April 29, 2015--The Dead Who Know Brooklyn

We've been to Brooklyn four times this month. To the new hip Williamsburg Brooklyn and the other of my childhood neighborhoods, memories, and misdemeanors

There's a garden center we've been back and forth to right by Kings County Hospital where my gang used to hung out by its lunatic asylum wing--no euphemisms back then--to shamelessly taunt residents who, to get a breath of air summers, in their pajamas and robes, would come out onto caged-in terraces, screaming at the elements in their private languages. It was a first experience with unfairness and inhumanity. Ours.

Deeper into Brooklyn there is Butler Street which, opposite the toxic Gowanus Canal, was where the borough's ASPCA was located. it was one of my father's favorite places, not because he was an animal lover, quite the contrary--we were forbidden to have pets-- but because after a week of not being adopted, dogs and cats were, he said, gassed.

To exorcise that memory I drove-by last Sunday and brought to vivid recollection how my father used to take me there after I had seriously misbehaved to let me know that if I didn't shape up, he would drop me off there and after a week . . .

He would pull over in front and we would just sit in the car for half an hour with the motor turned off and the windows rolled down, in any weather, so I could hear the desperate yelping leaking through the door.

I got the point and instantly stopped my misbehaving. Or at least continued it more surreptitiously.

I found that the ASPA is no longer there--the neighborhood is fully gentrified--and the old dog pound has been converted into million-dollar, open-space lofts. The Gowanus, however, is still nearby and deadly to all forms of life.

Not far from Butler Street is Sterling Place where, at 7th Avenue, my father owned a four-story parking garage. He should have held onto it as real estate values subsequently soared but his partner, Uncle Herman, decided he wanted to cash-out and my father couldn't pay what he asked. Just another in a series of failed ventures. All involving family-member partners.

The Sterling Place Garage, while still in my father's and Uncle Herman's hands, before its conversion also into lofts, had a brief history in the tragic and morbid.

On December 16, 1960, high over Staten island, a TWA jet crashed into a United Airline jet, with the fragments of one plummeting onto the Island while the other, the United flight, crashing in Brooklyn, the fuselage and body parts, falling in Park Slope, most right at the corner of 7th Avenue and Sterling Place.

There was only one survivor, an 11-year-old boy who was thrown clear of the wreckage. He lived only one day and then succumbed to his injuries, saying, before he died, from his hospital bed, that moments before the collision, he had looked out the window at the snow falling on the city, "It looked like a picture out of a fairy book. It was a beautiful sight."

One hundred-twenty-eight were killed. Most had been on the United plane. My father's garage became their temporary morgue.

June 4, 2014--NY, NY: Fish Story

We've had a series of beautiful days. It is as if the weather gods are compensating New York City for the harsh winter they imposed.

So we have been taking long walks. For the fresh air, the exercise, and to take note of all the changes that occurred during the four months we were lolling in Delray Beach.

"It's a shame," Rona said, as if already taking the clear air for granted, "how the banks and pharmacies and food places are pushing out the shoemakers and dry cleaners."

"And the mom-and-pop places," I joined in the familiar litany.

Living peripatetically as we do, these shifts in the neighbor are more dramatic than they would be if we were here all the time. It would feel more like a steady drip than a torrent of change.

"Why don't we try to enjoy things," Rona said, wanting us to move on from nostalgia for the old, more human scale New York. "For example, look at this little park. I don't think I ever noticed it before. It's just a sliver of a triangle, all grown over like a woodland landscape with what looks like a rambling path. Let's finish our ices and wander in."

We were at Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street and had just stopped at Rocco's, an old-fashioned Italian bakery to get some of their delicious homemade ices. "Just like the old days in Brooklyn," Rona had said but then added, "Here I am, doing it again, living in the past. I find it so hard to move on and get comfortable with all the change and gentrification."

I put my arm around her and we ventured into the pocket park.

Though tiny, it was a transporting oasis from the throb of traffic on Sixth.

"I'll say one thing positive about all the new things."

"I'm looking foreword to hearing that," I smiled.

"During the past 20 years or so the city has done an amazing job of improving its parks. From Central and Prospect Park to Washington Square, Union Square, and now this one. It really is like an enchanted glade. Magical."

"And we have it all to ourselves. That's almost my favorite part."

Rona hugged me and I let my hand find her breast. "Stop that. There are other people here," she squirmed away from me but giggled with girlish pleasure.

After wandering further in the West Village we turned to home. Broadway, pleasantly, was a bit less crowded than when NYU is in session and also the street demographics are now shifted more toward our end, my end, of the actuarial scale, which meant that we didn't have to dodge the streams of college-age kids staring obliviously at their smart phones.

"Did you see that?" Rona whispered, pulling on my sleeve.

"What?"

"That women. The one pushing the walker."

"I see her," she has shuffled passed us as we stopped to look in a shop window, "But I don't know what you're pointing out."

"What she has in the basket."

"Maybe a cat, like I told you about seeing the other day when I went out for the paper? The woman who had her cat seat-belted in a kiddie stroller."

"No. Not her. Walk faster. You're not going to believe this one."

"Give me a hint. I don't want to race after her and scare her. She looks pretty fragile."

"She's stopped at the light. We can catch up without startling her. This you won't believe."

We got to her well before the light changed and I looked surreptitiously into the basket. Rona, excitedly, was poking me in the back. I brushed her hand away so I could get a closer look.

"I see what you mean," I said.

Rona, nodding, to shush me, poked me harder.

To the woman I said, "Are you taking him for a walk?" I was referring to the fish in the small bowl in her walker basket.

I expected to be glared at or at least ignored.

"Yes," she said, with a wide smile. "It's such a beautiful day I thought he'd enjoy being out."

"It is beautiful," I said, not knowing what to say. "He must . . ." I cut myself off, not believing I was talking about a fish that was being taken out for a walk.

"He's cooped up all day."

"I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us when . . ."

"I know you think I'm crazy," she said, looking directly at me.

I truly did not know how to respond because, yes, I did think . . .

"Maybe I am. At least a little bit." I was happy to see her smiling. It suggested enough self-awareness to assure me that she didn't require an intervention.

"You know when all this began?"

"This?"

"With the fish. He's a Beta."

"I can see that."

"After Herb died." I looked away. "Almost a year ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"We were together almost sixty years. I didn't know what to do with myself. I wanted to die. If I could find the courage, I wanted to end it. To kill myself."

"That's . . ."

"I know. Sad and desperate." She looked at me and I shrugged as empathetically as I could. "That's how I felt. As if life no longer had meaning." She shuddered. "But then a friend suggested I get a pet. How having a pet is good for people living on their own. It brings life into your life."

"I've heard that too," I said.

"But look at me. Am I able to walk a dog? Or bend down to empty a litter box?"

"I don't . . ."

"You can say it. It's the truth. I'm old and all crippled up. With my knees. I could also use a new hip. And I have back spasms from top to bottom. So . . ." She pointed at the fish bowl and this time she shrugged.

"So this . . . ?"

"Yes, this. I call him Herb. I know that's crazy but at this point I don't care, I don't care what anyone thinks."

"It makes sense to me," I managed to say. In fact, it did.

By then the light had turned green and she began painfully to cross the street.

"Nice talking to you," she said over her shoulder. "Have a nice day."