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Let us reminisce on the famous landmarks and traditions that we had in Brooklyn ... Good Humor men, Bungalow Bar, fruit trucks, men with white shirts crowding around Nathan's (not just white shirts; every man had a hat), Steeplechase, the Cyclone, the Tornado, the Thunderbolt, the Bobsled, the Thompson (and the many other exciting attractions in Coney Island), 25 cent movies, 5 cent bus (or trolley) and train fare, buses with windows that opened and seats with foam, schools where you could go home for lunch. And mom wasn't the only one there waiting to give you lunch; nearly everyone's mom was home when you got home from school. At 3 o'clock it was time for a glass of milk and a cookie.

Remember Mayor LaGuardia, the World's Fair, subway trains with ceiling fans and comfortable seats and heaters that actually heated, incandescent light bulbs, the Five & Dime store, three baseball teams in New York, transistor radios, 45 rpm's (well how about 78 rpm's), milk in milk bottles, real glass glasses, cars with wings, real candy stores, Kirsch's and Hoffman sodas, 15 cent pizza, 10 cent cokes, 5 cent Nestle bars, that special Brooklyn 15 cent egg creams, root beer floats, and those 25 cent malteds, 5 cent baseball cards, and flipping card (heads & tails) to win or lose a collection.

Remember the games we played: streets cleared out for punch ball, stickball, kick the can, Ringalevio, Tag, Touch football (one hand touch and two-hand touch). In Tag and Ringaleveo, the guy (girls never played Ringaleveo), the guy who had to tag or find everyone was called "It" - nobody ever questioned what "It" meant; he was just "It" that was his name. Girls never played many of these games, never any games where physical contact was made; it was a different world. Catching and bottling the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening. That was mean but it didn't occur to us then (the joys of youth). I apologize to all those fireflies.

And then there was that rough game, Johnny on the pony (and the call was "Johnny on the Pony 1,2,3; Johnny on the Pony 1,2,3"). There were the runners and there was the pony consisting of maybe four guys bent over and leaning with a tight grip against each other (shoulder against butt), the entire pony leaning against one chosen to be the "pillow" who in turn was standing against a pole or wall. The runners would (each runner in turn), run and jump onto this pony trying to crush it. I don't know why more backs weren't broken but they weren't (G-d does watch over children).

A lot of these games were rough and the girls settled for potsie, jacks, and I don't know what else. We would watch them spin around, get dizzy, fall down, and giggle. By the way, sneakers were just sneakers, only one style, they were mostly black, and ugly to look at. We also played box ball (using as many boxes as there were players); the boxes were the concrete divisions on the sidewalks or schoolyards. We also used those boxes for skellie (soda bottle tops filled with wax?).

Do you remember when decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"? It's been cleaned up since, but those were different times. Remember "one potato, two potato, three potato, four" when eventually everyone know which one to start on in order to get the choice they wanted? And mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over" and "race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest. The worst embarrassment was to be chosen last in any game; that was me, and I got used to it. An odd number of players and last to be chosen, it was always, "All right, you can have Harold." So who said everything was fun and roses in old Brooklyn? Doesn't bother me now; I really laugh at it all.

Wally from PCWorks writes to me saying, "What about stoopball, punch ball, pitching pennies, penny on the trolley track, potsie, mumbly peg, simon says, red rover, red light, kick the can, and hide and seek. Sal Amatuzzo emails me saying that "hide and seek had ulterior motives when you would be lucky enough to hide with a pretty girl." And I say too bad I wasn't smart enough to know about that game. Wally continues with torch the Christmas tree, boat races involving floating the boat along the curb to the sewer, hit the coin with the ball, hand ball, Chinese hand ball, skating up and down the paved street, catch, hardball, and races with homemade scooters?" I hear ya, Wally, I hear ya. He also recalls those guns made from the ends of orange crates with rubber bands using cardboard squares for ammunition (I admit those wooden guns with square cardboard missiles were dangerous but compared to what some use today; need I say more?)

Back to pleasantries: Remember when we enjoyed our parks with grass and the Belt Parkway had no cars parked on the grass. When they built it around 1936, there were hardly any cars (only rich people had cars). Remember when you got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time? When you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?

