Christmas Shopping

Well it's that time again...Black Friday...only worse. At least the stores used to wait until midnight of Thanksgiving Day to admit the hoards of lunatics who lined up at their doors waiting to get trampled to death. Now they are opening at 8 pm on Thanksgiving night. God forbid their customers and employees have a full day to be with their families and celebrate being together. This is a spectacle that really sickens me. Instead of encouraging people to give thanks for what they have, they are urged to go out and get more. As far as I know, this execrable tradition is uniquely American. Maybe we have too much and need to stop and consider why we feel so compelled to spend money we don't have on stuff we don't need.

Shopping has come a long way since the 1950s. Malls didn't exist. There were "downtown" areas in every town that featured one or two department stores like Kresge's or Sears...Macy's if it was an upscale town.  These stores would decorate their windows to lure shoppers inside. In New York, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's in Herald Square and Abraham and Strauss in Brooklyn were famous for their holiday windows. The stores were decorated with trees (before they became politically incorrect) and festooned with garlands and giant Christmas balls. They also featured elaborate Santa's Workshops where kids bundled in snowsuits would wait in line to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas and have their pictures taken. The scenes in the movie "A Christmas Story" where little Ralphie and his family visit Higbee's Department Store got it exactly right.

I find it interesting that 1950s kids believed in Santa Claus for so long compared to today's kids who mostly pretend just to ensure their gifts appear under the tree. We really didn't have a lot, and we needed the hope that a magical fat man in a red suit might bring the things we so badly wanted, even though we knew our parents couldn't afford them. Oh sure, we had doubts, but wanted to dream that we had a shot at that big Erector Set or the snazzy Shwinn bike we would eye greedily in the store window. We would diligently make up our Christmas gift list, putting the thing we wanted most on top, double-underlined. We wished we could pool the money that well-meaning aunts would spend on practical things like clothes and books, and use it to buy the Red Ryder BB Gun that every boy wanted but knew in his heart he never could have.

In our neighborhood, a lot of shopping was done locally. We had a Woolworths, a John's Bargain Store, Vim Furniture,  and all the stores along Pitkin Avenue. There were shoe stores like Thom McAn, Buster Brown, and A.S. Beck (where Tony Boots worked part time), McCrory's Department Store and clothing stores like Moe Ginsberg's and Abe Stark (who gave away free suits to any ballplayer who hit their outfield sign in Ebbets Field). Downtown Brooklyn was another shopper's mecca with A&S, Mays, Martins (where the lovely Jasmine worked in the bridal department after school) and a new chain, E.J. Korvette's. There was no online shopping, no gift cards, and no credit cards...just cash or a check if you were well off enough to have an account.

These are wonderful memories for me. If you've seen the movie "A Christmas Story" (soon to open on Broadway by the way) you will know exactly what my holidays were like. Those times with family and friends will stay with me no matter how much more senile I may get.

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People

I mentioned in my last post, which I wrote just before the lights went out for 9 days, that I remembered snow storms better than hurricanes. Obviously that has now changed. Sandy made a believer out of me...hurricanes beat snowstorms, hands down. People who live in hurricane-prone areas are gluttons for punishment. If you have to keep a supply of plywood in your garage to board up the windows once or twice a year, you might want to think about relocating. We never saw hurricanes in 1950s Brooklyn...even they were afraid to come into the neighborhood. I was trying desperately to think of a way to link Hurricane Sandy to the theme of this blog and I think I found it; the essential goodness of people. 

I am so proud to see the way 99% of Staten Islanders and others in hard hit storm areas are stepping up to help their fellow man in any way they can. Volunteers are everywhere, handing out food, cleaning up debris, directing traffic, and maybe just letting a total stranger cry on their shoulder. Restaurants are giving away free meals, stores are donating clothing, cleaning materials, power outlets to charge cellphones, or just a place to stay warm for an hour or two. There are a few world class a-holes engaging in looting, but they pale in comparison to the brave and good deeds performed everywhere you look. This goodness is what I remember about the people I grew up around in the East New York section of Brooklyn.

It was common on my block for people to help each other. Men would do things like shovel the walks of older neighbors, or get together for a "painting party" when an apartment needed a fresh coat. My father Tony was not big on painting and would often ask our next door neighbor, Frank, to "help" him. Frank was a prince of a guy and wound up doing most of the painting while my Dad fetched the beer and talked about the Yankees. Women on the block were like Wardens: they kept an eye out for any kid who might think about doing something dumb, and chew the kid out, closing with the ultimate threat: "Don't make me tell your mother!" 

