PHOTOS OF East New York Projects

Some Photos of East New York Project area. Now that I figured out how to post photos I'll be posting a few more

View of my apartment 738 Stanley Ave. 2nd floor..
wow they finally got  air conditioning

Front of 738 Stanley Ave. We used to hang off that ledge over door

View of my side of the building. apt 2B
Still has my initials middle window 2nd floor

My initials  CL  outside my window 50 years ago and still there

Close up of my initials

Smoke Stack on Stanley and Schenck Ave. that Sandy "Sick" Schmidt climbed to the top

Used to hang out at the Galazy Diner weekend late nights
Dave the counter man served us

The famous George Gershwin Junior High School 166
where I got into a lot of trouble. I had made copies of the keys to this school

we used to joke about a guy named  Jimmy from Hendrix St.

Public School 273  "Dry Gulch"

ENY ice cream and dogs

Well i'm not sure what I'm going to write yet, but I passed by my old apartment at 738 Stanley Avenue and my initials painted in white paint are still outside my bedroom window.  Ahhh, that window. When I was younger , I would stand  outside that window and yell to my mother  who was in the kitchen." Ma, throw down some money for  ice cream".  Bill Cosby talks about the  ice cream man, he  was so right-on with his stories.  We kids would  go wild for the ice cream man.  Hi Ya Al used to give us prizes. The worst prizes ever.  Tiny paper parachutes,  rubber blow toys that made fart sounds, little metal clickers that sounded like crickets, i forget the others, but  we  liked  Hi Ya Al the best. I think his name was  Al Calzone from Delancey St.  Yeah he travelled all the way to ENY to sell ice cream. Not a bad move . There were so many kids in the projects.    Good Humor Ice Cream was good  and I used to order the  Chocolate Eclair pop from that truck.  But  Al  had  Marino  Ices. We would carve a hole through the middle. We'd call it a donut and we would turn it over  and suck the sweet syrup out of the ice.  My favorite flavor was called  blue gelato.  Johnny and his father  Rocky  sold ice cream and  I wrote about them  before.  They didn't have the best  quality ice cream but they came around earlier and we gave them  business too.  Carvel truck came years later. I wasn't much into soft ice cream.  My brother got run over by the Carvel truck, got a  concussion. I think they gave him  $1000, what a huge law suit  haha.  Bungalow bar had  a  cool truck with a wood shingled roof.  I used to like the  pull the cord and ring the bell and watch the kids come running.
       So,  where was  I?  Well, my window faced the  flagpole.  Our projects had a flagpole.  How many flag poles are there anymore, ?  Anywhere?  Well we had one, and when someone famous died it would be at  half mast.   I hope I spelled that  correctly.   On my way to  high school, and  yes I maybe skipping years, but  so what.  There were packs of stray dogs laying in the grass behind the flagpole.
I  loved dogs, but I did have  a fear of dogs I didn't know.  I used to play with  stray dogs, named  Laddy, Queenie, Spaghetti and more, but these had no names and they looked mean.  I had to get by them to catch the bus on Linden Blvd.  Scary ,,, i would  move slowly , then as i was about to pass the pack , I would  run and run so fast.  My orange laces on my high white Chuck Taylor Converse would look like a blur.   I'd run across Linden Blvd and  quite often the bus would be  pulling out ,,,, So  I'd jump on the back  bumper  grabbing on to the  big sign advertisement on the back of the bus. Usually someone else would  jump on too.  We had about  a mile  ride to Jefferson High School.  on Pennsylvania Ave.   There was a space between the sign and the  bus , so you could slip your  fingers in there.  It was  fun.  Mind you the bus was only a nickel with  your bus pass.  A year or so  later ,they changed the design and eliminated the space. This really made it hard to ride the back of the bus.
    Back to the dogs. There were many stray dog packs.  This particular pack had  several Shepherd looking  dogs. Big mean ones.   So one day,  a few years later, i had bought a dog.  A German Shepherd named Pancho.  This dog was smart.  I taught him to  jump over  a 5 foot high fence.  People would  fear this dog, when they saw him fly over the fence on command. We didn't have to use leashes in those days.  Dogs could run free.   In any case, Pancho ran away one day. He must have  picked up the scent of a dog in heat.  He headed to the  weeds.  He went to the pack of about  12 dogs.  I was watching him, he had ignored my calls to him.  He got involved in a  brawl with the  pack leader.  I was  hoping my dog wouldn't get killed but  I did nothing to help him. I just  watched from a distance.  I was actually afraid of being eaten alive.  Pancho won the  fight with the  leader of the pack.  it seemed like he was the new leader.   I refused to go in and get him. Those dog eyes glowing in the dark, there was no way I was going into the pack.  I turned around and went back home and  basically said  goodbye to Pancho.  The next day, Pancho was  hanging outside  the building.  I felt so good that he returned.  Pancho's full name was  Pancho  El Akbar, or Pancho the Great.  he was  great, loyal , smart and tough.  I miss that dog.

