Bongos sound great. I love the evocative tone, which is a bit exotic, even dangerous. Bongos and congas and timbales get you up and moving. Sheila E.! I mean, c’mon.

But. (There’s always a “but”, n’est-ce pas?) In my early days, getting bongos was code for a sad second choice. See, when I was a kid in the Bronxy part of the Bronx, we lived in a rent-controlled apartment with a pain in the ass super and pain in the ass neighbors. And, alas, we lived paycheck to paycheck. No money for cool stuff.

I wanted to play a musical instrument. First choice: PIANO!!!! Oh please please please??? NO!!!

I want to play drums. Oh please please please please??? NO!!! Just a snare drum??? NO!!!

So I thumbed through the Lafayette catalog’s musical instruments section and picked out a snare and cymbal set and showed it to my dad. NO!!!

But. (There’s always a “but”.) One day he came home with a package and handed it to me. Open it up, it’s for you, he said. It’s bongos. Tunable bongos.

Well I loved bongos, and howled when I heard them used on various Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

But jeez, I really wanted to learn a musical instrument and thought I’d really be good at it.

Fast forward to 2001. I’m making some money, finally. It’s summer. I pass the newsstand on Brooklyn’s Seventh Avenue and Union Street. There’s a take-one flier for guitar lessons. First lesson, in your home, free. I call. I start. I learn. It kept me sane in those horrible months after 9/11. My boxer (doggie) would lie on my bed as I strummed chords to “Flying Shoes”, the song that most matched my mood.

But still no piano.

After 25 years in Brooklyn, we moved to a part of the Bronx my parents made fun of when I was a kid. They made fun of it because they could never in a million years afford it.

I met a guy who was a BFD at Juilliard. Just for shits and giggles, one day I asked him if he knew anyone willing to teach an old dog like me some new tricks. That is, teach me how to play piano.

Turns out, he sure did. His prize doctoral student. My wife got me a Yamaha 88-key electronic piano. Every week for two years, I met him at the school and he signed me in and I learned theory and scales and flips and sight-reading on Hamburg-build Steinway grand pianos.

I was a kid in the proverbial candy store. That is, until the school went into lockdown. Undaunted, we continued lessons on FaceTime. We continue to this very day.

But the keyboard wasn’t an acoustic piano. It was good. It served the purpose. But it was bongo-adjacent.

Fast forward to this very day. My research was complete. I road tested a bunch of pianos. Made of spruce, mahogany, steel, brass. I made a decision.

This bad boy is coming to my home in the weeks ahead. It took a long time. But it happened. No more sad second choices, not at this stage of life. Oh please please please, I begged myself when I reasoned that it was too expensive, too big, too this, too that.

OK, I told my inner little kid. OK, you can have it. And after many decades, I gave myself permission to birth my dream.

Ah, liverwurst. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

No more Boar’s Head liverwurst. They brought it on themselves. There’s no place for lousy quality control, and that Virginia plant deserved to be closed. Nevertheless, liverwurst has a flavor profile that can’t be beat. (Full disclosure: my last liverwurst sandwich was probably a good five years ago. But still…)

Even The New York Times’ Dan Barry wrote about this loss. Who needs madeleines! The Proust is in the pantry, alongside the onions, and hearty horseradish-infused mustard. Sometimes you just need that luncheon meat fix.

Think about this: McSorley’s. Many beers, light and dark. Liverwurst with raw onion and lots of mustard. LOTS of mustard. More beer. That’s all you need to know.

Except for when you (ok, ME) have a hankering for: olive loaf. Spiced ham. Bologna and American on a hero with mustard. LOTS of mustard. And, when the weather cools: pickled herring, with lots of onions, and black bread with really good butter. Kielbasa, with sauteed apples and caraway seeds. German potato salad, peppered with celery seeds. And mustard. LOTS of mustard.

And a bottle of Jever, or six.

We (mostly) eat healthier now. That’s why we’re not dropping dead of MI’s at age 55 as some of my friends’ dads did back in the day. We exercise, watch the carbs, swallow our statins, like good little boys and girls. But sometimes you want to go off-road. Remember the flavors and joys of our early years, when a lunchbox packed with luncheon meat sandwiches and some Pecan Sandies or Lorna Doone shortbread cookies were a welcome respite from learning about pints and quarts? (Which my idiot sister never quite mastered, but that’s another story for another day).

I hit the gym every other day, and work out with a personal trainer. I look better and feel better. Yet I know: “no one here gets out alive.” Sometimes, ya gotta live a little.

Because: everything in moderation, INCLUDING moderation. Where is the lie?

McSorley’s Old Ale House is on East 7th Street. They still have liverwurst on the menu ($6!!!). And Schaller & Weber? Second Avenue just south of 86th Street. They have Braunschweiger Liverwurst, horseradish mustard, and more.

Just add:

Trust me, you can’t go wrong.

Summer wanes. The days are still hot, but the nights turn deliciously cool. Windows remain open and air conditioners are finally unplugged.

In the heat of the day, a verdant vista remains. Not a tree has turned to blaze yet, not a-one. The school year, though, has begun, and my mind turns to yesteryear.

You’re a kid, in the old days of NYC. It’s hot and humid and you have no a/c, because your apartment is wired for 60 amp service. Fifteen amp glass fuses blow with great regularity. Plus, who has money for a/c?

Your dad is working late, your mom is working too, and your sister? Who the hell knows where she is.

Homework is done. It’s dinner time, but there’s no dinner. So you go to the arctic a/c of Pizza Haven, on Kingsbridge Road, your local pizza place, and order four slices to stay, very hot, and a large orange drink. This is a beverage that has as much in common with real fruit as Spam has with a porterhouse steak. But it’s cold, it’s sweet, and it tastes great, and: you’re a little kid, so what do you know from nutrition?

Gino, the pizzeria owner, slides your slices from a countertop “house pie” onto his scarred wooden peel and slips them into his Baker’s Pride oven. He gives them a nudge and flips the oven door closed. It will take a while. Your sweat will turn to icicles. It’s a 65-degree meat locker in there.

Your stomach growls.

As you wait for your dinner, you fish a dime out of your sweat soaked jeans and pop it into the juke box. You press buttons to make racks and racks of record titles flip over. A-side. B-side. You finally find your selection. G15. Press the white key for “G”, then another key for “15”. A small vinyl disc, a 45, flops over and slides into place. It’s a song you dream of playing someday, while on your first date with Felicia Abramoff, prettiest girl in the class, prettier even than the Mouseketeers’ Annette Funicello.

You tingle to the sound of the sexy saxes that herald the wall-of-sound introduction, and then nearly swoon with excitement when Little Eva beckons: “Everybody’s doin’ a brand new dance now-owww…”

At last, Gino calls you over to the counter. Your slices are placed on a battered aluminum pizza tray.

You sprinkle your dinner with a blizzard of garlic powder and hot pepper flakes. You reach for a straw from a dispenser on top of the glass counter. “Just take-a one,” Gino chides.

“Do it nice ‘n’ easy now and don’t lose control…a little bit of rhythm and a lotta soul….” Little Eva explains. You float back to your table on the wings of puppy love.

You sit down, fold your first slice, take a big bite of molten goodness, and sigh, for Little Eva is convincing: “There’s never been a dance that’s so easy to do. It even makes you happy when you’re feelin’ blue….”

Jeez, it’s fucking hot out there, you think. You hope that someday, life gets easier. For now, though, this is as good as it gets.