On the street where you lived....

[Christiern]

A few weeks ago, SinginSumo, one of Jazz Corner's assets, started a thread in which he encouraged his fellow posters to share childhood memories. He called it On the Street Where You Lived. At last count, it has yielded 71 posts, including many delightful ones (some of you may have seen it). I hope it gets a new life over there, but it will have to be without further input from me (suffice it to say that, just as management brings to any establishment its good or bad vibes, so it is with a bbs).

It occurred to me that Organissimo (where the vibes are warm) might yield some interesting shares if this thread found a second life here. So here it is (hopefully with SinginSumo’s blessings). I have copied and slightly upgraded my own posts before porting them to the big “O”--the place to be. So here, to kick this thread off, is my initial JC post:

• As a child, I lived on many streets, having grown in different parts of the world, mainly in Reykjavík (Iceland), Copenhagen, and New York, but the place that generated my fondest memories is a small pair of islands in the Baltic Sea, Christiansø and Frederiksø. My maternal grandparents moved there in the late 1930s when my grandfather retired. He had gone to sea at the age of 12 (in 1886) and served as an officer of the Royal Danish Navy before becoming Harbor Master on the island of Crete. When the political situation there forced him to return to Denmark, he became a ship’s captain in the Royal merchant marine, a position he held throughout WWI and for a few years thereafter. When it did not look as if Denmark would offer enough of an adventure, grandfather took the family--including my 9-year-old mother, her sister and three brothers--to explore a new life in Santo Domingo. It turned out to be a bad move, for everything that could go wrong, did. It was on to the next island: grandfather accepted a position to head the LLoyd insurance company’s office in Iceland. One of my uncles, Torben, remain in the Domincan Republic, where he had a decent, albeit menial job in a sugar refinery. He still lives there and, at age 97 rarely misses a day of work in a company he founded.
  
  My grandfather’s decision to move to Reykjavík accounts for my being half Icelandic. By the late 1930s, when my grandparents returned to Denmark, my mother had married and, within a year, divorced my father. She had also remarried in order for me to have a father, and Baldvin became as close to a real father as I ever had. I was now about five years old and my grandparents were living on yet another island, which brings me back to Christiansø.
  
  Christiansø is the larger of two islands that make up Erteholmene (the pea islets), the smaller one being Frederiksø. The short space between the islands forms the harbor, across which there is a short walking bridge. To give you an idea of their size, one can walk around the larger island at a fairly leisurely pace in about twenty minutes--not along the coast line, but inside the wide granite wall that hugs it and protected the islands for three centuries. This was a fortress back in the days when such was needed, and what makes it so attractive today is that it has virtually not changed in all those years. While modernization of interiors is permitted, all exteriors must pretty much retain their 17th and 18th century look.
  
  
  A crude map of the islands.
  
  I spent much time on Christiansø with my grandparents in the years that led up to WWII. They lived on what was simply called, "the street" (#7 on the map). This was a block-long stretch flanked by two long, yellow 2-story buildings that had housed military personnel from 1684 to 1855.
  
  
  Here is "the street," where I lived. The building on the right is the warehouse. The people
  are pesky tourists--we were glad to see them leave the island on the 3 o'clock boat.
  
  After the war, I came back and attended the island's school (#12 on the map).
  
  
  This is the my one-classroom school. It now has electricity.
  
  The islands now have electricity and real flush toilets, but in my day we used kerosene lamps and outhouses. Only the doctor's house, the inn, and the official residence had any semblance of modern convenience--the latter two even had a telephone and inside flush toilet. That toilet made it a joy to visit the official residence, where lighthouse keeper-police chief-customs manager Jacobsen and his wife lived.
  
  This

panoramic view, taken from the smaller island, Frederiksø, will give you some idea of the environment. You can see the two rows of yellow houses where we lived. The large white house is the official residence where Mr. Jakobsen lived.

I will continue this in my next post to this thread after seeing some input from others who are willing to take a similar retro trip. In the meantime, I leave you with a photo of me seated on the steps to my grandparents' apartment on "the street," in 1938.

Edited October 12, 2004 by Christiern

[Free For All]

Wow, really interesting stuff, Chris!

