All meals arrived with gobs of potatoes—baked, boiled, mashed, au gratin—and vegetables—peas, string beans, corn, the usual. My father always made a huge salad in a wooden bowl with oil and vinegar, eaten after the meal which lore has it he learned in France during the War. And if every crumb wasn’t devoured, we heard the hysterical admonition about starving children of China. So if I finished my mound of mashed, all the little Chinese kids would be fat and happy?

My Mom’s specialty was gravy, near perfect and never to be tasted again since she took all recipes to the grave, including her Thanksgiving apple pie. “It’s too much work,” was her bored response to pleas that she write them down. After her death, we found recipes on index cards, but in shorthand which she mastered in secretarial school and used all her life. Especially when she attended college after my father died. All her class notes were in shorthand. “Mom, what do you take down?” I asked scanning pages of wavy lines. “Everything the teacher says,” she replied with indignation.

Meat, potato, vegetable. Not exactly haute cuisine but way above average considering many families in my Brooklyn Irish neighborhood wouldn’t go near vegetables, fish, spaghetti, even Chinese food. And no one thought it odd. “Can’t even stand the smell.” So I always believed we were culinary royalty until I dated Nancy Cirrito and was invited to Christmas Eve dinner.

I thought I knew Italian food cause on special occasions we would go to Monte’s on Carroll Street for veal parmagiana with a side of spaghetti. And pizza was eaten nearly daily along with fat meatball heroes from Romano’s on 13th Avenue. But to be honest, my exposure was just a trifle parochial. Right after we married, I tossed away an omelet sitting on the counter. “What did you do with my omelet?” Nancy asked. “It was bad, green, threw it away.” “It was a squash omelet. It was supposed to be green,” as she rolled her eyes and tried to figure out whether the “in sickness and in health” vow included stupidity.

Back then any dinner at a girlfriend’s house was a big deal. It isn’t like today where you never know who or how many will be mooching down your favorite foods. It signified serious romance, meeting the relatives, using a napkin, eating stuff you hate. And since Christmas was the grandest, being invited to her family feast probably broadcast that I was The One which was kinda funny since we were babies--19 and 21 and were dating less than a year. And I didn’t even try to wiggle out of it since I was clueless and my Christmas Eve only meant last minute shopping.

And you’ll play Santa for my sister Marilynne’s three kids? So along with chatting up her relatives, attending midnight Mass, exchanging presents, I had to make sure I didn’t screw up the beard and the ho ho hos. Nice.

The Cirritos owned a two family red brick across from the monastery in Borough Park. Simple, small with plastic covers on the beige couch, some fancy lamps and an oriental rug. Whenever I arrived to pick up Nancy, her mother, kind smile gentle voice, would inevitably ask:

Would you like something to eat?

No thanks.

Have something.

No, thank you.

How about some soup?

No, that’s OK.

Chicken?

No, I’m not really hungry.

Macaroni? I can heat it up.

No, really.

How about a peanut and butter sandwich?

No thanks really.

Sweet of course, but different from my world where the first question involved drink and, if you were lucky, a handful of pretzels.

So at 7, wrapped present in hand, jacket and tie, I rang the bell. The Christmas tree sparkled. The dining room table was loaded with china, crystal glasses, fancy napkins. Then the food started. And never ended.

I had eaten shrimp, and some clams on the half shell from Lundy’s in Sheepshead Bay. I once had a lobster, but that’s about it. Everything else was, well, different. And all home-made. Hot, light sfinge sprinkled with powdered sugar were the pre-appetizer appetizer while milling about, saying hello. Have one more.

Cold fish salad—lobster, shrimp, squid, calamari, scungilli, crab, octopus—in a huge bowl, with green and black olives, celery cut small, capers, peppers, lemon, parsley, olive oil. After a bowl or two, the main courses began: fried smelts and eels; linguine in white clam sauce and macaroni in red sauce with cabbage; fried and baked shrimp; baked clams; stuffed calamari in red sauce.

“Be careful. The stuffed calamari are sewn closed with thread.” “Thread?” “Yes, like when you sew a button.” “So your Mom sewed these, er, what are they called, closed?” “Yep, they’re called calamari, and she stuffed them and then sewed them so the stuffing wouldn’t fall out.” “Never had a meal with cooked thread before.” Who would have the patience, care enough to spend hours on just one of the myriad dishes. No one I knew.

