Okay, folks. We’re going to take a slight detour down memory lane. The nostalgia-laden among us will appreciate it more than, say, the purists, who come to this site looking only for things East-Flatbush. Actually, the events depicted in this blog took place in East Flatbush and in the middle of the last century. Hang in there and I promise to reward you with a link to a great site.
When I first embarked on this blog business I did considerable research to see what was out there that would/could jog my memory. I noticed a common thread.
Person A sees Person B’s name on a site. Person A has a major attack of nostalgia resembling something along the lines of: “Holy ____. I know that person. He/she sat behind me in ___ and I___ . Wow. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
What usually follows is a written litany by the rememberer of events to legitimatize the relationship, to prove you’re not some kind of weirdo.
Now, you probably know where this is headed, but hold on, buckaroos.
Person B’s (the rememberee) responses fall into one of two categories depending on the emotional level invested in the original relationship:
Category 1:
Rememberer: “Hey, you lived across the hall from us on Linden Blvd and your mother played maj jong with my mother every Tuesday. You were in high school and you usta babysit me. Do you remember me?”
Or “You lived on East 52nd Street and I lived on Beverly Road and we played punchball once in a while on East 53rd Street because it was a wide street.
Rememberees in this category remember every miniscule detail. Wanna know the color of your mother’s kitchen wallpaper? Yellow. How many Twinkies you had before you puked your guts all over the living room carpet while watching Milton Berle? Five. Who hit the brand new Spauldeen down the sewer and had to retrieve it or get the ____ beat out of him? You. (As a bonus, the Rememberee will tell you how much the ball cost forty years ago and where he got it and who supplied the coat hanger so you could retrieve the ball from the sewer.)
Category 1’s are easy, because deep down, there ain’t no deep down. You remember or you don’t remember. No big deal. Yeah, it would have been nice if B remembered but if not, tough!
Category 2’s are a whole ‘nother story. Ah. I sense some smiles forming already.
Category 2 remembrances are usually emotionally charged. Now we’re talking serious, heavy-duty, life-altering, potentially embarrassing stuff that, in retrospect, makes us wonder how we ever climbed out of puberty, sloshed through our teens, and made it into semi-adulthood. Somewhere in this scenario is the recurring phrase “unrequited love.”
Let’s face it. By fifteen you knew what love was. You knew you had found it. Case closed. And for the next forty or fifty years every once in a while in the privacy of your own mind, you would conjure up that image of that person who truly shaped your life. And, since your mind can be your best friend, your mind wouldn’t let that person get any older. You knew that person as a fifteen year old and, wonder of wonders, that person is still fifteen!
Typical Category 2 scenario: “Do you remember me? We went steady during the summer of ’68. I gave you my ID bracelet. You were the first person I ever …
Typical response: “No. And don’t write to me any more.”
I marveled that two people who shared the same experience could remember it – or not – so differently and attach such different significance to the event. What a loser. She didn’t even remember him! Whew!
Until…
About a year ago I came across a great site where people wrote about their memories growing up in Brooklyn.
There, tucked in among all the unimportant things about far away places like Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay and Williamsburgh was a short piece from a girl describing growing up in Flatbush. Everything she mentioned I knew. The people she talked about and the places she hung out, I knew. And when she listed her name, I knew her!
Not only did I know her, but she was the first girl I dated. It was my sophomore year in Erasmus Hall; we dated for about six months. I mean serious, steady dating. Holy! I can still remember her. And, in my mind, she was still fifteen and she still had long blond hair.
So, I wrote to her. I mentioned our mutual friends, the neighborhood, the places we went together. This was sooo cool.
About two weeks later, I get a long, chatty email from her in which she tells what she’s been doing since high school and updates on the neighborhood and some of our mutual friends from a half-century ago. Yeah, yeah. Get to the point where you remember me, too.
And finally, in the last brief paragraph the information I had been waiting for, she politely apologizes for not remembering me.
Judy R, say it ain’t so.
P.S. I’ve sent this blog on to some friends. Each has come back with a similar story. What’s yours?
Oh, that other website? www.brooklyn.net/my_bklyn
Here’s another
www.brooklyncigars.com/guestpage/htm
Don’t be put off by the title. I don’t have a clue as to the connection.
Also, both sites can be habit forming and addictive.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
FWIL RIP (originally posted 2007 - anyone have any updates?)
Hey, How much bad news can a person take?
First, Tilden going belly up. Now, Lundy's is history - for the second time.Hold on a minute, before you get all upset and claim that Lundy's is/was in Sheepshead Bay and not East Flatbush, let me explain my rationale.
I grew up feeling that there were some areas in the borough that were 'non-neighborhood': Flatbush Av, Downtown, the Highway, the Junction. There were some institutions that belonged to the borough and not to a particular neighborhood or high school: the downtown theaters, Brooklyn College, the main public library on Flatbush Avenue, Prospect Park, Ebbets Field, and ... Lundy's, for example.Come on. You know a trip to Lundy's was a special occasion. Not the every Sunday type of occasion that warranted a trip to Fong Fong. We're talking about the original Lundy's - not the puny remake that emerged in the nineties that could seat only seven or eight hundred people. I'm talking about the original - and according to some - the largest restaurant in the world, with seating for close to three thousand! How's that for intimate dining?
And now, even the puny off-shoot is shuttered.
Here's a further update. The property owners are thinking of turning the place into a food store!
Ain't nothin' sacred no more.
Hey, How much bad news can a person take?
First, Tilden going belly up. Now, Lundy's is history - for the second time.Hold on a minute, before you get all upset and claim that Lundy's is/was in Sheepshead Bay and not East Flatbush, let me explain my rationale.
I grew up feeling that there were some areas in the borough that were 'non-neighborhood': Flatbush Av, Downtown, the Highway, the Junction. There were some institutions that belonged to the borough and not to a particular neighborhood or high school: the downtown theaters, Brooklyn College, the main public library on Flatbush Avenue, Prospect Park, Ebbets Field, and ... Lundy's, for example.Come on. You know a trip to Lundy's was a special occasion. Not the every Sunday type of occasion that warranted a trip to Fong Fong. We're talking about the original Lundy's - not the puny remake that emerged in the nineties that could seat only seven or eight hundred people. I'm talking about the original - and according to some - the largest restaurant in the world, with seating for close to three thousand! How's that for intimate dining?
And now, even the puny off-shoot is shuttered.
Here's a further update. The property owners are thinking of turning the place into a food store!
Ain't nothin' sacred no more.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Too Late to the Party
If you went to high school in the late fifties or early sixties, you missed the real Brooklyn . Our parents were invited to the party; we weren’t.
Brooklyn , the real Brooklyn, the Brooklyn celebrated in film and in novels had already changed by the time we came on the scene.
