SPALDEEN DREAMS

It's Magic

2012-02-11T12:20:00.002-05:00

Ed Sullivan used to have a guest on once in a while called The Great Ballantine. He was a comic magician who always cracked me up...kind of like a Henny Youngman who did corny tricks. Some dormant part of my brain kicked in this morning to remind me of how, as a kid growing up, I was fascinated with magic. Every comic book had ads in the back pages for sure fire magic tricks guaranteed to mystify your friends. Some Fifties kids (like Johnny Carson who rode this interest to a successful career) really got hooked on magic. For me it was enough to mystify my friends, who were easily mystified by the way. Here are a few favorites I remember.

Guess the Card - For novice magicians, this was a simple trick involving nothing more than a deck of cards. You would ask a friend to pick a card from the deck, look at it, and replace it face down back in the deck. Of course every magician worth his
abracadabra had a little snappy patter to distract the mark so that he would not realize you had cut the deck and looked at the card that would now be on top of his card. You then shuffled the deck and, sifting through it, told your incredulous friend that his card was the ace of spades. The trick was easy to do, and the gimmack not immediately apparent to gullible nine year-olds.

Disappearing Coin Box - This trick involved a wooden box with a pull-out tray containing a cut-out circle where a coin would fit. You would bet your mark that you could make his coin disappear and then reappear. He would put his coin into the slot and then, with a flourish, you would slide the tray back into its recess. After uttering a few magic words, you would slide the tray back out to reveal an empty space where the coin had been. Finally, to allay the look of panic on your friend's face as he saw his nickel disappear, you would slide the empty tray back in, say the magic words, and pull it out again with the precious nickel back in its place. The trick of course was that the box had two trays, but a good magician never gave away his secrets.

The Chinese Handcuffs - Of course everyone today knows the secret of this trick, but back then it was fun to watch a kid struggling to get his fingers out of what looked like an innocent little tube made of straw. The harder they pulled, the tighter the cuffs became. The beauty of this device was its brilliant assumption that when people's fingers are stuck in something, they tend to try to pull them apart to get free. Chinese handcuffs were specifically designed to get tighter the harder one tried to pull free. The trick to escape was to push the fingers together, at which point the cuffs would give and release the trapped fingers. This was an especially satisfying trick to pull on bigger, stronger kids whose solution to everything was brute force.

The Money Maker - An ingenious contraption that made it appear that the magician could spin straw into gold, or to put it more mundanely, turn blank pieces of paper into money. You would ask the mark if he could use some extra money; the answer was always yes. You would then taks a pre-cut piece of white paper, feed it through the rollers of the Money Maker, and voilà, out came crisp, dollar bills. A variation on this miracle was to feed one dollar bills into the rollers and have five dollar bills come out. The trick was to pre-load the miracle money into the Money Maker so that it was not visible until the crank was turned. The rollers carried the blank paper to an unseen compartment as it rolled out the pre-loaded currency. This trick was always a show stopper.

Magic has come a long way. I get e-mails today showing magic tricks that dazzle and baffle me, but then like my gullible friends of yesteryear, I'm pretty easy to baffle these days.

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You Can Never Go Home Again

2012-01-26T13:28:00.000-05:00

Moving from the East New York section of Brooklyn to the Ozone Park section of Queens, approximately six miles, was a lot more traumatic than the distance might indicate. Geographically, socially and culturally, Brooklyn and Queens were as different as London and Paris. I was in my late teens when my father decided to sell our house on Somers Street (making sure it had already lost most of its value) and relocate the family to a nicer neighborhood. We moved to a small home on 109th Street off 107th Avenue. That we were just a short walk to Aqueduct Racetrack may have had some influence on my father's decision in this matter. "Tony Boots", you may remember, had a penchant for slow horses and investment stocks that were about to collapse.

I was already familiar with the new neighborhood, having spent the last year of high school at John Adams H.S. just down the block from our new house. Since we were still living in Brooklyn, I had to take the 'A' train to my new school. I would get off at the elevated Liberty Avenue - 104th Street stop and walk the few blocks to John Adams. Compared to my old High School, Brooklyn Tech, a huge, squat, inner-city brick building that housed 6,000 boys and no girls, John Adams looked like Beverly Hills High. The campus, off Rockaway Boulevard, looked park-like, with its grassy lawns and tree-lined entryway. The building itself was in the architectural style known as 'Public School Ugly', but they had something that made it beautiful to me...girls!

I knew a few students who attended Adams; they had already made the move from our old block to the suburban streets of Queens. This helped some, but I still felt like an outsider since by senior year all the cliques had been formed and transfer students were eyed suspiciously. I had played varsity baseball at Tech, but never thought of trying out for the John Adams team. I was bitter about being booted out of Tech (entirely my fault) and not really anxious to start over again in a new school. I was down on school in general; I just wanted to get my diploma and get out. It didn't help that I adopted the sulky persona of a rebel who didn't quite fit in with the preppy types at Adams. See link below for details.

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The Preppies vs. the Hoods

The new neighborhood was so different from where I had grown up. The streets were lined on both sides with neat, single-family houses fronted by postage stamp-sized lawns. There was also a shared driveway leading to garages at the rear of the yard. It was this shared driveway that drove my poor mother nuts. The neighbors we shared it with were low-lifes, commonly known in Italian as 'cavones' or cafones...rude, ill-mannered peasants. They had a dog that pooped all over the driveway, and no amount of pleading by Mom could get them to control their mutt. Dad was not a confrontational man, and so we endured the mounds. This situation figured prominently in the family's decision to move back to Brooklyn at a time when everyone else was moving out, another of Dad's bad real estate calls.

Also, unlike our old block where every kind of store imaginable was a short walk away, Queens was different. Most people used their cars to run errands. My Dad never got his driver's license, so it was left to Mom to get around as best she could, taking buses and trains when necessary to do her shopping. Dad left for work every day, but Mom felt cut off, not just because she couldn't walk to get what she needed, but her friends were gone. The women she met on the street and talked to every day weren't there for her. She felt alone and isolated, but not being a complainer, I don't think my father ever fully understood how she detested that house and how badly she wanted to leave it.

Thomas Wolfe is remembered for the quote: "You can never go home again.' That's because 'home' is not so much a place as it is a place in time. Only a few years after we left Somers Street in Brooklyn, it ceased to be what it had been for us...the place where we grew up and where our hearts were. I once made the mistake of driving down my old street to see the house where I spent my childhood. It was a mistake. I barely recognized the old place. The stores were all gone. Tacky aluminum siding covered the elegant brick row houses. No kids played in the street. It was truly a sad experience. Lucky for me, despite Wolfe's assertion, I can go home again, if only in my mind.

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Open Sesame

2012-01-22T12:06:00.001-05:00

Partly because I'm running out of new topics, and partly because I have more to say on an old one, this blog is about a magic carpet ride that only cost a dime: the comic book. In the dark days before television, computers and video games, kids had few options outside their own imaginations, to help them fantasize. I'm not saying that was a bad thing, quite the contrary, a fertile imagination can open the door to new worlds for young and curious minds. Maybe that's why comic books were so popular with children of my generation. They gave us new doors and new worlds to peek behind, allowing our imaginations to do the rest.

If you didn't grow up loving comic books, as I did, it will be hard for you to understand what they meant to me. The first level of appreciation came from my physical senses. The candy stores where they were sold displayed comic books arranged neatly on shelves so that the titles could be read. They had glossy, brilliantly illustrated covers that shouted their titles: Archie and Veronica, Little Lulu, Red Ryder, Superman, Batman, Lash Larue, Donald Duck...all familiar characters to comic lovers. We stood mesmerized, shiny dime clutched in sweaty palms, eyeballing the new arrivals to see which would come home with us. It took a while.

Once we got our treasure home, the sense of smell kicked in. Nothing smelled like a newly opened comic book. Whether it was the paper, the ink or both, we inhaled that smell like older guys who experience the rapture of that first new car smell. Maybe there a connection. Since new comics were always read in private, we could enjoy the smell without people looking funny at us. Once a new comic had been read, it was as if something went out of it. It sat there begging to be read again, but it wasn't the same comic anymore. The only analogy that comes to mind is from the great Dom DeLouise movie 'Fatso" when he asks Candy Azzara if she's a virgin and she replies: 'almost.'

Other than stimulating the senses, comics took you away. They made you laugh, sucked you into great adventures, and generally stretched the limits of 'the possible.' We knew they weren't real, but for fifteen minutes or so, we allowed ourselves to go along. We shook our heads at Uncle Scrooge's miserly ways, marveled at Lash Larue's skill with a bullwhip, and worried ourselves sick as Superman unwittingly exposed himself to Lex Luthor's kryptonite trap. Today, preserving comics in plastic sleeves and hoarding them as collectibles is in fashion. We put them to better use, sitting on the stoop and trading them among ourselves to get comics you wanted to read, but not badly enough to part with a dime.

Comics were also the gateway to miracle products that would change your life. Charles Atlas invented the dynamic tension system to help build up muscles on skinny guys so they wouldn't get sand kicked in their faces at the beach while their girlfriends laughed. How about the pet monkey that was almost human and, for the paltry price of $18.99, would be mailed to you from the Animal Farm in Miami, live delivery guaranteed. All boys, if they had two dollars, would send away for the amazing X-ray vision glasses that allowed you to see through anything. The leer on the face of the kid wearing them in the ad told us all we needed to know.

They still sell comics today, but they can't compete with Wii or X-Box for kids' attention. For me, that shoe box full of comics under my bed was my 'open sesame' to escape the streets of Brooklyn for a little while. Here's my first blog on comics in case you missed it.

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Ten Cent Fantasy

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Don't Throw That Away!

2012-01-18T11:07:00.001-05:00

I can still hear my mother say, on those rare occasions when there was food still on my plate, 'Don't throw that away.' In our house, nothing edible ever went to waste. Italian mothers were in the forefront of the recycling movement. Stale bread with a little parsley and garlic powder added became bread crumbs, soon to make a comeback as the coating on fried veal cutlets. Leftover vegetables of any kind found their way into dinner omelets, a nice dish in the days of meatless Fridays. My father-in-law, Ray, used to talk about local bakeries making something called Washington Cake by crumbling together old, stale cakes, moistening the mixture, and selling it at a reduced price. The link below references something called Washington Pie that sounds similar.
http://www.recyclethis.co.uk/20080125/how-can-i-reuse-or-recycle-old-cake/comment-page-1#comment-1061961

Interestingly enough, some of the most delicious dishes I ever ate came from salvaged food. The most amazing homemade soups often started out as poultry carcasses. Stale Italian bread cut into large cubes, toasted and served with cooked escarole will take the chill out of any winter day. And if there are any leftovers from that dish, the escarole can be mixed with garlic cloves, olive oil and calamata olives and baked in a pie. Someone told me that their grandmother used leftover Sunday spaghetti to bake into a pie. Never had it but it sure sounds good. Linda's Spaghetti Pie Recipe - Food.com - 254585 My mother-in-law, Belle, was known to make a sandwich out of anything on its last legs.

The culture of poverty raises culinary creativity to new heights. In the nineteenth century, Italy, like other countries, consisted of the haves and the have nots. The aristocratic haves dined lavishly on food and wine grown mainly by the have nots. Poor peasants could not afford to eat meat or even some of the more commonly available vegetables. They relied on fish and eggs for protein, and found ways to make some less expensive vegetables edible. The more adventurous ones took the parts of animals that nobody else wanted and put them to use. Dishes like tripe, now served in trendy restaurants, were born from the desperation of poor people to feed their families. One of my Aunt Anna's specialties was a dish called Sanguinaccio, a chocolate pudding made with pig's blood as a thickener. I'm surprised Jello never latched on to that one.

Dandelions are a nuisance to gardeners. Italians took the yellow flowers, battered and fried them, and viola, a tasty appetizer. Lambs' heads, lambs' heads for God's sake, are cooked, brains, eyes and all, and served on a big platter. Don't believe me...here's the recipe for this traditional Italian Easter dish. Buon appetito. Capuzzelle di Agnello (Lamb's Head) Maybe Old Buttercup is slowing down, not able to pull that plow as easily as he used to. Does Giuseppi send him to the glue factory? Not on your life...into the pot! We ate some salami made with horse meat in Venice, and it was quite delicious. If salami's not your thang, how about a nice horse stew. horse meat recipes - The Italian Taste

In old Italy, and in old Brooklyn for that matter, being poor didn't equate to being a victim, dependent on the government for everything. You found a way, and that process made you stronger. You didn't whine about it, join in protest marches, or vote only for politicians who promised you a free lunch. You tightened your belt, made the best of what you had, and worked hard so your kids would have more. We as a people are losing that willingness to fight our way out of poverty, and do what it takes to better ourselves. That, my friends, does not bode well for the future.

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The Funnies

2012-01-11T20:02:00.002-05:00

As a kid I was a big fan of the Sunday comics in the newspaper. Many of them like Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley and Blondie are still around. Looking at them today, they seem to belong to another age and I can't believe they still run them. My father read the New York Journal-American during the week, but on weekends for some reason, he switched to the Daily News. I remember waiting for him to come home from church with the fat Sunday edition of the News under his arm. Before television was part of our lives, the comics section of the newspaper was so popular that New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia used to read them aloud on the radio to kids glued to their Emerson consoles.

For adventure, The Phantom was my guy. He lived in the Skull Cave with a trained wolf and rode a big white horse names Hero. Created in 1938 by Lee Falk (who also gave us another fav of mine called Mandrake the Magician) the Phantom does not have any supernatural powers but instead relies on his strength, intelligence and fearsome reputation of being an immortal ghost to defeat his foes. The Phantom is the 21^st in a line of crime fighters that originated in 1536, when the father of British sailor Christopher Walker was killed during a pirate attack. Swearing an oath to fight evil on the skull of his father's murderer, Christopher started the legacy of the Phantom that would be passed from father to son. Cool.

When Charles Schulz sold his first comic strip to the United Feature Syndicate in 1950, it was the Syndicate that changed the name from Li'l Folks to Peanuts - a name that Schulz himself never liked. Hard to believe but Charlie Brown and company have been around for over 60 years. Unlike some of the older strips, Peanuts to me is as funny today as in was back then. The characters are timeless as are Schulz's observations about life. The thing that really put Peanuts over the top for me was the drawings. In a few simple panels, we saw Lucy, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty and all the gang teach us that the world can be cruel. Just as you are about to kick that football through the goalposts, someone just might pull it away.

Dick Tracy, a hard-hitting, fast-shooting and intelligent cop created by Chester Gould made its debut on October 4, 1931. The strip was so popular that it appeared on the front page of most newspaper comics sections. Gould did his best to keep up with the latest in crime fighting techniques; while Tracy's cases often ended in a shootout, he also used new technology and advanced gadgetry like the two-way wrist radio to track down the bad guy. The strip also introduced famous Tracy villains like Pruneface, Mumbles and hitman Flattop Jones. Aided by his partner Sam Ketchum and his sweetheart Tess Trueheart, Dick Tracy was the hero of every law-abiding American boy.

Finally, don't ask me why, I loved Popeye. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. The strip was created by Pete Segar and revolved around the main characters: Olive Oyl, Popeye's skinny girlfriend, Bluto, Popeye's muscle-headed nemesis, and Popeye's pal Wimpy who would always promise to "...give you a quarter on Tuesday for a hamburger today." The plots were predictable: Olive Oyl flirting with Bluto, panicking when he took her up on it, and Popeye saving the day after eating a can of spinach for strength. Popeye ate spinach in order to encourage children to eat more vegetables; that sure as hell didn't work for me.

It seems like a million years ago when I sat at our kitchen table in Brooklyn, bowl of Cheerios and cup of coffee in front of me, (I didn't have a cigarette with my coffee until I was 12) reading these great old comic strips. The world was simpler then, but life goes on. "Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories." ~From the movie An Affair to Remember

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My Kingdom for a Horse

2012-01-06T17:35:00.005-05:00

When I was a kid, cowboys were king. It's only natural that a few of them became my heroes. The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and Lash Larue were high on my list. They tore across the plains, ten-gallon hats jammed tight on their heads as their faithful steeds easily overtook the poor nags the bad guys always rode. When I reached my teens, it's only natural that my admiration for cowboys and their legendary horses like Silver, Trigger and Champ would cause me to forget my Brooklyn street upbringing and lead me to believe I could actually ride a horse.

My first equestrian adventure came in the wild western part of Forest Park in Queens where they had riding stables for many years. My friends and I must have been so bored one cold winter day that we decided horseback riding was a good idea. The poor horses they kept there were as tired and tame as any horses could be. They knew they would never be running in the Kentucky Derby, and had traded in their horsey dreams to carry city kids on their backs all day in exchange for a bag of oats and a place to sleep. We mounted up and rode single file into the woods. The horses knew the trail and the stable guy with us just said to give them their heads...they knew when to run and when to slow down.

We did OK for a while and I thought I was getting the hang of it. The stable guy had not given us much instruction in how to ride, so I just kind of bounced around in the saddle trying to look like I had done this before. All the while I was thinking, how the hell did anybody in the old west ever get anywhere on horseback. We reached a little valley in the park where all the horses stopped in unison for a break, just like union carpenters at coffee time. When it was time to start again, our stable hand said that we were about to ride up a steep hill, and that we really had to plant our heels in the horses' flanks to get them moving.

Now my mother didn't raise no fool, and kicking a thousand pound animal hard didn't seem like a good idea. My friends complied however and their horses were soon galloping up the hill. I gave my steed an apologetic kick and he didn't move. "Harder" stable guy said. I kicked harder and still nothing. "God damn it, kick the f**king horse" said our helpful guide. This time, embarrassed by now that my friends were nearly to the top of the hill, I whomped him good. (Did I mention before that it was a cold winter day, because that fact is about to grow in importance in this story.)

The poor horse took off up the hill like he had been shot, with me holding on for dear life. Just like nobody told me how to stop the first time I ever went skiing, nobody told me how to stop a horse in a full, furious gallop. As we raced to the top of the hill, the rest of the group was waiting with a look in their eyes that said: Is he going to stop? Now, in all-out panic mode, I did what I thought Hopalong would do and pulled back hard on the reins. The horse reared up (this is where the winter day comes into play) and slipped on a patch of ice at the top of the hill. Luckily horses don't have seat belts because I was thrown clear as the horse wound up flat on his ass.

By the grace of God, only my dignity was bruised that day, but from that point forward in my life, the closest I ever got to a horse was in the winner's circle at the track on those rare occasions when my horse won. I now smile knowingly when I hear that great Willie Nelson country song: " "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys."

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Go Fly a Kite

2012-01-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

The cost of amusing kids has gone through the roof. Most are now into electronic or video games that run around forty bucks on average to buy, not to mention the "box" these games are played on. The cost is not measured in money alone; the real price we pay for kids' addiction to these games is that they rarely play outdoors any more. They become isolated from social interaction with other kids and spend way too many hours playing these games, the worst of which are violent and can desensitize a child to unacceptable behavior. Other games draw kids into fantasy adventures to the point where they develop unhealthy obsessions and blur the line between make-believe and reality.

Fifties kids in Brooklyn never saw forty dollar toys. Sure we had fantasy heroes like Flash Gordon and The Lone Ranger, but when play time was over, we hung up our ray guns and cowboy hats and played baseball, football, punch ball, stick ball and stoop ball. On any given day, we could entertain ourselves for under twenty-five cents. Pea shooters, spinning tops, yo-yos, pitching pennies...all activities that fell within this modest budget. One of my favorite 25-cent toys was a paper kite. We would buy them in Sam's or Louie's candy store for fifteen cents, and add two rolls of string for a nickel each. No kid would settle for flying his kite only as high as one roll would allow; we tied two rolls together to really get that baby up there.

The kites were brightly colored and came rolled around two balsa-wood sticks that needed to be assembled to form the cross-shaped frame of the kite. It took a bit of skill to get the kite together without tearing it. We learned little tricks to keep the kite from breaking apart while being buffeted by the winds at higher altitudes. One such trick was to tie the sticks that formed the frame together with a short piece of string at the point where they crossed. This strengthened the kite and gave it greater stability when aloft. We also experimented with different types of kite tails, an essential addition for ease of flying. Many a mother never learned that her missing pillow case had been torn into strips and was dangling at the end of a kite.

