One month ago, we rescued two four-month old kittens. The rescue lady gave them funky names and we immediately renamed them. “We dub thee: Felix and Oscar.”

They are indeed an odd couple. The local rescue lady found them in back of a Target store on 225th Street in the Bronx. They were dumpster divers. Who knows what dangers they had to flee to stay alive just four months. “What kind of food do they eat?” we asked the rescue lady, wondering wet vs. dry, chicken vs. seafood, “pate” vs. chunky.

“They’ll eat anything,” she said. “Give them good stuff, but as for flavors and textures, they are not picky.”

She was right. When it’s mealtime, I bang on the food dishes with a spoon and they gallop behind me to their feeding spot, bury their noggins in their grub, and chow down.

They play-fight all night, like two ten-year old boys on a sleepover. They run through the house with reckless abandon. They play with toys. They kiss each other and fall asleep. An hour later, they’re at it again, swiping and swatting and being healthy kittens.

They take care of each other. We have a big apartment and they don’t have the run of the entire place. Not yet. So we keep the doors to some rooms closed. Off-limits to Felix and Oscar.

The other day, Oscar came over to me and snuggled. I petted him and he walked five yards away, and returned for petting. Rinse, repeat. Four times. It occurred to me: I haven’s seen Felix in awhile. Uh-oh…

I got up. Oscar led the way, tail straight up. I heard desperate kitten meowing, high pitched and pathetic. Hmmm. Where was Felix? He wasn’t in the hall closet. Maybe the powder room? Nope. Maybe the master bedroom? Nope. My office? Nope. Meowwwwwww. I opened the door to my wife’s office.

MEOWWWWW. There he was. Felix was lost and scared. How he got in there, I’ll never know. And they ain’t talking. This is the Bronx. Snitches get stitches.

Oscar knew, though. He looked out for his red-headed brother, and enlisted my aid.

And I became sad. So I had to do a deep dive to figure out what was bothering me. Didn’t take long. My sister and I are estranged. We once were besties, but that was a long, long time ago. We were dumpster divers in the central Bronx. We ate anything. I was found, but not my sister. Her life’s been tough and her struggles turned her bitter and dangerous to me. I tried. I really tried, to make the relationship work. No bueno. Time and time again she kneecapped me. Dirty deeds. Inappropriate behavior. I just couldn’t anymore.

So now, I see how our rescue kittens, Felix and Oscar, two tabbies, interact. They have a great chemistry. Two completely different personalities, but buds nevertheless. They have each other’s backs. One lies, and the other swears to it.

Sometimes the Kryptonite leaches out. I think about what might have been. Ah well. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

“Through thick and through thin,
All out or all in.
And whether it’s win, place or show.
With you for me and me for you,
We’ll muddle through whatever we do.
Together, wherever we go.”

Yesterday my wife and I got into our blue time machine — ok, it’s a Subaru, but whatever — and hurtled back 40 years.

We drove 15 miles to Jackson Heights, a lovely bedroom community in Queens, NY.

Ah, the old sod. We lived there from 1977 to 1985. We were kids.

We bit the bullet and moved to a lovely Jackson Heights “junior four” from our one bedroom on West 21st Street, because our Manhattan landlord jacked our rent to a lofty $275 a month.

We hated it there back in the bad old days of rampant NYC crime. It was affordable, but dull, and not particularly safe. Plus, all our friends lived in “the city”. In the late seventies, Brooklyn was still a dicey backwater. We figured we’d save money for a few years, and move back to where most of our friends lived. We figured wrong.

We lived in Jackson Heights at the time of Son of Sam, and so we called our apartment building (“The Berkeley”) The Berkowitz. My wife would wrap her red hoodie around her head when we walked back to our apartment at night. Why? “It’s my Son of Sam helmet,” she’d explain to perplexed guests.

There were shell casings on the glass-strewn courts where I played pick-up b-ball. There were cocaine gang shoot-’em-ups. There was gay-bashing.

Our apartment was gorgeous (sunken living room, roomy eat-in kitchen, so many closets that many were just empty). Our block was leafy. But it wasn’t “the city”.