Seems like your story might make a pretty interesting book, especially with all the memorabilia you seem to have saved.

...... my story would barely make a "pamphlet".............. -_-

[catesta]

Nice story, Chris.

I'll have to dig up some pictures and see if I can figure out how to post them.

The best part of my childhood was spent on many streets between NY (Bayside, Brooklyn, The Bronx) and Cleveland.

My Italian family was large and very close. We (brother, sisters, cousins) would spend time as children between the homes of my grandparents and great aunts and uncles. It gave me the opportunity to experience life similar to my father's when he was growing up. I miss the little things like making a run to the little Italian grocer for my grandmother or just listening to them all talk while playing cards. Walking around the neighborhood with my grandfather was another highlight. He was very well known from being in the funeral business, so a walk could take ages since people always wanted to stop and talk. It was a nice time.

The memories are still strong. Today I have one surviving great aunt from that generation, I was informed yesterday that her health is not good. I will have the good fortune of seeing her in November. When the pages turn, my father becomes the oldest family member.

My father had a Pharmacy in the Glendale area of Queens. He also had a store on Mayfield Road in Cleveland. When the store in NY was sold I started attending school in Ohio.

We lived on Tanglewood Trail in a suburb of Cleveland. I had some great friends and some great times there. My brother is seven years older than me, so I spent a lot of time tagging along with him and his rock band buddies.

They would take turns stealing beer from different parents and smoke cigarettes in a network of self built forts . My life is ruined as a result of witnessing things like this. Electricity was piped in by running very long cords from the homes of un-suspecting neighbors.

My brother used to con my mom into taking the wagon and going to construction sites to borrow various pieces of lumber, nails, tar paper, carpet and whatever else was there for the taking. This would happen everytime after my dad or someone else in the neighborhood would destroy one of the club houses.

The area was great, a mixture of Irish, German, Italian, Polish, and the very rare but very funny family from West Virginia. My parents became very close to them, my brother made best friends with the son and my youngest sister with the daughter. The father was if I remember correctly in some kind of high tech business (what that meant in the 70's I have no idea). His partner lived up the street. I don't know exactly where he came from I think maybe Hawaii. I say this because after they had a business dis-agreement and dissolved the partnership, our neighbor (Mr. Cook) when ever he would see the other guy jogging or out in public, would drop whatever he was doing and start screaming the theme song from Hawaii Five-O. Hearing that from a distance would make you laugh your ass off.

I could go on forever about the hot older girls that lived next door, the neighbors German Shepherd that I would feed salami and baloney to, jumping bikes over cardboard boxes, pink flamingos, ice cream on Cadillacs, our cats and "the great duck massacre of 1974", but I will yield for now.

Edited October 12, 2004 by catesta

[Dr. Rat]

Good idea!

I grew up on Randolph Street in North Philadelphia, which was a sort of hinterland between the white ethnic neighborhoods (Irish/Polish) to the east and black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods to the west and south.

So my street was a mix of all three elements. The house directly across the street from us had a big Puerto Rican extended family living there, presided over by a gandmother who was on the front stoop A LOT and used to yell at me in Spanish when she saw me getting out of line on the street. There was a lot of salsa music going on--I imagine Palmieri and teh Fania All-Stars and the like, but I was too young to tell then.

I remeber two of my great frinds were the children of a mixed race couple down the street, who I think were attending Temple--I was very sad when they moved away.

At one point when I was young, we moved from one house to another in the neighborhood and we rented our former house out (while we tried to sell it) to a bunch of "hippies" as my parents called them. My Dad hated Nixon and the war intensely, so he was generally sympathetic. (My Dad helped teach me to read by letting me read Watergate coverage to him out of the newspaper).

When we sold the house and they moved out, they gave me a specially painted sled. (Red with flowers and all kinds of "hippie" stuff! For most of my youth I was embarassed to use it!)

I can remeber his pulling his 1966 Beetle over to the side of the road to celbrate Nixon's resignation.

I also remeber crashing my bike when I was around the corner on sixth street, and a team of Puerto Rican mamas coming out to patch me up and return me home. A memory that I often call up whenever someone condemns eveyone who lives in a certain place.

To an outsider sixth street would have been a dangerous slum, I suppose. But it was my neighborhood, complete with good neighbors.

