Readers Report
My Brooklyn is just about EVERYTHING all the other people have written. What is so amazing to me is that in spite of the fact that MY Brooklyn was the Brooklyn of the very late '20s (on 47th Street and 10th Avenue), the '30s ( Dahill Rd. and Kings H'way) and the '40s (Boro Park: 1414 51st Street). I find that I share all of the same fantastic experiences of all you other Brooklynites: the stickball, Chinese handball, Dixie cups, etc. I find it so gratifying and an almost impossible task to read of your (y'all's: I am now a denizen of the South) reminiscences. I could hardly stop reading last night, and will probably not finish reading tonight. I wish that Dr. Miller will put them in a book so that these old eyes can read them at my bedside rather than off a computer screen. I am a little saddened by the fact that so far I have found so few of the people that I knew. Where have THEY gone! I have found only one classmate from Boys' High Class of '42, one Dave Herbach.
Oh, how I enjoyed your sharing with us experiences on the "old" Culver Line with its open platform cars, and the fact that the streets were so safe, day and night! I left a very diverse Brooklyn to go South to Mississippi and taught at the University of Southern Mississippi during the Civil Rights encounters. I tried, oh how I tried to communicate to the students how "normal" it was for all of us to live together and enjoy one another. But that will have to be at another time (after I have read more).
My Brooklyn included the Goldman concerts in Prospect Park, Ebbets Field on Flatbush Ave., Pitkin Ave., and Boys' H.S. among many other memories. It was just after WWII, when veterans were returning, that housing was needed for them in huge supplies. They built an entire town in the Canarsie area consisting of Quonset huts which went up almost overnight to accommodate veterans and their families. I remember the victory gardens on which we cultivated vegetables during the war and the stars, some gold for deceased veterans, that hung in the windows. I feel fortunate that I was able to grow up in such an interesting place at a time when you had access to a wonderful education.
My Brooklyn was at 2032 Hendrickson St. between S & T, one block off Flatbush Ave. I was born in '37, went to P.S. 207, Madison for two years till my mother found out I was cutting and playing ball, so she took me by the ear and put me into St. Leonard's Academy on Atlantic Ave. and Fulton St. but its was the best time of my life. I remember Faust's bar on Ave. S , the community center in P.S. 207 at night to play ball or dance, ya dance—not many of us knew how but we tried and then on to TV for Ted Steel's Dance Party. That was a gas. If the girls knew you could dance, they were all over us. In the '50s I had my first car. Remember when ya got one buck's worth of gas and you drove all week—five gallons for a dollar. Trolley car for a nickel, but we jumped on the back and held on till the cops seen us. . . . Love ya Brooklyn. God bless us all who had the thrill of growing up there.
Readers' reports continue . . .
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