We preferred to fly our kites in places like Highland Park where there were no electrical wires to complicate safe landings. There were also different ways to rig the kite so that it could perform aerial maneuvers. Sometimes we would let two competing kites battle it out in the sky. One enterprising kid tried the James Bond-like trick of tying his fathers old double-edged razor blades to his kite's tail in the hope that it would shred his opponent's kite. (He probably grew up to work in government.) His shabby tactics backfired when he sustained a bad cut after absentmindedly grabbing his kite by the tail as he reeled it in for a landing.

And so for a measly quarter, we got practice assembling things with our hands, learned kite-building innovations (no matter how despicable) that would give us a competitive edge, and got all the fresh air and exercise we could stand. Take that, Nintendo.

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The Magic of Rye Playland

2011-12-27T14:31:00.001-05:00

I smile when youngsters of family and friends mention school graduation trips to places like Europe, the Mediterranean, and yes, Australia! Surely these are wonderful places to visit, and I'm happy for the kids that they have this opportunity. No kid in the 1950's dreamed of traveling to such places. I can remember just one excursion we were permitted to take, and that came in eighth grade. Our destination was Rye Playland in Rye, New York, where we would take a boat ride on Long Island Sound. This may sound pretty tame compared to today's junkets, but we were thrilled. Most of us had never traveled outside the boundaries of New York City, so Westchester County seemed like an exotic destination that promised action and adventure.

Our Lady of Lourdes secured a bus for the trip. If you can imagine this, for a bunch of city kids, even a bus ride was something to look forward to. What made this outing special was that boys and girls would be on the same bus. Again, not a big deal today, but back in the dark days of strict separation of the sexes in Catholic school, it was as if the inmates of the friary were let loose in the convent yard. There was a palpable buzz in the air as the sound of crackling testosterone and hormones filled the air. Brothers and nuns chaperoned, and the look of grim determination on their faces told the world that they knew the mission before them would not be easy. Whiffs of Brylcreme and Old Spice were carried on the breeze, further evidence that the boys on this trip were in full makeout mode.

Another plus was that students were not required to wear school uniforms on the trip. This was probably due less to the school's willingness to relax the rules than it was to preventing the Rye police from quickly identifying any boy who might be arrested. A six-page set of dress guidelines was issued by the school, and as all eighth graders will, we pushed the envelope hard. The guys wore pegged pants, pointy-toed shoes and shirts with flared collars (a sure sign of a future in and out of prison for the wearer). The girls wore dangerously short skirts, Mom's Jean Nate perfume, and yes, lipstick...all clearly meant to inflame boys who were already lusting in their hearts and elsewhere.

The screws managed to keep the throng in check while we were on the bus, but when we arrived at Rye Beach and prepared to board the boat, the wheels began to come off. The boat was a large one and once aboard, we scattered like bugs when the lights went on. Girls broke out the forbidden high heels that were secreted in their bags, and guys whipped out their combs and defiantly swept the backs of their hair into the dreaded D.A. (duck's ass) style that was cause for 10 whacks if you wore it within five blocks of school. Couples began pairing off as if by prearranged signal. Any hidden alcove on the boat became a place to make out. The screws did their best, but they were no match for young love. By the time we got back to the dock, the girls' lipstick was gone and the guys' flare-collared shirts were blotched with Maybelline Plum Perfect.

The return trip on the bus was a subdued one. The chaperones sulked, knowing how miserably they had failed to halt nature's course. Girls wore guys' jackets, as if in open defiance of the "no fraternization" rules. Hands were surreptitiously held across the bus aisle, and even the nuns, God's guardians of feminine chastity, were too tired to rap their knuckles on unsuspecting skulls. It was a liberation of sorts for us kids. It seemed to me that the nuns and brothers treated eighth graders a little differently after the trip. Maybe they set up the whole thing as a kind of rite of passage, kind of like the prison guard who goes out for a cigarette during a conjugal visit.

It may not have been a trip to Europe, but in some way that trip to Rye Playland was special. A bus load of children left in the morning, but a bus full of young adults returned at night.

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Old School

2011-12-13T09:08:00.001-05:00

Sometimes we hear the term 'old school' applied in a pejorative way as in: "Oh ignore him, he's just old school. It bothers me a little because, as I understand it, being old school should be something to make one proud.

Old school people understand the absolute necessity of one generation sacrificing for the next. This was illustrated so well by the immigrants to this country from all races and ethnic groups who worked hard despite an often harsh reception at the hands of their neighbors. They endured prejudice and unfair treatment, worked at menial jobs (often more than one) and by so doing, earned the grudging respect of those around them. Their children received the education they never had, and as a result, their way in the world was made a little easier. So anxious were they to assimilate that they sometimes left behind the rich cultural heritage of their homeland so that nothing would stand in the way of the Americanization of their families. Happily, their children and grandchildren are rediscovering their roots and restoring the old traditions that define who they are.

Old school people know that you can't rely on the government or anyone else to take care of your family. They raise their children to live by the values they themselves learned from their parents. They teach by example such principles as respecting those around you unless they give reason to be treated otherwise; working hard to get what you want in life; extending a helping hand to those less fortunate; living as a responsible citizen by obeying our laws and fighting injustice; and by living within their means, setting something aside for that rainy day we know will come.

Old school people take full responsibility for themselves. They recognize that like no other country, America affords opportunity for those bold enough to grasp it. They don't squander their God-given talent but rather enhance it through formal education and by learning well the lessons taught in the streets. They don't expect to start at the top but are willing to pay their dues until they are worthy of greater things. Setbacks and failures are not things to be laid at the doorstep of others but challenges to be overcome. They are generous enough to lend a helping hand to younger people the same way they were helped on their way up. They do not make excuses and most of all they do not quit.

Finally, old schoolers are courteous in an age when manners and civility are taking a beating. When women rightly asserted their right to equal employment and equal treatment under the law, many men abandoned chivalrous behavior toward women as the price to be paid for their equality. This is wrong. Holding a door open or surrendering your seat to a woman or older person is simply common courtesy. I think chivalry, if not done in a condescending manner, is still something most women welcome. Pulling out a chair in a restaurant or respecting elders should not be customs that are abandoned as our society moves toward full equality. Southerners are still old school. They may have lost the Civil War but they have, so much more successfully than northerners, retained the gift of civil behavior.

If these are the things that old school people are derided for, then I am proud to stand with them and suffer the slings and arrows. Old school rules.

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Nuns

2011-12-07T20:07:00.000-05:00

If you grew up as I did attending a Catholic grammar school, then you are familiar with nuns. My school was Our Lady of Lourdes in Brooklyn. Children were taught by lay teachers from first to fourth grade. These were formidable women who ranged from saintly (the kind and placid Miss Baumann who exerted such an influence over the young boys in her charge that they would line up on her doorstep in the rain bearing umbrellas, and fight for the honor of escorting her the short distance to school), to malicious (the white-haired, permanently scowling Miss Wall whose special punishment for misbehaving lads was to grasp us firmly by the hair and bang our heads against the slate blackboards.)

Starting in grade five, boys were turned over to the Franciscan Brothers, and girls to the Sisters of Saint Joseph, a community of nuns founded in France in the year 1650. In 1836, a request came from the Bishop of St. Louis, Missouri for Sisters to teach deaf children. He had been advised by a friend in France to "…get the Sisters of St. Joseph because they will do anything". Truer words were never spoken. These nuns were not your modern-day religious women who walk around in pastel colors and penny loafers, no, the nuns at Our Lady of Lourdes were "old school" in the harshest sense of that term. They wore habits that might only be described as starched straight-jackets. And they were feared.

Nuns have been portrayed in movies (Lilies of the Field), plays (Nunsense) and TV shows (The Flying Nun), but I think the characterization that comes closest to the nuns I remember was in the movie Doubt. Meryl Streep plays the forbidding Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a grimly determined grade school principal bent on exposing a priest she believes to be a pedoplile. What made Streep's performance so brilliant was that she showed us not only the iron will and discipline of Sister Aloysius, but her repressed softer side that reflects a true love of the children in her care. Girls I knew in school who got to know the nuns saw this side of them, but to us boys, they were all like Rosa Klebb, the villianess with the knife blade in the toe of her boot in the James Bond movie, From Russia with Love.

Our school wisely separated the girls from the boys. Separate classrooms and separate schoolyards...there would be no fraternization while all those young hormones were raging. That was fine with the boys, because we knew that the Sisters of St. Joseph were the Lord's appointed guardians of feminine purity. To them, boys were testosterone-crazed lunatics whose sole mission in life was to sully innocent young girls. (They should only have seen their innocent girls in action in the balcony of the Colonial Theater.) If we wandered too close to one of the girls a watchful nun might just flick us with a left jab that Sugar Ray Leonard would have envied. The guys in my class were more afraid of them than we were of the brothers. I've told this story before, but I'll repeat it here since it fits the theme.

The worst beating I ever got was in 8th grade. Another boy (Michael Miller) and I were carrying a ceramic-like statue of the Blessed Mother balanced on a small table into the 8th grade girls' room down the hall. As we shuffled slowly into the room trying to keep the statue from falling, I craned my neck to get a look at a particular girl when I tripped over the bench seat of a desk that had been left folded down. The statue hung agonizingly in mid-air for a split second before shattering into a thousand pieces. Sister Bonaventura, the most feared nun in the school, had a look of horror on her face and was momentarily frozen like the rest of us. She recovered quickly though and proceeded too beat the hell out of me, all five feet of her. My cheeks redden to this day when I think of my humiliation.

Despite their combativeness, I believe that most nuns, and brothers for that matter, played an important part in educating young people in Catholic schools. People will always cite exceptions to try to demonize them, but most, like Sister Aloysius in the movie Doubt, were good people who took their calling seriously, even if it meant occasionally swatting a malcontent.

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Those Fabulous Fifties

2011-12-01T17:36:00.001-05:00

If I had to pick a decade to spend the rest of my life in, it would be the 1950s. I know what you're thinking, another old coot looking for his youth, but it's more than that. Life in America was different then. Americans were different too. There was optimism in the air. People still believed the Horatio Alger stories where the main character, Ragged Dick, (hey, I didn't name him) overcame poverty by working hard and leading an exemplary life, eventually gaining wealth and honor. Those stories may have exaggerated some, but Americans generally felt that if they got an education, paid their dues, and worked hard, they would succeed. And it was true for the most part.

Family roles were clearly defined. The men went to work and the women stayed home, kept house and cared for the kids. This model of the American family served the country well for a hundred years. And in case we needed examples to show us the way, we had "Father Knows Best", "The Ozzie and Harriet Show" and "The Donna Reed Show" as templates for what a family should be. Mothers rarely worked, kids didn't go to school until kindergarten, and when they got home, Mom was waiting with milk and cookies to help with homework. There were no nannies or au pair girls to care for the children; that was Mom's job. On weekends, Dad puttered around the house or took the kids out to learn how to ride a bike or hit a baseball.

The United States was the envy of the world. Our economy was strong, jobs were plentiful, and anything 'American' was soon being copied by the rest of the world. Literature, art, entertainment, commerce, science and medicine were reaching new heights. American might was respected and feared all over the globe. If we went to war, our young men were ready to defend their country. They understood that our way of life was only as safe as our military might made it. There were no anti-war protests, women were not setting their bras on fire, school administrators maintained order and discipline without drugging our kids, and cops were given a wide berth if you knew what was good for you.

Technology had not yet become an addiction for our citizens. People spoke face-to-face or, if you were lucky enough to have one, on the big black telephone sitting in the living room. Kids played outside instead of sticking their faces in a computer or video game. The pressure for material things did not drive our existence. Clothes and toys got handed down without shame, cars and appliances got fixed instead of junked, we had one TV and we gathered around to watch as a family rather than hiding in our rooms and surfing the net, easy prey to perverts who prowl these chat rooms looking for kids with something missing in their lives.

If you got sick, the doctor came to the house and healed you for five dollars. There were no massive HMOs with their forms in triplicate, or money-hungry doctors looking to put another Cadillac in their garages. We didn't use heroin, crack or cocaine; I think Cherechol cough syrup was the strongest drug I ever took. Hypertension and clinical depression were not epidemic, there was no AIDS and psychiatrists needed second jobs to make a living. We ate what we enjoyed, and strangely enough, all those beans, lentils and greens we ate because that was all we could afford turned out to be the secret to good health. We didn't know what cholesterol was and ate ice cream and cannolis without guilt.

I know there were problems. Race relations were horrible. We still went to war. Women and minorities battled the glass ceiling. But are we that much better off now? Race relations are worse than ever. We are at war today with an unseen enemy who will not meet us on the battlefield but instead kills us by flying planes into buildings and strapping bombs to their children. The basic family unit is under attack. Divorce and child abuse are at all time highs. Our leaders are in office, not because of their ability to govern, but because they can make pretty speeches. Our own citizens and countries around the world are losing confidence in America. People live in fear of the unknown.

No, you can keep your 50 years of progress and drop me back into the middle of 1955. I'll be just fine, thanks.

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Thanksgiving Rerun

2011-11-23T12:02:00.002-05:00

Here's an old blog I'm rerunning for the Thanksgiving holiday:

Thanksgiving is a time when we, like the Pilgrims who started this holiday in 1621, take time out to give thanks for all we have been given. Somehow, what with all the parades, football games, and eating as if we were going to the electric chair at dawn, the "thanking" part tends to get overlooked. Oh sure, we're thankful for our families and friends, good health, living in a great country like the United States...all the big blessings that come to mind, but what about the small things? They deserve our gratitude too. And so, hoping to set a good example and maybe start a trend, I decided to list the top ten small things in life that I'm thankful for:

10. That Rosie O'Donnell is a lesbian so that no guy has to sleep with her.

9. Living in a country where any sound bite in a suit can grow up to be President.
8. Being named "Sexiest Man Alive" by Geezer Magazine.

7. Thanks to organ transplants, we can now have someone else's heart attack.

6. The market's down, but I can still watch Law and Order reruns three times a day.

5. Adam Sandler movies are now available on DVD.

4. There was no "Godfather IV".
3. Our sacred American tradition that allows any pinhead to vote.
2. That Barbra Streisand never had a "wardrobe malfunction."
1. As per the Darwin Awards, some idiots are eventually weeded out of the gene pool.

I am also thankful for all those Macy's parades we took the kids to back in the day. We must have gone for twenty straight years. There we stood outside the Dakota Apartments, huddled against the cold while waiting to see such B-list celebrities as the lip-synching Osmond Family, Eartha Kitt at age 85 on a respirator, and the guy who does Bette Midler's dry cleaning. I got up at 5 am for this? The real parade attraction was the balloons. I don't know how they maneuvered those mammoth things down Central Park West, with the swirling crosswinds on every corner, but it was always a treat to see. The crowd would start buzzing when a particular favorite was still blocks away: "Here comes Snoopy, here comes Snoopy."

The parade was fun when we first started going. People were reasonably polite and respected the fact that those in front had got there early to have a good view. In later years, the Yuppie scum showed up, arriving late with their Starbucks coffee and spoiled-rotten kids. They would push their brats to the curb with no regard for who was in front of them. One year we saw a bunch of them standing on the hood and roof of some poor shlub's car to get a better view. When we hollered at them to get off, they looked at us like we were crazy. To paraphrase an old joke: "What's the tragedy when a bus load of Yuppies goes off the cliff." Answer: "Two empty seats."

Holidays are a special time. They remind us that being with family and celebrating our traditions are what make the day so uniquely American. In that spirit, I wish you and your family a very Happy Thanksgiving.

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If I Had a Hammer

2011-11-19T15:17:00.043-05:00

I still do some consulting for my old company, Con Edison. Con Ed employs a lot of people who do demanding, physical work to keep their electric, gas and steam systems working. The company is very safety conscious, and is continually looking for ways to reduce accidents. Interestingly, a high percentage of accidents involves the use of hand tools. This seems strange given all the more dangerous power tools in use. One possible reason for this is that so many of the young people being hired today have little experience using simple hand tools like hammers, wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers. Also, they have little curiosity about how mechanical things work. As kids, we learned early on that because our families could not afford to buy us new toys, we often made our own or repaired broken ones.

Learning to use tools became a necessity for us. I don't think my father ever bought a tool in his life. The few tools he had were scrounged from wherever he could get them and kept in an old shoebox. Every tool had tape wrapped around the handles. They were chipped, nicked and dented, but we managed. I still have one of his beat-up screwdrivers to this day. My dad Tony was the least handy guy I ever met; he would usually sweet talk our neighbor Frank into doing any real repairs around the house while he talked and drank beer. I think the first time I walked into a Sears hardware department and saw real tools, I was awe struck.

Every kid on my block could hand make a scooter or a carpet gun from scratch. We made wooden bows from tree limbs and fashioned crooked arrows to play Robin Hood. Bicycle repairs were done almost daily since all of us rode second-hand bikes. My first bike was a hand-me-down from my cousin Joan. It would have been humiliating for a guy to ride a girl's bike so I made a crossbar out of wood, and shaped and painted it light blue to match the color of the bike. Problem solved. If we got flat tires, every kid knew how to remove the inner tube from the tire, patch it and remount it on the wheel. Roller skates, sleds, red wagons...we could fix them. We built our own roller hockey goals that we set up over the manhole covers in the street for our very own hockey rinks. The point is that sheer necessity helped us acquire basic hand tool skills that are so lacking today.

One store-bought toy on every Fifties kid's Christmas list for those lucky enough to have parents who could afford it was an Erector Set. For those unfamiliar with it, the Erector Set was a collection of variously shaped metal pieces and the nuts and bolts to assemble different projects like a Ferris wheel or tow truck. The set came with detailed instructions that taught kids how to build things by following a plan. Lincoln Logs were another construction toy that encouraged kids to use their hands. There were kits to build radios, model planes and rockets, even chemistry sets that temporarily deprived some careless boys of their eyebrows. There were no video games, electronic toys, or computers...toys from the Fifties were hands-on!

I have a friend who as a kid salvaged a used lawnmower engine and some old washing machine belts to turn his two-wheeler into a motor bike. By his teen years he was rebuilding car engines for hot rods. Kids built go carts, carpet guns, tree houses (using salvaged lumber) and improvised ramps for jumping bikes. Necessity really was the mother of invention. It stands to reason that if you never swung a hammer as a kid, you have a good chance of showing up in your employer's accident statistics as an adult.

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Pleasure Island

2011-11-15T12:53:00.002-05:00

Fredrick Law Olmstead is known as one of the premier landscape architects and park designers in the world, with Central Park in New York City being the jewel in his crown. A lesser-known Olmstead gem is Prospect Park in Brooklyn, a place that featured prominently in the childhood of so many kids including me. If Central Park was the elegant centerpiece of Manhattan, surrounded by multi-million dollar properties, high-end retail stores and horse-drawn carriages, Prospect Park was the "people's" park. Not to minimize the beauty or grandeur of Prospect Park, but it just seemed more like a neighborhood place than a world renown tourist attraction. Its playgrounds, ball fields, zoo, lake, serene walkways and carousel drew old and young alike to its shady embrace.

My wife was lucky enough to live within walking distance of the park and was a frequent visitor. I wasn't so lucky and had to either take the subway or ride my bike to get there, but it was always worth the trip. One of my favorite attractions was the zoo, not large like the Bronx Zoo, but we got to see exotic animals up close and personal. This was in the days before showcasing animals in more natural settings became popular; sadly, most of them were caged. Even as a kid I sensed there was something wrong with locking up magnificent beasts like tigers, bears and elephants in tiny enclosures for people to gawk at. One exception to this practice was the seal pool. Surrounded by an iron fence, this pool featured space where the seals could swim freely, and concrete platforms where they sunbathed. I loved watching them, and on hot days, wished I could join them.

