alone are vets of Vietnam. Like Otto, they are the nicest guys you ever want to meet.

Otto handled Agent Orange. What I long-ago learned from the man-boys just back from their tour, back when I was a summer-job pup of a downtown “office boy” in the late 60s and early 70s, was that the soldiers were told that the powerful defoliant was harmless, totally safe, and that — given the oppressive jungle heat and humidity — it was ok to handle 55 gallon drums of it without gloves or other protective gear, and spray it out of their helicopters and C-123s. The idea was to defoliate the vegetation that gave cover to enemy soldiers, thus saving U.S. lives.

According to military.com, 300,000 U.S. soldiers died from exposure to Agent Orange, almost five times as many as the 58,000 who died in combat. Maybe you should Google “dioxin” if you want to learn more.

If you are lucky enough to live long, you come to grok this axiom: a large number of deaths is a statistic; a single death is a tragedy. Otto died of cancer from handling Monsanto’s chemical concoction. Today, July 16th, would have been his 74th birthday, according to Zuckerberg’s social media platform.

So easy would it be to veer off into rants about VA lies, political mendacity, and cancer care detail. Not today, for Otto was not into “woulda, coulda, shoulda.” Today, I prefer to think of a gentle giant of a Real New Yorker who had been through hell, found true love, gave kindness with a whole heart, and — OK — told some of the corniest jokes ever uttered on Planet Earth.

Happy birthday, Otto. I will never forget you.

It’s summer. It’s warm. TIme for fun in the sun, at the beach, the pool, at backyard bbq’s. Roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of summer. Those days of soda, and pretzels, and beer.

And I’m here stuck in a funk. Two-plus years of suspended animation took its toll. Physically, mentally, socially, economically, politically.

What did we lose? We lost family members, some dear, some reviled. But lots and lots of family and friends perished. The bodies piled up, like cordwood. And yet we (ok, I) hear comments from some along the lines of “oh, it really wasn’t that bad, was it?”

WELL WHAT FUCKING PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON????

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bodies-750-covid-19-victims-new-york-city-remain-refrigerated-n1266762

We lost our minds. Cooped up for days on end, working from home, learning at the kitchen table, eyes burning out looking at screens, a 24/7 drumbeat of death.

We lost our jobs. We lost contact with our friends. Sorry, Zoom. The thrill most definitely was gone after a few months of “please mute” and morons fumbling with “share screen”.

We lost civility. (Maybe we never had it? I don’t know anymore.) We lost the notion of national “shared experience” — these days, it’s all a zero-sum game, isn’t it? For me to win, you have to lose, and vice-versa.

Some of us still struggle with agoraphobia. I tense-up before any sort of social gathering. I’m so accustomed to a solipsistic existence. I reflexively reach for a mask before opening the front door, even to take out the trash. I’ve been to the movies a few times. They’ve been nearly empty. And yet I wonder: should I don my N95?

Oh, and then there are the residual physical issues. I can’t get into details, but I think we’ve all got our share.

So, yeah. What we lost? For me, the ability to give a flying eff about summer. Because variants are coming. And new serums are being readied. Because despite what we think/hope/pray/”believe”/hear, this is not gone and it’s not going away.

On July 15, the Brooklyn Writers Space (BWS) will cease to exist.

The Brooklyn Writers Space was a co-working townhouse for those who made their art with words. I lived in Brooklyn for 25 years and mostly wrote my stories, songs, and poems from a tiny bedroom in my apartment, a 1926 Candela-designed residence. Back in the day, it was “the maid’s room”, with a mini-bathroom and postage stamp-sized windows that faced south, towards Union Street. It was dark, dingy, and dirty.

That is to say, the space was miserable enough to encourage myriad excuses to interrupt my writing. Tidy the apartment. Start dinner. Walk the dog. Take a nap.

One day, a few years before I left Brooklyn, a new neighbor mentioned that he worked on his TV scripts at this new place on Garfield Place, to get away from apartment distractions. I called up Scott Adkins, who co-founded BWS with his wife, Erin Courtney. They were two playwrights who founded a safe place for other writers in the area. Scott and I met for a tour and I signed up immediately.

Members got a key, and access to a cubby with a power strip and desk lamp. The space had a “break room” with fridge and coffee machine. There was an area to lounge about, and a roof deck.

I would pack my laptop and my folders full of notes, and tell my wife, “OK, I’m going to the writing monastery.” I’d unlock the door, and a wave of good vibes would wash over my neurons. I’d find a cubby, plug in, and wait for the words to start flowing to my fingers.

Nothing.

But invariably, I’d hear the steady “click click click” of other writers banging away on their laptops and my competitive side would emerge. I’ll show YOU! I’d suddenly feel a rush of words and I’d start my story, or scene, or character backstories.

I’d return to my apartment mentally exhausted, and full of pride from the newfound productivity. There were no household distractions. Creativity wafted through the air, thicker than cigar smoke. I met other writers there, some of them famous. Several of them blurbed my first collection of short fiction, Home Front.

Scott organized group readings of BWS members at local venues. I worked up the nerve and volunteered to read at Union Hall.

The batting order that night had me reading my story right after the award-winning playwright Honor Molloy, who read with great proficiency and with a strong Irish dialect. I planned to read my story that night with dialect as well. I figured I was sunk.

Molloy killed. No surprise. She’s a master. I had to up my game. Good news. I, too, killed. Great applause. Great post-event feedback from the packed house. BWS did this for me. It helped me break through my self-doubt regarding my tales. My work resonated. My work belonged.

I kept writing.

After a few years, Brooklyn was no longer viable for us. We passed the baton to a new generation of residents and moved to a leafy quadrant of The Bronx. Thanks to BWS, the training wheels came off my writing. I no longer needed a dedicated space to find “the zone”. To this day, I simply look out the window of my home office and let my brain go off-leash. Et voila. The characters tell me what they want to say and I take dictation for them.

I don’t know why Scott and Erin decided to close BWS. Maybe their lives as gifted playwrights took them away from Brooklyn. Maybe the business model doesn’t work for local writers in a post-pandemic world.

All I know is that BWS introduced me to a gang of talented writers — and I’m still in touch with them to this very day. The space hot-wired my brain to the point where I’ve written Home Front, A Shoebox Full of Money, Robert’s Rules of Innovation (Book I and II), and where I’ve ghost-written three other books. Plus, I’m coming down the home stretch on my third short story collection, which should be ready for take-off in 2024.

Good luck to Scott and Erin, and to all the writers who harnessed the positive energy of BWS to sharpen their skills and share their stories with the world. It was a brilliant idea, and it midwifed a hell of a lot of super work. I’ll always fondly remember my long afternoons at the Writing Monastery. Good work, guys.