I don’t know how it is in the suburbs, but in Brooklyn in the neighborhood that I have lived in all my life you get into habits. When you have reason to walk down a street you will do it sometimes for years at a time. Maybe you are going to school or to a particular store or even to visit a friend. But sometimes the reason you have to walk down that street goes away and you don’t walk down it for whatever reason. And then you do and it is all the same but so much different if you can understand what I mean.
I went to visit my uncle in the Cobble Hill nursing home where he is rehabbing after his operation. He had forty four kidney stones if you can believe it. He has Alzheimer’s and goes in and out but for some reason he always recognizes me. So I brought him a filet over broccoli and some eggplant parmesan. He refuses to eat a lot of the food they have in the place so he dived right into the stuff from Vinnie's. I visited with him for a while and then my cousin and his wife came so I left so they could visit.
Now the nursing home is on Henry St and I decided that since it was such a nice day I would walk to the store. I was walking along the street that I don’t think I had been on for ten or fifth teen years or so. Shit maybe twenty five years. I noticed the little wine bar on one corner and the new Chinese take out place. Then I got by Kane St across from PS 29’s. Now my grand aunt, my grandmother’s sister had a vegetable store on that corner when I was kid. She was a holy terror. She was a real old school entrepreneur. Or in real terms a freakin bitch on wheels. During Prohibition she had her husband brew up wine in the cellar and she sort of set up a bar in her apartment. When the longshoreman would get paid she would have them come to her apartment and play cards and eat macaroni and drink wine all night until she got every penny of their paychecks. With that she bought about six brownstones in the neighborhood. Whenever anybody couldn’t pay the taxes she would swoop in and get it for a song.
My grandmother lived in one of those brownstones on Henry St between Degraw and Kane Street with my uncle. I used to go to her house every day when I was kid. My Catholic grammar school was around the corner so my dad used to drop me off at around seven in the morning before he went to work on Wall St. and I would walk around the corner for school at 8:30 or so. I spent many an hour there before and after school. I walked past the old house and it seemed so run down. I guess the people who bought it from my aunt really let it go downhill. The stoop was chipped and door was shabby and the railings needed to be scraped and repainted. You see my grand aunt thought she was so smart. She gave each of her six kids a house when she retired to Florida and they all eventually sold out and followed her. They got such a great price. About $100,000 at the time. Of course now they are all worth well over a million. As usual greed and karma strikes back and they lost out on the boom.
Anyway to get back to the vegetable store, my aunt always made Jelly Apples. She had a little hot plate with a pot on it where she would melt the jelly and then she would spear an apple on a wooden stick and swirl the apple around and around till it was really coated. You let it cool off for a minute or too and you had a great treat. The kids always wanted jelly apples because it was just about the sweetest thing you could get to eat. It would rot the teeth right out of your mouth. The moms thought it was ok because it wasn’t like it was a candy bar. I mean it was fruit so it was healthy right? We would all troop in there after school and get jelly apples. And my aunt always gave me one for free. And slipped me a quarter. For some reason she liked me more than the rest of the cousins or even some of her own grandkids. She used to call me her little “Irishie” because I was half Irish. And when she slipped me a quarter she would say “Take-a good care of my sister, capice.” You see I think she felt guilty about how she treated her but could never come out and say it. It was our little secret.
When I was walking down Henry St kicking the leaves that are just starting to fall I could almost taste the jelly apples and hear my friends yelling to come play fistball in the schoolyard. I could smell the sauce bubbling on the stoves and the bleach as the old timers cleaned their sidewalks. I got up to the limestone building when the vegetable store used to be.
It’s a Laundromat.
I went to visit my uncle in the Cobble Hill nursing home where he is rehabbing after his operation. He had forty four kidney stones if you can believe it. He has Alzheimer’s and goes in and out but for some reason he always recognizes me. So I brought him a filet over broccoli and some eggplant parmesan. He refuses to eat a lot of the food they have in the place so he dived right into the stuff from Vinnie's. I visited with him for a while and then my cousin and his wife came so I left so they could visit.
Now the nursing home is on Henry St and I decided that since it was such a nice day I would walk to the store. I was walking along the street that I don’t think I had been on for ten or fifth teen years or so. Shit maybe twenty five years. I noticed the little wine bar on one corner and the new Chinese take out place. Then I got by Kane St across from PS 29’s. Now my grand aunt, my grandmother’s sister had a vegetable store on that corner when I was kid. She was a holy terror. She was a real old school entrepreneur. Or in real terms a freakin bitch on wheels. During Prohibition she had her husband brew up wine in the cellar and she sort of set up a bar in her apartment. When the longshoreman would get paid she would have them come to her apartment and play cards and eat macaroni and drink wine all night until she got every penny of their paychecks. With that she bought about six brownstones in the neighborhood. Whenever anybody couldn’t pay the taxes she would swoop in and get it for a song.
My grandmother lived in one of those brownstones on Henry St between Degraw and Kane Street with my uncle. I used to go to her house every day when I was kid. My Catholic grammar school was around the corner so my dad used to drop me off at around seven in the morning before he went to work on Wall St. and I would walk around the corner for school at 8:30 or so. I spent many an hour there before and after school. I walked past the old house and it seemed so run down. I guess the people who bought it from my aunt really let it go downhill. The stoop was chipped and door was shabby and the railings needed to be scraped and repainted. You see my grand aunt thought she was so smart. She gave each of her six kids a house when she retired to Florida and they all eventually sold out and followed her. They got such a great price. About $100,000 at the time. Of course now they are all worth well over a million. As usual greed and karma strikes back and they lost out on the boom.
Anyway to get back to the vegetable store, my aunt always made Jelly Apples. She had a little hot plate with a pot on it where she would melt the jelly and then she would spear an apple on a wooden stick and swirl the apple around and around till it was really coated. You let it cool off for a minute or too and you had a great treat. The kids always wanted jelly apples because it was just about the sweetest thing you could get to eat. It would rot the teeth right out of your mouth. The moms thought it was ok because it wasn’t like it was a candy bar. I mean it was fruit so it was healthy right? We would all troop in there after school and get jelly apples. And my aunt always gave me one for free. And slipped me a quarter. For some reason she liked me more than the rest of the cousins or even some of her own grandkids. She used to call me her little “Irishie” because I was half Irish. And when she slipped me a quarter she would say “Take-a good care of my sister, capice.” You see I think she felt guilty about how she treated her but could never come out and say it. It was our little secret.
When I was walking down Henry St kicking the leaves that are just starting to fall I could almost taste the jelly apples and hear my friends yelling to come play fistball in the schoolyard. I could smell the sauce bubbling on the stoves and the bleach as the old timers cleaned their sidewalks. I got up to the limestone building when the vegetable store used to be.
It’s a Laundromat.
2 comments:
Awww. You think that's bad? Entire mountains are missing from my childhood.
I didn't know such colorful characters in my youth. All my relatives stole in respectable ways.
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