Eventually I got beaten up a few times--there was a lot of territorial fighting going on between white, Puerto Rican and black youth gangs, and your skin color was more than excuse enough to get knocked around. And my siblings had definitely felt the bad effects of living in a chaotic and violent neighborhood, so my parent decided to move out to a more stable and exclusively white neighborhood.

It was safer, but my parents often complained about a decline they saw in the quality of their neighbors. North Philly had the worst: criminals and bullies and utter neglect, but our new neighborhood had none of the best--people pulling together, generosity of spirit, liveliness.

I look back on it now as moving out of a world dominated by the street into a world dominated by television. I had a pretty rough transition.

--eric

Edited October 12, 2004 by Dr. Rat

[catesta]

My father had a Pharmacy in the Glendale area of Queens

uno) was this on Myrtle?

dos) do you remember where you went for ice cream in Glendale, senor catesta?

Ridgewood Clem

Yeah bro it was on Myrtle, can't remember the exact address, but I could look it up.

The store was called Glen Chemists.

Ice cream, hmmmm...., I remember going to Eddie's.

[Noj]

Chris A, I enjoyed reading these here and at JC.

Born at Burbank Community Hospital in '76.

Moved to current Burbank home in '79 from another Burbank home.

Graduated Burbank High in '94.

Parents on the verge of killing me for still living at home in '04.

Boring, boring, boring...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[Big Al]

Do you ever have recurring dreams that you've gone back to live there? I know I do; I'll post my thoughts about Stonegate Street when I get a chance.

Great thread, BTW.

[jazzypaul]

Serious question for the NYC posters...what, in your mind, makes the NYC experience different and unique from living anywhere else? I've been there twice, and don't think I ever got a real taste for the city either time. Although, being in the neighborhood over by Nassau Colliseum for a week's worth of Dead shows, I got my introduction to jamaican food. I ask, because NYC'ers have this joy about their town that I don't see people have about anywhere else (even Chicago ). So, really, what made it great growing up there?

[RDK]

Mine layer, but here's Tom Waits growing up on "Kentucky Avenue." His story's more interesting than mine. (Don't mean to be glib, but I think Waits has written several of the most evocative soings about childhood that I've ever heard.)

Eddie Graces buick got 4 bullet holes in the side

Charlie Delisle sittin at the top of an avocado tree

Mrs Storm'll stab you with a steak knife if you step on her lawn

I got a half pack of lucky strikes man come along with me

Lets fill our pockets with macadamia nuts

Then go over to Bobby Goodmansons and jump off the roof

Hilda plays strip poker and her mamas across the street

Joey Navinski says she put her tongue in his mouth

Dicky Faulkner's got a switchblade and some gooseneck risers

That eucalyptus is a hunchback there's a wind up from the south

Let me tie you up with kite string and i'll show you the scabs on my knee

Watch out for the broken glass, put your shoes and socks on and come along with me

Let's follow that fire truck

I think your house is burnin down

Then go down to the hobo jungle and kill some rattle snakes with a trowel

We'll break all the windows in the old Anderson place

and steal a bunch of boysenberrys

and smear em on our face

I'll get a dollar from my mama's purse

and buy that skull and crossbones ring

and you can wear it around your neck

on an old piece of string

Then we'll spit on Ronnie Arnold

and flip him the bird

and slash the tires on the school bus

now don't say a word

I'll take a rusty nail

and scratch your initials on my arm

and i'll show you how to sneak up

on the roof of the drugstore

Take the spokes from your wheelchair

and a magpies wings

and tie em to your shoulders and your feet

I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad

and cut the braces off your legs

and we'll bury them tonight in the cornfield

Put a church key in your pocket

we'll hop that freight train in the hall

and we'll slide down the drain all the way

to New Orleans in the fall

[catesta]

Ice cream, hmmmm...., I remember going to Eddie's.

You are 100% absolutely... CORRECT!!

Eddie's Sweet Shop

Eddie's is still great too, even if it's technically in Forest Hills. That whole Ridgewood & Glendale corridor is fantastic. Tons of great food (did you ever go to the Forest Pork Store?), including a ton of grumpy Romanian cafes; the most amazing (the only) Bosnian hamburger joint in town; the superb Joe's of Ridgewood & a bunch of excellent Italian cafes & bakeries, etc. Glendale is rather whiter but hardly less WEIRD w/much still to be discovered.