We had neighborhood cops, big, beefy Irishmen, that actually walked a beat. They knew us and we knew them. It never occurred to us to cross them because they were not reluctant to swipe that nightstick across your behind. Many store owners knew families on the block who struggled and always threw a few extra sliced baloney slices onto the pile knowing it might be someone's dinner. I've talked before about the baker who delivered fresh, hot bread to my wife's grandparents every day for two years after Grandpa got hurt and lost his job. He never asked for a cent. People in need would find canned soup or boxed cereal left in their milk boxes anonymously by neighbors who wanted to help without injuring anyone's pride.

Even us kids knew what it was to share, whether it was sports equipment, bicycles, roller skates or bringing someone home for lunch. Somehow our Moms always found a way to stretch a meal for one more. We would routinely go to the stores for seniors who couldn't go themselves, and we gallantly refused their offered nickel tips knowing they needed the money more than we did. If there was a death in a family, enough hot dishes were brought to the house to feed that family for a month. We didn't think highly of ourselves for behaving this way, its just the way people grow up when they are surrounded by families barely eking things out.

The reaction of disaster-struck New Yorkers and New Jerseyans has been so different from the people in Louisiana hit by Hurricane Katrina. While I'm sure many people did what they could for neighbors, too many others stood by waiting for the government to come to their rescue. Good luck with that.

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Storm Memories

I'm sitting here with the wind howling outside my window trying to remember if we had storms like Sandy when I was a kid. We lived in an attached all-brick row house in Brooklyn, so I'm guessing we weren't as vulnerable as people living in the suburbs. I checked the history of hurricanes that hit New York when I was a kid, and although I recognized some of the names like Hurricanes Agnes and Connie, back then most of the information on the storm's progress and aftermath came the next day in the newspaper. Television stations didn't have reporters and cameramen out all hours of the day and night with updates every two minutes. Sometimes I think we were better off not knowing. My recollection is that our electric service wires were underground as they are in some parts of Brooklyn, so we almost never lost power. 

The storms I remember better than hurricanes are the snowstorms. It's probably a combination of my failing memory and my tendency to exaggerate, but it seems to me that winters were a lot harder then. We routinely had  three or four serious snowfalls a year, when the streets were blanketed in white and everything came to a standstill. As much as I absolutely hate snow now, that's how much I loved it as a kid. For one thing they closed the schools, every boy's fondest wish. For another, there were few cars on the streets so we were free to use our sleds without fear of being run over. Every family had a Flexible Flyer sled that had been handed down through the generations. These were not the flimsy plastic numbers around now, but solid, well made chariots of oak and steel. 

Our mothers, happy to have us out of their hair, would layer us up and shove us out the door. The meeting place was the vacant lot across the street from my house. Kids from blocks around would gather there because of the lot's enviable geographic location: it was elevated about fifteen feet above the level of the street, creating a natural hill for staging the poor kids' winter Olympics. We would pile four or five kids on a sled and push them down the hill. Sounds like fun until you realize that their route took them directly into the path of oncoming traffic! Good lookouts were a must. We also built ramps and moguls over which to ride our sleds, finally slamming to a halt in a snowbank trying to laugh with our mouths full of snow.

When we tired of sledding there were other snow-based activities like building anatomically correct snow men and women. Or we constructed snow tunnels that were fifty feet long, or elaborate forts with windows and ledges to hold the dozens of snowballs for the big battle with the fort across the street. The unwritten rule that every kid followed was no rocks packed into the middle of the snowballs. Sometimes, if things were really slow, we'd ring the bells of the old people on the block and offer to shovel their sidewalks. They showed their appreciation when Spring came around and we had to retrieve a ball from their back yards to keep the game going.  

Now, if two inches of snow are in the forecast, the weatherperson/doomsayers with their serious faces fill our television screens warning people to stay indoors until it's safe to go outside. If I had heeded that bad advice, I would have missed some of the best times of my life! 

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Past Meets Present

Sometimes things happen for a reason. We were trying to get to Belmont Racetrack for a little thoroughbred excitement today. Sadly we had to take the Belt Parkway (known locally as that goddamned Belt Parkway. Sure enough, around Sheepshead Bay, everything in the eastbound lanes stopped cold. No warnings, no explanations, no reports of why on the local radio stations, just stopped. With no relief in sight we limped off the parkway at Knapp Street and u-turned into the westbound lanes. With nothing better to do on a beautiful sunny day, we headed for Coney Island. I have written extensively about my childhood connection to this wondrous place, and I could hear it calling to me.

