My Brooklyn (245)

Eleanor C. Dow (nee Tedger)

Born in what is today Crown Heights General Hospital and moved from Ridgwood to East New York in 1939-1952, when my parents bought a house in Ozone Park. 662 Belmont Avenue between Ashford & Warwick Sts. was home. Went to P.S. 158 and BJHS #64. Thinking I had art talent, my grade advisor recommended Prospect Heights H.S. between President & Union Sts. on Classon Avenue. Across the street was the Brooklyn Museum, the Botanical Gardens, Prospect Park and Ebbets Field. My friend and I would walk to the IRT station on New Lots Ave. upstairs, in cold winter and wind, to our high school near the Franklin Ave. station.

Through Blake Ave. push carts with the freshest veggies and fruits, where Nellie's pickle market sold and made the sauerkraut and the best barrel pickles in the world. The dairy store where the sweet and salted butter were in huge tubs, but the fellow always cut out almost exactly the amount you wanted. The fish market which had a sign saying "If it swims, we have it" on Cleveland Street and Blake Ave. There was the butcher shop where the meats were always fresh. I also remember the bakery on Sutter and Warwick, where the bread, rolls, whatever you wanted were always fresh. Delicious!

I remember the movie houses: the Kinema on Pitkin & Berriman, the Loew's Warwick, the Premier, the Pitkin in Brownsville, where we'd walk to almost every night for Crane's french fried potatoes but then we discovered "City Line" and the ice crean parlor and the greasy spoon on Fulton St. and the guys who hung out there from Franklin K. Lane high school, where the city line ran between Brooklyn and Queens. The B.C. (Bloody Corner) Ice Cream Parlor across the street. I think some of my best years of my life were in Brooklyn. Sometimes I'd go downtown on a Saturday or Sunday to visit my best friend who lived on Baltic St. off Smith St. (still had a trolley car there).

In the summers, we hung out at Goldy's Luncheonette in New Lots or in Spring Creek near the garbage dumps where they would sometimes filter their product. We would go to Brighton Beach on three subways because it was cheaper than the bus to Rockaway which was closer to home. My dad had the first portable radio in the neighborhood and the gang wanted to take it to the beach every day to listen to the "Home Town Frolics" which was primarily country music. It was too heavy for me to carry but Big Vinnie could!

As the saying goes, and it is true: "You can take the kid out of Brooklyn but you'll never take the Brooklyn out of the kid." That's us alright!

7 March 2000

Joe Alba

I wanted to let the poster Frank Hall know that my dad went to P.S. 73 the about the same time his brother did, since he was also in the school with Jackie Gleason. Did you know that when they did the Honeymooners, when he looked out the window to see what was playing at the movie, he was looking at the Colonial Theatre which was on Broadway facing Chauncey St. Art imitates reality.

30 October 1999

My Brooklyn

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