I’m McGraw. McGraw of the Mirror.

They were doing a lot of renovating on this side of town. Thought I might pick up a story there.

An old brownstone was named as the next victim.  I cautiously stepped inside, looking for anything of interest.

Climbing up a rickety old staircase, a gargled old voice beckoned me into the first room on the left. I was surprised anyone would be living here. I introduced myself.

“Call me Murph,” he said.

I asked if he had any kind of story for my paper, and his eyes beamed.

“’Twas a gent lived here, the whole neighborhood knew o’him.”

“Will you tell me bout him, Murph?’

“Got any kind refreshment for an old codger that outlived his prime?”

I offered him the bottle from my pocket. This is the story he told me:

In those days of yesteryear, approaching mid-century, there were many misfits and oddballs on our streets. They didn’t have the services we had today.

One was a medium-sized guy with a large head that kept shooing unseen things away with his pointer finger.

Another was a tall man with a small head who roamed the streets, repeating, in a syncopated manner of his own, “They’re coming! They’re coming! They’re coming to get you tonight!”

Into this world was born  Piccolo Pasquale, the son of Pasquale Pugliese.

He was eternally known as Piccolo, no matter how far he progressed in age.

There was a name that he preferred, Il figlio del furioso, “The son of the Furious”, after the man who was his idol, Jacobo Robusti, who adopted the name, Tintoretto, and, due to his robust painting style, was called Il Furioso.

Now, Piccolo’s father was anything but furious. He was a bit featherbrained. He made his living selling buggy whips till buggies went out of style. Then, he turned to his creative side, manufacturing fireworks and small dago bombs for the neighboring kids. This lasted till his creations became a bit too robust, and he fired himself away into that far country from whom no man returneth.

Not that Piccolo was a true scholar of Tintoretto. Like his father, he was high on creativity and short in funds. He only knew what he could find in the local library, and they, also cash-strapped, had only two volumes on Art History.

Somehow, he discovered Tintoretto and his high energy of human bodies in motion. His own body possessed no such motion and he planted himself on the street, in front of his brownstone residence, casually painting sketches.

Tintoretto fathered many children. Piccolo had one daughter.

Piccolo read in one of those volumes that Tintoretto’s favorite daughter, Marietta, would dress up as a boy and assist her father at painting.

So Piccolo insisted they name their daughter Marietta. His wife,  curious as Marietta had not been a family name, consented.

Marietta grew older and Piccolo attempted to dress her in male clothing, Faustina laid the law down. Don’t mess with my daughter! Go get yourself a job!

Piccolo did the best a frustrated artist could do. He got himself a job selling newspapers. He soon grew into the habit of setting up his easel and paints, slamming his bundle of papers beside him, and, should  stray passersby request a paper, he would be more than happy to sell it to them.

When Faustina demanded the cash he had earned, he would hand it over. Daily, there was less and less cash, to the day there was none.

It seems that Piccolo had adopted the custom of Tintoretto, using his money as alms for the poor, or to purchase small necessary items for those who gathered to see his sketches.

Incidentally, that’s how I first met up with him. Somehow, he got wind I was running low on toilet tissue and tossed a passelful my way. Well, back to our story…

At one point, Piccolo noted a child, unsure if it was a boy or girl, and asked that child to be his assistant. Before he or she could answer, the mother was upon him, and Piccolo narrowly escaped imprisonment.

Faustina realized Piccolo’s situation was hopeless, and soon took a job as an operator. It wasn’t long before she operated herself right out of that home, taking Marietta with her.

Piccolo knew Tintoretto had painted two self-portraits. He tried the same, but never could capture the wart on his nose quite right.

Then he remembered Tintoretto’s masterwork, The Embarkation of St Helena in the Holy Land, and hired a streetwoman named Aggie, (who had been shot in her right hand by Bugsy Siegal) for a handful of some jellybeans, and began his magnum opus, The Exhaustion of Bleecker Street Aggie With The Hole In Her Hand .

A few weeks later, totally bereft of funds and very hungry, he traded the painting for half of a corn beef sandwich.

Today a fella could get at least 25 for it, I betcha. But that’s the kind of guy he was. Had I been there, he’d have given the sandwich to me.

“Tell me, Murph. Are any of his paintings around.”

“All gone for lunch meat and personal items….But that masterpiece, the one of Aggie, it materialized years later. It now hangs in the library where he first heard of Tintoretto.”

“On the wall?”

“Yes, in the Men’s Room.”

“Whatever became of that guy, anyhow?”

“You might say life got the best of him. Penniless, I took him in. Sleep eluded him. His stomach could take no food…Funny, though, I learned Tintoretto went out the same way!”

“How about you, Murph? Ever do any art?”

“No sir, I couldn’t tell  Botticelli from a pot o’chili!”

As the bottle was long drained, I rose to leave.

Murph pleaded with me, “Don’t go! I got lots of stories…The Hieronymus Bosch of The Bowery, the Michelangelo of MacDougal Street, The Prince Street Picasso…”

I went down the steps.  I wondered if ol’ Murph would go down with the building.