My Brooklyn

Harald Steingass

My Brooklyn was in the Bay Ridge section on 5th Avenue and 54th Street from about mid-1958 until about mid-1962, between the ages of about six and ten. My parents and I had just come over from Germany, and after spending about six months with an aunt in Queens, we moved to Brooklyn. I attended P.S. 94 out towards Sunset Park, which was one of the best parks in NYC. The pool was great in the summer, and I remember the many days I went to the park with my parents or my friends to go roller-skating down the slopes of the park, overlooking the Brooklyn docks. I also remember some of the candy stores and the stores on 5th Avenue. It was on the corner across the street from the Seamen Savings Bank (hopefully still there) that I set up shop shining shoes when I was about nine or ten and actually earned a nice bundle for a kid that age. I only did it for a couple of months, but it was very good experience for later life. Most of all I remember the stickball and stoopball games we had on my block during those long summer vacations. During those months my mother saw me in the mornings and in the evenings, when I came home grimy and sweaty from a long summer's day doing everything a kid off from school usually does. We then moved back to Queens in 1962, only to return to Brooklyn daily a few years later to go to Brooklyn Tech: a great school, of which I have the fondest memories, and which (for all you Technites) has a great website. For the past thirty years I have been living in Germany, but have returned to the US many times, although not to my old neighborhood. Maybe I'll make it the next time around.

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