Sunday Memories - A Visit from Another Her New York: "I Just Happen to Live in NJ"

Tina, a writer and mother of four, remembers Her New York (Brooklyn), and one I only knew as on the other side of the bridge and somewhere near Coney.


"When I was a teenager, I would take the train everywhere. I grew up in the Cypress Hills Housing projects and I had this boyfriend in Astoria and I just figured out which trains to take, I was 13? The RR train to Astoria, almost the last stop on the RR. I showed up at his house and he asked me what I was doing there and I said 'I wanted to see you.' He took me back to Brooklyn! Well, that was the end of that. Later, I had another boyfriend up in Harlem so I had to get the IRT from the A and I met people there, older than me who told me they had NEVER been to Brooklyn. They were New Yorkers and Harlemites but downtown to them was 34th Street."

Tina met her husband of 28 years when he moved into the same apartment building. They eventually moved to New Jersey to raise their family in a safer environment. I asked how her children were children of New Yorkers and how they were New Jersey natives.


"They are very independent. My 14 year old daughter travels from NJ to NY on her own. I'm in constant contact with her by cell phone, but she travels by herself. Has since she was ten. My younger son (in his 20's) is very street savvy. However, they don't have the same insecurities that I have. Like with the police. I grew up in the 'hood' and police were not our friends. My kids are OK with the police. My older son wants to be one and is on the list. On the other hand, they're a bit more sheltered. Once my daughter said some people looked too scary to her. I told her 'you have family that looks like that.' And when I was in school we had 40 kids to a class. Here they say oh we have such crowded classrooms and they're talking about 20 kids."

She has lived in NJ for many, many years now but NY never quite leaves us, no matter where we travel.


"NYers are much more well-rounded. We're exposed to all sides - poverty, richness. I met someone who had never met a gay person. Well, that's what they thought but nothing I said could change their mind. When my job required to me to travel, I had to go to Texas for a task force and I was like 'let's get to the point.' We take charge, get down to business - a natural leadership. Someone there said to me, 'I can't get over your accent.' I was like, 'what accent?' And there's the driving to stores or to food/restaurants. When I transferred to a job in the middle of NJ, I had to drive. I asked someone where did they go for lunch? They pointed to a gas station across the highway. Every lunch hour people would go to the deli at the gas station. THAT'S where I draw the line. I'm not eating at a gas station. And the quiet. The actual quiet. Took some getting used to. Well, I may lay my head in NJ but my heart is in Brooklyn. I want my ashes spread over the Brooklyn Bridge."

It Was Her Anomaly

For a second I thought parts of Florence had come back to life. Same sneakers, cheekbones and that skinny body bursting with life, but in jeans and a bandana.

She was staring at all the reading glasses. Only the pharmacist saw me hiding behind a corner and quietly snapping pictures. He didn't to say anything, even though he had that uncomfortable look of 'that's not allowed here I wish I were a manager and could say so." It's possible he thought we were related, both of us dressed like one another and different from everyone else in the store.

Finally she stomped just like Florence over to the counter and told him she needed glasses but couldn't figure out which one was which and how did she know which one was which and which one would be the one she could read with and although he was swamped and the only one at the counter he came out and tried to explain to her which was which and what was what.

"I can't read my newspaper!" she exclaimed, as he pointed here and there. You just knew it was the Times she was talking about.

Perhaps it was all the times strangers stopped for Florence or perhaps it was all the times I wish I had, but I found myself standing at the rack handing her different strengths and styles and explaining and commenting and sure enough she picked the pair with the least bells and whistles and the one most fitting for someone with a soul like a razor and a face that defied the contradiction of age and beauty.

When The Past is Screaming To Be Heard, A Rule...

Found in an old journal, Florence's instructions to me.

"A rule....., always have a (small) piece of paper & a pencil (the stub is just right for necessary jots of info - size is all) in your pocket - it is never lost & it fills memory to perfection!"