Babysitting-----my specialty

My two baby sitting experiences, will never get me another baby sitting job.  Let me say I was an adult during these experiences.
Awhile back  a neighbor hired my 10 year old daughter to babysit for her  2 year old.  Ummm how stupid is that?  So of course I went in to help.  The 2 year old banged her head on a pointy piece of furniture  and  was crying loudly .  So , I thought quickly and  gave her  a video tape in the plastic case , one of those  big VHS  tapes.  So the kid takes it and starts banging it on her  head.  She was  really enjoying  doing that.  She stopped crying  and we all were laughing . Then we noticed that now her head was  bleeding. The mother came home and saw a  bloody kid.  All I could say was  "she was having lots of fun".

Another time, i was  watching  my friend's  5 year old, maybe  4 year old.  Anyway,  the kid was bored and  I had to think of a fun thing to do.  Band Aids... yeah that was the idea.   so  we put  all different  shape and color band aids  all over  her   arms and face and forehead.  It made the kid laugh every time i showed her in the mirror.  It was quite hilarious.  However, when she revealed  her wonderful  Band-Aid makeup to her mom,  Her mom let out a scream.  First I thought it was a good scream, but it was a bad scream..  I got  yelled at "what did you do to my daughter:"... I said ,  "we were just  having fun".
A funny thing is, the memory stuck in my friend's daughter's mind as a memorable event.  About  2 weeks ago , she sent me a picture of her 5 year old child with duct tape all across his mouth eyes and arms. And she said " you taught me well"..... Oh my!

I don't think I was so bad, when I think of a story about  my wife's father watching her.  She was  3 years old and he was holding her  hand walking with her by the public swimming pool.  He  was then engaged in a conversation with some friends.  All of a sudden he noticed all these people diving into the pool,  his daughter  ( my wife)  was  under the water ,  while he was just holding  her hand.  She  almost drowned.   I guess  I'm not the worst babysitter.  :)

4th of July in the projects

Let's start out by letting you all know that the Boulevard Projects in  East New York, were built  in a swamp land. That swamp was filled with garbage and then they built about  26 buildings on top of the garbage or landfill.  There was still the  stream of water from the sewage plant, that we called  Shitz Creek. There were rows and rows of quansett huts or we called them the barracks.  These were  inhabited by veterans of  World War II .  Some of these people  had goats. There were 2 cow farms, several vegetable farms and two riding stables.  There were woods that we called Sherwood Forest, where the police found a huge crop of marijuana  back in the late 50's  when not many people even knew what it was.  We had names for every landmark, from Dry Gulch, to "the lots" , to the circle, The Pond, Volcano Mountain, and of course the  witch's  house.   

     I'm not sure where this story is going, but  at least you know the lay of the land. These projects were located right on the  Idlewild Airport plane route  , later known as Kennedy Airport. The planes would come so low and so loud the buildings  seemed to shake.  If you were home watching Rin Tin Tin on TV, or something the planes would come over and make you miss the whole end of the show.