Thin slices of broiled sole in butter, lemon and white wine. Lobster tails and baccala, “It’s what we call it, really a cod like from Cape Cod.” Just when I thought there couldn’t be more, there was another dish, another food I never tasted, could barely pronounce.

Shiny string beans sat in oil and garlic; artichokes with breadcrumbs. “How do you eat these things?” Stuffed baby eggplant covered with homemade tomato sauce and dripping with mozzarella; broccoli steamed littered with slivers of garlic shining with olive oil; stuffed mushrooms. Sometimes my Mom would serve peas and corn because Bird’s Eye frozen foods packaged them as one, but a half-dozen vegetables at a meal? Ha.

Crisp loaves of Italian bread were used to soak up the sauce or the juice or whatever was left on your plate. “I don’t see any butter.” “You don’t eat Italian bread with butter.” “No, what do you eat it with?” A few chuckles told me to shut my trap.

Everyone ate everything. Even the kids all under 10. No one screamed, ewwww eels, disgusting. The family ate and talked and laughed and ate some more. At home, hearty meals were cooked and eaten quickly. Not at the Cirritos. After one serving, dishes were collected, cleaned. We’d shuffle into the kitchen or living room and soon another course would appear. I started strong, eating seconds and remaining silent as food was heated on my plate. How much more could there be?

Desserts included shiny strufoli—honey balls—covered with sprinkles. Cannolis, sfogliatelle, a huge platter of Italian cookies, homemade cheese cake and a pie or two. There were more desserts than people. “Try this.” “Have a small piece of this.” “One more.”

We’ve eaten that meal on every Christmas eve for more than forty years. First sfinge, now made by my children, and then cold fish salad the same as that wonderful evening so long ago. The food is the passion, art really, to be savored, cherished. Yet it is more—family, love, memories. Santa with the pillow still appears and my kids and their cousins, now mostly grown, climb on his lap laughing, excited. Presents are opened. Look what I got. Hold it up, let’s see. After a bit, we wander back for dessert: strufoli, cookies, cheesecake, a pie or two.

Ken Nolan is a lawyer who has always lived in Brooklyn.

Of course I knew that he spent years in Europe fighting the Germans and was an active member of McFadden Bros. American Legion Post where we went on Sundays afternoons. Named for two brothers who were killed saving Europe, the Post was where mothers would talk and fathers would drink beer and all us kids would down sodas, eat pretzels and run around like banshees.

Every Memorial Day there would be a standing room only Mass at Holy Name attended by hundreds of veterans and their families. After Mass, a wreath was laid at the feet of the crucified Christ which was attached to the simple red brick church. Guns would fire into the air thrilling the way too many kids. With the marching band, all the men and their boys would march from Holy Name to the Baptist church on 8th Avenue and then to the synagogue a few blocks later where wreaths would also be left. Since Protestants and Jews were rare in my Irish Catholic Brooklyn neighborhood, these ceremonies were witnessed by a handful of Baptists and only the Rabbi. To the applause of those lining the sidewalks, we would then march along Prospect Park back to the Post where the party would begin.

My father with his long legs always marched in the back with his three sons, away from the flags whipping in the wind and the music blaring. And it wasn’t until 30 years after my father’s death that I learned that he boarded a bus one day for Fort Dix, sat down next to Bud Pope and didn’t return for three and one-half years. As part of an anti-aircraft unit he had a Forrest Gump experience–fighting Rommel in North Africa, invading Corsica and Italy under Patton who then raced into southern France where he became an MP until they needed bodies for the Battle of the Bulge where he fought. And he was being trained for the invasion of Japan when Truman dropped the bomb, the war ended and my father returned to Brooklyn on the subway. “Jack Nolan’s home, Jack Nolan’s home,” the kids screamed as they carried his duffel bag. He went to Casey’s for a beer with his three sisters, married my mother and had four kids of which I’m the second. And like almost everyone else, stayed in the neighborhood where he was born, prayed on his knees every morning and night, worked hard, never made much money and died right before he could enjoy life.

