THE MEXICAN GARDENER PART II

Posted on June 26, 2014 by xaviertrevino

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Last week I got a call from the woman whose garden I’d worked on last month, when I was there last as I was leaving she asked if I could do some indoor handyman work as well, hang some pictures and such. I said I would and gave her my number.

When Elly called, that’s her name, Elly; she said:

            “Xavier, can you come to hang those pictures? And I also have a few more piles of leaves out back I need you to pick up.”

Elly and her husband are elderly, probably late 80’s and pretty infirm. She uses two canes to get around. I’ve only seen the husband sitting on the couch, so I couldn’t tell you how he gets around. I’m glad to be of help to nice people who need it, so I said sure thing, I’ll be up on Sunday, 11am.

I packed my Milwaukee mini drill and driver and assorted bits and set off for east 88th Street.

When I got there Elly greeted me warmly and took me out back.

            “Xavier, Larry got a new hose, so if you could do whatever you were going to do before, please do that, and pick up those piles of leaves, and if you don’t mind could you plant a few plants for me?”

Planting! I was going to do some actual planting, and become a complete gardener.

            “Of course I’ll plant the plants for you, no problem.”

But first, there was the question of hooking up the power washer that I’d only used once over a month ago, and then it was after Larry, who contracted me for this job had set it up. It’s his power washer and had been sitting in Elly’s backyard since then.

Larry had gotten a very nice grey hose with a quick release connection, and I didn’t know that with this connection you don’t need to turn off the water. So I went down to the basement in search of the valve, the one that sprayed water everywhere the last time we turned it on because of a hole in the hose. The boiler room where the valve was located was locked, and that prompted a call to Larry, who has the key. Elly doesn’t.

The last time I was there Elly showed me a cork bulletin board she wanted me to hang for her husband. I had taken out my glasses to read the instructions and left them there, and after a few phone calls my friend Janet, Larry’s wife emailed me to say she’d retrieved my glasses and I could come for them at any time. I thought about asking Larry about my glasses but I’m seeing them socially next week so we just dealt with the water situation when Larry came downstairs.

I have to mention that when I tried the quick release connection I couldn’t get it off, so it was good that Larry was here. He showed me how to do it, and how to get the power washer started. I’d forgotten in the few short weeks since the last time.

So I was all set up to power wash approximately 400 square feet of moss covered concrete, flagstone, brick, and AstroTurf.

I started with the planting, there were several plants in their little plastic holders and Elly had set them about where she wanted them planted. I got the spade and started digging up little holes for the plants, neatly inserting each one and patting down the earth around them. I didn’t talk to the plants, the lovely Danusia does that, so these plants would have to do with my magic touch.

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I got the plants in the ground, then I packed all of the dead leaves and branches into two large garbage bags, and was ready to power wash.

When I had done Larry’s backyard, in another building a few blocks away, it was all concrete save for the back part which is dirt and has all of the plants and trees on it. I splashed water all over my shoes and myself but mostly it was just water.

Elly’s garden was covered with years of moss growth, an inch thick in some places. And under the green moss is rich black loam, which when mixed with a powerful spray of water becomes little droplets of black. My legs were spattered with little black dots of dirt, and my limited-edition made for The Gap Converse sneakers were soaked and dirt-encrusted.

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I should have worn flip-flops, god knows I have enough pairs of them; but I wore my gardening sneakers, as I’ve come to see my limited edition Cons, and was going to go home squishing.

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It started out good; I went along the concrete borders of the garden plot, watching as the moss peeled away like paint. I used to use a power washer to peel away paint from radiators, now I was peeling away moss from concrete. The problem is, the moss does not magically disappear. It turns into mud, and it splatters everywhere, but mostly on me.

It got really tough when I reached the concrete near the house; the concrete here was very old and rough and had plenty of nooks and crannies for the moss to take root.

Look at this picture; the black spots are mold roots dug in deep.

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I had to stop frequently to sweep the mounds of moss gunk out of the puddles of water (something else that doesn’t magically disappear) and get them into garbage bags. With all the water going in the bags along with the moss, they were going to be heavy.

It seemed never-ending, sweep up moss here, and more moss appears there.

There is a two-foot by ten-foot section in front of the house right before the Astro Turf begins that’s made from three flagstone pieces and bordered with red bricks. As I started to wash the moss off of the brick I realized that the only thing holding it all together was the moss. And the moss was deeply rooted in the highly porous brick. More spattering and squish.

I finally got to the back of the yard, turning green concrete back to it’s original beige color. Moss and mildew gone! I swept up all the wet moss I could, and again with the broom coaxed as much water as I could into the earth and the two drains I found set into the concrete. I took all of the garbage bags out to the garbage space in front of the building, switched from the power washer back to the garden sprayer head on the hose (lots less pressure) and washed as much black as I could off the pathways and Astro Turf. Then I sat down on the steps leading up to the house to see what I could do about my dirt encrusted legs and kicks. Elly had given me a couple of towels, and they came in handy now.

I took off the kicks, gave them a spray with the hose, and wiped them down as well as I could. I did the same to my legs, and wiped my feet dry before stepping into my squishy sneakers. It wasn’t too bad. I was ready to hang the pictures, it was now 3pm and I’d been at it since 11. I was tired but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to put a few screws in a wall.

Elly had other ideas, though.

“My god, I’m tired just watching you work! Let me pay you for the yard work, and let’s hang pictures some other time, OK?”

            “Sure, no problem,” I said, pocketing my cash. I’m always willing to lend a helping hand.

 

 

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FROM NIGHTBIRDS TO LABAMBA

Posted on June 25, 2014 by xaviertrevino

 

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My friend Sarah who lives at 172, the building I’m doing a 2-week stint in said she loved the Yuppiefacation of Ave A, which I posted on Saturday. She said she liked reading about how the neighborhood used to be.

The night I “trained” with the night guy, George I had to listen to George tell me all about the history of the building, where he’s worked for 31 years. I finally told him I used to live on Houston Street in the 80’s and was familiar with the building.