One day the super plopped a document at our doorstep. It was a red-herring. I was a kid and had no idea what that meant. But I soon understood it was our ticket out of Jackson Heights. A few years later we flipped the apartment and moved to Park Slope, which was, as they say, “on the come.” It was 1985. The crack epidemic was just around the corner. But we survived and the neighborhood thrived, to the point where it became the butt of jokes, a place where tykes were allowed to run amok in restaurants, boutiques, and even bars.

But I digress.

Only one thing tied us to Jackson Heights over the ensuing years: our safety deposit box at Queens Community Bank on Northern Boulevard. They kept “our family jewels” (actually just “important papers”) because no Brooklyn bank near us had a vault.

From time to time, we pulled important family papers out of the vault. There was hardly anything left in our runty Box 141. Fast forward forty years. I received a letter from the bank. It was sold. The bank was scheduled for renovation. I was asked to remove the remaining contents of my box.

Hence the time machine back to our youth.

We drove around the old sod. There stood The Berkowitz. It was beautifully maintained, as ever. But New York City is all about change, and this neighborhood had changes aplenty. All for the better.

I thought about the old sod in recent years, whenever I read of the morgue trucks that backed up Elmhurst General, just blocks from our door. Jackson Heights was ravaged by Covid. The Grim Reaper had a field day. But our sense was the neighborhood turned the corner.

The Arepa Lady (who started her business with a cart under the Roosevelt Avenue EL trestles) had a real retail space right around the corner from The Berkowitz! A cool espresso shop replaced the crummy one-chair barber just down the street. The old basketball courts with Mobius strips for rims were transformed into a kiddie-park green-space that was a wonderland for tykes. A French bakery rivalling anything on Rue Saint-Honore sold masterful macarons.

There was a Greenstreets, bikes-and-pedestrians-only initiative on 34th Avenue! And restaurants galore!

Back in the day, my wife and I would repair to the Mark Twain Diner on Northern Boulevard for standard chee-burgee fare. It was a bit down-at-the-heels, but affordable and nearby. Now? It’s the Jax Inn Diner, and we’re here to report that it was hopping and VERY good.

We ate our breakfast and, for a brief moment, we were in our late twenties again. It was a time of crazy parties and lots of laughter, for the lion’s share of our lives lie ahead. We worked hard, and played hard.

We left Jackson Heights in 1985 and began our quarter-century Brooklyn residency. We had long, rewarding careers, got out of the NYC-native’s provincial mindset, and thrived in a much wider world. Our co-workers and clients were, indeed, some of the best and brightest. We raised our son in a glorious neighborhood.

But yesterday, forty years on, we were back to a time when we had to take a step down in order to get ahead. We thought about those days, equal parts struggle and hope, as we paid the check at the Jax Inn, got back in our time machine-slash-Subaru, drove down Northern Boulevard to 69th Street, turned right onto on the BQE, and headed home. But it won’t be long before we’re back, because I have a hankering for the roast chicken at Pio Pio on Northern Boulevard and 85th Street. And maybe some dumplings at Phayul on 74th Street, and….and…

Once, I loved so many of them. Retailers! I’m talking stores, here!

“To all the stores I’ve loved before
I traveled in and out your doors
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song (I dedicate this song)
To all the stores I’ve loved before.”

Ah, Rabsons. On the north side of 57th Street, across from Scandinavian Ski, and the upstairs hair salon where I sat patiently waiting for an apprentice stylist to cut my hair for free (for I was un hombre pobre once upon a time). Rabsons had the finest stereo equipment, and knowledgeable staff. There, I bought BIC cassette players, Thorens turntables, KLH speakers. It was a major step up from Lafayette’s, where I got my start in stereo component equipment.

Joe’s Army Navy...le sigh!!! My Fordham Road favorite! Once I started working at the NYPL on Marion Avenue as a 15-year old, I was rolling in dough, for I made $1/hour as a page. I bought my own shirts, jeans, Li’l Abner work boots, and sweatshirts at Joe’s. I spent hours in front of their windows near Jerome Avenue, planning my next purchases before buying new screens for my pipe at the cigar store on the corner. It was never the same for me, though, after the big fire. Although my dad bought fire-sale sneakers there for $1/pair, and wore them even though they smelled like ashes.