Do you think yr old man's shop is still a pharmacy?

Metropolitan Clem

I'm not sure. Seems like I went to check it out a few years back and it might have been a hair salon now.

I'm going to try and search it out in November.

There are condos now where my mothers family had their drug store for some 50+ years in NYC at 9th Ave & W. 42nd St.

Some of my granfathers (father's side) funeral homes ares still standing...

He was partners with James & Frank Romanelli. Some of the homes are still operated by the surviving family (Rockaway and Crossbay Blvds in Queens, 3rd Ave in Brooklyn) and some have been bought by national companies, like this...

James

Times change.

[tonym]

My first two homes were in run-down 'cardboard' council estates. They were both notorious nationally because of their off- the-scale figures for crime, suicide and unemployment. In the North East of England, in the '70's (Labour's winter of discontent, pre-Thatcherite era)

My family was greatly affected by the social climate; my Grandad was 'taken in' by the local Police on several occasions due to his West Belfast background and his vocal nature on all things nationalist at a time when IRA activities in Ireland were frequent. This helped marginalise my family somewhat. Having a dad in the Parachute Regiment didn't help, especially around the time of the Derry conflict --- let's just say, they didn't see eye to eye. Just before he left us we were given an opportunity to move to Iran of all places; he was due to be stationed near Tehran. Obviously, the changes over there at that time saw to it we didn't go. Living there without a dad left us vulnerable and my mother was attacked visciously on a couple of occasions.

Times weren't that enjoyable to be honest. Looking back I would have preferred to have lived in a caravan than there. Everywhere you looked was daubed with hateful graffiti and trash. Houses were boarded up every other week and schools were vandalised on a regular basis. The majority of folk were moved around by the authorities so had little respect for their environment.

Fortunately the experience give me an appreciation of where I live now, and lots more. My son is now 3 and a half and was born in this quiet village. He will never have to witness a childhood like mine.

[Christiern]

Great, just as I had hoped, the memories are being stirred and the recollections are pouring forth. Don't stop if you have more to tell--continue what yo started. Here's another segment from me:

• 
  
  
  The small tower on Frederiksø was built in 1685--it is now a museum.
  Here are two views and an interior.
  
  I did not spend the WWII years on Christiansø, but rather in Reykjavík and New York (P.S. 101, Forest Hills), and I will share some of that in my next post. I returned to the island in 1945, and found, to my delight, that it had not changed at all--the same people were doing the same things, the dinners were still something to look forward to and the food was still delicious, if somewhat altered by wartime rationing. At 14, I enjoyed the conversation all the more, and I listened with great interest to stories of how things had been during the Nazi occupation.
  
  A door at the harbor end of the street served as the island's bulletin board. On it was a telegram from Sweden, sent by one of the two Nazi officers who had been stationed on Christiansø during the war; he was thanking the island's residents for have helped him escape to Sweden.
  
  During the war years, guns and ammunition were regularly smuggled to the Danish underground via Christiansø. Swedish and Danish fishing boats would rendezvous and transfer the weapons from boat to boat at sea. They were always in wooden crates, the kind herring was shipped in, and it was commonly believed that the two resident Nazis simply looked the other way, perhaps because they valued their soft assignment. Anyway, my grandfather told me that they were friendly guys and that there was never any problem on the island. As you can see in the photo below, there is a narrow passageway behind the inner row of house where my grandparents lived. Since they were on the ground floor, anyone walking behind the houses passed right by my grandparents' windows, one of which held a battery operated radio. My grandfather recalled that, one day--when, as usual, he was tuned in to the BBC--one of the Nazis tapped gently on the window and politely asked if the radio could be turned down a little."
  
  The islands' resident doctor (this was a government position), was also a poet and writer who periodically contributed to a Copenhagen newspapers. Dr. Foss decided to celebrate his first post-war birthday with a garden party to which the entire population was invited. Denmark has its own version of dougnuts, they are called æbleskiver, which translates into apple slices, but has nothing to do with apples, nor slices. They are actually balls of deep fried dough, about the size of a golf ball, and quite tasty. The war had made it impossible to get vegetable oil, which the preparation of æbleskiver calls for, so the doctor's wife decided to fry hundreds of them in paraffin oil.
  
