The Ice Bucket of Townsend Avenue

I have always had strong memories of my parents' apartment on Townsend Avenue in the Bronx.  It was on the fourth floor of a five floor brick walk-up, a one bedroom facing the back alley and another bricked apartment building. I have tried to explain to those who did not know me then, for I lived the first 16 years of my life there, that the overall decor of the place was 1950s nightclub. It was organized in earth tones and curtains, complete with a bar built by my father. Pretty much the only people who were allowed into this incongruous space were my mother's sisters, in laws, and respective children, for birthdays and holidays awash in the latest cocktails. We kids, of whom I was the eldest, a very serious only child, were relegated to the bedroom, which was, when I was old enough, entirely my own. It too was brown and beige and full of curtains covering both built in and makeshift closet space. And lots of shelving for books. And mirrors along the one long wall in front of which was a Hardman and Peck upright piano.  I had begun to play the piano when I was nine and until I was 17 I was intent on developing an incipient talent, until it became a chore rather than a pleasure.  My parents had the Castro Convertible in the living room.  It was magical at night, when the drapes were closed and my father's international music accompanied by his mandolin blared over the cacophony of idle, inebriated adult conversation. In the day time, it was more library, as mirrors and bookshelves again covered the free walls, with just a touch of decay, for these old Bronx buildings were not well maintained any longer and they were infested with roaches no doubt survivors from pre-historic times. No one I knew lived quite as we did.

But for all the photographs I had (many were lost in a leak in my old garage where Dad had stored them) there seemed to be virtually none of us in that apartment. When I was in New York in May, my cousin Carol brought along boxes of photographs of my mother, my father, her mother, (who was an inveterate photographer I am delighted to say) my Aunt Teri, in whose apartment we assiduously pored over them. And among these photos were two that were taken on Townsend Avenue. To be sure, they only capture a tiny portion of the living room--these were fairly large apartments built in pre-war days--but finding them, my parents in the place and manner which was--well, as I knew them when I was so young, there was something, validating, something I needed to confirm what I remembered.

There is my father, about 47 in 1965, when I was 11 (I assume I was in the bedroom with my cousins when this picture was taken, I see a child's bottle on the stained glass like table-- we had three or four of those on which cocktail glasses were placed), looking classic movie star in his suit and tie, and my dramatic mother, maybe about 39, black Irish, so fair of skin, with nary a freckle and dark long locks that she always kept up when I knew her, wrapped in a hair rat and dressed in her characteristic unique style, complete with a recently gifted cigarette holder. They are at the bar. Oh, and yes, you see those curtains behind them?  We had a kitchenette, not a galley kitchen, so all of the appliances, the refrigerator, the sink, the stove, and in a little cubby hole built by dad, a black and white television, were lined against the wall covered by the curtain. My mother would slip in and out, allowing no one else (except my father) behind that curtain while she engaged in her culinary or serving ministrations.

Since I first got my hands on these pictures, I have been pouring over them, remembering that's the room in which I concluded there could be no Santa Claus because we didn't have chimneys, but only thin hot water pipes, that that is where the Christmas trees my dad brought home for decoration never measured up to my mother's specifications, where they were amused at me cavorting in a tiger costume, for Halloween, perhaps? Where I did my grammar school homework sitting on the floor using one of those stained glass tables as a desk, and looking forward to being able to watch "The Adventures of Superman" at 4:30 p.m. They were already in repeats by then. Memories of every kind flow back. Good. Not so good. Sad. Happy. I stood at the bar talking on the phone to Virginia Rohan, one of my best friends at Mt. St. Ursula, all worked up that Emma Peel  of the Avengers (and Diana Rigg, the actress) had left Steed because her husband, Peter, had finally been found in the jungles of Africa. My mother, who was not overtly affectionate to me, once let me lean against her, when neither she nor I could sleep, both of us on the floor, watching the Channel Nine Late Late Show, while dad slept on the Castro bed.

And then today, as I was considering how I wanted to write about these photos, and their re-discovery, I noticed the ice-bucket on the bar. In one picture, my mother is in front of it. In the other, she is behind it. I suddenly remembered. I had that bucket, still. Here, in California. That object was in the same photograph as was my mother. It took on, as objects do historically and personally, a sudden and intense meaning. A connection directly to her. To them.  Did I still have it? I thought it might have finally gone the way that things do, to the trash heap, even things of sentiment. I had confiscated it when my father died in 2008, if not before. But now, in 2016, did I still have it somewhere? It became urgent to know. And then I found it in the back of a kitchen cabinet.

The last bit of Townsend Avenue of them, and me, so many years ago. The building on Townsend Avenue is long gone. My mother died too young in 1974 of a virulent cancer. Dad died at a ripe old age, but still too soon, in 2008.

I broke into tears of thanksgiving, and loss. The bucket from our night club apartment is now prominently displayed on my pass through bar counter,  51 years and three thousand miles away from its original spot. I think it will be there for a while. Maybe it's time to use it again. And toast to them, my parents.