*With thanks to Alana. Her camera is her version of a small piece of paper and a stub of a pencil. "My research has been my outlet here, walking everywhere and photographing signs that sometimes are barely visible or stumbling on a piece of paper or address of a person I am researching at the archives and realizing that someone else had growing pains too and if they could do it so can I, ...very grateful that this is my home and to paraphrase Alfred Kazin, the past is screaming to be heard..think I've pulled it out of every crevice."

Sunday Memories - A Visit from Another Her New York

Barbara, a minister in New Hampshire remembers Her New York, one I only knew in glamorous movies where women had curves and to show them off in wonderful dresses of black and white.


Aunt Toots
"My Aunt Toot lived at 212 E. 48th Street from the time I was born (almost 70 years ago) till around the late 60's. A very sophisticated executive secretary for RT Vanderbilt, she introduced me to my first alcoholic drink when I was about 18. After seeing me turn up my nose to a dry sherry, she fixed me a home squeezed Tom Collins and I've been drinking gin ever since.

Tootie made most all of my dresses till I finished graduate school, using the same pattern and varied types of material. This was very helpful as my hips were so much larger than my waist that it was almost impossible to buy ready made dresses.




One of the great times was when my mother and I took an overnight train to the city from Maine. I can't imagine why it would have taken all night. We did things like the Ice Follies and taping of the Perry Como show, also saw Victor Borge.

Aunt Toot never went outside without her veil and gloves. Her scent was Chanel No. 5. When I visited her, she would take me to great places for lunch--I also wore white gloves but not a veil! And of course we always went to Radio City Music Hall."

... and Dancing in the Rain

It wasn't that I had forgotten. It's just that I hadn't had to remember. But there she was, a little girl jumping and giggling and running and shouting in Wednesday's downpour.

When I was young and it poured humongous cats and dogs, Florence would send me out in maybe rain boots, maybe sneakers to play in the storm. I'd race around the empty courtchyard and jump and dance and skip and stick my face up into thunder and wind.

As of her decline deepened, the months and months and months turned into years and years, and to pass the time we would watch Singing In The Rain over and over and over again. The blessing of dementia allowed it to be an exciting revisit, one she didn't realize had just happened the week before.

Today, quickly snapping a picture as I futilely raced against getting soaked and miserably wet, I wondered if her quirky idea of playtime came from that passionate dance Gene Kelly did when he realized he was in love.

"... Another Hundred People Got Off Of The Train..."*

Waiting for someone, watched the many people pour out like confetti made of July colors, a train station reconfigured some years ago to look beautiful yet remind us through pieces of old walls artfully placed how awful it had been especially during the summer months.

***
*Another Hundred People - Company by Stephen Sondeim

...It's a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay...

Sunday Memories: Home Where My Love Lies Waiting - revisited

This is Florence somewhere in Bushwick. She told me she could tell how their fortunes were diminishing by how bad the new home was. This move was one of the bigger steps down.

The trip from Trenton to Brooklyn was taken illegally in the front of the truck with the driver who, according to Florence, took pity on Gramma and her, two lone females on the border of destitute.

I know nothing of that apartment on Patchen Avenue, except that Florences flourished at Eramus High School, was neighbors with someone who knitted mittens used for shooting rabbits, and had someone mailed her a little letter so that she could have this special stamp for her collection.




***

original post:

The Exhaustion of Diaspora: Part Six - Home Where My Love Lies Waiting
Saturday, April 4, 2009

Welcome, New Visitors to HER NEW YORK!

Thank you so much for taking time that at the end of your life you do not get back to visit IT WAS HER NEW YORK.

I post three times a week on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, Sunday's posting always a family or childhood memory. However, as we see from JEREMIAH'S VANISHING NEW YORK, something in our home can without warning suddenly become a memory.

Still, perhaps foolishly so, I write to defy what some call inevitable and others call stupid. I'm with stupid.

Like Father, Like Son

It was a dream come true. As wonderful as Gramma allowing me a ride on the Wonder Wheel or Florence playing hookey with me and Louise and taking us for a early morning summer swim, recently one night I got to have Coney and baseball together. The Brooklyn Cyclones, farm team for the Mets, were playing the Pennsylvania Auburn and with $8 tickets for the outfield boxes, once again we rode the emotional roller coaster until the Cyclones, just like the Mets came from behind and we're still not sure how but then again family traits do run deep.