     So  July 4th is summer, it is so hot , and so humid.  Most of the people in the building would  come out front and sit on the benches outside.  If it was  around  dusk,  the kids would be playing  3 feet over the boundary line or  ringaleevio or hide and seek.  When evening came, Someone would have a  portable radio and  playing either  1010 WINS  Alan Freed Show, or maybe it was a few years later and they had  Murray the K and his Swingin Suaree on WMCA, or the Good Guys.  Perhaps  it was the  Jocko Radio Show,,,or even Latin music hosted by Dick Ricardo Sugar on WEVD  playing  Charlie Pamieri or Pacheco y su charanaga... I was in a Latin band, playing the keyboards.  Our leader was fluent in Spanish and played Timbolis.  ( I'm not checking spelling on any of this,,,sorry),.  

        So its hot it's humid,, people sitting outside  and the  mosquitoes were like  B-52's attacking everyone. They seemed to like my taste the best.  I'd love to smack a mosquito when he ws drilling his stinger into my arm and  "splat"  blood would  splash al over my arm,if i got  a good one  and had perfect timing.  That is, after he filled his tank.

    Leading up to the  4th, we would try to secure fireworks.  A few of the parents would buy Roman Candles or some kind of  rockets.... Cracker Balls we always had,, and would throw them not he ground and scare the crap out of  old ladies and  others.  Sometimes we would arm ourselves with  cherry bombs or M80's.  They say an M80 equals a quarter stick of  dynamite  maybe an  1/8. There was  something  called  aerial bombs that were  more powerful ,In any case, we would  walk around with our  brown paper bags filled with these ash cans aka  M80's  and throw them at people.    During the day if we went fishing on the  Cross Bay Bridge,    we would throw them lit into the water,,,they had  water proof stuff around the  fuse,,  We'd get a big  splash,,,The best  was catching a  giant  pre-historic looking  horseshoe crab.. taking that crab and shoving a  cherry bomb into it and  blowing it to smithereens.   

        Now  we are back in the projects and  it is kind of dangerous on the  4th or around that date, because  people  would throw explosives at you ,,, Yes even if they knew you , we would  often have  cherry bomb fights. Scary stuff.    Someoen would always  buy a "mat " of firecrackers  , i think it was  80 packs..  I seem to recall Tiger  Brand, made in Macau.   i used to collect labels of different brands of firecrackers.   We would like to light a whole  pack at a time. You would  hear  20 simultaneous explosions.  Sometimes we would light them off in the hallways,,,, oh the parents hated that  ,and we would get yelled at ,,but it was really loud in the hallways.  One time this guy Eugene jackson, he ws  really tall,  I remember.. He threw a firecracker  at me and it blew up in my ear.  Two of my neighbors,,"the big kids"  Mal Capone and  Arnie ran after him and  kicked his  butt.  Hey good to have peeps.   Anyway,,,,  we would like to go up to the roof tops and  look out about  15 blocks to  Blake Ave, and watch the tenement  fires.There were so many fires around that time of year.. And those  old  houses  would burn easily,,,  There had to be  3 or 4 fires a night up on  Blake or Sutter Ave.

The firemen had their work cut out for them.  

      Sometimes people   were stupid and  held a cherry bomb  or even a fire cracker too long.   It would blow up in your hand,, It happened to me with a firecracker,, My hand  blistered up pretty bad... One guy, named Fly Away  held  a M80 too long and lost  2 fingers.  They didn't call him Fly Away because his fingers flew away,,He got the name because he was like  6 ft 5in and  skinny as a rail . If a wind  blew he might fly away.   