  Unfortunately, paraffin oil generates severe, uncontrollable diarrhea! You guessed it, practically the entire population was afflicted, including the doctor.
  
  Apropos Dr. Foss, there was a big post-war event on Christiansø over which he presided, along with the main island's governor and our Mr. Jacobsen. The occasion was the opening of the island's first public toilet, a real single seater, replete with water tank and chain. The inauguration ceremony was recorded for broadcast by the Danish Radio and Dr. Voss had written a poem for the occasion, which he delivered with much gesticulation, tongue in cheek. Then the Mr. Jacobsen''s little daughter stepped forward, made a curtsy in front of the Governor, and extended in his direction a red silk pillow on which a shiny pair of scissors flashed in the sun. As Christiansø's resident artist/musician, Mr. Køje, gave his accordion a hearty squeeze, the Governor of Bornholm approached the ribbon and smiled at the cameras, scissors in hand. At least half of the islands' population and a group of fortunate tourists then saw him perform a dramatic snip, step inside, and ceremoniously pull the chain. The sound of the flush was sweet music to everyone's ears, bringing forth a salvo of applause, bravos, and other approvals. Christiansø was entering the twentieth century.
  
  Here is a depiction of a 1808 attack on Christiansø by the Royal British Navy
  • 
    

So, that was a lengthy glimpse of a street I grew up on. My next post will deal with my eventful 1941 trip to the U.S. I'll leave you with photo taken in the 1940s aboard a visiting ship. That's Mr. Jacobsen on the left, standing next to my grandfather. I'm not sure who the ribboned gentleman is.

[brownie]

Superb reading, Christern. All this cries for book publication...

Very interesting thread.

[Guest Chaney]

I remeber seeing this thread (as Chris notes) over at the JC and thinking, DAMN! What a terrific idea!

Thanks for bringing it here!

(At work right now so just wanted to give a . Props? Is that what the kids say? Still don't know what that means.)

[Harold_Z]

Great thread Chris ! You HAVE to get an autobiography out.

I'm not too adept at posting pictures. but I mangaged to find a nice one on the internet so I'll post it. It's an old photo taken in 1923 in Paterson NJ, where I was born in the mid 1940s - about 1/2 a mile south of where this photo was taken. I'm currently working my day gig a block east of where whoever took this photo was standing (the photo is facing east) in a building not yet built at the time of this photo.

This city was mapped out by Alexander Hamilton in the late 1700s and was designed to be an industrial and manufacturing center specifically suited to this purpose by it's close proximity to NYC (maybe 8 or 10 miles east of Paterson).....and this brings me to Jazzypaul's question about what people from this area dig about NYC.

....WAALLLL...when I was a kid I would play hookie from high school and hop the bus into the city (all people within a 30 mile radius of NYC refer to it as THE CITY). In less than an 1/2 hr I'd be haunting the record stores in midtown (King Carol, The Record Hunter, the Jazz Record Center on 47th st,etc) spending my allowance (I was a solidly middle class kid) on Jazz records and usually capping off the afternoon (YES afternoon) standing on the sidewalk watching the likes of Gene Krupa or Louis Metcalf or Charlie Shavers playing at the Metropole. Later on I caught a series of concerts at the Museum of Modern Art (free) with Clark Terry, Eddie Costa, Oscar Peterson, Bob Brookmeyer and more. All this time my parents would satisfy my jazz mania by occasionally taking me to Eddie Condon's, Nick's, Basin Street East to see Louis Armstromg, Wild Bill Davison, etc.

MAN....NYC was the JOINT in those days... I could go on and on with this, but trust me...it was happenin'.

Edited October 13, 2004 by Harold_Z

[Tim McG]

A middle-class slum.

Pomona, CA was a blue collar slum palace relpete with various pockets of poverty and one well-to-do neighborhood.

Here's how it breaks out:

South Side

The Barrio

Cherryville

Ganesha Hills [the rich-boy part of town]

Little Africa

Sin City

Ghostown [where I lived]

The place was a dump then, it's a dump now.

