My Brooklyn

Jay S. Orlikoff, DDS

What a delight your web page is. I found it by chance. I really don't know what my "old" neighborhood was called. We used to say we were from the (Kings) Highway. I was from E. 17th and the "Highway."

I went to a dentist in your neighborhood... on the corner of Eastern Parkway and Washington. I think the address was 201. My pediatrician was I think at 135 EP. In those days I could safely take the subway by myself to go there. I was probably doing that at around 12 years old . . . 1955.

I'm curious how old you are, and how you came to create the page. Do you plan on updating the other neighborhoods?

Memories <sigh>.

Matt Perlstein

This is a comment I sent to Don Solomon in response to his reader's report. He suggested I send it to you.

I thought your story about my Brooklyn was very interesting and brought back lots of fond memories. As an Erasmus 1966 grad, I do have to take exception to

Erasmus Hall High School, with its faculty full of Ph.D.s, its famous alumni, the hapless basketball team forced to play against the future Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of Boys' High.

Actually, the 1965 EHHS team, for which I was a manager and PA announcer for home games, won the NY city championship and came in 2nd the next year. Lew Alcindor, the future Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, didn't go to Boys' High. He went to the now-defunct Power Memorial H.S. in Manhattan. We did scrimmage Power one year at the Yeshiva on Avenue J and East 16th Street and held our own with them.

Frank Tobin

My Brooklyn? Playing stick ball on Berkeley Place . . . a 2-sewer hitter . . . only stopping the game for a half hour a day to go home and watch Annette on The Mickey Mouse Club. Saturdays at the Garfield Theatre (5th Ave./Garfield Place) . . . Josie the usherette telling us all to SHADDUP!!!!! 15 color cartoons, Coming Attractions galore, Flash Gordon & Rocketman & Batman & Robin serials, 2 features (usually the Bowery Boys & a Lash LaRue western). The Brooklyn Public Library with its vast selection of great books . . . James Joyce? what did he steal his name from James Jones? (I could never find that great "dirty" book From Here To Eternity . . . why not? Getting my 1st adult library card—what a great feeling, freeing myself from that childish children's section. Artie's candy store on 5th between Union & Berkeley. St. Augustine's and clapping the blackboard erasers with Agnes McNamee (god how we used to kiss on the roof of that school). Manual Training High School . . . and how proud I was of Evan Hunter for writing The Blackboard Jungle ("Hey man. . . . he's talking about us!!!!" . . . required reading for all of us . . . ). DA haircuts & pegged pants . . . Maria Say No, the Puerto Rican girl who I was crazy about, but would always say "no" to my make-out suggestions. P.S. 4, the school I grew us next to. Downtown . . . the Paramount and the Fabian's Fox and those great rock & roll shows. The Albee, the Strand, the Carlton, the Plaza (which always showed those movies that were condemned by the Legion of Decency). . . . This and more is my Brooklyn.

Readers' reports continue . . .

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