The ball fields were located on the Parade Grounds. I assume at one time the spot was used for parades, but all I remember is the well-tended baseball diamonds that were used only by organized baseball leagues. The neighborhood ball fields we used were overgrown, strewn with broken bottles and debris and playing on them often produced injuries. The Prospect Park fields were fenced in, carefully mown and raked, and had precisely painted foul lines with real bases. Stepping onto those fields made you feel like a ballplayer. I played varsity baseball for Brooklyn Technical High School, and also in PAL and American Legion leagues, so I had the privilege to play there. Local residents would congregate and watch the games, making it seem even more special.

Another big draw was the lake. Stocked with catfish, the lake was one of the few places a kid could fish without a boat or a lot of equipment. We would use bamboo poles with a bobber that would dip under the water when we got a bite. Pieces of bread or corn kernels served as bait and worked very well. What kid can forget the thrill of landing that first fish. We usually threw them back to be caught another day. The Parks Department also rented row boats and paddle boats for the more adventurous. My father took me out once; it may have been the only time I saw Tony Boots get into a boat. Swimming was prohibited since there were no lifeguards, but that didn't stop many kids from splashing around on a summer day.

No trip to the park would be complete without riding the carousel. You could hear the calliope music filling the air as you approached the enclosed pavilion that housed the ride. Soon you saw the whirling horses, lions and tigers and your step quickened, racing ahead of your parents to get on line to buy your tickets. The exquisitely carved and garishly painted carousel animals were works of art. Some of them moved up and down while they circled, while some remained stationary; no self-respecting boy would ever mount a stationery horse, or worse still, sit in one of the tame bench seats that were clearly designed for grandpas. Spinning around on your steed while waving to your mom, who was hollering at you to NOT reach out for the brass rings, was every boy's idea of pure pleasure.

There were few green spaces in Brooklyn near where I grew up, so you can only imagine the anticipation with which we viewed a trip to Prospect Park. For us, it looked like Pleasure Island must have looked to Pinocchio, but without the consequences that bad boys faced. I am grateful that men like Fredrick Law Olmstead understood the importance of such spaces to city folk, and used their consideriable talents to build them for us.

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The Mayor of Union Street

2011-11-10T17:10:00.001-05:00

I recently returned from my second trip to Italy. I hope there will be more. I think one of the reasons I enjoy going there so much, apart from the obvious beauty of the place, is that I feel very comfortable around Italians. The men and women I saw on those trips look just like the ones from my old Brooklyn neighborhood. I am not referring to the younger Italians who live in the cities, who look so slim and elegant in their fashionable clothes, but rather the older, country people who inhabit the streets of every small town in Italy. Their brown faces, mended sweaters and the way they gesture with their hands when they talk is so familiar to me.

In my old neighborhood of East New York, every block had an old Italian man the residents referred to as "the Mayor" who sat out on his stoop 16 hours a day observing. Among his most important duties were to keep any balls we kids hit into his vicinity, yell profanities in Italian at any kid who retrieved a ball before the Mayor could scoop it up, and rat out any kid who did something bad to the kid's parents. The Mayor was under contract to DiNoboli to smoke only their smelly cigars. The stubs of unfinished cigars would be stashed in the mailbox to be smoked another day. The Mayor's uniform was a simple one: mis-buttoned gray cardigan sweater over a plaid shirt, dirty trousers held up with suspenders or a safety pin, scruffy slippers and sometimes a newsboy cap.

Neighbors called the Mayor Zio Nicola or Zio Antonio or some other Italian name, zio being a term of respect in Italian that translates as uncle. He acknowledged their greetings but rarely smiled unless the greeter happened to be an Italian woman around his age. Then the Mayor became the soul of chivalry, tipping his hat if he was wearing one and exchanging pleasantries in Italian...a regular Marcello Mastroianni. One of the Mayor's favorite pastimes was playing brisk, an Italian card game that involved communicating the contents of your hand to your partner without the other players catching on. Apparently the rules called for wild gesticulating and much cursing. Home made Italian liqueur like anisette or strega was frequently served to add fuel the fire.

The old Italian women on my street were fixtures too, with their black dresses and gold teeth. They rarely went indoors for fear that the other Italian women would talk about them. We used to make money running errands so they wouldn't have to leave their posts on the stoop. In the summer they loved the shaved ices with flavored syrup that the man sold off a push cart. Since it would be undignified for them to negotiate this transaction in person, they would give us the money, usually wrapped in an old lady handkerchief, and we would do the deed. Our reward was a few pennies, or if they were feeling magnanimous, they would treat us to an ice and then pump us for gossip about what was going on in our families.

These were displaced people who came to America from Italy and tried to fit in. They insisted their children learn American ways and they encouraged this by never speaking of their Italian heritage or conversing in their native tongue except among themselves. Their children and grandchildren were the poorer for this. My wife's grandfather, Vincenzo Salamo, was the Mayor of Union Street in Park slope. He would take in all the neighbors' empty trash cans and pick up paper bus transfers which were good for a free ride back then and hand them out to people on the block. In Italy I saw people in small towns sitting in small groups and talking animatedly. If I closed my eyes I could have been standing on Rockaway Avenue or Fulton Street listening to a spirited debate as to whether Naples or Sicily was the superior birthplace. Viva Italia!

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Neighborhood Character - Fat Sally

2011-11-02T13:29:00.001-04:00

Fat Sally was aptly named. He weighed around 300 lbs. and looked at exercise in any form the way you would look at something unpleasant on the bottom of your shoe. Sal also had what used to called a "club foot" and wore an over sized corrective shoe. Completing the picture were hooded eyes and a full head of oily curls that made him look like a slightly dishonest angel. In fact, Sally was slightly dishonest. He fancied himself a "wise guy" but didn't really get into any heavy stuff. He took numbers, but so did every candy store owner in the neighborhood. He was also our illegal fireworks supplier, and did a brisk business selling cherry bombs and ash cans out of his car trunk on July 4th.

Fat Sally's criminal career started early. When we were kids we all played an Italian card game called "brisk". Sally began to organize these games in exchange for skimming a dime from every winning pot. In exchange for this fee, he would bring you (for a small charge) ice cold sodas from the corner grocery store or Italian ices from Roma's pastry shop on Fulton Street. He would also keep an eye out for the cops who actually patrolled a beat back in those days. They were like the mailman; we saw them every day and they knew every kid on the block. They were not above giving you a love tap with their nightsticks if they thought you needed an attitude adjustment.

As he got older, Sally moved on to taking bets on the numbers and also sporting events. As I said, there was plenty of competition in the neighborhood, especially from our local barber who made a lot more money as a bookie than he ever did cutting hair. Fat Sally might have been risking a broken kneecap since the barber was connected to real mob guys, except that he had one big thing going for him...his brother crazy Louie. Here was a serious sociopath. Louie started out as the kid who would eat a bug on a dare. He was violent and totally unpredictable, and even in a neighborhood full of tough street kids, we all gave crazy Louie a wide berth.

Louie, despite his psychopathic tendencies, had a soft side. He served as an altar boy at Mass and at times, seemed deeply religious. How he reconciled these feelings with his penchant for throwing garbage pails through store windows or beating the crap out of people who looked the wrong way at him, I'll never know. Louie was also very protective of his little brother. Knowing this, Fat Sally felt free to act like a total jerk. He would knowingly taunt people, confident that Louie would step in if things got out of hand. Unfortunately, Sal pushed his luck a little too far.

There was a sad character in our neighborhood we called "Eddie Goose". Eddie was like the Lenny character in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men"...brutally strong but gentle as a baby. He was probably schizophrenic, and in the cruel world of kids, that meant teasing and worse. He usually tolerated our taunts, but one day Fat Sally just wouldn't let up. Knowing his big brother was close by, he began hitting Eddie Goose, first on the head, and when Eddie covered up, then in the stomach. Something snapped in Eddie's brain and he turned into The Hulk. Once aroused, his strength kicked in and he quickly put the cowardly Sal on the ground. Crazy Louie stepped in and it turned out to be the worst mistake he ever made. When Eddie was done with him, to quote the great Jim Croce song, he looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.

In a perfect world, all the Fat Sallys and Crazy Louies would eventually meet their Eddie Goose and get what was coming to them. The world is far from perfect however, although on one day in the 1950s, under the el on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, Karma was king and it was good to see justice done.

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My Life as a Gay Man

2011-10-01T15:49:00.008-04:00

There were a number of words for homosexuals when I was growing up, but "gay" was not one of them. We called them fags, queers, homos, sissies and a lot of other unflattering things. You have to appreciate that although there were gays back in the Fifties, the lifestyle was not exactly embraced. People didn't come out of the closet, they locked it from the inside. I can only imagine how tough life was for them. They couldn't even divulge their secret to their families. The image most men cultivated was the strong, silent type...guys like Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Clark Gable. Ironically, some of Hollywood's most popular stars were gay or bi-sexual but could never admit it: Randolph Scott, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Errol Flynn and Tab Hunter come to mind.

What young guy in the Fifties wouldn't have traded places with Rock Hudson or Cary Grant? Strong, handsome, rugged, yet with charm and a sense of humor. Who could blame Doris Day for "going all the way" with them...hell, I might have given it a shot myself! The lifestyle has a certain appeal, after all, men clearly don't understand women, but they understand other men. If only the relationship didn't have to be physical. I have seen the play "La Cage Aux Folles" a number of times and one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much is that they portrayed the gay lifestyle in a very sympathetic light. The characters are likeable and the author told their story in a way that aroused empathy and understanding.

As a kid, I had a couple of unlooked for gay encounters. Once in grammar school a Franciscan Brother kept me after school. He said he wanted to talk to me about something and I readily agreed. In my experience, when you weren't getting hit by these guys, everything else was OK. We were in an empty classroom and this creep sat down next to me and began talking in a very soothing voice. Soon his hand was on my knee and moving North. I was confused and angry that a trusted grownup would touch me this way. I just got up and ran out of the room. We never spoke of the incident.

Another time I was in high school and had fallen into the bad habit of skipping school and going to the movies. My usual truancy-mate, Paddy Jones, was out of school that day so I just went to our local movie theater, the Colonial, on Broadway. It was an early show during the week, so the theater was nearly empty. I was surprised when a man, who could have been the centerfold for Pedophile Magazine, came over and sat down next to me. I was annoyed but not suspicious until the guy put his hand on my inner thigh as casually as if he was reaching for his popcorn. Nobody ever warned us about these pervs back then; homosexuality was a taboo subject and I think Catholics thought they would go to H-E-L-L if they just uttered the word.

By the time I got into the army, I was wiser and warier. I had heard all the jokes about dropping the soap in the shower. We had a communal shower in the barracks, so if you wanted to be clean, you just took your chances. I can say though that if you look in the Guinness Book of Records under the category "Fastest Shower Ever Taken" you will find the name of yours truly.

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The Circle Closes

2011-09-29T16:44:00.005-04:00

One of the pleasures of childhood was having my family around. I lived with my parents and siblings, but I also lived with my extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins...there were even Godparents and assorted close friends who, in Italian-American circles, were awarded the honorary title of aunt or uncle. In 1950 I could take a street map of the East New York section of Brooklyn, draw a circle around a two mile radius of our house, and anybody I cared about would have lived inside that circle. Families tended to band together for mutual support. We regularly ate in each other's houses, watched each other's kids, and attended each other's weddings and funerals. Holidays were always spent together...noisy affairs with lined up tables, mis-matched chairs, borrowed dishes and home made wine that the adults gave to the kids, but not before mixing with soda to avoid brain damage.

We were closest with my mother's family; my father's family were all yellers, and when they visited, I ran and hid. Down the block on Somers Street lived my Aunt Anna and Uncle Jim, with their children Frank, Cathy, Anna Marie and Pat. Not far away Aunt Mary and Uncle Nick lived on Fulton Street with their kids, Millie, Nick and Sal. Grandma and Grandpa Camardi and their son Michael lived around the corner on Hull Street. We saw a lot of each other because it was common for even the youngest kids to walk everywhere unescorted. I could be away from home all day and never miss a meal. Aunt Anna lived to feed people. You were never in her house for ten minutes without a meal being placed before you. Historical Note: In exchange for having to put up with Italian men, God gave Italian women the gift of being able to create a delicious meal, virtually out of nothing.

Aunt Mary and Uncle Nick were the family entrepreneurs and worked hard in their quest for riches. Aunt Mary was a gifted seamstress and started up a couple of clothes-making businesses; Uncle Nick was a sweet guy who took his orders from her and cheerfully carried them out. They lived in a second-floor apartment whose windows were about ten feet from the elevated train that ran on Fulton Street. When the trains passed, some furniture in the room actually moved from the vibration. Their son Nick as a boy would sit for hours and bang his head against the back of a club chair. Today they would diagnose him with some disorder like A.D.D., but in fact it was just a phase he was going through. Nick grew up to be a fine husband and father. Their family moved to Selden, Long Island in the early 1960s when there were still buffalo roaming the plains.

Grandpa Pasquale owned a hat blocking and shoe shine store on Rockaway Avenue. On my visits there he would always find some busy work for me to do as an excuse to slip me a dime. I would usually blow it on an ice cold Mission pineapple soda from the red ice chest in front of Louie's Candy Store a few doors away from Grandpa's shop. I took Grandpa's success for granted back then without thinking how hard he had worked to achieve it. He came to America in 1912 with nothing but a dream and an immigrant's work ethic. After many years of struggling, he owned not only his own business, but his and Grandma Caterina's house. As their grandson, I can state with pride that their extraordinary qualities live on in my children.

Today I'd need a 3,000 mile circle to include our family. We are scattered coast to coast and "get together" only on Facebook and e-mail. About five years ago cousin Anna Marie hosted a reunion in New Jersey to which a surprising number of family members came. We had people in their 80s and children under one. It was so good to see them all in person, but the best thing for me was watching cousins who had never met catching up and laughing together, just like we did at all those family dinners. It was as if the circle had been closed.

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* Spaldeen Dreams # 200 *

2011-09-26T17:18:00.003-04:00

Almost exactly three years ago, inspired by a new friend from my old neighborhood, I began writing Spaldeen Dreams. I wanted my kids and their kids to have some idea what it was like growing up in Brooklyn when I was young. I think most of us, as we get older, regret not having talked more with our parents and grandparents about their lives before we arrived...I know I do. While it's true that my grandparents spoke little English, if I could have learned some Italian, maybe there would be more stories to tell. I have no excuse for not asking more questions of my parents, except maybe laziness and the arrogance of youth in thinking they had nothing to tell me.

Although I have tried to set down my stories honestly, there may be times when my imagination has filled in the gaps in my memory. If so, it was unintentional. Sometimes I am dead certain that something is so only to find out it's not. I think we don't want to admit to ourselves that we are starting to forget details; the implications of that are too ominous. Luckily, the ability to do online research to capture information and images of the 1950s helps compensate for aging gray cells. Also working in my favor is the tendency for long term memory to be better than short term. I sometimes see an image or hear a song associated with my childhood, and the memories of the far away past come flooding back.

I have written mostly about small, everyday events as seen through the eyes of a 10-year old. The street games we played (mostly invented for want of money); what school was like and some of the teachers who made a difference; the magic of radio and its influence on our lives; the movies and TV shows that entertained us; neighborhood characters; family holidays, picnics, and just eating together around the table every evening; my parents, grandparents and other family members; the mistakes I regret and the breaks that lifted me from the streets; my good fortune in marrying the patient and loving partner who helps me be a better person; and my children and granddaughter whose lives, if nothing else, justify my time on earth.

In the days before widespread literacy, family oral histories were a common way to pass along traditions. As more people learned to read and write, these stories and bits of family history began to be documented in family Bibles, annotated family trees, and even photographs. The other day we were looking at old 8mm home movies from 40-50 years ago. My kids are lucky to be able to see themselves as children growing up, as well as images of their "young" parents and others they barely remember. This connects them to those who came before in a very special way. Technology is helping too, with websites like the Ellis Island records archive, the U.S. Census Bureau online, and genealogy researchers like Ancestry.com; I was able to find out so much about my family using these resources.

I loved growing up in 1950s Brooklyn. The world was full of promise and America was leading the way. Things are different now, scarier. I want my little blog to preserve that simple time before cell phones, the Internet, I-pods, plasma TVs, microwave ovens and terrorists. Maybe this is my way of reaching back through the years to recapture lost youth. For whatever reason, I'll continue to write as long as I have something to say. I want to thank my wife for her ongoing help, and those other angels who have encouraged me along the way.

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Say Cheese

2011-09-21T09:58:00.004-04:00

Considering how far the technology has advanced for cameras, they can't seem to replicate the warmth and feel of old studio photographs. I think some of my favorite images are the early tintypes that began appearing around the time of the Civil War. We've all seen the poignant photographs of soldiers posing proudly in the uniforms of their regiments. These portraits were usually taken before they went off to battle, and for many families, are all that remain of loved ones lost in battle. There is an intimacy in these pictures that somehow makes you feel that you know the subject. You would think them crude by today's digital photography standards, and incapable of stirring such feeling, but they do. The black and white likenesses that should seem stark and cold produce the exact opposite effect.

As photographic equipment improved in the twentieth century, it became common for families to visit neighborhood studios to have portraits taken for milestone events like First Communions, Confirmations, graduations and weddings. Studios sprang up in every neighborhood to accommodate the demand. They kept various props and backdrops to lend drama and visual appeal to the portraits they took. There were standard poses that didn't vary much; if you look at Communion pictures from the 1950s, they almost always featured Greek columns and prayer books with Rosary Beads draped over the book as if to remove all doubt that this was indeed a holy kid! The theme was repeated for Confirmation; why waste perfectly good prayer books and Rosary Beads.

Weddings were another event that required portraits. Often today, photographers don't have studios; instead they take pictures at the reception venues which are far more picturesque than in days of old. In the Fifties, the wedding party usually made a trip to the studio for pictures. It wasn't essential to have a photographer at the wedding. Who needed candid shots of capicola and provolone sandwiches being tossed from table to table. Most wedding pictures were posed portraits that, like Communion photos, had a sameness about them. The bride and groom, with their attendants, would always take a group shot. Then there was the mandatory pose of the bride with her wedding train spread out on the floor. My mother's lovely wedding day picture illustrates this perfectly.

Portrait prices were surprisingly affordable and even poor families were usually able to commemorate big occasions with portraits. Our photographer was Herbert Studios on Fulton Street. I can still clearly remember the man who took the pictures for so many years. He was whip thin, with a pencil mustache, and dressed like Fred Astaire in pleated slacks worn high, an open necked shirt, and for artistic effect, an ascot. Really, an ascot. I remember him applying makeup to cover the scrape on my knee that would not have shown up well in my short-pants Communion portrait. These studio portraits are part of every Fifties family's memorabilia and had the same warm and intimate qualities of the old tintypes.

I am very happy that some of these great old family photos survive. Many were lost little by little as the memories of one generation were passed down to the next. Looking at them is like traveling back in time. The faces and the places speak of who you are and where you came from. While it is still common for families to commemorate milestones in pictures, they are usually taken at some franchised mall outlet in glorious digital color that, to me, convey no warmth, no mood, no feeling. We are finally getting around to converting hours of Super 8 family movies to a DVD so that our children and grandchildren can see what they looked like growing up. It's not a Lincoln Studios portrait, but it will have to do.

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Tony's Career

2011-09-15T12:25:00.001-04:00

My dad “Tony Boots” worked hard all his life, but never had what you might call a career. As a kid I knew he had a job because he was always rushing out of the house late for work. He never ate breakfast that I know of. To save precious seconds in the morning, Dad would put his socks in his suit jacket pocket and put them on when he got to work. Tony was a familiar sight to our neighbors as he ran down Somers Street toward Rockaway Avenue to catch the bus that would take him to Pitkin Avenue and the A.S. Beck shoe store where he worked. It’s funny, if you looked at him decked out in a suit and tie you would think he worked in a bank or an office environment of some kind. In the 1950s, people dressed for work, even shoe store clerks.

As expenses in our household rose, including the tuition my parents paid for my sister, brother and I to attend Catholic school, Dad's income was no longer enough. He took a better paying job in the mail room of the accounting firm of Haskins and Sells. The morning commute became even more challenging now that Tony had to travel into “the city”. He seemed to like the job, even though by today’s standards it might seem almost demeaning for a grown man to work as a mail room clerk. It was different back then. Public assistance was less readily available, and even if it was, most self-respecting men would die before going on the dole to help support their families. The entitlement mentality that prevails today was still years off, so in addition to his new job, Tony worked weekends at the shoe store to help make ends meet.