Eagle Provisions…be still, my foolish heart. This palace of Polish provisions gave me so much. Kielbasa. Kabonosy. Zywiec beer!!! Chrusciki! How many shirts did I ruin with your powdered sugar goodness? Where the grandpa would rub the buzz cut of my three year old son as I wheeled the kid around the narrow aisles of this Brooklyn mainstay on Fifth Avenue @18th Street. The family sold the building and I hear it’s now a condo. With an acai bar on the ground floor. WTAF!!!! Jaka szkoda, indeed. What a shame!

Uptown, it’s Alexander’s! I saved the best for last. Alexander’s was where I bought my recorded music, as a teen. Albums stamped “C” were $2.99. D’s were $3.49. E’s (usually double albums) were $3.99. The record department was in the basement. I entered through the 190th Street doors, heavy glass barriers to the world o’retail within. There was a certain solemnity to entering this sacred space. The vestibule had a scent of carpet off-gas. Or, maybe they piped in oxygen to energize the customer experience, as they do in Vegas casinos. For music, though, this was the place, along with Spinning Disc, Music Makers, and Cousin’s (where I got my German-made K55; another story for another day). George Farkas, Brooklyn native, opened this particular store in 1933. All the stores were closed by ’92.

I’ve loved many stores. These are but a few. Now, stores are quaint. Streets are blocked with UPS, FedX, Amazon, Fresh Direct, and Pea Pod trucks — and so many more. The goods come to you. Get them, return them, get new ones, return those…it’s as regular as the tides.

Feh!

“The winds of change are always blowing (blowing)
And ev’ry time I tried to stay (try to stay)
The winds of change continued blowing
And they just carried me a way (carried me away)”

My two cents: there’s a new breed of “silent majority” citizen in the U.S.

I am in this group. We don’t jump at the bait when we’re trolled. We don’t flap our arms and shake our heads in dismay. We lie low. We know the difference between right and wrong.

We are good people, helpful, kind, generous and observant. We’ve watched Trump turn over the years, like a quart of buttermilk in the August sun. Rancid. We are ITCHING to vote in November.

Quietly, we count the minutes.

It is said by men far wiser than me that one is alive as long as there is someone on Earth to remember that person.

Big Mort is very much alive, and it’s not just through me.

This rainy day I am behind my computer screen, plotting out my new story. My wife is watching the men’s finals of the Australian Open. It is Medvedev vs. Sinner. We think they’re both spectacular. I sort of like Daniil Medvedev a bit better, because he projects a certain Russian world-weariness that speaks to me. My bloodline runs through the Pale of Settlement, via Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania.

As I write, I hear a scream from the living room. It’s from my five-foot one and three-quarter inch waif of a wife. She bellows: “gahd…DAMMIT!!!!”

After the better part of half a century together, she’s heard my reaction to strikeouts, dropped passes, missed free throws, blown calls. That is: “gahd-DAMMIT!!!”

See, the thing is, I got it from my father. Big Mort. Conerly throws an interception? “Gahd-DAMMIT!!!” He’d pound his chair, pace in front of the TV, and scream. My mom would feel his forehead. He’d be burning up. One time, the thermometer read 102.3 degrees during a Giants – Browns game.

So that’s where I got the “gahd-DAMMIT!!!”

And now, my tiny wife does the “gahd-DAMMIT!!!”

So in some small way, my emotionally distant, PTSD-ridden, sometimes violent father is still alive, now through the mouth of my wife, who was hardly a fan of Big Mort.

There’s a lot of screaming in the living room right now. Sinner just won in five sets. Medvedev is denied again.

“Gahd-DAMMIT!!!”

See you again soon, Dad.

The Les Paul and Mary Ford cover of “How High the Moon” came out in the year of my birth. It became a number-one hit.

I loved the song because Mary Ford’s overdubbed vocals made little-kid-me laugh. A whole lot. Which was important because my household wasn’t humor-driven. At all. Mine was a dark, Dickensian world, ruled by dour dullards.

No wonder I flipped over Mary Ford’s vocals. They sounded funny, in the way that “The Chipmunk Song” by Alvin and the Chipmunks would when I was a man-of-the-world second-grader in P.S. 86.

I also liked the lyrics to “How High”. This song first came out in 1940, and was a “serious” song, but for the little guy that was me, this version was “up” and aspirational:
“Somewhere there’s music / How faint the tune / Somewhere there’s heaven / How high the moon?”