    So that was the   firework fun in the Projects,,,  the little kids had sparklers and  well, because  we also didn't have much money, we used to make  our own fireworks but tying  steel wool  to a  string, lighting it and  spinning it around like a  sparkler.. That's ghetto fireworks.   As young kids we had this things called punks.They were skinny brown  things with a thin wood stem.  They would burn like a cigarette. We would burn holes in papers and leaves with the hot tip.  Or wave it around in the dark watching the   orange designs it made...It was also good , supposedly , for keeping the mosquitoes away.  On the hot days we would  go to the  Super Market ,, either Speedway or  The Market Place to cool off. Maybe go to the movies. Those were the only places with air-conditioning.  We  had fans.  Some people  talked about having blocks of  ice and a fan to blow the coolness.  We had  2 fans,,  the good fan and the bad fan.  The good fan had lots of colored buttons,  Green was high speed.. my father always seemed to get that one pointed at him.  Now we can't survive without  A/C.   Our cars didn't have  A/C either ,,we had the triangular  "fly windows" in the front that you could direct the air with. I don't think air-conditioning got into cars until maybe  1959.  It was only in some cars,  probably Cadillacs..  We had used  old cars.    If we were lucky someone would drive us to  Coney Island and we would  watch the real fireworks,,but mostly we watched the  tenements burn down and  watch a few Roman Candles and  bottle rockets.  Oh yeah,  and  matches would light by striking it on the  ground,,or on a window,,or with your nail you could  flick the  tip off and it would ignite,,,I think they used to say it had phosphorus  in the tip.. They were Ohio Blue Tip matches i think ,,they were wooden.  They became  illegal I think ,,but they were cool.   you could even throw them on the ground and watch them light.  

    Those were the good old days.   

  

Tennessee Food

I had hoped the food in Tennessee would be really good. Well, it wasn't. When you ask someone where to eat for the best food, they recommend a restaurant chain. " oh y'all kin go ta Olive Garden for some EYEtalian food".   Then some local recommended Calhoun's for  BBQ.  Turns out  Calhoun's was a chain .  The food sucked.  They fry everything. Even corn on the cob fried.  I'd show ya a picture, but I haven't learned how to post pictures yet.  friend  okra,  fried green tomatoes etc.  The people here think Mac n Cheese is a vegetable.  The menu says  pick  your  main course, such as  ribs, chicken fingers etc and   choice of vegetable. The list has  friend corn on cob, friend okra  ,, macaroni and cheese.  Do they grow mac n cheese  on  their farms?  Amazing place this Knoxville.  i think i'm gonna go tubin' in a tire tube down the river.
"