Never said a word about those three and one half years except an occasional comment about tough Germans with their crew cuts. Johnny O’Dea once had a school assignment about the War and his mother told him, “If you want to know about the War, ask Jack Nolan,” which he never did. So except for parties at the Post and my grandmother Maysie complaining that the Army helmet made him lose his hair, I never heard him or any of the other fathers talk about blood, dying or sacrifice. They just did it. No questions. The Krauts and Japs were bad and we had to stop them. So they did and never complained about the years away, the pals that didn’t come home, the horrors they witnessed. My father wasn’t an officer or a newspaper hero, just a guy who did his duty and was mature enough to keep the horror to himself. “And thank God you came home,” was the response whenever those days were mentioned. Even in the Post, the talk was of sports or neighborhood stuff and after awhile, there would be singing and more laughter until time to go home and finish your homework.

And it was funny how we learned. I once wrote for his war records but there was a fire in the record storage place in St. Louis, sorry. One of my many cousins made the Army his career and was forced to do a research paper. His commander barked, Hey Quinn, you’re Irish from New York. You must have a relative who fought in World War II. Do it on him. Which Bobby did and that’s how we found out all about my dad’s war years from meeting Bud Pope on the bus to being in an antiaircraft unit with a bunch of guys from Pennsylvania who probably weren’t the brightest since occasionally they fired at British planes.

I wish I had asked about those years and his thoughts and feelings but the motto of our neighborhood was “shut up and go to work”. Everyone was the same, struggling from paycheck to paycheck, trying to feed and clothe large families so if you wanted a new baseball mitt you delivered groceries or newspapers or shoveled sidewalks in the snow. No whining allowed and my father never uttered a word of regret. War was hard, but life wouldn’t change just because you returned home a hero. The rent still had to be paid, milk and bread cost money and no one was rewarding these guys with easy, well-paying jobs. My parents always knew and taught life was a struggle, filled with pain. Sure you laughed and sang and celebrated First Communions and birthdays and Christmas, but nothing was easy because they only taught what they knew—if you want something, work for it. And hard.

Not only wasn’t the War discussed, but I was 24 when my father died in 1972 at the height of Vietnam which divided the country, our neighborhood and our family. I was the smart ass college student and in my blue collar neighborhood, you did not question God or country. There was anger and bewilderment: “How you could grow your hair long, smoke dope and oppose your country?” They just served and couldn’t comprehend the anti-war movement especially when guys who fought and guys who protested were raised on the same concrete streets, drank beer in Farrell’s and still went to communion every Sunday.

The world was changing and not for the better. Crime, welfare, the surrounding Brooklyn neighborhoods where they played ball or went to parish dances changed. Prospect Park, which was our backyard, became dangerous as pocketbooks were snatched and bikes stolen. My father believed in order and respect for family, Church and country. The chaos of the 60s angered him and his friends and drove these inner city Democrats to Nixon. Whenever politics was discussed, Dan Flynn, my friend’s grandfather, would recite, “The Republicans are for the classes, the Democrats for the masses.” This allegiance was lost as hippies took over campuses, battled police and cursed Dick Daley in Chicago who would have been very comfortable in the Post or at Mass in Holy Name.

And colleges were mostly blamed. “I went to college—Red Hook,” a huge iron worker sneered in Farrell’s one night, referencing a tough, gritty Brooklyn neighborhood. Students from Columbia, Harvard or some other foreign place were dismissed as rich spoiled brats, but we went to inexpensive city schools—St. John’s, Brooklyn College, Hunter—lived at home and came from the neighborhood. How was it that guys who grew up here could turn against the USA, could protest the War and support McCarthy or McGovern? “Four more years,” the cops, firemen and union workers that lined the bar in Farrell’s would chant as they turned from Nixon on the TV to glare at me and my friends. They rejoiced in Nixon’s victories as proof that their lives of work, sacrifice and patriotism were justified.

In my father’s view, we had it easy–food on the table, education, not the back breaking jobs that killed spirit and body. And didn’t appreciate it. We protested, looked like bums, did drugs and followed those who weren’t “stand up guys,” the rich, those who never worked with their hands, those who lived in Manhattan. And during these turbulent times, his rectum bled so they took out what they could, after which the surgeon told me and my mother that he had 6 months to live. He lasted nine. We all cried at the wake including my brother who returned from his Navy service in Hawaii. “The Navy eats well,” my father told him so, rather than be drafted, Johnny joined after graduating from Fordham and was an aide to Admiral McCain and learned to make pizzas at night for extra money. The guys from the Post marched in together, prayed and threw paper poppies in the casket. We buried him in the veteran’s cemetery on Long Island and then returned to a restaurant where we reminisced and laughed loud with tears in our eyes.

