Accompanied by my lovely wife Medi, my two sisters and I took a trip back in time to our childhood neighborhoods. We drove first to East 22nd street where we all grew up and then traveled to Ave U where Barbara and I lived after Jean and Helen got married.
I remembered E. 22nd street vividly even though I left there at seven years old. I never had as many friends as I did on that block nor interacted with neighbors who truly cared about the kids on the block.
We resided at 1894 E. 22nd street. Our block was between Avenues S & T. Being New Yorkers, we had no time for fancy names like Main St, Cherry Lane or Bristol Drive. We named our streets in bare boned fashion.
Most us us were Catholic but I played with one Jewish kid - Ivan Smuckler. He was alright . I had one Protestant friend - Tim Johnson. He always called his mother "Dot". I thought that was strange but then again I thought Tim was strange.
We did not tarry at E. 22nd because there was a lot to see and do at Ave.U
We moved to Avenue U when my parents had to find another place. My mother always kept bad news from me. She never wanted to upset me. She hated moving to this apartment which was two or three steps beneath the house she left. My sister Helen told me she only saw my mother cry twice in her life: when she moved to Ave U and when her father passed away. The apartment did get better after a good paint job and lots of wall paper.
We lived on the second floor of what is now the Jennan Medical Building. For the entire time I lived there, the Kodak Photography store was on the first floor. My room faced Ave. U and I watched the world walk and drive by. I could see everyone on their way to and from work and could watch people buying donuts right at the donut shop directly across the street, guys having fistfights (rarely) outside the bar and grill next to it and and kids licking ice cream they just bought at the candy store next to the bar.
At the back of our building , there was a landing over the 2nd floor of the building. It was a multipurpose area. After climbing out the kitchen window, I could read out there pretending I was on my veranda or drink a coke imagining I was sitting on the terrace. Its major use, however, was for clothes.
One of my brother in laws climbed up a telephone pole, at the back of the first floor store and strung a clothes line from the pole back to the building, just by the the kitchen window. We had a washer but not a dryer. When the wash was finished, my mother would lean out the window and hang the clothes. The clothes line was actually on a pulley so she could send clothes as far as the telephone pole and later pull them back. When we stayed with my folks, Medi washed the clothes and operated the pulley clothes line.
Here we are standing on Avenue U, diagonally behind us are a donut shop, bar , and candy store of my youth. Funny, the donut shop and the candy store remain but the bar went out of business. Directly behind us, spanning the street was the Ave. U train station serviced by the D train. I mentioned, did I not, that New Yorkers avoided fancy names.
There are so many Chinese restaurants and stores on Avenue U now. Growing up, I only knew of two. One was the Chinese laundry next to the camera store in our building and the other was a Chinese restaurant five blocks away. As you can see, the hand laundry is now a restaurant and it is next to the former camera store, now a medical office.
The laundry owners had hung a large sign in the window that read "Hand Laundry" . Anytime I went in there, the kids, some younger than me, were working, ironing, folding shirts or wrapping the folded shirts in brown paper.
The Chinese restaurant had an extensive American menu for those who found their food too exotic. The only time I remember my father eating in a non-American restaurant was his one trip to this restauran . He ordered a hamburger. He boasted of never having a stomach ache in his life and attributed his good fortune to never eating foreign food, like spaghetti and meatballs or any kind of Chinese food.
Boy. I used to work at the Ave. U candy store selling newspapers, scooping ice cream and mixing soda , especially the New York delicacy - the egg cream . Who knew it would one day become a deli and grocery store , even selling hot food.
When I lived on Ave. U, you could only buy food in a grocery store. Now there are mini markets everywhere, like the one in this picture. Note the guy crossing the street in Indian dress. In my day, he would have stood out like a guy wearing a space suit.
We all attended St Edmund's elementary school - grades one to eight. My sister Helen even studied at the two year commercial high school there upon her elementary graduation. The building was both a church and a school. The church itself was in the center with hallways of classrooms surrounding it on all sides. The basement was huge and it was where we had our assemblies, lunchroom and play area on rainy days. The high school girls even got to dance at their recess wearing their bobby socks.
The nuns of that day truly believed that sparing the rod would spoil the child . They did not hit the girls but felt it was the best way to communicate with boys who at times could be blockheads. Fortunately for me, I was a model child and avoided their attention.
Here we are at a place called Sheepshead Bay. It is almost as famous as Coney Island and even closer to home. Fishing boats docked there and took customers out fishing. They also caught fish to sell to the many seafood restaurants along the way.
There were other restaurants , some more like diners. One time, around lunch hour, I was at the counter, checking the menu on the wall and checking my coins. I fell short by about fifty cents . My face must have shown my disappointment so the guy at the counter said "Hey kid, what did you want" and followed up by "How much do you have?" When I told him, he gave me half an order. I think two meatballs instead of four. Times were simpler then.
The only time I had seen the word "Baku" was planning my trip to Azerbaijan where Baku was the capital. Now it is the name of a very popular restaurant at Sheepshead Bay, one of many Russian and Eastern European eateries in the area.
The Bay is next to an area called Brighton Beach which is next to Coney Island. In 1975, Henry Kissinger made a deal with the Russians to allow as many Jews to leave as wanted to. I think they all settled in Brighton Beach where they still reside and own all the apartment buildings, own all the businesses there and have made Yiddish and Russian the local languages. People now call the area "Little Minsk ".
For as long as I can remember, Lundy's stood for class and good food. Newspapers reported on celebrities eating there, some famous, some infamous- as in Mafia. Today it continues to serve good food but not to the celebrities who are few and far between.
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