ADULT TOYS

I ran into a streak of work the last half of January, and realized I’d have some extra money.

Not a whole lot, as Charley Varrick once said, but more than I was expecting to have. A windfall, you might call it. Of course, I had to work for it, the emails and phone calls just came in a sudden torrent for the work.

The work ranged from replacing the valves on an old (and difficult) shower body on the Upper West Side to changing lightbulbs and setting up an Amazon firestick down in the Village. Along with five non-consecutive days of plastering and painting in SoHo, I was looking at some disposable cash. Of course, the bulk of it I planned to set aside for the next mechanical crisis our ancient secondhand car is going to throw at us. But I knew I’d have a little spending money left over.

There were some things I’ve been meaning to buy but was reluctant to spend money on, like an airbrush. I intend to actually build some of the model airplane kits gathering dust in my closet,

And I’ve been toying with the idea of creating actual art with an airbrush. So that was the first thing that came to mind.

I’ve also been wanting to get myself a pair of Thursday Boots Chelsea boots. They cost $200, and never on sale according to their website. But it’s a nice-looking boot, and I wouldn’t be wearing Blundstones like everyone else. When I sold shoes many years ago, Jimmy Breslin came into the store. Actually, he’d been dragged in by his wife Ronnie, who was paying for the shoes.

He asked how much the shoes were. He was trying on a pair of Allen Edmonds shoes, which ran about $100 in the mid-nineties.

“This style is $95.” I told him. Then he said, “Xavier, I pay $20 for a pair of shoes. Tell me why my wife wants to pay $95 for these?” Well, I could have told him that his $20 shoes probably didn’t make it to the end of the year, or that I really didn’t believe him knowing what he wrote about shoes in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. I just explained to him he wasn’t going to find a quality pair of shoes for less than $75. He actually wrote about it in his Newsday column that week.

But back to my windfall and the toys I bought with it.

After working every day in one capacity or another for 2 straight weeks I finally had the day off last Friday. I had some of the money, but I didn’t even have time to spend it. But by Friday I had all my spending money. I wanted the airbrush badly, but I didn’t want to get price gouged at Blick. Besides, they didn’t have the one I wanted in stock.

I went to The Complete Sculptor’s website and they only had the Iwata airbrush, reasonably priced but after reading the reviews I saw it isn’t the one that would be good for my purposes. Time to order the airbrush online.

But I couldn’t leave The Complete Sculptor empty handed! I’d waited two weeks for some gratification. I was proud of myself that I hadn’t spent every night on Amazon clicking away like some demented old man watching HSN. But enough was enough and I needed to have something to hold, the airbrush would be on its way but not tangible yet.

I got, in no particular order, a mini hacksaw. A wire brush for my Dremel. Superglue accelerant. A glue dispenser for the styrene glue.

Well, now I needed the styrene glue to go with that! Luckily Blick art supplies has a store not 2 blocks from The Complete Sculptor, so I dropped by them for that. And a pair of detail scissors. And a new cutting mat. It all came to about fifty bucks.

Feeling good about not going crazy, when I got home, I ordered a knife sharpening set from Amazon. I’ve been meaning to do that since Danusia complained about how dull our kitchen knives are, so no guilt there. The knife sharpening kit reminded me of my days at Yorke Dynamold shoes in Queens, where I famously sharpened an expensive pair of Wiss scissors on the grinder and ruined them. I didn’t know you only sharpened the cutting blade, not the backside blade, and I sharpened both.

I know a bit more about sharpening now, and our knives cut right through the tomatoes I bought for the test.

But I’m going to wait till my next billing cycle before ordering those boots.

THE RED CABOOSE IS CALLING

The Red Caboose is a self-proclaimed “hobby shop” in the basement of a commercial building at 23 West 45^th Street, in the heart of the diamond district. Damn, I should be writing for real estate brokers! Their website proclaims that while they “still do have trains in a variety of scales,” they are also “strong in die cast planes, cars, and have a vast supply of hobby supplies: paint, tools, glues, etc.” The Red Caboose is a dying breed. They should actually call themselves “The Last Hobby shop in Manhattan.”

There used to be dozens, and by the time I was frequenting them, in the 90’s there were still some left- Jan’s Hobby shop on the Upper East Side, a place I think they called The Model Center in the Empire State building, and my favorite, Ace Hobbies on 32^nd Street just off of 6^th Avenue.

Ace was a hole in the wall shop, literally just a bare loft space in Little Korea with stacks of military styrene model kits on sheet metal shelving. Planes, tanks, ships. Some racing cars for the car aficionados.

That was after the gulf war and it sparked interest in all things military, at least in me; and gave new hope to the fellow Lew who owned the place. And to the plastic model industry, of course.

Lew was a chain-smoking bald man in his late 40s who wore a wispy mustache and was prone to fraying white shirts and skinny ties. He looked like he could play a washed-up Madison Avenue Ad executive in some Jaqueline Susann movie. Well, a movie based on a Jaqueline Susann book, I should say.

One of the reasons it was my favorite was that Lew chain-smoked cigarettes, and so did I at the time. That and he also had a rack of the latest modeling magazines, plus Aviation week and Military Aircraft Journal. Nobody else had those things. He was also amenable to ordering a particular kit for you if it wasn’t in stock.

I would go to Ace Hobbies several times a week and spent a lot of time and money there with other model freaks. By doing so I ended up with a collection of over 500 plastic model kits. I probably built 50 or 60 of them until I got divorced and had to get rid of most of them.

I was really into the model building though- I strove to build “museum quality” models and came very close. I read “how to” magazines and bought the right tools and honed my skills.

That’s how I came to visit the Red Caboose sometime in the late 90s.