My dad was right, after all. We had it easy with our college deferments from the draft. The closest we came to a body bag was tv and we marched and chanted continually, safe from the carnage for four years, letting those who had to work after high school lose a leg or die so we could shut down our colleges in protest over Kent State and spend the best part of the spring at the beach. And guys from the neighborhood never came back–Cusack, Bilotta, Fitzgerald. Others like Van Pelt and Drago returned wounded and couldn’t understand how we could oppose their sacrifice. They talked about buddies who died. We talked about the Viet Cong.

We were smug with our four year deferment after all and thought it our right to protest and watch the war on tv. We knew it all, how to rid the world of conflict, poverty, injustice. Cops, soldiers were bad, black panthers, SDS were good. We were superior to those who ran the corporations, the government, the world. And we never thought differently until Bobby Kennedy came to speak at Brooklyn College and challenged the arrogant questioner with a call to end student deferments because they’re unfair. College students are safe from Vietnam, Kennedy boomed, you let the working class fight and die. Everyone should be treated the same whether or not they attend college.

Can you believe that, my friend George asked? He wants to end our deferments. The thought of our being drafted had never really resonated. For the first time, we realized that we could end up in the mud of Vietnam.

Kennedy was short and a bit thin with the trademark hair and smile but didn’t back down when heckled and booed. McCarthy, not Kennedy, challenged Johnson and college students didn’t forgive. My father and I had seen Bobby when he campaigned in 1964 at the nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor on 8th Avenue. He arrived standing on the back seat of a convertible. He was immediately mobbed. Kids pulling at his sleeve, adults clapping. The Kennedys were us except rich and educated and powerful. Proof that the Irish had arrived, but just when everything is perfect, shots in Dallas return the reality that we were taught—happiness, beauty, contentment is ephemeral–tragedy, disaster, sorrow inevitable. As Pat Moynihan said when JFK was killed: “We’ll laugh again, but we’ll never be young again.” And after poor Bobby Kennedy lay in the kitchen with the blood rushing from his head, my dad only worried about all his children growing up without a father.

The nervousness about ending student deferments faded slowly. I was a freshman then and eventually returned to routine—studying, talking politics and sports, working. I felt safe and a few years were a lifetime when you’re 18. Even in those tumultuous years, time passed drip by drip and the gulf between the neighborhood and college grew wider. Our parents loved Nixon who we despised. Friends were arrested for marijuana and had to rouse Tom Cuite, the local councilman, out of bed, to reason with the judge. “They’re college students with marijuana” the cop told the desk sergeant, “Hard narcotics,” was the spiteful reply. Anger at the anti-war movement was palpable, and families split along political lines. My mother and father hated my antiwar views, but there were no arguments, the subject was simply not discussed. I’m sure they thought it was a stage that I was going through and eventually I would bathe, cut my hair and mature. They were right after all.

My college years rolled by interrupted by nightsticks cracking heads, assassinations of King and Kennedy, race riots, Kent State, Woodstock, campus unrest and Friday nights in Farrell’s having too many beers. Vietnam’s specter haunted us relentlessly, just like the nightmare that returned deep in the dark when you were a kid, appearing when least expected. No one wanted to go, and elaborate schemes were concocted to dodge the draft—graduate school, psych letters attesting to your insanity, physical ailments which never stopped you from playing basketball for hours, but now debilitating. Everyone found a way to dodge the draft, that is, if you were smart and dishonest.

And then they instituted the lottery system where you were selected in the order they randomly selected your birthday. So I sat at home in my tiny room and listened to the radio as the birthdates were called, for example, One–Dec 6, two—Feb 21, three–Oct 28…Those with high numbers were safe, those with low ones were sunk. Since only a limited number of soldiers were needed, anything above 200 had a shot of not being drafted. Above 250, time to party. I sat at the worn card table that I used for a desk and listened as the numbers were called with my heart pounding, quietly praying for a high number. After the first hundred, I felt good, knowing that just a bit more luck would help me survive. Then 134—June 11th. My birthday. I pounded the table and shook my head. In my heart I knew I never had a shot at a high number, that didn’t happen to guys like me. Oh well, was my parent’s response. Sure you could get killed, but that’s the price of freedom. When needed, you go and bring along your rosary beads for safety. My brother, after all, joined the Navy and was safe in Hawaii.

