Growing Up In Brooklyn

Before we moved to the Brigham Park Cooperative Apartments on Brigham Street we lived on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn, I don't remember the number. What I do remember is that there was an elevated subway line that ran on McDonald Ave, and beneath the "El" (short for elevated) ran a trolley car line. I can remember coming home from Public School and playing out in front of our apartment house, and watching the trolley cars go by. As boys will be boys we would place things on the tracks like rocks and bottles to watch the trolly car wheels crush the objects. Of course our parents strictly forbid this practice but we did it anyway. One day someone came up with the bright idea of placing a coin on the tracks to see what the trolley car would do to the coin. Someone, eventually came up with a penny which we placed on the tracks. It was flattened like a pancake by the trolley car. It seems that we could have predicted this result but as kids it was more fun and more " naughty" to actually use real money -- a penny. This was 1950 when a penny was actually worth more than a glass bottle. I can also remember we wanted to try a nickel, but no one could figure out how we were going to get our hands on that kind of fortune.

Part 2 of My First Date with my STBB

As you may remember,I was on a blind date with my STBB, and one other couple, and we were playing pool. After either allowing the other couple to win, or just playing badly, we decided to get something to eat. Parenthetically, I should note that it was on this date that I basically decided two things. One, I had wasted a great deal of time and money bowling, during my high school and college years, when in fact I should have spent all that time and money learning the game of pool. As I got older It turned out that its much more common to play pool than it is to bowl, unless of course your are of polish extraction, of which I am not. Anyhow, the two couples left the pool hall and as near as I remember it, I suggested we go to Nathan's in Coney Island NY. This was geographically desirable and it was a cheap way to end a blind date, at least that's what I thought it was. Little did I know that my date was going to order Lobster Rolls, the most expensive thing on the menu at Nathan's. Anyhow, we went to Nathan's and I spent more on food than I ever expected, and my mind was made up about the second thing I needed to decide on this date. It seems that I decided I was going to marry my date. Looking back, I'm not sure that I actually made that second decision, or somehow my mother and future mother in-law, whom I had not yet met, made the decision for me. In any case it was the best decision I ever made ( or was made for me), because not only did I get my STBB but I also got my best friend for life.

My First Date With My "Soon To Be Bride" The First Installment.

Many, many, many years ago either my friend or my future wife's friend, I can't remember which, arranged a blind date for me with my " Soon To Be Bride". incidentally for purposes of protecting the innocent ( Me) I shall refer to her as the STBB (Soon To Be Bride) from now on in this blog, and maybe in my current life as well. Anyhow after this blind date was arranged someone, my STBB always says it was me, decided we should double date, and go shoot pool and then go out to eat. First you should know that in the middle 1960's, the time many, many, many years ago of which I write, had decreed that shooting pool was now "cool". Prior to our blind date many new sanitized pool halls had opened with their express market targets being girls, women, and others of the female sex who up until the invention of magenta colored pool tables would never even think of looking into, much less walking into a Pool Hall. Anyway once society had made it permissible for dates to go into pool halls, off we went the double date, me and my STBB. From, what I can remember the time in the pool hall went well, no blood or other bodily fluids was shed, and everyone on the double date and the other people already in the selected Pool Hall all remember to act like it was socially acceptable to be in the pool hall instead of how they would have acted before magenta pool table covers. To the best of my knowledge no written record exists recording the scores of the pool games we played, but I am reasonably certain that as a practitioner of the art of dating I would have allowed my STBB to win. With such subtlety, that she and her girlfriend would never have known they were being allowed to win. On the other hand they might have just beaten my friend and I outright, but my male ego does does not allow me to recognize that possibility.