In just a few weeks, the Yankee home opener will mark the mental close of another winter.  Not a particularly hard one, but a Real New Yorker winter nonetheless.  The long new season, full of promise, lies ahead like a kid’s summer.  So much time, so much time.  How unlike the summers of adult life, which scoot by like the finger-flick of an iPad.

             Thinking back, I recall that the Yankee home openers of my youth were always midweek day games against Detroit.  It was an event.  The entire neighborhood would make plans to play hooky from work or school.  We’d take the #4 train down to 161^st Street and run down the “el” stairs and down River Avenue to get on the ticket line for our non-reserved upper deck nosebleed seats.

            Leader of the pack would be Big Larry.  Larry, our superintendent so long ago, died a few years ago.  He mumbled when he spoke; my name is Marty — he would call me “Moh.”  I think back and remember him swabbing our hallways on Sunday mornings, his hair and white tee-shirt drenched with sweat.  I remember the tattoos on his forearms.  They were faded blue-green.  I think they were of anchors. 

He was in the Pacific in the Big One, double-ya double-ya two.  Sometimes when we were lucky, he would take out the Japanese sword he “found” during his tour in the Pacific and let us do dangerous, non-PC things with it. 

             My dad was in the European Theater and he had it tough.  But even he admits that the guys in the Pacific had it even tougher.  Heat, malaria, an enemy you couldn’t see.  Booby traps.  Crazies charging at you, screaming like banshees.  Japanese Zeros, kamikazees — no thanks, I’d take The Bulge too, like my dad.

             Larry’s kids were our best friends.  His son, Larry –Lawrence, they called him — was my buddy.  Joanne was my sister’s good friend and the youngest Cathy was, well, the hapless tag-along little sister.   

             Larry’s day job was on 48^th Street, Music Row.  He repaired musical instruments.  He got his son a full set of Ludwig drums, Johnny Cash style, that is, one piece at a time, “out the back door” — a mismatched set.  In their basement super’s apartment Larry and I played drums loudly, and badly, along with the radio.

             I loved that apartment of theirs, and I was there at least as often as I was in my own.  There, we played music, as loudly as we wanted.  We ate sandwiches on the formica table without plates (horror of horrors!), we ate spaghetti until our stomachs burst — not boring old pot roast like we had.

             We talked sports, we talked about the Yankees and, in time, we talked about girls.  Time stretched before us and every spring Big Larry would take us all to the Big Ballpark in the Bronx.

             High up in the grandstand, surveying the subway, the Bronx County Courthouse, the Concourse Plaza Hotel (which wouldn’t let Elston Howard in, my father would always remind me), we were kings.  In our hands were pennants and pretzels, while the grownups tossed back beers.  We kids looked forward to the day when we, too, could call the beer guy and order a round.

             Big Larry was hardly rich — he probably couldn’t afford to take a gang to the new Stadium these days — but he was always generous.  Wherever that family went, I was invited along. Peach Lake,Jones Beach, Yankees opening day, I was always invited.  I loved when he asked me to help push-start his cars, which were always $50 clunkers. I was flattered that he thought I was big and strong enough to make a difference.

 My friend Larry would shrink in shame as we pushed these bombs down Webb Avenue until Big Larry popped the clutch, turned the ignition key and gassed it.  The engine caught and plumes of thick black exhaust smoke spiraled up to the Bronx heavens.
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             Once underway, Big Larry would push the buttons of the radio until he found a song he could snap his fingers to.  “Toe-tappers,” he’d call them. He’d lean back, and to his wife say, “Annie…light me up a Lucky.”  Annie, my surrogate mother, would light up two in her mouth and pass one up front to her husband.  Cool.

             Annie passed away as well, just weeks after Big Larry.

             Big Larry always worked hard, and he knew how to party.  At big holidays, he’d spend a fortune on Christmas presents for the kids.  For Easter, they all had spiffy new outfits. 

             When their relatives came over, it was “game on.”  Big Larry would play Eddie Albert and other pop and/or country crooners on his high-fi and they’d dance and dance, shouting and drinking until early in the morning.  I marveled at the magic, as before my very eyes cases and cases of Rheingold would disappear over an afternoon and evening of party-time.

             And it was truly magic how my sullen demeanor would brighten once I went down to that dark, dank basement apartment.  There, I’d join Big Larry, Annie, Lawrence, JoAnn, Cathy and the rest of the clan.  We’d watch the grownups dance and drink in a swirl of cigarette smoke and good cheer.  One time, Larry’s Aunt Agnes got really drunk and, glass in hand, slowly bent to sit on her chair, only she missed it by a good two feet and ended up plopping down on the bare wood floor, laughing and laughing, so hard, and we all laughed too, because it was a holiday and we were having good mindless fun, and who cared if she laughed so hard she peed on the floor – which made us all laugh even harder.

 The Yankee home opener is only weeks away.  It marks the mental end of another dreary winter.

             Goodbye, Larry.  Goodbye, Annie.  I miss you.  Rest in peace.

 Love,

 Moh

(Note: this post is excerpted from my soon-to-be-published anthology of short fiction, Home Front: A Collection.)