Readers Report
This is the greatest web page ever. I am so happy I found it! My Brooklyn was Flatbush! My parents brought me home from Prospect Heights Hospital to a lovely little house at 1086 East 31st Street (and Avenue K) My father was from Texas and my mother was an Irish Catholic from Manhattan. I was probably the only kid in Flatbush who grew up on chili con carne! Well anyway Daddy was a farm boy and there we were in Brooklyn on a 60x100 plot of ground with chickens, ducks, rabbits cats, dogs and a monkey. The neighbors soon got tired of the rooster crowing so we had to eat him one night (except Daddy). I remember that most of the activity we did centered around the Junction. We went to Trunz's Meat Market and there was sawdust on the floor. The butcher always gave me a slice of bologna. Then there was a live chicken market. You went in and picked out your chicken and they killed it right on the spot. Before Brooklyn College came into existence, Barnum & Bailey circus set up a tent every spring on what is now the College grounds. That was exciting. That would be around 1936. We had horse-drawn carriages coming down the street. There was the rag man who called out "I cash clothes," and the fish seller. And the fruit and vegetable man. And of course the ice man!
I started school at Our Lady Help of Christians and was there until third grade when we lost our house and moved to a cold water flat on Rogers and Foster Aves. My sister and I went to St. Jerome School. It was during the depression but we never knew we were poor. We went belly whopping in the winter and down the hill in Farragut Woods. We played "Russia" off the brick building and marbles in the little dirt patches surrounding the trees. We played "double dutch" endlessly. On Saturday afternoons we would go to the movies. The Farragut, the College, Loew's Kings, the Rialto, the Albemarle and the Kenmore. After the movies we had to go to Confession, that was the weekly ritual!
In the summer we would go to Farragut pool or we would walk down to the Junction and stand on line for the Green bus to take us to Riis Park. We would spend all day at the beach and come home burned and sandy! I would not trade my childhood in Brooklyn for anything. It was the best of times!
25 April 1999
Bay Ridge; Our Lady of Angels; Wilson's Ice Cream Parlor; Third Avenue; Fontbonne Hall, 1961; Sunday and Friday night dances at OLA Shopping on 86th Street; Bliss Park; basketball games and playing in the OLA schoolyard; Joe and Howard's.
25 April 1999
Linda Shaw
Our Lady of Angels; St. Saviour, 1965; Wilson's; Joe and Howard's; Otten's; Jack's; Third Avenue and 72nd Street Stationery; "Penguin"; Kings County Nursing School, 1968.
25 April 1999
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