Readers Report
My Brooklyn was East 27th and Avenue I near Brooklyn College from 1954 till 1975. I miss walking to the small College theatre to see movies, the Junction Bar at Flatbush and Nostrand, and eating Chinese at Avenue J (lobster rolls) at a place I just can't recall. I went to P.S. 152, then Andries Hudde Junior High, and then Midwood High School (graduated in 1971). Played punchball all day until dark. I miss Joe Ochiogrosso (Joe's Ice Cream Truck) and Freezer Fresh. I don't miss throwing up off the Pilot II out of Sheepshead Bay. I live in Atlanta, Georgia now and would like to hear from anybody from the old neighborhood.
Does anyone remember P.S. 140 on 4th Avenue between 59th and 60th Street? Was it in Sunset or Bay Ridge? It was torn down in the late '60s, but it's not completely forgotten. The mind's halls still echo with Mr. Patterson's cough and Mr. Fleming still walks the corridors. Mrs. Duffy, Mrs. Tracy, and Mrs. Cabinet (is that how you spell it?) still haunt their homerooms hoping to teach Kenneth (Skippy), Henry Barker, Angelo Giardinni, and me the rudiments of English, math, and social studies. Of course there were the girls—Gloria, Kathy, Elida (my cousin), Carol and Lois (above all). It's all quite misty and vague.
208 Beverly Road, near Church Avenue and Mcdonald Avenue, trolley rides to Coney Island, sticky molasses-covered popcorn, coming home at dusk, the Beverly Movie Theatre and "Uncle Jack" the manager, eating rye bread smeared with mustard from wax paper cones and gulping seltzer at Gorelick's before the movies. My brother and me. We never paid. They never asked.
Fireflies on July 4th caught in a jar. We sat on the stoop. We lit sparklers. We made *mish mash* of our chocolate and vanilla dixie cups. Vanilla Mellow Rolls. Mellow rolls. Like Marshmallow. The Dodgers. The first TV in the house. Alice and Murray had the first TV. My pansy patch in the front yard. The twig of a tree. The concrete pool in the back yard. Tasting mint in my neighbor's yard. A neighborhood dog bites me under the eye. Rabies shots. Every day for a week. Watching the bushes grow in the backyard while we waited for Hilly to come home from the war to cut them. Twenty-six steps to our floor. Potsy. Stoop ball. Hit the penny. Snow. Higher than our dog, Clipper. Snow fights with my brothers. The Igloo. Silver Rods Drug Store.
Irene and Jackie and Judy. My mother. My father. My brother David goes to Korea. And my brother Herb.
Readers' reports continue . . .
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