A Cheetah Named Lily

She was sitting on an antique wing chair wearing a blue and red silk robe. Her hair was down. And I’ll be dammed, if there wasn’t a cheetah in a black suede collar sitting next to her like a house cat. She hadn’t lied to me. She said she had a pet cheetah and there it was.

“Her name is Lily. Give her a chance to get to know you, and she’ll be purring in your lap.” Because of the way Bianca smiled as she said that I didn’t know if she meant it.

“I think that’ll take some time. Lily’s looks like she’s going to start snarling.”

“It’s not that. I just lit some incense and she’s making faces to let us know she doesn’t like it. She’ll lose interest before long and get closer to you.”

Bianca was right. We moved to the sofa. I sat in the middle with Bianca on one side and Lily on the other.  She nuzzled my hand until it was under her chin, Lily that is. I’ve had lots of dogs and cats. Lily was bigger than most dogs but she was still a cat. I got the idea that Bianca was interested in seeing if I could win over her pet. I silently accepted the challenge and began to gently stroke under Lily’s chin. Then I moved my hand down to her neck. When I saw that she didn’t mind my touching her throat, I knew we had become friends. She rolled onto her back expecting a belly rub, and I went along. She started purring, and it later became clear that Bianca was very impressed.

A First Taste of Grappa

I was at an outdoor family event on a sunny afternoon. There were lots of people there I didn’t know, but they all seemed to know me. Everyone was a close relative on my mother’s side. They were warm, friendly people, and some of them still very old country. Since we were outdoors, it was probably on my great Uncle Tony’s property in Staten Island. Or it could have been upstate in Peekskill. We had relatives there too. I was too young to remember, but it doesn’t matter. I was looking at an interesting old guy. He had white hair and could have been an uncle or cousin. He saw me staring, smiled, and said, “What’s your name?” He looked all right to me, so I told him it was Robert.

“Ah!” he said, “Concetta’s little boy.”

That threw me because I knew whose little boy I was, and it wasn’t Concetta. Besides, “Ma,” my mother’s name was “Connie,” so he must have had me confused with some other kid. I decided to let it go because he seemed like a good guy.

I noticed a small, sort of child-sized glass sitting next to him on the table. It looked like it was filled with water.

He said, “Not water. That’s grappa. You want to taste it?”

He smiled, raised his eyebrows, and nodded to the glass. I picked it up. My father had once given me a sip of beer, and I was interested in trying grappa. When it got near my nose, it smelled so strange I couldn’t believe the aroma was coming from that little glass. I didn’t have words to describe it, but I think of it now as a fermented fruit sort of smell. It wasn’t bad and maybe an indication of how it would taste.

As the grappa touched my lips, it burned a little but not too much. The fruit aroma was gone, and the taste made me think of gasoline. I tried not to show surprise. I didn’t want to act like a little boy in front of this dignified old man. He got me a glass of water.

“You’re a pretty tough kid. I’m not so tough when it comes to Concetta, so don’t tell your mother who gave you your first taste of grappa.” Then he laughed, but I didn’t get the joke and never told my mother either.

Dragon Boat Dinners

“Harder.”

Boom.

“Deeper.”

Boom.

“Gimme more.”

Boom…boom…boom.

Kay Yee is the best drummer any dragon boat team has ever had. Her job is to keep the paddlers working at their maximum without wearing them out. That’s not easy.

A dragon boat is a forty-foot-long canoe propelled by twenty paddlers. The drummer is usually a lightweight woman who sits on a cigar box-sized seat at the bow with her legs wrapped around a barrel-sized Chinese drum. Through drumming and shouting commands, she regulates the speed of the boat. I stand at the rear and steer with a ten-foot paddle loosely attached to the stern. Steering, while not easy, is straightforward. I have to align the boat at the start of a race, dealing with wind and current, and keep it going as straight as possible for a five-hundred-meter sprint. The drummer, on the other hand, has to change the form and pace of paddling a number of times in those five hundred meters, from deep hard pulls to get the boat started to an all-out push at the finish. Kay Yee and I have been doing this for a long time and work well together. What the paddlers have to do is keep their heads down, stay in sync, and paddle hard. They’re the engine.

Kay Yee is one of the sweetest women I know when she’s not sitting at the drum, but when she is, some of the team call her the Tyrantess. She once shouted out to a new member of the team who was sitting toward the back of the boat, “Tell me your name. I need to know your name so I can yell at you when you do something wrong.” She can be fierce, but we have a well-disciplined, winning team.

