Kate’s Window

Entries categorized as ‘Bronx’

Happy 4th of – OMG, Call the Fire Department!

July 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment

This is not a true story - I’ll deny it ‘til the cows come home with utters bursting and cream on the table! 

Back in the Bronx   in the 60’s, (I can’t mention the year, ‘cause I don’t know the statue of limitations on setting fire to a highway), fireworks were illegal, even so, every neighborhood managed to have a fireworks display. 

Everyone knew  each other and watched out for each other; a cop car would come by every once and a while, to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.  Each year, just a few blocks from our apartment building, my neighborhood held a display on a bridge over a six-lane highway, with cars often pulling over into the breakdown lane to stop, watch, and enjoy the show. 

That Fourth of July  started out like every other, and for the first few minutes it was wonderful: watching and feeling the explosions high in the air, the whistling of the bottle rockets before the bang, when suddenly there was smoke, fire, and pandemonium, but for my best friend Berta and me, it became just a bit more.  

At 15, Berta and I  were joined at the hip, so when her parents decided to spend the holiday weekend at their summer cottage, Berta and I begged until she was allowed to stay with my family.  Then we pleaded with my mom to let us go to the fireworks by ourselves; after all, what if the boys were there?  Mom relented, (she didn’t like fireworks anyway), we had to be home by ten, and I had my apartment keys in my jacket pocket.   

On the way,  we snuck on more make-up and once there, we plopped our butts down on the grassey slope about halfway between the highway and the street, fell back on our elbows, and began coolly scanning the crowd.  

Suddenly,  there were flames and billowing smoke – a grass fire – immediately followed by sirens: the cops coming by at the same time.  Berta and I scrambled up to the sidewalk along with the crowd, while the police and neighbors tried to put out the fire with abandoned blankets. 

On the sidewalk,  everyone brushed them selves off, and knowing the fire trucks would arrive soon, began leaving.  Berta and I hadn’t gone a block, when I realized my keys weren’t jingling.  I searched every pocket and Berta dumped our tote bags on the sidewalk.  Nothing – crap – I had been sitting on my jacket and my keys must have fallen out of the pocket in the rush.

“We have to go back, Berta,”  I whispered, “We begged your parents, pleaded with mine, and if I go back without the keys, I’ll be grounded for weeks.”

Best bud’s go with you into the flames of hell.   

We got there  ahead of the firemen and went into the area where we thought we’d been, crawling on our hands and knees, away from the fire, but into the smoke: coughing and blinking and wiping all the way.  We stayed close and changed course often, when suddenly my kneecap came down on something very hard and pointy,  bringing more tears to my eyes and with them, my keys.  

As we were  making our way back to the sidewalk, the fire trucks were arriving.  It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but it felt like hours when we began walking home for the second time that night.

The first people  we met, were Mike and Johnny; Mike was Berta’s and Johnny was mine; the boys.  Only in our teenage dreams of course, we’d never even kissed, only meeting on the street corner and talking for hours.  We were still sputtering and wiping, they didn’t say much, just sort-of stared, (which felt good), but we had to say quick goodbyes to get home by ten.   

We made it  just in time but my mom must have been at the peephole, as the door opened before I had the key in the lock.  Funny, but she didn’t say a word, just pointed to Grandma’s big mirror over the couch in the living room; in it, you could see from ceiling to floor. 

I’d like to say  we didn’t look as bad as we thought – but we did.  

OMG  - call the EMT’s – we died of teenage embarrassment! 

Categories: Bronx · Humor · Seniors/Baby Boomers
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Sometimes a cigar is more than …

March 11, 2009 · 4 Comments

Tonight,  after dinner, I went out on the back porch and lit up a cigar. 

It’s  a gorgeous  night, balmy with a little breeze.  I sat in the dark, no light on, just breathing, listening to the rustle of trees, the hum of the odd car.  With my Lab, Dutch, by my side sniffing the air, I blithely watched the end of the cigar flare up in the shadows.  

After a while,  I knocked the ash off my Macanudo Portofino, let it die, then put the rest back in the tube to save for another day. 

I remember  the first time I smoked a cigar.  I was 18, at a party, when an older boy, at least 20, offered me one.  I was ripe for the pickin’ and thought I was the hottest thing since – well – Tiparillo’s. 

