Back in the Neighborhood

The other day I was meeting my wife for dinner at the Greenhouse Cafe in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.  She was coming from Manhattan and running a little late. While I waited, I sat on the wooden bench in front of the restaurant and soaked up the vibes. When you're in a real neighborhood, it doesn't matter where, the feelings are pretty much the same. I'm referring here specifically to an urban neighborhood as opposed to the suburbs where most people retreat to the protection and privacy of their three-bedroom fortress with the neatly mowed lawns in front. It's not that people in the suburbs are unfriendly, they're just not out and about like city dwellers. They have to climb into their cars to go get a cup of coffee and a bagel, and rarely encounter their neighbors for a casual chat.

From my vantage point on the bench, I watched the neighborhood beehive. An enormous heavy guy wearing a Yankees t-shirt double parked his battleship-sized SUV to run in and pick up a pizza. Across Third Avenue, two women in their fifties, who looked like they stepped off the set of Jersey Housewives, chatted outside the salon spa they had just exited. Both were deeply tanned the color of an old baseball glove, and wearing earrings the size of hubcaps, I imagine they were discussing the latest sensational tidbit passed along by Gina, the nail girl. Next door a chunky, Italian looking kid was pulling down the metal grate in front of a neighborhood hardware store that Home Depot hadn't yet bankrupted. I watched him unlock the chain securing assorted step ladders to the metal arm of the store awning and bring them inside. Tomorrow morning he would reverse the process and hope that somebody bought one. 

At the bus stop in front of the Greenhouse Cafe, an elegant looking man stood waiting for the bus. He was tall and bronzed, well-dressed with impeccably combed silver hair...a Cesar Romero look-alike. If a couple of muscle bound goons knelt in front of him and kissed his hand, I wouldn't have blinked an eye. I couldn't help wonder why such a distinguished gentleman would be waiting for the bus. I half expected a black Mercedes driven by a trophy wife to pull up and whisk him away, but no...as soon as the bus arrived, he boarded and went on his way. Young working people walking home from the subway stop on Fourth Avenue strolled past me, nearly all chatting intently on their cell phones, oblivious to the world around them. Mothers with baby carriages running errands, delivery boys on bicycles bringing delicious take out to neighborhood customers, and waiters from the Greenhouse having a cigarette outside before the evening rush.

A heavy-set woman pushing one of those chairs that double as walkers wheezed to a stop and sat down next to me on the bench. She told me she had asthma and a bad back and needed to sit for a while to get her breath back. She started to complain that there were too many Arabs moving into the neighborhood, but abruptly changed the subject after looking at me and realizing I could be one of the hated Arab invaders. She asked me if it was raining or whether it might be the spray from the window air conditioners in the apartments above the restaurant. After a few minutes she struggled to her feet, bid me good evening, and walked off toward 86th Street where all the neighborhood shops. Other than a large Century 21 discount outlet, all the businesses are storefront, Mom and Pop operations. Double-parked cars line the street as Brooklynites exercise what they believe is their God-given right to flout all parking regulations. 

A few doors down, dark-skinned Arab-looking men who drive for a local car service sat at a card table playing dominoes, while sneaking peeks at the young women passing by. Up the street is Skinflints Restaurant, a neighborhood institution that's been there forever. On Thanksgiving Day they invite local senior citizens who may be alone for the day to come in for a free dinner with all the trimmings. A few avenues up is Hinch's Ice Cream Parlor, a landmark soda fountain recently sold by the original owners to people who promised to keep it like it always was. Neighborhood people don't love change. Churches, delis, bakeries, laundromats, gift shops, pizzerias, beauty salons, even a shoemaker who still repairs shoes...all part of the hustle and bustle that is the neighborhood.

I sat there taking it all in, and for a moment drifted back to Somers Street off Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn where I grew up. A lot of who I am is bound up with that neighborhood. It's a funny thing, I hung around with guys from different ethnic groups, religions  and races, and although prejudice was alive and well, we pretty much got along. Our allegiance was to our neighborhood and those living in it. Guys from another neighborhood were the enemy. I enjoy living in the suburbs; I have my little garden and we are blessed with wonderful neighborhoods, but it's not a neighborhood, and that's what I miss.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER 

“SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS:  

Children's Craniofacial Association

The Great American Pastime

 One of the things that defines America is the game of baseball. Called The Great American Pastime, baseball has been part of our culture since the early 1800s. Based on the English game of "rounders", American-style baseball is popularly believed to have been "invented" by Civil War General Abner Doubleday, but in reality, there is no single person responsible. "Alexander Cartwright (1820-1892) of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. He and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, devised the first rules and regulations that were accepted for the modern game of baseball. The first recorded baseball game was held in 1846 when Cartwright's Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club. The game was held at the Elysian Fields, in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1858, the National Association of Base Ball Players, the first organized baseball league, was formed." (History of Baseball by Mary Wells.)

No matter who invented the game, baseball became wildly popular in the United States. One of the reasons the game caught on is that it requires very little in the way of equipment. A grassy field, a ball and a bat are pretty much the only essentials. We played in a vacant lot littered with stones and broken glass. Pieces of cardboard were used for bases. If you were lucky enough to own a glove, you shared it with the other players, often leaving it at your position when you came in to bat so that the kid playing that position on the other team could just pick it up and use it while in the field. Bats were scuffed and nicked from years of use...sometimes even balls, as the seams began to unravel, had to be taped to keep the game going. We enforced our own rules with no adult supervision. Baseball was our God, and we played every day until the sun went down to hone our skills .

We now go to the local Double A class Staten Island Yankee games in their beautiful ballpark in St. George down by the ferry. I still get a little thrill every time I see that emerald green grass and those painted baselines. The players look about 15 years old to me, young, strong and having the time of their lives. Each one chases the same dream I once chased...to become a professional baseball player. They shag flies in the outfield and warm up their arms. They do exercises to stretch out their calf and back muscles to minimize the chance of injury. Before the game a nervous high-schooler sings the Star Spangled Banner while older patrons stand reverently with hands over hearts, shushing the young people around them who don't yet fully appreciate their great good fortune at having been born in America. 

The stands are filled with families who come here partly because they can't afford to go see the New York Yankees up in the Bronx. Young kids in oversized team jerseys and hats bound up and down the stairs to make another run for the "all-you-can-eat" concession food that comes with their game package tickets. They pester the bullpen pitchers and catchers to sign things, and the players do their best to look aloof, all the while pinching themselves at the thought that kids actually want their autographs. The dads in the crowd look a little dreamy-eyed as they time-travel back to their baseball days. Eyes were keen enough to pick out that perfect fastball and line it to left field; legs were strong enough to run hard around the bases trying to stretch a single into a double; and hearts were untroubled enough to throw themselves totally into the game they loved and played with abandon.

Sadly, our local team had a bad season, ending up dead last in their division. Winning is great, but baseball is not all about winning. It's about hope...cheering for your team, clapping your hands during the dopey chants...Let's Go Yankees, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap. It's about hollering CHARGE as the home team organist plays: Da-da-da-DAA-da da. It's coming out of your seat as that weak grounder slips between the third baseman and the shortstop, putting a man on first. "Hey, you never know" somebody always says, "one long ball and we're back in it." Even if your team loses, it's about looking at the kids watching the fireworks after the game. Their eyes grow round the way yours did when you saw you first real fireworks display and not some guy in a pizza-man undershirt shooting Roman Candles into the night sky. 

What kind of game is baseball? Grown men bring their old gloves to the ballpark, still hopeful that one day they might catch a foul ball. That's the kind of game baseball is. Baseball is America.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER 

“SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS.

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS:  

Children's Craniofacial Association