Brooklyn in the 1950s
-
One day, back in the 50s, our neighborhood softball team was hosting a team from some exotic location, such as Bensonhurst, at the PS 217 schoolyard. I think I must have been playing either shortstop or second base, because I had an excellent view of the earthshaking event that I'm about to describe. It was…
-
We were playing punchball on the PS 217 "big court." It must have been during school hours because Mrs. McGowan (a fifth grade teacher) was the umpire and the players included the entire population of the class, not just the regulars. Michael Lurie, the least athletic student in the grade, and perhaps in the entire borough, was told to play third base, and obviously unfamiliar…
-
Here's a sad childhood memory. Just around the corner from us, on Ditmas Avenue, there lived the ugliest man I've ever seen in my entire life. He was a small, always solitary old man. He was not deformed, just plain ugly. His nose and mouth stuck way out, but his chin receded; he had very long…
-
My mother had a pretty fair soprano and as a young adult performed in amateur musicals. She sang in that high, quavering style that I associate with artists of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Ruth Etting ("America's Radio Sweetheart"). I remember that sometimes, when she wasn't busy putting the laundry through the wringer or scrubbing the…
-
"Phoebe," she calls herself, but in the script she's just "girl." It's the last scene of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's (Stuyvesant '24) All about Eve. "Phoebe" has sneaked into Eve Harrington's hotel room and has pretended to fall asleep. Eve accosts her and is about to call the police when the intruderess proclaims herself a fan of the actress. Here's their…
-
This reminiscence will not mean much to anyone but my born-and-bred-in-Brooklyn readers. One of my smart schoolyard buddies, Jimmy Nolan, won a scholarship to Columbia. He was a year or two older than I, and the first of our gang/crowd to venture out of the neighborhood. The summer after his first college year, we were…
-
Last night, on the big HDTV, with the collaboration of Netflix, and peering through our toes, we watched the John Ford cavalry movie "Rio Grande." I first saw this film in the year of its release (I was eleven years old) at the Leader Theater on Coney Island Avenue. In days of yore, it was the custom for the neighborhood urchins to…
-
When I was a child, there were two neighborhood dentists. One was named Caress and the other was named Yankowitz. My parents chose Nathan Caress, possibly for onomastic reasons, but they might have made a mistake; Nathan Caress should have been called Nathan Butcher. Dentistry sixty years ago was much inferior to dentistry today, especially in our…
-
Miss Dusenberry, an English teacher at Erasmus Hall High School, was a formidable presence. It was 1954 or 1955 and I was a junior, carrying just sixteen years of experience on my skinny back. To my shy, inhibited self, Miss Dusenberry (Edna? Grace?) was perceived as ancient (50s), statuesque (5' 10"), domineering (she spoke authoritatively…