I didn’t tell him that I had friends who lived in the building back then and that I remembered him, the little Ecuadorian immigrant with thick glasses that sat in the big black chair by the door.

Of course, I had no idea he was Ecuadorian, I’ve just found out, but I do remember George. Luckily he does not remember me. The boss and one of the other guys can’t figure me out; they think I’m a spy for the management company or something.

But talking to George brought back a lot of memories, like the first friend I had that lived here, rather it was his girlfriend that lived here and he lived with her; Dave Buck.

Dave was a singer and a trumpet player, he played for the B-52’s as well as being their road manager. He also had his own band, the Swollen Monkeys.

Dave bought his girlfriend Mary Jane (no joke) flowers everyday. I remember going to the flower shop on Ave A on the ground floor of 172 and watching him order flowers and fill out the little cards for MJ.

Dave introduced me to another guy, Knox who was the guitarist in the Swollen Monkeys. We all became fast friends and hung out a lot. Knox eventually moved into 172, I know it was an apartment on the 4th floor facing the schoolyard. MJ lived on the 4th floor also, but she faced Ave A and moved out when she broke up with Dave.

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But Knox and his wife Laura stayed, and the Swollen Monkeys played on.

Dave was very enterprising and a great promoter, and he scoured the East Village for places to gig.

We used to hang out at a bar on Second Ave between 4th and 5th called Nightbirds. A Chinese guy named Tony who was rumored to have been the head of the narcotics unit of the Hong Kong police until he retired with enough money to buy a bar on Second Ave owned it.

Tony was a thin man in his early 60’s who wore a cigarette perpetually pasted to his upper lip, wagging up and down as he spoke and dropping ash everywhere. He reminded me of the Vietnamese guy in The Deerhunter who took bets on the games of Russian roulette.

I wondered why there were two owls on the sign in front of the bar sandwiching the word NIGHTBIRDS until I figured out that’s what owls are called in Chinese, night birds.

Nightbirds was a dive bar with a pool table and cheap drinks. There was a guy named Sammy, an ex-marine who always wore marine-issue camouflage fatigues with white Addias sneakers and had a shaved head who played pool there every night. I told him I was an army vet but he wasn’t interested in being friends.

Dave wanted to play at the bar, but Tony didn’t think it would work. Then Tony bought another bar, a place up on 12th Street that was a notorious transvestite prostitute hangout called LaBamba. This was where the Swollen Monkeys could play.

I spent many a weekend there watching Dave and Knox and the rest of the band play raucous sets with little more than their friends and bored drag queens that refused to be displaced as an audience. But I loved them; Dave was a wonderful front man, a sort of punk-rock Fred Astaire with his widow’s-peak short-cropped hair and zoot suits. There was a song I’ll never forget, “On Vacation From Vacation.” I can still hear it in my head on occasion.

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I had another set of friends, and one of them, Steven was a big fan of the Pyramid Club, which was fairly new to the neighborhood in the early 1980’s. When it opened it was basically a Punk-New Wave venue. One night Steven dragged me down to the Pyramid to hear a new band from Texas called The Butthole Surfers. I already didn’t like the name, so I was prepared not to like the band, which I am now sorry for. I left after a few songs; they were just too crazy for me. Now I have Pepper in my iTunes library.

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The Butthole Surfers

I did frequent the Pyramid for a while, scoring drugs for people and such, listening to what I could of the music, but the scene I really liked was at LaBamba.

There was trouble; the cops were always trying to bust the prostitutes, noise complaints, liquor license violations, the list goes on. My life went on and changed direction, going out to hear music was not one of my big priorities after a time. In 1987 my wife got pregnant and I stopped going to LaBamba, or any other place for that matter.

Dave was killed in a hit and run accident in 1988 and Knox left the band and became a member of the Psychedelic Furs around the same time.

Tony sold LaBamba and somewhere in the 90’s it became Dick’s, an ordinary Gay bar. But if you walk by you can still see where the letters “LaBamba” were attached to the panel above the door.

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LaBamba

The Pyramid is still there and thriving.

I can’t for the life of me remember exactly where Nightbirds was, except that it was on Second between 4th and 5th on the east side of the street. But I know the ghost of Sammy the ex-marine is still playing pool there somewhere.

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TV OR NOT TV

Posted on June 23, 2014 by xaviertrevino

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I bought an Apple TV thing 6 weeks ago, I’d been thinking about it since I lost my job and it’s getting tough to afford $123.69 a month for my Directv. When I got Directv I was trying to get FIOS, but there is no FIOS in Brooklyn, so the phone company said they were offering to “bundle” my TV, phone and internet for only $79 a month. I did this because I was tired of getting chiseled by Time Warner just for cable. The $79 became $134 a month, $92 for the satellite service and $42 for the Internet provided by Verizon. We only use our cell phones so the landline was declined.

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5 or 6 years later, the DIRECTV is up to $123.69 and the Internet from Verizon is up to $52.49. And by the way, if it rains or snows really hard, you get no TV at all. Heavy cloud cover will block your satellite signal. So, cable outage or weather outage, your choice. In 7 years here on Broadway the Internet’s gone out only twice.

Apple TV sells for $99, and that’s it. But what do you get for your $99? You don’t get to watch Fargo on FX, that’s for sure.

You do get a little black box “the size of a hockey puck” as the kid at the apple store so aptly described it. And you get this remote:

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The ATV app on the phone, the lame remote on the left.

This is about the lamest, meat headed remote I’ve ever encountered in my life. You get a screen like this:

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And you have to click on one letter at a time to spell something out, and we activated the Lovely Danusia’s Netflix account it took 10 minutes just to type everything in letter by letter, since her email is 21 characters and password 10. Then it said the password was wrong. You would expect a better interface than this from Apple.

I’d downloaded the Apple TV remote app onto my iPhone, so we used this for the second try and though faster, it still said the password was invalid. She went through the whole process of changing the password, and we were on after 20 minutes worth of work. We figured that was it, the next time we log on it will be in the memory. No such luck, we had to go through the same process all over again, down to the thing telling us the password did not match. At this point I just wanted to flush my $99 hockey puck down the toilet.