Most of our teammates are Chinese, and the rest are a typical New York City ethnic mix. Our ages range from eighteen up to my wife Bridget, me, and some other grandparents. We practice in Flushing Bay just under the planes, taking off and landing at the end of the LaGuardia Airport runway, and we race in cities up and down the East Coast from Montreal to Miami, June to October. Each venue has its own boats, so all teams are on an equal footing and don’t have to transport their boat.

Almost every city we visit has some sort of Chinatown, and after a day of racing, we usually find a restaurant that can accommodate a large group. If the restaurant is authentic, they serve us Chinese banquet style. We’ve joked about Chinese restaurant owners only being able to count by ten. That means round tables for ten with at least ten courses served on lazy Susans in the center of the tables and a check in multiples of ten when we’re finished. Very few courses at these restaurants resemble anything you’d get in a standard Anglo-Chinese restaurant. Our polite Chinese friends won’t tell us the ingredients in what we’re eating unless we ask. Bridget used to like a particular crunchy noodle dish until she found out they weren’t noodles at all but actually julienned jellyfish. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. I was once surprised by a beautiful platter I would have sworn was made up of colorful squash and strips of beef and pork. I was only right about the squash. It was a strictly vegetarian Buddhist dish, and the “beef” and “pork” were actually tofu.

Dragon boating is an expensive sport, and teams often have corporate sponsors. Bridget used to work for a bank that wanted to start a team and invited all employees and their spouses to try out. That’s how we began sixteen years ago, and since then, a group of us formed our own team, Gotham Thunder. Instead of a sponsor, we raise money with dinners and happy hours to cover equipment, insurance, and other expenses. We invite other teams, and they reciprocate by asking us to their events. We often don’t immediately recognize one another at these off-season events, wearing suits, ties, heels, and make-up instead of tee shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. Getting together like this, over food and drinks, is fun and an excellent way to keep the team members in touch over the winter months.

The younger and more demure Chinese women are entertained and maybe taken aback by Bridget’s American forwardness and saying exactly what’s on her mind. Some of them have spoken of their well-to-do grandmothers who had their feet bound in pre-revolution China, saying with some pride that they were rich enough not to need to walk efficiently. And then there’s Mae, who starts some of her political statements with, “I’m not a communist but…” and then goes on to say what great things Chairman Mao did for the Chinese people.

Some team members are amused that with my Italian American background, I’m not unfamiliar with ingredients like chicken feet, tripe, and various other types of organ meat and sea creatures. If there are no Chinese restaurants, the second choice is often Italian. At a dinner in an Italian restaurant, some of the team didn’t know what broccoli rabe was.

I told them, “Think of it as Italian bok choy.”

We have much in common that revolves around the dinner table. My Italian traditions tie into my Chinese friend’s traditions in that our major life events are grounded by food. These events, and not just happy ones like weddings and births, center on a meal. After a Chinese or Italian funeral, close friends and family meet at a restaurant for an elaborate luncheon where the life of the deceased is celebrated. When visiting a Chinese home, I must acknowledge the hospitality offered and accept something to eat, even something as basic as a piece of fruit. This is so much like my home when I was growing up, with my mother serving something to any guest who arrived at our door because no visit could be complete without the sharing of food.

When I hear the Chinese greeting, “Ni chele fan ne meijou?” (“Have you eaten rice today?”), it makes me recall my mother saying “Mangia!” to a guest.

When at home in New York, we typically meet at restaurants in Chinatown in lower Manhattan or in the newer Chinatown in Flushing, Queens, and not always on special occasions. Sometimes, after a Sunday morning practice, we’ll have Dim Sum when we need to discuss team issues or just feel like hanging out together. Meals after evening practice are more elaborate. Some of us enjoy these dinners as much as the races, and Bridget teases me about my being on the team only for the group dinners. It’s interesting how she and I are treated differently when we return to these same restaurants alone. The chopsticks disappear and are replaced with forks. They serve us American-style, little saucers of duck sauce and crispy fried noodles. The food is still good, but the authenticity is missing.

From time to time, we have potluck dinners at someone’s home. The last time it was at our place, Bridget made Italian sausage with peppers and onions. I was a little disappointed when Kay Yee arrived with couscous and lamb patties, expecting her to bring some traditional Chinese home cooking. I wasn’t disappointed when I tasted it. It was better than any I’d ever had in a Middle Eastern restaurant.

