My Brooklyn (277)

Bonnie Rose (nee Mohamed)

My Brooklyn . . . seems like another world to me, living here in NC now. I try and tell my new friends what my life was like. My perfect life. My block, my stoop, my school. There was no rich kid down our block. Nor were there poor ones. We were all the same. Houses with stoops, brick buildings with our mothers looking out of the windows to keep their eyes on us (and calling us for supper.) We were there. Playing skelly, playing hopscotch, hide-and-go-seek. We played hit the penny with our precious spaulding balls. The candy store man, Benny, knew all of our names. And he knew the kinds of candies that would satisfy our sweet tooths. The paper strip with the colorful candy dots. The fake ice-cream cone made of pure sugar, with the marshmallow top. The Brooklyn where your school was usually down the block, the grocery was too. And the pushcarts, I remember the pushcarts which had wares of every possible description. Window shopping at all the stores down Pitkin Avenue, impatiently wanting to grow up and have money to buy things in those nice stores. The teenagers that hung out on the corners, harmonizing. My Brooklyn on a hot summer night, where everyone sat outside, or hung out on the rooftops. My Brooklyn where the grocery closed before sundown on Friday and reopened after Saturdays sunset. My Brooklyn where the Jewish holidays were holidays for all of us. The paper flags we carried as we marched around the synagogue. The Succoth huts. My Brooklyn where we thought we were the luckiest kids in the world. We all had our large families, and a ton of parents, the neighbors, that is, that looked out for all of the kids on the block. My Brooklyn is still alive . . . in my memories and my heart.

6 August 2000

Alyssa

I am only thirteen years old yet I am more of a historian then a student. Surprisingly I am the only one in my class REALLY proud of my origin. I love it here in my quiet neighborhood of Windsor Terrace. I grew up in an old house down by Terrace Place. It is an old home built some time in the 1920s (I did research). My great grandmother passed it down throughout the years from an elderly woman who was first to buy it. I love it in Brooklyn more than anything else. I love my old home and my life here. There is no way I would leave.

7 August 2000