Tues-Thurs, May 27-29, 2014
What follows is a detailed description of a three-day period
during which Dad, David, and I drove all over Brooklyn and Queens, looking to
uncover parts of our family history in New York.
===
Tuesday, May 27
Dad came and met me at my and Leah’s apartment. After having
breakfast at the Windsor Café (Windsor Terrace), we got in the rental car and
drove to the old site of Ebbets Field, off Eastern Parkway. I had never driven
down Eastern Parkway before. Beautiful!! We remarked that it feels like a
European boulevard, as if it could just as easily be in Rome or Vienna (add to
this the grandeur of Grand Army Plaza!). We wondered if it and Ocean Parkway,
as they have similar sounding names and both flank Prospect Park, weren’t also
designed by Edward Olmsted.
We then parked near the site of Ebbets Field. It is now a
city housing project (has been a housing project for longer than it ever was a
baseball field. We walked all around the edges of what would have been the
stadium, reading as we went an article from the NYTimes (2013, on the 100th
anniversary of the Park) that described as walking tour around the old stadium.
The article included many interesting facts about the players, managers, team,
and fans throughout Brooklyn Dodger history. Dad was good at remembering the
names of many of the players and managers. Dad told me the story (as he had
told me before) of a time that he and his dad went to a Dodger game together. (He estimated that he might have been 4-10 years old.) After the game (or maybe during?), his dad walked him over to
Prospect Park Zoo. This was a fond memory for both of us, for me particularly
because Leah and I live on Prospect Park. We remarked how small Ebbetts field
was (it didn’t take long at all to walk the whole perimeter), and noted that
older stadiums were built smaller—think, for example, Fenway. As we walked
along the perimeter of the field, we noticed the Jackie Robinson Public
Elementary School. We took pictures by a mural of Jackie and the classic façade
of Ebbets field, while looking right across the street at the corner where the
façade would have stood!! We went inside the school (with the permission of a
security guard) and were greeted by the principle, who was very friendly and
told us that he students (grades 3-5) watched the movie 42 when it came out, and the Jackie and his “Nine Core Values” are
a part of the school’s curriculum. (Dad also mentioned to me a memory of once
playing softball at the field by his apartment building, and how he hit a
homerun while his dad was watching, and how proud he felt.)
We then drove down Ocean Parkway on our way out to Manhattan
Beach. Ocean Parkway is also very beautiful. Like Eastern Parkway, it is quite
wide, with a separated bicycle/pedestrian lane of the southbound side, and what
was once a bridal path (dad told me) on the northbound side. On the drive down,
dad told me that his grandmother (his dad’s mom) and other relatives used to
live somewhere just to the east of Ocean Parkway. We couldn’t quite figure out
where.
We arrived at Manhattan Beach, where Grandpa Harry, Grandma
Sally, and dad lived from the time that Grandpa Harry came back from WWII until
dad was five (1950). Harry was 39 when dad was born, Sally was 36—old for that
time to first have kids; but then, they had waited until after the War to get
married. There had been a military train facility there during the war, and it
was subsequently converted to a housing unit for soldiers returning from war
when the war ended. The space is now Kingsborough Community College. Outside of
the college campus, there are some very nice houses in Manhattan Beach. Where
dad remembers that his mom used to push him in a stroller. One day, he told me,
they saw a big dog barking at him, and he remembers that they got scared. Dad
had a picture of him as an infant (one year old, maybe) being held by his
grandma (I think his dad is maybe also in the picture), and his cousins—at
least one from each set of aunts/uncles (two others.) They are in Manhattan
Beach, sitting on a piece of playground equipment in the form of a giant
concrete cylinder on its side in which a small child might crawl. We walked all
over the KBCC campus, hoping that we might find this piece of playground, but
with no success. We went into the campus library and into the Office of the
President, where we were able to get some leads on tracing the history of the
space when it was still a post-war army housing complex. More on that on
Thursday… We walked along the water at the edge campus, looking across at the
Rockaways. We noted how seemingly fitting it is that the housing units should
now be a community college—reflecting that many of the students at the
community college might be first generation college students, and that dad’s
dad was also a first generation college student in his family. (Although he was
very bright, he didn’t end up finishing—his father got ill, and he started
working to help take care of the family—what dad describes as one of his father’s
big regrets.) We also walked along the north side of Sheepshead Bay, where
there had once been some fancy restaurants.
