Herbie: 90 years and Brooklyn...

Late last month, my father turned 90. He’s in pretty good health (knock on wood, keyn eyn-hore,  כײן עַיִן הָרָע) though it looks different from his perspective than it does from that of most others. He lives on his own in the same Manhattan apartment he has for nearly 50 years (when it was new), walks several blocks every day to take his water aerobics class, and takes buses and subways to get around, both to doctors and museums and progressive events and occasionally to visit his remaining friends and acquaintances in nursing homes. He sometimes forgets things, but this seems to be not a lot more than most of us, and his analytic mind is sharp. It is harder on him when he flies places, but he still does. (The time two years ago when we both flew to DFW on Christmas Day and had to change planes to different places and a rare snow there meant the SkyTrain was out and the fact that it was Christmas meant no one was driving little carts and he had to walk from B15 to C36 – B to C is over the highway – was a challenge, but he did it fine.)

This is the part that other people see as great. For him, his left knee hurts a lot – he had his right knee replaced many years ago and it didn’t go well, so he never got the other done, and now it is really bad – so he has to count the days between SynVisc® injections. He is sometimes physically unstable. He hates that he forgets things. He sleeps a lot and takes daily naps (sounds good to me!). He never thought he’d make it anywhere near this long. His only brother was killed at 20 in the Spanish Civil War when my father was 14. His father died of cancer at 53. His mother died at 66. MY mother died, also of cancer, at 57. His oldest grandson, my son, committed suicide at 24. And here he is at 90, outliving most everyone of his generation; he just lost his last, and closest, first cousin. He knows people who are older, but most are homebound (or nursing home bound); a couple are still active, but it is rare that they see each other.

A birthday, he would be the first to point out, is just a day, one more. But it is symbolic, and the weekend before this day his children and grandchildren and spouses, none of whom live in New York, came to the city to spend time with him. In order to break up the constant eating, we rented a large van and driver and went to Brooklyn to see where he (and his children, also, in other neighborhoods) had grown up. We started in the south at Nathan’s (Famous) in Coney Island. This was a real high point. Nathan’s hot dogs and French fries are available in some airports around the country, but they taste different in Coney Island. And there are fried clam strips, hard to find anywhere in the Midwest. The clerks were apparently instructed to push Nathan’s “famous” Mac ‘n’ cheese, but none of us remember this from our childhoods as being part of Nathan’s. No, hot dogs (with brown mustard and sauerkraut), fries (the best in the world) and clam strips. And then, on a sunny but chilly day, walking around on the Boardwalk (there is, however, no more “under the Boardwalk” – sorry, Drifters – there was too much crime and drugs happening there), looking at the huge beach, and some of us (younger ones, and certainly not me) going on rides like the Thunderbolt (the roller coaster starts off going straight up vertical!) and the whatever-it-is-called that pendulums you back and forth starting way up in the air (Andy only). More on the carousel.

And finally we retrieved the driver and headed north, to Sheepshead Bay and to where we grew up. The kind of run-down, two family homes we rented an apartment in looking decades shabbier. But, amazingly, Zillow’s rated at about $1.8 million!! Come on! Then up past James Madison HS, my alma mater as well as my mother’s, and I was able to go into the swimming pool where the teams are now the Golden Knights, not the Highwaymen of my youth, and then to Kings Highway (after which the team name) and up to Brooklyn College, where my mother graduated and my father attended for a while. It is nice there; the quad is as I remember it, but there are more buildings to the west (I keep wanting to say south; I have a good sense of direction except when I think of Brooklyn, where I grew up I always think of what is in fact east as north and west as south, probably because the numbered “East” street where we lived ascend to the east.) Hanging around, my sister discovers a yellow parakeet. For real. Hopping around. The bird is catchable, to the entertainment of a little girl, who is worried it will die. We assure her it will not, as we place it in an empty coffee cup with a lid and an airhole, say goodbye to the girl, and the driver takes us was back south again to a Petco where Rita buys a cage and some birdseed. The bird is ravenous.

So we continue back north, through Flatbush, past Midwood and Erasmus high schools, and the old Ebbetts Field, into Crown Heights and then into Bedford-Stuyvesant where my father grew up. We drive past several addresses where he lived (they seem to have moved every six months or so; in the depression the first month was free), some of which buildings are still standing. We stop at the old Boys’ High, where he went, now not a regular high school (and not to be confused with the newer Boys’ and Girls’ high school not too far away).  It is an amazing, huge, castle-like building of gothic proportions. My father says he never saw the south side entrance in his years of going there; he lived to the north, and came in from that direction, or the east entrance. We wander around; across the street on the south side are big row houses, 4 stories plus basement. It is not the best neighborhood, even now, so we wonder what they would cost. Midblock they change to smaller, only 2 stories plus basement. One is for sale, and we look it up on a phone. Nicely renovated, 2200 sf, only $2.8 million. These prices are more than a little shocking for people from Kansas City.