At best we merely prolonged its death by trying to keep the memories alive. But to have grown up in the post-war years, the Eisenhower era, was to be cheated of the glory days of Brooklyn .
The Dodgers had already abandoned Brooklyn ; their home leveled to make way for a high-rise apartment house. Coney Island ’s fabled Steeplechase had closed; Lundy’s was suffering through its last days. Ebinger’s would soon shutter its doors, taking with it the best black-out cake ever created by man (or woman); Brooklyn College embarked on a misguided open-enrollment policy guaranteed to fail.
Closer to home, the Rugby Theater – on its way to oblivion - was first converted to a two-screen theater; ‘For Rent’ signs became more prevalent on Utica and Church and Flatbush Avenues and if lucky, the stores were finally rented as dollar stores;, and Brooklyn’s Church Avenue trolley - the last line in the last borough to operate trolleys - had its swan song in October, 1956.
By the mid-sixties, New York City New Jersey East Flatbush into a tail-spin from which it has yet to recover.
That was the final straw. Once urban flight took hold in the sixties, the last vestiges of our parent’s Brooklyn disappeared. I watched in amazement as six high-stooped attached houses on Rockaway Parkway Linden Blvd
By that time the streets and especially the subways had become unsafe. Until then we had been insulated from the Pigtown and East New York gangs; from the drugs; from the poverty. Having already given up teaching, first at Meyer Levin and then at Tilden High School, I, too, became part of that flight as my young family moved ‘to the country’ from Avenue H.
Current residents can claim they know our East Flatbush, but it’s a different neighborhood they're describing.
The Tower of Pisa on Utica
The RKO Kenmore, Loews Kings, the Patio theaters – gone, gone, gone.
Even Tilden – soon to be gone.
From the vantage point of almost a half century later I realize the neighborhood of my memories no longer exists. It, too, is gone.
A drive down Church Avenue Church Avenue East 57th St Beverly Road Kings Highway
The Brooklyn that brings us to websites such as this one is the past recorded on curled black and white photographs with scalloped edges, faded slides, brittle home movies and clouded memories of innocence, childhood, family and above all – a safe place.
I welcome your response.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Delaney Cards
What do you mean you don't know what a Delaney card is?
If you don't remember Delaney cards you didn't go to a New York City public school in the fifties or sixties. If you grew up in and attended a public high school in New York City and I mean the five boroughs of New York, then you know what a Delaney card is.
In any case here's a refresher course:
In any case here's a refresher course:
Welcome back, class.
I'm sure you're all as happy to be back as I am.
First, let's take care of some housekeeping chores. My name is Mr. Berger and I will be your homeroom teacher. When the late bell rings you WILL be in your assigned seat so I can take attendance. When you leave this room, you will take everything that you brought with you - including your lunch and your sneakers.
I'm going to hand each of you a Delaney card. For those of you new to high school or new to New York or can't remember anything prior to last June, these cards serve a bunch of purposes. Each of your teachers will ask you to fill one out and each teacher may use it for different purposes but its primary use is as a seating chart and a way of keeping attendance. I'll get to know most of your names within a week. Some, like the young man facing the back of the room, I'll learn a lot sooner.
Yes, they're called 'Delaney cards.' No, not da laney card. What do you mean 'Why?' They're Delaney cards because they were created by Edward Delaney, a Harvard graduate who taught history at DeWitt Clinton High School."
It's easier to explain what a Charlotte rouse is than a Delaney card. "Hey, yo, teacher! I dropped my Charlotte Rouse on da Delaney card."
Wanna make it a complete trifecta? "Hey yo, teacher! I dropped my Charlotte Rouse inna my egg cream and it spilt on da laney card." It don't get no more New York high school than that!
"Yes. Print your name and all the information called for on the black side and print your name on the red side." Yes, in ink. OK, then you can use pencil. No, you can't borrow a pencil. Yes I know it's small. What do you mean you made a mistake? It just asks for your name and address. Yes, I know it asks for personal stuff, but I need to know your name if you're going to be in this class. Yes, even if you're in the Witness Protection Program."
And so continues the unique rights of Fall in New York City high schools. And the first forty minutes of the semester.
Each Delaney card was put into a slot in a Delaney book corresponding to the row and seat of the student. Six or eight rows across; six rows deep. This works if the room is set up in the traditional configuration of the middle of the last century. One year I had an official class that met in a science lab. Don't ask.
At the beginning of the class each day the teacher would take attendance either by calling the names - a good technique for the first week until you get to know the students - or by scanning the room for empty seats, looking in the Delaney book for the corresponding card, turning it over to the red side and drawing a line through the calendar date.
At the beginning of the class each day the teacher would take attendance either by calling the names - a good technique for the first week until you get to know the students - or by scanning the room for empty seats, looking in the Delaney book for the corresponding card, turning it over to the red side and drawing a line through the calendar date.
I also learned to leave extra time at the beginning of the first few classes so the students could remember their seat assignments or negotiate changes. Unlike some teachers, I didn't care where the students sat -except for those with valid reasons for choosing a particular seat. (Having to sit next to the cheerleader with the blond ponytail did not qualify as a valid medical reason.) But after the first day or so, that was it. You chose your seat, live with it - unless I moved you.
Delegate. The first rule of good classroom management - and sanity. And there's no better task to delegate than class attendance. There's never a shortage of students willing to take on the role of attendance monitor. Picture the thrill of standing in front of your class of peers and marking some fellow student absent. A minute ago, you were just one of them; now, that maroon Delaney book in your hand signaled awesome power. Its status is the equivalent of the junior high school color guard or elementary school chalkboard eraser monitor.
The front of the card was personalized by each teacher. I would put in various codes and if I wanted to garner extreme fear in a student who had just committed some capital offense I would make a big deal of putting a mark on his or her card. It usually took about two weeks before I forgot what all the codes, dashes, and symbols meant.
Every once in a while an attendance monitor would ask me what some of the marks meant. Invariably the monitor would be mysteriously replaced by someone less inquisitive or at least smart enough not to ask. Test scores and writing exercise grades were entered in a separate book.
Impersonal? Maybe, but, hey, I had thirty plus kids in each of five classes I met daily. By the end of the day I considered myself lucky if I remembered where I had parked my car. At least, back then, the desks were bolted to the floor.
No one had to teach me the importance of handing each student only one Delaney card - and collecting one card individually from each kid. None of this passing a supply of cards back ("Hey, teach, I didn't get no card." when you know you gave each row six cards.) This method also reduces the number of sophomoric obscenities that have been around for a hundred years. What it doesn't do is eliminate all the phoney phone numbers. The war never ends.
