Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Brooklyn Memories Part 1

Part 1. Brooklyn Memories

There were the Stoop, the Block, the Park, and later the outermost Streets - Flatbush Highway, Avenue U. My world was circumscribed by these simple boundaries of time and place - my neighborhood. Brooklyn, 1950. As good a time as any to be born. There was a certain tenor of simplicity to those times; the war was over, good and evil had been starkly defined, the moral compass was unambivalent. In that very southern tip of Brooklyn, a settled middle-class quality prevailed, soothing, quiet, a gentle peace only marred by the occasional stereotypical bully.

My grandmother Dora and grandfather Herman lived down the block, at 2121 East 35th Street. For a while Dora had a tiny dress shop of sorts in the basement apartment downstairs. We lived at 2103, second house from the corner in a block of red brick row houses all connected, and with a front porch that was my cowboy fort and lookout onto the greater world. Neighbors had metal boxes with lids on their porches, for the home delivery of bottles of seltzer water or milk. The mailman would go down the block, and rather than go up and down the steeps to every house, would just clamber from porch to porch. I would crouch in wait by the door slot, and when he came to our door and opened the slot to push the mail through, I would snatch it from his hands. Lord knows what he thought. Grandma doted on my little brother and I, always bring us Chicklets gum and treats from the corner candy store. I have an early memory of sitting on the floor of her bedroom, with a round tin of costume jewelry of many hues. I was entranced by the sparkling light reflecting off of the facets of the brooches and pins.

Was there a particular flavor to growing up in Brooklyn that distinguishes it from say, Manhattan, Kansas, or Snyder, Texas, or Columbus Ohio? We did not farm, hunt, chase rabbits or grow chickens. Our backyard was small and narrow. The sidewalks were our domain, the lines in them serving as markers for innumerable ball games. The alleys or side walls of candy stores served as the backdrop for endless games of Chinese Handball. I remember the sound of the pavement grinding under the metal wheels of my skates. They were ineffectively tightened with a large metal key, and were always falling off of my Keds sneakers. The pavement reflected the summer heat, or became cold under the winter snow and ice. It glistened magically through the lens of my first magnifying glass, ants and specks of quartz looming large through the glass. Pavement, alleys, streets marked my terrain.

There is a debate in my family that has not been resolved. I distinctly remember the last remnant of a bygone era, the trucks or wagons of scissor sharpeners and junk dealers slowly moving down the street, cowbells clanging. The question is this: were they horse drawn, as I seem to think, or just trucks? I remember wondering where on earth the stables were.....Maybe the junk dealers were horse drawn, and the scissor sharpeners used trucks, and we are both right. But of course there were the little white Good Humor trucks with their jingling bells, as well as the carnival ride trucks that sold rides for a nickle.

Our house had a brick stoop going up to the porch and first floor. With a good Spaldeen ball (25 cents at the corner store), or the less expensive (15 cents) but less lively pastel colored ball, I spent many the long hour throwing it against the stoop and catching the rebound. I am sure I was improving my eye-hand coordination, a skill necessary for the social survival of Brooklyn youngsters.

There was a clarity to the air, a fresh scrubbed smell; after all we were just a short hop from the ocean, on the other side of the marsh by Avenue U. I remember hearing the horns of the ships at night or early morning, and that unmistakable crying sound of the occasional seagull overhead.

A special treat was to sit on the front of my father[base ']s bicycle, in a little black metal seat mounted to the frame, as they rode on the Boardwalk at Coney Island on Sunday mornings. The best part was the cool sea air, and then our lunch of french fries and hot dogs at Nathan[base ']s. I looked longingly at the little mechanized horse rides at SteepleChase Park, and fruitlessly begged my parents to let me ride them. I never did go into SteepleChase, and it closed for good in 1964.

I was a voracious reader, even at an early age. My mother had enrolled me in some sort of book club, where I picked out and received paperback books from a catalogue. My imagination opened and blossomed to the tune to the classics -Treasure Island, House of the Seven Gables, Last of the Mohicans, Gulliver[base ']s Travels, and others. I used to read late at night by the light of the corner street lamp shining through my window on the second floor.

I felt relatively safe, within the boundaries of my world. The urban environment of Brooklyn sheltered my early years, and was a steady counterpoint to the rich and inward world of my own mind.

10:08:11 PM    

© Copyright 2002 Josef Tornick .
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