My Brooklyn

Readers Report


Al Davis

My Brooklyn starts at Williamsburg General Hospital on Bushwick Avenue where I was born in 1940. My Brooklyn takes me to South Second Street between Havemeyer Streets and Driggs Avenues where the tall apartment buildings once stood. It brings me back to the days of WW II when the one very large American flag was draped from across South 2nd Street from one building to the next. Memories of living on Keap Street between Lee and Bedford Avenues and watching the transportation crews tear down homes to build the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The trolley cars on Lee Ave., the WMHA on Bedford Avenue, P.S. 16 then P.S. 122 then Eastern District High School from 1954-58. Memories that are etched in my mind and that I will never forget. Then the move to South 5th Street and playing punch ball on Keap Street between South 5th and South 4th. What memories! Memories that can go beyond Williamsburg. The Brooklyn Dodgers! America's original baseball team.

These memories will never be gone from this writer.

23 July 1998


Vicky Mahoney

P.S. 182, J.H.S. 149, Thomas Jefferson H.S.—graduated 1959, Brooklyn College—B.A. 1963.

Vermont Street in East New York in the 40s and 50s. Eastern Parkway near the Botanic Gardens (and Prospect Park and the main library and Grand Army Plaza) from 1959 to 1963, when I left Brooklyn for Berkeley, California.

Am now about to leave Tollhouse, California for New Mexico.

Are any of you out there who remember those places and those days? Please get in touch.

I just spent two hours reading the My Brooklyn entries, and am soaked in the memories of long ago. In fact, I am dashing off to a retirement party this afternoon, and at the advanced age of 55 think I need more Brooklyn in my life. I have moved so far from it all, and yet it is me. Vicky nee Wallach back in my life.

23 July 1998

Vicky Mahoney continues . . .


Bill Pasternak

Brooklyn is a state of mind that never leaves you. While you may wander far from it as I have, it is always with you. Both the good and the bad.

My remembrances of Brooklyn are grounded in Bensonhurst in the '40s, 50s and '60s. I was born at the Israel Zion Hospital—grew up at 1530 West 8 Street—attended P.S. 247, Seth Low Junior High School, Lafayette High School and did a year at New York City Community College (in the old Brooklyn Pickle Works building). Then I realized that I was a "broadcast brat" at heart and was not happy with school. So I moved on.

Some of the really good things. In junior high and high school I was a "class photographer." That got me out of class quite a bit so I could photograph our "teams" in action. I learned to view sporting events in reverse—on the ground glass finder of my Ricoh Diagord G twin lens reflex camera.

Thanks to the off-campus education garnered from the late Saul Rosenthal (Rose Radio and Photo on Bay Parkway), I not only learned how to take fairly good photos, but also how to fix those wondrous talking boxes called "radios."

Fixing radios—and later fixing television sets—lead me to getting my ham radio license (first licensed in 1959 as WA2HVK but have been WA6ITF since 1974) and, eventually into a career in broadcasting. But it also lead me away from my native fields of brick and concrete to the other side of the nation that overlooks the mighty blue Pacific.

These days I watch over the technical end of an hour-long television news program for KTTV Fox 11 and write books and articles about communications, video and the like. But before I departed my Brooklyn I had many "growing up" adventures.

I remember my first subway ride. I remember attending my first baseball game—the then Brooklyn Dodgers—at Ebbets Field. I remember my first trip to Times Square to watch the New Year "ball" drop to ring out the old and ring in the new. I vividly remember my first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

On a more personal note, I recall my very first date—with a real "girl"! We went to see a flick at the old Marlboro Theatre on Bay Parkway and then right next door to the soda shop for an egg cream. I think we were both about 15 or 16. I also think we kids were a bit more naive in our times then are the kids of today.

I recall a snow storm that closed all of the schools. Even the busses were not running so I had to walk to East 18 Street and Ave. K, to see my friend Larry. We spent the afternoon and evening in his basement—playing with ham radio. His mother Carolyn made us dinner after which I trudged back home to West 8th Street in the blinding snow that was still falling.

I recall the first time I really fell in love and even more vividly I recall the pain of breaking up and having to say goodbye. A saga that plays out more than once in almost everyone's life.

But I recall the last time I fell in love too. I was working for General Electric—fixing television sets—and walked into this GE dealer on 5th Avenue and 51st Street in Brooklyn to repair some floor stock. Behind the counter was this rather shy lady. For some reason we struck up a conversation and eventually became friends. Neither of us ever dreamed we would wind up spending most of our adult lives together as man and wife, but this September will be 27 years.

Maybe my greatest personal memory of Brooklyn came one early morning in 1967. I was coming home from visiting another ex-Brooklyn ham radio operator whom I had grown up with and who had moved to New Mexico a few years earlier. I sat in Row 12, Seat A of a TWA Boeing 727-200 as it descended over Bayonne Bay, Staten Island and winged over Brooklyn as it made its way toward a rendezvous with the runway at La Guardia Airport.

I looked out, trying to spot my neighborhood. The outline of two clouds silhouetted the ground. And, I thought to myself: "...how calm and beautiful Brooklyn looks from up here."

I grabbed my camera and captured the moment. That photo hangs on my livingroom wall as a reminder that no matter where you are, Brooklyn is always with you. This is because Brooklyn is more than a place; it is a state of mind.

Santa Clarita California
(Just north of the City of Angels)
website

23 July 1998


Readers' reports continue . . .

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