Excuse me. I have to get back to my class. "Roberta. Why were you not in English yesterday?" "What do you mean you were home taking care of your sick sister? You told me last week you were an only child. Also, I saw you in my homeroom class yesterday morning, and then I saw you fourth period outside sitting on my car smoking. That's why your Delaney card is turned over with a line through yesterday's date, and that's why the Cutting Office was notified."
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Update -
The first batch of blogs has been 'archived.' Scroll down the right side of the screen. The blogs are saved by date written.
Sorry for the mini-hassle.
If you've just jumped on, there are some that will be of interest.
Sorry for the mini-hassle.
If you've just jumped on, there are some that will be of interest.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Parking Meters and Egg Creams
You're right. They don't have anything to do with each other
I usually don't read obits, but this one intrigued me:
The last New York City mechanical parking meter - an emblem of street life since 1951 was withdrawn from service recently.
Before you rejoice and decide to move back to the City from Boca or wherever it's always hot, read on. The meters have slowly been replaced by more than 62,000 battery-powered digital meters that the City finds more accurate and vandal-resistant.
In a somber but unpretentious ceremony somewhere in Coney Island, the last mechanical meter was replaced by a digital version ready to take quarters.
Quarters? What happened to dimes? I remember dime meters on Flatbush Avenue and then along Church and Utica Avenues. And not the type that required the driver to twist a handle after inserting the coin. Just put the coin in the slot, listen for the gears winding or more likely inserting the coin and waiting for nothing to happen before pounding it on its side to giggle the coin enough to engage the gears. The latter took some finese.
Parking meters came to New York somewhat late in the dance. They were first introduced in Oklahoma City in 1935. How's that for embarassment? Scooped by Oklahoma City! I'm sure that really eleviated the parking crisis in downtown OC.
Anyway, it took sixteen years before New York realized that it was letting a lot of dimes - and quarters - to say nothing of slugs and foreign coins, to slip through their fingers. The meters were first installed on West 125 St, and it sure didn't take long for the fungus to spread to the 'outer boroughs.'
Those original meters required weekly winding by some guy walking along the curb with a crank and winding each meter. Another occupation replaced by modern science and after all that special training you went through to get that job! But, the job that really impressed me was the guy who emptied the coins from the meter into a 2-wheeled canaster with a long vacuum-cleaner type hose. Now, that was a job! Just think of the possibilities. Think of all the promotional opportunites that must have been turned down once you got that job. "No, sir. Thanks for the offer, but I really don't want to be borough president. I think I'll just stay down here in the Department of Traffic doing the same boring job out there on the streets I've been doing for 23 years, collecting all those dirty coins for the City I love."
A side note for all you ex-pats out there. It no longer costs a quarter for an hour of parking. For that lone quarter you get 10 to 12 minutes of parking. That could be why the City has installed meters that can accept coins or credit cards and/or parking cards. How thoughtful. There is no longer a need to carry a roll of quarters. There are currently about 600 meters that accept credit cards.
There must be a lot of folks feeding these machines. Last year, the City took in $96 million from those meters.
Well, I was so distraught over another loss from my youth (Ebbetts Field, trolley cars, Ebingers, Tilden High School, and now mechanical parking meters) that I decided to drown my sorrow, literally, with an egg cream.
Anyway, I could not find a decent egg cream, let alone many who knew what an egg cream is. Anyone out there know where the name came from? Why 'egg'? Check this: a neighbor who grew up in Bay Ridge seems to remember an egg cream made with CREAM SODA!!! (That's why your mother told you never date anyone from any number street that didn't have 'East' in front of it.)
Decided to see if I could recreate one on my own.
Fox's U-bet Syrup - a Brooklyn institution long before Ebbets Field was conceived.
The only syrup allowed in an official 'egg cream.'
Just as Brooklyn bagels taste better than bagels from any other city, so too, with egg creams.
As a public service, the following is the receipe for an 'official Brooklyn egg cream' from Fox's website:- Take a tall, chilled, straight-sided 8 oz. glass
- Spoon 1 inch of U-bet chocolate syrup into glass
- Add 1inch whole milk
- Tilt the glass and spray seltzer (from a pressurized cylinder only) off a spoon, to make a big chocolate head
- Stir, drink, enjoy
It didn't taste the same!
By-the-way: No more glass jars; only plastic squeeze bottles. For those of you who insist on scooping your syrup out of a hard-side container, Fox's U-bet is available in 55-gallon drums. (No kidding!)
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
This is a response to the previous installment announcing the demise of Tilden High School. The story, in part, appears courtesy of Sam Roberts, class of '64 and The New York Times.
WHEN TILDEN WAS THE WORLD
By SAM ROBERTS
Published: December 17, 2006
THE REV. AL SHARPTON and I don’t have much in common — but we do share a defining backdrop for our wonder years in Brooklyn. At different times, we both attended Samuel J. Tilden High School.
And both of us were chagrined by the announcement Monday by the New York City Department of Education that Tilden — deemed unsafe and unsalvageable academically — would be closed and replaced by a cluster of smaller and presumably more manageable institutions.
Tilden alumni are hardly slouches. In addition to Mr. Sharpton, they include the Mets manager Willie Randolph, the labor leader Victor Gotbaum, the former White House counsel Leonard Garment, the writer Murray Polner, the jurist Milton Mollen and the weightlifter Dan Lurie.
Sid Gordon batted for Tilden before joining the baseball Giants. Ronnie Blye broke scoring records at the school before playing for the football Giants. The folk humorist Sam Levenson, though not an alumnus, taught Spanish there in the 1940s.
Jake Ehrenreich, whose memory play, “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn,” opened Off Broadway in October, not only graduated from Tilden but also makes his entrance on stage wearing a Tilden sweatshirt, emblazoned with a giant T.
Tilden, which opened in 1930, was built to accommodate about 3,800 students. But within a decade, enrollment swelled by 50 percent. I grew up about a mile away, on Kings Highway, one block from the hulking New Lots el, which more or less defined the border between East Flatbush and Brownsville. Almost overnight, Brownsville, heavily blue collar and lower-middle class, would be recast from Jewish to black. We lived in what we considered solidly middle-class East Flatbush, which I deluded myself into thinking was an integrated neighborhood because an Italian family lived on our corner.
Also, I like underdogs, and like almost everybody at Tilden during those years, I knew that its namesake was a New York governor who had won the popular vote for president in 1876 but been deprived of the job because supporters of Rutherford B. Hayes had stolen the election in Congress.
The school wasn’t perfect. As early as 1958, a police officer was regularly stationed outside. We abandoned the annual Thanksgiving football rivalry with Jefferson High School ... because more injuries were suffered in the stands than on the field.
