Readers Report
Flatbush—the heart of. Foster Ave.& E 26th. St. Jerome's class of 1970. Best friends Rookie and Gormley. Cathedral Prep H.S., then on to Midwood. Kingsborough CC then USN for a European stint. Back home to Brooklyn College and starting a career. Growing up very Italian with an Irish name. Dad even spoke Italian. Stoop ball, slap ball, stick ball, Johnnie on the pony, Ringalevio, poker on the stoop of McCabe's house with bottled beer in hand. Tony Giata's dad kicking him in the butt whenever he was in the street. Johnnie pump turned on to cool the hot summer day. Backyard BBQs with cousins. Trips to Jentz, (not Jahn's), Karp's for ice cream. Anyone remember a frappe? Walks down Flatbush Avenue. Hanging out at Mike & Carl's candy store. Clare Levey, Kathleen McDonald, Rookie, Sister Mary Auxilia (Twitchie), Miss Bowden (great math teacher), Sister Mary Clara (I'll crack your jaw, O'Shaughnessy!). Chestnut fights, flirting, pick up hardball games at Foster Park—ON CEMENT! Roller hockey at P.S. 89. Anyone remember P.S. 89? After school basketball at P.S. 269. Trips to Lundy's for clams. Bike rides all summer long to Breezy Point and Riis Park. Oh how I wish I could return and do it all again. Now I am 45—have the greatest wife and kids, live in golfers' heaven (Jacksonville, FL) but must now make a pilgrimage to Brooklyn in search of completeness.
My Brooklyn is and always will be one of my fondest of memories.
Watching the man deliver coal for our furnace that was in the cellar. The cellarboard that covered the entrance to the cellar was very much in demand on Election Day for those big fires they used to build. Hearing a cowbell on a pushcart, so you knew that was the man who came to collect old rags. Waiting for the pony ride to come so you could feel like a big shot with your friends riding around the corner in a little wagon being pulled by a little pony. The day the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series.
I lived on a street where everyone knew your name and who your parents and grandparents were. Today they call it Carroll Gardens—we used to say we're from Red Hook or South Brooklyn. Today when someone asks me where I'm from I just say Brooklyn!
My Brooklyn? It was Coney Island in the summers during the '60s, when I would come in from Long Island and spend July and August at my grandmother's on West 33rd Street. What truly sticks in my mind to this day was the small-town atmosphere of the neighborhood. Everyone seemed to know everybody else in the neighborhood, especially my grandmother, who had been there for fifty years by that time.
Readers' reports continue . . .
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