The Red Caboose had the best diorama supplies in the city. People that do model railroading are serious about their dioramas. They were the only ones that carried miniature colored and clear lights and lenses, essential even for airplanes if you want something to look authentic.

After finding out about them I made the trip to 45^th Street in search of tiny glass lights. The place is in the basement of a four-story building, almost lost under “we buy gold” signs that overflow West 45^th Street.

They had their own characters, some even wearing the de rigueur pinstriped railroad engineer caps. They had their own Lew- a tall thin African American fellow with granny spectacles dressed in chambray and denim that everyone called “The Professor.” But there was no smoking here.

I was fascinated. The dusty little shop was a warren of die-cast passenger airliners and cars. A good amount of plastic car kits. And of course, tons of HO scale trains.

I found my little lights, along with miniature chains and lichen. Bottled rust and oil stains. I was in heaven.

Of course, all of that went by the wayside when I got divorced and there were more important things to do besides building little airplanes. But somewhere along the line, I found an old Bakelite aircraft recognition model of a German bomber from WWII. A great find except the two tailplanes were broken off. But it’s tough for me to throw away anything that rare, much less an airplane, so I’ve toted it around from one apartment to another for the past 25 years.

Last year in the spur of the moment I hung it above our bed, flat against the wall. Danusia objected.

“Why don’t you like it?” I asked. “It looks like a cross.” She answered. It was getting a little Freudian for the both of us, I thought.

I took it down when we painted a couple of months ago, and I thought, “how do I get this to look less like a cross?” Why, fix the tailplanes, of course!

So here was the conundrum: The model itself is made of Bakelite, an outdated plastic they used to make telephones from in the 1940s. Some of us are familiar with the hard black substance.

The material I needed to make new tailplanes would have to be polystyrene card, and the only thing that will join the two is cyanoacrylate glue. Superglue, to the uninformed. This is work, as the dried glue is harder than either the Bakelite or the polyurethane. I would need all my skills to make blend in three disparate materials.

The second part of the conundrum was making an accurate representation of the twin vertical stabilizers. Just my luck there were two verticals and two horizontals, a twin-tailed plane.

I managed to track down some 1/72^nd scale plans for the Do-17 online, made some sketches, and went to work with my trusty miniature saws and Dremel.

I did all this right after Christmas, which brings me to the kindness part of the story.

Right after the holiday we were invited to one of Danusia’s friends’ home up in Greenwich. She is a single mom with an 11-year-old boy.

“Do you think there is some activity you can do with Wes?” Danusia asked. “He can use an adult males’ attention…”

I thought about it, and about the 20 or so unbuilt model kits in my closet.

“Does he like to build things?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. He likes Legos and things like that.”

“How about I bring an airplane we can build together?”

“But all you have are warplanes. His mother wouldn’t appreciate that.”

“I think I can find something unwarlike.” I said.

I looked through my stash and found an old 1/72^nd scale FROG kit of the Grumman “Goose.”

The Goose was a seaplane designed before the war as an 8-passenger commuter plane specifically for the wealthy Long Island crowd. Fly to New York Harbor and skip the LIRR! They must have proclaimed. The kit I had was of course of a plane pressed into service by the RAF during the war, but there was no need to paint it or put the decals on so it could just be the passenger goose. Wes and I had a blast putting the goose together and it inspired me to get off my ass and fix the Dornier with the broken tail.

As you can see by the pictures, I was successful. I want to tackle more of the kits in my stash, but I need more polystyrene glue. I left the bottle I had with Wes in case he feels like budling more kits. The bottle I gave him I bought at Blick art supplies, where I got the sheet plastic. But it comes with a little brush and is not as good as the professional glue dispensers from Testor’s, which is what I always used. But I know they have them at the Red Caboose.

Holy Guacamole

Guacamole is a staple of the Mexican kitchen. It’s become an American favorite, an essential for Superbowl parties and fourth of July barbeques. Guacamole has become as American as apple pie, so to speak. And like apple pie recipes, there are endless variations.

I learned to make guacamole from my mother, who grew up in the mountains near the city of Puebla in Mexico. In our kitchen my mother kept a mortar and pestle, which she called a molcajete.

She used it to grind down spices and garlic to use in her cooking. It was carved from volcanic basalt and looked ancient. For me it represented a connection to the ancient past of the native American peoples of Mexico that represent 41% of my DNA. I have no idea what happened to that molcajete, but I wish I’d taken it with me when I was the last person to leave my childhood home after my mother died in 1977.

Returning to the subject of guacamole and the present, I make guacamole for most dinners we invite people to, Christmas, Easter, birthdays. I also make it as a bring-with dish to any potluck I’m invited to- in this case my friend Wayne’s New Year’s Day open house this coming Monday.

I have to mention that I have my own molcajete, Danusia gave it to me for a birthday ten years ago or so. But it’s made from granite and doesn’t have the patina of history my mother’s had.

I cherish it not just as a thoughtful gift with some meaning to it, but as a kitchen tool I like to use. Just the appearance has mystical qualities. I’ll be using it Monday to crush up some dried Aji Charapita peppers for a special guacamole for my friend Wayne. He’s Jamaican and takes great pride in Jamaican Scotch Bonnet peppers, which are pretty hot. So, when I discovered these Peruvian Aji Charapitas I thought of Wayne, and this will be my opportunity to share some heat with someone who will appreciate it.

My mother’s guacamole was pretty spicy. She used a combination of jalapeño and habanero peppers, onion, and diced tomatoes in her guacamole. A pinch of salt, the juice from a whole lime and her secret ingredient, a big dollop of mayonnaise. When I was old enough it was my job to dice up the peppers, onion, and tomatoes for her.

“Not small enough,” she’d say when I thought I was done. “Chop more.” So, I have the skill required now to chop the ingredients to proper size. I could use my food processer, another gift from my lovely wife, but there’s something visceral and spiritual about using my 8-inch kitchen knife.

