The Early Years

Of course I don't remember my first few years. I know we lived in Brooklyn the first one, and Queens the second one. I also know that my father didn't have much money. I think he didn't even really have a job when I was born. We lived in an apartment facing subway tracks, the kind that are up in the air. I don't know what to call this. This is about all I know.

I must have been around two when my father bought a house on Long Island. It was when they were creating suburbs out there, post war. The house was going to be a brand new house, in a brand new housing development. He got the last one, and bought it without my mother, because he kind of had to grab it. It was a lovely, brick split level house. The houses weren't built yet. He saw a model. So my parents had the privilege of watching their new house be built especially for them. My mother had lots of pictures of us going out there and sitting on the house in it's different stages. How exciting that must had been for my parents. My father was raised extremely poor in the tenements of the Jewish East Side of Manhattan, born around 1915. My mother was a girl during the depression and the war.

My earliest memory of it all was after the actually move. I think I was 2 1/2 and I remember my mother telling me two little girls were my age were going to live next door. I remember when they came, and they were in their car, and I looked in the back seat, and there they were. They were my first friends. We grew up next door to each other, through high school.

Since this was a new housing development, everybody must have moved in around the same time. Most of our neighbors were all young couples, with very small children my age. So there was lots of kids to play with. Most everybody who moved in at the beginning stayed till we all grew up, so basically most everyone in my neighborhood grew up together.

I feel lucky to have grown up here. We were a tight community of mostly Jews, Italians and Greeks. All us kids played with each other outside all the time.  After all these 40 years since high school graduation, I have found alot of them on facebook, and there is still a special feeling there between everyone.

We had an amazing elementary school. I think what made it so extraordinary was the principle. She was an older woman from New England. It opened the year I went to kindergarten. It was new, as was the neighborhood.

Some of the things that made our school so special was the field trips. Our principle would take us on trips to the Museum of History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I learnt an appreciation of Fine Art there that has never left me. Also I was in band, and we would go to Leonard Bernstein's concerts for children.

I know someone where I live now that his kids went on a field trip to Safeway. That seems so sad to me.

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My brother was born when I was 4. All I remember of it, was the gumball machine in the hospital lobby. I guess I got the mumps when my mother got out of the hospital and gave them to her. My newborn brother had to get a special, experimental vaccine from Italy, against the mumps.

I loved and adored my little brother. I thought he was so cute. Way cuter than me. We were good friends throughout our childhood. 

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I was a small child, and in the 1950's to mid 1960's. I never knew it, but when I look back it was still quite the old days, especially compared to now. It was kind of a transition time from the older days to much more modern times, but it was in alot of ways still very old fashioned. I was thinking about it last night and decided to list all the things that are old fashioned and outdated from that time.

First, I don't remember this, but my mother told me when we moved to Long Island, we didn't have a refrigerator, we had an ice box. She said everyone had an icebox.This is in 1954, 25 miles from NYC. She said an iceman would come around every 2 hours all day long, to bring people ice.

I do remember the milk box on the back step. The milk man would come and leave milk in glass bottles, and then you would wash out the bottles and put them there, to give back for the next milk. It was good reusing.

The doctor would come to out house when we were sick.

The games we would play outside: hopscotch, jump rope, kick ball, off the wall with a red rubber Spaulding ball, we would play clapping hand games, and also the games with the red Spaulding ball like " A my name is Alice". We never watched TV together as kids.

Inside games or quiet games: we played alot of board games.

My father loved to swim and we would go to the beach alot, Long Island Sound. He also bought pools. Little pools, that got bigger as I grew. We finally had a nice 4 foot stand up pool that I lived in with my next door neighbor, when I was older.

Everybody had a mother and father. Families stayed together. Mothers stayed home, and fathers went to work. My own family was like a fairy tale family of that time. My father would go to work, my mother would stay home and clean and iron,and then make a beautiful dinner for us all every night. We would eat together, and then we would go downstairs and watch T.V. together as a family every night. There was stations 2,4,5, 7,9 13. I think that was alot because we lived neared  NYC. There were TV shows that were like American institutions, or at least that is how it seemed to me. Things like Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Andy Griffith, Bonanza. It was almost like they were part of our family, and we would watch them every week.