Remember Tiparillo’s  – they were back in the ’60’s, I had just graduated high school: an all-girls Catholic high school, in the Bronx.  We wore green uniforms and I rolled my skirt.

That first summer  after graduation, I started lighting up, never at home, but at parties, bars, and on street corners under the streetlight with friends.  They had Marlboro’s, Winston’s, and a Camel or two, but my smoke of choice was a Tip – a Tiparillo.   

There was an ad  campaign, something about, “Should a gentleman offer a lady a Tiparillo?”  The point being, that Tiparillo’s were almost cigars, and since few women smoked cigars, this was one you could smoke and still be a lady.    

Almost cigars was actually way off the mark – Tiparillo’s were kinda’ like a bigger, longer cigarette, without the white paper, but with a tobacco wrapper and a plastic mouthpiece.  

They came  maybe five in a pack and tasted more like the smoke of a cigarette, then a cigarette itself, and not anywhere near as strong as a real cigar, or even as strong as my mother’s Pall Mall’s.  I probably went through a pack or two a year before I stopped smoking all together when I married at 23. 

The ads  didn’t merely sell Tiparillo’s; they sold sex.    Under a photo of a topless, bespectacled, big-breasted woman, with a ledger book decorously placed, was the slogan, “Should a gentleman offer an accountant a Tiparillo?”   How risqué was that !

My bra size  was 32A, I needed my glasses for walking, talking, and breathing, couldn’t balance the books to save my soul, but that Tiparillo made me Fab.  

A few years ago,  after almost 30 years of not smoking, I celebrated my 50th and lit up cigar.  Maybe it was the lightheadedness the smoke caused or the flood of memories that made me high – but the contentment immediately returned.  And, like a Tip, I only want one or two a year.   

Chocolate  is my addiction, cigars are my caprice: the slow prep, the waving flame, the intake not the inhale of breath, the aroma, the anxiety of a bite, then the tranquility when it doesn’t come, never fails to soothe me. 

Tonight’s cigar  had me envisioning that hot teenager of 40 years ago, and bending over to pet Dutch, those boobs are still 32.  Yep – 32 inches from tip-to-floor.

Categories: Bronx · Humor
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Big City / Small City ~ Driving !

February 15, 2009 · 8 Comments

I’ve lived in Big Cities and Small Cities.  So, let’ say a Big City has a population of over 1million and a Small City, a population of under 1 million. 

In NYC,  all the boroughs, except Staten Island, have populations of over 1 million, so that would make them all individual Small Cities.  Collectively, the population is a little over 8 million.  In the Heartland City, where I currently live, the population is about 800,000. 

There are differences  in these Big City – Small City cultures.  So, right off the bat, let’s talk about driving.

Stopping at a yellow light  in the Heartland can get you killed – rear ended - because no matter how far back the car closest to you is, unless they’re just pulling away from the red light at the previous intersection, they ARE going to try to make it through YOUR yellow light.

In NYC, a yellow light is a warning to stop - in 4 seconds – that’s it – no questions asked or needed.  You see a yellow light and you immediately slow to a crawl or instantly stop – and everyone behind you does the same thing.  If you’re the car behind me – you’d better do it too!

I don’t think there are any “turn on red”  signs in NYC – but I love doing that in the Heartland.  I think the simple reason for that no-turn-on-red law, in NYC, is that there are just too many cars on the street – the opposite holds true in the Heartland. 

Some Heartlander  must have body-snatched a NYC/DMV commissioner because honking is now frowned on to the tune of $100.  I really miss it.  I used to go little Village nearby for that fix, but they got rid of the geese.  Bummer.

If you’re coming  from the Heartland to NYC, and you do want to tell your friends and family that you drove in Manhattan, you can get all the practice you need by going to the Indy 500.    We went once, but for this practice drive, you don’t even have to attend or  pay for a ticket, just travel around Georgetown Road, Crawfordsville Road, and 16th Street   ALL DAY LONG  from May 1st through June 1st.