Guys with high numbers sported buttons that read “343” or “298.” Jealous and a bit afraid, I was resigned to find some way out. I knew the routine. A physical at Fort Hamilton Army base. That was the chance, 4F was the prize. We talked about schemes, not eating, bad backs, running off to Canada, eyesight, letters from shrinks declaring you’re nuts. It consumed our thoughts as graduation approached. It’s funny; I just can’t recall whether it was fear or principle. The war was a mess and wrong, but deep in the recesses of our hearts, we were afraid to come home dead. Easy to protest, hard to fight.

What to do. Shrinks wrote elaborate, phony reports. Minor sports injuries of knees, shoulders, arms became life threatening according to the friendly orthopedist. Elaborate concoctions were formulated. Some succeeded, others failed since the Army knew no one wanted to go. Even legitimate disabilities were questioned. Mickey McNally, who always wore coke bottles for glasses, was sure he would fail since, without glasses, he couldn’t see his feet. The skeptical examiner dropped his glasses and instinctively Mickey caught them. You passed was the response.

It was a spring day when I and a hundred or so others arrived at Fort Hamilton beneath the Verrazano Bridge which once protected the harbor with cannons. With precision we were processed, filled out papers, undressed and went from one exam to the next. A bit surreal actually. A friend had painted his body all sorts of colors and was ranting like a lunatic. He looked at me, put his index finger to his lips in a silent shhhhh. Another guy had tattooed on the side of his hand from his wrist down his pinky, “FUCK YOU.” So every time he saluted, the officer would read, “FUCK YOU.” The black sergeant laughed when he saw this, and called over his buddies. That’s a real tattoo, they laughed some more. That one worked.

To my disappointment, I sailed through each perfunctory physical exam. The last one was to determine if you were sane enough to kill as we used to say. The room was large and the metal folding chairs were filled with mostly white guys like me, each holding pages of letters from shrinks attesting to their insanity. I was heartbroken. They all had an out except me. I blew it. After all the exams ended, some officer called those who passed into a room for further instructions. Me, one other sad looking white guy and four blacks were the only ones who passed. Everyone else won the coveted 4-F. All I had to do was see a psych, lie and I would be safe. I couldn’t believe the Army could fall for such blatant bull shit. These phonies were in perfect health and were devious enough to use the flawed system to escape their duty. And I just wasn’t that smart.

I was jealous, angry. I was number 134 and the previous year, the draft lottery reached 195. The news reports in early 1971 spoke of needing fewer men, probably going to number 175. Even if they went to 135 I was sunk. By June 71, they were already at 125 and with six months to go, my number was certain to be reached.

I had worked as a copy boy for the editorial page at The New York Times through college and one of my jobs was to tear the AP wire copy from the machine each half hour and distribute it to the editors. In late June, I read that the draft was suspended for the summer since the quota of draftees was sufficient. A short reprieve, but really nothing since there was September, October…The numbers always jumped by 10, so just one more call and I would be opening a draft notice. My life was on hold since I had graduated from college and had the bloody reality of Vietnam looming.

Sometime in August as I was ripping the AP wire from the teletype machine, I stared at a story that reported the draft didn’t need any more men this year. The lottery ended at number 125. Unbelievable. I read and reread the story. Relieved of course, but not really happy. I was saved. I wouldn’t have to fight the terrible mistake of Vietnam and I no longer feared coming home in a body bag like we saw daily on the evening news. I had beaten the system after all.

I told my parents that evening and the news was met with typical silence since they could never understand any of my generation’s beliefs–the opposition to the war, the long hair, the disdain of authority. They and their friends survived the Depression—“Save your money, you’ll need it. They’ll be another one”–and sacrificed lives and years defeating evil. This is what you did and stop your whining. Obey your parents, your Church, your country. There was never a thought to have meat on Friday or to destroy a college campus. Simply incomprehensible. And now you have college punks screaming that the war’s immoral, the government criminal. Not a reason for an argument around the way too small kitchen table, just bewilderment and resolve to re-elect Nixon and those like him.