My recipe is a little different. After making a chili for a group picnic many years ago that was so hot only the most courageous of my friends would eat, I realized I was going to have to adjust for the American palate. But how could I make it interesting? Different from the pablum available at Whole Foods without sending everyone running for the water faucet? Ginger! That’s how.

My mother never cooked with ginger, as a matter of fact I didn’t discover ginger until I was an adult and began to sample various Asian cuisines. But ginger has been a staple of my cooking for the past 20 years. I put it in everything. Beans, stir fry, stews; anytime I marinate meat.

So, here’s the recipe:

2 or more ripe avocados. If they are black, they are ripe. No squeezing, please.

½ cup of grated ginger. I use a regular box grater with the next to smallest holes.

1 large jalapeño or serrano pepper. Or you can go crazy with habaneros or even scotch bonnets! How courageous are your friends? Do you still want to have friends after they try it?

½ or less of a small red onion. The peppers and onion will have to be diced small, like my mamma said.

The juice of half a lime. More if you use more avocados.

A pinch of salt, and lastly, a dollop of mayonnaise.

I cut up the avocados a bit in the bowl before adding the finely chopped ingredients. Makes it easier to mash and mix everything together after. And there you have it! Please let me know if you try it.

THE SECONDHAND CHRISTMAS TREE

One of my earliest memories of buying a Christmas tree was when I was 9 years old. My mother and I went out to get the tree on Christmas eve. “It will be cheaper then.” My mother said. “They don’t want to get stuck with any trees and we’ll get a good price.” Was her reasoning.

So we went to see the tree man, a rare white man in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1963, and looked over the remaining trees. My mother chose one and asked how much. He said $4 and my mother offered two. He let it go for three. She and I carried the seven-foot Douglas fir home.

The past couple of years the price of trees has been astronomical, so we haven’t bought a tree since 2020, when I paid $45 for a 4-footer. In 2021 we went to a place in Kingston, where we’d been visiting friends and got a bunch of free branches, the cut-offs from big trees and Danusia made some kind of green arrangement on the wall. We did the same last year with local cast-offs.

This year Danusia asked the local tree seller on Edward M. Morgan Place (where I got the $45 tree) How much the 4-footers were. They said $100. No way we are paying a hundred bucks for something we have to throw away in a few weeks. I reluctantly started planning for another fake tree. Then something interesting happened. I overheard my good friend Tommy, the housepainter arguing with his wife on the phone.

“What was that about?” I asked curiously, though it was none of my business.

“Sarah doesn’t like the tree I bought.” He said. “What’s wrong with the tree?” I had to know.

“Nothing. It’s a great tree. It’s an awesome tree.”

Sarah had just come home from work to discover the not tall enough tree in her Livingroom and had called Tommy to complain about it.

“So how come she doesn’t like it?” I asked.

“She says it’s too small. Says she’s taller than the tree.”

“How tall is the tree?” I asked.

“It’s six feet! At least I think it’s six feet. Taller than me.”

Well, Tommy is about an inch shorter than I, and I’ve shrunken to 5’8 ½ (the half inch is important to someone that used to be 5’10) but Tommy hasn’t reached the shrinking stage yet. Neither has Sarah, who happens to be taller than Tommy. So, I can see her point.

“What are you going to do about it?” I asked.

“Get another tree, wadda think?” “What are you going to do with the tree Sarah doesn’t like?” I asked.

“Get rid of it, I guess.”

“Can I have it?”

“If you come get it you can have it. When you gonna come?” I had to think about that. Tommy and I were at a meeting in the East Village, close to his home on East 4^th Street. But I live on 156^th Street and Riverside Drive. I would have to drive our car downtown to get the tree. And there was the problem.

Normally the solution would be to ask my wife Danusia to drive down for the tree, it is after all her car. But Danusia was in Kentucky on a job. If I wanted the tree, I was going to have to do it myself, and that was a scary proposition. It’s scary because the last time I’d driven in the city alone was in 1982 and I was drunk at the time. Wasn’t thinking about the consequences. I didn’t think of the consequences when I said to Tommy “I can come in the morning.”

“Early, come early, Xavier.”
“I’ll be there at 10.”

Of course, that night I didn’t get much sleep, thinking about having to drive the car all by myself the next morning. You see, I just got my license 9 years ago, at the age of 60. And since then, the only driving I’ve really done is when we visit friends upstate, and then only on fairly empty country roads. I can’t have more than a total of 10 hours behind the wheel, and almost all of them with someone by my side saying, “watch out!” every time I make a mistake. The thought of running the errand was daunting.

I lay in bed thinking of NYC traffic and NYC drivers, remembering the onslaught of cars jockeying for position on Delancey Street when I took driving lessons from Mr. No at the Far East driving school nine years ago. Mr. No shouting “You go! Go!” When I didn’t react fast enough.

I finally fell asleep with the thought I could still punk out in the morning, call Tommy and say I wasn’t coming. I thought of asking him to bring the tree up in his truck, but I knew he would just laugh.

Saturday morning, I got up and told myself to grow up. “Just get in the car and go get the tree.” I said to myself. What could possibly happen? Then a million things that could happen rushed through my mind, none of them good.

The fastest way down would be to take the Henry Hudson, and the entrance to the HH is just a left turn and 200 feet from the driveway of our garage. But driving on the highway with the maniacal New York drivers going faster than they should scared the shit out of me. So, I got on my computer and mapped out a route going down Riverside Drive and then whatever local streets I could use to get to East 4^th Street and Avenue A. Why couldn’t Tommy live on the West side?