And of course, the fireworks helped ease the exhaustion from the ride.



*with thanks to Kristopher for the hotdogs and fries. Go Nathan's!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Vanishing New York Highlights Her New York: C.O. Moed Faints

Jeremiah's Vanishing New York a.k.a. The Book of Lamentations: a bitterly nostalgic look at a city in the process of going extinct, one of THE most important blogs in the world (which NY is) highlighted IT WAS HER NEW YORK on it's Wednesday July 22nd blog.

Vanishing New York

To say that this is an honor is an understatement. Jeremiah Moss is a New York hero who epitomizes the African proverb "Only when lions have historians will hunters cease to be heroes."

Well, Mr. Moss is one mean-ass lion with a computer and because of that, our city won't have to go quietly into the night.

Sunnyside Up

The maintenance guys had to get in immediately because something was leaking somewhere.  Luckily I still had an emergency $20 tucked away so I grabbed a taxi to Florence's.

The dashing driver and I talked about the decrease of taxi use and the possibility of driving a bus. He asked what I did.

"I'm an out-of-work writer."

"Oh! You can write about me."

So I took a picture and, handing him my card, told him to check the blog in a couple of days.

"I don't just drive a taxi." And he handed me his card. There, dashing smile and all, was his picture next to bright bold letters announcing SUNNYSIDE REAL ESTATE: All Your Residential and Business Needs Met!

"You're like in the two worst professions to be in during a recession,” I said in disbelief.

He laughed, said, "What can you do? You work."

Knock down 7, get up 8.

Sunday Memories - Fine Dining At Chez PS 134

PS 134 on East Broadway between Grand and Montgomery/Pitt

The spartan diet of Florence's limited but very healthy cooking took its toll early in my life and in need to something interesting to eat I would, against the rules, often visit friends' homes to ogle their tuna fish casseroles with potato chips on top, or their peanut butter and jelly sandwich (a forbidden delicacy in our home) or the obviously gourmet macaroni and cheese dishes. I didn't partake of any of it, the imposing on other people's limited food supply and strained budgets a cardinal sin, but I did lustfully leer at those dishes.

And then one summer, once again enrolled in the city-run day camp program in the park across the street, I was told that because I was a camper I was eligible for the summer lunch program at PS 134. I almost died and went to heaven. And for several weeks I indulged in plates of all the starch and gravy and meat loaf and macaroni they'd pile on my plastic tray.

Years later, I found out that PS 134 had a lunch-time program for the senior citizens in the neighborhood. For $1 you could get lunch. Florence, barely still cooking for herself or occasionally going to the Luncheonette with me (our version of eating out), swung by, perhaps motivated by the same curiosity that drove me to meander around friends' dinner tables. The fare, this time low sodium and low fat, was just as exotic to her as those summer meals years ago had been for me. I was thrilled, thinking a steady source of food would help balance the nutritional swings between her diet of national chain fast foods she saw on TV and the tasteless salt free organic stews she made for herself.

But soon she stopped. "I don't feel right," was her explanation. She worried that taking her $1 meal when she had a little bit more than nothing in her bank account was taking away a $1 meal from someone who didn't have anything in their bank account.

Coming Home

He and his five brothers and sisters were found in a box on Queens Boulevard in the pouring rain.

From the beginning we liked each other
-->

However, I'm allergic to cats.

And there was that story of a cat who lived with my parents briefly. It kept following Florence around all day interrupting her practicing. The message was clear: pets stymie art. The cat was given away on day three.

Still...

When someone decides they want to adopt you and they decide it with a heart that has greater horizons than any limits that appear, there is really nothing much you can do about it.

And this kitten decided I was his.

So, one day, quite recently, he took up full residence in an apartment I obviously had been renting for 33 years just so that, one day, he could move in.

-->


Jupiter has come home.

