The Reader's Digest used to have a regular feature, "The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met." I've met many unforgettable characters, but if I were to choose the most unforgettable one, it would have to be Tom Conroy. He was not famous but he was a very important person in my life for 50 years and I'm putting up this post as a memorial to him.
MEMORIES OF TOM CONROY
In September 1970 I moved to the Lower East Side of New York City to attend the Cooper Union School of the Arts. I collected comic books and hoped to become a comic book artist. A few months after I settled in, I came across a store on Fourth Avenue and 11th Street called The Memory Shop and went in to see if they had any comic books. The store was crammed with stuff, mostly movie posters and file cabinets of stills, but there were also boxes of back issues of comics, completely unsorted. I said to the owner, “If I put all these in order, would you pay me in comics?”
“Sure,” he said. This was my introduction to Mark Ricci. I didn’t know yet that this was the way he generally handled business. Mark looked to be in his 40s and always wore rumpled, greasy, black suit pants and a sweaty sleeveless undershirt, a “wife beater.” He had a Hitler mustache. Mark was not a scrupulous person. When the fire inspector dropped by to look at his firetrap of a business, Mark would ask, “50?” and in response to a slight nod would slip him the bills. He might say to one of the employees, “Geronimo, we need an electric typewriter.” A day or two later Geronimo would show up carrying one, unboxed, of course. As far as the memorabilia, was Mark buying goods stolen by employees of studio offices or other sources? Sometimes.
At the same time, Mark didn’t seem to care about money. His staff consisted of various street people whom he paid out of his pocket and let stay in apartments he rented. Most went by nicknames. Mark was referred to as “The Godfather.” Other members of the cast included Geronimo, Popeye Larry, The Bride of Frankenstein, a couple referred to as the King and Queen of England (because they don’t do any work either), and last, but very important in my life, the Gray Lizard, Tom Conroy. Tom was a tall, skinny speed freak whose movements were quick and jerky, like those of a lizard, and who had an ashy dusting over his pallid skin and clothes, hence the descriptor “gray.” Once my comics started getting published, I became “Famous Paul.”
After I had organized the comics in the store, Mark asked me to collect some boxes of books stored at Tom’s apartment. Tom wrote out his address, 340 East 6th St, apt 4D, with the instruction “Call up from street.” I went over there that evening. Tom didn’t have a telephone, so I had to call out his name until he heard me. He then dropped a set of keys tied to a bandana out of his window.
A photo of Tom's building, 340 East 6th Street, I took on a recent visit to New York. It looks much the same as it did in the 1970s.
I opened his apartment door to face a dark hallway, narrow because one side of it was lined with milk crates holding magazines and other items. They were stacked to the ceiling and propped up by shovels, brooms, and plungers. Some light filtered in from a window in the small room at the far end.
That small room was cluttered with the sort of things with which hoarders fill their places, but also a lot of filing cabinets. There was a path through it to the room in which Tom stayed. It too was cluttered, with a mattress on the floor and posters and papers pinned to the wall. There were stacks of file folders full of movie stills as well as boxes full of well-organized comic books. In the middle of the room was a tripod holding up a hose from which rose an open flame about a foot high that burned constantly. This was his source of light and heat and the explanation for his slightly sooty appearance. “Just like a campfire,” Tom said. “Electricity’s been off for two years.”
The windows in this room were covered in cardboard so that people across the street wouldn’t call the fire department. There were no chairs. Tom sat on his mattress. The effect was like entering a shaman’s cave. I was fascinated and spent several hours sitting and talking with Tom. We hit it off immediately, like the kindred spirits we were. When I left that night, he gave me 20 early Fantastic Four comics to add to my collection.