Dad’s next job was for a company that made casket linings. I believe he worked in the office, since physical work was anathema to him. One year when I was in high school he asked me if I wanted to work the summer in their shipping department. I readily agreed since I needed the money to support my growing social life. The job involved unloading heavy bolts of satin or velvet cloth that were used to line the interiors of the mahogany taxis that transported people to the afterlife. I was a pretty strong kid, and prided myself on being able to carry a bolt of cloth on each shoulder. That is until my supervisor, a older man named George (with one arm mind you), elbowed me aside and hefted three bolts on each shoulder!

It was fun to spend time with my father at his work place. I would stop in at the shoe store once in a while and he seemed glad to see me. He was well liked by his co-workers because of his fun nature, quick with a joke and always up for a beer (or four) at the end of the day. Later in life Tony decided he needed to join the ranks of American stockholders and make some of that "easy" money he heard his bosses talking about. Despite my mother’s protests, he invested in some stocks that promptly plummeted in value. I think brokers would call him asking what stocks he was buying so they would know to sell. He had the same kind of luck with real estate, buying as a neighborhood was peaking, and selling after it had bottomed out. Dad was always a bit of a dreamer in the Ralph Kramden mold. That big score was always just around the corner.

After my father died in 1982 of lung cancer brought on by a lifetime of smoking, it took me a while to realize how much I missed him. Never one for father-son chats, Dad offered advice when he thought I needed it, but otherwise let me be. I sometimes wish I had asked him more about his life as a young man and what his family was like, but sadly that conversation never took place. His generation didn’t go in much for sharing feelings; they were too busy surviving the Great Depression and supporting their families. He wasn't formally educated, not successful by ordinary definitions, but he was there for us. I know he and Mom sacrificed so that we could get an education and have a shot at a better life. My main regret is that he never got to see how well his grandchildren turned out. I know how proud would have been.

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Yaaa, We're Going to the Cemetery

2011-09-12T13:08:00.004-04:00

The title of this piece should give you some idea how little I got out as a kid. From birth to age 13, my world was bounded by Atlantic Avenue, Bushwick Avenue, Eastern Parkway, and Saratoga Avenue...pretty much to school and back home. On weekends and summers we had a bit more freedom and would head for the wilds of Highland Park in Jamaica, ride to Crossbay Boulevard on our bikes, or spend a glorious day at Coney Island or Rockaway Beach. This provincial existence was broken up only by rare trips to places we didn't normally go. One of them was the cemetery.

My father's family was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery located in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Founded in 1849, Holy Cross occupied a large, park-like plot of land dotted with shade trees, grassy hills, and of course, burial plots. Some of the better known residents there include the great Brooklyn Dodger first baseman, Gil Hodges; the larger than life gambler, Diamond Jim Brady, and the infamous bank robber, Willie Sutton. We used the entrance on Tilden Avenue, an impressive structure that set the mood for the seriousness of purpose for visitors. Usually my father and my Uncle Joe would make this pilgrimage once a year to visit their mother Lucy, sister Mary who died tragically young, and other family members.

After the brothers braced themselves with a few shots of Fleishman's Rye (which doubles as a handy disinfectant) and beer chasers, the three of us would pile into Uncle Joe's two-tone green 1953 Chevy Bel Air and the adventure began. I sat glued to the window as we drove down Eastern Parkway, past Prospect Park and finally into Flatbush. In the Fifties, Flatbush was almost country-like, and inhabited by mostly Jewish families living in neat, one-family houses. Lawns were new to me and I remember thinking these people must be rich to live like this. When we arrived, it took a few minutes of wrong turns, muttered curses, and fevered searching for the name of the person at the end of the row of tombstones that marked the place where our family lay.

Our plots were in a remote corner of the cemetery, and there were few other visitors around when we paid our respects. After a quick prayer, I would be allowed to roam while my father and uncle spruced up the grave site. There were water spigots scattered around the property so that people could water the flowers they left on the graves of loved ones. I would amuse myself by finding an empty container, filling it with water, and then emptying it on the bushes planted on the nearby graves. I read the names and dates on the headstones and wondered why some people lived so long while others died so young. It seemed unfair. When I got older, the men would give their backs a break and permit me to plant whatever it was they had picked up at the florist's outside the cemetery gate.

I always felt at peace in the cemetery. In the middle of bustling Brooklyn was this quiet oasis with trees and pathways winding between the headstones. Surprisingly, no noise intruded to disturb the sleeping residents. In their conversation in the car, my father and his brother complained about making these visits, but once they knelt down to pray, I could see a change come over them. Maybe they were thinking of their own mortality and how soon they would be resting under these stately oaks. The ride home was usually quieter than the ride there.

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Coney Is Back!

2011-09-04T10:05:00.002-04:00

It's no secret that Coney Island is bound up with my childhood. In the dark days before Disneyworld, Coney Island was our fantasy world. Even Mom needed some relief from having us underfoot all summer, and when she couldn't take it any more, off we went. Going to the beach wasn't simply a matter of jumping in the car and arriving seaside in 30 minutes. This was an all-day outing that took planning, logistics and courage. We rode the subway carrying our beach blankets, towels, pails and shovels, and of course the brown bags dripping oil from the peppers and eggs or Italian tuna sandwiches. There was also a gallon thermos jug full of grape Kool-Aid that could be filled to the brim for about four cents.

We took the A train to Franklin Avenue. People would snap our pictures as we got off the subway because they didn't see many white people in that neighborhood. We walked up the steps to the elevated Coney Island train that actually had woven straw seats. You can only imagine my mother, and usually one of my aunts, trying to keep tabs on this caravan of kids and baggage. The ride was above ground and we all ran for window seats so we would have a good view of the exotic landscape that was just a twenty-minute drive from home, but seemed to us like another world. We shifted uncomfortably in our straw seats as the bathing suits we wore under our clothes chaffed in the non-air-conditioned cars. At last the tang of salt air told us we were there.

We ran down the train steps, with the slower adults trying to keep up and screaming at us to stay together. The pull of the ocean and the sounds of crashing waves drew us up the narrow streets that led to the glorious boardwalk. We then slogged through the cool sand under the boardwalk, giggling past the young couples groping each other to the sounds of their new fangled transistor radios. Finally, we hit the sun-splashed beach and broke into a run as the sand turned hot under our feet. Mom would splurge for the fifty cent umbrella rental fee so that the younger kids in the troupe could have a shady place to take their mid-day nap. They slathered us up with Coppertone and turned us loose, hoping not to see us for a few hours.

After a day of diving into the waves, burying each other in the wet sand near the water, and chasing after the Good Humor man who sold ice cream on the beach, we should have been exhausted, but we knew the day was not yet over. After our bathing suits dried, we got dressed and headed across the boardwalk to the Steeplechase Park amusement area. We usually stopped first at one of the custard stands for the best pistachio or banana soft ice cream I've ever had. We were then free to tour the rides in the park. An admission entitled you to so many rides, and they would punch your round ticket for each ride you went on. The Panama Slide, the Airplane Swings, The Wild Mouse and of course the Steeplechase horses that circled the park on a track. It was a ten-year old's heaven on earth.

We recently visited the Coney Island Aquarium. Unfortunately, it was "Screaming Kids Get in Free" day and we didn't hang around for long. We took a stroll on the boardwalk down to Nathan's for lunch. I was most pleasantly surprised to see the beach and the amusement area thriving. After years of hard times, they have cleaned things up and it looked very much like it did when I was a boy. The Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel are still there, and if you squint really hard, it's 1952 again...your vision and hearing are perfect, nothing hurts, and you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. But back to reality; now where is that sun block, and I can't find my eye drops again.

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Doubt

2011-08-29T12:21:00.003-04:00

As a diversion in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, we watched the movie "Doubt" set in the Bronx in the 1960s. It's about a Sister of Charity (Meryl Streep) who squares off against a Catholic priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) over the nun's suspicions of an improper relationship between the priest and a young boy who attends St. Nicholas School where the nun presides as Principal with an iron fist. The movie was wonderfully written and acted, but more to the point of this blog, it released a flood of memories for me about life inside the walls of a Catholic grammar school. Life was much less complicated then; we never knew what lay ahead like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, the exploration of space, and race riots in our streets. My biggest daily worry was not getting smacked around by the screws (Franciscan brothers, Sisters of St. Joseph, and lay teachers) who ruthlessly patrolled the halls of Our Lady of Lourdes School.

Watching "Doubt" was as if someone flipped a switch in my head and I was back in those classrooms. Don't get me wrong...I loved school in spite of the daily threat of bodily harm, but it was an ongoing battle between a boy's temptation to do what you were told not to do (like talking in class) and the consequences of getting caught, as Brother Jude advanced down that classroom aisle with murder in his eyes, always careful to remove his watch lest he damage it on your skull. There were never any hard feelings involved in administering discipline; it was just business. Brother Jude would eagerly join in a game of Triangle (schoolyard baseball) at lunch time and act as if he had never boxed your ears an hour before. The screenwriter for the movie had to experience that world to write a script that so exactly captured the mood of that place and time.

I always say I'm not a big Meryl Streep fan, yet she's been brilliant in every movie I've ever seen her in; Doubt was no exception. She plays Sister Aloysius, a hard-case nun who treats change like the plague. She bemoans the decline in penmanship, and attributes it in part to the introduction of ball point pens. "You have to press down so hard, it makes you write like a monkey" she pronounces. "I'm so sorry I ever even allowed them to use cartridge fountain pens." The scenes at Sunday Mass were also spot on, as a vigilant nun patrols the aisles of the church administering a sharp smack to the back of the head of any foolish child who dares to talk or fall asleep. Sister Aloysius metes out justice from her school office with malice for all and mercy for none. To a boy caught listening to a transistor radio in class: "Write out the multiplication tables ten times each, and make sure they're legible." No transgression will ever pass Sister Aloysius unpunished.

Father Flynn, played beautifully by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a victim of Sister Aloysius when her accusing mind and relentless persecution cause him to transfer out of the parish. He so reminded me of some of the more approachable priests from my old church like Father Schaeffer, who looked like JFK and made a real effort to reach out to the young boys of the parish. I saw him once take on a group of punks from outside the neighborhood who tried to crash a school dance. We followed him outside to help, but he needed none as he soon had the tough guys licking their wounds and on the run. It dawned on me that his interest in us, when viewed through the eyes of a Sister Aloysius, might have well ended his career as a priest. I know the Catholic Church had its problems with abusive priests, but the movie left me conflicted about the line between genuine priestly affection and child abuse.

At some point in the film, Father Flynn gives a sermon about gossip. A woman confides to her confessor that she is guilty of gossiping. For her penance he tells her to cut a pillow, go to the roof of her house, and empty all the feathers into the air, then come back to him. She does as she is told, and the priest says to her: "Now go and retrieve all those feathers and put them back into the pillow." That's impossible she says, they are in the air and cannot be retrieved. "And that is gossip" says Father Flynn. Even the pious and always certain Sister Aloysius tearfully admits to doubts at the end of the movie. A good lesson for us all. Matthew 7:1 Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged.

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Miss Frankie

2011-08-22T17:07:00.002-04:00

She was in her mid-thirties with powdered skin, cotton-candy blond hair worn like Barbara Stanwick's in "Double Indemnity", and pouty red lips. She wore flowered dresses, tinted eye glasses and always smelled so nice. She was Miss Frankie, our grammar school art teacher. During the 1950s at Our Lady of Lourdes school, Miss Frankie did her best to light the fire of artistic passion in a collection of rag-tag kids from the streets of Brooklyn. Each child paid the princely sum of 21 cents a week to cover the salaries of Miss Frankie, and our far less glamorous music teacher, Miss Hessian. The fee also helped pay for afternoon movies every Monday shown in the church basement...such classics as "Francis the Talking Mule" with Donald O'Connor, and the adventure serial "The Thunder Riders" with cowboy Gene Autry.

As I recall we had art class on Tuesdays. Miss Frankie would breeze in with an armful of rolled-up paper that she would tack up and proceed to show us, step-by-step, how to draw a vase full of flowers or some other innocuous still life. She would begin the drawing, and then wander around the room to see how her pupils were progressing. Miss Frankie was not overly tolerant of deviations in style or technique; she wanted you to copy what she had drawn, exactly as she had drawn it. She would correct your drawing to make it look like hers, thus stifling any ideas of artistic interpretation. Picasso or Monet would have grown up to become plumbers if they had Miss Frankie as their first art teacher.

I could always draw pretty well, and easily reproduced the line drawing for the day in the style approved by Miss Frankie. Because of this she would usually glide by my desk and simply nod, saying: "Very good James" before moving on to the next student. When she didn't like what she saw, Miss Frankie would bend down over the drawing, her lovely scent filling the air, and proceed to modify the offending artist's rendition so it looked more like hers. I was in love with Miss Frankie, and wanted so much for her face to be near mine as she corrected my work. Because of this, I was not above setting aside my artistic integrity and intentionally tanking a drawing just to get the benefit of Miss Frankie's suggestions.

Art class was a welcome break for our regular teachers since they got a brief respite from the 45 or so kids they were charged with enlightening each day. That may sound like a lot compared to today's classes of 20-25, but remember, this was a Catholic school where discipline was king. Unruly children were never a problem for long. One trip to the Principal's office where Brother Justinian awaited (Darth Vader was modeled after him) was usually enough to take the starch out of any kid who put a toe over the line. As a result, teachers could concentrate on teaching, and the results bore out the effort required to maintain decorum in the classroom.

We all wore school uniforms so there were no fashionistas to set themselves above other kids. Your hygiene was always subject to inspection, and there was no reluctance to send notes home suggesting more frequent shampoos or finger nail cleaning. During a class, if the Principal or any other teacher entered the room, we would all stand and say in unison: "Good morning Brother Justinian." Kids so respected teachers that we stood in the rain fighting to carry a teachers books or shield them with our umbrellas. We tried hard to get picked for menial jobs like washing the blackboards or packing textbooks away at the end of the school year. Older boys were allowed to go grocery shopping in Bohack's for the food used by the brothers and nuns who lived on the church grounds.

But I digress...back to my muse, Miss Frankie. I never knew whether "Frankie" was her first or last name, but despite the rather narrow artistic boundaries she set, I owe her a debt for instilling in me an interest in art. This was nurtured by a Brooklyn Tech high school teacher, whose name is gone from my memory. This woman encouraged me to try for a career in commercial art, but unfortunately my days at Brooklyn Tech came to an end soon after some bad decisions I made caused me and the school to part company. Teaching should be one of the noblest professions anyone can choose because of the potential to influence and shape young lives. Sadly, the bureaucrats have turned teachers into civil servants, thereby severely limiting their ability to inspire. To all the teachers who rise above the system and give their all every day, we should say thank you.

"A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others." ~Author Unknown

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Ma, I'm Sick

2011-08-12T18:45:00.002-04:00

I want to get something off my chest. When I didn't feel like going to school, I would take advantage of my mother's love for me by feigning illness. I was basically a very healthy kid, so I was rarely genuinely sick. That helped my credibility because when I said I felt sick, Mom believed me. She would always gauge whether I had a fever by kissing my forehead. Then she'd say: "You don't feel warm, let me get the thermometer." Trusting soul that she was, Mom would always stick it under my tongue and go off to do something. This gave me time to rub the bulb of the thermometer rapidly back and forth across the bed sheet, thereby creating enough heat friction to produce a temperature. Once I overdid it and Mom nearly fell over when she read 105 degrees!

Staying home sick from school was one of the best boondoggles of childhood. I was pampered beyond belief. I felt a little guilty when poor Mom fussed over me, cutting the crusts off my sandwiches, bringing up a stack of comics for me to read, and later on, when we got our first television, fluffing up the pillows on the sofa while I watched mindless cartoons like Junior Frolics, Felix the Cat and Koko the Clown who always crawled out of the inkwell of his creator and onto the screen. Getting control of the TV was a real perk of feigned illness; my sister never got to watch what she wanted. Even if it was a show I enjoyed, I refused to put on any channel she wanted just for spite. Yes, I was a real dick.

Like most Italian and Jewish mothers, the number one remedy for anything that ailed you was chicken soup. This is not a myth but a sacred truth. If there was no other reason to fake illness, getting to eat Mom's chicken soup was reason enough. She made it from scratch with celery, carrots, and rice or small pasta like Orzo. The chicken fat you could skim off the top of the pot was thick enough to lubricate a small battleship, but that's what gave this soup its curative properties. I ate bowl after bowl topped off with Oysterette crackers. If Mom had any suspicions about how a kid who was so sick could have such a voracious appetite, she never let on.

I think by the time I was in high school, Mom had wised up. She packed me off to school no matter how much I whined. This called for a strategy shift; how could I dupe the school nurse into sending me home sick? There were a few "sure-fire" tricks that would get the job done according to some of the seasoned delinquents in my class. One was to put a penny under your tongue along with the thermometer. Other than satisfying any curiosity about what a penny tastes like, this never worked. Another was to put an ink blotter in your shoe. In the days before ballpoint pens, we used ink blotters to keep the blue-black ink in our fountain pens from smearing. Another bust. Finally, I took to just playing hooky and writing excuse notes from home to cover my absences. Yes, I know, a dick.

As a teen, I had a promising career as a forger. For instance, I could draw great replicas of bus or subway passes and would sell them to kids who had lost their real ones. I could also imitate my mother's handwriting perfectly, and so writing excuse notes was a breeze. This ruse went swimmingly until one time when I made a spelling error on a note, realized it and stuck it in one of my text books. I wrote out another note and it was accepted as usual. Unfortunately, the first note slipped from the pages of my book and some do-gooder found and turned it in. Somehow the attendance office matched up the two notes and the jig was up. My parents were called to school and my poor mother was shocked to find out how many excuse notes she had written. This little caper prompted the guidance counsellor to suggest (demand) that I transfer to another school.

Once in a while I'd stay home sick from work, and found that the thrill of getting away with something had not diminished. I finally wised up and gave up my criminal ways, in fact, later in my career I prided myself on getting to work no matter how lousy I felt. I only wish Mom had been around to witness my redemption.

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Juxtaposition of the Incongruous

2011-08-07T19:16:00.002-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I taught a three-day writing class for my old company. Nothing really creative, just a refresher in basic grammar, punctuation and structure for an audience of customer service representatives who are in training to become senior customer service representatives. One of the new duties they will pick up if they earn the senior title is writing original letters to customers. Over the years, the company has found a disappointing lack of writing skill in its employees including those in management positions. After day one of the class I heard one student say to another: "So that's what an adverb is." Miss Baumann would be horrified.

I've written before about my fourth grade teacher, Miss Baumann. (We never knew her first name because we would never dream of addressing her so informally) She was one of a group of dedicated teachers at Our Lady of Lourdes School who, for far too little money, took scruffy street urchins and taught them the King's English. Not just enough to get by, but grammatically correct, properly spelled, punctuated, and capitalized English. Our class was not filled with "gifted and talented" kids to merit such a thorough grounding in our native tongue, but in fact, it was expected that every student who graduated that school could write good English. The Catholic school system had never lowered expectations for us just because we were poor or descended from immigrants; there was one high standard and everyone was pushed to meet it.

Trying to teach these skills now, to adults, is very difficult. It's impossible to do in a three day class what wasn't accomplished in 12 years of formal schooling. These students are not dumb, but their basic elementary and high school education was so fundamentally flawed in that it did not place enough stress on English. What good is math and science if you can't communicate your ideas in writing. The English and writing curriculum have been terribly diluted over the years. People now get college degrees who can't compose a decent resume. As expectations spiral lower and lower, such idiotic books like "Handwriting Without Tears" find their way into our school libraries. We have ourselves to blame for tolerating this erosion; we don't ask enough of our kids, and the result is sadly apparent.

