Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Dear Eduardo - 2

Dear Eduardo - 2


Some people would never understand how neat this place is. How does one explain?

It is a building near other buildings on the block. They were all built around 1928. They used a certain kind and color of brick, but they used other colors around the archways of the building doors and the undersides of the windows to contrast. In other words, they cared. The lobby floors are
mosaic. There was once furniture in the lobbies, too.

The Parkway is half a block away. It runs for four miles eastward going to Pelham Bay, and about a mile west until it hits Fordham Road. There are of course trees and birds, but there are also the most wonderful stone table and bench chessboards. There are avenues of benches every other street or so.

You take the Parkway -if you are lucky, you walk it- until you get to the New York Zoological Park and the New York Botanical Conservancy. People still call them the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Gardens. Once upon a time the Bronx Zoo used to have two free admission days a week. Now there are "free" admissions for those who are members of the Zoological Park. For that, you pay something like 100 dollars a year.For those who cannot pay that, admission is $26.

There is a an El train 3 blocks away. It screams and lurches, then stops. To newcomers this might be annoying. To those who have lived here a long time, it becomes part of life's and life's welcome regularity of noises.

Not so welcome regularity: the mice. I hate mice.  The one workperson I called in to do something here, like make sure there were no open mouse holes, said that whoever filled in the holes at some point did a great job.

That person was my dad. He found the holes that the super couldn't find.

Well, I guess we should be glad that rats don't come here. About half a mile away, on Bronx Park East past the divide, in the buildings that used to be the Workers' Coops and are listed as a Heritage Site, there are rats. The person who bought the buildings hates workers and won't get rid of the rats. I think there should be a law that the person who buys buildings that are part of a Heritage site must keep them up, which includes making sure that rats are evicted.

The couch my grandparents had in here until about 1978 was sold. We did keep the one they bought afterward, and the two matching chairs. I have re-transplanted them.

You slept on that couch, Eduardo. Do you remember?

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