You may have heard that I’m a big Barry Manilow fan. That’s not quite true. The fact is I’ve always been a huge fan of another Brooklyn native. And no, it’s not Barbra Streisand either! It’s actually Neil Diamond. The “Jewish Elvis”!
And while his voice has given way to a sort of raspy shadow of its former self, the guy’s music is timeless. Not just the usual litany of hit material, but one in particular stands out as a personal favorite. The song is “Brooklyn Roads”. I think it came out in late ’68 or ’69, and it’s his autobiography of sorts. In it, he sings of his growing up “2 floors above the butcher, first door on the right”, running into his father’s bear hug, feeling his dad’s whiskers on his face. The imagery is stark and harkens back to a time when I can remember living 2 floors above a grocery store. Hearing the lyrics makes me smell the scents in the hallway of everyone’s cooking as he climbs the stairs to his apartment. It’s all so real for me. And as the story winds down, he bemoans the fact that his life has taken a few too many turns away from this simple life. But, in the end he realizes, as he looks up at his former apartment, and spies a boy not too unlike himself; that the more things seem to change, the more they remain the same. And even if you can never go back “home”, you’re never far from it either!
So it’s with that same feeling that on October 24th, I’m going to rewind back to 1965, when those familiar Brooklyn roads lead me back to my old grammar school….Our Lady of Grace! Quite a few of us have fond memories of OLG….a school which in the last few years has become a charter school.
God knows, the sight of the halls, the schoolyards, the classrooms, and the auditorium will bring back too many memories...and not all of them good! There’s the first day my mom dropped me off at kindergarten, and all I could remember, besides sheer terror, was the smell of burning tar from the construction of the school’s auditorium. Who’s ever challenged a nun’s authority? Well, you had to know that at that point, you were taking your life in your hands. A nun named Sister Genevieve ruled kindergarten with an iron fist. I had the nerve one day to tell her to shut up. That did not go well. Wooden sticks, smacks with both hands….I went home looking like Rocky after the first Apollo Creed fight!
Corporal punishment was the rule for nuns and even lay teachers…some were better at it than others. My 8th grade nun was so frail that when she went to smack one of my classmates for something stupid he’d done, her hand bled! No so with the other 8th grade nun. If you wore glasses and she told you to take them off, all the blood would drain from your face in anticipation of what was coming!
I often wondered whether any of these nuns could possibly have been canonized into sainthood knowing how they tortured some of us. I’d feel a little strange praying to one of them for a miracle.
But it wasn’t all hard knocks! Ringolevio, saluggi (grabbing someone’s hat off their head and flinging it around to your friends), getting initiated into the “bush club” (it’s not what you think, it’s actually getting tossed into hedges on the way to school), half days on Wednesday, pretzels at 10:30; and 8th grade prom (seeing real cleavage on girls you never thought had it!).
That’s only a small taste of where the road will lead on October 24th. I’m just wondering if I’ll find that same kid that Neil Diamond found at the end of his song!
In some ways he’s not as lucky as we were…..with one possible exception….he doesn’t have the bruises to show for it!
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Off the beaten path
Call me a little late in coming to the table, but sometimes it takes a while to discover those gems that are the true essence of what New Jersey was.
A recent visit to both Roebling and Ocean Grove opened my eyes to just that.
Roebling, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a small town just south of Bordentown, founded by Charles Roebling….he of the family that manufactured the cable for the Brooklyn Bridge, George Washington Bridge, and Golden Gate…among many others.
Time it was that Roebling was a bustling hub of activity as the steel mills ran 24 hours a day. The residents there all worked for the company, and lived in a sort of nirvana until the mills closed in 1974. But Roebling never lost its sense of community.
My tour guide is the town’s unofficial historian, George Lengel. His father, a Hungarian immigrant, worked the mill, as did George himself until his father prevailed upon him to find another career, because, in his words, he didn’t raise his son to be no steelworker! And even though George didn’t fancy himself to be a grade A student, off he went in search of a career as an educator!
Most of the original housing…..mainly row homes and semi attached houses, still stand; as do remnants of the original mill. It is said that, ever now and then, an apparition appears in one of the abandoned mill’s windows, and despite the fact that searching parties have been formed, no one to date has been found!
It’s one of those few places where people rarely leave since a good many of the residents are descendents of the original settlers…..the quintessential place where “everybody knows your name”. Outside of the fact that the River Line runs through the center of town, it’s as though the 21st century stops at Route 130!
So too the character of Ocean Grove…..a short drive off the Parkway or Route 18, at the end of Corlies Ave. Just past the light on Route 71, and you enter another universe….sort of like a New Hope on the shore.
Here again the homes each have a character all their own, and you never know what your going to find happening on Main Ave. Recently my wife and I were just browsing through the stores when we hear someone singing to a karaoke machine, drawing an enthusiastic crowd! And that’s not such an unusual occurrence.
There are loads of others too numerous to mention here…..I’m sure you can name a few of your own. But it’s always a treat that in a state known for bulldozing its past to make way for tomorrow, there are still a few places that time seems to have forgotten!
A recent visit to both Roebling and Ocean Grove opened my eyes to just that.
Roebling, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a small town just south of Bordentown, founded by Charles Roebling….he of the family that manufactured the cable for the Brooklyn Bridge, George Washington Bridge, and Golden Gate…among many others.
Time it was that Roebling was a bustling hub of activity as the steel mills ran 24 hours a day. The residents there all worked for the company, and lived in a sort of nirvana until the mills closed in 1974. But Roebling never lost its sense of community.
My tour guide is the town’s unofficial historian, George Lengel. His father, a Hungarian immigrant, worked the mill, as did George himself until his father prevailed upon him to find another career, because, in his words, he didn’t raise his son to be no steelworker! And even though George didn’t fancy himself to be a grade A student, off he went in search of a career as an educator!
Most of the original housing…..mainly row homes and semi attached houses, still stand; as do remnants of the original mill. It is said that, ever now and then, an apparition appears in one of the abandoned mill’s windows, and despite the fact that searching parties have been formed, no one to date has been found!
It’s one of those few places where people rarely leave since a good many of the residents are descendents of the original settlers…..the quintessential place where “everybody knows your name”. Outside of the fact that the River Line runs through the center of town, it’s as though the 21st century stops at Route 130!
So too the character of Ocean Grove…..a short drive off the Parkway or Route 18, at the end of Corlies Ave. Just past the light on Route 71, and you enter another universe….sort of like a New Hope on the shore.
Here again the homes each have a character all their own, and you never know what your going to find happening on Main Ave. Recently my wife and I were just browsing through the stores when we hear someone singing to a karaoke machine, drawing an enthusiastic crowd! And that’s not such an unusual occurrence.
There are loads of others too numerous to mention here…..I’m sure you can name a few of your own. But it’s always a treat that in a state known for bulldozing its past to make way for tomorrow, there are still a few places that time seems to have forgotten!
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