I went down to the garage level with the car keys and my homemade directions I’d scribbled on a piece of paper. I got behind the wheel and steeled myself for an adventure. I managed to back the car out of our space without hitting anything and found myself on 158^th Street heading east.

The worst thing that happened to me on the way down was not realizing the 11^th Avenue splits at 40^th Street, the right 2 lanes keep going down to 24^th Street where I planned to make a left and go across to 7^th Avenue, my gateway to the East side. So not knowing that and being in the far-left lane I ended up on the nightmare of 40^th street, with all of the tunnel traffic and signs and little streets that go God knows where. I kept praying I wouldn’t end up in New Jersey. I managed to make it to a light on 9^th Avenue, where I was suddenly accosted by the squeegee men. Squeegee men! I thought Giuliani had gotten rid of them! But no, here was one throwing dirty water on the windshield.

“Hey! Stop! I don’t have any change!” I shouted. I half expected the guy to say he takes Venmo, but he just scowled and walked away leaving me with a sudsy window. I now know better than to drive on 40^th Street.

After getting to 7^th Avenue, it was smooth sailing. I made a left turn on West 4^th and was actually able to answer Tommy’s frantic text messages of “Where are you?” while waiting for a red light somewhere between there and 1^st Avenue. “Almost there.” I texted from somewhere around the Bowery.

I pulled up to a fire hydrant just short of Tommy’s building and called him. I assumed he was upstairs waiting for my call.

“Where are you?” He asked.

“By the fire hydrant.” I replied, and in an instant, he sprang into view with the tree on his shoulder. He’d been waiting in front of the building.

“You’re late. I’ve got pancakes on the stove!” I looked at my watch and it was 10:10. Only ten minutes late, but I wasn’t going to get into an argument over it.

The tree was semi-wrapped up in blue painter’s tape, after all the guy is a professional painter, so it was that much easier to get it into the back of our “Sports wagon,” as the manufacturer likes to call it. I call it “little blue,” since it’s small and dark blue. I had already put the back seats down, so we wrestled it into the car, and I was off to my less stressful trip home. I stopped by a guy selling trees on Hudson Street and bought a green plastic tree stand, I’d thrown away the red and green metal stand we’d had for years when we’d decided trees were too expensive in 2020.

I got home without any further drama and was grateful we live in a building with an elevator to the garage. I took the tree upstairs, gave it a “fresh cut” with my power saw and set it up. It may be second hand, but it sure is beautiful, like Tommy said. But I’m glad it was too short for Sarah’s taste.

FIVE MINUTES IN THE WATER

 
Before I realized I’d said it I inadvertently suggested to Danusia “Why don’t we go to the beach?” Last Friday. We’d been talking about Labor Day weekend and maybe doing something special, and I know she’s very fond of the beach. I am not, which is why I was surprised I’d said it.
This would be the second time I’ve been to the beach this summer, we’d been in the spring once or twice to fly kites, but that didn’t involve wearing a swimsuit or going in the water.
The first time for me this summer was a few short weeks ago, when she wanted to take a friend to the beach one last time before her friend moved back to Poland. I donned swim trunks, and besides putting my feet in the water I didn’t even bother to take off my shirt. I spent the rest of the time safely ensconced beneath the nifty beach umbrella Danusia had ordered on Amazon.
A definite improvement over the cheap umbrella we’d gotten at a CVS in the Rockaways last summer. I don’t remember what happened to that one, I just remember having to chase it down a few times after the wind ripped it out of the sand and sent it flying across the beach like a spear.
This one has its own screw in post and is bigger and made of heavier cloth than the last one. It will not fly away and my fears of impaling a stranger with our flying umbrella have subsided.
I still have other fears, like the fear of displaying my more than middle aged body in public, gone are the days of cavorting naked at the nude section of Jacob Riis beach. I fear getting sunburned, eaten alive by biting flies or mosquitoes, sand in ridiculous places and drowning.
These fears are shaped and reinforced by past experience, the worst being almost drowning in Far Rockaway when I was 11 or 12. Then there was the time I caught some kind of skin fungus in Coney Island the summer I turned 14 through an open cut. I had lesions on my skin for a year after that.
My father loved the water having grown up in Tampico, Mexico- a costal beach town if there ever was one. So trips to the beach were a requirement of growing up in my family. But after I moved out of the house and started my own adult life the only way I went to the beach was because a woman in my life wanted to go to the beach.
Of course the woman in my life now is Danusia, and she loves the beach every bit as much as my dad did. But she, unlike my dad, does not insist or require that I accompany her. She usually goes with friends or her niece, Kasia.
“Let me call Kasia to see if she and Ritchie want to come along,” Danusia said after I’d sealed my fate. Kasia and Ritchie indeed want to come along.
Saturday morning we got up early and I made sandwiches and Danusia made enough three-bean salad to feed an army and we dragged all our stuff down to the garage and loaded up the car. We drove to Brooklyn to pick up Kasia and Ritchie.