I had registered on HBO GO since I still have an account, I haven’t turned off the DIRECTV yet- so we signed on and selected a Tom Berenger movie Break Down, where a chilling Busta Rhymes throws a baby out the window and orders the throat of one of his “Hoes” cut. The movie had a bluish tinge to it and I thought it was the cinematographer’s choice until we tried to watch another movie, also blue-tinged. Also the picture quality of Apple TV is not exactly HD.

So, after an attempt at watching another fuzzy blue movie I put it back on DIRECTV and watched something I’d recorded on the DVR. I’m going to miss the DVR feature on the box.

What are the other choices on Apple TV?

Here’s the screen:

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I won’t discuss them all, most aren’t even worthy of discussion.

Here goes: Netflix- I already told you about that.

Hulu plus- haven’t tried it yet but it doesn’t look promising.

HBO GO- I talked about this too.

Watch ABC. When I hook up my digital antenna I won’t need this.

Disney, Disney XD, and Disney Jr.- Not for me.

PBS- this we watched, after selecting a PBS station (Connecticut, Boston, NJ or NY) and signing on.

A&I and The History channel- Yes.

Lifetime, Bloomberg TV and Sky news- I don’t think so.

The Weather Channel was a favorite till DIRECTV got rid of it, so yes, I’ll watch.

ALL the sports channels are a no, I only watch sports if the Yankees are in the playoffs or in the Series, despite my momentary lapse last week for the last Rangers game. Red Bull sounds interesting if they have the air races. There’s nothing like watching a plane fly fast.

There’s a bunch of other stuff I’ll never watch, Crackle, Vevo, Korean TV, etc. I’d watch the Smithsonian channel.

The thing of it is, even if you want to watch any of these channels you have to deal with that stupid remote, and scroll through tons of uninteresting crap till you find something worth watching. A lot of the things you come across on the History channel, for instance, are 2 and 3 minutes long. You have to keep picking things to watch. Maybe Apple TV is designed to get people to stop watching TV; it’s such a chore. I’m certainly finding hard to cancel the satellite and the choices of a million things to watch, in un-blue tinged HD to boot!

But it always comes down to the money, which I haven’t got a lot of nowadays.

I’m glad I like to write, right now the TV’s off and I’m entertaining myself by trying to be entertaining to others. But then again I do like the mind-numbing stimulation (isn’t that an oxymoron?) that the brightly colored screen in front of me provides. And that satellite remote is a hell of a lot easier to use.

I will cancel the DIRECTV; I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. I waited until Fargo was over, and I’m prepared. I have a good digital antenna I brought a couple of years ago for the bedroom TV, it’s been sitting in the closet since. Now I just have to get off my ass and up on the roof to install it. At least the wires are already there; I’m going to use the cable from the satellite dish to hook it up. I’m sure they’re not taking the wire; they probably won’t even take the dish. But I know they want their DVR box back. Stay tuned.

 

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THE YUPPIEFACATION OF AVE A

Posted on June 21, 2014 by xaviertrevino

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Last night I had to take out the garbage from 172, and if there’s any more motivation I need to find a new line of work it’s not ever having to that again.

172 has a compactor, that’s a machine that squeezes all the garbage that comes down the compactor chute in a building into a ‘sleeve’ of thick black plastic and is tied off at either end with special tie wires. There’s even a little tool that twists the wire tight so the garbage doesn’t spill out. The resulting bags are as big as the operator would like it to get, but they average 5 feet. And they are heavy and unwieldy.

I’ve used one before, years ago when I did the garbage at a place called River House way uptown, so I knew what to expect. But I still wasn’t prepared for it.

At 144 there is no chute, no compactor. The garbage is picked up by hand from the service entrances of the apartments. Then the small bags of garbage are stuffed into large black plastic bags which are then tied shut. These bags are kept in the courtyard, then on garbage night carried up a flight of stairs to the street. The average bag weighed 30 pounds and I always looked at it as a strength-training exercise, one in each hand.

Here at 172 the bags average 50 to 60 pounds, but luckily all I had to do was wrestle them onto a big dolly and roll them up to the street from the courtyard.

And therein is the rub.

I noticed one of the guys that showed me how it is done would use the wire-tie tool, which has a hook at one end to poke holes in the bags after he tied them up. This is ostensibly to let the air out of the bags, but it also lets out whatever putrefying and fermenting liquid is in the bag. This liquid smells like throw up and after the first two bags I wrestled my pants were covered in it.

I got all the black bags up to the street (the courtyard is lower than the street and there is an incline) and stopped to catch my breath. Just then two very pretty young women in very short skirts and teetering heels were walking by. They stopped and looked at me standing down in the courtyard, and one of them, the taller of the two, yelled down:

            “Take out the garbage! It’s garbage night! What are you waiting for?”

I wanted nothing less than to run up the incline and punch her in her pretty blond face, see some of her carefully applied makeup run.

They shared a raucous laugh together and sauntered off on their teetering heels.

Mind you I only felt that for a second, I knew they are just drunk privileged kids that don’t know any better, that if they live in this neighborhood they are either trust fund babies or marvelously talented.

After finishing the garbage I went back to my post in front of the building to watch the drunken kids parade up and down Ave A. It was Friday night, after all, and a very pretty one at that. The breeze was delicious.

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These kids were trying to piggyback, the two boys in front were able to but the girl was too drunk to get on her boyfriend’s back.

I used to live on Houston Street not far from 172 in the 80’s. As a matter of fact I had friends who lived here in 172 at the time, the first people I knew that had cable TV and me and my then wife Kathy would come over to watch MTV with them, back when it had actual music videos on it. The East Village was a very different place then, Ave A was junk central, and you could score drugs on any given number street just feet from the avenue. The further east you went, the better the drugs. Ave A was for the bridge and tunnel crowd who were scared of getting murdered on Ave B, C, or D. D was a definite place to get killed for any out-of-towners.

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There is a club at the old Provident Loan Society building on Houston Street now, as a matter of fact there’s been a whole string of clubs there for the past 30 years since Jasper Johns gave it up as a studio. There are myriad bars, clubs, and restaurants lining the avenue from Houston to 14th Streets.

