Readers Report
My fondness for Brooklyn will never leave me and I think of it often. My family moved a lot when I was young (born 1961) and we lived in many areas of B'klyn . . . Doorchester Road, Rogers Ave., Synder (our house was knocked down to build the police station). Schools . . . P.S. 131, P.S. 149, Caton school, Walt Whitman, Madison H.S. The place of my youth I recall the most is St. Paul's Pl. between Church and Caton.
The street games were the best: buck-buck, racing pop sticks in the gutter after a quick spring rain storm, stick-ball and of course the bike room in the basement of our 4-story walk-up which the kids on the block used as hang-out. There was also Al's boy scout troop whom none of the kids on the block were members of, but we all enjoyed playing in the church gym when Al would let us. Anyone out there remember Deadman's Hill in propect park, skully, and just hanging out on the stoop at 148 St. Paul's Place.
I feel like it all deservres a movie so we can all remember and enjoy! Brooklyn: many have left it but few forget it. (I have a dozen books about it). Thanks for letting me ramble.
4 April 1998
Brooklyn 1972
I remember growing up at 3420 Clerendon Road in the Flatbush section. It was the best of both worlds—the Irish, Italians and Jewish people. Everyone got along and everyone had pride—not that anyone had all that much.
That did not matter. We were all in it together.
The spring and summer were just wonderful. I used to play stickball on the street and the old people used to sit on their lawn chairs. I remember their conversations so well . . . Nixon vs. McGovern, the War in Vietnam, the Mets, how John Lennon should be deported for being a "radical." How all the old ladies thought Mayor Lindsey was so handsome. That was some summer.
4 April 1998
My Brookln is first and foremost my family, even though my mom is from Queens. She has lived in Brooklyn since 1969. I however have only lived in Brooklyn since 1979, when I was born. I live on the well traveled street of Ocean Parkway. My neighborhood is called Kensington. It is kind of smushed in between several bigger meighborhoods in Brooklyn.
I attend school in Boston now. I miss Brooklyn very much. It is hard to explain to people not from the metropolitan area what it is like. Many people are shocked at the idea of living in the city. Then I have to explain the idea of boroughs to them. I am a proud resident of the borough of Brooklyn which is one-fifth of the city, I find myself saying. i do not think my friends from the Cape or the suburbs or down south really understand the diversity that is Brooklyn.
I live next to immigrants from all around the world. Outside my apartment door (that is another thing people have trouble understanding) is the world. I went to schools in Borough Park, Kensington, Flatbush and Midwood. I have friends from all over the borough. My Boston friends have trouble understanding that it takes an hour to get to my friend's house in Marine Park or Dyker Heights. They say but it is in the same city.
After that I try to explain to them that, since I have to switch from the F train to the D train going to the Bronx for a game at Yankee Stadium, it's a three-hour round trip. Again my friends say but it is the same city. My reply: But it is Brooklyn.
8 April 1998
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