275. WISH I HAD

Tommy and Lenora Vicks were two people

I'd gotten to know from down along e12th Street - 

he was a stage-construction union guy for some 

of the big uptown theaters and she passed her time 

waitressing and trying to put together some sort of 

dance career - which never went anywhere that I

saw. The two of them were pretty normal in all other 

respects, and by the time I met them it was surprising 

to me to be able to find two NYC people, in a close age 

range proximity to me, who actually did live fairly 

normal lives from their own nice apartment; flowers 

and window-sill planters and a decent  little garden 

spot out back, and nicely furnished rooms and kitchen 

and all the other amenities I'd normally have thought

about for some older uncle or aunt somewhere. They 

did all this pretty well and I guess really the only thing 

they'd not acquired was a car - urban New Yorkers 

took that in stride and never thought twice about it, 

even though it did stand out a bit to me, and even 

though I too, of course, didn't  have one. At the

same time though I wasn't 'seeing them' as an uncle 

or an aunt living comfortably in a nice space. So, I

just let it go. However, Lenora's paradise was 14th 

Street and all the stuff it offered, so that I suppose 

from that spot most of these things in this homey little 

space came. Back in those days it was still the sort 

of environment where 14th Street yet held some 

dignity - fairly decent dress and gown and linen 

shops and dishes and stuff - whereas now it too 

has degenerated into the usual Chinese junk and 

imported trinkets sold by immigrants along the 

way  - acres of cheap paper products and 

detergents indoors and ten dollar shoes and 

watches outdoors. At this time - not so much 

now - there'd be carts and rows of  cheap people 

selling cheap stuff, but even though it was

cheap, that was mostly because of no overhead.

It wasn't because the stuff itself was cheap. 

I don't know how the stores even tolerated this 

- all those street merchants undercutting store 

prices for certain goods by large margins 

- because they had no overhead, no light-bills, 

no wages and taxes - no what's now called 'brick

and mortar' concerns to worry about. The stores,

on the other hand, were drowning in expenses. I

always figured that if I was a store owner I'd most 

certainly send some goons out there, to the sidewalk, 

to bash some heads and convince these morons to 

move on. On top of all else, they didn't even pay 

rent for their little sidewalk space, while the store 

owners got saddled with everything.

-

But, to my point, the rows and rows of carts and booths 

which now distract the eye and ear (and nose) with

all that cheap, plastic, and marginal stuff, were not there.

Another funny thing about that older New York is the fact 

of the now 'glorified' charm of the old pushcart vendors 

who sold along every street their wares, and fruits, and 

vegetables and most anything else in the early days before 

the establishment of sales taxes, department stores, and 

inspectors and compartments and sections for selling this 

and that under roof and ceiling - now that same, unique

'once-so-charming' outdoor sales effect has degenerated 

into trash-merchants redundant up and down some streets 

and certainly any historic 'charm' has long ago been cancelled 

out. But Lenora partook of all this stuff and from it made a 

nice place and Tommy - always busy - just came and went 

as he needed and it was a pleasure to visit them - 28 w12th 

if I recall - the few times I did, but before that Tommy Vicks 

had gotten into some sort of scrap with the law and had a few 

'precarious' months, as he put it, in jail or Rikers or somewhere 

sweating it out. But he was always the same - direct and 

strong-willed, with a foul-enough mouth used mostly on the 

job - but it was all something, he'd say you get used to real 

fast if you're 'gonna' survive here,' and because of his skills 

he'd built a few really nice shelf-cases and tables in the 

apartment which added a nice touch. But there really 

never were any books about - something I always looked 

for - they'd load this space all up instead with decorative 

stuff, I guess called 'furnishings' or something, things that 

she'd get out shopping along the streets. It was nice 

visually (so was she, but I never got involved in any of 

that angle; just so you know), but never meant too 

much to me to see and I did alwaysrue the lack of 

books there, as I said. That might not seem like much

of anything but I mention it twice because, for me, the 

way I was, it was a touchstone signature of how people 

really lived. Just as a person's actual 'signature' sort of 

betrays their essential self no matter what, so also does

the presence or lack of, books, to me. I admit, it's some 

50 years later now, which is weird, but the prevalence and 

significance of 'books', even though prevailing society has 

now discounted that factor and found a hundred others 

ways for people to submit to information, and the getting 

of it - as well as games, crap, junk, porno, bargains, deals 

and steals, even obituaries! - I still factor in and 

value the essential idea of a 'book' when I draw the 

bounds for a person's interior-identity sketch. I often 

wondered where theirs were - Tommy and Lenora. 

Bookless?

-

One day he came  home with a small 

sculpture, as I remember, from some 

production or other - a form made of 

sticks and wire - some sort of  human 

pose supposed to be evocative of something, 

and he plunked it in the corner on a small 

pedestal he'd brought - it stayed there a 

while but one time I went in it was gone so I 

never knew what happened : I was  never 

much a theater guy but they always had those 

little Playbill books strewn about too, for any of 

the current productions, and they were sometimes 

fun to see - especially the ads - and Tommy 

would say he needed them for work and from 

them he referenced names and titles and locations 

where he could at any time be sent on a job - made 

sense to me - and then I learned later also that

'opening night' Playbills or, better, opening night 

Playbills signed by a cast member or two, were very 

collectible and considered sometimes quite valuable 

- the 'opening night' specials were often sealed and 

stamped in a corner especially to denote their provenance 

or uniqueness or whatever - anyway, I learned  later that 

the root of Tommy's problem had been in forging signatures 

and falsely sealing and stamping playbills which he and 

another person had amassed, and they'd been selling 

them as original 'opening nighters' through some form 

of mail-order or something for the theater crowd - they'd 

gotten caught and had been charged with forgery and 

theft-of-services, mail fraud, and a few other things, and 

for a while it had looked bad, (serious enough charges), 

but after a month or so in jail and after a few hearings, 

they'd been able to buy a good enough lawyer to calm 

everything down - Tommy's biggest fear was in losing 

his job and his union card and all that - so that nothing 

much came of it all after a while - funny and a totally

unique story to me at the time.

-

This little bit of malfeasance on Tommy's

part has always stayed with me. Not for what 

he did, but - actually - for the way he, I guess,

'lied' to me, or found that he could or would, about 

this. I didn't know much of any of this theater stuff, 

and he could most probably have said anything he 

wanted, but by mis-representing it all to say he 

'needed them to stay on top of job possibilities,' 

or job openings, or however he phrased  it, in 

retrospect to me it turned out to be pretty rotten. 

And I was sorely disappointed he'd done that. I 

was 'vexed' as my British friend Morris used to 

say. All he had to do was own up to it. I really 

wouldn't have cared. But, anyway now so long

past, it little matters. Sorry to say, I've never had

any further trace of them. Wish I had.