We parked on Surf Avenue, right near the Parachute Jump and a few blocks from the original Nathan's Famous hot dog stand. With the warm sun on our faces we strolled up West 16 street and onto the boardwalk. In an earlier blog I mentioned how the boardwalk has been restored and the old food stands given new fronts. We had seen this wonderful improvement during an earlier visit. I assumed the restoration of the boardwalk was limited to the stretch immediately along the section that housed the amusement rides, but I was wrong. We covered a good part of the 2.5 mile boardwalk length from around the Scream Zone rides in Luna Park and Astroland toward the eastern tip of Brighton Beach, and our favorite swimming spot when we were young. (Bay 3) 

The boardwalk was clean as a whistle and crowded with people of all shapes and sizes. The language we heard most was Russian; probably at least 75% of the strollers were of that ethnic heritage. There was a time when people didn't feel safe going to Coney Island, but I'm happy to say that day is past. As we walked by the handball courts where the sun-bronzed old men were schooling the younger ones in the finer points of the game, the memories came flooding back. There were grand bath houses along the boardwalk where people could rent lockers and shower after leaving the beach. I stopped for a soft ice cream cone,,,vanilla and chocolate swirl. Pistachio and banana, my all time favorite flavors, were no longer to be had. A small cone now goes for $4 bucks, a bit higher than the 15 cents we used to pay.

As we passed the NYC Aquarium and the balconied apartment houses down toward Brighton Beach, we began noticing a series of Russian restaurants and bars built to attract the locals. They lent an exotic holiday air to the surroundings. Old men and women sat on benches gazing out to sea. Maybe in their minds, they were young again and it was the Black Sea in mother Russia they were looking out on. Young couples hand in hand, women pushing strollers, bikers, skateboarders, hairy men with their shirts off to catch some rays, and Jasmine and me. We sat here so many years ago, covered with Coppertone, sitting on a beach blanket and listening to Alan Freed on a tiny transistor radio. The future was off in the distance, and nobody knew what it would bring. I'm happy to say we are back at Brighton Beach nearly fifty years later, wistfully revisiting the past.

I felt good as we walked back to the car. I'm grateful to the Russians for reclaiming Coney Island and restoring it to glory. Knowing that a place I enjoyed so much as a kid is still around and thriving gives me hope that we might grow old together.

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Vincenzo and Gelsomina

Every year we have three group parties to celebrate the birthdays of family members whose birth dates are close together. Usually we hold them in July, September and November. This past Saturday we toasted my nephew Alex, my son-in-law Malcolm and my son Matt. We can't celebrate individual birthdays since it's so hard to gather everyone together. Also, the work that goes into these parties is significant; between the shopping, cooking, cleaning and hosting overnight guests, it can be tiring, but also great fun. I mention this as a lead-in to a discussion of how Italians used to treat Sunday dinners. Back then, most families lived within walking distance of each other so the logistics were simpler. My wife was talking about the Sunday dinners she remembers at Grandma and Grandpa Salamo's house held every single week.

Vincenzo and Gelsomina (Italian for Jasmine, my wife's name) came separately to America from Italy in the great immigration wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Vincenzo came from Calabria and traveled to America as a ship's cook. (I'll bet the ship's captain was surprised to find himself one cook short after Vincenzo decided he liked America and jumped ship!) Gelsomina came to America from the town of Gaeta near Naples under someone else's passport at the age of fourteen. She was indentured as a domestic servant to the home of a family acquaintance. Her family's desperation to get her to America, and to what they hoped would be a better life for their daughter is an indication of just how difficult living in Italy had become at the time, especially for those living in the "Mezzogiorno" or southern regions of the country. 

Vincenzo and Gelsomina met, married, and brought eleven children into the world, one of them being Erasmo or Raymond, my wife's father. Vincenzo was very industrious and hard working, and eventually bought a brownstone in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn which is no longer in the family. (Too bad...it would sell for a cool $2 mil, even in today's soft market.) This is the house where my wife's family gathered on Sundays for a typical Italian dinner. In those days, the cooking was done mostly by Grandma and Grandpa, who shared the house with two daughters who never married, and a bachelor son, Michael. Vincenzo and Gelsomina's married children, with their children, would come to the house every week and gather at the big dining room table. I sat in at a couple of these dinners and can give this first person account of the event.

