I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, as if I needed to specify. For the first 8 years or so of my life I lived with my 4 siblings and my parents in an apartment building.

When the area started getting rough, my parents moved us to a two family home. We rented the top floor.

On the first floor was the landlady and we were constantly reminded to behave so she wouldn’t get upset and throw us out.

It was a nice house and we were around 100 feet from a schoolyard. We would play everything there and stay out until I heard my mom calling me home.

My mom worked and also was a housewife and mother. There was always dinner when we would come home after school. The house would be spotless and she would always be there when we needed her.

We had a laundry line outside my parents’ bedroom. My mom would wash specific items and then hang them on the rope, fastened with wooden clips. The line was located above our garage and it extended towards the telephone pole 30 feet away.

Summers were hot and humid, and air conditioning was a luxury that few families could afford. Nevertheless, we made the most of the summer months with trips to the beach and picnics in the park.

One of our favorite foods to picnic on was, fried chicken from a store called, “Mazon,” a restaurant on Kings Highway and East 10th Street. The chicken was always perfectly cooked and juicy, and it came with a side of coleslaw and potato salad. We would often eat our fried chicken on the beach, watching the waves crash against the shore. It was a simple pleasure, but it made the summers all the more memorable.

Other times we would bring the coals and a barbecue grill. My mom would bring Hot dogs and hamburgers, potato chips and pretzels.
We would come off the beach and head to the benches where my mother would have set up a table for us.


We would eat and then she would give us towels and we would go shower in the public showers. We would come out clean, tanned and laughing.


My mother would call my father on the payphone and tell him to pick us up. He would come driving up Oriental boulevard in our big sky blue Chevy Impala. Always with a smile on his face and a kiss for my mom.

My mom would do anything for her children to the point of exhaustion. She never left the house without makeup or her hair done or covered with a kerchief. Beautiful.

We had a television set which was a big piece of wooden furniture. As long as I remember that TV never worked. We would sit a black and white TV on top of it. A wire hanger was pushed into the broken antenna. We would all gather to watch. Sitting on the floor jockeying for position. Laying on my stomach, face in my hands. We had channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. Once in a while I would change to the UHF channels and I would see a different station through a snowy screen. I actually picked up baseball games over 100 miles away.


My mom would make us dinner, Monday was a meat dish, burgers, steak or meat loaf.
Tuesday was fish day.
Wednesday was chicken or a tuna casserole.


Thursday? Oh man. Ravioli and flan. My favorite food back then and to this very day. Cheese ravioli we would buy from 86th Street. It would come in rectangular boxes, white and orange checkered with a string wrapped around it to stop it from opening. Hunts tomato sauce and muenster cheese… just writing this is making me salivate…


Friday night my mom would always prepare a feast. Delicious traditional Jewish Syrian foods. We would gather in the kitchen dining area and my father would sing the blessings on the grape juice and the challah.

We would sit around and talk about different things. To be honest I don’t recall what we did talk about, I can tell you most of the time the dinner would end in an argument and a slammed door.


For dessert my mom would put out a plate of jello and some fruit.

Saturday lunch we would gather for the prayers and eat leftovers from the night before. We would sit around again and…an argument would ensue…

Saturday evenings my father would do the cooking. He would first go out and buy the Sunday Daily News which was wrapped with a comic section. Then he would place English muffins in the toaster, while it was toasting he would mix the tomato sauce and grate the cheese. It was really something delicious. We would then gather and watch Mary Tyler Moore and the Carol Burnett show.

On Summer days, the Good Humor man would show up around 4 o’clock. His name was Benny and he was an older man with a Good Humor uniform and hat. Chocolate fudge cake was my go to.

There was a lot of time I spent alone. I would sit on the floor in the backyard next to a puddle of water, find a leaf and put an ant on it. It would sail away. I would create scenes on the puddle and literally spend hours there.

I was a loner and there was always an emptiness inside, even when I was with friends and in a crowd.

One weekend during the summer, we would have a block party. Our block would be closed to traffic and at some point the fire hydrants would be opened. Out would come freezing water we would stand under, running and dancing. Trucks with rides would come, a horse drawn wagon, a fire engine would also show for us kids to ride.

Transistor radios would be playing different stations. 99x, 102.7 WNEW and 1010 WINS. baseball games would be listened to as well. There were the Mets on my porch and the Yankees on others.

At night the window screens would lose the battle to the mosquitos. I would lay awake sweating with mosquitoes living and buzzing in my ears.

In 1977 I fell in love with girls. But there was this one girl, black hair and blue eyes who lived next door from me. We became friends and inseparable that summer.

We would walk together and laugh. She loved to climb trees and taught me how to climb a fence. We would spend the majority of our time together.

We used to ride our bikes to this park where we could get lost in the woods. Well, not really lost, the park was surrounded by Brooklyn streets. But we would act lost and it was there thate we first held hands and later on, kissed each other.

She taught me to climb the garage. We would sit on the roof of the garage and talk for hours. We would listen to the transistor radio and just laugh and cry. I cannot remember what we spoke about, or what we laughed and cried about. It was our summer and we thought we would be together forever.

She was from an Italian family and her grandmother was always in the kitchen with an apron on baking and cooking. Since I am kosher, I couldn’t eat most of what she made. She would tell me in her Italian accent, “You don’t know what you are missing.”

Forever came to an abrupt end when, in the fall of 1977 she moved to Long Island, leaving without a word or a goodbye.

She did write me a post card and apologized for not telling me. Her parents wanted her to move on from her old friends and make new ones. So she wrote to tell me goodbye.


When Angela wasn’t around, I spent my time riding my bicycle around the corner over and over. I knew each and every crack in the sidewalks. I would become Evil Knievel and use a root from a tree to jump.

I would play wiffleball and pretend to be Dave Kingman hitting and Tom Seaver pitching.

I would throw a ball against our stoop. (The stairs leading to our porch, usually around 4 or 5 steps) and wear my Mets hat, jacket and pretend to be playing a game. I was Bob Murphy calling the game.


My mom and I would spend great times together. She would bring me to the movies, a Broadway show called, “Beatlemania,” and to Shea stadium to see the Mets play. One year she brought my to the Old Timers Game, I stood by the field and Tommy Holmes threw a ball and after, graciously signed it.

She would bring me to all the movies, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, the Way We Were… hey wait a minute each of those starred Robert Redford! There was an ulterior motive.

I am a man hurdling towards 60 years of age and still feeling blessed for the parents who shaped me into the man, the father and grandfather I am.

I looked up Angela a couple of years ago only to find out she passed away from cancer. But I found out she was a mother to four wonderful kids and her husband actually became my friend on Facebook, we correspond frequently.


There are so many times I wish I could go back and simply play in a puddle, throw a Spalding against the stoop or even ride a bicycle around the corner, over and over…

Age can be a funny thing. I still see myself as a young handsome man, only to be shocked into reality when I see my reflection. My looks have gone and my age is written in my eyes.

I still feel lonely and sad, for no reason at all. I work all day and I dream in between, of another universe in which different choices were made.


I am blessed with love and my health. I feel overwhelmed because there is so much I want to do but I am unable to…

Those bills and those bills. We pay for the luxury we choose. There is so much we gain and so much that we lose.

I once stood proud and sure. But life can knock you down and force you to kneel.

The stuff that life is made of. Her, them and nature. Music, food and the talking pictures. Books and writing.


Writing… my catharsis which helps me to escape and to remember. My talent which I must over estimate because not many others seem to be impressed. But it’s for me, you see?

Blessed, I haven’t won or conquered. I have been blessed.