Readers Report
My Brooklyn is most remembered as a summer night when, in later July, the light of day seems to linger on until almost 9 o'clock, and the sound of kids in the street still echo as long as it's light enough to keep your eye on the ball. It is the old Jewish and Italian folk, sitting on fold-up chairs and discussing their medical conditions, and what the dentist told them, and where their "oldest" has moved, and why they never call. The jingle-jangle of the Good Humor Man can be heard in the distance, and the occasional guy with the "whip" on the back of his truck . . . the kind that spins you around like at the amusement park . . . only he comes to your door with an abbreviated version of this ride and for a dime, you get to spin and turn until—the small proce of a dime—you defy getting sick and puking up your mother's fishstick and spaghetti dinner. Long walk on this night, as the men return from Ebbets Field. And some of the older guys are wearing hats like men did then—even in the summer. We run through the alleys and over the roof tops and spy on our parents and hope they don't see us . . . and we avoid the random band of rebels from a secret area north of Eastern Parkway where the bad kids come and hassle us, we of the Crown Heights contingent. And we are careful to avoid their clusters force . . . "all I find I keep?" . . . they say, and we hate to hear that because it's foreign and after all, they are the invading force in our neighborhood, and we swear revenge. My dad offers to drive us somewhere and all of us, six or seven, pile into the car and he feels large and the caretaker of the night as we tool the neighborhood and maybe we go to Powell Street or past the Loew's Pitkin which by now has changed from the days of his youth, and it's a more foreboding place, with poor black kids splashing under the purple street light by an open hydrant. So we swing north to Flatbush to Jann's and we drink sweet malts, as the people stroll up and down the avenue. Maybe we stop to see Aunt Sally on Clarkson, and she tells us she had one of the first televisions in Brooklyn. "I used to give out tickets", she tells us, "they came from everywhere to watch. I had to rent chairs. They wanted to see Berle." And then up Remsen and onto Utica past the Carroll Theatre where I spent more time than anywhere else. That was my Brooklyn . . . at least for a while.
6 June 1997
The place where I met and married my husband right out of high school. Our idyl didn't last long because he was killed at Anzio at age 21. However, our daughter and I had a year with him at Durham, NC, while he trained at Camp Butner. It has been umpteen years, and I understand that Red Hook has changed for the worse. They tell me that the statue of the soldier at Coffey Park, a World War I memorial, has been decapitated. Was it ever replaced? The description of 1010 President Street is a revelation because I never knew that Brooklyn has its own zoo! We used to go to Central Park to enjoy the one there.
25 May 1997
I love Brooklyn. Don't get me started.
My Brooklyn had its center at 2813 Ocean Avenue, corner of Avenue X. My father had a hardware store on Avenue X near East 23rd Street. We all went to Abe and Harold's "candy" store, where I learned about egg creams and lime rickeys. My dad used to go there at night to get tomorrow's newspaper, a concept which I had a great deal of trouble comprehending. "How did they know what was going to happen tomorrow?"
I attended P.S. 206, P.S. 254, Shell Bank Jr. High ('57) and Madison ('60). I think I was in the last graduating class that kids in my neighborhood made. The class of '61 attended Sheepshead. I really loved my days at Madison. I was always proud to be associated with the school. When's the next reunion??? We had a great basketball team. One year, we even beat Boys' High's team with Connie Hawkins! Let's not talk about football. Except to say when we finally won a game, our victory parade closed Kings Highway on a beautiful Saturday!
My Brooklyn extended southward to the ocean at Brighton Beach and Coney Island, and later included Manhattan Beach. This included, of course, my beloved Steeplechase, Nathan's, and the Cyclone.
On the way to the ocean, was, of course, Sheepshead Bay with Lundy's and its outdoor clambar counters. The waiters there always gave us kids as much water to drink as we asked for. I can't imagine that kind of accommodation today. Sheepshead Bay was also where Gary Morgenstern and I used to bowl at Freddy Fitsimmon's bowling alley where they had "pinboys" and two-holed balls.
At age ten or twelve during the summers, my friend Peter Beichman (whose dad also owned a hardware store—his on the Bowery) and I joined the Sheepshead Bay Boy's Club, which allowed us to go on any of the fishing boats in the Bay for a quarter or a half-dollar. Some of the boats (the Effort and the Elmar, I think) were converted submarine chasers from World War II. I never ate fish, but really enjoyed fishing.
To the east was Marine Park, where I played baseball, once against a team with Joe Torre, whose brother Frank was still playing in the bigs. One of Joe's teammates used to say "Come on, Joe Torre, brother of Frank Torre, get a hit!"
Although I never knew exactly where it was (we took the bus and trolley), I went north to Ebbett's Field very often during the summer months. We scoured the gutters for Dixie Cup lids and wrappers or sticks from Borden's (?) ice cream pops, and could turn in ten of them in (with seventy-five cents?) for a ticket to the bleachers, from where we often snuck around to behind third base as the game progressed. I loved that ballpark and those Dodgers, and my heart broke, along with the hearts of most of the rest of Brooklyn, when they inexplicably moved to L.A. I think I've never recovered.
Also somewhere north was Prospect Park and the Botanical Gardens, but they weren't very important to me. In fact, most of Brooklyn was foreign to me until after I moved to Lawn Guyland, with great sadness, in '61.
In and around my apartment building, we played (with Spaldeens) stoopball, box baseball, punchball, slapball, Chinese handball, stickball against a wall and on a bounce in the middle of the street. We played skelly, flipped and traded baseball cards, roller skated, and rode our bikes with baseball cards flapping in the spokes.
While in high school, I learned to shoot pool, much to my mother's displeasure. Especially on Yom Kippur when she caught me in Joe's Pool Room on Avenue X. What a sleazy, wonderful place that was! Joe really liked me, and let me run the joint while he escaped to the sunlight from time to time. It was there that I learned to play three-cushion billiards really well. I graduated to Barney's Pool Room (and bowling alley) on E. 13th St., just off the Highway. Barney's, although also underground, was a bit more respectable. They sold food there and had a ladies room! Floyd, a black man in his thirties or forties, worked there much of the time. He spoke Yiddish better than my father.
God . . . I could write a book. I think I just did! Sorry.
Not at all. Thank you so much. [DNM]
9 June 1997
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