My Brooklyn

Patti

I was born and raised in Canarsie. I lived there for 27 of my 30 years before I moved out of state. I go back often to see family and friends and it always feels like home when I go back. When you live out of state, people cannot figure out how us "Brooklynites" can go back. I have come to the conclusion that unless you are raised there, you just cannot know what it feels like. I don't think I could have had a better childhood growing up anywhere else. Brooklyn was, is and will always be my home.I don't know, there is just something about walking through a neighborhood and knowing people, their children (many of whom you grew up with) and their grandchildren.I have always believed in one saying, "Brooklyn isn't just a place to live, it's a state of mind." Thanks for letting me share my feelings. God Bless to all of you.

Ari Cohen

Brooklyn to me is all my dreams wrapped up in a city. The smell of street fairs mixed with the rattling of the subway is Brooklyn. It's hanging with my high school buddies and dreaming of being there in the fifties to watch the Dodgers win a World Series. It's street hockey and football. It's The Mary Queen of Heaven Bazaar. I love Brooklyn!

Lee Lesser

I grew up in a mansion (well, I thought it was anyway). It was in East New York at 432 Montauk Ave., between Hegeman and New Lots Aves. I lived there from birth, 1944, to 1960, when we moved far away to Flatbush. The neighborhood had Italian and Jewish families and for years I thought the whole world was the same: either Jewish or Italian. It wasn't until I went to high school that I realized that my world was pretty limited.

I was different than most kids. I really wasn't interested in sports. Oh, sure I had a favorite baseball team, the Yankees, and went to lots of games, yes even Dodger games, but playing baseball wasn't my thing. Machines and electronics kept me intrigued for hours. When I was about 10, I completely took apart my bicycle (a Columbia of course) and my parents just stared at me in disbelief with all the parts laying on the street. (yes, I got it all back together). Later it was an Erector set, then electric trains, then my first tape recorder, then of course, cars, cars, cars.

Here are some vivid memories:

• All the adults sitting outside at night on aluminum folding chairs, gossiping.
• Watching Milton Berle on Tuesdays on our neighbor's TV (we had none).
• Riding my bike far away to a little weight lifting shop owned by Jack LaLane.
• Our first TV, a Philco, maybe 10", every time you changed stations you had to adjust 4 knobs to bring the picture back in.
• My earliest awareness of girls, Norma Bernstein, 5th grade; I had no idea how to show it.
• Driving to Long Island with my family to a new shopping place called Green Acres Mall.
• Mr. Puglese's farm across the street. Don't hit any balls in there!
• Coming home every day for lunch from P.S. 202.
• Placing 3rd in the 100 yd dash on Field Day in the 6th grade.
• Being demoted in 7th grade because I got too many Charges.
• Soft twisted pretzels dipped in spicy mustard, 8 cents.
• Going to New York City alone by subway to visit the Gilbert Hall of Science.
• Spending the summers of 1957 and 1958 in Rockaway (that's Queens, not NJ) in a bungalow on Beach 38th Street.
• My first paying job delivering groceries at Harry's Grocery Store on Edgemere Ave. in Rockaway.
• Waiting on Sutter Ave. every morning for the school bus to take us to Franklin K. Lane H.S. (Class of '61).
• Playing King-Queen and Johnny-on-the-Pony on the corner of Montauk and Hegeman.
• Going to Radio City Music Hall with my family every Christmas morning (yes, everyone in the place was Jewish).
• Working on Saturdays at my Father's luncheonette, Lesser Brothers. It was on the busy corner of Flatbush & Nostrand right around the corner from Brooklyn College.
• Going to the Blake Ave. push-cart market with my Father every Sunday morning.
• Driving my Father's new 1960 Oldsmobile when I was 16 (God, was I nervous).
• Taking my girlfriend out for a driving lesson on that car (on the Belt too) without telling my Father (well, I did marry her).

My best friends, where are they now? Harold (Hazzy) Alpert, Michael Sussel, Eddie Kaponer, Jack Edwards, Gerry Waldon, Neil Hay

Readers' reports continue . . .

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