People ironed. My mother ironed alot. I ironed alot.

Things I remember: The Cuban Missile Crisis, and how it messed up my amazing birthday party because all the mothers were worried. I didn't really understand what was going on. I just knew that they were worried. My mother had rented cartoons and a movie projector and we had cartoons on a screen in my own house. Kids today don't understand how truly miraculous this was.

Air Raid Drills because of the Cold War. They would put on a siren and we would have to go into the hall, put our head against the wall, and cover our head with our hands. I never really knew why we did this, but it doesn't seem like that much protection from a bomb now in retrospect.

President Kennedy getting shot, and the nation being so sad. I was especially sad for Caroline and John John, because their dad had died.

Watching Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald live on nationwide TV, and how shocking it was.

The New York World's Fair in 1964 and 65. My mother was a huge fan and we went a ton of times.

TV was only black and white. Color TV existed but was very expensive, like for a king. Ditto with remotes. We stood up and walked across the room to change a channel.

Going to the movies was a really big deal.

I was raised on Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Andy Williams, Barbara Streisand. My mother had been the president of the Frank Sinatra Fan Club in NYC when they were all screaming over him. Rock and Roll was out, my mother never moved into that generation. One time we went to see what was at the movies. It was Elvis. We left. She told me not that long ago, they thought of him as the devil. Also I was raised on albums of Broadway Shows. I didn't get to see them, but my parents would go, and my mother would buy the albums, and I would hear them all the time.

I remember when the fast food hamburger places came into being. We had Wetsons. You had to eat in your car.

I remember when they started putting seat belts in cars.

We would go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

We all had the measles, mumps, german measles. My neighbors even had scarlet fever. The polio vaccine I think was pretty new. They had polio when my mother was a girl. I remember when they switched the vaccine from a shot to a sugar cube. Of course I was a kid, so I liked it. I guess they still had whooping cough bad when my mother was a kid too. And we all had small pox vaccines.

I remember Wonder Bread commercials. Wonder Bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways. I am thankful my mother wouldn't buy wonder bread, but bought Pepperidge Farm Whole Wheat Bread instead. At the time, I was jealous of the neighbors who got to eat Wonder Bread. I guess the neighbors didn't like borrowing bread from my mother, because it was too healthy. I also remember all the cigarette commercials.

I remember praying a prayer every morning in school with the pledge alliance. I remember when they outlawed it and we stopped.

Bazooka Bubble gum for a penny, and gumball machines for a penny.

Barbie Dolls. I had the original Barbie with the blond pony tail and back and white striped bathing suit. She is worth a bundle today.

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My mother loved to travel and she loved history. All our family vacations involved piling into the car, and seeing the old historic sites of the Northeast coast. We went to Sturbridge Village, Mystic Seaport, Jamestown and Williamsburg. We would go to big Antique shops in new England, and my mother would buy Mustache Cups and Old Irons. We saw Monticello, and Hyde Park. We went to Niagara Falls. I had cousins who lived on the other side of the bridge from Washington D.C., so we would go visit there. I toured the White House when Jackie Kennedy was there. That was considered a big deal. I saw the Capital, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Memorial. We only went to the Smithsonian for an hour, and I wish we had spent more time there. I do believe I got to see the Wright Brother's Airplane.

One other thing my mother was the Brownie and Girl Scout Leader. We went rustic camping for Brownie and Girl Scouts. I don't remember it that well, but there are pictures. I have to say that this is the only time I ever went camping in my childhood. Both my parents were hard core New Yorkers. In fact, I had no idea that people went camping any other time, except for Girl Scouts. I didn't know that was something people would elect to do on their own for fun and vacation. I think I thought it was strictly a Girl Scout activity and nothing else. Funny me. Actually I thought my reality was the only reality. I had no idea about other people's reality.

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