We continue north, into and through Williamsburg, now hip to the north of the el-covered Broadway we are on and still Hasidic (including enclosed sukkahs built on the terraces) south of that street. Finally across the Williamsburg Bridge and back to Manhattan, tired and, on this Saturday afternoon in October so crowded we decide to even forego a stop at Yonah Schimmel for knishes, a major sacrifice, and make it back to his apartment in time for sunset. It was actually a great trip, and this is the consensus of a group of family who hardly ever all agree on what to do and whether it was fun.

And, I think, my father liked it. No matter how well he is doing, he and we know that he is 90, and that the opportunities to do things like this may be limited in the future.

Not too soon, though, we all hope.

Remembering Matt. Meyers though his poetry

Recently, my good friend Matt. Meyers died in New Mexico. Matt. was a very close friend from high school, and President of our Class (James Madison HS Class of 1966). He was a poet, and smart (graduate of Princeton), personable, charming, and a great friend. He will be very much missed by many people.

I recently wrote of Brooklyn Nostalgia, and as a way of remembering Matt. I am posting a poem that he wrote for our class' 20th anniversary in 1986. It captures, I think very well, the memories of 45 years ago as they were experienced 25 years ago.

Thank, you, Matt. We are thinking of you, and remembering you with love.

Twentieth Reunion

Of James Madison High School, Class of 1966

August 1986

We have come a long way

From that fragrant warm day in June

When we graduated from James Madison High School.

A long way from our freckled faced innocence and naivety,

A long way from our making out in any available

Movie theater balcony.

A long way from our exploring coffee houses in The City.

(Listening to early Bob Dylan, and Peter. Paul. and Mary),

A long way from shooting hoops and all night poker games.

(Smoking a pack of cigarettes at a single sitting),

A long way from our puppy-love crushes and embarrassed giggling.

A long way from bowling and ice-cream sodas on The Highway,

A long way from our Senior Singing.

But. we have come so far

That tonight we are back to where we started:

Young again, in Reunion.

How many crushes are being felt tonight?

How many giddy embraces are being renewed?

How many petty grudges are being finally laid to rest?

How many silent "what ifs" are being said?

Tonight we return to Brooklyn

To explore who we were and what we've become;

To marvel at our survival

Of two decades that took us from

Cozy tree lined streets to the carnage of Vietnam,

From the quiet of Bedford A venue

To the rioting in Newark and Detroit,

Our private adolescent distress turned into political protest,

The jubilation of winning Sing, transformed into

The celebration of the Woodstock Nation.

Classmates: We have made it!

Tonight is our assertion that we are learning longevity,

That we have become what our Yearbook inscriptions predicted we'd be;

We have mastered nervous breakdowns, bad breaks, and broken hearts,

Divorces, motorcycle accidents, demotions and false starts,

To take our place as safely ensconced adults;

Contending with mortgages and ulcers,

And a growing inventory of memories.

Some of our children are even college aged!

Their rooms already empty, except for the posters

And trophies and car keys.

"Now I know what our parents suffered through",

We mumble to ourselves in ever increasing frequency,

As we marvel at the unbroken circle

Of our children teaching us about our parents' worries.

We are a vast and powerful network, our Class of '66,

We sing for a living in Los Angles,

Own a business in Rio de Janeiro;

We have Doctorates in psychology, geology, meteorology,

We travel to Hawaii to take Nature photographs,

And England to manufacture woolen pants,

We sell insurance and real-estate and hosiery,

We are home-makers, house-husbands, caterers,

And of course, doctors and lawyers.

Let us also not forget our Classmates

With whom we shall not in body be reunited tonight?

Who of us has died of AIDS?

Or is home alone crying for lack of money or sanity?

Our who died in Vietnam,

Or in a car crash a long time ago on a lonely road in Iowa?

For them, our dear departed ones, let us also be a bit silent tonight.

Tonight we are poised on the poignant fulcrum of Reunion.

The uncertain future faces us with a wistful, beckoning smile,

The past, our common youth, with tearful eyes

Waves and wishes us a gentle "Good-bye".