We drove from here through Brighton Beach (his grandma had
lived in a small house on Brighton First Place, or Brighton First Walk, or one
of those little streets), under the elevated train line (fun!), to Coney
Island. We parked, and rode the Cyclone!! We both agreed: wooden rollercoasters
and better and more thrilling that metal, upside down ones. Dad said, as the
car came coasting to a halt: “They don’t make rollercoasters like that anymore!”
We ate at Nathan’s (the original location, on Ocean Ave, not
the one on the Boardwalk). We then walked along Ocean Avenue, over towards the
Brooklyn Cyclones stadium, and down to the Parachute Jump.. It is surprisingly
tall!! 26 stories. We called mom from there. She recalled that she had always
wanted to go on the Parachute Jump, but by the time she was old enough (or tall
enough?), it had closed down. [We read later that the Jump closed down in
1965.] Mom also recalled that once, Grandma Betty had ridden the ride, and that
she had lost her shoe! (In funny Betty fashion.) We walked out onto the Pier,
which was nice.Then back down the boardwalk, where we looked at the
interesting, now-vacated building of (what we later discovered had once been)
Child’s Restaurant. We then noticed that a gate to Brooklyn Cyclone’s stadium
was open for a little league practice/game, so we walked in. Very nice—the
ballpark overlooks the Boardwalk, the Paracute Jump, and the Cyclone, the
Wonderwheel, and the rest of the Coney Island attractions. We saw a cool quote
inside the stadium from Walt Whitman about baseball when it was first being
played in Brooklyn. We walked back up the Boardwalk, took a picture in front of
the Wonderwheel (original structure, opened in 1920).
We then drove up to New Utrecht High School, in Bensonhurst,
where Grandpa Harry graduated from High School in 1926(7?). We saw the
cornerstone on the building—1922-3, which means that Grandpa Harry would have
been in one of the first graduating classes, if not the first graduating class
to go through all four years at the school. Beautiful school—looked like Leon
High in Tally. Stately, brick architecture. A quote above the doorway: “Tyranny
begins where law ends.” We walked around the new sports field, where there was
a cool school mural and we took a picture. The security guard inside the school
told us that it has a reputation as a good school. There were a number of signs
written in Chinese in the neighborhood, and we saw a variety of ethnicities at
the sports field. A security guard told us that this is where they filmed Welcome Back, Kotter. We remarked that
we wished we knew where Harry had lived.
We then drove out to Mill Basin, where dad’s Uncle and Aunt
Lou and Min Scheinberg used to live. (Min was Grandpa Harry’s younger of two
younger sisters; the older of the two was Anne; the sister who was older than
him died when he was a young man—maybe in his 20s. Min introduced Grandpa Harry
to her friend [Grandma] Sally Finkelstein.) We drove around looking for where
we thought Lou’s first house was out there, but we couldn’t quite find it. We
then drove into Mill Basin proper, and as soon as we passed the park near the
front of the neighborhood, Dad’s sense of direction immediately kicked in. He
recognized the park and the playground, and in no time had navigated his way to
the street where Uncle Lou lived. We rolled down the window and asked a man
(maybe about 50-years-old) sweeping his driveway: “Did you know Lou
Scheinberg?” Immediately, the man pointed out the house to us. We talked to the
man (his name was Nicky) for a while; he, along with Uncle Lou and family, was
among the first families on the block to buy their houses. He knew Uncle Lou
well, and did know that he had died; he told us that Michael (Lou’s son) owned
the house now, but rents it out to tenants. (Michael lives in Jersey.) Dad
reminded me of the story from about 10 years ago (approximately 2004) when he
drove out here looking for Uncle Lou’s house. Back then, as now, dad asked a
stranger on the street which one was Lou Scheinberg’s house and the person told
him. Dad knocked on the door, and as soon as Uncle Lou opened it, at age 90, he
said: “Robert!” They went inside the house together, which was not in good
shape—seeing many pictures of his parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and
grandparents all around the house, dad burst into sobbing. Uncle Lou gave him
that day a picture of his family (which must have been from the 50s or 60s),
which dad then copied and sent to his cousin (Marion?). Unfortunately, he has
since lost the picture.