I learned, however, that life is always one step forward/two steps back. As the Dead sang “…’cause when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door…”

Still, I hoped that, somewhere, there might be a “heaven”: better things ahead, with music, and laughter, and love, and — dare I say it — FUN!

The mindless movies of the era told me that my teen years would be a hoot. Cars. Girls. Beer on the beach. Life told me otherwise. My teen years were marinated in “uh-oh-the-draft” Viet Nam panic. The sixties exploded, as I nearly did.

I held on tight to the thought that “somewhere there’s music, how faint the tune…” Every week, the Village Voice print ads — and radio spots on WNEW-FM — offered a smorgasbord of music. I feasted as best I could.

The Fillmore. Vanguard, Bottom Line, Sweet Basil, Cookery, Blue Note, Max’s, Cedar Tavern, West Boondocks, Schaefer Festival. (Never made it to Corso on 86th to see Hector Lavoe.)

The music was excellent, plentiful, and affordable. And logistically simple. For the Fillmore, and Schaefer concerts, I’d march down to Cousin’s on Fordham Road, and the clerk would pull a stack of printed tickets held by a thick red rubber-band from a counter drawer and peel off my ducats.

Live music was ubiquitous. It was fun. And it provided the sense of generational community that helped us hold it together during daunting periods of history. I think about those days now when ticket prices for the Stones at MetLife Stadium next spring start at $199 and reach $1,700 (plus fees). That would be $25 to $230 in 1970 dollars. My 1970 CSN&Y tickets were $5.50, no fees.

I am reminded of the New York music scene and its power by today’s edition of Lucian Truscott Newsletter, https://luciantruscott.substack.com/. I urge you to check it out and subscribe. Lucian is the man.

Music is more important than ever, especially in these times of tension. It’s too bad that live performance tix for major artists are so pricey.

The good news is that so much quality music, by uber-talented though lesser-known acts, is available at intimate venues. My 2024 hope is to get out more and thrill to the sound of the snare and bass just before the leader counts down and the fun begins. GOOSEBUMPS!!!

Les Paul and Mary Ford were right: “Somewhere there’s music/How faint the tune/Somewhere there’s heaven/How high the moon” .

The young couple moved into our tired apartment house off Fordham Road one humid Bronx summer, just about the time the twelve-year old me and my friend Larry started worshipping the publicity still of Sophia Loren in “Boy On a Dolphin”.

The husband of this couple was a trim, pleasant-enough guy in the Dick York-as-Darrin-in-“Bewitched” mode. But his wife! THAT WIFE!

Larry and I fell in love with this juicy peach of a person. The woman had fire in her eyes, wore fishnet stockings, high heeled pumps and tight skirts. A beehive hairdo completed her look. We were very confused: what was a woman LIKE THAT doing with a nothing like HIM????

She was our queen. We were two goobers ever-eager to please her. We held the door for her and smiled. We held her groceries as she fumbled for her keys. We looked at each other after she closed her apartment door behind her and widened our eyes. Did you see what she was wearing today??? OH MY GOD!!!

By Thanksgiving we saw her baby bump. The entire building was enthralled. A new neighbor was coming! By Easter the couple was wheeling their baby boy around the neighborhood. Yes, she was now a mommy. But “Darrin’s” wife still was our heartthrob.

By summer there was another baby bump. Then, another kid. Then, another baby bump. Then, another kid. One of the building’s wits said she wasn’t raising a family, she was feeding her litter. By the time I was a freshman in college, there were five or them. Or, was it six? It became hard to keep count, especially since I was distracted by my seventeen-credit course load.

Fast forward to New Year’s Day of my senior year. I hadn’t seen that “new couple” and their brood for what seemed like years. And I was never a fan of this time of the year — “the holidays” — and the pressure to spend extravagantly on over-priced, forced “gaiety”. That year, money was especially tight, since I was saving for my big move out of that west Bronx dump.

There I was, in front of the private house just south of my old apartment building, washing and waxing my very used, Earl Scheib-painted, ’66 VW Karmann-Ghia. I wore a sweatshirt, for the temperature had moderated to the low fifties, and all of the Bronx’s yellow and poop-studded snow had melted. Perfect car washing weather.