Brooklyn Nostalgia

The web is full of sites where people reminisce about the places they are from, especially when they don’t live there anymore and so can romanticize it a bit. Brooklyn, New York, where I am from, seems to be particularly a focus of such memories. One of them, complete with pictures, can be found at http://www.screanews.us/NewYork/BrooklynOld.htm.

This site has a lot of good pictures, and some very good memories. Of course, most of the text is hallucinatory (few or no one-parent families), often projecting ("this was my life, so I imagine it was that of others'"), and frequently stupid. The "good old days" were not always so good. There is even a book by Otto L. Bettmann called “The Good Old Days – They Were Terrible!” (Random House, 1974), reviewed here nearly 30 years after it was published. Another site compared various "good old days", going back generation by generation showing what seemed better in memory was not really a very good time. The conclusion on that site is that “the good old days” were never a time period but rather when you were a kid. It is not the time -- it is that things seemed simpler, and often better, and we repress the bad memories from -- when we were kids.

That said, our memories are our memories; we accept the things that are better and regret the things that we miss. However, it is fun to look back at our past, and at our youth, the good and the bad. As far as the Brooklyn described on the website above, at least the pictures are good. While the memories range from the 30's to the 60's, they seem to focus largely on the 50's, and there is a report card from Kindergarten (1a) in 1949, so I would guess that the person who put this together is probably in his very late 60s.

Many of these things were still around in my memory, although the prices were up. Subways were 15 cents when I started riding them; for a quarter, the newsstand guy at the Neck Rd station would give you the NY Times and a token in change. Phil Ochs wrote a song in the 60s about the "Daily News" with the lyric "7 little pennies in the newsboy's hand and you ride right along to never-neverland!", and I remember that it was a big deal when it went up from a nickel. There is an early picture of me wearing a Daily News "Strike" body placard, having gone with Uncle Benny (who worked there) on a picket line. And Uncle Benny would bring the Sunday News comics home on Saturday -- magic!

I remember pizza slices at 15 cents also, but the real treat was walking to Roma's Pizzeria on Avenue U just east (but if you had asked me I would have said "north" probably, since in that part of Brooklyn the “East” numbered streets increased from west to east; the numbers of the streets were going UP, so of course it would be north!) of Nostrand Ave to get a WHOLE pizza for dinner. And walk back with it 5 blocks. Toss-up as to whether this beat Brennan and Carr, hot roast beef sandwiches, on the opposite corner. Which I think is still there. (On the map, the area where I lived is the northern part of “Sheepshead Bay”, bleeding into southern part of what is labeled “Midwood”;  the angled street that crosses the border SW to NE is Kings Highway, which is what most people called that area; Avenue U is a few blocks to the south. Often the whole area north of Sheepshead Bay up to nearly Prospect Park was simply referred to as "Flatbush". For another take, see the 1974 movie "The Lords of Flatbush", which featured young Sylvester Stallone, Henry Winkler, and Perry King!).

I remember the last of the straw-seat subway cars, the oldest on the Franklin Avenue Shuttle which ran for 3 stops and connected the Prospect Park station on the Brighton train (ours; then the Q, now the D) with the Independent train at Franklin Avenue (or so it said on the maps). Mostly I rode the one stop to the Botanic Gardens station in order to walk the long block down Eastern Parkway to the Brooklyn Museum; a couple of times to the second stop, Park Place, where the Brooklyn Children's Museum was (and, I am told, Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, where I was born, and now part of "Interfaith Hospital" having merged with St. John's).

I certainly remember the crowded beaches of Brighton and Coney Island, and Mrs. Stahl's (under the Brighton Beach subway station on Coney Island Ave and Brighton Beach Ave) and Shatzkin's (on the Boardwark in Coney Island around W. 38th St.? The same guys with the paper shopping bags with knishes in one hand were hefting a huge metal cooler on their other shoulder, picking their way among the jam-packed beaches (I can't even describe these -- ENORMOUS beaches, matched in size hardly anywhere in the world, hundreds of yards from boardwalk to ocean -- SOLIDLY packed with people, a couple of inches between their blankets!) shouting "Hot knishes! Cold drinks!"