Old School High Tech Revisited

I couldn't get a signal on the computer to find the number of the theater to find out the times of the movie on Friday. "When I get home I'll go on their website and call them," I grumbled.

"I do have a phone book," she said. "It's white and it has numbers in it. I'm even in it."

Later, she read aloud from her hand written stories. I typed them into my computer. "Wouldn't it be faster to xerox it?" she asked.

"Who's old tech now?" I answered.

Sunday Memories - It Was Her New York and For a Brief Moment It Was Ours, Too

The people gathered.


The lady sang.


The audience listened.


The neighbor sat enthralled.


And she talked of her New York.


The Renegade Cabaret
Highline at the end by 21st Street
At night, usually Friday

What I Stared At While Wondering ....

Then Why Are You Living Here?

Where: a tiny plane going from a tiny city back to New York

Who: two high-powered business people with accents from places I'm told I should be more open to

What They Said:
#1 - I'm still getting used to it. Did you ride the subway when you lived in NY?
#2 - no, not really...I wouldn't. There are um interesting people on it if you know what I mean.
#1 - Ha ha.

What I Stared At On My Subway Ride Back from the Airport Wondering...


Where Are All The Interesting People?

The Door

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. - Matthew 7:7

But if all else fails, take a picture of it.

Sunday Memories - "You Say You Want A Revolution..."

Monty's Mom asked what everyone in the courtchyard asked. "What are you doing with your mother's apartment?"

(actually it was more like "whatcha gonna do wit ya motha's apartment?" note: the "t" is silent)

I gave the usual answer about renting and the piano.

"You still play?"

No. I had put my foot down at 13 and refused to play anymore. If I was going to be forced to study music, go to music school and attend the music department at the School for the Performing Arts for violin, I wasn't also going to study the piano. In a rare nod to my individualization, Florence agreed.

I never liked it, I told Monty's Mom.

"Well," she said, "You were a rebellious one."

I was? I had played with Monty when we were little little but like most of the neighbors in the courtchyard it never really felt like anyone knew me, just of me as I ran past in a game of tag.

"Oh yeah. You were power to the people. I mean it was the 60's. But yeah, you were. You were little, too. Yeah. Power to the people."

Songs from the Second Floor*

While they all took pictures of the Empire State Building I looked up to where New York really exists and took a picture of the second floor.


*Sånger från andra våningen (Roy Anderson- 2000)

A film poem inspired by the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. A story about our need for love, our confusion, greatness and smallness and, most of all, our vulnerability. It is a story with many characters, among them a father and his mistress, his youngest son and his girlfriend. It is a film about big lies, abandonment and the eternal longing for companionship and confirmation. Written by Fredrik Klasson {fredrik.klasson@telia.com}

Pets of Our Lives: Part 4 - Cats

It was like the names of the seven dwarfs or those reindeers. But in the courtyard (pronounced courtch-yard) we had (to the tune of that reindeer song) Mikey and Kushna, Skinny and Bob, Frisky and Blackie and that randy-like Tom...

Hartstein the cop hated them and was constantly yelling at us to stop playing with them. But except for Marcy's dad's fish, those cats were the closest thing any of us got to having a pet. (I don't count the summer I had snails.) (Or the gerbil that kept dying.)

Sunday Memories - Our Other TV

It was normal for our parents to take us to the Metropolitan Museum. Not sure why. Just was. Only recently I realized those big tableau paintings were, after Lang's fairy tale books, my illustrated bible stories, the Family Of Man photos, and Friday night at Gramma's, a way to see a movie of the passion I felt in my soul.

YELLING! SHOUTING! BABIES AND OLD PEOPLE CRYING! BIG BURLY MEN CARRYING BIG DELICIOUS WOMEN!!! WHAT'S GOIN' ON HERE!???!!


HAPPY MOMMY AND DELICIOUS BABY LOVED BY HAPPY MOMMY JUST LIKE ON TV!!!!


ANGELS AND MAGIC DO EXIST! THEY'RE GONNA MAKE IT ALL BETTER!!!