Compounding the schools' failure to teach proper English is the tendency for parents to park their kids in front of a TV or computer and take no interest in their education. Reading to and with kids can be a tremendous help in developing their ear. Listening to our language being spoken properly helps children know what good English sounds like by training their ear. They may not be able to cite the rule that makes a sentence grammatically incorrect, but it will clank on their ear when spoken aloud, and they will know to give it a second look. As it is, they enter adulthood blithely unaware of their inability to write correctly, and become frustrated when the deficiency is called to their attention. Trying to fix it now is nearly impossible, especially in the age of e-mail and "textspeak".

To impress on you just how well those Lourdes English drills sank in, let me relate a little story. I attended college at night while working days to support my family. I was always the oldest in class, but I didn't care. The wonderful gift of English that I had been given by teachers like Miss Baumann served me well. Even in classes in which I wasn't that strong, the professors were so impressed by papers that weren't full of typos, misspellings and grammatical errors that I usually got better grades than I probably deserved. In one class, an instructor asked if anyone knew the literary term for the placement of very dissiimilar elements side by side in the same sentence. Somewhere from the deep recesses of my memory came the answer: "Juxtaposition of the incongruous" I volunteered.

The students turned in their seats staring at me as if I had spoken Swahili. My instructor's jaw dropped a little as he nodded his head to indicate that my answer was correct. The only one who would not have been surprised by my answer was dear Miss Baumann.

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The Preppies vs. the Hoods

2011-07-21T13:48:00.005-04:00

If you saw the movie "West Side Story" you may remember that one of the plot lines was the friction between two street gangs, The Sharks and The Jets. There were gangs around for sure in the Fifties, but they couldn't dance like the gangs in this movie! In my neighborhood we saw an interesting phenomenon around the time Pat Boone started to become popular. Up until then, guys tended to dress in regular street clothes, or if they identified with James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" like I did, they wore black leather jackets, dungarees (not jeans) held up with a thick, big-buckled Garrison belt, and motorcycle boots. Although I sported the "hood" look, I was a fraud. I was just a regular guy trying to fit in.

When Pat Boone arrived on the scene, I noticed a change in the way guys were dressing. Pat was the personification of the clean-cut kid, the anti-Elvis, and parents and kids alike embraced him. Maybe Pat could help stem the tide of Rock and Roll, the devil's music. Maybe if our kids had someone popular they could emulate, we still had a chance to save their souls. In my high school, black jackets and boots began to disappear as button-down shirts and white bucks or saddle shoes took their place. Long hair with duck-tails got cut and hair was styled more like Pat's, parted neatly and combed to the side. Dungarees were out and chino pants with that little belt across the ass were in. The Preppies were taking on The Hoods and winning.

I resisted, mainly because I thought Pat Boone was not even in the same league as James Dean. He was polite instead of sullen; neatly groomed instead of a slob; and sang songs about lolly pops and moonbeams...I hated him. But soon my friends began to switch sides. I hardly recognized them in their sissy shoes and school sweaters. I held out as long as I could, but as the hood clique faded away like Neanderthal man, I became more and more conspicuous. Nobody wanted to hang out with a hood anymore, even a fake one. Teachers looked on hoods as trouble back in the day when they still had some actual authority to make your life difficult. But the straw that broke the camel's back was when most of the good looking girls moved into the Preppie camp. I had no choice but to cave.

When I asked my mother if I could but some new clothes, she resisted because money was tight. When I told her I wanted to try button-down shirts and chinos however, she muttered her thanks to Our Lady of Mount Carmel and we went to Mays Department Store. Now I show up in school in Preppie garb and I felt like my worlds were colliding. The Preppie crowd was suspicious of my sudden conversion, and my hood friends looked at me like the Benedict Arnold I was. I didn't belong anywhere. Although I still harbored hood sympathies, by sheer strength of will, I out-prepped the Preppies. My acceptance came when I was allowed to sit at her cafeteria table with Sheila, Jewish American Princess and Queen of the Preppies. Ironically, having finally earned my white bucks, it slowly dawned on me that this was really not my crowd. Luckily, graduation day arrived and I went out into the world still not quite sure of who I was.

I guess the person who finally helped me find myself was my wife. After dating on and off for a few years, I realized that what I wanted in life was to spend the rest of it with her. I proposed and gave her an engagement ring while on a carriage ride in Central Park. This move was right out of the manual: "Romantic Gestures for the Clueless". Happily for me she accepted and has helped shape who I am ever since. Any good qualities or instincts I may have probably came from her. My bad points I attribute to the Hood-Preppie conflict that raged in me during those formative teen years. She has been at it for nearly 45 years now and still has work to do. I am very lucky that she never gave up on me.

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The House I Lived In

2011-07-14T12:29:00.002-04:00

When I was about two years old we moved from the apartment over Bilello's Bakery on Pacific Street to our new home at 77A Somers Street (pictured left). This was the first house my parents owned, and the one where I spent my childhood. It was an all brick row house, not elegant enough to be called a brownstone, but a substantial structure nonetheless. There were three floors and a cellar. We occupied two floors: the first, also referred to as the "parlor" floor, and the second, where our bedrooms were located. The third floor was a rental apartment where my cousin Pete and his wife Leah lived. There was an inside staircase that led from the first to the second and continued up to the third floor. There was also an outside stoop with brick stairs that provided access to the third floor apartment from outside the house.

The entry to the house was up a couple of steps from the sidewalk. On the right as you entered the front door, there was a storage area under the stoop where my father kept things like snow shovels, sleds and also where I stored my Shelby bike. If you turned left you went down a hallway that ended at the kitchen. By today's standards the kitchen was primitive. The stove and refrigerator were born in the Truman administration, although later on we got a new washing machine but no dryer. We had an efficient dishwasher named Mom. The only bathroom in the house was off the kitchen. It had a shower stall but no tub, clearly a reason why to this day I prefer showers to baths. Beyond the kitchen was an unheated pantry room with an old coal stove that led to the back yard. It was Mom's hiding place for treats like cookies and candy meant only for "company."

Off the kitchen was the parlor/living room; we ate at a Formica table in the kitchen. A little alcove separated the two rooms. It contained a set of built-in drawers and also a shelf where the old black rotary phone sat. It was a Hyacinth exchange but I no longer remember the phone number. The living room featured a sofa, Archie Bunker style chair, a console record player and our RCA 17" black and white TV. There was also a faux fire place where we hung our Christmas stockings. I always wondered how Santa came down from the chimney since there was no opening. Our scrawny Christmas tree weighed down with ornaments graced the living room, encircled by my Marx electric trains and the plastic model buildings that made up the "town" that the train passed through.

Upstairs on the second floor were three "railroad" bedrooms (one following another in a chain). The master bedroom where my parents slept was at the rear of the house overlooking the back yard. My sister's room was next to theirs, and at the front of the house, looking out on Somers Street was the room where I slept. I can remember on hot summer nights turning my bed around so that my head was practically out the open window. Separating the rooms were sliding pocket doors that rolled into the walls. I woke up to the sun shining in my window, and in all the years we lived there, I never remember getting downstairs ahead of my mother. She had the coffee pot on and made a number of trips up the stairs trying to wake my father, who always needed "just another five minutes Fran."

The cellar was my sanctuary and hideaway. On cold or rainy days I would spend hours down there playing cowboy, with my own horse that my Aunt Anna had fashioned out of an old narrow table. She sewed on an upholstered saddle and made a horse's head out of an old rug. I would tear off strips of newspaper and stick them in the crevices of the limestone cellar walls as if they were dynamite fuses. I'd light the fuses and then make a leaping mount onto my horse. (This activity may help explain the higher-than-normal pitch of my voice today.) The cellar was also where I would make my street scooters out of old fruit crates and roller skates. My father wasn't really a handy guy, and his tools were not much further advanced than those used by the Pilgrims, but I managed.

I believe I have a good memory for events, whether they actually happened or not. My memories of this house are warm and vivid. Safe in the confines of its walls with my mother, father and sister, and surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and friends, I cannot imagine a happier childhood. I am still tied by my heartstrings to that house, that time and that place. I will be forever grateful for having the good luck to be raised there.

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The Power of Formica

2011-07-06T16:16:00.001-04:00

I look at the appliances and gadgets around my house and think about the days when things were much simpler. No exotic coffee makers, (no exotic coffees for that matter), no air conditioning, computers, cell phones, video games, microwaves, none of the things we take for granted in modern life. But we were happy with what we had. I read an article recently about how the 2003 blackout in New York City actually brought families and neighborhoods together because all of the electronic distractions that take up our attention were not available. People actually spoke to each other.

Take the kitchen for example. Now there are all kinds of streamlined kitchen counter configurations with stools and easy-to-make instant meals designed for the convenience of varying family schedules and food preferences. Growing up, I sat with my parents, sister and brother at the Formica and chrome table in the kitchen. We ate the home-cooked meal Mom had made and talked about what went on during our day. I find it funny that psychologists now recommend sitting at the table for family dinners as a way to promote togetherness and quality family time. We did the same thing, but we called it eating.

After dinner we would listen to the radio, or when we finally got one, watch our favorite shows on the RCA black and white TV. I remember feeling happy hearing my mother laugh out loud at the Jack Benny or Red Skeleton Shows. I would watch the Yankee games with my father and talk a little baseball. One of my jobs was to keep him supplied with cold Piels beers. We were apart during the day, what with work and school, and this was our time to be together as a family. I even took a time out from teasing my sister when we watched kiddy shows like Howdy Doody and The Mickey Mouse Club together. Music was played on a multi-speed "Victrola", a turntable that spun 78 rpm vinyl records, and had an adaptor for playing 45 rpms when they came out. No I-pods, no down loads, but it was good enough.

Our refrigerator was a Kelvinator with old-fashioned ice cube trays. No automatic ice maker, no instant cold water, just a box with a tiny freezer that had to be manually defrosted. We survived. For many years my mother did laundry in a wash tub, and hung it out to dry on a clothes line. When we got a washing machine it was a big deal. We never did get a dryer. Somehow, Mom managed. We actually had a toaster with little doors that opened on either side. You placed the bread in, closed the doors, and a heating element toasted the bread. You had to watch it because there was no timer or darkness setting. Smoke billowing out of the toaster meant you had waited too long. Know what...it made better toast than the damn fancy toaster I have now.

Frozen foods were just making their appearance, so everything we ate was fresh from the grocery store. No propane grill in the back yard...we barbecued using charcoal briquettes and lighter fluid. It wasn't uncommon to see men without eyebrows in the summer. In the days before microwaves, I remember what a splash TV dinners made when Swanson introduced them in 1953. They were a convenience to be sure, but it was the beginning of the end for sit-down family dinners at the kitchen table. Now everybody sat in front of the TV eating off folding trays. One small luxury we had must have been a wedding gift to my parents because we couldn't afford to buy it. It was a Westinghouse electric sandwich press that made the best damn grilled cheese sandwiches I ever ate.

Funny but it seems like the more modern conveniences that got introduced to our lives, the more isolated we became. Dads heat something up in the microwave when they get home late from work. Kids bring dinner to their rooms so they don't have to be away from Facebook for a whole hour. Mom pops in a Lean Cuisine before heading off to Pilates. Is it possible that a lot of the problems that lead to divorces and broken families could be solved with a Formica table?

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July 4th, Brooklyn Style

2011-06-23T18:21:00.008-04:00

As the Fourth of July approaches, people prepare to attend spectacular fireworks displays sponsored by such business giants as Macy's or the local town government. These shows are carried out by professional pyrotechnists like the Grucci family of New York, a five-generation, family-owned and operated company on Long Island New York who give 300 elaborately programmed, computer-aided fireworks performances annually all around the world. It wasn't always so. Back in 1950s Brooklyn, fireworks for the Fourth were more of a hands-on affair or, if you'll forgive the pun, hands off if you were careless.

The excitement started mounting maybe in mid-June when that first cherry bomb detonation on the block signalled the arrival of a new illegal fireworks season. I was never quite sure where the fireworks came from, but there were "guys" who, year in and year out could be relied upon to sell fireworks out of their hallway or car trunk. All we knew was that they drove "down south" where fireworks were (and still are) legal, bought a supply of the most popular stuff, and then resold it at a profit in the neighborhood. This was Capitalism pure and simple. The transactions were very clandestine, although back then the cops were a lot more tolerant than today, after all, they were kids once too.

My friends and I would take the wrinkled dollar bills we had saved up and search out the shady characters who peddled this stuff. Once you told them who sent you, like in the old speakeasy days, you were accepted. No thought was given by these bums about the dangers of selling explosives to underage customers. If you had the cash, out came the stash. Cherry bombs, ash cans or M-80s, Roman candles, bottle rockets, pinwheels, firecrackers in packs of twenty and, for the feint of heart, ladyfingers and sparklers. When the big day came, we usually waited until dark to set off our explosions. We didn't just blow them up at random either; they were too expensive to squander. No, we staged elaborate scenes for maximum effect.
Maybe an ashcan (equivalent to about one-quarter stick of dynamite) would be inserted into a ripe watermelon stolen off Steve's horse-drawn cart. (Steve was a junk man in winter and changed hats to sell day-old produce at bargain prices in summer. I doubt he ever hosed out the wagon between career changes.) Sometimes we would roll cherry bombs under cars and run like hell when the owners gave chase. Every year one of us, with no hope of ever becoming a Mensa member, would man-up and hold something dangerous in his hand until the fuse had almost burned down to the powder, just like this kid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4juRddaJw Amazingly, no one was ever seriously hurt, although once, during a Roman Candle fight, "Fankie"s hair caught on fire. We called him Fankie because although his name was Frankie, he couldn't pronounce his Rs. One instant nickname, coming up.

Fireworks were a common way to celebrate Independence Day in most New York City neighborhoods. The cops had murderers to catch and weren't very interested in busting kids for illegal fireworks, as long as you kept it sane. At some point that last proviso was forgotten, but it wasn't us kids who screwed it up, but Neanderthal adults. They would light a fire in a big, cast iron garbage pail out in the street and just sit there lobbing in all sorts of fireworks, hour after hour. Some of these would be blown out of the pail and explode on someone's stoop or front yard. The poster boy for dangerous, over-the-top fireworks displays was John Gotti. Every year the Teflon Don would sponsor such an event in the Howard Beach community. At first the cops left it alone, but as Gotti became more notorious, they shut him down on Mayor Rudy Giuliani's orders.

For me fireworks on the Fourth of July were a part of growing up . They are less commonly seen in New York City neighborhoods these days because of a zero-tolerance crackdown by police. I guess that makes some sense, but I'm glad for the thrills we got from setting off fireworks as kids. To us it was mostly harmless fun (Brooklyn style) and I'm happy to report all fingers and toes are intact.

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Thanks Brooklyn

2011-06-10T15:25:00.003-04:00

In writing this little blog, it’s been a challenge trying to convey what growing up in 1950s Brooklyn was for those who didn’t live it. It must have been the same for my parents trying to get me to understand what it was like going through the Great Depression of the 1930s; there’s no frame of reference. Every decade has its own feeling I guess. For me, I wouldn’t choose any other time or place to spend my childhood. After WWII and the Korean War, America was poised for one of the greatest periods of technological and economic prosperity ever seen in the world.

Of course none of this mattered to a ten-year old on the streets of Brooklyn. For me the world was bounded by Bushwick Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, Pitkin Avenue and Howard Avenue. This small section of Brooklyn called East New York contained everything I needed to be happy. Along with a group of friends whose sense of adventure and curiosity matched my own, we tackled life head-on, making mistakes and learning as we went. Between 1948 and 1958, I was never bored. We had our seasonal activities that came and went as regularly as the seasons themselves.

Spring ushered in baseball season, pea shooter, carpet gun and water pistol wars, card games on the stoop and building homemade scooters from empty wooden fruit crates and recycled roller skates. Summer meant swimming at local beaches and pools, marbles and stickball games, and on those long summer evenings, playing Ring-a-levio and Johnny-on-the-pony until dark. Fall brought basketball and football in the park, roller hockey using a roll of electrical tape for a puck, and long bike trips far beyond the familiar boundaries of the neighborhood. In winter came sleigh riding, building snow forts, collecting and trading comic books, and of course setting fire to a big pile of discarded Christmas trees.

There was always something going on, and if by chance there wasn’t, all I had to do was ring a couple of doorbells. In the age before telephones or television, it didn’t take much to amuse us. If somebody had a pocket knife, a yo-yo or a spinning top, we were good for hours. We weren’t above mischief either. A cranky neighbor who refused to let us retrieve a ball from his yard might find four flat tires on his car. Maybe one of the group would get hold of a couple of cigarettes, a can of beer, some fireworks or even a girlie magazine and the game was on. We would find a deserted hallway, post a lookout, and plunge into the abyss. We sinned knowing that at the end of the week we could confess to Father Gonzalez, secure in the knowledge that he spoke little English and would always absolve us with the customary three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys.

I believe that growing up in the low-tech ‘50s stimulated kids to be active. Everything was hands-on; we explored and experimented rather than sitting back passively waiting to be entertained. This was especially true when school was out for the summer and we had maybe 12 hours to fill. Our mothers didn’t want to see us except for meals, so street games became our Nintendo. We ran wherever we went, so obesity was not a problem. We ate what was put in front of us. I don’t remember a single kid with a peanut allergy. Differences were settled in kid fashion by kid rules, usually without fighting but not always. Parents parented and didn’t overdose hyperactive kids with Ritalin when a smack to the back of the head was a lot cheaper and more effective.

I wonder what kind of a person I would become if I was born today? I am far from perfect, but I can’t help believe that the kind of childhood I was lucky enough to have helped instill in me positive values like hard work, continuous learning, thrift, and appreciation of family. My faults are my own, but my virtues I owe to the streets of 1950s Brooklyn.

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Deja Vu All Over Again

2011-06-06T10:11:00.007-04:00

I love the quote from the inimitable Yogi Berra: "It's like deja vu all over again." That's the feeling I had yesterday as we sat at the 9:00 am Spanish-language Mass at St. Rose of Lima church in Meriden, Connecticut. This is a lovely church in a small town in Connecticut filled with Mexican immigrants, but it could have been Our Lady of Loreto church in 1950s Brooklyn filled with Italian immigrants; the similarities were remarkable.

The entrance procession took a while. It was led by a group of middle-aged Mexican ladies, all seemingly under four feet tall, who were members of the St. Rose of Lima women's sodality. Dressed in red and black, they marched up the aisle, the veiled tops of their heads barely visible through the standing crowd, as they proudly carried their sodality's banners and sang the entrance hymn, in Spanish of course. Their lined, sunburned faces spoke of hard lives, but their faith gave them an inner glow as they basked in the attentions of their friends and family. In Our Lady of Loreto church 60 years ago, the scene would have been exactly the same except that the Italian women would have belonged to the Our Lady of Mount Carmel sodality and their uniforms would have been black and brown. My Aunt Anna was a ranking member of the Daughters of Mount Carmel.. Her manner was normally subservient, but when she marched up that aisle at the head of the sodality, she assumed an air of command that completely transformed her.

Father Jack began the mass in what I assume was fluent Spanish. He is a big man with a shaved head who looks more like a Russian hit man than a man of God, but the congregation's affection for him seems clear and vice-versa. Father Jack moves confidently through the liturgy attended by Mexican altar servers, lectors and singers who look like Munchkins alongside his towering presence. At Loreto, our counterpart to Father Jack was Monsignor Baretta, a small but no less imposing figure who presided over the church in its heyday. The Monsignor could be charming when he had to be, but I think it was his nature to be wary and cunning like a Sicilian Mafiosi. Like all Catholic priests, both men did what they had to do to keep their church vibrant...not always easy in poor neighborhoods where families had all they could do to put food on the table.

In both churches, the presence of families worshiping together was a common denominator, not something we see all that much, at least in our regular Staten Island church...people wearing their Sunday best to Mass... women in dresses, men in jackets and ties, and children scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. I was wearing shorts, and I'm sure the phrase "disrespectful gringo" was uttered more than once. The sense of family was reinforced when it came time to exchange a sign of peace. This took about five minutes as people wandered around the church greeting family and friends. The music was fabulous...a cross between Gregorian Chant and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I half expected a Conga line going up to Communion.