Like all college kids, my friends all found ways to avoid the Army and we continued to march and protest until the war ended miserably and Nixon was impeached. Exciting times to be young and so very right about everything. But life moved on with jobs and marriages and other stuff. A month or two after I read the AP story, I accompanied my mother to my dad’s doctor who gently told us that he had colon cancer and would be dead in a few months. My mother cried as we walked along the concrete Manhattan sidewalks to his hospital room where we hid the tears and forced a smile. He faded away slowly, praying on his knees every morning and night as he did all his life.

With my young bride, I stayed in my familiar, parochial neighborhood near my mother and 12 year old sister, doing what I could to assist, to comfort. The turmoil of the late 60’s, early 70’s calmed and the bitter politics faded and the more mundane aspects of life emerged—getting a decent job, saving money for a house, enjoying a beer in Farrell’s. I taught English in the local public high school, went to law school at night and grew up.

We were going to change the world, but of course the world changed us. Our college-infused idealism slowly drifted away and we again embraced our roots of family, friends and church. Crime and the uneven Brooklyn streets drove many to the imagined Eden of Long Island or Jersey. We had kids and mortgages to occupy us and our hair grayed and golf replaced the sharp elbows of schoolyard basketball. And we voted for Reagan.

Now there’s another war and the scenes are the same—brave, scared young Marines from Bellington, West Virginia, Osawatomie, Kansas or the Bronx fighting and dying in the dusty streets of Fallujah rather than the steamy jungle of Vietnam. We were right about Vietnam but that never diminished the valor of those who served, those who weren’t selfish like most of my generation. I took the road most traveled and it made a difference and not a good one. Yes, it’s easy from my office overlooking midtown to admit a flaw, now these many years later. Life is hard and so are the choices. Perhaps my father and his buddies had the same doubts, fears. Yet their decisions made them better. Ours didn’t.

Kenneth P. Nolan is a lawyer who lives in Brooklyn.
 

Others from my working class Catholic parish adjacent to the park signed up as well. Mo Maloney was assigned to the carousel where he would collect tickets and throw teens off the ride if they didn’t pay with the inevitable fights that he enjoyed. Franny Hayden was given a push cart full of cracker jacks, the sweet popcorn and peanut mix with the cheap little prizes at the bottom, ice pops and watery orangeade. Stationed somewhere in the park, Franny’s job was somewhat dangerous since this was Brooklyn after all, and in 1965, there were muggings and murders and all that stuff which is why my mother wanted me to work in the cafeteria where it was safe.

So for minimum wage, a whopping $1.25 an hour, I cleaned tables, prepared food and watched the thousands–blacks, Puerto Ricans, Hasidic Jews, ethnic whites like myself–pour into this Depression era zoo on hot weekends because they had nowhere else to go. With their kids running wild, they would stare at the two pathetic polar bears or the unlucky seals in their pool or walk through the stench of the monkey house where an old Parkie would whistle and one mischievous monkey would hurl a piece of apple at the people. He rarely missed. He was the good one. The bad monkey pissed on the visitors.

Rebuilt in 1935, the zoo was like Noah’s ark, only sad. There were elephants and a buffalo that was always shedding, a hippo or two, mangy lions and tigers always asleep, black or brown bears–who knew the difference, and a pathetic rhino that was the target of snowballs in winter. They all appeared healthy, but not happy in their small, barren prison-like cages.

We loved the animals and hated the people who reminded us too much of ourselves but different–having no money and only the public parks and beaches for recreation. Of course in Holy Name parish, we had the Church for CYO basketball games and dances and bazaars, but in the summer we had to depend on the City since we never even heard of the Hamptons.

But we had fun. On breaks, Eddie Babicke would hang out in the yak cage and every Good Friday would refuse to talk to any customer between noon and 3pm. And one particular scorcher of a day, my brother Richard and Eddie Keyes went swimming in the seal pool, but only after the zoo had closed to the general public and the old cop had turned his back, muttering something about crazy kids.

In New York City as a teen, however, you couldn’t just work; first you had to obtain working papers. Because I wasn’t quite 16, I jumped on the Smith Street bus, rode it to State Street near the Long Island Railroad terminal and was given a quick physical by an apathetic doctor. In return, some lady gave me my working papers. There on State Street Johnny Hederman had his first eye exam and was told he needed glasses that he still wears. I still don’t understand the rationale for the perfunctory process. Probably to protect kids from being exploited as was common a generation or so before. But I didn’t really care since all I knew was that I needed a job to pay me money.

