Readers Report
I lived eleven of my first twelve years in Brooklyn, but haven't lived there for 35 years and haven't even set foot in Brooklyn for 30 years. Yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. Flatbush . . . the first apartment I can recall (ages 3-5), I lived on Fenimore Street, a block off Flatbush Avenue. Just across Flatbush on Chester Court lived my great-grandparents, David and Gussie Mitchell. Other relatives lived along Flatbush. My uncle Sam Burdick owned a luncheonette. My great aunt and uncle Selma and Irving Burdick lived at the corner of Ocean and Caton. As a kid we always went to Joe Yee's restaurant on Sundays, on Flatbush near Church. I lived a glorious four years in Bensonhurst/Bath Beach, and later two years in Canarsie, which when I was smaller was a legendary name as in "I'm gonna hit the bawll awl the way to Canahsie." All those beautiful places, frozen in time, late '50s, early '60s.
8 October 1997
My Brooklyn was Sheepshead Bay. Jahn's on Nostrand and Avenue Z (always very crowded on weekends for 2 cent plains and the "Kitchen Sink"). The Sheepshead movie theater. Martin's on Nostrand and Ave W. The fishing boats that returned to Emmons Avenue around 3:00 p.m. Attending Sheepshead Bay High School in the late 60s (Leo Sevitz's senior orchestra, SING, graduation at Walt Whitman Auditorium). Taking "safe" walks on Nostrand Ave. at any hour.
I now live on Long Island but Brooklyn's where I'm from.
10 October 1997
I was Born on July 13, 1947. I spent my early years, until I was nineteen at 2058 E. 55 st. My telephone number was CL8-0690. This information flows off the tip of my tongue, just as if I am there, right now, instead of 45 years later and living in Jersey. I was five before I could get the numbers straight.
So many memories, flowing through my mind. Let me dip in and see what I pull out.
Lately I have been thinking of "Cookie," a girl I knew from friends, who I used to see at Riis, Bay 14. I never knew her last name. I was enchanted by her large, beautiful, brown eyes. She had captured my soul the moment I first saw her. As usually found in these cases, she never saw me. I was invisible. For many summers, how I wished she and I could be a little more than friends. This just wasn't in the cards. Then she disappear from the beach, my life, leaving me just a dream.
I met her a few years ago when she visited New York. She is living California. Our meeting was fated. We ran into each other in Central Park. When I think of the odds of us meeting, I knew we were destined. This time we hit it off. Her kisses were just as I dreamed they be. I even went over to her family's house, and met her family. I found out her name was Anya. A few days after our meeting she returned to California.
Today, I don't remember where her family lives, E. 50 something. And in all the excitement of seeing her I forgot to ask her for her last name. I miss her.
16 October 1997
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