Here are my Real New Yorker remembrances of Halloweens past. Add yours in the comments section and have fun tonight:
— Going to Fordham Road to buy crappy machine made costumes, then getting home to doctor them up: more blood! (Ketchup) More eye darkening! (Burned corks fished out of the garbage) More designer detail! (Dad’s old crushed fedora)
— Meeting on the top floor of our tired old Bronx apartment house and working our way down, clambering down the steps and bang bang banging on doors!
— Once finished, we’d head across the street to Fordham Hill Apartments, THE MOTHERLODE! Many buildings! Many apartments!
— Coming home with two (or more) filled shopping bags filled with candy and coins (yeah, folks put pennies, nickels and even dimes in the loot bags) and eating ourselves sick!
— Picking out the candy corn (thrown loose and unwrapped into our bags), hard candy, and raisins and giving them to our little siblings (hey, what did they know, right?)
— Falling asleep in a pile of candy wrappers, floating in a sugar high.
We dressed as ghosts. “Bums.” Pirates. Cowboys. Indians. Devils.
Real New Yorkers cannot wait for the film to open. It stars Bobby D. and Al Pacino and, helmed by Scorsese, is expected to be a career highlight for the three of them, as well as for Joe Pesci, Bobby Cannavale, and Ray Romano.
On days like today, I feel like Pacino as the aging Don Corleone. It’s autumn, and I imagine sitting in a backyard chair, as he did. Wind-swept leaves cartwheel as he recalls life-episodes long gone.
And I remember one raucous Passover fete at my BIL’s house. Except for him, who hails from Baltimore, we all have family roots in The Bronx. There are many empty bottles of red wine on the table. The talk turns to favorite movies and actors and Pacino’s name came up. I love Pacino, and have since Panic in Needle Park. I remember my AP English teacher at Clinton, Gail Simon, had the Playbill cover from “The Indian Wants the Bronx” — which showed Pacino in the starring role — taped over the blackboard. How proud I felt that “one of ours” made it big.
As we all shouted out our favorite Pacino roles, my wife’s cousin Ellie, who grew up around East 174th Street, near where my granny used to live, off Vyse Avenue, cut everyone off.
“Ya know, I went to school with him,” she said.
Yeah right, was the cleaned-up version of what we pelted her with. Sure, Ellie knew Pacino. Yeah, when pigs fly.
“No really. We went to school together. Herman RIdder Junior High. Only back then, he was Sonny Pacino. He was raised up by his grandparents. He was in school plays and I was in a play with him.”
Sure.
“I’ll prove it,” she said. “I’m gonna mail you something and then you’ll believe me.” Remember that this pre-dates email, jpegs, smart phones, and the Interwebs. We actually used snail mail back then.
Fast forward a week. The mail comes, with one letter from cousin Ellie. My wife opens it. “Commear, right now!” she screams. “You gotta see this!”
In her hands is a black and white photo with scalloped edges, of the type taken back when most folks used those old Kodak box cameras. It’s a picture of a school stage, crowded with kids. There, front and center, is a young Ellie and a brash looking kid in a white tee-shirt with a full head of dark hair. We peer closer.
It’s friggin’ fourteen-year old Sonny Pacino, starring in some school play.
Man, I wish I had that photo now. It didn’t survive our many moves, from Chelsea, to Queens, to Brooklyn, and back to the Bronx. But it survives up here, in my noggin.
It would be nice to have some joy in our lives again.
You remember joy, right? A big, toothy, unselfconscious smile. Hands thrown in the air. Eyes wide open. You remember? Like biting into a Gorman’s hot dog on Fordham Road after school on a sunny Friday afternoon in autumn. Like cutting work for a midday showing of “Star Wars” the day it opened? Like seeing your kid pop out in the delivery room and you know your life is now forever changed for the better?
You know? You remember? Joy? As in: “Yayyyyyyyyy?”
There’s no joy in Mudville right now. Only a relentless drumbeat of dyspepsia from social media and mainstream news. Only the Twittersphere’s corrosive bile, flung from our so-called leaders, uncouth liars who should have had their mouths washed out with Lava soap as children back in the day.
Last week, however, I happened to see a television commercial that actually made me smile. A little girl with a winning smile and a lot of energy turns heads at local, regional and national talent contests. Judges beam in appreciation of her enthusiasm. The child’s parents are awash in pride.
The look on the kid’s face is an expression I’d long-forgotten: pure unadultered joy!
I go online to learn more about the ad. Big mistake. The caustic comments on You Tube caught me off-guard. And that no doubt speaks more to my naivete than the ill-will of the commenters — here are but a few:
“The girl dancing makes me wanna throw up”
“If I see this commercial one more time I’m going to stab my eyes and ears out”
“She rides the short bus for sure”
“Most obnoxious untalented brat kid ever. Not dancing. Just jumping like a clumsy cloying clown and acting like a spoiled attention midget. Parents obviously blind. No talent no grace no rhythm no skill.”
Wow. Such venom. That’s a lot to unpack, as some say these days. People take the time to go online and spew about a fictional kid in an ad that encourages parents to save for entry fees? Folks, get a life!
it’s no wonder that I’m slinking towards the exit doors to various social media platforms. The thrill is gone. Too much anonymous word-bomb throwing. Not enough kindness. Certainly not enough joy.
Gorman’s is long gone. And I think I’ll pass on the opening of “The Joker.” But maybe tonight I’ll give my son a call. And then practice the piano — headphones most definitely on.