The airyway was usually reserved for the adults - my grandmother, grandfather and occasionally my mother, who only sat there after her household chores were done. A peaceful and relaxing place for sitters, the airyway was the enclosure leading to the first floor entrance under the stoop of our brownstone. A person could sit there and watch people without intruding on their space. After all, the sitter was on his own home territory. So after dinner, my grandmother and grandfather would “take the air” until the light faded, sit quietly, and with hands clasped watch the happenings of the neighborhood. Sometimes I too sat and watched, not from the airyway, but from the stoop adjacent to it. From there I heard my grandfather’s comments about the unwitting and innocent people passing by.
Usually among the evening’s strollers was the smiling Pippo Scalia, the local tailor. He would be out for his after dinner walk, a passeggiata, dressed in his best and smelling of too much Bay Rum. His usual fashion statement was a snug pin-stripe suit, silk bowtie, and a flat cream-colored straw hat. He walked with a confident and conceited kind of bounce with his head slightly tilted. Pippo always seemed on the lookout for some lost widow or a newly arrived female in need of nurturing and instruction in the mores of our Brooklyn neighborhood and the world at large. So on balmy evenings he would stop by the airyway with a respectful “basciamu li mani,” tipping his hat to my grandparents. After a few words about the weather, he would prance into the night as my grandfather, under his breath, would smile and in disgust label him the neighborhood rooster. “Sa benidicca!”
Occasionally the area’s odd couple would walk by - a tall red-faced, hunched over gentleman and his short wife. He always walked in front of her, swearing in an Irish brogue, and she always tried to catch up, swearing back in her heated Calabrese. “Ancora,” my grandfather would whisper. Again. Always the same thing! “Sempre a stessa cosa!”
Mrs. Nicholson, the “American” who taught fifth-grade at St. Francis, would sometimes walk by, taking her short little steps, heading for the corner delicatessen, where she would purchase her nightly quart of Rheingold and a package of Old Golds. “Poveredda!”, grandpa would whisper. Sometimes Angelo Lo Curto, from down the block, would stop by and my mother would put out another chair from the dining room. Mr. Lo Curto was very civilized; he would join my grandparents for sometimes up to an hour, arms crossed and never saying a word. I guess it was his way of paying his respects to an anziano, an elder.
On real hot nights most of the airyways and the stoops were crowded. The streets were noisy, filled with a babel of conversations and the staticky sounds of a thousand radios. If you listened real hard you could hear a lot of dialect being spoken, including my grandparents’ Sicilian. On such a night Grandpa would hand me some change and tell me to go to the corner candy store and pick up a brick of ice cream. “Napulitan,” he’d say, with a smile. My mother would bring out the dishes while I ran to the candy store. By that time it was dark and while we ate strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, we’d watch Pippo across the street posturing to Annamarie, the barber’s daughter. She was pushing forty, in need of nurturing, and Pippo was always available.
The teenagers quieted down as they walked past the house, afraid they would receive a disapproving glance from the old couple in the airyway. In those days it seemed as if the older adults, especially grandparents, pretty much kept an eye out on things, and most people, kids included, knew that. So from the watchful eyes of the elders in our airyway, our small piece of the neighborhood was protected and kept safe.