At the end of the service, nobody bolted for the door to be first out to the parking lot. Like at Our Lady of Loreto, congregants of St. Rose stayed in their pews until the last bars of the closing hymn. After Mass they mingled, catching up in small groups with goings-on and laughing like they had not a care in the world. Not only Father Jack, but all the ushers, gathered at the rear of the church to greet parishioners and visitors alike. It was interesting watching the mostly Caucasian members of the parish arriving for the next Mass. They seemed to wait inside their cars until all the smiling Mexicans departed, lest they be touched by their joy. African-Americans and Hispanics, in my limited experience, are more joyous in their religious services than up tight white people. My wife and I speak no Spanish, yet we felt like an integral part of that Mass because of the simple faith and celebratory mood of the people.

When you really think about it, twenty-first century Mexican-Americans are not very different from 1950s Italian-Americans. Both groups work hard to make things better for the next generation; education and religion are important parts of their lives; and family trumps everything else. So to the good people of St. Rose, thank you for making us feel welcome and for your reminder that worshiping God does not have to be all gloom and doom.

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Spin the Bottle

2011-05-24T17:45:00.008-04:00

Boys of the Algonquin Indian Tribe of Quebec were brought to a secluded area, often caged, and then given an intoxicating medicine known as wysoccan, an extremely dangerous hallucinogen that is said to be 100 times more powerful than LSD. The intention of the ritual was to force any memories of being a child out of the boy’s mind. Unfortunately some boys also suffer memory loss to the extent that they lose memory of their family, their identity, and even the ability to speak. Some boys who still remembered events from their childhood after returning to the village were then taken back and given a second dose, and forced to attempt to cheat death a second time. In Brooklyn, we also had our rites of passage, but they were far more civilized.

Maybe the first baby step to manhood was crossing the street alone. As a boy, if you wanted to get to the other side of the street, you tugged on the sleeve of some total stranger and said these words: "Mister, can you cross me?" If your parents were easygoing, they might let an older kid cross you. At some point your parents gave you permission to cross alone, admonishing you to always look both ways. You acted like you were grateful, not having the heart to tell them that you had already been crossing solo for the past two years. Being short of toys, we would play a game to see who could let a passing car get closest to his body. Sometimes we would slap the back fender and fall down as if the driver had struck us. When the poor trembling sap got out of the car, we would tear off howling with laughter. As I said, no toys.

Another step to manhood involved a feat so dangerous, that in looking back, I shudder to think how stupid we were to try it. The elevated train ran along Fulton Street on its journey out to Jamaica, Queens. I've written before about how we would squeeze through the bars at the unattended end of platform to save the nickel fare. Another way of getting a free ride usually followed a "dare". Accomplishing this feat marked you as fitting material for tribal leadership...if you lived. There was a metal canopy over the stairs leading up to the elevated train station. We would boost ourselves onto this canopy and, like a cat burglar, walk up to where the canopy met the roof of the platform, maybe 40 feet above the street. Scrambling up another level onto the roof, we would carefully lower ourselves down to the platform and wait for the train. As you risked life and limb, your friends would stand down in the street heckling to see if you chickened out. If you made it they called you crazy, an epithet we wore like a badge of honor.

A tougher test had to do with something that we as boys had avoided like the plague up to now...girls. Maybe around fifth or sixth grade, boys come to the realization that those soft, sissy beings that couldn't hit a ball or make a death-defying climb had other things going for them. Suddenly we were acting all goofy around them, desperately wanting their attention and approval for reasons that were as yet unclear to us. Of course this was the first step in the great mating dance between men and women, a dance whose outcome is preordained, but the testosterone raging in our blood prevented us from seeing the end-game. We had feelings and stirrings we didn't understand; we just knew that we wanted these girls to like us, and would violate every rule in the Boys Handbook to get a smile or (rapture) a giggle.

Having no instruction manual on "Getting to First Base", we would have been helpless had it not been for a game called "Spin the Bottle." The game was played at birthday parties in someone's finished basement that had been decorated with balloons and crepe paper streamers. Boys and girls would gather in a circle, and an empty soda bottle would be spun in the middle of the circle. When the bottle stopped spinning, the boy and girl closest to where the neck and base of the bottle pointed had to go into the next room and kiss. The duration and passion of the kiss usually depended on the girl; the guys were more afraid of this encounter than climbing up to the train platform. "The Kiss" ranged from a chaste peck on the cheek to a gum-swapping grope fest that caused blood to flow to places it had never been before.

We were really innocent in the 1950s and in some ways grew up very slowly compared to how quickly kids mature today. Guys stumbled and lurched into manhood, guided only by the tales told by the older boys on the block. Schools wouldn't dare talk about things like s-e-x, and our parents certainly had no stomach for that conversation. Somehow we figured it out though, due in no small part to Spin the Bottle, a game invented by an unsung, social networking genius.

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The Pull of Nostalgia

2011-05-17T17:10:00.001-04:00

At least once a week I get an e-mail asking me if I remember the “good old days” when gas was 25 cents a gallon and The Platters were at the top of the music charts. I enjoyed these nostalgia fests when I first started receiving them, but after a while they all start looking the same. Why this obsession with looking back? Do we really miss the things these e-mails talk about, or is it our youth we miss ? It’s probably the latter. Folks my age re-live their younger days by circulating these little time capsules that take them back to a time when their mornings didn’t start by opening a little pill box with S-M-T-W-T-F-S printed on top to remind them what day it was.

The older we get and the less we can do, the more we long for the days when we could run full speed for blocks, jump those fences in a single bound, and eat like we were going to the electric chair in the morning without gaining a single pound. Life was in front of us instead of in the rear view mirror. There was high school, maybe college, then a job, marriage, kids, and waaaay off in the future, something called old age. The face in the mirror was free of wrinkles and liver spots and covered with a mop of hair. There was a spring in the step and more than enough energy for whatever needed doing. Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle, waking up after being asleep all those years and finding a world far different from the one I knew.

How did that boy frolicking in the gushing cold spray of the “Johnny pump” become the old geezer who takes 30 minutes just to straighten up in the morning? When did the kid who could hit a pink Spaldeen two sewers and race around the bases in the street turn into the sedentary lump who drifts from computer to TV room to refrigerator in an endless cycle for 12 hours a day? Where is the carefree lad who could sleep like the dead for 12 hours regardless of what was going on around him? Did he metamorphose into a tossing, turning wretch who dozes fitfully for two hours at a time, always debating about whether to get up to go to the bathroom again?

Age is a funny thing. When we’re young we can’t wait to get older. We get so tired of hearing the words: “No, you’re not old enough.” When can I cross the street alone? When can I light up a cigarette in public? When can I get my license? When will I be old enough?? Well guess what bunky…that’s no longer a problem. Now it’s: What was his name again? What doctor am I seeing today? Can somebody read this menu to me? We get so caught up in life that we don’t always realize how quickly it’s passing by. Suddenly our children are over 40. We can’t eat dinner after 6pm. A day on the golf course is followed by a morning in the hot tub. Now we hear a variation on the words that so frustrated us as kids: “No, you’re too old.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to still be here and grateful that modern medicine has progressed so far. Conditions that would have spelled ‘toe tag’ 30 years ago are now treatable, allowing life to be mercifully prolonged. We won’t be twisting the night away like in our Chubby Checker days, but we do get to answer the bell every day and do as much as our creaky frames and feeble brains will allow. I can remember (barely) when my body would do anything I asked of it. At this stage of my life, if the good Lord granted me three wishes they would be: 1) good health for my family; 2) the next six Powerball numbers; and finally, 3) a week back in my 18-year old body. I want to remember what strength and stamina were like. I want to remember life without medications and a good night's sleep. Hell, I’d settle for remembering where I left my car keys!

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A Raisin in the Sun

2011-05-10T13:04:00.000-04:00

It's 1958 and I'm heading to the beach. This is not a kiddy trip to the beach with mommy telling you when to eat, when to go in the water, when to get off the rides...no no, this is an unescorted, guys only, maybe-we'll-meet-some-hot-Jewish-girls trip to the beach. I can't wait to smell that first blast of salty ocean air as we step onto the elevated subway platform at Brighton Beach. My preparations have been flawless, like James Bond packing his tux and custom-made silencer for an encounter with Goldfinger. The objective of the trip is to meet girls, and that required equipment, cover stories and of course false papers so you could prove you were 18. The latter also made it easier to prove you were who you said you were when when you lied about being Jewish. It rarely came to this, but a good beach gigolo never takes chances.

We never carried a bag of any kind since, for some reason known only to testosterone-charged teen-aged boys, this was considered "faggy." Everything we needed would be carried in a manly, rolled-up beach towel. Bathing suit (check); long, tapered comb (check); bottle of Wildroot Creme Oil to slick back my D.A. hairstyle after coming out of the water (check); Coppertone suntan lotion (check); tiny transistor radio that, if you were lucky, got one station under ideal weather conditions (check); and if you were feeling extra lucky, a pack of Juicy Fruit gum to take care of that salami breath. Lunch was a problem. We hated carrying bag lunches onto the beach because it just didn't look cool. Would James Dean whip a pepper and egg sandwich out of an oil-stained brown paper bag? But neither did we have the money to buy lunch on the boardwalk, so the compromise was to take lunch from home and eat it on the subway.

Once at our destination (Brighton Beach, Bay 5 where the hot Jewish girls hung out) we rolled out out the beach towel, stepped out of out clothes, and revealed our rippling muscles to the world. OK, maybe they didn't ripple but they did twitch a little. After fiddling with the radio dial until we got something that wasn't static, we then covered ourselves in suntan oil and lay out on that towel like a Cajun Crusted Tilapia until we were done on one side. Burn, flip over and repeat...you could literally smell your skin cooking in that broiling sun. This insane activity was deemed "healthful" in the horribly misinformed 50s, and today I have to listen to my dermatologist lecture me every time I visit. You were happy to hear the approach of the Good Humor man so you could buy a fifteen- cent Humorette (orange or lime creamsicle) to cool off.

At some point we would go on scouting trips to visit the blankets in our search area for young ladies who might be interested in having some company. The search area was the distance you could walk on the burning hot sand without squealing like a girl for relief. A highly prized skill that might expand your search zone was the ability to step on the corners of people's beach blankets as you threaded your way through the minefield of people eating sandy baloney sandwiches washed down with jugs of Kool-Aid. We would use our cheesy but battle-tested pick-up lines like: "Hey Johnny, I think I'm in love" or, “I’m having a terrible day, and it always makes me happy to see a beautiful girl smile." Nobody was more surprised than us when one of these terrible lines actually worked.

For the record, those rumors about hot Jewish girls proved to be totally unfounded. They were no hotter than the average Christian girl, but that urban myth spread around the high school locker room like wild fire, unfairly elevating our pathetic hopes. We spent many fruitless days searching for girls who "looked Jewish." I've since learned that there is a sure-fire way to tell, but I found out too late to improve our scoring odds. You ask them what they plan to make for dinner and if the answer is "reservations", bingo, hello Shiela. I once took a Jewish girl home to meet my mother. Mom was Italian and a firm believer in the sentiment expressed in that song from West Side Story, "Stick to Your Own Kind". She was polite to my date, but she looked threateningly at me with Luca Brasi eyes.

Now, thanks to all my reckless sunbathing on the beaches of Brooklyn, I had to have some sun damage spots removed from the top of my bald head. If it was up to my doctor, with her SPF85 sunblock and wide brimmed hats, I'd go out on the golf course looking like Miss Marple. I never did find that hot Jewish girl, but I did manage to trick a pretty special Italian girl into marrying me. Mom was so proud.

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My Many Mothers

2011-05-04T17:28:00.002-04:00

Mother's Day is coming up, and it got me thinking of my own Mom of course, but also of the other "Moms" who were part of my childhood. In 1950's Brooklyn, the neighborhood was a collection of melting pot families with different ethnicities, races and religions. The one thing many of those families had in common was a strong, loving mother who held the whole shebang together. These remarkable women were the glue of our society. They quietly ruled the house, but usually allowed their husbands to believe they were in charge. The men were grateful for this concession, but deep down knew to whom they reported. Not content to raise only their own children, these women extended their motherly influence to any child who happened to cross their threshold. I was fortunate enough to have regular guidance from a number of auxiliary neighborhood moms.

Tommy Dowd was a good friend and playmate, even though he was about five years older than me. He was a diabetic and small for his size, and that may have explained how he became part of our crowd. Tom's mom Lillian was a lady in the best sense of that word. Her husband worked as a banker and enjoyed a few beers in the evening at Grimm's Bar. I think Lillian just got lonesome sometimes, and would invite the unwashed urchins lounging on her stoop to come in for tea, that's right, tea! Being English, tea was a familiar ritual to her, and we would sit around her dining room table drinking tea from China cups and eating cinnamon toast or Lorna Doone cookies. Lillian made conversation by asking about our families and how things were going in school. It was an incongruous scene to be sure, but seemed perfectly natural at the time. I'm sure any bit of polish I may have acquired in childhood rubbed off from the genteel Lillian.

Angie Bilello was another surrogate mom who lived across the street from my grandparents on Hull Street. She was the mother of my friend Rich...all sweetness and light unless she thought you were up to something, at which point she would turn into Sgt. Joe Friday and start firing questions designed to break through your pathetic tissue of lies. Angie was a selfless Italian wife and mother who cared not only for her family, but also for a blind brother who lived with them; she did this without complaint. I felt at home in her kitchen because there was always something good to eat. I know my memory can't be right on this, but it seems to me that Angie was always frying veal cutlets! Ah, the smell. This was in the day when you could buy veal cutlets without needing a co-signer for a loan. We ate this Italian heroin like snacks before dinner, sitting at the formica kitchen table with Angie smilingly looking on.

Agnes Bordenga was the Myrna Loy of Somers Street. While the less glamorous mothers wore the mandatory flowered house dress, Agnes dressed up. She was a very attractive woman married to Sal, the coolest guy on the block. I would look for excuses to run errands for Agnes just to be around her. She smoked (something every other mother on the block frowned upon) had a wonderful sense of gaiety just like Myrna Loy. Agnes always treated me kindly despite the really obvious crush I had on her. When their daughter Phyllis (my sister's friend) got older, Agnes and Sal hosted annual New Year's Eve parties, probably just to keep Phyllis home where they could keep an eye on her. They invited the teenage boys from the neighborhood, and allowed us to smoke and even have a glass of beer. This might sound terrible, but we never abused their hospitality; it made us feel so grown up.

There was no escaping the mother's network in 1950's Brooklyn. Each of the women who took it upon themselves to watch over the neighborhood children not only helped them stay out of trouble, but in their own way added to the development of their character. Things are a bit different now. Neighborhoods are different and people look at the world through lenses of fear and suspicion, sadly, not without cause. Lillian's invitations to tea would be reported to Child Welfare; Angie's steady diet of fried veal cutlets would be condemned as unhealthy; and Agnes would be hauled off to jail for permitting teens to smoke and drink in her home. My mother was one of a kind and irreplaceable to me, but in raising me she had some help from the great ladies I mentioned and others I didn't. Happy Mother's Day, Frances.

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The Kennedy Years

2011-04-26T15:59:00.001-04:00

We've been watching "The Kennedys" on Reelz TV. The series was originally produced for the History Channel, but they declined to air it since they felt the producer was too harsh on the family, especially poppa Joe. They paint him as a controlling, micro-managing fanatic who would stop at nothing to get one of his sons elected President of the United States. It is rumored that, partly because she has a new book coming out on her family, Caroline Kennedy and the rest of the clan exerted pressure on A&E, the parent company of the History Channel, to yank the series because it portrayed her family as manipulating schemers. I found it ironic that in pulling the rug out from under this fine series, the Kennedys acted in exactly the way the producers characterized them in the show.

But I'm not out to bash the Kennedys; they have suffered enough. I really wanted to write about the crises I lived through during the Kennedy administration. I never really thought about it because it just seemed like part of growing up, but President John Kennedy faced some big time challenges in his short time in office. There were many issues facing the country, and it seemed unfair somehow that all would come to a head on JFK's watch. It was the height of the Cold War, with Russia and the United States circling like two Summo wrestlers over who would be the 800 pound gorilla in the world. Racial tensions were tearing the country apart, and the newly liberated island of Cuba, just 90 miles off our coast, was cozying up to the Russians. It seemed as if real life was playing out like in the movies Dr. Strangelove and Seven Days in May.

First. there was the crisis in Berlin. In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city. Kruschev and Eisenhower talked but no agreement was reached. In 1961, alarmed by the steady flow of citizens from to East to West Berlin, the border to West Berlin was closed and the Berlin Wall erected. President Kennedy responded by calling up nearly 150,000 National Guardsmen. My Army reserve was on alert but never activated. My pal Lefty from Hull Street was called up with his reserve unit and spent a year in North Carolina making Raleigh safe for Democracy. The Berlin Wall stood until the great Ronald Wilson Reagan made his famous: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech in 1987.

Most southern states had "separate but equal" rules for whites and blacks in the early sixties for schools and other public facilities. A black student named James Meredith, who had attended an all black junior college for two years, applied in 1960 to get a degree at the University of Mississippi. He was denied entry twice, with the leading opponent being the state governor, Ross Barnett. After winning a case brought on his behalf by the NAACP, Meredith thought the matter had been settled. But Governor Barnett, despite telling President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy that he would stand aside, broke his word and incited the locals to riot, resulting in injuries and death. The Kennedys, infuriated at the betrayal, called in the National Guard who led Meredith through the university's door. This was a shameful incident in American history, and JFK, despite knowing he would lose Southern reelection votes, ultimately did the right thing.

With hardly time to catch his breath, Kennedy was up at bat again. In September 1962, after some unsuccessful operations by the U.S. to overthrow the Cuban regime (Bay of Pigs) the Cuban and Soviet governments began to surreptitiously build bases in Cuba for a number of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles with the ability to strike most of the continental United States. On October 14, 1962, a United States Air Force U-2 plane on a photoreconnaissance mission captured photographic proof of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba. The U.S. announced that it would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the Soviets dismantle the missile bases already under construction or completed in Cuba and remove all offensive weapons. Cuba and the Soviets backed down after the United States agreed never to invade Cuba.

I voted for JFK when I was young and foolish, and a registered Democrat. I was greatly saddned when he was killed in 1963. Although history may have taken some of the bloom off the Camelot legend by revealing JFK's human frailties, I think he did a credible job in dealing with all the world-shaking crises he faced in so short a time. I have also gained a measure of respect for his brother Bobby. It was his job to play bad cop to JFK's good cop. Bobby was the hammer in JFK's velvet glove. Together they bullied and cajoled the Congress and the Cabinet, with able assistance from one of the world's greatest political persuaders, Lyndon Baines Johnson. I don't know how anyone stands up to the pressure of being the leader of the free world. I don't envy them their job of running this country, and though I often violently disagree with their policies, I applaud them for having the courage to try.

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Brooklyn's Champs-Élysées

2011-04-18T11:23:00.004-04:00

A while back I wrote about Atlantic Avenue, one of the neighborhood streets that holds a lot of memories for me. Another is the majestic Eastern Parkway, a broad, tree-lined boulevard that starts around Bushwick Avenue and winds its way through a tangle of ethnic neighborhoods before ending at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. When I was growing up in the Fifties, a drive along Eastern Parkway was our answer to a stroll along the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The multi-laned street carried traffic from downtown Brooklyn to the Interboro (now called Jackie Robinson) Parkway, and along Atlantic Avenue onto the Belt and Southern State Parkways to the promised land, Long Island.

Eastern Parkway was the world's first six-lane highway, completed in 1874. It had divider islands that separated the main traffic lanes from the local streets. These were planted with beautiful trees and paved with grey stones, and we stood on them waiting for the light to change. For a kid, crossing Eastern Parkway was a big deal, and our parents would have had fits if they knew we were so bold as to try. Brownstone houses, apartment buildings, retail shops and storefront churches lined both sides of the street. In my time, Jews were the primary residents of the area with a scattering of Blacks. A few Orthodox Jews still stubbornly hang on in the Crown Heights section, and an uneasy peace exists between them and the Blacks, who are now the dominant culture.