I paused to admire my work. There, trudging up the hill from the Jerome Avenue EL train, was the “new couple”. Clearly, they had had a rough night, but…my pre-teen heart-throb was not looking too good. It was like she’d aged fifty years since I’d last seen her. Oh my darling, what has become of you? Can six kids in less than eight years do that to a person? I guess so!

He, “Darrin”, forced a nod of acknowledgement as he passed. She, on the other hand, recognized the college-aged, now-athletic me and gave me a big wide smile. I gave her a big smile and a “happy New Year, guys!” But my heart sank. What happened to my dream girl? Her ravaged teeth, her complexion, her figure — how could this be?

I continued to detail my car and thought about how Larry and I once long ago carried on about our dream girl, in-between furtive glances at Sophia Loren’s poster taped to my friend’s bedroom wall. The promise of the new year and a new apartment stabilized my wobbling interior gyroscope, set off-kilter by the sight of the once-glamorous woman staggering into the building.

I vowed then and there, as I polished the chromed VW hubcaps, that should I be lucky enough to woo a woman like THAT, I would make darn sure that she was treated right, not — as the building’s super later commented — “like a horse ridden hard and put away wet.”

My work that day was finished, and my local drinking establishment — Durty Nellie’s, on Kingsbridge Road — awaited. Life goes on, I learned, as it will two weeks from now, when a new generation of revelers — or, alternatively, car washers — makes stories of their own to tell, and retell.

Wishing you all better things for 2024!

Today we had to say goodbye to our 15 year-old furry friend, Fizz the Cat. Here’s a photo of him as I choose to remember the little guy:

Fizz was rescued from a kill shelter in rural Pennsylvania by my son and his girlfriend at the time. Fizz survived college life with a bunch of rowdy kids. After my son graduated, he took Fizz, sans girlfriend, on a year-long VISTA program adventure in eastern Montana. There, my son was an EMT on a rig in the oil town of Sidney, and Fizz spent his days with another, lesser, cat in Section 8 housing.

After his hitch, my son returned to Brooklyn just as my wife and I were making plans to pull up stakes and move to the northwest Bronx. It was a time of turmoil, as one can imagine, as we were ripping our lives up by the roots after 25 years in the borough of churches.

But there was another wrinkle. Our brave 12-year old boxer doggie, Genghis, was failing. He never made the trip with us to the promised land, but he did get to meet the youngster that was Fizz.

Genghis and Fizz did not hit it off that steamy summer of 2010. Genghis looked up from his green Cabela bed with an expression that said, “who’s this little jerk?”

Fizz looked at the 85-pound muscled monster that was Genghis and took a swipe at his face, switchblade claws out and ready to rumble.

The problem did not last long. On July 22, just a few weeks after Fizz arrived in NYC and days before we moved, we had to put Big G down. He was riddled with cancer. His demise was a shitshow. He fought off the narcotic with every last bit of his waning strength.

Finally he succumbed.

And we moved. Fizz loved Bronx life. He ran around the apartment like a nutball from the time we moved until just a few days ago. As The Doors famously sang, “No one here gets out alive….” True enough, for over the last few years, it was Fizz’s turn to incrementally fail. Now a senior cat, he had developed diabetes and I had to watch his weight, check his urine, and shoot him up with 2.5 units of insulin twice a day, making sure he ate his food first.

Our lives were enmeshed in Fizz’s medical metronome.

And things were pretty good until just last Sunday. As I said, Fizz had been in decline. He could no longer jump onto tables and beds like he used to but, hey, I don’t shoot hoops anymore. We age.

But the lives of our pets are so compressed. Sunday, he would not eat. Monday he refused food. Yesterday he wouldn’t even partake of his water-play at the kitchen sink. Not drinking OR eating? Not good. I made an appointment with our vet.

Last night he yowled all night. He would only stop when one of us would say “it’s alright, Fizzy; we’re here. Go to sleep.” Then he’d relax until the next round of yowling in a way that communicated: “Mom? Dad? Help me, I’m scared!”

Today was even worse. He couldn’t move about, had trouble navigating his litter box, hell — he could barely lift his head. This was Genghis Redux. We’d seen this movie before.