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In the 80’s there was the Pyramid Club and A7 catty corner to it on 7th Street. A7 was a hardcore club, and the Pyramid was art-rock in its infancy. The Pyramid also owed some debt to places like ABC No Rio and No Se No on Rivington Street, pioneers of the downtown poetry/art/music do-it-yourself scene. Even before that was the 9th Street survival show at the old school between B and C that became Charras. I did the T-shirts for that show in 1981.

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ABC No Rio                                                                                                      No Se No

I hung out at all of those places, and the World on 2nd Street, of course.

A friend of mine was in a band called the Vipers at the time, and they opened for Joe Jackson at the World one night. I was scoring for him and he put us on the guest list. Seeing Joe Jackson for free in 1983 was pretty cool.

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There was Lesko’s and Odessa. Lesko’s put red light bulbs in the bathroom to discourage people from shooting up in there. I don’t think the red light bulbs ever stopped anybody.

You hardly saw anybody on the street in the 80’s on a Friday night; the bridge and tunnel kids tended to stay in their cars out of fear of getting killed and most of the scene regulars lived in the East Village. I think we moved to Houston Street because of the do-it-yourself art scene, besides, the rent was cheap and the drugs were close.

All of that is gone, though I’m sure if you look hard enough you can probably score some drugs nearby, drugs are a staple of the NYC bar scene, and always will be. I smelled plenty of skunkweed as I walked the 9 blocks to the J train on Delancey Street last night.

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This is what the girl who taunted me earlier probably looked like by now.

But the drug of choice seems to be alcohol on Ave A. I’ve never seen such a dense collection of bars in my life, just about every other business on the street (I include Essex Street) is a bar or club.

And now there are velvet ropes! On Essex! On Ave A! Who’d a thunk!

There’s a place called Beauty & Essex that has limos in front of it.

As I wound my way down the street to the train last night, weaving trough the loud drunken kids I had to remind myself, I used to do the same thing. Perhaps I wasn’t a trust fund baby or marvelously talented, but I used to get high and drink and talk loud and weave down the avenue too, and I’m sure someone back then resented the shit out of me and my friends too. There just weren’t as many of us.

 

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UP ON THE ROOF

Posted on June 20, 2014 by xaviertrevino

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I worked the past few days this week and 2 days last week, in the same industry I was fired from. I’m back at the bottom again.

But it’s OK, work is work and we can’t all have really cool jobs (or businesses).

Years ago when I was selling shoes a middle aged couple came into the shoe store I was at in Forest Hills Queens with their barely adult son. He was wearing a suit and tie and his handsomely dressed mother did all the talking.

            “My son needs shoes, for business.”

Not for work, but for business. I wondered what kind of business a 20 year old was running. Well, in 1988 that would have been a valid question, but now, in the days of Internet start-ups and Silicon Valley I would understand. But one of those kids wouldn’t be buying black brogans for their business.

I’m a worker, have been and always will be. Hopefully the nature of my work will change from sweeping, mopping, and buffing floors to something a little more comfortable, like writing books and magazine articles.

I know, big change but if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true? (Thank you, Rodgers and Hammerstein.)

In the meantime the rent needs to be paid and all that other good stuff.

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The mighty Empire State Building

This building is a lot bigger than 144, which though higher (17 floors) has fewer units on a floor, 64 units total, four to a floor up to 17 and 2 penthouses.

This building, I’ll call it 172; is only 12 stories high but has 8 units per floor, and a bank and a couple of other businesses on the street level.

The basement is huge and it boasts a bike room, storage lockers, and a gym. Laundry room is standard; if you don’t have a laundry room you’re not in New York.

When I was at 144 prospective tenants were always asking about a bike room or storage.

            “Sorry, no bike room, no storage,” I would happily chirp with my cynical doorman’s smile. There used to be a bike room and even a storage room where one day we had to rummage through old steamer trunks to empty it out for building materials, I remember finding an old Ike jacket from WWII that the super wheedled out of me.

172 has big giant storage lockers in a big giant room, the kind you see at Manhattan Mini storage. They gym is air-conditioned (the rest of the basement is not) and there is even a playroom for the kids in case it’s raining outside and the kids are driving you nuts. In 144, the nannies (and some parents) would drag their kids down to the lobby and drive me nuts. There doesn’t seem to be an overabundance of kids at 172, this is the East Village and there is an overabundance of self-centered young adults. Last night two locked themselves out and one lost his phone. I opened the doors for the lockouts, but I couldn’t find the guy’s phone.

I have to work nights the two weeks I’m filling in for a guy. His schedule is 8 to 5 on Tuesdays, and then 5pm to 2am Wednesday to Saturday. Weekend evenings out with the wife and friends are out.

I’ve done this before; when I started at 144 I was the night man, 11pm to 7am. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now, so I’d better get cracking on the writing business.

One of the better perks of working in either building is going up on the roof. 144 has just a plain tarpaper roof, no frills, and no access for the tenants, some of whom were always hassling me to let them sunbathe up there. I did let one do it, once, and only because I was up there painting the water tower support.

172, on the other hand, has red outdoors tiles and a deck on the roof. It’s a weird U shape that extends from one roof door to another on the other side of the roof.

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There are 3 doors, from 3 stairwells, A, B, and C. When the guy training me showed me how to arrange the tables and chairs (same teak as the deck) he said, “always open door A and C, never B.”

At night I have to go up and lock the doors, 10pm on weeknights and 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays. The first night I did it there were two couples up there, one had eaten dinner up there and had to carry down their plates and serving bowls. After I got them to leave I had the roof all to myself, and enjoyed the view.

I could see most of the city, most of downtown, anyway. There was the Empire State to the north, and the new Freedom Tower to the south. The Williamsburg Bridge glittered to the east, my route home to Brooklyn. There was a big yellow half-moon in the sky, partially obscured by thin clouds.

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Impressive

Years ago at 144 I heard about a meteor shower that was happening one night, and I took a break from sweeping and mopping to go up and have a look.

