Readers Report
The beautiful part of living on Eastern Parkway and having all those benches was that the bench became an integral part of your make-believe life. A bench could be a snow fort from which to pitch snowballs. If iced, we sleighed across them. We jumped from them and became "statues" to be guessed by our opponents. Five kids could sit across a bench and play "telephone." It became a schoolroom, a place to sit and play ball games, a safe place to park your kid brother in a baby carriage and, best of all, a place where all the mothers sat and bragged about their kids. And our trees were enclosed in cages; each one had a plaque with a testimony to a World War I military man who died in the war.
Pretty classy, huh?
19 September 1999
My Brooklyn 1024 Montgomery Street, Brooklyn 13, N.Y. I lived at this address from 1945-1964. I attended P.S. 189, Winthrop J.H.S. and Wingate H.S. I graduated Wingate in 1963.
I remember hanging out in the President Bowling and Billiard Academy, more commonly know at The Pit because of its subterranean locale beneath street level on Utica Avenue.
I also could be found in White Castle on Utica and East New York Avenues.
I played in Lincoln Terrace Park and used to take the B-17 bus to see a girl on Seaview Avenue in Canarsie.
My first job was delivering meat on a heavy bike that had no gears and it was tough going up the steep hill of Utica Avenue to make deliveries on Eastern Parkway for 15 cents a delivery and maybe a tip if I was lucky.
I have a daughter who now goes to school in Brooklyn so I still get back there even though I now live 160 miles north of my homeland.
20 September 1999
As a boy, I fondly remember two movie theaters that held wonderful memories. The Kinema Theater (cor. Pitkin Ave. & Berriman St.) and the Embassy Theater on Fulton Street (cor. Richmond St.) in East New York. If anyone has any information about these theaters or any leads, I certainly would appreciate it. Right now all I have are the pictures in my head.
Ray of 612 Belmont Ave. (bet. Jerome & Barbey Sts. since demolished)
20 September 1999
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