METROPOLITAN DIARY

[elleng]

In Search of Shep
Dear Diary:

Eddie and I were in eighth grade. We paid 30 cents for a bus from Rockville Centre on Long Island to Jamaica, Queens, and then 15 cents to ride the subway to Manhattan. It was 1958.

Our goal was to wander the city and then meet our hero Jean Shepherd, the radio raconteur who would later write “A Christmas Story.”

Shep had a Sunday night show on WOR where he told long stories and introduced us to Robert Service’s poetry. Being one of his fans felt like being part of a cool club, with inside jokes and references.

At 13, Eddie and I were adventuresome but not menacing, and most people just ignored us as we made our way around town.

The steamer Ile de France was docked in the Hudson, and we walked up the gangplank. After we had been exploring the ship for a while, a man asked us what we were doing.

“Nothing,” we said.

He told us to leave.

Later, we walked to WOR and waited for Shep. Just before 9 p.m., he pulled up on a Vespa.

“Hi,” we said as he hurried into the studio.

He waved.

“Hey guys,” he said.

We got on the subway and headed home. It was a great day.

— Jerry McGovern

((P.S. I grew up in RVC, and also was a Shep fan!))

Kari Patta
Dear Diary:

I cannot cook without my kari patta (curry leaves) plant, so I lugged my tall, gangly one with barely enough leaves to prepare one dish from Maine to a lightless rental apartment in Morningside Heights.

Eventually, I transferred the plant to my well-heated office, where it just about survived under fluorescent lights. Two years later, I moved into my own apartment in a prewar building and brought the plant there.

Looking for a sunny spot to put it one hot summer day, I chanced upon a large, neglected, open space near the building’s basement. I surreptitiously dragged my leafless, eight-foot plant there and attached a note: “Please don’t throw away, belongs to new owners of 62.”

Later, while watering it, I met another plant lover who expressed regret over how badly neglected the spot was.

When the next summer came, with the help of my plant-loving friend and a small check from the building’s board, I filled the area with flowers and ornamental plants, and I started an herb garden for everyone to use.

As summer passed, the place filled up with residents drinking tea, sipping wine and eating at a dining table someone had brought out. I got compliments and made tons of friends. My kari patta plant became lush and full of leaves.

— Helga Do Rosario Gomes

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/04/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html

[Nittersing]

1. elleng, is that your "ps" about also being a Shep fan?

If so, this must have been a particularly fun letter for you to read!!

[elleng]

2. Yes, and YES, it was!

[rsdsharp]

4. I never got to hear Shep on WOR, but I loved reading his stuff

in Playboy, and in his hilarious collections of short stories: Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters, A Fist Full of Fig Newtons, Ollie Hoopnoddles’s Haven of Bliss, and In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, from which A Christmas Story sprang.

If you didn’t know, Shep is not only the narrator of the movie, but has a cameo as the guy who tells Ralphie where the line starts.

[XanaDUer2]

3. I heart ny nt