But...we did have the NHRA's WinterNationals Drag Racing at the LA Fair Grounds

[catesta]

Give this sucka some legs!

[Dan Gould]

when I was a kid I would play hookie from high school and hop the bus into the city (all people within a 30 mile radius of NYC refer to it as THE CITY).

On both Long Island and in Connecticut, we were more than 30 miles outside of NYC, and we called it THE CITY, too.

[Christiern]

• In 1940, the War was on, the Nazis invaded Denmark and, in May, the British occupied Iceland. A seasonal visit to Christiansø was out of the question, so Baldvin, my mother’s second husband, arranged for me to spend the summer on a farm owned by his relatives. It took almost two days to get there from Reykjavík, first by a small ship, then by car through dirt roads, and finally on horseback. Life on the farm was at first boring, but I grew used to it. There were other children on the farm, but I was the only one who had been on the “outside,” as they called it. I spent much of my time at the foot of a mountain where the cows grazed and I learned to create my own toys. The kids would collect sheep bones, polish them to a bright shine and dip them in dye that was used to color sheepskin rugs. Each bone represented a different animal: a sheep’s jaw became a cow when turned upside down and anchored in the ground, a small leg bone became a sheep, and so on. We then build little farm houses, created small rivers, traded “livestock,” etc. It was a wonderful exercise in creative thinking, and it has stood me in good stead.
  
  That summer, Baldvin came to the farm for a visit, essentially to tell me, with tears in his eyes, that my mother had asked for a divorce. I, too, saw that as bad news. When I returned to Reykjavík, my mother had taken an apartment of her own, probably with financial help from Baldvin, whose office supply store had made him very wealthy. I still spent as much time as I could with Baldvin, much of it in his store, but I also continued in school. Baldvin again arranged for me to spend the summer on the farm, and I was there when my mother called on the phone and asked me if I wanted to go to New York with my father for a year. Having seen a few American movies and many pictures from there in magazines, my impression was of a land where everybody was rich, kids rode around in the backs of limousines, etc. Remember, the New York World’s Fair was a favorite subject of articles, so there were ample photos of clean, futuristic cities and happy people. I didn’t think twice before I agreed to go.
  
  My parents were married in Copenhagen in 1931, a big affair where the best man was Crown Prince Knud (who was dating my Aunt Flavie at the time), and there were more medals on tuxedoed chests than anyone ever threw over the White House fence. The young couple (my mother was 17) took off for Marseilles for their honeymoon, but my mother did not see much of my father while they were there. She returned to Denmark and, then, Iceland, alone and pregnant. I came along, punctually, 9 months and 3 days after the wedding. So, when I returned to Reykjavík from the farm in 1941, I met my father for the first time. He had recently arrived from Italy with his mistress, Stella, and her daughter, Kanda, by a previous marriage to an English Lord, or so it was said.
  
  On October 18, 1941, Baldvin threw a 10th birthday party for me. Exactly a week later, I boarded the S/S Godafoss, a small Icelandic freighter, with my father, Stella, Kanda, and an Icelandic maid named Adda. I was excited to be going to America and the fact that I would be back in a year made parting from my mother easier. My parents had a contract that limited my stay in the U.S. to a year.
  
  So we left Reykjavík on October 23, as part of convoy HX-156. My ship carried 31 passengers in small, creaky cabins, but we only slept during the day, spending our nights in the upstairs lounge, wearing our life vests. We were six days out to sea when U-boats first attacked the convoy. The crew immediately commanded us to the life boats, a precautionary measure. Fortunately, there never came a call to lower the boats, but they gave us a commanding view of the drama that was taking place. I vividly recall seeing U.S. destroyers hooting and dropping depth charges that shook our ship in a frightening way, but it seemed to scare the adults more than it did us kids.
  
  The submarines followed our convoy for five days and, according to newspaper accounts, over 70 depth charges were dropped, but no U-boat was hit. The Germans had better luck. They struck an American Navy tanker, Salinas, creating a frightening display that we all watched like fireworks on a Fourth of July. I believe some of it was caught on film because there were three press photographers among the passengers (Pathé News, Fox Movietone, and Life magazine), and I vaguely recall seeing something in Life and in a newsreel theater.
  