Leaving Mill Basin, we headed downtown to the Main Branch of
the Brooklyn Post Office, where Grandpa Harry would have worked for 30-some-odd
years. Dad had never been there with him. The building is bueatiful—right in
the heart of downtown Brooklyn, next to Borough Hall. It was a lovely, breezy
summer evening. We remarked what a nice place it must have been to work—to come
out of the post office and be in the beauty of downtown Brooklyn. We also
remarked how incredible it is that the post office is housed in such a grand
building. This seemed to fit with our other reflections on the Postal Service
of the 1940s-50s, how the postal workers used to wear ties to work, that it was
a job they were proud of.
Wednesday, May 28
We drove out to Queens. Dad showed me around in Forest
Hills, where there were some magnificent homes. As a young man, dad worked as a
stage guard at the music venue at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. He recalled for
me some of the concerts he guarded at, and about a time when a big fellow, who
told dad that he played football for Cornell(?), tried to rush the stage.
Unclear if dad tried to stop this person or not. He also recalled for me how
during the US Open, they used to position young men as guards in front of the
houses in Forest Hills, to keep people from wandering into these gorgeous
homes. I can’t recall if dad served as one of these guards.
We picked up David at the Continental Avenue-Forest Hills
subway station (E/F). We started the morning by driving to the pharmacy where
dad had worked as a young man as a medicine delivery boy (he was likely in High
School). He split the part time job with two of his friends, rotating days. The
pharmacy is still there, slightly bigger. We then were able to find where he
used to go to the doctor. The doctor that he used to visit, dad recalled
fondly, used to make home calls, even for an illness as slight as a cold. The
doctors—a married couple—who now practice in dad’s doctor’s office also still
make house calls, we learned; they also still had dad’s doctor’s little black
bag. One of the nurses retrieved it from a hallway closet to show us, and we
took some pictures with it. We couldn’t find any sign of the doctor’s name or
initials inscribed on the bag.
We then drove to the little shul where dad had his bar
mitzvah ceremony (Beit Knessent Tikvat
Yisrael Shalom). Dad told us that he had stopped going to religious school
as a young boy (his parents were not religious), but before his bar mitzvah, he
started tutoring. The bar mitzvah was held on the ground floor in the rear of a
private residence, in what is still today a small shul. We were able to get
into the entry hallway, but not into the shul.
We then drove to the Pomonok housing project, where dad
lived for 20 years—from age 5 until the day he was married at age 24 (including
through college). This was dad’s world! It was here that dad and two other boys
formed the Pomonok Bicycle Association—or, their code name for it, PBA: Pears,
Bananas, and Apples. Pomonok is (as I understand it) technically a part of
Flushing—just south of the Long Island Expressway. Dad lived at 67-08 Parsons
Boulevard, Apt. 5C. We remarked that the housing complex had “aged well”—especially
in comparison to some other areas we visited. The building is one of several on
dad’s side of the street, that all share a small paved and green space between
them. Here, dad used to play ball in the small parking lot, at any number of
stoops, or on the game-boards painted on the concrete. They would play
punchball, slapball, stoopball (number of bounces = number of bases), pitching,
touch football, a hop scotch-like game involving the throwing of a little tab
and hoping over the square on which it lands, and a game in which you filled a
bottle cap with wax and flicked it around a square game-board, trying to hit
all the squares in their numbered order. We had bought a Pensy Pinky-type ball
earlier in the day, and we played a round or two of several of these games.
This is the same play space from which dad would (famously) shout up to Grandma
Sally: “Ma! Throw down ten-cents! (Jack) The ice-cream man is here!” I was
overcome with amazement that dad spent 20(!) years of his life, in this
apartment and around this common area. There was also, between another set of
buildings, a little paved space with benches where dad said they used to hang
out as teenagers to talk to girls and what not.