And thanks to Bette Davis, I have the perfect opportunity to say, “Put on your seatbelt, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”      Enjoy ~ Kate

Categories: Bronx · Heartland · Humor
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Knish ~ on a cold winter’s day

December 31, 2008 · 2 Comments

On the way home from work today, I stopped at the ONLY Jewish deli  in the city, to pick-up an order I had called in – pastrami on rye and a knish. 

 

 While waiting in the pick-up line, the clerk and I started talking, with the clerk finally asking, “You’re not from around here, are you?”  “No – I’m originally from NY.”   ”Then you know Jewish food – right?  She continued, “Well, I just started working here and embarrassed to ask anyone, but what’s a knish?” 

 

I choked back a giggle – she’d been serving them and packing them, but hadn’t had one, hadn’t even broken one apart – god forbid. 

 

A typical knish (ka-nish) in NYC, looks like a fried, pastry rectangle about an inch or so thick, 3 to 5 inches long, and inside is mashed/chunky potatoes.

 

It’s served hot, you can eat it wrapped in a paper napkin in your hand, or on plate to cut and use a fork.  You drizzle mustard on it – spicy brown is the usual – and then dig in. 

 

That’s the usual but they can be square, baked, or round and not closed, filled with potatoes and – spinach, mushroom, pastrami, etc.

Recipe     

 

Of my years in the Bronx, I remember the food – the ethnic / cultural / racial diversity of food.  Jewish Challah bread and Irish soda bread; Irish Corn Beef and Cabbage and Hungarian Goulash; Puerto Rican pigeon peas and rice; African-American red beans and rice and barbecued pigs feet; German hot potato salad and cold pickled pigs feet; Italian spaghetti w/sausage and meatballs in the gravy – tomato sauce in the Bronx is GRAVY!

 

About knishes – it always amazes me that different cultures/ethnicites individualize each others foods – a knish by any other name could be a pierogi, an empanada, a calzone, or almost any other stuffed dough “pocket”.  Even a Chinese fried/steamed dumpling.   Enjoy!  

 

What’s your cross-cultural, or unique, favorite food ? 

Categories: Bronx · Food · Humor
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Big City ~ Small City

November 6, 2008 · 2 Comments

I’ve lived in Big Cities and Small Cities.  So, let’ say a Big City has a population of over 1million and a Small City, a population of under 1 million. 

In NYC, all the boroughs, except Staten Island, have a population of over 1 million, so that would make them all individual Small Cities.  Collectively, the population is a little over 8 million.  The unidentified Midwest city I currently live in, has a population of about 800,000. 

There are differences in this Big City – Small City social culture.  Here’s just a couple I’ve noticed ~ completely unbiased ~ 

Waiting for an elevator ~

  • In a Big City ~ People wait to the side, with the expectation that someone may be getting off the elevator.  After passengers disembark, those waiting then get on.
  • In a Small City ~ People stand in front of the elevator doors to wait. Sometimes very close. Sometimes so close, that when the doors open, the passenger inside, may not be able to get off. That disembarking passenger will unabashedly stand aside, while still inside the elevator car, and wait for someone to get on before they exit.

     The cultural difference ~

  • In a Big City ~ people stand away from the doors, so a herd of disembarking passengers doesn’t trample them.
  • In a Small City ~ the odds are, with the ratio of elevators to people, that ~
    • You will be the only person waiting for the elevator,
    • There will be no one in the elevator, or
    • You and the disembarking passenger are linked by blood, marriage, or high school football.

 Walking on city streets ~

  • In a Big City ~ Folks walk singularly or in twos and threes, and every once in a great while, four abreast.
  • In a Small City ~ Folks walk in two’s, three’s, four’s, five’s, six’s, seven’s, eight’s, nine’s, ten’s, eleven’s, by the dozen, or by the gross.

      The cultural difference ~

  • In a Big City ~
    • You walk alone if you’re alone or if you’re talking to your invisible friend.
    • You walk in two’s, if you’re with your significant other, engaged, married, or you’re a two-timing SOB with his slut.
    • You walk in three’s if you’re a couple being mugged.
    • You walk in four’s if it’s men’s or ladies night out, it’s 2am, and everyone is holding each other up, ’cause the drinks were 2 for 1.
  • In a Small City ~ you walk any way you want to because ~
    • You and everyone else on the street are related by blood, marriage, or high school football.

Categories: Bronx · Heartland · Humor
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