Tag: growing up
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Summer Camps
One of the things about New York City, that many people probably don’t realize, is how many wild places there are. Tracts of land that house bird sanctuaries, giant sprawling wetlands and forested nature preserves. There is lots of ocean front as well, lined by beaches like Rockaway or Coney Island and little inlets and…
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When I Was You
It was something we said to each other as children…our sense of time and place were malleable; we had not yet been indoctrinated into the order of things as dictated by our elders. Put it another way, our outlook was natural and probably closer to the truth than the artificial constructs human society has created.…
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Uncle George’s House
The grownups visited in the basement That basement that George was so proud of He paneled it in that 1960’s style Cheap, but effective, like a boys clubhouse – Leonia and George hosted parties and dinners down there She cooked and he tended behind the bar he built Gossip and politics; One cousin was lazy…
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Island Memories
It was before most cars had air-conditioning; so even on the hottest days we drove with the windows rolled down. Always in that black ’63 Impala, or later on, the blue one. And finally the Nova. My grandparents were working class people with union jobs. They bought American. They bought Chevy. WMCA New York was…
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Castaway
You’re never too old to cry for that which is lost The pieces of my life are woven together with the thinnest of thread. I don’t think there is anyone that even remembers Cambria Heights. Especially Cambria Heights. I have few living relatives, and I see them rarely, if at all. None of them would…
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The Island
I remember old houses, weathered by wind and salt air and knocked sideways by hurricanes on their way to more newsworthy places. It was an island across the bay from Kennedy airport, surrounded by brackish water and interwoven by canals…fodder for tropical storms. It was populated by tough men and tougher women, union democrats with…
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Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Jamaica Avenue is a long stretch of two and three story buildings, many with commercial enterprises on the first floor and living quarters on the second and sometimes third floors. It cuts clear across Queens from West to East, continues onto Long Island as Jericho Turnpike, and on the West end gets lost in a…