The long table was surrounded by mismatched chairs, and everyone had assigned places. The menu rarely varied: chicken soup to wake up the taste buds followed by antipasto, and pasta with meatballs and other "gravy meat". Then came a roast, usually veal, with some vegetables like escarole, potatoes or stuffed artichokes. After this came a pause during which family discussions took place. These were sometimes loud but never ill-tempered; it's just the way Italians made room for dessert. Coffee and/or espresso would be served in the kitchen accompanied by Italian cookies, a cake from Ebinger's Bakery, or maybe something homemade like chocolate pudding pie. A bottle of anisette would make the rounds, either sipped as a cordial or poured into the tiny espresso cups to liven up the coffee. 

After dinner the ladies would clean up with some assistance from the men. I can see all their faces in my mind's eye...My wife's dad Ray and his stylish wife Belle; Uncle Anthony who was a kind and loving father, and his smartly dressed wife, Chris; Uncle Frank,who served in the Navy, and his quiet wife Mary; Uncle Gregory, the rogue of the group who never met a scheme he didn't like, and his sweet, patient wife Mary; Uncle Mike the bachelor professor and resident intellectual; Aunt Julia, who spent hours and hours playing with our kids at any game they wanted, just like she played with my wife and her sister when they were growing up. She never once displayed any sign of impatience, and the kids adored her for it. Aunt Nancy was a little "Adams Family-ish", and had a set of idiosyncrasies that made her a bit of an oddball. Throw in some scattered kids and Grandma and Grandpa, and the cast was complete.

When Jasmine and I host one of these Italian dinners these days, it's hard to imagine how these wonderful people ate and drank like this every week! It was a time when families lived near one another, making weekly gatherings more feasible. Sometimes, in the midst of such a party, I sit at the head of the table and watch my children and their cousins having five loud conversations simultaneously, and I feel so blessed that the Italian tradition of Sunday dinner is in our DNA. The sense of "family" is paramount in the Italian culture, and these gatherings help me remember and be thankful for my own childhood in the bosom of a nurturing, caring, and yes, sometimes crazy family. I know that even though they are living many miles apart, that somehow my children will find a way to honor their heritage after we are gone, and pass along this beautiful custom to their children. Alla famiglia!

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Back in the Neighborhood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Great American Pastime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In the Kitchen

When I was growing up, the homes on our block were fairly simple. We had a kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom and living room. There were no sun rooms, dens, powder rooms, TV rooms, or "great" rooms with glass-walled fireplaces. When I think of those days, I tend to picture myself in the kitchen. Until we got our first RCA 13" black and white television, the living room was usually reserved for company, so the kitchen is where we spent most of our time. It was where the family gathered to eat, play games, do homework or just talk. I have already written a little about our kitchen in "The Power of Formica". http://www.blogger.com/blogger but every once in a while, I see on image that takes me back to that place and time.

Because money was tight, Mom found ways to cut a corner when she could. Peanut butter and Welch's grape jelly came in glass jars that were slightly bowed at the bottom. After these were empty and washed out, they became our drinking glasses. They were perfectly functional and didn't cost a penny. If you broke one, you just ate more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until the set of glasses was complete again. The earlier jars were plain, but as advertisers wised up, they began putting pictures of favorite cartoon characters on the jars so that kids would bug their parents to buy a particular brand. Interestingly enough, a set of 6 of these "retro" glasses are now being sold on eBay for $16.99. 

If you look in the average kitchen today you will see an array of pots designed for every possible cooking chore. My mother had a motley collection of pots and pans that may not have been fancy, but in them she cooked the most fabulous dinners. The one I remember best was a black, cast-iron frying pan that weighed as much as a small car. This pan was dear to me because in it Mom made the best bacon and eggs ever. She would cook the bacon first until it was crispy but not dry. Then she used some of the bacon grease to fry the eggs, perfect, sunny side up eggs that were brown around the edges with no white ick around the yokes. Wonder bread toast completed the meal all washed down with Maxwell House coffee. 

Breakfast was and still is my favorite meal of the day. I love cereal, maybe because cereal makers were sponsors for a lot of kids' TV shows back then. I would sit at the table with a big bowl of Cheerios or Wheaties. Into it I would slice a banana into exactly ten pieces (a quirk that persists to this day), pour in the milk out of a glass bottle, and diligently read whatever was on the back of the cereal box. At some point, cereal makers introduced smaller, single serving sizes of their different brands in a variety pack. The exciting feature of these little boxes was that you could make a slit down the perforated length of the box and pour the milk directly into the box...what a concept! No room for a banana though.