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It wasn’t quite like this

This being brightly lit New York it wasn’t much of a show; but it was a show nevertheless. I got to see some shooting stars, enough to impress me. It sort of made me feel small, but alive; a part of something that I’ll never understand. But at least now I don’t have to even try and understand it, just dig it.

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OK, OKAY!

Posted on June 19, 2014 by xaviertrevino

 

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When I was a kid in kindergarten and spoke very little English one of the first words I learned and used was okay. I went home to mom and when she exhorted me to do something like clean my room or do whatever it was she wanted me to do that I found difficult or annoying and tried to delay I would say:

“OK, OKAY!”

Her exhortations were sometimes reinforced with a little shove and as I got older with well-manicured long nails digging into the biceps of the closest of my arms to her.

“Don’t give me your OK, OK, just get to it! OK, OK, that’s all Americans do, is say OK. I want action, not assurances!”

OK, mom.

Funny that she should think of OK as an assurance, since to me it was more of an assent, the way I was using it, as in “yes, mom, I’m going to do what you want.” As soon as I am good and ready, or when the nails dig too deep.

She just saw it as a delaying ploy.

I was watching a movie on TV last week, and the characters were speaking Spanish, part of the movie was set in Mexico, and one of the characters gave instructions to another and said: “OK?” He replied, “OK, seguro.”

Correct Spanish would be si, seguro.

You can probably say OK to 90% of the world’s population and they will get it. After World War II the word stayed in many places Americans had fought or were stationed in.

The etymology of the word is complex and confusing- more than one language from Africa to Native American speakers (Choctaw being the most cited) have a word that is similar sounding that means assent, and just when it was first used in English is a matter of debate. I’m not here to debate or explain the etymology of OK, just here to marvel at the universality of the expression.

I will relate this: One of the earliest uses in print of the word (or expression) was in the presidential race of 1836, when Martin Van Buren was running. Van Buren liked to be called “Old Kinderhook,” being from Kinderhook, New York, and legend has it that he signed a lot of papers O.K., meaning his nickname, Old Kinderhook.

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Around that time there was also the Anglo-German “Oll Korrect,” and it’s debated that Van Buren stole this for his campaign. “Vote for OK” is infinitely more American than “Vote for Martin Van Buren.”

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I don’t think there’ll ever be a definitive answer about where the word came from, but I know this, OK is here to stay and it is spreading. It’s the one word the whole world will know soon.

And as all colloquial expressions, OK has its derivatives and variation.

When I first started reading Dashiell Hammet books, a lot of the characters said:

“Oke,” pronounced “oak.” This in time mutated to “okie dokey,” popular with kids, especially ones brought up on Little Rascals shorts. Not to be confused with hunky dory, an Irish expression. But they both mean the same thing.

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It was further bastardized by the Captain Queeq character in The Caine Mutiny, who used kay as a sort of acknowledgement-filler. Now just plain K is an acknowledgement in text messages and emails.

There is also the symbol, the thumb and forefinger forming a circle with the other three fingers extended, forming a simultaneous O and K. You don’t see that much anymore, it’s been replaced by the ubiquitous “thumbs up” popularized by people like Terry Richardson and Lynndie England, the American GI shown cigarette in mouth holding up her thumb in front of naked trussed up Iraqi prisoners. Of course the thumbs up or down dates from the Roman Coliseum, where the fate of a life depended on the up or down direction. We could get into a whole discussion on the symbols alone, and I don’t have the space for it here. Just say’in.

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OK has a few different meanings depending on how you use it. The most basic meaning is yes. Then there is all right, as when you say, “is that OK with you?”

It can be used sarcastically, like when you are given an ultimatum you don’t like or realize something you didn’t want to acknowledge and you say, “Okaay…”

I just interviewed my wife, the lovely Danusia for this blog post, asking her if she remembers OK being in common usage in Poland when she was a kid.

“I don’t remember it as a child, but when I went back to Poland after Solidarity it was in common usage.” That meant in the late 80’s.

I said: “OK,” as an assent, meaning I understood. I could have said “right,” or “I understand,” but who can compete with OK?

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GROWING UP L.G.

Posted on June 18, 2014 by xaviertrevino

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The prompt yesterday was to write about the home you lived in when you were 12. I had to work yesterday, and like last week, I gave myself the day off from The Daily Post. I could do today’s prompt, but growing up in housing projects in Brooklyn in the 1960’s is too good to pass up.

 

We lived in apartment 7C on the seventh floor of 415 Lafayette Ave in Lafayette Gardens, a seven building project that opened in 1962. I moved there with my parents, Agustin and Maria, my brother Luis who was 5 years younger and my sister Elsa who was in the middle. In 1964 my mother added my foster sister Cheryl Ann.

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My three siblings in front of the flagpole in 1968. I was a budding photographer.

When we moved in only five of the seven buildings were finished, and the first couple of years were peaceful and idyllic.

By 1968, the year I was 12, it was a whole different ball game. The last two buildings added were the largest at 20 stories each, and were filled with section 8 families. We knew them as welfare families, whose adults did not work. It was also the year that Martin Luther King was murdered, and LG being 70% African-American it was a place of simmering anger and resentment. I remember running all the way home from school the day after it happened, being chased by the black kids in my class, some of who were my friends.

It was called Lafayette Gardens because the tenants were encouraged to plant gardens in little plots out in front of the buildings, on what we commonly called “the grass.” There were little steel poles with chains to keep people off “the grass” and you could get a ticket if you went on the grass.

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My mom’s garden was a lot more elaborate than this present day LG garden.

My mom was an ace gardener, having grown up on a farm in Puebla, Mexico, and our building won first prize every year until NYCHA got tired of holding contests. We lived in a three-bedroom apartment and paid $90 a month for most of the 17 years we were there.

There were plastic slipcovers on the couch and two easy chairs my parents had bought on lay-away from J. Michaels in downtown Brooklyn.

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The plastic slipcovered couch.

