Grief Street

like us purchased clothes whenever possible: by pawing through garments on the dead table, donations from the families of the parish deceased.
    We never knew what extraordinary bargains might be found, save for the time that a family friend by the name of Father Tim broke the rules and tipped Mother to a fine boy’s winter jacket—maroon and gray plaid wool, with a stand-up mouton collar and a belt that crossed over the front ' with a chrome buckle.
    Until the blessing of a dead boy’s coat, I walked to school in the winter with the Hudson River wind blowing at my back so hard it felt like whips. Mother would cook extra pancakes on the coldest mornings—not for my eating, but for stuffing under the arms of the six flannel men’s shirts she had jerry-stitched into a boy’s coat. Hold them hotcakes tight with your hands, son, and you’ll nae be minding cold. Quick like the fox, you’ll be where you’re going with no discomfort on arriving there. Warm hands and proper school, these be things to free my young Irishman from the crimes of ignorance and poverty and the raw-boned cold of America, j
    The only brand-new thing my mother ever wore was a dress I bought her from Sak’s Fifth Avenue so she could have something nice on the day the mayor swore me in as Patrolman Neil Hockaday of the New York Police Department. She wore it that once, to please me, then never again. When she passed, I gave her dress to the dead table.
    I crossed Ninth Avenue.
    Uptown from Forty-third, the blocks used to be full of hardware shops and saloons specializing in forty-cent draughts. Some of the hardwares have turned into the type of restaurants where customers have to specify radicchio. Bibb, or Belgian endive if they want to eat a salad. The sole surviving low-rent saloon has no identification to it, save for a sign on the door that reads no drugs, no thugs.
    Downtown, there was once the open-air Paddy's Market of pushcart fruits and vegetables—and swag of the day. Mother did not go to Macy’s or Gimbel’s when I needed things not easily available from the dead table—sneakers, khakis, polo shirts. Instead, she went to Paddy’s Market and gave her list to a hobble-legged man called Gimp Higgins who sold tomatoes on the sidewalk. A couple of days later Gimp Higgins would happen to come into the possession of the very merchandise Mother wanted, at cut-rate prices.
    There is still a market of fruit, vegetables, and swag down along Ninth Avenue. But the pushcarts are long gone. And the vendors of what is now called the International Market tend to be from Greece, the Philippines, Korea, the West Indies, or the remnants of Yugoslavia. Times do change. Which explains the modern additions of a gay bar, and a drop-in center for homeless old folks so they can sit around and drink coffee someplace warm instead of getting themselves mugged on a snowy day.
    Also there is the addition of Covenant House, a sanctuary for runaway teens from Middle America. The priest who founded the place—relieved of duty for being overly fond of freckle-faced boys (though never defrocked)—once invited a fortunate guy from Texas by way of Connecticut to drop around and inspire the unfortunate youngsters of Hell’s Kitchen. Which is how it was that George Herbert Walker Bush came calling during the election year of 1992.
    Maybe this seemed like a good idea to somebody on the president’s campaign staff. But what the White House will never understand—no matter who lives there—is the impertinent wisdom of a Kitchen kid, native-born or naturalized. Being a Kitchen kid is a state of mind, a whole different level beyond White House mentality.
    Picture the photo op:
    A flock of sullen youths crowded around the feet of a president in a pinstripe suit and a society lady accent. George Bush lectures the assembled Kitchen kids on the pride and glory of a weekly paycheck at minimum wage. There comes the moment when these youths can no longer bear the crapola. So one of them gives the president some practical socioeconomic advice on the state of the union: “Get real, man. That chump Mickey D paycheck? Shit, I made that in twenty minutes selling powdered milk to ignorant frat boys from Connecticut come to the city after heroin.” Meanwhile, just outside the photo-op set, one of the TV reporter's cars is stolen from where it is parked next to a fleet of NYPD and Secret Service vehicles.
    The heist and the unscripted reality check delivered to the president of