It was a great day for the beach, we decided on Saturday because we both had stuff scheduled for Sunday and rain was forecast for Monday. It was partly cloudy; high wispy clouds that held no rain but diffused the hot sun nicely, the hot sun bearing down relentlessly is one of the things I hate about the beach- and a nice cooling breeze was in the air. A high of 85° was predicted and the weatherman did not disappoint.
I had already decided that I was going in the water; I decided that right after my inadvertent blurting of let’s go to the beach. A voice inside said, “be brave, go in the water, and don’t be a stick in the mud.”
As soon as I erected the nifty new umbrella and we set up the pop-out “tent” I bought from “Today’s picks” on the Today show- it’s a really cool tent that springs into shape but a pain in the ass to try and get back into a flat round shape I was ready to go in the water. I’d even taken off my shirt encouraged by some of the flabby out of shape old man bodies milling about the beachfront. But first, we all had a bite to eat. That old don’t eat before you swim myth is just that, a myth.
Eating done, Danusia announced, “I’m going in the water!” “Me too,” I said. “Us too, said Kasia. And the four of us waded in.
The water was cold, I had hoped it would be a little warmer, but I sucked it up and braved the cold. I went in up to my chest, and then a big wave came and broke over my head and it was no use trying to keep my hair dry. I let the fears go and enjoyed being in the water and bouncing in the waves the way I’d done as a child. At least now I know to stand sideways against the tide so I don’t get knocked over and under the way it happened so many years ago in the Rockaways.
Besides the four of us there weren’t may people in the water. “Look!” Danusia said. “More people are coming in the water because of us!” And they were, now. I was just beginning to relax and enjoy it when there was a frantic whistling from the shore.
“Out of the water! Everybody out of the water!” It was a young woman in a bikini holding one of those white lifeguards floats under one arm. “There’s sharks in the water! No swimming. The drones have spotted sharks in the water.”
Damn! The first time in years I’m digging being in the water in years we get thrown out of the water. It was a little more than five minutes, I think more like fifteen, but I fulfilled my own promise to myself.
Later that night we were watching TV after taking showers and eating dinner. Danusia suddenly kissed me and said, “Thank you,” while looking deeply into my eyes. Puzzled, I tried to think of what kind of good deed I’d done to merit such a special thank you, I said, “For what?”
“For going in the water with me today,” she said.
It is the little things that count.

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS TREES PAST

The first Christmas tree I remember with any clarity was the tree my mother bought the Christmas of 1963. I was 7 years old and President Kennedy had been assassinated just weeks before.
We waited till Christmas Eve, my mother explained that the tree man would want to get rid of any trees he had left and we would be saving money. So Christmas Eve my mother and I set off to the Christmas tree man on the corner of Franklin and DeKalb avenues, the northeast corner of our housing projects. There was a big empty expanse of asphalt between the curb and the first building there, an ideal place to sell Christmas trees.
She said it was ok to wait till Christmas Eve because in Mexican tradition Christmas really isn’t over till January 6th, Dia de Los Reyes. That was the day the three kings found Jesus and gave him gifts. If we’d still been in Mexico we would have had to wait till the 6th for our presents, just like baby Jesus. But my mother was savvy enough to know her American brought up kids demanded their gifts on Christmas day. So it was a sort of compromise. And no double gifts.
There was a big man with a red florid face smoking a big stinky cigar selling the trees. He smelled of whiskey just like my father and wore a colorful woolen cap.
It was cold and he had a barrel with stuff burning in it to keep warm.
“What can I do you for, Mrs.?” He asked cheerfully as my mother inspected the trees, her face set in her “I can smell shit” expression.
“Tell him we want to buy a tree,” she said to me in Spanish. I was embarrassed to have to translate for her. At 7 years old I was already a judgmental so and so that thought my mother should learn how to speak English properly if she was going to live in the United States.

“My mother wants to buy a tree mister.”
“Okay, sonny, tell her to pick one out!” I looked at the sign and it said Christmas trees $5.
$5 was a lot of money, my mother had said. We can’t afford $5. That’s why we had waited.
Mama found one she liked and pointed to it.
“Sure, lady, that’ll be five bucks.”
“No, mister, $2.” My mother countered.
“Uh uh, lady. Not $2, $5. Okay, I’ll do her for $4 since it’s Christmas Eve.”
“Please, mister. $2.”
Mama could be stubborn. “Son, tell him it’s all we have,” she said to me in Spanish. I was paralyzed, the man was big and scary and I didn’t want to make him mad. My mother proffered the two crumpled one-dollar bills and made a sad, imploring face. “Please, mister,” she added.
The man let out a big sigh. “Yeah, sure, lady. $2. It’s Christmas Eve, so I gotta be nice. Two bucks it is. Don’t tell anybody else, ey?”
I nodded dumbly in agreement as the man wrapped the tree in some twine. My mother hoisted the tree up onto my 7-year-old shoulder and supported the end of the tree as I bore the brunt of the weight and we set off for our building around the corner.

Today I bought this year’s tree up near Broadway and 157th Street near our home. I bought our tree at the same place a couple of years ago and even though pricey I won’t have far to carry it. I saw some nice 5 to 6 footers, and asked how much.
“These are $55,” the nice young fellow in his Covid mask said.
“A little too much for me, I said.” I walked over to the smaller ones, and picked one that was barely 4 feet tall.
“These are $45 plus tax.” Tax? Since when did they start charging tax on Christmas trees?
“So what’s that come to?” I asked.
“The tax is about four bucks.” I said nothing, just though for a second. Almost 50 bucks for a tree.
“I could do you for $40. With the tax it’s $43.” I got a deal and I didn’t even have to ask! I must have subconsciously learned my mother’s facial expressions.
“Yeah, okay, I said, digging out my $43. The guy cut a fresh cut into the tree and put it through the netting wrapping gizmo. I put the tree in my Whole Foods trolley and headed down the hill to the back door of my building.
We have a new kitty that’s probably never seen a Christmas tree so I put it up and haven’t decorated it yet. I want to see how she reacts to the tree first.
Every year when I buy a tree I try to remember other years, other trees.
Last year I went to get a paper on Broadway the day after Thanksgiving and there were two small trees in front of a fruit stand on 158th Street. They were just leaning in front of a storefront gate.
“Are these yours?” I asked the fruit guy, a middle-eastern fellow.
“Yeah, sure. They’re mine.”
“How much for one tree?” He thought about it for a second and then said “$10, mister.” I gave him a $10 bill and got a Douglas fir the same size as the tree I got today for $33 less. I don’t even know if that fruit guy actually owned the trees but I’m glad he got the ten bucks.