I spent a good part of my 'yout' just off Eastern Parkway in Callahan and Kelly Park on Truxton Street. We walked from home and sometimes stopped off at the candy store to pick up a new Spaldeen ball, or maybe a bat from the broom factory where they sold thick, red or blue broom handles for fifteen cents. These made perfect stickball bats. We played at the handball courts, where an outline of home plate was painted the height of the strike zone. This was a good variation on street stickball because it only required two kids, a pitcher and a hitter. The area was enclosed by a chain-link fence, and depending where the batted ball hit the fence, it would be a single, double, triple or home run.

Heading along Eastern Parkway toward downtown Brooklyn, we'd pass the live chicken market. I always held my breath to avoid a choking smell that still lingers in my nightmares. There was a junk yard fronted by a run-down store window decorated with hub caps. They sold used car parts...remember this was in the day when people actually repaired their own cars. If you zigged off Eastern Parkway near Carlucci's restaurant where we ate after attending funerals, you could visit Our Lady of Loreto Church on Pacific and Sackman Streets, where I was baptized. There was Miranda's Beer Distributor where my father bought cases of Rhiengold and Piels beer for family celebrations. Farther down was the Eastern Parkway Arena where prize fights were held on Friday nights, and at other times it was used as a roller skating rink.

There were a number of nightclubs along Eastern Parkway, including one whose name escapes me, across from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. This club was patronized mostly by Blacks, and featured top-name entertainment. I went there a couple of times and, while I felt nervous being one of the few white guys at the bar, it was worth it to see acts like the Platters on stage. There was also a small Cabaret whose claim to fame was a real piano mounted on the roof above the doorway. This fascinated me and I went out of my way to look for it every time we drove by. Eastern Parkway ended at the Grand Army Plaza circle near the Brooklyn Museum and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. We just visited a Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Museum last week. Going back there is like time-traveling and somehow makes me feel young again.

I came across a website NewYork/BrooklynOld.htm that contains so many pictures of places in Brooklyn that, unlike the Brooklyn Museum, are long gone. It gave me such pleasure to look at them because it's who I am. One of the nicest associations I have of the area is from a street that begins where Eastern Parkway ends...Union Street. It was there that a special girl with a small gap in her front teeth grew up at 909 Union Street. Before we were married I 'd drive along Eastern Parkway to pick her up for our dates. When we returned, her father was waiting at the second story window to be sure we didn't linger too long over our goodnights. Thank you Eastern Parkway for Callahan-Kelly Park, the skating rink, the piano on the roof, and for the best friend I have in the world.

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The Rear View Mirror

2011-04-12T16:26:00.010-04:00

In the car today on the oldies station I heard Elvis Presley singing Hard Headed Woman. Suddenly I saw in my mind those wavy black and white lines they always used on old television shows to signal that a flashback was coming.

I'm playing a short center field the way I always did, daring opposing batters to hit it over my head. I'm twelve years old and, in my mind at least, there is no fly ball I can't run down. At the crack of the bat I instinctively take off in the direction I know the ball will be traveling. After a few long strides, without slowing down, I sneak a look over my shoulder to try to pick up the ball's flight. There it is, soaring toward the fence. I adjust my direction slightly and stick up my glove. I hear the thwack as it hits the webbing. I spin and throw hard on a line to third base. The runner who was going to tag up at second goes half-way to third and goes back. He gives me a grudging 'nice catch' nod as I trot back to my position. I'm good. My body is strong, my reflexes are quick, and I have that unshakable confidence unique to the young.

"Well a hard headed woman, a soft hearted man, been the cause of trouble ever since the world began, oh yeah...." is blaring out of the radio of my 1961 Chevy Impala. Heads turn because the car windows are rolled all the way down as I cruise along Cross Bay Boulevard past the Big Bow Wow Drive-In. I can smell the burgers and hot dogs on the summer breeze as I pull into the lot. I look good in my French-toe shoes, black chinos with the belt in back, and my pink and black shirt that laces-up the front. I take an admiring glance at myself in the gleaming finish of the black car before strolling to the miniature golf course to see if any of the guys are there. I wonder how any of the giggling girls, with their hair in giant rollers under bright aqua scarfs can resist me. I have that unshakable confidence unique to the young.

"Now Adam told Eve, listen here to me, don't you let me catch you messin' round that apple tree, oh yeah..." I couldn't wait to get out of high school; college was definitely not for me. I'm in a dead-end job working as a bank clerk and thinking I have the world on a string. I'm pulling in a sweet $52 a week and spending twice that. The free checking account that the bank gives to every employee is my ticket to living beyond my means. Some of the bad checks I wrote are still out there bouncing. I soon discover credit cards and my finances worsen. As Tennessee Ernie said: Another day older and deeper in debt. My prospects are poor, but I'm having too much fun to realize it. I have that unshakable confidence unique to young.

"Now Samson told Delilah loud and clear, Keep your cotton pickin' fingers out my curly hair, oh yeah..." My best friend Rich has a girl he wants me to meet. She's a friend of his girlfriend JoAnn. Her name is Jasmine, she and JoAnn are classmates at Bishop McDonnell High School on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. We meet at JoAnn's house in Richmond Hill. Jasmine seems nice enough and we hit it off pretty well. I am especially impressed with her sense of humor; she laughs at all my jokes. I think we went to a movie and after that had a few dates, but we went our separate ways. Hey, why rush into anything, there are plenty of girls out there and most of them would be happy to date a guy like me. I have that unshakable confidence unique to the young.

"I got a woman, a head like a rock. If she ever went away I'd cry around the clock, oh yeah..." As the light changes and the guy behind me honks, I drift back to reality. I reflect on the ending to my story. It must have been divine intervention that brought me to my senses, and sent me back to the lovely Jasmine. Luckily she saw something in me that even I didn't know was there. She married me, and began the process of guiding me onto a better path. She sacrificed so that I could finish college at night, get a better job, and make a life for our family. I wanted so much to justify her faith in me.

Whatever I've accomplished in life, I owe to her. Even when I make mistakes she is always there to help me. The only way I can think of to repay her is by trying harder to be the kind of husband she deserves.

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What the Hell is a Gerund?

2011-04-04T12:48:00.031-04:00

I recently started teaching a 3-day letter writing class for employees of my old company. These folks are senior customer service reps who must compose written replies to the more complicated inquiries and complaints the company receives, and also to letters written to the Public Service Commission or top executives. I knew going in that it would not be an easy class; if you haven't mastered the basics of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, etc. by the eighth grade, then that ship has sailed. My experience bore out my fears...luckily the company has hundreds of "canned" letters written for almost every imaginable occasion that its employees can use as is or modify slightly as necessary. This limits the amount of original writing they must do.

Going over the rules of grammar took me back to my school days at Our Lady of Lourdes in Brooklyn. Those teachers and Franciscan Brothers drilled us relentlessly from the first grade, and created a solid foundation in the English language that they continued to build on right on up through eighth grade. Starting at ground zero with the alphabet, there were printed white-on-green signs mounted above the blackboard that ran around the perimeter of the room. They contained examples of how to write every letter in upper and lower case script.

We learned the Palmer Method of script writing by doing exercises in making loops and whorls with our scratchy fountain pens, while the teachers stood over our shoulders. By pure, boring repetition we learned how to write out letters in a legible hand by the end of first grade. Today, teaching script writing to kids has become a major issue in grammar schools. "Helicopter Parents", so called because they hover over their children every moment of every day, are up in arms because little Ashley made a scowly face when she tried to write in script. Call out the guard, change the curriculum, my child is struggling and I can't bear to watch! Some pinhead actually wrote a book called: "Handwriting Without Tears". Puh-leeeeze.

By second grade we learned about capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. In third grade we hit the basic parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives. Then we moved on to prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, infinitives, and gerunds... gerunds, for God's sake. If you asked the average high school graduate what a gerund was, they would probably answer: a small, furry animal that lives in a cage and exercises on a wheel. We not only learned the parts of speech, but how to correctly use them in sentences. By third grade we were diagramming sentences showing their proper construction, the subject, verb, object and all modifiers. This was a foolproof way to learn grammar, but they don't teach it any more because it causes the kiddies to frown.

We took all the English we learned and we wrote. Essays, book reports, friendly letters, business letters...we had homework every night that involved writing out the answers to questions. Our answers had to be not only factually correct, but written logically, using correct spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. I'd bet money that in 1956, the English and writing skills we had after graduating eighth grade in a Catholic grammar school would surpass those of college grads today. Don't take that bet because you'd lose. One of the greatest deficiencies exhibited by modern day job seekers is the inability to write. It's a very sad legacy for young American adults that they can't write nearly as well as mid-Nineteenth Century kids with a fourth grade education.

So thank you Misses Langin, Ruffalo, Wall and Baumann; thank you Brothers Conrad, Francis, and Jude for beating that stuff into our young skulls. We didn't appreciate it then, but you were bestowing on us the priceless gift of literacy. Today we worry more about our kids being happy and having high self-esteem...those things are good up to a point, but can't help them find work if they are illiterate morons.

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Waste Not, Want Not

2011-03-28T16:28:00.016-04:00

I like my coffee in a cardboard container instead of a cup. I guess it was all those years of going to the coffee cart at work and drinking coffee out of a container that created this odd habit. When I go to Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks for a coffee to take home, I like to rinse out the container and re-use it once or twice before throwing it away. This not only allows me to drink coffee I brew at home out of a cardboard container, but also gives me a chance to re-use something that is still perfectly usable before throwing it away. My youngest son was recently startled to find that I did this. He wonders why I just don't buy a package of cardboard containers and use a new one when I have coffee at home.

Where am I going with this? Well, I want you (and him) to understand where this habit of thrift developed. I don't think of myself as cheap. The smoke coming off my American Express card should be proof of that. Also, thanks to my wife's love affair with Costco, I have a closet full of cardboard containers, and can well afford to use a new one every time I want a cup of coffee. Its just that my upbringing won't let me. I remember as a kid, nothing in our house was wasted. That wasn't just a quirky habit, that arose from need. My parents could not afford even small extravagances, and never owned a credit card, so the money my father brought home each week had to pay all our expenses. As a result, my mother found ingenious ways to stretch a dollar.

We ate a lot of dinners made with some kind of pasta cooked with other simple ingredients like beans, lentils, peas, escarole and potatoes. (By the way, please don't feel sorry for us...I still enjoy these delicious and nutritious 'paisano' dishes today.) Our dinner glasses were provided courtesy of Welch's Jelly, and our dinnerware was supplemented with china handed out at the local movie house to boost attendance. We couldn't afford soda, so Mom bought little cans of flavored syrup made by Snowcrop. One can of this sugary stuff made two quarts of imitation soda, and started lots of cavities in our unsuspecting teeth. Tupperware was out of our reach, but every empty ricotta container found its way into the cupboard to be reused for storing leftovers. Balls of bakery string, used rubber bands, and pieces of used aluminum foil were in the "junk" drawer for when they were needed.

A lot of our clothes came from Cousins Hand-Me Downs, Inc. That's not a store, but a way for poor families to recycle clothes as the older kids outgrew them. I'd go to a birthday party and see my cousin Sal wearing a favorite old shirt of mine. When crew neck sweaters came into style, I just took my v-neck vest and wore it backwards under my jacket. School lunches came from home...there were no school cafeterias with healthy menus served by ladies in hair nets. Our brown bags dripped oil and reeked of Italian tuna fish, peppers and eggs, potatoes and eggs, onions and eggs, or on a good day, a veal cutlet hero. Spending money came from picking up empty soda bottles and taking them to the candy store, where we always had to argue with the proprietor to convince him we had bought the bottles there before he would cash them in.

I remember my Dad straightening out nails that had bent when he tried to pound them in. He put the straightened nails into his "toolbox", really an old shoebox, to be used again. Mom collected Green Stamps which were given out by certain participating merchants and pasted into books. Books of stamps could be redeemed for nifty items like toasters and beach chairs. The Green Stamp redemption center was on Pitkin Avenue, and I remember how excited Mom would get when we walked down there to get some simple household item she could otherwise not afford. Televisions had vacuum tubes, and when a TV set went "on the fritz" we would go to Louie's candy store where a TV tube testing machine was set up. You pulled the tube out of your television that you thought was burned out and plugged it into the tube tester. If the needle on the machine went into the red zone, it meant the tube had to be replaced. Louie sold replacement tubes and for a couple of bucks, you were back watching Howdy Doody again.

As much as this sounds like a chapter out of Charles Dickens, this is how we were raised. Appliances were fixed, socks were darned, shoes were resoled, and nothing went into the garbage until all the useful life had been squeezed out of it. And so my son, there you have it, the reason your old man re-uses his coffee cups. Mom would have been so proud.

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Atlantic Avenue

2011-03-08T17:09:00.021-05:00

It starts down near the docks in Brooklyn and snakes its way eastward through preppy Clinton Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, Bed Stuy, East New York (keep your car doors locked for those last two stretches), Woodhaven, and finally stops abruptly at the dreaded Van Wyck Expressway in Ozone Park, Queens, where traffic goes to die. I'm talking of course about the street that is so bound up with my youth...Atlantic Avenue. Back in the day, before shopping malls began sprouting everywhere, people flocked to neighborhood stores strung out along Brooklyn boulevards like Atlantic Avenue, Rockaway Avenue, Fulton Street, and further down, Pitkin Avenue, and Sutter Avenue, the latter two streets referred to casually by the locals as "Jewtown".

Shopping density along Atlantic Avenue waxed and waned, with the heaviest concentration of "name" stores in Downtown Brooklyn, and clusters of local stores strung out all the way to Queens. Back in the 1950s, cars were not as plentiful as they are today, and one of the reasons Atlantic Avenue thrived was great public transportation, All of the city's subway lines had stops along Atlantic Avenue, and many bus lines brought shoppers from outlying areas to spend their money. There was even a Long Island Railroad stop (East New York station) that has since been abandoned and closed down . Back then, the train would leave the gloomy East New York station, re-enter the tunnel under Atlantic Avenue and continue east in practically a straight shot to Jamaica. There was even a trolley that ran along Rockaway Avenue where you could transfer at Atlantic Avenue for eastbound or westbound buses.

There were many prominent landmarks along Atlantic Avenue like the distinctive red brick building known as The 23rd Regiment Armory, at 1322 Bedford Avenue, that was built from 1891-1895 and takes up most of the square block bounded by Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street, Franklin and Bedford Avenues. The regiment was organized during the Civil War and was housed in a nearby armory on Clermont Avenue from 1873-1895. Another is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, which stands at the crossroads of Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenues in Fort Greene, where it rises majestically into the Brooklyn sky. At 512 feet, the building's tower is the tallest structure in the borough, and its gilded copper dome and clock have been a familiar sight to Brooklyn residents since 1929.

There was also a mysterious building complex called the House of the Good Shepherd, just off Atlantic Avenue at Hopkinson and Pacific. The Home, whose stated objective was "the reformation of women and the preservation of young girls", became the standard repository for women mostly in trouble with the law. In those days that could include disobeying a husband, drunkeness, failure to pay a debt, etc. It was also a home for wayward girls. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who ran the home, did an excellent job of keeping the girls protected by building a ten foot high brick wall topped with barbed wire around the complex. Altar boys from the local churches were recruited to help say Mass in the home, and the tales of wild doings behind those walls ran around the neighborhood like wildfire.

Around Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues stood Bickford's Restaurant, a popular spot that stayed open late and was a favorite stop after a movie date Downtown at the Fox or Albee Theaters. Another restaurant we hung out in was the White Castle on Atlantic Avenue and Highland Place. This was the scene of our infamous arrest for murder as told in an earlier post: View "The Lords of Flatbush". In Queens, further out on Atlantic Avenue, was a joint called Maybe's that served burgers in plastic baskets covered in a mountain of french fries. And of course anytime a birthday rolled around, we would head to a bakery on Atlantic and Vermont called Mrs. Maxwell's. The old owners would decorate cakes in the window so people could watch. It's still at the same location but under new management. I have souvenir plaque in my arteries as a grim reminder of Mrs. Maxwell's.

As you drive along Atlantic Avenue today, there are remnants of the old street, but it has changed greatly. You can still see the Williamsburg Savings Bank tower, but I believe it has been converted to condos. The Armory is still there looking much like it did in the 1950s, but its really not safe to walk there any more. The House of the Good Shepherd is a housing project. In the past five years, Atlantic Avenue has undergone a renaissance, with big box stores like Target and Best Buy coming into the old downtown area. There is also the Atlantic Yards project, under which, after much misguided resistance on the part of local residents, the new Barclay's Center Arena and shopping complex will be constructed. It will serve as the new home for the New York Nets basketball team, and will revitalize an area that had fallen on very hard times.

If I close my eyes and think back, I can picture the walk from my old street corner down Rockaway Avenue to Atlantic Avenue. I would pass Louie's Candy Store, the cigar stand under the el at Fulton Street, Crachi's Drug Store presided over by my godfather Gabriel, my grandfather's hat blocking shop, and across the street, Ariola's Pastry, a neighborhood treasure where they made the best sfogliatelle pastries in the world. This link will give you a virtual tour of the Atlantic Avenue I knew. http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/atlantic/atlantic.html

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The Halls of Montezuma

2011-02-21T07:36:00.014-05:00

The "Marine Hymn" is the official hymn of the United States Marine Corps and the oldest fight song in the U.S. military. The opening bars of the hymn include the phrase: 'Halls of Montezuma', which refers to the Battle of Chapultepec during the Mexican-American War, where a force of Marines stormed Chapultepec Castle. Why the history lesson? Well as a kid, the phrase had a different meaning for me because of my Brooklyn frame of reference. I remember thinking that wherever Montezuma was, it must have been one hell of an apartment building if they wrote an entire song just about the halls.

Apartment buildings dotted Brooklyn neighborhoods like our own little Chapultepec Castles. They were interspersed with residential row houses, now called by the fancier term 'brownstones' since real estate prices went up. These 4-6 story structures ranged from funky functional to surprisingly elegant, and housed the huddled masses that flocked to places like Brooklyn during the immigration wave of the early twentieth century. Each building had several apartments on a floor, and tenants in adjoining units got to know each other a lot better than they cared to. The lobbies always smelled of cabbage, a testament to the culinary tastes of the residents.

Hallways of apartment buildings were used for a surprising number of activities. On rainy days there was usually a bunch of kids sitting on the marble entrance steps playing Brisk, a card game imported from Italy. We learned some of the finer points of the game from the old Italian men who played on the park benches on sunny days, like how to silently communicate with your partner. This was a form of cheating to be sure, but a vital advantage in a game where knowing your partner's hand gave you a decided advantage. Sometimes the older neighborhood guys would get up a crap game under the stairs that let to the basement. If the games got loud or vulgar, the building super would usually chase us out into the street.

Many a Brooklyn kid had his first cigarette in the back hallway of an apartment building. We didn't dare risk being seen smoking in the street since we knew the neighborhood women would send silent messages on their 'jungle drums' over the rooftops and back to our parents, and we would pay dearly for our folly. We would snitch unfiltered cigarettes like Luckies, Chesterfields or Camels from the packs in our fathers' pockets and light up like big shots. Those were the days when smoking was in vogue, and 'inhaling' was a rite of passage. Incredibly, actors, sports figures, and even doctors promoted the relaxing benefits of cigarettes.

Another more romantic activity was stealing your first kiss. If you lived in a private row house, there was always a watchful parent at the window, waiting for you, a worthless hoodlum in their eyes, to bring their daughters home from a date. This was definitely a mood killer. If you were lucky enough to be dating a girl who lived in an apartment building, you had more leeway since the entrance wasn't always visible from her apartment. You planned your move carefully, always carrying a pack of Juicy Fruit gum to cover up the smell of Chesterfields on your breath. At the right moment you moved in, trying to anticipate which way she might angle her head to avoid the awkward 'nose bump'. You also prayed that some nosy neighbor wouldn't be taking the dog for a walk during your big 'Tyrone Power' moment.