One day when I was 11 I found a snake in the hallway, it had escaped from a neighbor’s apartment. I caught it in a bucket my mom gave me, with the aid of a dustpan. We took it to the 88th Precinct on Classon Ave. where the desk cop said; “we’re gonna cook it and eat it for lunch.”

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I see the turtle is still there.

We played in the concrete playgrounds that had concrete animals; I still remember the turtle that’s in this picture. There was also a dolphin and animals I can’t remember. We played skelly on pre-painted skelly squares, and there was a ball field and handball courts on Franklin Ave.

There were kids whose favorite pass time was to call the fire department to say a kid was hanging from the rail on the roof, we would all go outside to watch as the firemen trained their spotlights on the edges of the roof.

Our building and 411 across the street were known as the twins, they were the only 13 story buildings and they faced each other. When I was 12 I begged my mother for a telescope for Christmas so I could look at a girl named Evelyn who lived on the 5th floor across the grass. I could see into her bedroom window. I told my mom I wanted to look at the stars.

I went to Francis Scott Key JHS on Franklin Ave, and the year I was 12 won a writing contest that I didn’t even enter after writing an essay about how nice it would be to spend sometime in the countryside, somewhere I’d never been before. My prize was 2 weeks on a dairy farm in upstate New York. It was my first time away from home.

I say I didn’t enter it because I knew nothing about it, one day my English teacher told me she’d sent in my essay and it had won. There were 15 winners from all over the school system, and one day we all went to a big lunch at the Board of Education building on Livingston Street. My parents dressed up and were very proud.

There was a movie theater on DeKalb Ave; I think it was called the Majestic. On Saturdays my mother would give me $2 and say “take your brother and sisters to the movies.” It was 50¢ for kids and two bucks got us all in. We would watch old Warner Brothers cartoons, Laurel and Hardy and Flash Gordon serials, then whatever the feature was. I remember Godzilla and Mothra and a whole bunch of Christopher Lee vampire movies.

The year I was 12 my friend Carlos’ older cousin Arami took us to see Dr. No in the afternoon, it was an adult movie and you could only get in with an adult. It was the first time I got aroused watching a movie.

Arami was a Cuban guy in his 20’s with a car and two missing front teeth. One day he took us to Yankee stadium, my first and only time there. He bought us hot dogs. I don’t remember who won the game.

The night he took us to the game was right after Martin Luther Kings’ assassination, and the news of riots all over the country had everybody rattled. I remember being in the car and driving along Bedford Ave and seeing hundreds of Policemen in riot helmets and big plastic shields. It was scary and exciting at the same time. I was praying we would be able to get home after the game and that my family would still be intact.

The year I was 12 was also the year of Laugh-In, the summer of love, and my first kiss. At Francis Scott Key JHS, girls would write their names on a slip of paper and put it in a hat and the boys would pick out a slip. You were supposed to go in the closet with the girl and kiss her.

The fist name I picked was Shelly Quarrels, the shyest girl in the class. I was surprised she even put her name in. She was a skinny, quiet black girl who wore really long dresses and white socks with Mary Janes. This at a time where most of the girls were wearing the shortest skirts they could get away with.

It was a very chaste kiss; we did not know you were supposed to stick in your tongue.

In August I turned 13 and things started changing at a breakneck speed. I wasn’t ready for what was to come.

 

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LOSE MY HEART ON THE BURNING SANDS

Posted on June 16, 2014 by xaviertrevino

 

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We went to the beach yesterday, the lovely Danusia and I. We started out for the beach one day last week, and I talked her down to Prospect Park, and just when we reached the G train on Flushing Ave I checked my little transit app on the old iPhone and discovered the G train wasn’t going past Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets, and it would add at least 45 minutes to our journey, so we returned home.

Yesterday, after making the sandwiches and packing the towels and reading material and sunscreen, I checked to see if by any luck the trains out to Coney Island or Brighton beach weren’t running, or at least weren’t running well. They were all hunk-dory so I was out of luck, the beach it was.

I had no intention of going in the water, or of even taking my shirt off for that matter, so I didn’t bother with a towel or swim trunks.

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This picture is from last summer in Mattituck, LI, ergo the no shirt.

It takes a lot of convincing to get me to the beach; I always consider a summer without a trip to the beach an extraordinary summer. I guess this summer is out of the question for an extraordinary summer.

I don’t exactly know why, maybe it’s because of bad childhood experiences. My dad was an excellent swimmer, having grown up in Tampico, Mexico. Tampico is a port town with plenty of beach and water, and my dad spent all of his free time swimming as a kid.

My mom, on the other hand was from Puebla, a city in a valley in south-central Mexico surrounded by mountains and extinct volcanoes. No beach there, and little chance to learn how to swim at an early age. Just like a second language belongs to the mother, so does the ability to swim or not.

My ex-wife is an excellent swimmer; she grew up on Martha’s Vineyard. She taught our son Javier how to swim before he could walk.

My father’s way of teaching me to swim was to throw me in a pool and yell, “Swim, you little bastard, swim!” He was very disappointed when he had to jump in the pool to fish me out.

The swimming part aside; I’m not very fond of the sun, either. My last apartment, the one I lived in alone for a year or so before moving in with Danusia gave new meaning to the expression “man cave.” I’ve since learned to let the sun shine in.

But letting it in doesn’t mean you have to sit in it. The sun is hot, and full of harmful radiation, it will kill you if you stay in its direct rays long enough. That’s why god invented shade and umbrellas. And then there’s the matter of the sand. If you’ve ever had sex on the beach you know it can get very unpleasant, or at least messy. I hate the sand too.

My earliest memories of the beach are of getting knocked down by waves and swallowing a lot of water. Of cuts and scrapes that became infected by mysterious bacteria. Of creepy slimy things wrapping around my legs underwater, and of sand suddenly disappearing from beneath my feet, with the current threatening to sweep me out to sea never to be seen again, except as a piece of flotsam.

There are also memories of severe sunburn, sand-encrusted sandwiches, and the aforementioned sand in one’s most intimate parts, not to mention your partner’s intimate parts.

The good memories are jumping up to catch a wave, momentarily buoyant. Of pretty girls of all shapes and sizes frolicking in the surf, or just lying around half-naked. Of a nice cold soda and a cool breeze catching you at just the right moment.