One Christmas when I was married to my first wife Kat we were so broke we had no tree. I was on welfare and she was collecting unemployment due to our drug habits, so we taped some Christmas tree lights to a wall in the shape of a tree. The next year was a little better, and we managed a scraggly Charlie Brown tree.

Things with Kat weren’t always so dire; after we had a son and both started working again we always had big trees and lots of presents under them.

Then there were the Christmases my now wife Danusia and I had in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We lived on Broadway just a block from Woodhull hospital, in a neighborhood as devoid of green as the Mohave Desert. And that meant Christmas trees, too. The first Christmas there I walked almost all the way to Greenpoint before I found a tree seller, and had to pay to have it delivered. At least they carried the 7-foot Blue Spruce up the stairs. In 2007 it cost $70 including the delivery. 

            The following year Danusia surprised me by walking through the door one night carrying a 6-footer.

“Where’d you get the tree?” I asked.

“I got it on East 3^rd street, only $30!”

“How’d you get it here?” I asked.

“On the subway! All the people on the J train thanked me for bringing the wonderful smell of pine on the train!” Only Danusia could buy a tree in Manhattan and tote it on the subway to Williamsburg all by herself, one of the reasons I love her so.

A couple of years later, after we’d moved up here Hamilton Heights it was my turn to go downtown to the $30 for any tree place and tote it up on the subway. I took a little shopping cart to make things easier on myself and nobody thanked me for bringing the tree smell on the train. I’m not as charismatic as Danusia, I guess.

But I got the tree up the 5 flights of stairs and we had a great Christmas. Thinking of that tree reminds me to be grateful we live in an elevator building in Washington heights now, a short walk from that 5^th floor walkup, and I’ll never have to walk a tree up and down the stairs ever again!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

KEEP YOUR INTERVAL

          

When my therapist asks how I am feeling and I say, “Tired,” he says: “That’s not a feeling. Glad sad mad scared. Those are feelings.”

Sometimes I feel happy, sometimes I feel sad, but mostly now I just feel helpless.

There are a few people that mostly just make me mad, but this isn’t about that. This is about having my life turned upside down, leaving me feeling helpless, powerless, and yes, scared.

Someone Danusia and I both knew succumbed to the virus last week, it finally touched home. It wasn’t some faceless person from the Bronx or Queens or Wuhan China, it was a guy we both knew and seemed pretty healthy when we saw him not even six weeks ago and now he’s gone. And he wasn’t more than 4 years older than me. That’s scary.

We started wearing gloves and masks two weeks ago. We were lucky that because of my some time work I had a bunch of unused N-95 masks, and nitrile gloves. I’ve been stripping paint off our kitchen cabinets in preparation to move to another apartment upstairs so I knew where to find the masks and gloves.

We also have tons of 70% plus alcohol since Danusia is in the habit of spraying everything with it as a matter of course. Plus Purell or reasonable facsimile hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, of course. I had come home with a pack of 24 rolls of Scott bathroom tissue just before the crisis, or before the Corona or Covid 19, take your pick, forever now to be known as the new B.C.

Danusia came home with 3 or 4 rolls of TP every time she went out after the big mad panic buying rush.

“People are storming the big stores but they don’t know about the discount stores on Broadway!” She proudly declared to me as she dumped her booty on the dining room floor. She’s so cute.

Yesterday she proudly declared that we still have 19 rolls. “And one roll lasts us one week!” She added. Yes, she wrote down the start date of the last roll of Marcal.

TMI, yes, I know. But we need a little humor in times of fear and desperation.

Two weeks ago after the first mad dash to empty the shelves Danusia asked if we might run out of food.

This is a land of plenty, with very good supply lines, so I doubted it. But to be prudent I headed down to Trader Joe’s the next day, with my mask and gloves.

A little about the mask and gloves. Before all this (B.C.) I always felt a little resentful when I saw people wearing surgical masks in the street. To me it was an indication of either a person afraid of the outside world or someone that thinks his or her shit doesn’t stink. So I had a little trepidation when I showed up to meet some friends wearing a mask and gloves.

But I got over that real quick watching the Six O’clock news.

That first trip to T.J.s was a real eye opener, the store was jam packed with folks throwing everything but the kitchen sink into their carts. I figured I would get some cured meat that would last but it was all gone, save for one package of Brooklyn bangers. I passed on those.

I did stock up on peanut butter, one cannot live without a supply of salted peanut butter. Sardines, cheese, and fresh produce.

So we have plenty of food, and the stores have restocked and I’m not worried, and now I only need to go out for fresh produce.

It was cool getting on an almost empty subway last week, seeing the streets devoid of people and once Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods started making people line up their respective stores were pleasingly easy to navigate, though Whole foods still has those annoying Amazon shoppers who never heard of half of the stuff they are being asked to put in their big brown bags.

“Is this Bok Choy?” One fellow asked me in Whole Foods yesterday.

“Yes. Yes it is.” I replied in my best deadpan voice.

“”Thank you,” he said, not even noticing my droll delivery.

The first time I stood in a socially distanced line was ten days ago at Trader Joe’s on 21^st street. I waited 10 minutes to get in, and inside it was pretty empty there was no line at the registers. Yesterday was my first line at Whole Foods (I went later than usual) and everyone kept their distance politely.

Last week I realized that having my personal protective equipment isn’t enough as I watched the cashier at Trader Joe’s pack my stuff. So now I have a routine when I get home, I spray everything with alcohol. I’m grateful to the U.S. Army for teaching me decontamination procedures.

First, I spray my gloves and mask the second I come through the door.

Then I set my shopping bag on the floor, and spray each item inside one by one as I remove it from the bag. And wipe with a disinfectant wipe.