So we were proud to get the papers and have a job since spending money was scarce on our streets of large families and working class dads. No one starved of course, but money pervaded our world–a rip of your good pants was a catastrophe engendering a crisp, painful slap or two. You risked serious injury, lowering the smaller kids down sewers or climbing roofs, for a 25 cent Spaldeen, the pink rubber balls with which we played our street games of stickball, stoopball, punch ball. Our bats were always old broom handles. All clothes were bought two sizes too big–he’ll grow into them. You wore your cousin’s hand me down sweater or jacket and didn’t complain that they were out of style. And if you were the last kid born in the family, your clothes were always given to a relative or friend. Nothing good was ever thrown away. Ugly shoes were bought at Mr. Gutters, simply because his were made like iron–lasting months. It also didn’t hurt that he kept a bottle in the backroom for the dads.

The zoo wasn’t really my first job. At 11 I had a paper route delivering The Tablet, the Brooklyn Catholic weekly that everyone read in my neighborhood. A real good job, simple, predictable–just like my world. And one summer, the wrought iron fence of our row house was rusting. So my mother made me take the wire brush and scrape away the rust, prime it, and then paint it black. Since all 70 houses on Sherman Street had the same fence, I found a profession and was hired by Mrs. O’Malley and Nana Quinn down the street and made good money. But at 16, I was too big for the paper route and those fences needed painting every 20 years. And a steady job meant independence, that you were a man, earning your own way.

The zoo cafeteria was functional with metal tables and chairs, constructed of red brick like all the buildings in the zoo. You grabbed your tray and were served sodas, hamburgers, fries, ice cream and milk shakes or malteds, the food that everyone ate before McDonalds took over. The place was run by Bob, an old guy with white hair, whose girlfriend Ann also worked there and liked me. Ann was married and in my parochial world, theirs was the first affair I had ever known.

My parents, like everyone I knew, had survived the Depression and World War II–my dad fought for 3 ½ years in Africa and Europe and never mentioned it. Their lives revolved around Church and family. We lived in a two family red brick row house across the street from where my father was raised and four blocks from my mother’s childhood home. My grandmother Nana with the brogue lived with us and our cousins were downstairs until they joined the exodus to the suburbs. Aunt Rita and Uncle Tom lived a few blocks away and Grandma Maysie lived closer. In our neighborhood, we knew everyone’s relatives, even those who lived on the Island or Jersey since we saw them at Christmas, First Communions, Easter, birthdays. Houses were always filled with kids running about and the parents talking, laughing, having a drink that would inevitably lead to singing well into the night.

Bob and Anne’s affair was difficult to comprehend not only because these were the days before Woodstock and free love but because they were old and physically repulsive. I’m sure some parents in my small world cheated, but to this day, I don’t believe it. And if they did, where could they? Not in my neighborhood–a small town in a city of 8 million. Playing tag, you’re it, I ran into the street from between two cars and was almost hit by a car with the typical screech of brakes and the driver cursing out the window. By the time I arrived home, my mother had already heard all about it.

On the nice spring days, the zoo was mobbed. When it rained, it was empty with only the Parkies, those who worked for the Department of Parks, sipping coffee for hours. The Parkies, in their brown uniforms, never really did anything except feed the animals. A strange eclectic bunch of generally uneducated simple men, and in my arrogant teenage mind, just too dumb and too lazy to do anything else. But they were the power in the zoo, so I treated them with respect and deference, which, of course, was my upbringing. This inherent respect for authority was forever lost a mere three years later during my freshman year at college when a sit-in was broken up by police who nightsticked and bloodied the protestors.

Cleaning tables and collecting half-empty cups of coffee with cigarettes mashed in was not my idea of fun. But this was work and work was never expected to be fun. We had been raised with a Depression mentality, where you didn’t complain about digging ditches in 90-degree heat–you were thankful you had a job so your family could eat. Get a job, work hard, save your money because someday you could lose it all. We were raised on the stories of how my mother walked a mile and a half to high school to save the nickel bus fare or how my father quit high school to work because his father lost everything in the Crash.