After last week’s announcement by the Department of Education, I dug out my 1964 Tilden yearbook. Since we graduated on the stage of the old Loew’s Kings, I’d been in touch with a handful of Tildenites and knew what had become of them. Robert Ellman became a teacher, just as he’d predicted in the yearbook. Marilyn Schwartz became an educator, too, and acquitted herself in the thankless role of spokeswoman for the school district that includes Columbine High School in Colorado. Paul Nussbaum had said he wanted to be a politician; he became chairman of a giant hotel chain.
Most of the girls said they wanted to be teachers or stenographers. One boy wanted to be a roofer. Was that really what they aspired to? ... Did Ilene Kleinman become a psychiatrist? Did Philip Asher become a choreographer? Judy Gitlin had been voted most likely to succeed. Did she? At what?
At Tilden, fewer than 44 percent of students scheduled to graduate last June did so, and only half of those got a Regents diploma.
In the 1930s, Tilden established the school system’s first guidance department to effectively deal with what was quaintly described as juvenile delinquency. Now it is considered one of the city’s most dangerous schools.
In the Tilden I attended, nearly 98 percent of the students were classified as “others,” a euphemism the Board of Education used to designate people who were neither black nor Hispanic. Still, the mix of ethnicities and religions made the school much more multicultural than any place I’d ever been.
By the time Mr. Sharpton graduated, the proportion of “others” had shrunk to 63 percent, which was still considerably more than he would have encountered if he had stayed put on Lenox Road.
Right around the time Mr. Sharpton was attending Tilden, Sam Levenson was asked how the old neighborhood had changed since he taught there. More mixed, he replied. “No matter where I go, or how successful or unsuccessful I am,” he explained, “I never in my life shall ever feel that ‘they’ are coming. There is no ‘they’ to me, because I know about being ‘they’; I have been ‘they.’ ”
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Hold On To Your Tilden Sweat Shirts, Folks
From the official Samuel J. Tilden High School website:
www.tildenhs.org/ Brooklyn 5800 Tilden Ave Brooklyn, NY 11203
The staff of Samuel J. Tilden High School is a staff committed to excellence. This excellence will be evidenced in the development of out future leaders. It is our plan to insure that the young people that graduate from these portals are prepared with the social and academic skills necessary to achieve in an ever changing, technologically developing world. Within our young people we will reinforce the positive values that they bring from their homes and their communities. As they develop a sense of self-worth and dignity, they will also develop a strong appreciation for their own culture and respectful tolerance for the lifestyles of others. We will reaffirm the necessity for our youth to be academically prepared, socially concerned, and intellectually discerning human beings who will feel confident and adept in an ever changing multicultural and multifaceted environment.
Well, it seems that not everyone agrees with the above statement. Certainly not the New York City Department of Education ('Board of Education' to us Boomers) who on December 11, 2006 said that it would close five failing high schools that had proved unsalvageable.
That honorable distinction was bestowed on Tilden, as well as Lafayette and South Shore, and two small Manhatten schools.
The Brooklyn schools will be replaced by collections of small schools with about 400 - 500 students, typical of the Bloomburg administration, which has closed or is in the process of closing 17 other large schools across the City.
Education officials said the schools to be closed had notably low four-year graduation rates, did a particularly poor job helping students who were already behind as incoming freshmen, and proved exceedingly unpopular with prospective students.
In addition, the schools all had safety problems. Extra police officers and security guards were put into each of them after each school was named an 'impact school.' (South Shore and Lafayette were taken off the list after improving.) Hey, remember when Ralph was the only cop assigned to the school and there probably wasn't enough for him to do.
At Tilden, 43.5 percent of students scheduled to graduate in 2006 did so. (What was the graduation rate the year your graduated? Did you even know anyone who did not graduate?)
Don't throw away your Tilden keepsakes.
They're sure to become great conversation pieces. You can tell your grandchildren that you remember when Tilden was a great school in a great neighborhood, in the best borough of the greatest city.
A sad day.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Class Jobs - more
I don't remember class presidents prior to the fourth grade, but from that point on until I got into junior high school we always had a boy president - not that it really mattered because the president didn't do squat. Every year the boys would decide who they wanted as president and then procede to nominate at least two girls.
Duh!
It was simple. Boys voted for the only boy; girls split their vote between the two or more girl candidates. There was no platform; no promises; but lots of patronage. (More about patronage later.)
Who knew then that we were being prepared for the real world.
Every year the same drill, with the same inevitable outcome.
But the real power went to the kid who was the class monitor, the rat, the stooly who would stand up in front of the room when the teacher left. When the teacher returned, the monitor would report all the miscreants. Recently, a federal law was enacted to protect whistle-blowers and I'll bet Congress had these class monitors in mind when they drafted the law.
I had taught for a while at Lincoln but it wasn't until I joined Meyer Levin that I perfected the fine art of patronage. If I had twenty eight kids in my class, my goal was to give each one a job. And they loved it! There were so many kids in my official class doing 'stuff' that I thought about assigning student supervisors.
Hampton Gathers was my favorite. First, I loved the name. Some days I would call on him five or six times a period, just to hear the sound of his name. Hampton Gathers. He was my main man. This kid was ultra cool before cool was even a word. He was what we unofficially called our lollipop monitor. As important as his job was, it was, at best, a part-time assignment. Hampton embraced this job with his whole being.
Let me refresh your memory.
Every room had a round red sign, about twelve inches in diameter. Stenciled on each side was the room number. And this sign was attached to a wooden dowel about the size and length of a teacher's wooden pointer. During a fire drill, and other ocassions requiring evacuation of the building, the teacher was expected to carry the sign aloft as he and the class behind him left the building. This way, the class, in the ensuing frenzy could easily reassemble.
Now, on paper, this sounds like a plan.
And if there was one thing this teacher shared with his students, it was the opportunity on some early spring afternoon, when the leaves are just beginning to bud, to leave the building for a nice stroll out Beverly Road and left along Ralph Avenue, cross Tilden Avenue and observe the miracles of nature and possibly make a quick detour toward Tomain Joe's.
What this teacher did not particularly like was having to carry the silly sign in the building, let alone out in the street.
Hampton Gathers to the rescue. My main man.
There was another reason I needed Hampton and he and the rest of the class knew it...
"Had this been a real emergency you would have been instructed to get out of Teacher's way unless you can run faster than him."
Hampton was pressed into service maybe three times that year and on one occasion for an unexpected fire drill. That caused major administrative concern. The smart money was on Hampton who vigorously denied any wrongdoing. Everyone knew it was not a scheduled fire drill because it wasn't a particularly warm day; Dr Herselle would never schedule a drill where students might be required to put on coats. And the last thing he wanted was a posse of piqued panicked parents parading into the principal's office.
