Readers Report
My Brooklyn is stickball, hot summer nights waiting for the ice cream man ("Bungalow Bar, tastes like tar, the more you eat it the fatter you are"), Mr. Softee, etc. It is going to PS 179, then Immaculate Heart of Mary, then Bishop Ford . . . first graduating class of 1966. So many things to do: play ball at the Parade Grounds, walk in Prospect Park, skate at Park Circle Rink (I can still hear the organist say "ALL SKATE" or "LADIES"); Coney Island where I went on my first date, Steeplechase. Getting along with EVERYBODY—black, white, Italian, Irish, German, Jewish . . . we were all friends. I loved to ride my bike along the Ocean Parkway bike path to Coney Island. We live far from Brooklyn now, but my children listen with wonder to my stories. I have taught several kids here in Vermont how to play stickball—pitching in against the brick chimney!
8 October 1999
I fell in love with a chic in Bklyn last month and we still can't get enough of each other. She's from Bensonhurst and lives now in Sheepshead Bay and showed me all around places like Bklyn Hts Promenade (and made out on the benches at night too), Park Slope, Mill Basin, Emmons Ave., Bay Ridge, and we ate at Juniors, of course, etc. We went out all the time and never found a bad Italian restaurant. I found driving around Bklyn fun being that I drive everyday in L.A. I'm also a big nostalgia and Dodger freak and loved the history of Bklyn before setting foot there. The weather was great and I got a kick out of the town and its architecture, especially the Brownstones in Bklyn Hts. We even saw a group of wise guys get into a fist fight at the table next to us at a restaurant in Bklyn at 2 am on a Sat. night. Brooklyn, I Love U Man!!
9 October 1999
My Brooklyn (of the early 1950s)—a four-block radius whose center point was located at Kosciusko and Lewis. Hangouts were on neighborhood corners or in Al's Pool Room on DeKalb and Sumner, with guys like Curly, Rosey, Mike, Red, Hooter the Owl, Rubs, Abey the Mock, Rocky, and Goody. Summer days were spent playing sandlot ball at the Parade Grounds in Park Circle. No one had any money and all our equipment (baseball and football) was home made.
I wish I knew what happened to those guys.
Red
10 October 1999
I lived on Van Siclen Avenue between Livonia and Dumont. I remember hitching rides in the summer to Rockaway and Coney Island. Beach 28 in Rockaway was always full of young people I knew.
I went to J.H.S. 149 and Thomas Jefferson High School. Jack Hirsch was one of my friends in high school. My neighbor Fred Firshein lived near me on Van Siclen. Also Carl Cohen and Allen Gottfried we my close friends. We played ball all summer and in the winter hung out together. I remember hanging out with a crowd under the "el" train on Livonia and Van Siclen Aves. We stayed in Harry's Candy store and played "off the wall" at the power house on Miller & Livonia.
I went to Brooklyn College and taught in P.S. 54 in Brooklyn for three years. I met and dated my wife, Marilyn, who lived near the park on Blake Ave. When she moved to Flatbush, I drove up Flatlands Ave. and remember timing the lights to go the length without stopping until I reached Kings Highway. I remember fishing in Jamaica Bay with my brother Allen and my cousin Jerry Goodman and crabbing with Allen Gottfried. Contact me. I'd love to hear from you.
10 October 1999
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