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My father and I emerge from the long green canopy and stand outside the Ansonia Hotel on Broadway where we live. It’s Sunday afternoon. 1949. Winter. A chill wind blows. I am four. My father wears his gray felt fedora at a jaunty angle, the shadow from the brim hiding one eye. That fedora with the grosgrain ribbon is my father. He’s [...]
My very first marriage proposal came from the guy behind the counter at H&H Bagels on 80th and Broadway. I was around twelve and realize now he was most likely just looking for a tip or playing with the shy girl who was only recently allowed to go out from her school to buy her own lunch. I said, "No,” [...]
(for ELG) My dad, who served as an MP in Okinawa just after the war, had strong views on inter-racial dating, because of all the mixed-race babies he saw there, half-breed bastards, he called them, rejected by the Okinawans, and ignored by the American GIs who’d fathered them. As his teenaged son in the late 1960s, I caught the [...]
Each summer it was a requirement that my brothers and I attend summer school. We could not be idle. We must all do something to further our education. My mother, Dot, laid down the law. She was formidable—not standing more than 5’4”, she wielded the power in our household. My father, though technically present, was a “street man.” He [...]
Fifth Avenue entrance to Sunset Park My five-year-old daughter Claudia loves to go up and down the hills of Sunset Park on her scooter. We put her little crash helmet on and push her up the park hills, but she loves to go down them herself, having become an expert braker and master of turns. She loves to go fast [...]
It’s the middle of the season and my son won’t swing at the ball. Jesse is seven and this is his third year playing league baseball. For the entire season he hasn’t swung the bat. Since the pitchers on the other teams have little or no control, he is almost always assured of getting a walk. A success of sorts. [...]
It’s a bone chilling day in winter as I park my car on a side street next to the Cyclone roller coaster. My head is spinning with all these old Brooklyn memories, and I’ve come back here now looking for signs of them, looking for pieces left behind from the sad sweep of time. Sometimes, when the sky is just [...]