Candy cigarettes, soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles, coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes (this was even before the ice cream parlor) blackjack, clove and teaberry chewing gum. Remember those Saturday matinees? Shame on all of us; that poor matron in charge of the children's section should have been paid ten times her salary. I think all they gave her was that menacing searchlight. As soon as the music started (or some romantic dialogue), the kids would be walking all over the theater. Where were we going? We already spent our nickel on candy; I hate to think of what was going on in the theater's men's room. During that brief respite from the movie the side door might open with kids going out and I suspect some would come in; it was a moment of sunshine in the theater. And when we left the theater, that's when the sun would blind us. And how happy we were; we still had the day to enjoy.

We also had newsreels before the movie, and a whole lot of shorts, and how they kept us guessing all week how the poor damsel was going to get out of her predicament. So with a quarter (big money those days) we'd return the following Saturday to find out, and again, give the matron a run for her money. And when leaving the theater on a sunny day, we were blinded by the dark-light contrast. I'm sure all this was not just Brooklyn.

I remember when nobody owned a purebred dog; a dog was a dog was a dog; when a quarter was a decent allowance, and when you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny? I have to admit; I'll still bend down to pick up a penny at the same time wondering why our economy needs pennies. In the "old days" we'd use a penny to put into the machine on the subways to buy chiclets (preferably pepsin or spearmint), or peanuts, and in the stores all those penny candies.

I remember Mr. Palermo (my barber on Avenue L between E. 92nd and E. 93rd Streets, who always had a round bellied mandolin hanging on the wall). Of course, I remember Max's Tailor store around the corner; he was my grandfather. There must have been Palermo's and Max's all over Brooklyn, although I can never imagine another Max like my grandfather (but that's another story). Remember comic books (Superman, who was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, who could leap tall buildings in a single bound), remember pinkies and Spaldeens (Spauldeens?), roller skates with skate keys, bicycles without helmets, kneepads, elbow pads etc, corduroy pants (I still wear them though they're not popular), and red ties for assembly.

We had PF Flyers, shoes with laces, "release time", spelling pre-tests on Mondays and re-tests on Fridays, only seven television stations and the sets took five minutes to "warm up" (today it means you need a new set; then it was par for the course). In the words of pitchman, Sid Stone, you all remember him: "You say it's not enough? You say you want more for your money? Tell ya what I'm gonna do." (Was he on the Milton Berl Show?) We all remember when we just had radios, and we had Saturday double feature matinees, horror movies, the 3 stooges (I only recently found out they were Jewish. I never liked them as comedians but a psychologist friend told me that what they did, timing etc., took great skill). And we had cars with fins, stick pretzels in that little flat box that cost a nickel.

Speaking of Jewish, ff you were Jewish, you never knew anyone whose last name didn't end in one of 5 standard suffixes (berg, baum, man, stein and witz. When your mother smacked you, she continued to make you feel bad for hurting her hand. You were able to understand Yiddish but you couldn't speak it. You were as tall as your grandmother by the age of seven and you were as tall as your grandfather by age seven and a half. Remember those get-togethers when you thought speaking loud was normal? And your mother or grandmother took personal pride when a Jew was noted for some accomplishment (showbiz, medicine, politics, etc.) and was ashamed and embarrassed when a Jew was accused of a crime, as if they were relatives (es past nisht far a yid). And finally, you knew that Sunday night and the night after any Jewish holiday was designated for Chinese food. Btw, isn't it redundant to put a yarmulke on a toupee?

Remember NBC Studios on Avenue M? It was originally known as Vitagraph and then Warner Bros. Lauretta Abrams in California tells me that there were three sound stages underground; she would know, she used to go to parties there. She seems to be an authority on pickles (any relation to Gus's Pickles on Orchard Street)? She speaks of "those pickles that made your mouth pucker" which could have been the ones her father and grandfather made in her grandfather's appetizing store near Avenue J and Coney Island Avenue, or by her Uncle Harry Miller in "Miller's Appetizing Store" on 50th Street and 13th Avenue in Boro Park. Now there's a neighborhood; all the stores are closed on Saturdays and open on Sundays.

We had Automats, A & S, Mays, Namms, Korvettes, S. Klein, Gimbles ... and a walk through the toy departments of these stores was worth the trolley trip. Action toys were operating on display, toys like Gilbert erector set models, Lionel trains, toy tractors, airplanes going in circles doing loops at the end of a slim metal rod. Electronic toys were unheard of (I think that was good; we often made our own toys). We had a nightclub in Brooklyn (who ever thought anyone would come to Brooklyn for a nightclub).