We went up into the dad’s building and took pictures in
front of his doorway. He described for us their four-room apartment (as I
remember it): a living and dinning space on either side, immediately as you
come in. On the right side, behind that, a kitchen, and then his parent’s room.
On the left side, his room. We then went up onto the roof, where dad pointed
out Queens college, Kissena Park, the direction towards mom’s house, and across
the street, Elechester—another housing project that was owned(?) by the
electrician’s union, where several of dad’s friends lived. Dad showed us the
little window by the elevator from which he used to look out into the parking
lot to see if anybody was playing. He recalled for us dreams—which, subsequently,
have been very affective and resonant to me—of looking out this window to see
who was playing, and that there would be no one there.
We then walked down to where dad went to elementary school
(from the 2nd grade onward; he had gone to Kindergarten and 1st
elsewhere) and was part of the school’s first class. We remarked that it seemed
fitting that dad was in the first 2nd grade class of his elementary
school, and that Grandpa Harry was in the first (9th grade?) class
of his high school. We went into the
school, where, after signing in with a security guard, we were able to meet the
principal. She was very welcoming,
and gave us a tour of the school. She seemed to be thrilled to be meeting someone who attending the school in it’s
very first year! The gym was exactly as dad remembered it, and she showed us a
new (and nice!) library. We went into the cafeteria, which dad said “smelled
exactly as he remembered it,” and then into a 4thish grade class
assembly. They were watching a film, and the principal introduced dad and
several teachers and the assistant principal. The assistant principal seemed
even more thrilled than the principal had! She got in the microphone in the
auditorium and introduced Dad to all the students. Dad said a few words to the
students too—that, along with his fond memories of attending the school, the
school was part of what made him a good person today, and that he hopes that
the school will have the same effect on them. Before we left, the principal
mentioned that someone was working on a documentary about the school, and she
asked dad to give him her email address, which he did.
We then went out to the big playground where dad used to
hang out. It’s a concrete space—with a section shaped like a softball field
with an infield painted on the ground, and several basketball and handball
courts. On Saturdays, this was the place to rush to as early as possible to see
what games guys were playing and if you could get in one. Dad has a memory of
having one day had a particularly great afternoon, and hitting something like
seven big shots (a few homers, plus?) in a game.
We then ate at a little deli (new) down the street. We then drove into Queens College, where we
walked around campus. We went into the gym, hoping to see the display case that
talked about a famed women’s basketball coach at the college, and in which mom,
as a PE major and team manager to the team, was pictured. We had
seen this display case the last time we were at Queens college (maybe 5-10
years ago). The display was still there, but mom’s picture was no longer in it.
This is also where dad took mom on their second date—to a college basketball
game!
We then drove to where dad had worked as a full-service gas
station attendant (at the corner of Horace Harding Expressway and Fresh Meadow
Lane). It was here that (famously), after dad had had a successful first few
weeks on the job, one of his co-workers said to him: “Stop working so hard,
you’re making the rest of us look bad.” The gas station is now a Dunkin’ Donuts.
We drove to the Housing Plan where dad and mom first met. A
Housing Plan was something like a fraternity—guys would go in together to rent
a house near campus where they could hang out. Maybe one person lived in the
house. Dad’s housing plan held a road rally, to which mom was invited. The minute she walked in the room, dad said
to his friend: “That’s the girl I want to spend time with.” Mom had made
sandwiches (tomato and cheese), which dad ate and pretended to like.
They were assigned to the same car for the road rally; but she had been paired
off to sit with dad’s friend, and dad had been paired off to sit with another
girl. Dad asked his friend if they could switch seats so that he could sit next
to mom. The house didn’t look quite as dad had remembered it.
(Can’t quite remember the order here, but I think that
next…) We drove to a little picnic spot underneath what had long ago been the
Long Island Motor Parkway (1908-1938), and that when dad was a kid was a nice
pedestrian/bike trail. This had been the first limited-access freeway in the US,
modeled after similar highways and raceways in Europe. Here, dad and his
parents used to have little picnics, and he and his dad would throw the ball.
