Readers Report
I lived in . . . and best remember . . . Prospect Park. Monument Hill, Dead Man's Cave, the absolutely dreadful "egg-water" that was to be found at, and only at, the 3rd Street and 9th Avenue fountain (Prospect Park West, to everyone else). I sledded there in winter, and galloped through it in summer, first on my own to legs and, many years later, on a horse of my very own. I was alive there ... and free there, and many times I ran away to there, only to be found again.
I grew up at 1850 52nd St., Apt 4B. I remember every detail of the place. We were right on the fringe of the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park and the Norwegian conclave of Bensonhurst, centered (I think) around Avenue I. I remember a playground, and going for ice cream at Carvel.
When my brothers were born, we moved to Park Slope. From Norskies to Jews to the densest population of Irish Catholicism you could find on Earth. I remember not being able to take the elevator to meet some friends in their apartment at 35 Prospect Park West because the entire population of the building, including the elevator operator, were saying the Rosary in the lobby! I was duly sent to St. Saviour's Elementary School, where I was a spy for Sister Evarista. . . . It wasn't until I fought my way through St. Saviour's High School, Sing Out Brooklyn, and a dogged determination not to play basketball regardless of my height, that I realized that the Nuns existed to Make Me Strong.
And it's funny, after I moved to Colorado, I met so many people from Brooklyn. People who remembered the agony we all felt when the Dodgers abandoned us and Ebbets Field was torn down. (I used to boo the Dodgers at Shea Stadium—now I boo them at Coors Field). People who used to hang out in the Ingersol branch of the Library. People I'd never met who lived less than a mile from me.
I have not been back to Brooklyn. I have so many wonderful memories of the places I left behind. . . . It was good to read the Junior's is still there and still making cheesecake. I wonder if the barn and the bridle path in Prospect Park are still there? I miss being able to sit in the Long Meadow in the summer and hear Luciano Pavarotti sing for free (ah, that was a long time ago!) . . . and most of all I miss getting lost in all the little paths in the Japanese Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic. . . .
Someday . . .
Thank you for this wonderful site! It brings back into my life so much that was good!
12 December 1997
Crown Heights in the late 50s/early 60s.
- P.S. 189 . . . had Mrs. Baron/Mrs. Dubowsky/Mrs. Blatt
- Rutland Little League . . . games at Canarsie Fields
- Playing punch ball on Ford Street
- Carroll Theater. . . pizza and soda and candy for less than a dollar
- Lincoln Terrace Park
- Fast food was the White Castle on Empire Blvd.
- Bowling at Sid Gordon or Gil Hodges Lanes
- Shopping on Utica Avenue . . . toy stores . . . names?
- Abe's Candy Store on Rochester Ave.
- Penny candy store across from P.S. 189 . . . on East 92nd?
- Cub Scout Pack 54, led by Mr. Schatel
- Memorial Day Parade on Eastern Parkway
14 December 1997
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