We thought all the nightclubs were in Manhattan "the City" and all of a sudden we had Club Elegante on Ocean Parkway and the 3000 seat Ben Maksik's Town & Country Club on Flatbush Avenue just south of Avenue U. Judy Garland, Harry Belafonte, Bobby Darin, and Buddy Hacket did some shows there. Maksik's served 7200 covers on a typical Saturday night and hosted 27 weddings at one time on a Sunday.

Speaking of clubs, remember when we were in our early 20's and tried to get into Club 28. Rarely could we do it. Now I forget why we wanted to get in there; maybe it was a matter of feeling grown up. It was located off the most southern part of Ocean Parkway, just east of the turn where Ocean Parkway becomes Surf Avenue. That was Brooklyn.

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents. In my family we never used the word, "dinner" ... it was always supper. We had breakfast (always hot cereal with that rich creamy milk), lunch, and supper (everything that's considered unhealthy to eat today). Who ate dinner? Probably the same people who owned cars.

There was Sheepshead Bay (of course, it's still there), but then local kids would dive for coins tossed by the people from the city who came down on weekends to eat at Lundy's (they would shout "Pitch me a quarter, pitch me a half" and then dive for the coin and come up and show it to the thrower; on a good weekend they would make $15 or $20 dollars, a lot of money back then), coins of real silver, "zones" not zip codes. And Noreen O'Hara Welch, nee Caggiano, reminds me that they were then only two digit numbers like she lived in Brooklyn 10, NY (graduated from Midwood High in 1954 and Brooklyn College in 1958). She also reminds me that there were Italians in Brooklyn (like I didn't know).

Since Noreen came upon this website, either by accident or by recommendation (which I would prefer), regardless, she's still a reader of my recollections so she deserves my acknowledgement. She mentions L&B Pizzeria for real Sicilian style pizza. Yes, there were Italian neighborhoods: parts of East New York, Coney Island, and Bensonhurst, Canarsie where I lived, maybe sections of Red Hook, of course Dyker Heights (some of the best Christmas displays in the country), and certainly Red Hook (which has some of the finest Italian restaurants in NYC). But forgive me, Noreen, I never had any first hand experience with those neighborhoods being a very insular kid from the Canarsie sticks.

Best friend on my block was Mike DeBella and yet I only saw his basement when calling for him. Saw that first floor only once; he took me up there to show me what I recall was a velvet rope (maybe my imagination now) across the threshold leading to the "parlor" (living room) and a kitchen which looked like it was never used. They ate all there meals in the basement using the basement kitchen. My barber (Palermo) was Italian, my car mechanic (Conte Brothers) were Italian, the man who delivered ice was Italian, the man who came around in a truck to sharpen cutlery was Italian, the man in the horse drawn wagon selling produce was Italian.

And although he wasn't my family doctor (mine was a Dr. Dannenberg from around Utica and Montgomery Street who like all doctors, did make house visits; he in a beautiful Cadillac) the doctor on Flatlands Avenue was Italian. That was unusual in those days because most of the kids in the many trade schools then were Italian. And whenever it was time for me to get a beating, it was usually some Italian kid who did it. That's the way it was then; I find it very funny thinking about it now; I suppose G-d had his own way of doling out rewards and punishments for one reason or another. Friendship that were "mixed" cooled when we starting dating girls; Italians with Italians and Jews with Jews. That was also the way it was then.

We remember 3 cent stamps in blue with the Statue of Liberty, and apartment houses with open doors, home-cooking smells in the hallways. We had dinner at the table with the whole family and no television. We had Classic Illustrated comics, fireworks every Tuesday night, songs without "deep" messages. There were no synthesizers, "rap" music? (that's an oxymoron), and no boom boxes. Remember those record players? You put a record on (a record was a round plastic disk, only much larger than what we have on computers), and they ran 'round and 'round with a pickup arm holding a needle at the end. The needle would scratch into grooves on the record causing vibrations that were transferred into sound. Who's seen a record player lately? Anyone?

We also had real pianos, medium rare burgers at a real restaurant served on a real dish (no styrofoam), ketchup in a glass bottle, A&P supermarket (then with sawdust on the floor and ceiling fans), bagels and bialys, balsa wood gliders made with four sections fitted together and a small metal clip on the nose for balance. And with balsa strips we would model beautiful planes by pinning the strips down on plans to make the skeleton of the plane. That's when glue was used only to hold things together (maybe we did smell too much of it but it wasn't "a favorite pastime of kids". In my circles, drugs were only bought in drug stores (and the druggist was the man who would remove splinters from our fingers; I think we even called him "Doc".