Dragon boating keeps us fit and tan, but I like how it brings together such a diverse group of people, and as different as we are, we all laugh at the same jokes and feel the same emotions when we win or lose a race. We have college students and retirees, bankers and construction workers, a father and son, a mother and daughter, people with various national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, all working together as a team to win races and when we’re not racing, enjoying each other’s company over good food.

 

Sparrows and Baguettes

“Breadcrumbs. They told us what they like to eat and its breadcrumbs, especially the ones from day-old baguettes. We used to give them thistle seed and they weren’t too enthusiastic about that. I mean, really, if you’re going to feed sparrows you should at least give them what they want.”

“But do you mean that they actually told you?”

“Of course, how else would we know?”

(Overheard at a coffee shop in Central Park, NYC.)

It’s Still Art

Dan is an artist. He works in different media types, but I think of him primarily as a sculptor. His pieces vary in size, and he needs help with their on-site assembly when they’re very large. I always volunteer. There’s something about working on an art installation that’s extremely satisfying. They’re big and always in a public square or park where they can be seen by people, not necessarily looking for art.

I remember working on one of his largest and most ambitious jobs. Some of his work is representational, and some abstract. This one was kinetic. It consisted of four different lengths of square aluminum beams held together by steel cables. Like a Calder stabile, it would be fixed to the ground on pedestals but with the upper portions free to move. I saw his model, and it worked. Any place you touched it caused the whole thing to tremble. The completed piece was expected to respond in the same way. That was the hope, but his studio wasn’t large enough to completely assemble it for a dry run before its public installation.

The exhibit site was Highbridge Park at the northern end of Manhattan. The exhibit’s opening would coincide with the re-opening of the old aqueduct, which once brought water from the Croton Reservoir to the City and would now be used as a pedestrian bridge connecting the Bronx and Manhattan. When the day of the installation arrived, Dan left early to lay out the location of the pedestals. His wife Donna, and I rented a pick-up truck and an SUV to load the sections of the piece, tools, and ladders with the help of three young artists. We got the ladders and largest sections of the assembly into the pick-up and tied red flags on all of the bits of it extending beyond the truck bed. Donna drove the truck, and I followed in the SUV, watching her trim trees along the way with the uppermost section of the sculpture. It was raining when we arrived at Highbridge, but we ignored it and got to work. When we had all of our equipment and ladders spread out and got started, three boys about ten or eleven were watching us, and one asked me, “Are you making a movie?” I didn’t know where he got that idea, but I explained we were installing a work of art, and they seemed pleased that we were doing it in their park.

After securing most of the sections into position, the three artists, Niv, Kayti, and Emily, began measuring the cables and adjusting tension. Using the two ladders with one on the bed of the pick-up for extra height, the primary and largest beam at twenty-two feet was finally installed. For the highest end of this beam, Dan had created an elaborate red and gold construction that looked like a throne. Its purpose was to act as a sail and catch any mild breeze so the whole structure would be in almost continual motion. He named his work of art simply “Chair.”

Other artists arrived, completed their installations, and left, but we were still at it. Screws and bolts were tightened, and cable tensions fine-tuned. We removed our tools and debris and stood back to look at our day’s work. Dan walked up to it, pushed a beam with one finger, and the whole form quivered. We all tried it. We were wet, tired, and cold but satisfied. The weight of the beams held in tension with the cables was precisely balanced according to plan, and the installation was a success.

* * *

Two weeks after the exhibit opened, all of us who helped received a group email from Dan. He’d gotten a call from the Parks Department informing him his sculpture had been vandalized. They wanted to know how he would like to proceed. He’d been working on this for months, and now it was destroyed. We all sent our condolences and offers to help repair it. I called Dan and asked if he wanted to go and see how much damage there was. He said he couldn’t just then, maybe in a few days, when he got over the initial shock. I didn’t need time to get over it. When I hung up, I left immediately for Highbridge Park. I imagined I’d find a tangled mass of beams and cables with a fantastical red and gold chair on top of the pile. Would it be salvageable and worth the effort to repair it? As I walked up the path, I saw it in the distance through the trees. From where I stood, most of it seemed to be still standing. When I got closer, it became clear it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. The only damage was that two of the pedestals holding the beams had somehow broken, so although not as high as it should have been, it was intact. I took some photos and emailed them to Dan, hoping to cheer him up.

I was leaving Highbridge feeling better than when I arrived. Walking down the path to exit the park, I saw Dan. We waved and smiled. He couldn’t wait to see it either.