My absolute best student assistant was Carol Goldenberg. On the first day of class, my first day in the school, Carol told me I would need a class secretary and she would be happy to be that person. She was in my 8th grade official class. At that time the System was experimenting with 3-year SP classes. The experiment ended several years later. Too bad; as a product of the 2-year SP I embraced the concept of an enriched 3-year program.
Any way, Carol, at the ripe age of 13, was better organized and more mature than most of the secretaries I've had since leaving teaching. And, she could print like a typewriter. I mean this kid was great. Carol's arrival signalled the end of most of my administrative duties. (She later expanded her duties to be our son's babysitter. How neat was that?)
There was one job, because of its importance, that could not be relegated to students. During passing between classes, all teachers were required to stand outside their classroom to observe the flow of student traffic. For what? To break up fights? In Meyer Levin in the sixties? To watch for kids passing on the right or weaving in traffic? Pity the poor student who inadvertantly made a left turn across oncoming traffic to enter a classroom without first going to the designated u-turn area, so marked on the floor with turn arrows. Amazing the power of the system. Three years in the school. I don't think I ever saw a kid knowingly cross that line. Once, I called to a kid walking toward me on the other side of the hall to stop to see me. He nodded, walked forty feet further down the hall, made a u-turn at the designated arrow and came back to where i was standing. It was only then that I realized it would have been easier just for me to cross over to him. I don't know if teachers were exempt from the white line rule, but until I got tenure, I wasn't going to take any chances.
One more chapter on Meyer Levin - its teachers - and then we'll mosey through the neighborhood again. I'd like to hear from some of you who lived east of Ralph Avenue. No, not you, Billy. You lived south of Flatlands Avenue and that was Canarsie - or Flatlands. Definitely not East Flatbush.
Duh!
It was simple. Boys voted for the only boy; girls split their vote between the two or more girl candidates. There was no platform; no promises; but lots of patronage. (More about patronage later.)
Who knew then that we were being prepared for the real world.
Every year the same drill, with the same inevitable outcome.
But the real power went to the kid who was the class monitor, the rat, the stooly who would stand up in front of the room when the teacher left. When the teacher returned, the monitor would report all the miscreants. Recently, a federal law was enacted to protect whistle-blowers and I'll bet Congress had these class monitors in mind when they drafted the law.
I had taught for a while at Lincoln but it wasn't until I joined Meyer Levin that I perfected the fine art of patronage. If I had twenty eight kids in my class, my goal was to give each one a job. And they loved it! There were so many kids in my official class doing 'stuff' that I thought about assigning student supervisors.
Hampton Gathers was my favorite. First, I loved the name. Some days I would call on him five or six times a period, just to hear the sound of his name. Hampton Gathers. He was my main man. This kid was ultra cool before cool was even a word. He was what we unofficially called our lollipop monitor. As important as his job was, it was, at best, a part-time assignment. Hampton embraced this job with his whole being.
Let me refresh your memory.
Every room had a round red sign, about twelve inches in diameter. Stenciled on each side was the room number. And this sign was attached to a wooden dowel about the size and length of a teacher's wooden pointer. During a fire drill, and other ocassions requiring evacuation of the building, the teacher was expected to carry the sign aloft as he and the class behind him left the building. This way, the class, in the ensuing frenzy could easily reassemble.
Now, on paper, this sounds like a plan.
And if there was one thing this teacher shared with his students, it was the opportunity on some early spring afternoon, when the leaves are just beginning to bud, to leave the building for a nice stroll out Beverly Road and left along Ralph Avenue, cross Tilden Avenue and observe the miracles of nature and possibly make a quick detour toward Tomain Joe's.
What this teacher did not particularly like was having to carry the silly sign in the building, let alone out in the street.
Hampton Gathers to the rescue. My main man.
There was another reason I needed Hampton and he and the rest of the class knew it...
"Had this been a real emergency you would have been instructed to get out of Teacher's way unless you can run faster than him."
Hampton was pressed into service maybe three times that year and on one occasion for an unexpected fire drill. That caused major administrative concern. The smart money was on Hampton who vigorously denied any wrongdoing. Everyone knew it was not a scheduled fire drill because it wasn't a particularly warm day; Dr Herselle would never schedule a drill where students might be required to put on coats. And the last thing he wanted was a posse of piqued panicked parents parading into the principal's office.
My absolute best student assistant was Carol Goldenberg. On the first day of class, my first day in the school, Carol told me I would need a class secretary and she would be happy to be that person. She was in my 8th grade official class. At that time the System was experimenting with 3-year SP classes. The experiment ended several years later. Too bad; as a product of the 2-year SP I embraced the concept of an enriched 3-year program.
Any way, Carol, at the ripe age of 13, was better organized and more mature than most of the secretaries I've had since leaving teaching. And, she could print like a typewriter. I mean this kid was great. Carol's arrival signalled the end of most of my administrative duties. (She later expanded her duties to be our son's babysitter. How neat was that?)
There was one job, because of its importance, that could not be relegated to students. During passing between classes, all teachers were required to stand outside their classroom to observe the flow of student traffic. For what? To break up fights? In Meyer Levin in the sixties? To watch for kids passing on the right or weaving in traffic? Pity the poor student who inadvertantly made a left turn across oncoming traffic to enter a classroom without first going to the designated u-turn area, so marked on the floor with turn arrows. Amazing the power of the system. Three years in the school. I don't think I ever saw a kid knowingly cross that line. Once, I called to a kid walking toward me on the other side of the hall to stop to see me. He nodded, walked forty feet further down the hall, made a u-turn at the designated arrow and came back to where i was standing. It was only then that I realized it would have been easier just for me to cross over to him. I don't know if teachers were exempt from the white line rule, but until I got tenure, I wasn't going to take any chances.
One more chapter on Meyer Levin - its teachers - and then we'll mosey through the neighborhood again. I'd like to hear from some of you who lived east of Ralph Avenue. No, not you, Billy. You lived south of Flatlands Avenue and that was Canarsie - or Flatlands. Definitely not East Flatbush.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Exploitation
Okay, kids. Settle down. Hey, everybody! Quiet. While Carol is taking the attendance I want to talk to you about the assignment I wrote at the top of this blog. I gave specific instructions that you were to scroll to the bottom of the page - that the one on the bottom should be read first. Some of you in your zeal to please me are reading from top to bottom. Wrong!
No, Fern. "Zeal" not "seal like what swims in Prospect Park zoo."
Carol, when you're finished, let me have the Delaney book and please see that the absence cards are completed and brought to the office for mailing.
Where's Norman and why haven't the blackboards been cleaned? Oh, right. He's in the colorguard at the seventh grade assembly.
There I go again, getting ahead of myself.