This morning I called the vet first thing. I mentioned that this may well be an end-of-life visit. They moved up our appointment.

In his transporter, Fizz — the little nut that once could hop from the dinner table to the high dining room window sill, and leap recklessly from chair to chair — just laid there, still as a stone.

We poured him onto the stainless steel exam table. The vet tech turned on some new age music that he said was to keep Fizzy calm. But Fizz was already beyond calm. The music was probably for me and my wife.

The vet talked about options, sussing us out to determine if we really were bound and determined to play God. My wife and I agreed to leave Fizz a shred of dignity. Modern medicine could have patched up his issues in the short term, but I suspected that in months to come we’d be lurching from crisis to crisis until the inevitable finally occurred. My thinking was that I’d opt for being a week early than a week late.

Fizz rested quietly as the music played and his fate in the book of life was sealed. I think (I hope!) he was good with it. Fifteen years, starting with an escape from a kill shelter, then on to dealing with college kids in their ratty dorm, followed by a cross-country schlep to Montana, then back to Brooklyn, then on to thirteen-plus years in the Bronx.

I marked today’s date, November 29, on my calendar. Now I have two pet Yahrzeits to commemorate. Genghis was on July 22, 2010 and, now, Fizzy’s.

“Take care of yourself today,” the vet said as I gave the cat that was Fizz one last kiss on his grey fur keppy.

And now, I stare about our apartment. I look for Fizz on the dining room table. Nope. I look on the terrace, where he’d find a sunny spot and snooze. Nope. I wait to hear his little bell as he comes over and meows: “Daddy, it’s dinner time. Gimme my grub and shoot me up.” Nope. Well, maybe the little asshole is sleeping on my bed. Nope.

There’s his scratching post. There are his toys. There’s his box of syringes. But no Fizz.

It’s amazing how attached one can get to an eleven-pound rescue cat. I think it’s because both fur babies and owners reciprocally provide 100 percent pure, uncut love, straight from our hearts. No wonder it hurts so bad when we go into sudden withdrawal.

The herd is thinning for us. This week we lost two members of the team.

My wife lost a long-ago, back in the nabe, friend, Bo. A great guy and talented musician from a neighborhood brimming with artistic achievement.

And just last night, we lost Uncle Petey. He wasn’t really our uncle. And he wasn’t really that old. But he was in bad shape for many years and, finally, he succumbed as the walls of poor health closed in.

He was a gentle Panda of a man who was like comfort food on two legs. In that sense, he was our “uncle.”

When I met the young woman who would become my wife, I was introduced to a world of energetic, creative men and women VERY unlike the meat-and-potatoes crew I grew up with, for I came of age in one of the bronxier sections of the Bronx. It was a place where you went to school, you joined the military, you got a steady job (Post Office, Board of Ed, Metro North — those would do just fine), got married, had kids, and retired at sixty-five. The “lives of quiet desperation” (thank you, Thoreau).

Not this crew. Nope. This new group was full of theater majors. At first, my opinion of theater majors was even lower than that of education majors. That is, “lazy, not-too-bright kids intent on securing their 2-S deferment and coasting for four years.”

I soon learned that these folks had energy, brains, ambition and talent up the wazoo. They pushed and pushed and became musicians, film directors, producers, and cinematographers, book publishers, disc jockeys, award-winning comedy writers, and actors, as was the case with Uncle Petey.

So many people give you the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” BS about their stillborn artistic endeavors. Here’s a typical one: “Yeah, I coulda written a book, but who has the time?”

Uncle Petey worked his butt off honing his craft, making connections, and pounding away on doors. It sounds corny but he was a “people person”, the kind of guy who methodically weaved webs of like-minded folks.

When I first met him and that post-collegiate crew, he held low stakes, nickel-and-dime, poker nights in his fan-conditioned, top floor walkup dump in the far East 90s, across from Knickerbocker Towers. It was Petey, me and my wife, and a rotating cast of their fellow theater majors.

I smile at the memory of those raucous nights. Lots of laughs in his cramped kitchen, back when we were in our twenties and giddy with good health. We barely had two nickels to rub together but our futures were before us. Through the adventures and achievements of Uncle Petey and that crowd, I found my own path out of my maze of mediocrity.

