Readers Report
My Brooklyn was Bensonhurst Bay 26th St., between 86th & Benson Ave., 1949-1980. P.S. 200, J.H.S. 128 (SP) & Stuyvesant H.S. My memories of MY Brooklyn as a youth are described below:
I had a dream last night. I dreamt that all of us from Brooklyn got together and TOOK IT BACK!!!!! We stormed our neighborhoods and threw out all of the intruders and sent them packing to Manhattan. Then we took back our apartments, brought back our parents and our friends. Good Humor men, Bungalow Bar, JAVELLLL man, Fruit trucks, Drove half the cars over to Manhattan and left them there, cleared our streets for punchball, stickball, kick the can, squareball, ringolevio, tag, touch football. Took Nathan's back, brought back Steeplechase, the Tornado, 25 cent movies, 15 cent tokens, buses with windows that opened and seats with foam, schools where you could go home for lunch, Mayor Wagner, the World's Fair, Subway trains with ceiling fans and comfortable seats and heaters that actually heated. Incandescent light bulbs, the 5 & dime, 3 baseball teams, transistor radios, WMCA, WABC & WINS, 45 rpm's, Good Guy sweatshirts, 15 cent Pizza, 10 cent cokes. 5 cent Nestle bars, 15 cent egg creams and 25 cent Malteds. REAL GLASS glasses, cars with wings, milk in wax quarts, Kirsch's and Hoffman sodas, real candy stores, 5 cent baseball cards, the Daily Mirror, Journal American, World Telegraph, the EAGLE, Willie, Mickey & the DOOK. Parks with grass and NO FRIGGIN cars parked on the grass along the Belt Parkway. The Loew's Oriental, the Benson, Louie the Barber, comic books, Spaldeens, pensy pinky, REAL roller skates, bicycles without helmets, kneepads, elbow pads etc. corduroy pants, Red Ties for assembly, PF Flyers, shoes with laces, "RELEASE TIME", spelling pre-tests on Mondays and re-tests on Fridays, 7 TV stations ONLY, Saturday double feature matinees, horror movies, the 3 stooges, cars with fins, stick pretzels in that little flat box that cost a nickel, automats, A & S, Mays, Korvettes, S. Klien, Gimbles, stamp collecting with our fathers, coins of real silver, "ZONES" not zipcodes, 3 cent stamps in blue with the Statue of Liberty, Telephone #'s with character (Coney Island 6, Esplanade 3, Beachview 4, etc.) telephones with BELLS, Apartment houses with open doors, home-cooking smells in the hallways. Dinner at the table with the whole family and NO DAMN TV. Classic Illustrated comics, Fireworks every Tuesday night. Rock n Roll, songs without deeeeeeep messages, no synthesizers, real pianos! MEDIUM RARE BURGERS at a real restaurant (Irving's 21st Ave. & 86th St.) served on a real damn dish, no styrofoam, ketchup in a bottle of glass, Wonder bread in WAX PAPER, the decimal system, drugstores where the owners were called "DOC" (Alahand's), MD's making housecalls, chickenpox on Halloween, actually being able to EAT the halloween treats, snow piled under the "EL," "KING of the MOUNTAIN".
What a dream, and I don't remember it all!
14 October 1998
My Brooklyn surrounds me with buildings and parking garages, you want to go to E.N.Y. or Fairfield, or Brownsville, or New Lots, yeah tha's right Starrett City is the gates to reality when you walk amongst the wolves that feast on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Starrett City, Brooklyn, New York has produced talents such as designer Karl Kani, graphic designer Ralf de Focus, and a whole slew of others.
15 October 1998
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