  One U.S. destroyer, the Reuben James, turned around to come to the aid of the Salinas, but it was a fatal move that resulted in the Reuben James also being torpedoed by U-boat U-556. It went down, killing about 100 sailors. It was the first U.S. combatant sunk by deliberate action in WWII, a war that the U.S. had yet to enter officially.
  
  We weren't safe until we reached Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the remainder of the trip to New York was uneventful, but none of us were prepared for the scene that greeted us there. A horde of loud-mouthed, gum-chewing reporters and photographers came aboard. They looked exactly like the ones I had seen in Hollywood movies, even to the hats pulled down in the back. I recall posing for photos with Kanda, our little heads together, smiling through the hole of a lifesaver. Woody Guthrie wrote a song called "The Sinking of the Reuben James," but it is only recently that I realized I had been a witness to that historic tragedy.
  
  The next street on which I lived would be West 72nd in NYC—the Hotel Raleigh.
  

To be continued?

Here's my 10th birthday party

[Big Al]

But...we did have the NHRA's WinterNationals Drag Racing at the LA Fair Grounds

Hey, I was there once, when my dad was a professional drag racer back in the 70's. 1978, to be exact. It was one of his last races before he retired.

Now THAT'S the highlight of my childhood: following my dad's travels across the country when he was a drag racer!

[PHILLYQ]

Serious question for the NYC posters...what, in your mind, makes the NYC experience different and unique from living anywhere else? I've been there twice, and don't think I ever got a real taste for the city either time. Although, being in the neighborhood over by Nassau Colliseum for a week's worth of Dead shows, I got my introduction to jamaican food. I ask, because NYC'ers have this joy about their town that I don't see people have about anywhere else (even Chicago ). So, really, what made it great growing up there?

There is so much that I hardly know where to start. I grew up in Brooklyn and have never lived elsewhere, and we always had neighborhoods. Go a few blocks and you're in Italy, go some more and you're in Jamaica, some more and everyone is Jewish from eastern europe. Everyone has their enclaves, but you get on the subway and you might be squashed between two people from different corners of the world!

With all those people stuck together(The legal population of Brooklyn is about 1.8 million, I think, but actual is much higher), sure we have a riot or two sometimes, but for the most part people get along reasonably well.

NYC never sleeps, we want everything done yesterday and better than anyone else. Along with that, we have a generosity of spirit that doesn't seem to occur in many other places. We take a hit and keep coming. Those Al-Qaeda dirtbags made a huge mistake in attacking NYC. They thought they were doing something massive, but NYC brushed it off, said "I crap bigger than you guys", and moved on.

[Christiern]

I think NYC residents are more inclined to think in terms of neighborhoods where they lived. I could say a lot about my neighborhood, which is a wonderful, eclectic racial mix, but I have very little of interest to say about my street, Central Park West--except, perhaps, that Bela Bartok died while living on it.

[Tim McG]

But...we did have the NHRA's WinterNationals Drag Racing at the LA Fair Grounds 

Hey, I was there once, when my dad was a professional drag racer back in the 70's. 1978, to be exact. It was one of his last races before he retired.

Now THAT'S the highlight of my childhood: following my dad's travels across the country when he was a drag racer!

No kidding?

Wow.

I left Pomona [finally] in 1974 to attend college in Long Beach. I have to wonder....maybe I saw him race. Could have happened

[Big Al]

Well, the ones I remember were in Ontario and LA. I know there were others; I was just too young to remember them. 1974, you say? Hey, it could've happened!

Happy memories, all of them. Maybe I should start another thread: "On the Drag Strip Where You (Wish You'd) Lived!" For me, it would be Bowling Green, KY. :rsmile:

[Free For All]

I remember the big names from the 70s. I was into it, mostly via building model cars.

Big Daddy Don Garlits.

Shirley Cha Cha Muldowney.

Connie Kalitta.

Don Prudhomme.

Tom McEwen.

I even still have a drag racing sounds effects record I bought way back- "The Big Sounds Of The Drags". "Ascension" for motorheads.

I apologize for the off-topic.

Edited October 14, 2004 by Free For All