Over the years, New York City took the idea of the apartment building in a horribly wrong direction when it started constructing 'housing projects', huge complexes with hundreds of dwelling units. Adopting the 'bigger is better' theory, they moved from small buildings where everybody knew and looked out for their neighbors to over sized, impersonal brick monstrosities that became breeding grounds for crime and helped to doom so many city neighborhoods. (By the way, I must confess that I didn't really think that the Halls of Montezuma were in an apartment building, but it did provide a nifty title for this blog.)

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Go Deep, Dago

2011-02-06T10:32:00.002-05:00

Gone are the days when kids just went out the door and played. The world is a different place than it was in Brooklyn in the fifties. Creeps hunt children on the streets even in the best of neighborhoods. Parents have become so protective of their kids that they monitor their every move. "OK, we have a play date with Tommy at 3:15 this afternoon. I'll drive you to his house, walk you to the door, and pick you up at exactly 5:30. Make sure to call me on your cell phone every half hour to let me know you're OK." Maybe an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

We had so much more freedom as kids. Mom (who was still home to look after us and not working two jobs so the family could drive a BMW) would send us out after school, or at 8 am on non-school days, and when we saw our fathers coming home from work we knew it was time to go home. Maybe we would rush in at noon for a hurried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but then it was back out on the street. Having so much time for ourselves we invented games to play. I have described some of these in past posts so I won't repeat myself. Suffice to say that we were rarely bored.

Just as there is a caste system in India, there were class divisions among street kids. Though we sported no colored dots on our foreheads to mark our status, there was a definite, unspoken pecking order.Every few years you moved up with your age mates to another league so to speak. At the park you got to play on the better ball fields. You were picked earlier when sides were chosen for a game. There was some overlap in the groups based pretty much on your ability, for instance, a 12-year old kid with talent sometimes got invited to play with the 15-year olds and was given a chance to prove himself. If he delivered he became a regular part of the older group's player pool. This was quite a feat in our kid universe...like jumping from AA ball straight to the majors.

Maybe the biggest leap came when you were invited to play with the "men"... groups in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. In Brooklyn, you didn't stop playing ball just because you were out of your teens. Anyone who grew up on the streets will remember married men out in the street playing stickball in their pizza-man undershirts. One of the defining moments of my youth came from making the most of such a rare opportunity. One cold day we tagged along with the men on the block to Highland Park where they held regular touch football games. They tolerated us just so they had someone to run for sodas and cigarettes after the game.

We usually hung out on the sidelines watching the men, all pretty good athletes, go at each other. During the game a guy named Anthony DiBiase (called Dukie because everybody had a nickname) went down with a twisted ankle. The quarterback on one of the teams, an Italian-hating Irish cop named Eddie Braden, pointed to me and said: "Hey kid, fill in for Dukie." It wasn't a question but a command. I was around 15 at the time and pitted against bigger guys who were not above throwing a forearm into your puss before they "touched" you to stop the play.

I was on fire that day. Being much smaller and faster, it was easy to get open. Eddie kept finding me on short passes, long passes, any ball he threw up I pulled in. After the game, which we won handily, Eddie called me over and said in front of the men: "This kid has the best hands of any little dago I ever played with." He signalled for one of my friends to come over and ordered him to go buy sodas for the both of us. I felt ten feet tall at that moment; lower caste kids rarely got praise from the Alpha dog. I was proud not just for myself, but for struggling little dagos everywhere.

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Saved by the Books

2011-02-03T12:36:00.016-05:00

I have written in an earlier post about my local Public Library branch on Saratoga Avenue and Macon Street in Brooklyn (View "At the "Liberry"). When I think about how people's reading habits have changed today, I'm reminded of what an important part this old building played in my life when I was young. Before there were electronic Kindles, Nooks and i-Books, there were neighborhood libraries with dusty shelves, shushing librarians, and the most wonderful array of books any boy could hope for. Those books had some years on them, and gave off a pleasantly musty smell that is missing from modern-day libraries.

My local library branch in Staten Island features lots of computers, books on CDs, and online books you can download to your MP-3 player, but has very few actual books on its shelves. Where are the card catalogs in the wooden drawers that held the keys to adventure, romance, literature, history and biographies? What happened to the quiet place I remember where people whispered out of respect to those who were reading or studying? My library has turned into a noise-filled place where people feel free to eat, drink, and converse in loud voices using the worst street language, while indifferent librarians go about their business as if it was none of their affair.

Honestly, as a kid, I could have gone either way. My Catholic school education pulled me toward the angels, but the influence of our rough and tumble neighborhood tried to nudge me in the other direction. I led a sort of double life, trying my best to excel in the classroom because I honestly loved learning, while at the same time maintaining my street creds by running with the guys and doing some stupid things I now regret. Among the most positive influences for good in my conflicted young life were my parents and teachers of course, but right after them I would rank the local library and the doors it opened for me.

I almost had to sneak down there for fear someone would find out and put out the word that I was a "bookworm", the worst thing one Brooklyn kid could call another. My parents were not readers so there were very few books in our house. I think the grade readers we read aloud in school were the first books to excite my curiosity. In the upper grades we were assigned book reports on classics like The Red Badge of Courage and Tom Sawyer. A lot of kids took the "Classic Comics" shortcut, but I pored over these books from cover to cover marveling at how the authors could spin such compelling tales. Soon I began to read for fun, a habit that stayed with me, and which inspired a love affair with words that continues to this day.

I'm a little sad that the library I knew as a boy is pretty much gone. Probably fifty years from now, today's kids will be moaning about how they miss their electronic books and laptop computers. By then publishers will be downloading books right to the chip imbedded in the brains of all newborns. You'll just have to think about what book you want to read, and presto, the software in your head will disgorge it. I understand that you can't stop progress, hell even I enjoy listening to books on CD in my car, but I think back to that building on Saratoga Avenue, and see myself sitting there in my black leather jacket and motorcycle boots engrossed in a book about a boy my age; I see the Civil War through his eyes and try to imagine what it must have been like. Maybe that magical sense of wonder only happens for the young.

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It All Started at the Brooklyn Palace

2011-01-27T16:46:00.017-05:00

I just came across a lovely piece of family history, a copy of the invitation to my parents' wedding. This document means a lot to me because it recalls to mind those people who were so special to me. "Mr. and Mrs. Pasquale Camardi and Mrs. Lucia Pantaleno request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their children Frances to Anthony." I got a funny feeling reading the words that pretty much set my life in motion. The date was set as Sunday, September 29, 1940. The world (and soon America too) was embroiled in World War II, but the Camardis and Pantalenos were throwing a party to help give the family something happy to think about for a while.

I can only imagine the excitement in the two households. Pretty and vivacious Frances, next to youngest of four children, lived at 2402 Dean Street in Brooklyn at the time of the wedding. The bride's address appeared on the invitation for some strange reason. Anna and Mary, Frances' sisters, must have been hovering around the nervous bride, making last minute adjustments to her gown and telling her everything would be all right. Pasquale and Caterina, his wife, were probably nervous and hoping the day would go off without a hitch. Italians are very conscious about impressing the rest of the family on occasions like weddings, and I'm sure Grandpa dug deep wanting the best for his baby girl.

At Anthony's house things were probably noisy. My Dad's family tended to converse like they were speaking over the sound of a jet engine. Grandma Lucy may have been trying one last time to convince her son that Frances wasn't the right girl for him. She disliked my mother and didn't care who knew it. Dad's sister Mary, who sadly died before I got to know her, would have been trying to keep her large brood, mostly boys, from fighting with each other while her husband Nick sat outside on the stoop calmly smoking his trademark DiNoboli cigar. Dad's older brother Joe and his wife Mae would be having a couple of boilermakers before the wedding. Usually after the third drink they took off the gloves and the fight was on.

The reception was to start at 7 pm in a swank place called the Brooklyn Palace, on Rockaway Avenue between Somers and Hull Streets. Now we lived around the corner from there when I was a kid and I don't remember this place at all; it must have closed by the time I was born. The affair would most likely have horrified wedding planners of today. I'm imagining a wooden dance floor surrounded by tables covered with trays of sandwiches...ham, salami and cappicola. There would have been pitchers of cold beer, and each table would have a bottle of rye or scotch along with mixers like ginger ale and club sodas for making "highballs", the popular drink of the day. Coffee would have been accompanied by a big tray Cream Puffs to supplement the wedding cake.

When I think of the elaborate, obscenely expensive weddings thrown today, I can't help but smile when I think of Fran and Tony's little affair. The music would have been supplied by local boys who had day jobs so they could make a living. All night Italian songs would have been interspersed with pop hits of the day. Good people who worked hard for their families threw their cares to the wind and jumped up laughing when the Tarantella was struck up. Kids who were maybe slipped a little vino at the table by Uncle Joe would get a running start and then slide across the polished wooden floor between the dancers.

Just reading that wedding invitation conjured up all these images in my head and made for a few very warm, pleasant moments on a snowy winter day.

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Calling All Cards

2011-01-24T16:16:00.015-05:00

Today was freezing cold, so after our morning walk at the mall (very exciting) we came home to our warm house to stay. Usually when my wife and I are home at the same time, we fall back on a routine that seems to work for us. We have things we do together like eat, do crossword puzzles and watch TV, and things we do separately. It's a nice balance and helps keep us from tripping over each other. When the weather is so extreme it's an additional challenge since neither of us can do any of the outdoor activities we enjoy like messing around in the garden. On days like this I look for projects. Today I decided to start sorting out the baseball cards my sons collected during the 1980s and 1990s.

We have shoe boxes full of these cards made mostly by Topps. Some of the sets are boxed, that is, ordered by us from the manufacturer in complete sets for a given year. We have 5 of these along with hundreds of loose cards for 1980-1981 that I have sorted by team. We also have quite a few football and hockey cards, but these don't have the caché of baseball cards. It occurred to me that since they are just taking up space on my shelves, and my sons show no interest in them, I thought I would find out if any were valuable and give them the option of making some cash, something I know they are interested in. My timing is not great since baseball card collecting and values have fallen off in recent years.

The hobby peaked around the mid-90s when card values were at their highest. A number of factors helped kill card collecting: the 1994-95 baseball strike hurt the sport and the card industry; too many manufacturers flooded the market to compete with Topps, the company that once enjoyed a monopoly in the business...this created confusion in the market about card values; kids preferred to play video games rather than collect cards; the hobby became a big business as prices soared...people didn't just collect their favorite players for the fun of it but rather for their monetary value. Card shows sprang up where not only baseball cards were traded, but the shows were frequented by players past and present who cashed in on collector interest in cards. For a price they would sign your card, thereby starting the abominable practice of autograph selling.

Today packs of cards sell for anywhere from $1 to $10 dollars. They were a dime at the candy store when I was a kid. You got 10 cards and a piece of bubble gum as stiff as linoleum. The gum combined with the cardboard cards to emit a wonderful, mystical smell that any guy over 60 will recognize immediately. We flipped the cards as I described in a past blog. (View You Threw Out What???) We also did deals to acquire players we really wanted. We had no way of knowing what players were in the packs we bought, and finding a Mickey Mantle, Duke Snyder or Willie Mays was pretty much hit or miss. I once gave 200 assorted cards in trade for a Mickey Mantle.

I kept my card collection in cigar boxes and shoe boxes, sorted out by function. I had "nobody" cards I used just for flipping or trading since I could afford to lose them. I had cards I would not flip or trade for anything. I also had cards that were valuable, but since I already had them, I would use them for high-powered trades. These cards were our kid currency. We treasured them, looked at them until they got dog-eared, and never thought for a minute about their monetary value. Collectors today so highly prize these cards that they keep them encased in plastic and almost never look at them. Doesn't sound like much fun to me, but then the older vintage cards sell for serious dough. A 1909 Honus Wagner recently sold at auction for a record $2.3 million.

As I sifted through my sons' cards, ball players names long forgotten flashed before my eyes. I even thought I got a familiar whiff of bubble gum coming off these 30-year old cards. After all my work I'll probably find out the collection isn't worth what I paid for the special boxes to store it in. No matter, it was worth the effort to give me a chance to think back on a hobby that gave me so much pleasure as a kid. And I stayed out of my wife's way.

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The Mick

2011-01-14T07:32:00.012-05:00

He came out of Commerce, Oklahoma in 1951, this shy, blond, strapping hick of a boy who would soon lay claim to the job then held by my idol, the legendary Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees. The Yanks, already blessed with an embarrassment of riches player-wise, got Mickey Mantle for the price of a train ticket to their Spring training camp. When you think of the signing bonuses paid to players today of far less ability, you wonder how much Mickey could have commanded if he was more savvy. Having already made a name for himself on the ball fields of Oklahoma, Mick was known for his two great abilities, normally mutually exclusive abilities in mere mortals: his blinding running speed and his home run power from either side of the plate.

After two years in the minors, Mantle burst on the scene in a Spring training game while the Yankees were on a west-coast swing through California, ironically Joe DiMaggio's home state. That day he hit two home runs over 500 feet, tripled with the bases loaded, and beat out an infield single that would have been an out for anyone else. Four hits and nine RBI's...not a bad day for the kid who would soon make Yankee fans forget Joe D. Mickey was a wild-throwing shortstop when he came to the Yankees. Casey Stengel, the great Yankee manager, drafted Tommy Henrich, a pretty fair outfielder himself, to teach Mantle how to play center field. A few weeks into the regular season, Mantle threw out a runner on third base who wandered too far off the bag after a routine outfield fly, thus completing the rare 9-6 double play. "I think my work here is done" said Henrich.

Mantle came up at a time when the aging, aching DiMaggio was on his last legs. Joe D. resented the new kid a bit, and made no bones about it. I learned later in life that DiMaggio had a dark side, but as a kid he could do no wrong in my eyes. I didn't think there was a ball player alive who could step into the Yankee Clipper's spikes, but Mickey soon proved me wrong. His talents were prodigious, impressing even the veteran Yankee players for whom winning was a habit. They had never seen the likes of Mantle, and gathered around the batting cage like little kids to watch him launch balls over the wall. Branch Rickey, the man who would later bring Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodger organization, was a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1951. He sent a joking telegram to Yankee owner Del Webb asking him to name his price for Mantle. Webb wired back: "Ralph Kiner and half a million dollars."

There is no point in rehashing Mickey Mantle's stats with the Yankees; they are well known in baseball lore. Still, fans in bars everywhere argue how much better he could have been had he not been forced to play in debilitating pain for much of his career after catching a spike in one of the outfield drains in Yankee Stadium. Such an injury would probably have ended the playing days of ordinary men, but Mantle was far from ordinary. He slowed a bit, but continued to put up numbers that helped carry the Yankees to ten pennants and seven World Series crowns during his years with the team. People came to Yankee Stadium to see Mickey play, period. Whether he was flying from first to third on a base hit, running down a hard liner to right-center, or blasting baseballs into the stratosphere, Mickey rarely disappointed.

Later in his life The Mick showed a dark side that fueled a dozen tell-all books about him. His off-the-field exploits with teammate hell raisers Billy Martin and Whitey Ford were well documented on sports pages everywhere. Soon Mickey led the league in chasing women and trashing bars, but at the time all that mattered was what you did on the field. Maybe Mick got too many passes from fans and writers alike. Had he been held more accountable for his behavior he might be alive today. After becoming 'Sports Director' for an Atlantic City casino in 1983, and later owning a bar of his own in Manhattan, Mantle's ongoing battles with booze eventually caused his death from alcohol-related liver cancer.

Shortly before he died in August 1995, Mantle, now no more than a husk of a man, delivered a handwritten speech on national television. Mantle thanked fans for their cards and flowers, and urged youngsters to avoid the temptations faced by athletes. "To all my little teammates out there, please don't do drugs and alcohol," Mantle urged. "God only gave us one body. Take care of it." We don't want to remember our idols with feet of clay, and so I will remember Mickey as the muscular, boyish farm boy who roared out of Commerce, Oklahoma and set the baseball world on its ear. That 100-watt grin that lit up the room, the rippling muscles developed not in a gym but working in the oil fields, and those gimpy, heavily taped legs that carried his body around the bases after smacking another tape-measure home run...those are the things that will stay with me. The Mick may have been a flawed hero, but he was our hero.

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What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

2011-01-04T18:27:00.011-05:00

As kids we sometimes talked about what we would become when we grew to adulthood. Most of us had no clue. It's amazing when you think about it that such an important decision was given so little thought. We all knew we had to go to high school, but after that, who knew? Few families in the neighborhood could afford college for their children. Most were counting the days until kids living at home could get jobs and start helping out with the expenses. Girls with no special calling thought about being secretaries or working as telephone operators. For the guys it was either a laborer or an office job. We did have some cops, firemen, teachers and nurses, but most of us just drifted into any job we could get.

Today, high schools have counsellors and college recruiters to help seniors decide on a career. When I went to high school, if you saw the guidance counsellor, it usually meant you were in trouble. I attended Brooklyn Tech, considered a very good school then and now. The first two years of study were general academics, but starting in junior year, students selected a tailored course of study to prepare them either for college or a job. Some of the specialized tracks included Electrical, Chemical, Mechanical, Structural and Architectural. I picked Industrial Design because I loved to draw and I was good at it. Unfortunately not enough juniors chose that track and so Tech did not offer it that year. I wound up in the Aeronautical track, God knows why, and I hated it. I was turned off to school and scraped through my remaining high school years.

My first job out of high school was for Bankers Trust Company on 46th Street in Manhattan. The pay was a fast $52 bucks a week, but they gave every employee a free checking account. I thought I died and went to heaven. The part about a checking account that did not sink into my teenage brain was the need to actually have money in the account before writing the checks. I think some of the checks I wrote back then are still bouncing. The job was boring but I met a bunch of guys that became good friends. We could be found most Friday nights in Johnny's Bar across the street blowing off the pressures of the week and trying to impress girls; we rarely succeeded.

Thanks to a tip from a neighborhood friend, I applied for a job with the Standard Register Company based in Dayton, Ohio. They sold business forms and equipment, and had an opening for a forms designer. The drawing skills I had honed at Brooklyn Tech came in very handy, and I got the job. I later went into sales and worked out of their office in Roslyn, Long Island. I recently received a call from a co-worker of mine at Standard Register named Mike Giorgio. He says he was just calling around to try to locate some old friends and wants to have a drink. I liked Mike and will join him for a drink...I'm just suspicious that he's got some pyramid scheme going and is looking for victims. That's me, glass half empty.

I soon realized that the jobs I was working were dead end, and with a nudge from my wife, started evening college classes. Eventually I got a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Bernard Baruch College back in the days when you needed more than just a pulse to graduate. I had a very satisfying career with Con Edison, and have worked as a part-time consultant for them since I retired ten years ago. I sometimes wonder what turn my life would have taken if I had completed the Industrial Design study track back at Brooklyn Tech. We like to think we have control over our lives, but more often than not, some chance event alters our fate and there is no going back. All in all, no complaints.

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SPALDEEN DREAMS

It's Magic

You Can Never Go Home Again

Open Sesame

Don't Throw That Away!

The Funnies

My Kingdom for a Horse

Go Fly a Kite

The Magic of Rye Playland

Old School

Nuns

Those Fabulous Fifties

Thanksgiving Rerun

If I Had a Hammer

Pleasure Island

The Mayor of Union Street

Neighborhood Character - Fat Sally

My Life as a Gay Man

The Circle Closes

*** Spaldeen Dreams # 200 ***

Say Cheese

Tony's Career

Yaaa, We're Going to the Cemetery

Coney Is Back!

Doubt

Miss Frankie

Ma, I'm Sick

Juxtaposition of the Incongruous

The Preppies vs. the Hoods

The House I Lived In

The Power of Formica

July 4th, Brooklyn Style

Thanks Brooklyn

Deja Vu All Over Again

Spin the Bottle

The Pull of Nostalgia

A Raisin in the Sun

My Many Mothers

The Kennedy Years

Brooklyn's Champs-Élysées

The Rear View Mirror

What the Hell is a Gerund?

Waste Not, Want Not

Atlantic Avenue

The Halls of Montezuma

Go Deep, Dago

Saved by the Books

It All Started at the Brooklyn Palace

Calling All Cards

The Mick

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

* Spaldeen Dreams # 200 *