We threw each other some pop-flys to catch, and also had a little pitching game
along what is now the bike trail. (Later on in the afternoon, we drove to
another entrance to the Parkway, which was in a nice park.)
We then drove to Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, Queens,
where Grandpa Izzy, Grandma Betty, and Aunt Stella are buried, and where many
of dad’s relatives are buried in the Suchman Family Circle—Grandpa Harry’s
sisters, their husbands, dad’s cousin, and dad’s grandparents. We placed stones
at all the gravesites, and dad said a few words for each of them.
We then drove to one of dad’s aunts’ house, which was near
the cemetery.
After this, we headed out to where mom grew up in Little
Neck, just beyond the Cross Island Parkway, the last neighborhood in Queens
County (and thus, the city) before Nassau County (Long Island). Mom lived, from
the age of 3, at 58-42 251st Street on the ground floor of a duplex. Mom’s
neighborhood, we noted, has “aged very well,” to the point that dad thinks the
area looks even better now than it did when mom lived there. He explained that
at some point, the buildings went from rental condos to being up for purchase.
The space really looked good, with nice landscaping and well-kept buildings. Mom’s
building was situated as one of six-or-so on a cul-de-sac, which they called a “court.” It is here that mom
(famously), when riding her bike one day around the median at the center of the
cul-de-sac, crashed into the egg man
as he was making his deliveries. Mom was very embarrassed. The couple who now
own what was once mom’s apartment were very friendly and let us in. They said
that they had bought the apartment in the early/mid-80s, from a young couple
(whom we figured must have bought the apartment from Izzy, and lived in it only
a few years). When you enter the apartment, you are in the living room (which
faced towards the door when it was mom’s). Behind the living room, a kitchen
and what is now a dining room (which, as I understand it, was Aunt Stella’s
room). To the left of that and next to the living room are a couple of
bedrooms, one of which was mom’s, the other Grandpa Izzy and Grandma Betty’s.
We called mom from the living room, and she asked if there was still “the giant
wall mirror” in the living room—which there wasn’t. Outside, we Face-Timed with
mom and showed her around the court. It was in this court, walking around the
corner to Aunt Etty and Uncle Hy’s house, that dad famously asked mom: “So do
you wanna get married?” While Face-Timing, mom and dad disagreed about where
exactly along the sidewalk this question was asked. (Dad thought closer to the
apartment, mom thought around the corner.) We then walked through a little
green space on the side of court, across the street to Etty and Hy’s place.
Maybe a four-minute walk. This is where Cousins Randi, Carrie, and Stu all grew
up. Dad showed us the places where he and little Stuart (who was three when dad
met mom) used to play outside. We took a short video and sent it to Cousin Stu
(who we had seen just that weekend when his family came to town to see Caissie
in Les Mis). We remarked how nice it
must have been to have had Ettie and Hy so nearby—that you could easily bake a
dish and walk it over to one another’s houses for a holiday, for example. Dad
reminded us of the story when it was snowing and he couldn’t drive to mom’s
house, and how he walked there—about six miles. (“In the snow! Uphill both
ways!”)
We then drove to Bay Side High School, where mom went. Really nice building—very much in the
1930s stately, classic, place-of-learning style that characterized Grandpa
Harry’s New Utrecht High School (Leon High in Tally). After this we drove to
Francis Lewis High School, where dad went. The school looked more like Lincoln
High in Tally—less classic looking, more functional. We then drove to the first
house that mom and dad moved into together after they got married (in August of
1971). They rented the bottom floor of a house from a couple with a hilarious
Jewish name (Manya and Murray Mendelsson). The house is at 148-05 84th
Street, in Jamaica.
Dad then drove us through the heart of Jamaica, where the
elevated train used to run above Jamaica Avenue. You could tell where the
elevated line ended, because the street got wider there. This neighborhood not
aged so well. Dad took us to the banquet hall (Regency) where he and mom got married—a
big multi-plex banquet hall (where dad celebrated his bar mitzvah
too). Mom once worked at a department store near there (Mays), folding shirts. The space is now a public school. Across the street from the school was
a neighborhood that had particularly not aged well.