Rainy day in the projects

We lived in a 6 story building in the Boulevard projects in East New York. Everyone in the building knew each other.  People didn't even  lock their doors. Things have changed a whole lot, people have 3 locks on their doors now.  If they were allowed to have dogs, they would have pit bulls.  When it was  nice weather  we had lots to do outside.  You knew it was  Spring by the sound of the metal roller-skate wheels on the concrete.  We wore  Union Hardware brand skates and changed the clamps from the little ones to the big ones.  We all wore  skate keys round our necks.  Skating backwards was a lot of fun, so was  roller hockey and roller derby.  On rainy days  we had a few favorite games.  Blindman's bluff was a  good one. We would blindfold one person , and he would have to grab someone and say "blind man bluff 1-2-3 3 times.  The game was  confined to one floor of the building. We couldn't have someone be blindfolded and  chase us down the staircases. That would hurt ,, We would also play something like dodgeball with a  rubber ball like a  Pensie Pinkie or a Spalding. We'd throw the  ball hard and if it missed the person you were aiming at it would hit Eddie Napolitano's living room wall.  Eddie would come out yelling at us and we would run up to the 3rd floor.  We would eventually be on the  6th floor after being chased all day.  It was a good way to make a rainy day pass.  Another thing we would like to do was to  go in the elevator and  pull that  door open from inside when between two floors.  When you did that, the elevator would stop.  You would  reach in and  press the latch inside the  space on the upper right. That would release the  outer door and we would push that door open.  We all would  jump out onto safe ground. If we missed we would be dead.  it was good fun.  We sometimes would do it between the  1st floor and the 2nd., and jump out on to the first  floor.  This would allow us to  jump down to below the 1st floor. Someone would keep the door open  and  the other person would collect  any money dropped down their.  There were  2 big thick springs at the bottom,  i guess to stop the elevator from  crashing if the cables broke.  if someone didn't keep holding the door open , the elevator could move and  there would  be a chance of being stuck or  trapped down there.  Another alternative but  crazier was  standing on the handrail inside of the elevator and pushing open the  ceiling panel then climbing on top of the elevator. There was a lot of  electrical and cables up there, and it was not comfortable. It was  downright scary and dark. and when it stopped at a floor, while riding the top of the elevator,  it shook and  made a jolting stop on the floors.  It was  scary but fun.
     Other  games in the hallways, were  spinning tops,  playing crack top, where you try to split the  other guys wooden top in half with  your  top.  Tops were fun and came in  two kinds, the rounded ball bearing  point and the   sharp pointed diggers.  The  digger was better for  crack top , the ball bearing was easier to spin it and do some tricks.
    Lastly,  baseball cards flipping was a favorite.  We would play "off the wall", this was a  game where you  held a baseball card facedown with the long edge against the wall or hold the card flat against the wall.  Whomever went first would  hold  a card against the wall and let go the cards would spin to the ground.  The  2nd person would  hold the card either edge or face against the wall and if it landed on a card he would keep it.  If he missed the other guy kept it.  Then we'd do it again , switching who went first.  We would also flip cards.  Maybe  4 cards and the second guy had to flip their cards and  match the heads and tails to win.  Usually if you held a  "head" outward , you would  flip a tail. That is once you had the  power factor down.   Some cards were easier to get than others.  Pete Runnel's on the Senators and  Richie Ashburn on the Phillies were easy.  Don Drysdale on the Brooklyn Dodgers and  Mickey Mantle of the  Yankees, were harder.  We would also play "closest to the wall" with the cards,  You had to toss the card toward the wall. Throwing it kind of  like a "backhanded linoleum throw".  You would try to get close to that wall, or even better  , throw a  "waller" that would stand up flat against the wall. that was pretty much a guaranteed win.  Basball card games were fun. Collecting them was fun too.  Nowadays,  kids buy the whole collection and never  even touch them. They keep them mint to  increase the value. We would  touch them  flip them  , bend them.  We would  buy  a  pack of  5 or 5 cards with  bubble gum in it.  Topp's made them.  We would have check lists and get the set  2 , 3, or 4 times We would trade them, it was  awesome.  
    Sometimes we would  play the  closest to the wall game with  coins.  Same rules.  You could win some  good money , if you were lucky.
   I guess the last game was  ,  ring someone's bell and run away.  We used to do that to people we didn't really like.  Especially,  Tigerlady , in   6 B,,  she was a little crazy and would  chase us and  curse at us really loud.
    So much for fun in the rain.  After the rain  I would like to  leave the building through the 2nd floor hall window,  go out on the the   2nd floor roof,  hang on the    fence below and swing down . It was  something  that would make the parents  panic that  someone would fall and  get hurt. We seemed to like danger.  Then we would go to the curb and  look at the rainbows formed from the puddles of rain, mixed with  motor oil ..I liked those colors,,,, That was  a ghetto rainbow.  Hey, it looked nice.

Relatives of mine

I had an aunt with a beard.
I had an uncle named Juice because he drank a lot of orange juice.
I had a grandmother with no finger nail.
I had a grandfather who spoke only Russian and liked to throw handkerchiefs and call them birds.
I had a mother who played high school basketball. She also used cigarette ashes as her secret ingredient in her cooking.
I had a father who taught me to use leaves when out of toilet paper. he also taught me to pee on  cigarette butts and split them apart.
I had an uncle who made my aunt fall wherever he saw broken sidewalk or floor or step near a store,       Then he would call the lawyer and sue the store.
The same uncle could take the grass or blood stains out of your clothes, he was a spotter at a dry cleaners.
I had an in-law who was named Willy the Horse, he died at the racetrack and was a mobster.
I have a nephew who stole bikes and hid them in my mom's basement.
I have a brother who cut his pinky off while doing arts and crafts.
I have a sister who hid a guy in my mom's basement for  6 months before anyone found out.
I have another sister who took my address book and  went off to Europe at age 15 and visited all my friends there.
I had an uncle who was an undefeated pro boxer, but quit because he had good teeth.
I had an aunt who was a great artist.
I had a cousin  Chonka, who I never met, all anyone knew of her , was she lived in Arizona.
I have several relatives in Argentina, that haven't been met.