Speaking of naked, when I was a young adult me and my girlfriend at the time, the irrepressible Anna, would go out to Riis Park to the nude beach there on the weekends. We had a whole set of friends with cars and it was a regular thing for a couple of years. That was when I was a lot more comfortable about strutting around without any clothing.

We usually have beach chairs and umbrellas, it makes for a more pleasant beach experience, but the last beach umbrella we owned was turned inside out a couple of years ago after getting caught in ta severe thunderstorm while returning from the beach. I don’t know what happened to our last beach chairs, I think we left them in California.

So yesterday it was very basic, towels, sandwiches, and two crossword puzzles. The one good thing about the sun was I didn’t need to put on glasses to be able to read.

I started to cook just minutes after lying down and slathering myself with as much SPF 50 lotion as I could. I couldn’t find the SPF 70. The 50 turned out all right, I did not burn.

I tried to do the crossword- I had last Thursdays and it was pretty tough for Thursday, and I had the Sunday puzzle in reserve. I kept flipping from my stomach to my back when I felt like my skin was getting ready to catch fire.

I looked at people and listened to two little Russian girls building mud pies nearby. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they sure rolled their RRRs well. I noticed not one, but two enormous women in bikinis. Not only were they enormous, like close to 300 pounds each, but also they were old, late 60’s I’d say. I wanted to avert my eyes but I was fascinated by their unselfconsciousness.

            “I didn’t know they made bikinis that big,” I absentmindedly said to Danusia, who was lying on her stomach and couldn’t see what I was referring to.

One of them was so large that her overhanging belly obscured most of her bottom, all I could see was a little black strip across her ass.

At one point one of them went for a swim, and when she came out she started to cup her enormous breasts in her hands, as if to check if they were still there. It reminded me of those Hip-Hop kids that are always grabbing at their crotches. I always want to ask, “checking to see if it’s still there?”

Danusia swam a couple of times, and we left after three hours.

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We went shopping on Brighton Beach Avenue afterwards, amongst all the dressed to the nines old Russian women and the smattering of non-Russians who are filtering into the neighborhood. At one store there was a woman at a stand in front with all kinds of pastries. I wanted one, but not being able to read Cyrillic writing I had to ask. The Russian woman ignored us until Danusia tried to open one of the plastic cases so I could look. The woman slammed the cover down and let out a stream of Russian, scolding us.

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            “Meat! Meat! This is meat, you want meat?”

            “Do you have anything sweet?” I asked.

            “Inside. Inside is sweet.” I wondered if she were talking about her disposition.

 

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BAD NEWS FOR THE RANGERS

Posted on June 14, 2014 by xaviertrevino

 

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I never watched a hockey game in my life, but last night I found myself glued to the TV watching the second overtime period (I think that’s what it’s called) on the edge of the couch hoping for a Ranger goal. I watched as the men skated back and forth, back and forth, whacking the puck up and down the ice, crashing into each other, falling down and getting up, broken sticks flying everywhere all while listening to the announcer describe the action.

            “How does he know who’s who?” I asked the lovely Danusia who sat next to me staring into her iPad. She did not show much interest in the game.

            “They must be tired, the game’s been on since 8 and it’s almost midnight.”

She looked up briefly and said:

            “But they are sliding on skates. Probably not as tired as basketball players would be.”

            “Well this looks a lot more exhausting than basketball,” I said.

I’ve played full court basketball before, and it really sucks running up and down the court. I can just imagine the effort and energy it must take to skate up and down the ice with all that gear on.

            “You’ve never ice skated dear, just because you glide on the ice doesn’t mean you use less energy. It takes a lot of energy to propel yourself on skates the way these guys do.” I never tire of reminding her that I ice skated as a teenager.

            “Why do they all have beards, baby?”

            “I don’t know, honey. It must be a hockey thing.”

She grunted a sort of acknowledgement and went back to her iPad.

I stayed on the edge of my seat; my heart falling every time the Kings got the puck.

I’ve never been much of an athlete, nor a sports fan for that matter. My experience with sports is limited to playing softball in the projects league when I was a kid, and briefly joining the Brooklyn Tech football team until I had to carry a teammate piggyback up ten flights of stairs. We had no field to train on, and we ran up and down the stairs and did some other stuff in the gym. It wasn’t for me.

My only hockey experience was when I worked at Con Edison the summer I turned 20. I was in art school at Pratt and going to NY Dolls concerts at night. In the locker room other crews who worked at the power plant with us would challenge our crew, known as the “Performance Unit” to a game of foot hockey.

We were the brainy ones, the ones that took readings and did calculations. They were the tough ones, the ones that did all the hard, heavy dirty work.

The leader of the dirty work crews was an old Italian guy named Steve, who was barrel-chested and had hands like paddles. He instantly labeled me “sensitive” as he tried crushing my hand on introduction.

The game was played with a round two pound piece of steel that was the approximate size of a hockey puck. We had to keep them from kicking this thing into our side of the locker room while trying to kick it into theirs. All I could think of during the mad flurry of kicking feet and hands shoved into my face was I hope this thing doesn’t hop up and knock pout all of my teeth. You had to play or you were a pussy. I did not take the offer of a permanent job at the end of the summer.

Not being much of an athlete translates easily into not being much of a sports fan. But I am a New Yorker and I always feel good when a New York team is in the playoffs, even better when they go so some sort of championship. That’s why I’m most familiar with the New York Yankees.

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Last week a plane spelled out RANGERS over the east river. I got the R, part of the A, and the N.

Watching the news the past week got my excitement up, and I had to work Wednesday night and had to wait till Thursday morning to find out if the Rangers were still alive or not.

I worked that night with a guy who was more interested in “El Mundial” in Brazil than the Stanley Cup Final.

I was psyched to find out they were, and determined to watch at least some of yesterday’s game. The lovely Danusia had gone to some kind of fundraiser last night so I could watch the hockey game without any undue friction.

            “I thought you didn’t like hockey,” she said as I tuned in to the game as she was leaving.