Then I remove my gloves, after spraying them again, and wash my hands and face. I let everything air out before storing it all.

When I was in the army we were instructed not to bunch up when we traveled

as a unit on a road. “Keep your interval, men! Don’t bunch up! One round will take you all out if you don’t!” They were speaking of artillery rounds, of course.

The Covid virus is like an invisible artillery round. You can’t see it, you can’t smell it, and you can’t feel it. You can only be scared of it.

WHAT WE DID FOR CHRISTMAS

I’ve been doing this volunteer thing, and I guess it grew out of my community garden volunteering. Since I’m retired now, I try and think of better things to do than binge watching the entire Sopranos saga (twice) or looking up arcane stuff on the Internet.

When it’s warm and it’s garden season I spend a lot of time working at our community garden, Hope the Friendly Garden on the Hill. It’s actually meant to be Hope Garden but someone bought that domain name out from under us. More about that in the future.

So when the weather turns cold, what can I do?

That’s where New York Cares comes in. I’ve known about them for a while, every winter that I bought a new coat the old coat would go to a New York Cares coat collection station. And when I searched the Internet for volunteer opportunities a couple of years ago New York Cares came up.

This past August, in preparation for the end of garden season I signed up at New York Cares and attended an orientation. You have to do that in order to participate in any kind of volunteer event they host.

To backtrack a bit last year I took and completed a Master Composter course with the Lower East Side Ecology center. Part of becoming a master composter involved volunteering at events, and I did a bunch of “tableing,” meaning I sat at a table draped with a LESEC banner and showed off our worm bin.

I also did food events where my only job was to separate compostables from regular trash, a messy business indeed.

But it was rewarding and satisfying, doing something for the planet and my own sanity in the face of a world gone amok. That work prepared me for what I do now for others.

The first event for New York Cares was in the late summer, I spent 4 hours at the Intrepid Museum directing other volunteers to their stations. They packed a million meals in one day.

Then I signed up to tutor high school kids for their SAT tests. I do that most Saturdays until March.

My wife Danusia told me how for Christmas she used to buy gifts for strangers anonymously every season, and when I got an email from NY Cares about something called “Winter Wishes” I signed up.

Winter Wishes entails receiving letters from underprivileged children in the city and fulfilling their Christmas wish. I asked for 6 letters.

When the time came to go pick them up I mentioned it to Danusia, who expressed interest in helping out.

“How many letters did you sign up for?” She asked. “Six,” I replied.

“Are you crazy? Do you know what those kids ask for? You can’t spend five or six dollars on a gift. It’s more like forty or fifty.”

I was dismayed by the thought of having to shell out $240 to $300 for gifts while on a fixed income. I went to the New York Cares office and tried to get them to take some of the letters back. I figured I could do two, three max. I was told I had to speak to the woman who ran that program. When she came out she explained that the envelope was sealed, and that it was too late for adjustments. It was still three weeks before Christmas.

“You know, for some of these children this will be the only gift they receive this holiday season.” She told me. Talk about rubbing the guilt in! I left with my six letters hoping the kids didn’t want too much.

Of course I was alarmed when I started going through the letters, which were cute and funny and heartbreaking all at once.

One was easy, a six-year-old boy wanted a Bumblebee Transformer toy, and I could do that. The only girl I got wanted an LOL Doll or a Barbie. I wondered what an LOL Doll was. Two boys wanted either a skateboard or a scooter. One wanted a radio-controlled car, and the last boy wanted an iPad or a laptop, and failing that, an Apple Smart watch. Dream big, kid.

The instructions from NY Cares said not to spend more than $40 on a gift, and to wrap them. Then I either had to ship or deliver the gifts to some location in Bushwick.

I looked online for the best prices for some of these things, turned out that Walmart is cheapest, but there’s no Walmart near us. Danusia and I took the bus across the river to the big Mall in the Bronx, where there is a Target and a Marshalls. I got a radio-controlled car at Marshalls for under $30.

The skateboards were over $40, but Danusia offered to pay for one of them, and she got the Barbie for the girl. The LOL Doll thing was way to confusing. They were out of Bumblebees so I got another Transformer instead. There were no reasonably priced smart watches.

I went to Burlington coat factory the next day, where I found the scooter for half of what one of the skateboards cost. That kid’s first choice was the scooter anyway so I bought it and returned one of the skateboards to Target. I found a Kid’s smart watch on sale there for less than $40 and I we were done.

I’d also picked up some cheap wrapping paper and started wrapping when I got home. Danusia had wanted to include a bunch of candy and cookies she’d gotten as gifts from Tiffany’s after buying stuff for her boss there. I sort of tucked these things into the boxes and packages.

Of course when Danusia came home she was unhappy with my wrapping and re-did all of the gifts, individually wrapping the extra goodies. On the day of the deadline, December 6^th we stuffed everything into our Whole Foods trolley and some IKEA shopping bags and headed out to Bushwick.

One of the gratifying things about giving a gift is watching the person’s face when they open it. This was not going to happen, and this is what makes the volunteering such an important tool in building self-esteem. I have to know that I did this out of love, and not to receive a reward.

I do it because I spent so much of my life taking, not just things but taking emotions and life out of people, friends family and strangers; and it’s time to do some giving.

The last thing we did for Christmas was to make our annual lino-block cut cards and send them out.

Well, actually it was me that did the block cut and printed it out, but Danusia wrote out most of the cards and finished them off with a little glitter to hide the imperfections. If we know you and you didn’t get one, sorry we missed you. Maybe next year.

ICE CREAM CASTLES

Last night my wife Danusia and I went to The Cathedral of St. John the Divine for the annual New Year’s Eve “Concert for Peace,” and had an amazing time.

