Readers Report
1585 Bedford Avenue (corner President St.); 1946-1958: tenement building overlooking busy Bedford Ave. and Lubavitch School, throwing distance from Ebbets Field where I waited patiently with glove for Duke Snider to hit one over the right field wall. During afternoons playing stickball in EF parking lot or leaving jacket on car while it drove away. Walking along President St. to P.S. 241, past my aunt sitting in the window, and that oh so sweet deli on corner. Working in Barton's (Franklin nr Eastern Parkway). Memories sweeter than actuality. . . . Now living in the Netherlands but Brooklyn still in my blood. Joel Bernstein where are you? Ronnie Lieberman still alive? Oh well we all disappear just like the memories of old. Contact me if you know of me.
2 May 1999
P.S. 77, 2nd St., 6th & 7th Ave. Alexander J.H.S. 51, 5th Ave. Manual Training H.S., 7th Ave. . . . 50s
Miss the SMELLS, sewer gas, diesel fuel of buses, the sugar of Bush Terminal, the Gowanis Canal, ash cans, the trains, the stations, the East River, Prospect Park, the horse cart merchants, the bakery, pizza shops, chimney smoke, bagels, Chinese laundries, tar, trucks, deli's, factories, dig we must dust, bakeries, people odors, someone was always lighting a match (sulfur), cat and dog remainders, odors everywhere, every neighborhood had its smells.
SOUNDS, buses, fire trucks, police, tug boats, car horns, cats fighting all into the night, air raid (siren) warnings, store alarms, air hammers, the cries and laughter of children always in the air, ethnic accents and languages everywhere, the cries of peddlers—"bananaaass" with hand and horse (clacking) carts, minstrels, singing groups in doorways, train stations, the clatter of trains rumbling under ground or up on the el, you could hear the roar of the crowd cheering for a dodger home run halfway across Prospect Park, merry-go-rounds in the park or all the mobile rides (the swing—ohs and ahs) that went bloock to block, the ice cream truck or bike-cart bells, loud speaker trucks at election time, mothers talking from window to window or calling to their children or to peddlers, how about "Ice man!", the sound of the yelling at bocchie courts—handball courts—basketball courts, the hum of the BQE, truck sounds, backfiring cars, fireworks, dogs barking, it was never quiet, workmen always digging and every sentence started with F, Brooklyn was alive with odors and sound. . . .
It was all those People, together in one area . . . in one season of years . . . the din of life . . . in Brooklyn!
2 May 1999
Rae's candy store Ben and Sol's deli, P.S. 241, Franklin Ave., Ebbets Field, great times, great area, also the Pioneers, the Orioles.
2 May 1999
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