I can't imagine the number of hours I spent at our Formica and chrome kitchen table with the red and white checked oilskin tablecloth. It was always warm and cozy there, especially on winter mornings when the smell of coffee percolating in the old fashioned coffee pot wafted up the stairs and helped get us out of bed to start the day. It never occurred to me that the coffee wouldn't get put on the stove unless Mom got up to do it. My eggs never would have been made if she hadn't dragged out the black frying pan and cooked them. The Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops would not have been on the shelf if Mom hadn't bought and put them there. The kitchen was her domain where she worked hard to nurture all of us. Thanks Fran for all you did.

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M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

While growing up in 1950s Brooklyn, if I ever admitted I was a big fan of The Mickey Mouse Club on TV, it would have meant a guaranteed ass kicking in the schoolyard. I really liked only one part of the show, a segment called "Spin and Marty". This is how the ad promo described it: "The most popular serial ever shown on the original Mickey Mouse Club was a low-key story about fourteen boys spending the summer on a ranch. The two central characters were an orphaned rich boy, and a cool, lower middle-class kid with no father. Their rocky path to friendship, and their interaction with the other boys, horses, and adults on the Triple R made a lasting impression on viewers."

Spin and Marty certainly made a lasting impression on me. The show aired in 1955 at which time I was 13 years old, about the same age as the boys on the show. Most of my heroes back then were cowboys, so the idea of boys my age living on a ranch, riding horses, and just having fun held strong appeal for me. At that age the only horse I had ever seen belonged to Steve the junk man who, in summer, became Steve the fruit and vegetable man. The horse who pulled his wagon should have been named Elmer because he was about one stumble away from the glue factory. But I digress. Every afternoon when the MM Club show was broadcast, I was at my post in front of our 13" black and white RCA television ready for my vicarious adventures with the boys on the ranch. 

The plot of the series centered around the conflict between Spin Evans, a popular, likable boy who is comfortable around horses, and Master Martin Markham, a recently orphaned rich boy with a chip on his shoulder who initially disdains life on the Triple R ranch and rebuffs offers of friendship from Spin and the other boys. Al, one of the kindly old ranch hands, takes Marty under his wing and teaches him the skills necessary to compete in the annual rodeo competition against the Triple R's rival, North Fork Ranch. Marty, who soon becomes an accomplished ranch hand and confident in his own achievements, is now ready to finally accept Spin's overtures of friendship, as all the boys meet for the last campfire of the season. 

The story hooked me good. The interplay and growing sense of competition between Spin and Marty, the alliances that grew up around each boy, and finally their coming together in friendship and uniting to defeat the North Fork boys at the rodeo were all themes with which any 13 year old boy could identify. Even in the streets of Brooklyn there were cliques who competed, whether in sports, for the attention of neighborhood girls, or bragging rights of any kind. These rivalries played out every day, but if any group outside the neighborhood decided to come into our territory, the cliques would join together to discourage them. 

Later in life I had several chances to ride horses and came to the sad conclusion that I never would have made it at the Triple R ranch. It was fun injecting myself into the company of Spin and Marty though, and I have to tip my cowboy hat to Walt Disney who, even in 1955 knew what kids wanted and happily gave it to us.

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What's In a Name?

The top boy's name in the 1950s, by a considerable margin, was James. My mother must have had an inkling  that the name would be popular when she named me in July of 1942. The top four runner-up names for boys in this order were Michael, Robert, John and David. The most popular five girl's names: Mary, Linda, Patricia, Susan and Deborah. Nobody called me 'James' except my mother when she was mad at me. I answered to Jim or Jimmy, the shortened form of James. I always liked the name and was told I was named for my father's father, Innocenzo. I later learned that in Italian, Innocenzo means harmless or innocent. There were 13 popes named Innocent, but it doesn't describe me very well.

I recently looked at a photo of my sixth grade grammar school class and there were eight other boys out of 53 in the class named James. We had multiple Michaels, Vincents, Josephs, Roberts, Johns and Thomases. We also had the odd Louis, Dennis, Stephen and Patrick. The only really unusual name in the group that I can recall belonged to a boy named Granville King who reminded me a lot of Stan Laurel. I believe he was born in England, a country where that name may not have drawn much attention, but I can assure you that in Brooklyn, it was noticed. Granville was an effeminate boy who would have had trouble even if he wasn't saddled with that name, but the combination of his demeanor and his name was deadly. He was teased mercilessly.