Let's spend a few moments today talking about the exploitation of children - specifically, the voluntary exploitation of school children by those entrusted with their education.
In the eleven years I spent as a student in the Brooklyn public schools and the five as a teacher in the same system, not once did I hear a parent complain that the in-class assignment his or her child was doing - for free - was demeaning or degrading. And there was never a shortage of volunteers, even for the most menial of 'jobs.'
The reason: every job had its perks.
What future career opportunity was washing the blackboard or cleaning the erasers going to provide for Norman when he 'got out'? OK, walking up and down the aisles with the waste basket might lead to a lucrative civil servant position, but the others?
It starts in grade school, probably around the fourth or fifth grade. Anything is better than sitting a whole day in Miss O'Neill's class - even cleaning the erasers would be a welcome respite. Even if it meant going into the basement surrounded by the giant boilers that made those weird sounds, like what you'd imagine a boiler would sound like just before it explodes. They'd find parts of you scattered in a three-block radius. But, the most miraculous thing is that when they found your hand it would still be clutching a clean chalkboard eraser. For years afterward, people would still be talking how that kid what got hisself blown up could clean an eraser and they'd shake their heads muttering that kids nowadays don't know the meaning of clean erasers.
There were two ways to clean erasers: The purists would take them outside and clap them against the wall. The smart purists learned to stand upwind of the eraser as it smacked against the wall.
The avant garde eraser cleaners embraced modern science and used the vacuum in the basement, risking being blown to smitherines with the boilers. The two groups never saw eye-to-eye on the best method. The chance to be outside usually ended the discussion in favor of the purists. Being downwind of the eraser and engulfed in a cloud of chalk dust did convert some purists. I imagine the discussion died a natural death with the advent of whiteboards and dry markers.
In any case, eraser cleaning was probably at the bottom of the in-class job hierarchy.
At the polar extreme was being in the color guard for assembly (Do kids still go to assembly? Do schools still have auditoriums?). And even that job had its hierarchy. Carrying the American flag trumped all other flags. If you had that asignment, you had it made; you were destined for great things. When you walked the halls, kids would stand aside and let you pass.
Unless, you trip on the stairs, or sneeze, or... once you make it to center stage holding the flag with both hands and there you are in front of the entire school, and I mean everyone, and right in the middle of the Pledge of Allegiance, right at that point where everyone is saying that stuff for Richard Stanz you realize that your fly is open. The snickering starts with the boys in your own class and then quickly engulfs the girls sitting in Row F. It's the little kids who are the least cool. They have to point. It's the pointing that really gets to you.
And, all of a sudden, clapping erasers against the side of the building in twenty degree weather does not sound like such a bad job - when you finally return to school.
(My wife was an elementary school teacher - in the same school I attended as a student. She keeps in touch with a class she had more than thirty years ago and two of them remember being in the color guard - that it was the single best thing that happened to them in elementary school.)
I was never in the color guard. No, really! It wasn't me. I swear!
I was a crossing guard. Yup, with the white belt. Even then, I was into the 'power thing.' Hey, there are limited options open to an eleven-year old to impress the chicks. (Do they still have crossing guards? Like today I would really tell some seventeen year old sixth grader that he had to wait for me to say it's ok to cross the street.)
I was also an AV monitor - before it became a dorky thing. We would set up film strip projectors. (Explain that to your kids!).
There were other neat jobs in the classroom. Being the window shade monitor took somewhat of an anal retentive personality. Who else would be so exacting in their lives to line up all the shades? Howard Newman was. I swear that if the shades were off my more than a quarter inch it was a lot. Those shades were the envy of every teacher in the school. It was a cool job and often required team cooperation with the window monitor.
Now that job trumped all else - other than the aforementioned color guard and maybe being class president! All class activity would stop while the monitor carefully removed the twenty-foot pole from its brass mooring and carefully placed the hook in the brass loop on the window. Well maybe not always carefully. We would wait in anticipation for the gentle sound of the brass hook - some twenty feet in the air as it ever-so-gently penetrated the window glass. Sometimes we would be disappointed; but more often than not Warren would not disappoint us. And the response was always the same: Warren's same and unimaginative curse, Miss O' Neill's questioning of his intelligence and heritage, the cheering from his fellow classmates and later on, the ocassional transfer of cash from one unhappy student-bettor to a happier one. You would think Warren would have given up the pole - or handed it down or whatever. He made it through the entire fifth grade with that job and the next year when Miss Reilly asked who wanted the job he got it based on prior work experience - with the same results.
Come on! You all have seen those little holes or the cracks in the center panes of glass. How do you think they got there?
Knowing Warren's shortcomings in the spatial relationship area, I obsessed over that pole not being firmly engaged on its hook and coming crashing down on some hapless student - mainly me. I figured you could be in seat one in row one and still get whacked. Maybe it was better to sit in row six- near the windows. That way you wouldn't get the full force of the pole - and especially the hook. I thought I was alone in my fear until I noticed other kids - in fact the whole class would be mentally figuring the trajectory of that flying pole. Even Miss O"Neill, who would get out of her high chair in the corner (Remember those?) put her rubber-tipped pointer down and walk toward the back and give a reassuring tug on the pole to verify that it was safe.
One step up from basket monitor was the wardrobe monitor, whose job it was to close the wardrobe after all coats had been hung up. (This is for the folks who went to a '200 series' elementary school where all the sliding wardrobe doors were connected, so if you closed one door, all of them would close at the same time.) One of my tasks as a Director of Human Resources is to deal with job enrichment - how can management and employees make the job more interesting, thus keeping the employee more involved and, hopefully, more productive.
Hell, this ain't nothing new. Way back in the fifth grade Harold had learned to make the wardrobe monitor's job more interesting and enjoyable - much to the consternation of the girls he would periodically lock in the wardrobe. Midway through the year Harold learned a vital lesson about job security - a stigma that he no doubt carried with him throughout his work life. He was fired!
Oh, my! There's the bell. I can't believe the day is over already, class. Let's continue this tomorrow. Harold, let Marcia out of the closet.
Okay, kids. Settle down. Hey, everybody! Quiet. While Carol is taking the attendance I want to talk to you about the assignment I wrote at the top of this blog. I gave specific instructions that you were to scroll to the bottom of the page - that the one on the bottom should be read first. Some of you in your zeal to please me are reading from top to bottom. Wrong!
No, Fern. "Zeal" not "seal like what swims in Prospect Park zoo."
Carol, when you're finished, let me have the Delaney book and please see that the absence cards are completed and brought to the office for mailing.
Where's Norman and why haven't the blackboards been cleaned? Oh, right. He's in the colorguard at the seventh grade assembly.
There I go again, getting ahead of myself.