LOVE! LOVE!! THE GIRL LOOKS LIKE THE GIRLS IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD YOU KNOW BIG AND JUICY!!! LOVE IS POSSIBLE FOR SOMEONE LIKE ME!!!!!!!!!


WOW!!! LOOK!!! SHE'S IN THE MIDDLE OF A MYSTERY!!! LIKE JAMES BOND ONLY DIFFERENT!!!!!!



* All photos taken, possibly against the rules, at the Met this past Friday night.

GUEST ARTIST: DANA - The Sad Little Crone

Another one of Dana's short New York stories.

I seem to have trouble visualizing accurately how my face betrays my age. Especially when I hit a patch of exhaustion and my color drains completely. On my birthday I went to Trinity Church to hear a concert by a group called Alhambra. They specialize in Sephardic songs accompanied by very exotic instruments. Sensuous and rhythmic 14th and 15th century melodies. When they ended, I was caught in their spell. But hunger and fatigue had to be remedied. I crossed the street to a dingy pizza joint and ordered a large orange juice. Then I plopped down at a corner table to simply rest. I closed my eyes for a moment and awoke suddenly when a young Asian woman poked her nose in my face and asked tenderly “Are you all right?” followed by, “May I buy you some lunch?”

My first thought was “I really must buy a new winter coat. My God, I must look dowdy."

“No lunch, please.” I told her I was enjoying my birthday but just needed a little rest. Then I stood up and left the place. She followed me asking where I lived and how I was planning to travel home. I kept reassuring her that I would take the subway, as usual. She offered to escort me down the steps. I refused her kind help Then she put something in my right hand and ran into the crowd. I opened my hand to find a neatly folded $5 bill. I was truly shocked but also touched and somewhat ashamed at her judgment of me. Her compassion brought tears to my eyes. So that’s how I appear to her!

When I got home I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. There she was – the dear little old lady or perhaps the sad little crone needing a good meal. I swore I’d save that $5 bill forever. But I broke my vow 4 days later.

Like Summer In San Francisco

Staring at a street that used to be in a bad neighborhood, we sipped expensive coffee in designer cups and talked of the weather.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: ALL ABOUT DICK!

I'll be reading the first 12 pages of the new novel, ALL ABOUT DICK, which I started to keep me sane while finishing WIRE MONKEY. It did not keep me sane but now I'm in too deep to stop.

ALL ABOUT DICK: the night just perfect for love, that corner about to be turned, a really bad joke told by God


Writer's House Reading Series
Kettle of Fish
59 Christopher Street
New York, NY

June 24
7pm

with Carola Dibbel (bohemian slapstick!) and Elizabeth Smith (cowboys and tampons!)

Sunday Memories - Getting Out Of Town

Except for the rare trip on the Greyhound Bus to Philadelphia and later, after a purchase of a car, two trips to Atlantic City, leaving New York happened on public transportation - the F train to Coney Island or the Staten Island Ferry to... well... no where really. All we did was get off the ferry, run around the corner and reenter the terminal to wait to go back to recognizable land.

Later, when I had my own set of wheels - a three speed Raleigh bike - or enough carfare to take the Madison bus to the First Avenue Bus connection in Chinatown, that ferry ride because respite, refuge and freedom. I'd stand in the back of the boat as it slugged it out with the water and learned perspective. I lived in the most beautiful city in the world, on the most beautiful harbor in the world and I was going to be OK. Everything was going to be OK.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

In the tradition of Union Square's more than 150 year history as a meeting ground for social change, today's demonstration of Iranians and Iranian-Americans demanding a fair election in Iran.

Old School High Tech

Before ipods, before walkmans, before tvs, before cable, even before satellites left the world of sci-fi and went into the sky, it was a transistor radio stuck to your ear, the crackle of the announcer "foul... rbi... and he's... OH AND IT'S.... bullpen... " and the fiddling of the tiny dial not a button preset but a precise touch and turn that required the finesse of an ancient watchmaker.