We then had dinner at a diner, where dad used to go. Dad
showed us many old pictures of his family, from his dad and his sisters and
their husbands, and even a few of dad’s grandparents. He showed us the very
old-looking picture (the one that we have remarked looks as if it could be an
immigration photo) of Grandma Sally’s parents and her older sisters and
brothers. David noticed that, unusual for the time and unique in the picture,
Grandma Sally’s father was smiling in the photo—he looked relaxed, happy, confident,
as if he understood that smiling in photos was the thing to do.
Dad also happened to have a the torn-off cover to one of
Grandpa Harry’s school notebooks. On the back of the cover, Harry had written
his college schedule (at St. John’s College, which was then in Brooklyn and is
now in Queens)—what classes he took, which days of the week, what time, and who
taught them, and the year 1927. Dad had saved it for this reason. I noticed
that if you turned the schedule around, you could see that he had written “H.
Reiser” and then an address—as if to say “if found, please return to….” We
looked this address up, and discovered that it was in Bensonhurst, right around
the corner from New Utrecht High School, where Harry went to school. We figured
that this must have been where Grandpa Harry lived—at least the year that he
started college, if not before and after then as well. And just the day before,
we had remarked that we wished we knew where he had lived! We planned to go
there the next day.
Thursday, May 29
The address on the inside cover of Grandpa Harry’s school
notebook read: 7324 18th Avenue. After having a bagel at Connecticut
Muffin (Windsor Terrace), dad and I drove down Ocean Parkway and turned right
on 18th Avenue. After passing
through the edge of Borough Park and a very Hasidic area, we drove through a
highly Chinese area, until we got to the address. The building is three stories
and on the corner, with a hardware store on the ground level facing 18th
Ave. We walked around to the back of the building, where there was a separate
entrance for the apartments. The door was open, so we went in, up the slightly
crooked stairway, and onto the roof. It was a very emotional experience for
both of us, particularly for dad. We imagined Harry coming up on this same
roof. From the roof, you could see the Verrazano Bridge (which wouldn’t have
been built yet when Grandpa Harry lived there) and straight on to downtown
Manhattan. New Utrecht High School stood out from among the trees a few blocks
away. I wondered (to myself) if Grandpa Harry had ever snuck up here to smoke
cigarettes—I also reflected (in a separate but related thought) that 1927, the
date on the notebook, was in the Roaring 20s. Dad said he was trying to channel
his father as much as possible. (Not too hard for a guy who, as I understand
it, is just like him.) We talked about how this was likely the place where he
lived even before starting college, in high school, possibly even as a child. I
asked dad whether or not he knew if Harry’s father—dad’s Grandpa Alex
(Alexander), after whom dad got his middle name, Allan—who was born in Lvov,
Galicia (Lemberg, Ukraine), spoke English well; dad did not know (he died when
Grandpa Harry was a young adult). We took pictures in front of all the doors in
the apartment building (we didn’t know which one would have been his). We went
into the hardware store, where we told several people (including the owner, who
didn’t seem to understand English very well) that dad’s dad had lived there in
1927. A women shopping in the hardware store was pretty impressed. We took
pictures by the building and by the street signs.
We then drove over the New Utrecht High School (would have
been a 10 minute walk for Grandpa Harry), where we took a picture of the name
of school engraved across the crown finish of the building.
Since our Tuesday afternoon at KBCC, we had received an
email from the college archivist that she did in fact have a few photos and
blueprints of the campus when it was still an army facility. We called her and
planned to go meet her on campus. We drove down to Manhattan Beach, where in
the archive room of the library, she showed us an aerial photo of the site when
it was a military training facility (during the war). On a couple of early
blueprints for building the college, there was drawings of how the army housing
unit had been laid out (after the war). The blueprints mentioned that an army
obstacle training course had been converted into a playground for the housing
units. We suspected that this might have been the area in which the photo from
Tuesday (of one-year-old Robert on a playground) was taken. The archivist was
very friendly and helpful. Coincidentally, she had studied Library Sciences at
Queens College (the area in which dad started his graduate studies at Arizona
State University, but changed early on).