Let's spend a few moments today talking about the exploitation of children - specifically, the voluntary exploitation of school children by those entrusted with their education.
In the eleven years I spent as a student in the Brooklyn public schools and the five as a teacher in the same system, not once did I hear a parent complain that the in-class assignment his or her child was doing - for free - was demeaning or degrading. And there was never a shortage of volunteers, even for the most menial of 'jobs.'
The reason: every job had its perks.
What future career opportunity was washing the blackboard or cleaning the erasers going to provide for Norman when he 'got out'? OK, walking up and down the aisles with the waste basket might lead to a lucrative civil servant position, but the others?
It starts in grade school, probably around the fourth or fifth grade. Anything is better than sitting a whole day in Miss O'Neill's class - even cleaning the erasers would be a welcome respite. Even if it meant going into the basement surrounded by the giant boilers that made those weird sounds, like what you'd imagine a boiler would sound like just before it explodes. They'd find parts of you scattered in a three-block radius. But, the most miraculous thing is that when they found your hand it would still be clutching a clean chalkboard eraser. For years afterward, people would still be talking how that kid what got hisself blown up could clean an eraser and they'd shake their heads muttering that kids nowadays don't know the meaning of clean erasers.
There were two ways to clean erasers: The purists would take them outside and clap them against the wall. The smart purists learned to stand upwind of the eraser as it smacked against the wall.
The avant garde eraser cleaners embraced modern science and used the vacuum in the basement, risking being blown to smitherines with the boilers. The two groups never saw eye-to-eye on the best method. The chance to be outside usually ended the discussion in favor of the purists. Being downwind of the eraser and engulfed in a cloud of chalk dust did convert some purists. I imagine the discussion died a natural death with the advent of whiteboards and dry markers.
In any case, eraser cleaning was probably at the bottom of the in-class job hierarchy.
At the polar extreme was being in the color guard for assembly (Do kids still go to assembly? Do schools still have auditoriums?). And even that job had its hierarchy. Carrying the American flag trumped all other flags. If you had that asignment, you had it made; you were destined for great things. When you walked the halls, kids would stand aside and let you pass.
Unless, you trip on the stairs, or sneeze, or... once you make it to center stage holding the flag with both hands and there you are in front of the entire school, and I mean everyone, and right in the middle of the Pledge of Allegiance, right at that point where everyone is saying that stuff for Richard Stanz you realize that your fly is open. The snickering starts with the boys in your own class and then quickly engulfs the girls sitting in Row F. It's the little kids who are the least cool. They have to point. It's the pointing that really gets to you.
And, all of a sudden, clapping erasers against the side of the building in twenty degree weather does not sound like such a bad job - when you finally return to school.
(My wife was an elementary school teacher - in the same school I attended as a student. She keeps in touch with a class she had more than thirty years ago and two of them remember being in the color guard - that it was the single best thing that happened to them in elementary school.)
I was never in the color guard. No, really! It wasn't me. I swear!
I was a crossing guard. Yup, with the white belt. Even then, I was into the 'power thing.' Hey, there are limited options open to an eleven-year old to impress the chicks. (Do they still have crossing guards? Like today I would really tell some seventeen year old sixth grader that he had to wait for me to say it's ok to cross the street.)
I was also an AV monitor - before it became a dorky thing. We would set up film strip projectors. (Explain that to your kids!).
There were other neat jobs in the classroom. Being the window shade monitor took somewhat of an anal retentive personality. Who else would be so exacting in their lives to line up all the shades? Howard Newman was. I swear that if the shades were off my more than a quarter inch it was a lot. Those shades were the envy of every teacher in the school. It was a cool job and often required team cooperation with the window monitor.
Now that job trumped all else - other than the aforementioned color guard and maybe being class president! All class activity would stop while the monitor carefully removed the twenty-foot pole from its brass mooring and carefully placed the hook in the brass loop on the window. Well maybe not always carefully. We would wait in anticipation for the gentle sound of the brass hook - some twenty feet in the air as it ever-so-gently penetrated the window glass. Sometimes we would be disappointed; but more often than not Warren would not disappoint us. And the response was always the same: Warren's same and unimaginative curse, Miss O' Neill's questioning of his intelligence and heritage, the cheering from his fellow classmates and later on, the ocassional transfer of cash from one unhappy student-bettor to a happier one. You would think Warren would have given up the pole - or handed it down or whatever. He made it through the entire fifth grade with that job and the next year when Miss Reilly asked who wanted the job he got it based on prior work experience - with the same results.
Come on! You all have seen those little holes or the cracks in the center panes of glass. How do you think they got there?
Knowing Warren's shortcomings in the spatial relationship area, I obsessed over that pole not being firmly engaged on its hook and coming crashing down on some hapless student - mainly me. I figured you could be in seat one in row one and still get whacked. Maybe it was better to sit in row six- near the windows. That way you wouldn't get the full force of the pole - and especially the hook. I thought I was alone in my fear until I noticed other kids - in fact the whole class would be mentally figuring the trajectory of that flying pole. Even Miss O"Neill, who would get out of her high chair in the corner (Remember those?) put her rubber-tipped pointer down and walk toward the back and give a reassuring tug on the pole to verify that it was safe.
One step up from basket monitor was the wardrobe monitor, whose job it was to close the wardrobe after all coats had been hung up. (This is for the folks who went to a '200 series' elementary school where all the sliding wardrobe doors were connected, so if you closed one door, all of them would close at the same time.) One of my tasks as a Director of Human Resources is to deal with job enrichment - how can management and employees make the job more interesting, thus keeping the employee more involved and, hopefully, more productive.
Hell, this ain't nothing new. Way back in the fifth grade Harold had learned to make the wardrobe monitor's job more interesting and enjoyable - much to the consternation of the girls he would periodically lock in the wardrobe. Midway through the year Harold learned a vital lesson about job security - a stigma that he no doubt carried with him throughout his work life. He was fired!
Oh, my! There's the bell. I can't believe the day is over already, class. Let's continue this tomorrow. Harold, let Marcia out of the closet.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
'Street' Merchants
We did most of our daily shopping on Church Av - there was no need to go elsewhere. The closest to a mall before there was a Kings Plaza was Flatbush Av or Kings Highway near the Brighton subway station.
But there was an entire retail world that came to our door. There were the obvious 'seasonal' vendors. The ice cream guys in the warm weather. In our neighborhood, the Good Humor man reigned supreme. We're talking about a specially designed pick-up truck with a roofless cab. (In bad weather there was a canvas roof that could be unrolled.) The poor Bungalow Bar guy came in a distant second. He had to endure some very unflattering elementary-school poetry and even more damaging rumors regarding the cleanliness of the product. The latter ultimately contributed to the company's demise. (What do you think happened to those neat trucks?) For a while, even Howard Johnson's got into the frey and then there was a bunch of independent operators. (One summer I went on a bananna ice cream binge. Fortunately, I overcame this lapse in culinary judgement.) It wasn't until several years later that Mister Softee came on the scene and the days of the white-uniformed ice cream men who actually rang bells would join the ranks of horse drawn wagons.