We did play a little stickball, and more "Catch a fly is up" (later I heard it referred to as "One-o-Cat") in the street, as well as an odd version of baseball at the spot between our house and the Constantinos' where the narrow driveway on our side was home plate and lined up about midway across from the double driveway of the "rich" (read "attached single family, probably costing about $8000) houses across the street, which were 1st and 2nd bases on the corners. Pitcher stood in the middle, no bat but slapped the red rubber ball with your hand. That ball, a "spaldeen" (I understand because they were the discarded cores of Spalding tennis balls that were without hairy covers) were the mainstay of every game we played. In addition to the above, and a little hopscotch or potsy (is there a difference?), we had "two-box" (= "hit the penny”), "3-box" (also called "box baseball"), and "5-box" (a complex game involving bouncing the ball in each box). Also "off the wall" and Chinese handball (why "Chinese"?). And, of course, the mainstay because you could play it alone or with friends: stoop-ball (catch it on one bounce, 5 points; on the fly 10 points; off a “point”, 50 points – it comes at you fast – and off the top step point, 100 points! Or something like that.)

Movies were a quarter for a double-feature, at least on Saturday afternoons (take your sister!). And they were preceded by cartoons. And a nickel bought a candy bar, which went fast. Necco Wafers lasted forever, but had minimal taste. A compromise might be Jujyfruits, Jujubes, or Turkish Taffy, which stuck to your teeth and could be licked out for hours. Maybe that’s why I had so many cavities – or maybe it was because, as a dentist pointed out many years later, that NYC fluoridated its water sometime between the eruption of my “6-year molars” (full of cavities) and my “12-year molars” (very few). I do remember the unanesthetized pain of getting them filled, though!

I never had report cards like the guy on the website (I think he went to Catholic school). First of all, they were not A-F. We had (U)nsatisfactory, (N)eeds improvement, (S)atisfactory, and SO (really S°,  with a superscripted degree mark) that meant superior. I got a lot of S's, some SO's, and scarcely ever better than "N" in my two bete noirs, handwriting and Conduct (sometimes called “self-control”)! It seems to me that in Albany, when I was younger, we got graded in both "Ability" and "Effort". I will allow readers to decide which of these I received lower grades in.

I think those high schools in the pictures are Boys, Brooklyn Tech, and Erasmus Hall. I went to none of them. Bedford Ave was "HS row", being home to (south to north), James Madison (my alma mater, and that of 3 current or recent Senators and a Supreme Court justice, several sports figures, and Carol King – then Klein – and Chris Rock -- ok, this picture is from before my time!), Midwood, and Erasmus. Most of the newer HS (not Boys or Erasmus) were "U-shaped"; Tech was a full rectangle, and so big (8 floors!) on each floor than instead of numbering the rooms like 401-435 (as at Madison), they were numbered by corridor (e.g., 4W20).

As far as Coney Island amusements were concerned, when I was a kid Luna Park was gone, but Steeplechase was still there. I never liked the fast or scary or high rides, although decades later my son Matt managed to get himself really sick by riding (alone) the Cyclone several times. I did like Skee-Ball. And shooting. And another big thing was that there were Tuesday night fireworks in Coney Island all summer long, and we mostly watched from the roof of Grandma's building on E. 22d St. I remember when I first discovered somewhere, with pity, that there were places where there were only fireworks once a summer, on July 4.

And, while the website’s observation that most people in Brooklyn were Italian, Irish or Jewish might not have been completely true, I remember being quite surprised at some point in adolescence when I discovered there were White Protestants (Christians, but not Catholic and, unlike the non-Catholic Christians I knew, were not Black) -- an idea also expressed (obviously not stolen from me, but I had it way before I read it there) by the mayor-loosely-based-on-Ed-Koch in Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities".

The image of Brooklyn in the popular consciousness, and the memories of those who left it, change with the generations. The "Kid from Brooklyn" was a staple of World War II movies, tough, smart-alecky, and ethnic, often with a Jewish or Italian name. And relatively small, certainly smaller than the big Southern farmboy, another stock character. In the 1950s, when TV was new and based mostly in New York, both the writers and characters were often New Yorkers, and particularly Brooklynites. Shows like Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners (Irish working class folks living in an apartment that was sparse by any standard) and The Goldbergs (Jewish, and a little higher level working class) introduced (stereotypical) Brooklyn folks to the rest of the country.  There were a lot of smart kids from Brooklyn, many in important jobs all over the country.

And now Brooklyn is hip. Having transformed the winter hotels and apartments of Brooklyn retirees in Miami’s South Beach in the last 20 years, young “new” (=”often moved from elsewhere”) New Yorkers are filling the places those retirees came from, moving from the exorbitant rents of Manhattan and long-gentrified Park Slope to the slightly-less exorbitant rents of Brooklyn, filling the formerly Hasidic area of Williamsburg and the asbestos-shingled houses of Greenpoint and Red Hook with yuppies, and the leading edge now moving into – Bushwick! Of course, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be!

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