He asked, “Well, how bad is it?”

“I had a nice surprise when I got here. I’ll let you see for yourself.”

Dan was as amazed as I had been. We spoke about what might have happened. I remembered the little boys who had watched us put it together on that rainy day two weeks before. I thought about myself at their age and how I would have seen “Chair.” It might have been a sculpture, but it was just asking to be climbed on, as inviting as monkey bars or a seesaw. I didn’t see willful destruction. What I saw was kids having fun. I envisioned the same three boys who asked if we were making a movie coming upon it late in the day with the park almost empty. How could they resist? Maybe strong enough to hold one of them, even two but three? I imagined how they must have felt when it broke down and how quickly they ran away. This was all pure speculation but, at the same time likely, Dan agreed.

With the weather being much more spring-like than the last time we were there, the park was filled with people, some crossing to and from the Bronx on the newly opened footbridge and others coming just to see the exhibit. While we were sitting on a park bench by “Chair,” speculating on how it happened and what needed to be done to repair it, we began noticing people stopping and admiring and discussing it. It seemed fine to them since they had no idea what it initially looked like.

“Maybe it doesn’t need to be repaired,” I said,

“Maybe not.” Dan replied. “Even broken, it’s still art.”

 

 

The Village of Terranova

We hired a car and driver to take us to the village where my grandmother Nicolina’s family had lived and where she was born. Simone, our driver, showed up at our hotel in a new black Mercedes and my sister Nicki (Nicolina’s namesake), my wife Bridget and I started the trip inland. We were going to Terranova in the province of Salerno and the Comune (municipality) of Scignano degli Alburni.

As we drove up into the Alburni mountains the lemon groves that were along the coast gave way to chestnut trees and it got colder and mistier as we went higher. After about an hour and a half, we reached Terranova.

We arrived to find what I had expected – a small village, population 60, and a church – Chiesa San Giovanni Battista. Simone said he’d try to find someone to unlock the church for us. A woman came and opened the side door as Simone returned with the priest who told us some of the church’s history. The poor people were interred in the crypt below the church, so we were standing over the bones of our ancestors. The church was built in 1300 and the stone baptismal fountain was at least that old although a modern cover had been made for it. Nicolina DiAntonio was born in the village in 1878 and her father Lorenzo, grandfather Luigi, great grandfather Antonio, and her great great grandfather Onofrio who was born in 1740 were all baptized there. (That’s as far back as I was able to research.)

After our visit to Terranova, we went to Sicignano degli Alburni to find someplace for lunch. A local guy recommended a trattoria in nearby Scorzo called Si Ma Quant Sit? The menu was on a board on the table listing antipasti, pasta, and prima piatto. We started with the antipasto – some local cheese, prosciutto, capicola, and soprasade. We thought that would be it, but the owner, Raffale, the owner, kept coming to our table adding things to our dishes – frittata, eggplant parmigiana, eggplant in vinegar, and on and on. He asked if I wanted some pepper for my pasta. He put a little jar of olive oil infused with dried chili on the table. It wasn’t just spicy; it had a distinct pepper taste. I asked how it was made. He gave me some to take home and got Lucia from the kitchen and she explained how she makes it. Every meal we had in Italy was excellent but that two-hour lunch at Si Ma Quant Sit? was the best. And we found it by lucky accident.

 

 

New York City Diners

 

There are some places that want to be perceived as diners and others that are intrinsically and naturally diners. The latter, which are usually family run, can be recognized by very large menus, a few traditional Greek dishes on those menus, a huge selection of Danish, muffins and elaborate cakes displayed on and behind the counter and never letting your coffee cup get less than half full. They serve breakfast twenty-four hours a day and fast service is provided by people who are professional waiters and waitresses. Their coffee-to-go is usually in a blue and white paper cup with, “It’s Our Pleasure to Serve You,” framed by two Ionic columns.

Lately, in New York City, mostly Manhattan, a new type of chain diner has been opening. They try for a 1950’s retro style featuring Doo Wop interior design with old signs and maybe some muscle car parts hanging on the walls. Their menus list items with cute names that they want us to believe mythical Eisenhower-era Americans lived on; burgers, shakes and sundaes. Was there ever a “Malt Shop” in New York City? Maybe there was in television land where the Nelson boys and Donna Reed’s kids hung out after school but no, not New York. No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” sipping coffee in any of these Disneyfied places. There’s something contrived about the “new” diners that I would hate to see catch on.