I remember Bohack super market (really a large grocery with maybe three aisles but the first store I remember where the customer picked out his own merchandise), bowling at Freddie Fitzimmons on Empire Blvd., Bressner's Appliances on New Lots Avenue, Brighton Beach Baths (now the Oceana condo's), Brooklyn Day (schools here, and in Queens, were closed on this day and we never knew why; I think it had something to do with parochial schools, Brooklyn being "the borough of churches"), clothes lines in back yards, Crawford's and Howard's men's clothing (I worked in Crawford's while in college). Dan writes to me (strangers out there are always bringing me up to date with tidbits of information) saying, and I quote:

"Brooklyn Day (first day of June, as best as I can recall) was originally "Anniversary Day", an observation of the founding of the Brooklyn Sunday School Association in the 19th Century and was a holiday to allow a parade and various events to be celebrated. As the balance of power shifted over the decades and Protestants became a minority, it was renamed 'Brooklyn Day' so as to be politically correct (in a time when that moniker was unknown)." ... all right, so now we know. Thank you, Dan.

There was the great history of baseball in Brooklyn: Ebbets Field and New York Dodgers (for 25 cents, plus three Borden's ice cream wrappers, kids got "Elsie" tickets, which gave them bleacher seats to watch the Dodger games), and Jackie Robinson who was probably the best base runner in history (and a fine gentleman), and Gladys Gooding who played the organ before every Dodger game (thank you, Carole Jason for the Gladys Gooding fact).

We had the Empire Rollerdrome (roller skating rink), Field Brothers (men's clothing) on Kings Highway, the five cent train and trolley fare, Floyd Bennet Field, Fourth of July fireworks at Coney Island, Gil Hodges Bowling on Ralph Avenue, grocery stores - no supermarkets, clerks with long wood pole with hook or clamp at end (who knocked boxes from top shelves, caught them in their arms, always a good catch, and set them on the counter).

We had the Tilyou Theater on Surf Avenue, and we had the Bowery (not the same as the old Bowery "of homeless men" in Manhattan). This Bowery ran from Jones Walk to Tilyou's Walk (West 11th Street to West 16th Street). In his story "The Day of Rest at Coney Island" Elmer Blaney Harris describes what existed on the Bowery.

"Steeplechase was only two blocks away (between West 16th and West 19th Streets from Surf Avenue to the Boardwalk), but they were busy blocks. Blocks with eating booths, hot frankfurters on the grill, beef dripping on the spit, wash-boilers of green corn steaming in the center of hungry groups who gnawed at the ears as if playing harmonicas; photograph galleries, the sitters ghastly in the charnel-house glare of the Cooper-Hewitt; open-faced moving picture shows with shades dropped so that passers-by could not steal a glimpse without stooping down, which ignoble attitude never failed to invite effrontery from the jocose crowd; chop suey joints, fez-topped palmists, strength tests; dance halls and continuous song-and-dance entertainments, the girls in white, according to the regulation that obliges them to lay off their tights and spangles out of respect for the Sabbath.

Blocks with bands, orchestras, pianos at war with gramophones, hand-organs, calliopes; overhead, a roar of wheels in a death lock with shrieks and screams; whistles, gongs, rifles all busy; the smell of candy, popcorn, meats, beer tobacco, blended with the odor of the crowd redolent now and then of patchouli; a steaming river of people arches over by electric signs- this is the Bowery at Coney Island." - from Everybody's Magazine July 1908, page 33.

Harris mentions our "chop suey joints" reminds me of some feature that was the specialty of Rockaway Beach; called the Takee Cup (Lenny Pinkus, now living in the desert east of Los Angeles, explains "takee" as a cup of whatever that would be "taken" away and eaten someplace else). Harris continues, "that was chow mein in a cup made of pressed noodles that cost about a dollar. You would eat the chow mein out of this noodle cup with a wooden fork and then when you were finished, you would eat the cup. Nothing was wasted there; you just ate what you bought, an idea of one Mr. Tuck Yee Lee, who owned the Takee Cup in Rockaway Beach."

Len talks about the "five cent hot dogs and the 25 cent corned beef on club" ... yeah right; you'll never see those days again. Nor would you want to; when reminiscing, we tend to always remember the fun things. Much of living for the less than "upper upper class" was hard; it often looks rosy when looking back. I don't know anything about Murrieta, CA, Len, but anyplace in the desert is not for a former New Yorker; c'mon back.