            “I don’t but this is the Stanley Cup and the Rangers are a New York team.”

I alternated between the game and some WWII stuff on AHC, not being one for all the chatter between intermissions and such. I tuned in to channel 4 at 11:30 just in time to find out the game was tied. I had to see it through. That’s when Danusia came home to watch me watch the game.

After 12.04 minutes of watching the puck go back and forth and my conversation with Danusia Alec Martinez of the LA Kings got the puck in the net. The crowd erupted and I hit the off button.

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Alec Martinez

            “OK, that’s it,” I said rising.

            “Did they win?” She said looking up from her iPad.

            “No honey, they lost. I’m going to brush my teeth and lay down.”

In the bedroom I put the TV on, hoping the news would be on, but I had to sit through the LA Kings hoisting the Stanley Cup over their heads one by one as they skated around the rink in front of the delirious fans.

            “That’s an interesting ritual,” I said to Danusia, who sat next to me doing something on her iPad.

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            “What is, baby?”

            “Never mind, the news is coming on.”

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   GOOD DAY FOR A HAIRCUT

Posted on June 13, 2014 by xaviertrevino

         

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I’ve gone 4 months without a haircut, the longest haircut gap in probably 13 years. When I was a kid, the average wait was 6 months, and when I did go for a haircut it was to get it “shaped,” as in “just trim around the edges.”

When I joined the army in 1979 the first haircut they gave us was at Fort Jackson, SC and the barbers asked: “how do you want it?”

            “Uh, not too short on the top and front, please.” The barber took off most of my hair, but did leave a little on the top and front, enough to comb over to one side.

Then I got on a bus to Fort Benning, GA for my basic training and AIT (advanced individual training) and they gave us another haircut, just 2 days after the first one.

            “But I just got a haircut, Sargent,” I complained.

            “Get in the goddamned chair and shut up, private!”

This time the barber would say the same thing to everybody:

            “How do you want it? Airborne?” And without waiting for an answer did the same to everybody, sheared them like a sheep. We were all fuzzy-wuzzy after they were done.

I looked in the mirror and wanted to cry, I think one kid actually did cry, but I figured, there’s no girls around anyway.

We got haircuts once a week, and of course we paid for all these haircuts. At least it was cheap, something like $2.

When I got out of the army a couple of years later I wore bandanas until my hair grew back in.

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I always wondered why my brother’s hair is straight and mine isn’t.

When I lived in the East Village in the 80’s there was never any need for a haircut, except to keep the hair out of my eyes. I worked at a hip shoe store, and hip shoe store clerks HAD to have long hair, or at least some kind of punk-rock hair. It was the days of spiked Mohawks.

Speaking of Mohawks, I did give myself one in basic training, when I got tired of paying for haircuts. I borrowed and electric shaver from somebody and left a strip of barely half inch hair down the middle. When I went to breakfast and took off my hat, my Drill Sargent stared at me and yelled:

            “What is that shit on the top of your head? Go upstairs and get rid of it right now!”

I went back up to the barracks and shaved off the remainder of my 30-minute Mohawk. I was now officially bald; I was Kojack and Yul Brenner for about a week, till it started to fuzz up again. I wish I had some pictures of that.

Eventually I ended up at another shoe store, an orthopedic shoe store in Queens, and they didn’t go in for long hair.

            “You’re looking a little shaggy, there,” the boss would say every couple of months. I was frequenting a Polish barber on First Avenue near St. Marks place at the time, and despite my instructions to leave it long on top he always gave me the same short dude haircut I hated. Those haircuts were $10 or so plus tip.

I’ve often seen some people go into deep depression over bad haircuts; I’ve even seen bouts of crying and near-hysterics. I can identify with that, but I never let it take me to the crying phase. From experience I know it will always grow back.

About 11 years ago my life changed drastically, I was recently divorced and had a new job, one where I was supposed to look presentable; my boss was always yelling at me to get a haircut, and this from a guy who was obviously in love with his own hair. He also yelled at me to remove the earring I wore in one ear (when I was young men only wore one) and one day I decided he was right. I was getting my hair cut by a friend who worked at Bumble & Bumble. I used to work near there when the shoe store in Queens moved to East 55th Street in Manhattan, and always wanted to get my haircut there. But I couldn’t afford it. Now I could at least have the Bumble & Bumble haircut, but at my friend Sarah’s home instead of the store. The next time I went to her I said “take it all off, make it as short as possible.” She did the whole thing with scissors, and it took a long time. The barber in the army with the electric shaver had done it in a minute.

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This was 2 months after the “take it all off” haircut.

The next day when my boss came out of his apartment and saw me at my post at the front desk, his mouth fell open in surprise.

            “What happened to you? Were you beaten with sticks?”

I have to explain that the guy was from San Salvador, Sal from San Salvador I used to call, him. And he said this in Spanish. I guess if you get beaten with sticks in Central America your hair falls out.

I moderated after that, not too short, not too long. One day my friend Sarah said it was getting harder for her to accommodate all of her clients, she couldn’t make time for me, so I went to a place I’d read about in the Times Style section; Freeman’s Sporting Club Barbershop. The article talked about their specialty, the “Hitler” haircut, long on top and in the front, buzzed very tight on the back and sides. “Tapered” was the term they used in the army, no “Box” cuts or “Edges,” just a gradual taper; or fade if you are doing it Ghetto style.

They knew just what I wanted at Freeman’s, and I got my face wrapped in a eucalyptus-soaked towel when the guy was done. Aside from listening to some kid admonish me about shampooing my hair (it has ammonia in it, takes the natural oils out of your hair) it was an over all pleasant experience. I’ve been going there ever since, and at $40 as compared to the $60 plus I was paying for the Bumble & Bumble experience it’s a bargain, especially if I only do it every 3 months. That’s $20 a month for me.

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This is about normal for me.

It’s pouring out today, so I know it will be empty when I go to Freeman’s, which by the way has expanded and is even taking appointments now. They always ask, “Is there anyone in particular you’d like to see?”

            “Who ever is available is fine,” I say.

 

 

 

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