I hope tourists don’t have a BLT at one of these theatre sets and think, “Wow, I’ve eaten in a New York City diner!” because they haven’t.

Some of the old favorites are gone now; the Market, Munson and Cheyenne, but there are enough of the originals left to easily give anyone who wants it, a genuine diner experience.

A handful of them still have waitresses with teased blond hair who will ask you, “What’cha havin’, hon?”

How could anyone give that up for a second-rate copy?

Play

 

Excerpts from my recently published personal essay, “The Pit,” in the Outrider Press PLAY anthology. 

. . . Carlo slipped about halfway across and fell off the beam. He landed face down on a pile of sand. The game stopped because we thought he was dead. As soon as he saw what happened, his brother, who was on the other team, ran to call their mother. A few of us kids climbed down and stayed with him. After what seemed like a long time to us but probably wasn’t, he sat up, spit out a mouthful of sand, and started cursing about something on the beam that he tripped on because it was too dark to see. He was a tough kid and embarrassed because he fell. He wasn’t hurt badly, just a broken arm. His mother arrived, took him by his good arm, and got into a cab to Saint Vincent’s Hospital emergency room. . .

. . . They tore out the playground equipment, trees, fences, and pavement. After removing everything else, I wondered why they left a long section of the handball wall where the courts used to be, the one closest to the Bowery. We kids didn’t play handball. The games we saw there were fast and played for money by tanned hard-looking men – Jews, Italians, and Puerto Ricans. They played with a small black rubber ball. You could hear the distinctive sound of it smacking into the wall over Bowery and Houston Street traffic noise. With Houston Street being widened, no one could ever play handball on that wall again. . .

A Keith Harring mural on the old hand ball wall. 

 

Last Night at the Plaza

I’m a native Manhattanite and sorry that I’d only been to the old Oak Bar in the Plaza Hotel a handful of times. I’m pretty sure that I first heard of it in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. It begins with Cary Grant, mistaken for someone else, being kidnapped at the bar.I know I went there occasionally, but I worked Downtown, so it wasn’t a convenient after-work place-to-go. And when I was in the area of Fifth and Fifty-Ninth, I’d choose someplace else without really thinking of the Oar Bar. It seemed a bit stodgy to me and my contemporaries, not a place we frequented.

When I heard it was closing, I suddenly felt nostalgic about losing the Plaza. I made it a point to stop in for a drink. I went to the Oyster Bar first. The bartender and I were the only ones there. I ordered a Beck’s, and we chatted while my oysters were being shucked. Neither of us brought up the hotel’s closing.

When the oysters were ready, he served them professionally, setting out napkins and utensils but the silverware threw me. When all I really needed was an oyster fork, he’d also placed a fish knife on my napkin. I looked at it – it was pewter with the monogrammed Ps of the Plaza on the handle. I put it in my inside jacket pocket. When I finished the oysters, another customer was coming in as I paid my check. The bartender and I gave each other a friendly smile as I walked out. I left cash under my beer glass. That covered the check, the tip and what I thought a Plaza fish knife was worth. I like that fish knife and still have it so I guess I thought it was worth a lot. I never got his name, but we had a commercial interaction in addition to the beer and oysters. He knew I would understand his offer and might be interested. By looking me over and talking a bit, he surmised I was the kind of guy who’d appreciate a Plaza souvenir and give him a fair price. Everything would be auctioned off or thrown away within a few weeks, and I think we both felt that at least one fish knife now had a good home.

I left the Oyster Bar and crossed the lobby to have a last drink at the Oak Bar. I enjoyed looking at the famous nighttime murals around the room and wondered what would happen to them. After commiserating with another customer about its closing, I left feeling nostalgic for something that I never really knew but was a big part of my city. There were no souvenirs for sale and the only Cary Grant sightings were in the imaginations of the customers and staff.

 

.

RUDY GIULIANI wanted to clean up Times Square. Some thought this was because it needed cleaning, others because Disney said,

“If you clean it, we will come.”

 

” . . . During a break in one of the first hearings, a city attorney called me and firmly said, “No more buttocks.” Asked, under cross-examination, precisely what his reported observation of “exposed buttocks” referred to, one of our inspectors had come up short. He couldn’t describe what he saw as having a precise beginning and end, which made his testimony useless. Since a buttock wasn’t clearly delineated, unlike other body parts specified in the regulations, the attorney said we should steer clear of them in future reports. . . “

 

Specified Anatomical Areas