So that summer at the zoo we worked and learned. Life was not the simple routine of school, church and stickball. It was cleaning encrusted mustard jars and butts shoved in melted ice cream. And being polite to the customers–pathetic slobs that they were. We Holy Name kids stuck together like we were taught. And of course we knew how to work. So we flipped the burgers, cleaned the tables, became immune to the stench and the ignorance. But as the hot summer days became cooler what amazed me was that I began to like those pathetic slobs, the people my friends despised. Even the disgusting ones, the shiftless Parkies, the stupid, rude mothers ignoring their brats. They were interesting in their faults, their poverty of mind and manner. After all, they were people, just like me, struggling to survive, searching for a slice of joy on a hot summer day at the Prospect Park zoo.

Kenneth P. Nolan is a lawyer who has always lived in Brooklyn.

We were street kids after all, living, playing stickball and off-the-stoop and the hundreds of different games played on the narrow Windsor Terrace streets with car tires and sewers for bases and the huge limbs of the sidewalk London plane trees “in play.” But in the summer, red brick solid PS 154 with its windows protected by metal screens was our world. Softball bases and lines were painted in one corner and hopscotch and skelly boxes in another. New York City hired four counselors, two for the boys and two for the girls, to keep us out of trouble, I guess. Our parents with small, sweltering rooms and too many kids were happy to send us every morning “down the schoolyard,” returning for dinner, dirty and exhausted.

And of course we loved it. There were organized softball games–if you were 5’2” or under–against other local public schools, a volleyball net strung between the basketball pole and the wire fence which protected the houses next to the schoolyard. Dodgeball, punchball, slapball, running bases and so many other games. Best of all was the sprinkler, really just a metal pipe with holes in it attached to the brick wall. The sprinkler was the barometer of our behavior. If it was turned on for an hour or so in the afternoon after the girls finished their softball practice, you knew we behaved–no cursing, smoking or bothering the girls. If we acted up, Ben or Joe, our counselors, really teachers earning a few extra bucks, would punish us by not turning it on no matter how sweltering the weather.

When on, we would run through quickly, sprinkling our clothes. Of course, we would then drag a girl or one another into the water until we were soaked jumping around in the little puddles like Gene Kelly in “Singing in the Rain.” Once you were soaked, you and a friend or two looked for any passing kid to grab and drag into the spray until his sneakers squished. It was cool and wet and all we had much more fun than any water park or pool at some fancy resort.

When the weather was bad, we stayed inside, played slapball amid the hanging pipes and cement pillars. I played ping pong for hours and Raymo Masella, a big tough guy, taught me chess. On occasion, free sodas were handed out but only if you sat through a boring film by the company about how the sodas were made and how great they tasted. Watermelon eating contests meant a free slice which most ate slowly since our mothers would yell at us if we came home having swallowed the pits and stained our tee shirts. And after the counselors went home, Jimmy Sheehan would climb the pipes, the fences like Spiderman to retrieve the balls hit on the roof of the school and the houses adjacent to the schoolyard. We would then begin the games all over again.

If we were bad, we were punished, our parents told and we were punished some more. One kid had his mouth washed out with soap for cursing. Our softball team’s season ended abruptly because we painted our names on the front steps of the school. And it didn’t matter that we only had one loss and could end up in first place. Discipline was part of the program, our culture actually. If you stole or fought or destroyed any property, you were barred from the schoolyard, from your friends, for a day or a week. No questions asked.

In those early years, summers were long and slow, but eventually passed and soon I outgrew PS 154. Just after that, the City ended the program probably because of some phony budget crunch, and the once teeming schoolyard remained empty of laughter and noise. A shame actually, for we learned simple truths: bad behavior was punished; teamwork is important; you don’t need to be rich to have fun; if you were good at a sport, you played, if you weren’t you didn’t; get along with others; compete fairly; good teams win, bad teams lose; if you don’t like these games or aren’t any good, use your imagination and make up another.

We were blessed we were. In our ignorance and innocence. We were happy and our world was tiny and fulfilling. We had everything: family, faith and friendship. It was a simple life, full of laughs and a bit of sorrow. We were young and our only worries were whether we could get a hit, win the game. And it was never as simple or as much fun again.

Kenneth P. Nolan is a lawyer who lives in Brooklyn.