At first, when we were planning to go I was surprised and more than a little disappointed that it started at 7 PM and ended at 8:30, I could swear it went on later than that. What else could we do till midnight, I thought?

The first time we went together, we walked down Central Park West afterwards and caught the fireworks and beginning of the midnight run in Central Park. But that was in 2007 I think, and we were much younger then. Last night I could only think of getting home before midnight and avoiding the crazies on the subway.

Danusia had gone to the first concert for peace there when Leonard Bernstein conducted the orchestra in in 1984, and saw Philippe Pettit do a tightrope walk in the Cathedral at the 1996 Concert for peace.

Last night I got to sing along with Judy Collins for the fourth time.

Usually she just sings Amazing Grace a cappella and everyone sings along, but last night she started with Both Sides Now, the Joni Mitchell song Judy made her own.

I sang along the best I could, not knowing all the lyrics. But singing along made me tear up with joy, love, and gratitude.

I was singing with Judy Collins! Where else could I do that?

I have to say, her voice is still amazing, no raspy aged whisper here.

Judy told a joke her doctor told her when she was still smoking.

“Every time you light a cigarette god takes an hour of your life and gives it to Keith Richards.” We all laughed, and I’m grateful I haven’t made a contribution to Keith’s life fund in 16 years.

This year I paid off two credit cards, celebrated 18 years clean, 11 years of marriage to Danusia, and the publication of a story in an anthology!

Not to mention starting our second year in our wonderful apartment in Washington Heights, and being relatively healthy for my age. That’s a lot to be grateful for.

I no longer feel sad that when I turn on the news in the morning there is no breaking news flash that a certain someone choked to death on a hamburger and a certain someone else died of a heart attack trying to save him.

Or that some publisher isn’t breaking down the door with a book contract.

Whatever will be will be.

We even made a new friend last night, Luisa. She was alone, standing in the very long line to get in with us.

This little light of mine.

When we go to the front of the Cathedral the end of the line was just feet from 110^th Street, and Danusia wondered aloud if we were getting in. Knowing that it can hold 6,000 people I thought we had a pretty good chance.

We were waiting for a friend; a young polish woman Danusia befriended a couple of years ago. She was coming from Brooklyn and was cutting it close. She texted Danusia that she was on the C train at 72^nd Street just as the line started to move.

I kept looking for her as she kept updating us of her location.

“She’s on Morningside?” Danusia said.

“Two blocks away. Tell her to run.”

We weren’t the only ones waiting for someone. In front of us a group of 5 or 6 people joined a group already in line.

Behind us a woman spoke loudly into her cellphone. “ Make a right onto Amsterdam Avenue! Run!”

Danusia was on the phone with our friend Justyna, and I saw a young woman running up Amsterdam Avenue with a cellphone to one ear. It was Justyna, and she almost ran past us as I grabbed her arm.

The four of us sat together and basked in the love and gratitude, and at the end we lit our candles and sang along to O-o-h Child (things are gonna get better) and the standard finale of This Little Light of Mine with Jamet Pittman.

Afterwards we raced across the street to the Hungarian Pastry Shop, another tradition in our years together. I knew we had to get there fast because a good percentage of the people who attend the concert include it in their New Year’s tradition. We had hot drinks a pastry before heading home to ring in the New Year in our warm comfortable home, far away from noise and crowds of Times Square. That’s a New Year’s celebration I’ve never indulged in, and have no regrets in missing.

Like my alcoholic 11^th grade English teacher Mr. Kerrigan used to say, “Going to Time Square and getting drunk on New Years Eve is for amateurs.”

But that’s just his opinion, and if that’s what you did last night, I envy your bladder’s staying power.

Happy New Year, friends!

SUNDAY MORNING

When I was living at the Pratt Institute dormitory in the early 70s I would play this song every Sunday morning after waking up. Actually I did it after lighting the first cigarette of the day and going to the bathroom, of course.

Probably while the coffee was brewing on my roommate’s Mr. Coffee machine, and while I was deciding whether I should shower or not. It was that way then.

 Listening to that song always brought to mind another Lou Reed song, “Beginning to see the light.” A little wine in the morning, and some breakfast at night.

It was what I had done just hours before, usually.

After a Saturday night at Max’s Kansas city and then to whatever after hours bar everyone went to when Max’s closed at 3 AM we would head off to Ratner’s deli on Delancey street for what for me was dinner.

As I listened to the song I would think about my wasted years so close behind, and it was a sad thing to know I was only 20 at the time and thinking that.

And I did have a restless feeling right by my side.

I was looking for the light but was afraid to open the door.

It was much easier to drink the wine in the morning.

When I first heard the Velvet Underground sometime in the winter of 1970 I was very drawn to the chaos of songs like Sister Ray and I Heard Her Call my Name, the dark humor of the Gift and the atonal mystery of Black Angel’s death song.

But I was also calmed by the beautiful Melodies of Sunday Morning and I’ll be your Mirror.

Lou Reed was a songwriter that reached into my viscera, all of the love, hate, fear and turmoil that churned inside me.

I bought in to the despair of Heroin and the insanity of White Light/ White Heat and lived my life that way for a long while.

It would really be trite to say I saw the light, it’s more of I’m set Free.

It took some time.

In that time I stopped playing Sunday Morning every Sunday morning, I lost that and all the other records I owned, among other things; I stopped going out to listen to music, stopped going to the movies and whatever else people do.

My world grew small, just me and no one else, not my wife of 16 years, or my child, or any friends I might have made along the way.

It has taken some time, and Sunday mornings now I spend with other like-minded people looking to fill that space in my soul that the song once filled.

It feels good and sometimes I go out for coffee with them afterwards, breakfast for real this time, since I’ve had a good night’s sleep and have lost the restless feeling inside.

Today I love the sun, the wind, and the rain. And the feeling inside.