Where am I going with this? I think parents need to choose carefully when they are naming their kids. Tagging your poor child with a gimmicky name may be cute now, but the consequences down the road for your kid could be devastating. There was a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza imagined his first child might be called "Seven" after Mickey Mantle, or "Soda" just because he liked soda. The late Michael Jackson, poster boy for the seriously odd, named his kids Prince, Paris and Blanket. Those names might be OK in Hollywood, but if your kid's name is Blanket, better teach him self-defense and stock up on Band Aids. Frank Zappa painted a target on his kids' backs by naming them Moon Unit and Diva Thin Muffin. Sly Stallone cursed his daughter with Sage Moonblood.

I realize it's not the 1950s any more and those good, strong Biblical names are finding disfavor among the Pepsi generation. The top names for 2011 for boys were Jacob, William, Mason, Jayden and Noah. The first two are OK, but Mason will be called "jarhead", Jayden sounds like Superman's father and Noah means you should get the kid two of whatever pet he likes for when he builds the Ark. As for girls, the most popular names in 2011 were Sophia, Isabella, Emma, Olivia and Ava. These seem more conventional and safer. One last thought...I hate people who use initials to refer to their children. PJ, MJ, JR etc. all sound like the ass kissers who would remind the teacher she forgot to give homework over the weekend. BJ is just too unfortunate to even merit a comment.

Moms and Dads, unless like in the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue", you want to toughen up your kid for when you're not around, let's not get too cutsey with far out names or nicknames; it's like writing a check your kids will have to cash with their fists in the schoolyard.

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Walk Me to the Store

One of the reasons childhood obesity is such a problem today is that kids don't walk anywhere anymore. They get bused to school, driven to soccer games, play dates and pretty much everywhere else they go. The little tykes never get a chance to use their legs! My parents never owned a car and neither did the parents of a lot of kids I played with. If we had to get anywhere in the neighborhood, it was via shoe leather express. It wasn't uncommon for me to ring a friend's bell and ask him to "walk me to the store."  That was a common expression that meant keep me company while I walked to wherever I was going. We walked to school, to church. the playground, the local shops...pretty much everywhere we went. Because of this, none of the kids I hung around with had a weight problem.


One of the things that encouraged walking in the 1950s was the layout of the neighborhood. Everything was within walking distance because in Brooklyn that was the character of the neighborhood. Block after block of row houses punctuated by clusters of necessary support facilities like churches of all faiths, public schools, food stores, barber shops, shoemakers, bakeries, dry cleaners, candy stores, clothing shops, butchers, fish stores and any other kind of business that could make a living. Running errands for our parents meant a meandering walk around the neighborhood with friends if we could find them. The shop owners knew us by name because we were in there all the time. There were no Costcos, Home Depots, Walmarts or even super markets...it was all local merchants who lived in the neighborhood.


Another reason we walked is that it was relatively safe. Parents are terrified of letting their kids out on the street alone these days and that is truly a shame. We would walk a couple of miles to Highland Park in Jamaica to play ball for five hours and then walk home again. In the course of an average day, between playing games and just walking around, I bet we did ten miles without trying. It was like nothing to us and yet that level of activity kept us all slim and fit despite eating oily pepper and egg heros for lunch and ice cream every night when the truck pulled up. Also, elevators were unheard of. If a friend lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building, you walked up the four flights to call for him.


The point is we walked and never gave it a second thought...it was part of our daily routine. Nobody punked out of a ball game because it took 30 minutes to walk to the field; we just grabbed our gloves and did it. When we weren't walking we were riding bikes, racing on roller skates, sledding down hills or climbing the monkey bars in the playground. Maybe if we had color TV, video games, computers and i-pads we would have spent more time indoors, but we didn't and I think we were better for it. Scientists and nutritionists complain about how fast food and lack of fresh produce makes kids fat, but I guarantee you if they spent their days like we did, it wouldn't be a problem. 


The decline of real neighborhoods and the flight to the suburbs was the death knell for casual walking. People today have to (or choose to) get in their cars to go anywhere. If I see someone walk past my house I might eye them suspiciously wondering what they're doing on foot. I wonder when the last time the phrase "walk me to the store" was uttered anywhere.

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