Sunday Memories - Yeudi

This is how she looks today and it's also exactly how she looked 40 years ago when we met in 5th grade. She was one of the new girls transferred from PS 134 on East Broadway to PS 110 on Broome Street. She was exotic and worldly and exciting. She was clean and graceful and unwavering. I was a baby monkey on caffeine. I longed to be her elegant grace. I still do.

I had my first real birthday party at her house (it was a surprise). We suffered through the punches and grabbing and pushing at J.H.S. 56 together (she chased Willie Joe down Pitt Street after he sprayed her hair with Pledge. It was a fierce sight to behold.) And after that we went on to survived the High School of Performing Arts where the dancers and actresses ruled the boys and us musicians had to be inventive just to be seen. (I gave up and hid in the staircase during lunch for two years.) We ate, drank, and partied together and at some point in our late teens, maybe early early 20's, we were roommates in my first and only apartment. I still have her lamp, table and the dish, cup and bowl she left behind. She still looks like she lives here when she visits.

But what I remember most and always of Her New York was the day in 6th grade we got back our creative writing assignment. I don't remember what I wrote. But the moment I read hers my life changed. This, I remember thinking, is real writing. This is literature.

Little Mitzi and the Welbilt Stove

"What are you doing with your mother's stove? You going to sell it?"

(Actually it was more like "whatcha gonna do wit ya motha's stove ya gonna selit?")

Little Mitzi was finishing off a day of collecting signatures in front of Moishe's Bakery for I don’t know what.  We were walking back to the building she and Florence had lived in as neighbors on different floors for 50 years. She had been a school aide at PS 110 when I went there.

Talking to Little Mitzi, punctuation didn’t exist.  At least in the conventional way.

”I used to visit your mother we have the same stove a Welbit I lost some knobs she said here take one of mine I said NO! what are you going to do NO! keep your knobs NO! but if you're going to sell the apartment because they don't make those knobs anymore I called they said they don't make them anymore I love my Welbilt I used to visit your mother she was lonely she told me."

I promised to give her the knobs if we ever sold the apartment. When I asked to take her picture she said "No! I'm a very private person" and flounced out of the elevator.

New Home Edition!

Before


After

RAIN DELAY: Special Home Addition will be posted Tuesday Evening

Sunday Memories - The Domino Effect

What happened when in 1982 an ex-roommate from Holland told her best friend to come visit New York because we had a ton a space for guests:

January, 1982: Best Friend sits next to Strange Young Woman on plane and tells her "Oh I know a place you can crash at in New York."

Best Friend and Strange Young Woman show up at apartment after wild party. Beds made, pizza offered, party continues. Strange Young woman corners me as I make up guest beds and confesses she just met Best Friend. I think, "Oh God, we have a serial killer in our house.""

Strange Young Woman turns out to be funny and smart and a great gossip. We figure out a way to kick out Best Friend and keep Strange Young Woman.

We become great friends. I leave the United States for the first time and visit Strange Young Woman in Holland. I also find out they have toothpaste and toilet paper too.

Because of Strange Young Woman, I am introduced to Lesbian Nation, meet first, second, third girlfriends, get involved with Lesbian theater, become an actor, become a writer, go to graduate school, survive my return to dating men, become a film/video maker, go to another graduate school, visit Spain with Strange Young Woman, and together survive family weddings, gatherings, passages, memorials, heavy breakable ceramics we buy in whatever country we are in, drink, eat, gossip, grieve, walk, watch, consider, grow, bury, celebrate, survive break ups, break throughs, kittens, dogs, homes, ice cream, and shopping sprees of teeshirts...

Until...

One day it is not 1982 anymore. It is 2009. She is no longer the Strange Young Woman. She is family and it is 27 years later. From that one accidental meeting on a plane and her accidental stay at this home, my life became irrevacably changed and forced onto the road of its destiny.

Shelter From The Storm

It could be perched on top of a recycle bin by old windows.


Or around a conference table, the florescent lights becoming windows to a better way of living one day at a time.


And sometimes it's just a familiar bench by the bathrooms waiting for a movie to start.