Uncle Petey was relentless in the pursuit of an acting career. No surprise, then, that over the years he got plenty of work. Work that took him to California where he became a beloved character actor who paired with bold-faced names. He got regular radio work. He came East and started a theater troupe. He earned his keep giving improv lessons to new generations of aspiring talent. From NYC, to London, to Indianapolis, a lot of people absorbed Uncle Petey’s passion and love of the craft.

Now he is gone but he’ll never be forgotten. He’s in my personal Hall of Fame, a pantheon of one-of-a-kind nut-balls, with others of blessed memory such as Uncle Kenny and Uncle Richie.

When I was a little kid, my sister and I would roll our eyes when my grandma would talk about life experiences and intone, in her heavy Yiddish accent, “…vell….as long as you have your health….” We’d snicker and laugh our bloody heads off.

Yeah, well who’s laughing now?

Alev hasholem, Uncle Petey. One of the good ones.

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today.” Wimpy! That’s the first thing I thought of when I read that a local bar, actually THE BEST local bar — An Beal Bocht — was using “cheeseburger” as a prompt in a Moth-adjacent Wednesday night event.

The second thing I thought of was my Uncle Arthur. Artie! My dad’s brother in law and the bane of my father’s existence. Arthur was a gratuitously cruel, uncultured arriviste.
Arthur sold home appliances. He was a commissioned clerk in a Fairfield County strip mall store. He and his family lived in my grandfather’s big old Victorian house in Bridgeport.

The kid that was me marveled at how Dad, uncharacteristically, would hold his temper as Uncle Arthur bloviated. Artie berated his wife, Dad’s sister, sponged off his wife’s family, and trolled my father in issues related to World War II (they were both in the Army, European Theater, but my Dad saw combat and Arthur toiled in Graves Registration), politics and business. “So Mort!” he’d taunt, raising a glass of Wild Turkey, as my father’s blood pressure rose. “You make it? You make it yet? I made it! You?”

“Why don’t you punch him in the nose?” I’d ask my Dad as he drove our ten-year old Pontiac home from Connecticut to our Bronx dump, back when I was a little boy.

“Ahhh. Empty barrels make the most noise.” That’s all my Dad would say.

But, back to cheeseburgers! The Connecticut contingency invited us poor relations up for a BBQ once in awhile. One time, Uncle Arthur popped some pre-formed patties on his charcoal grill in his — or, rather, my grandfather’s — backyard. He split open a bag’s worth of Wonder Bread buns and unwrapped a package of Kraft Singles.

And then, he began to bloviate, oblivious to his culinary duties. And, as he talked smack, trying so hard to “engage” my father, he absently flipped the burgers.

One by one, our meal slipped through the grill to die a Viking death in the fiery ashes below. Uncle Arthur began to curse. It was somehow his wife’s fault. It was somehow Weber’s — the grill’s maker — fault. Then, the haymaker:

It was my father’s fault!!! Yes, he flipped the switch; my Dad distracted him and thus the protein perished. And as he screamed, the buns ignited in Wonder-ous fury and burned to black.

Everyone laughed at the sight of this obnoxious heathen, this…this…EMPTY BARREL of a man, flail about after cluelessly setting the burgers ablaze.

Everyone but my father. And I’ll tell you straight up: never in my life was Dad one to give advice. In fact, one time, my sixth-grade self asked him to help me solve a weighty life-strategy question and he said, simply: “I don’t give advice.”

But in not laughing at Uncle Arthur, I learned something. There’s a popular old Kenny Rogers song, “Coward of the County” and the payoff line is: “Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.” But Dad held it in, because he knew the full extent of Arthur’s backstory. Hardscrabble upbringing on the Lower East Side. A brother who was, well, today we’d say he was “troubled.” Select your own descriptor. He took a razor sharp shears from his mother’s sewing basket and stabbed the kid that was Artie in the neck.

And it was downhill from there. So the amateur shrinks among us can think of defense mechanisms such as compensation and displacement. Whatever it was, Uncle Arthur had a lot of psychic scar tissue. Enough that even my Dad, the six-four dreadnaught with the hair-trigger temper, knew who and what he was dealing with.

Very damaged goods.

Inadvertently, my father gave me sage advice after all.

That’s my “cheeseburger” story, and I’m sticking to it.