Well, not quite.
I remember the junk man coming around with a horse-drawn wagon with a bunch of cowbellls jingling on the back. There was also a horse-drawn hand-cranked merry-go-round wagon. The wagon was ultimately replaced with a truck-mounted 'whip' ride, which indirectly provided an unexpected lesson in cintrifugal force as it pertains to a not-fully digested meal in a young stomach. Spectators in the know, and even loving parents, learned to stand a respectible distance from the ride.
The vegetable vendor with his hand-lettered prices written with black crayon on a shopping bag also graduated from a horse-drawn wagon to a converted and repainted school bus and raised his prices accordingly. Other than my summer day camp rides to Broad Channel Day Camp on a school bus, Vegetable Joe's converted bus was my only school bus experience.
And finally, the ice man not only cometh but wenteth. By the time I joined the human race there weren't too many people on our block with ice boxes - in spite of what my grandmother called the refrigerator. So, most of the ice man's business was with the retailers on the Avenue. He, too joined the mid-twentieth century by forsaking his horse for horsepower but still retained that awesome ice crushing machine. Drop a giant cake of ice into the hopper and out came crushed ice. Or, cakes of ice were handled with a giant set of tongs and hoisted onto the iceman's towel-covered shoulder for delivery to the customer. I can still hear the sound of that machine. It didn't seem to bother the horse, though.
The knife sharpener guy intrigued me. He announced his arrival with a special sounding gong. I was intrigued with the fact that among other things he would sharpen lawnmower blades. Lawnmowers? Who had a lawn? My mother would save the scissors and dull knives for the day every two weeks that the sharpener guy would show up and it was my job to flag him down. Then, run back to the house and get the scissors and walk carefully and slowly to the grinder. Very slowly.
Rivaling the competition between the ice cream vendors was that between the Dugans and Krugs packaged bake goods. What ever happened to them? Dugans went stale in October 1966. Krugs? Who knows.
The most lethal weapon in our house was the seltzer bottle. I lived in fear of dropping one and causing an explosion that would level the entire block. Who knew that those colored bottles would become so valuable. Sol delivered them in crates of ten Good Health seltzer bottles on his shoulder. On special occasions he would deliver Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup. In a nod to healthy eating, we also consumed Cott diet soda. Being first with a product does not guarantee quality. Boy, did we know how to live!!!
And finally, there was the milk delivery: Borden's, Sheffield/Sealtest. In real bottles. The Borden's products came from Utica and Kings Highway in what at one time was a stable. And they drove those neat Divco trucks while standing up. Divco engineers followed the same styling concept adopted by Checker taxis. Hit on a decent style and stick with it. Both Divco and Checker are out of business.
We did most of our daily shopping on Church Av - there was no need to go elsewhere. The closest to a mall before there was a Kings Plaza was Flatbush Av or Kings Highway near the Brighton subway station.
But there was an entire retail world that came to our door. There were the obvious 'seasonal' vendors. The ice cream guys in the warm weather. In our neighborhood, the Good Humor man reigned supreme. We're talking about a specially designed pick-up truck with a roofless cab. (In bad weather there was a canvas roof that could be unrolled.) The poor Bungalow Bar guy came in a distant second. He had to endure some very unflattering elementary-school poetry and even more damaging rumors regarding the cleanliness of the product. The latter ultimately contributed to the company's demise. (What do you think happened to those neat trucks?) For a while, even Howard Johnson's got into the frey and then there was a bunch of independent operators. (One summer I went on a bananna ice cream binge. Fortunately, I overcame this lapse in culinary judgement.) It wasn't until several years later that Mister Softee came on the scene and the days of the white-uniformed ice cream men who actually rang bells would join the ranks of horse drawn wagons.
Well, not quite.
I remember the junk man coming around with a horse-drawn wagon with a bunch of cowbellls jingling on the back. There was also a horse-drawn hand-cranked merry-go-round wagon. The wagon was ultimately replaced with a truck-mounted 'whip' ride, which indirectly provided an unexpected lesson in cintrifugal force as it pertains to a not-fully digested meal in a young stomach. Spectators in the know, and even loving parents, learned to stand a respectible distance from the ride.
The vegetable vendor with his hand-lettered prices written with black crayon on a shopping bag also graduated from a horse-drawn wagon to a converted and repainted school bus and raised his prices accordingly. Other than my summer day camp rides to Broad Channel Day Camp on a school bus, Vegetable Joe's converted bus was my only school bus experience.
And finally, the ice man not only cometh but wenteth. By the time I joined the human race there weren't too many people on our block with ice boxes - in spite of what my grandmother called the refrigerator. So, most of the ice man's business was with the retailers on the Avenue. He, too joined the mid-twentieth century by forsaking his horse for horsepower but still retained that awesome ice crushing machine. Drop a giant cake of ice into the hopper and out came crushed ice. Or, cakes of ice were handled with a giant set of tongs and hoisted onto the iceman's towel-covered shoulder for delivery to the customer. I can still hear the sound of that machine. It didn't seem to bother the horse, though.
The knife sharpener guy intrigued me. He announced his arrival with a special sounding gong. I was intrigued with the fact that among other things he would sharpen lawnmower blades. Lawnmowers? Who had a lawn? My mother would save the scissors and dull knives for the day every two weeks that the sharpener guy would show up and it was my job to flag him down. Then, run back to the house and get the scissors and walk carefully and slowly to the grinder. Very slowly.
Rivaling the competition between the ice cream vendors was that between the Dugans and Krugs packaged bake goods. What ever happened to them? Dugans went stale in October 1966. Krugs? Who knows.
The most lethal weapon in our house was the seltzer bottle. I lived in fear of dropping one and causing an explosion that would level the entire block. Who knew that those colored bottles would become so valuable. Sol delivered them in crates of ten Good Health seltzer bottles on his shoulder. On special occasions he would deliver Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup. In a nod to healthy eating, we also consumed Cott diet soda. Being first with a product does not guarantee quality. Boy, did we know how to live!!!
And finally, there was the milk delivery: Borden's, Sheffield/Sealtest. In real bottles. The Borden's products came from Utica and Kings Highway in what at one time was a stable. And they drove those neat Divco trucks while standing up. Divco engineers followed the same styling concept adopted by Checker taxis. Hit on a decent style and stick with it. Both Divco and Checker are out of business.
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