Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Syreens

The streets of East Flatbush were corridors to Kings County Hospital, with ambulances wailing all day, and especially night.

One of the first words I learned, then unlearned, was "syreen," the noise-maker on ambulances and cop cars. I never heard it pronounced any other way until school, where our nuns, who were from Baltimore, told us the word was "siren."

They had to use their full authority to convince us of that. We gave it to them, but kept our pronunciation anyway. It sounded truer - or, as I learned much later, more onomatopoetic.

We were close enough to the hospital to drive there ourselves, when necessary, rather than by ambulance. Faster and cheaper both, I suppose.

I never knew an adult to go to the hospital. Kids did, with lifestyle mishaps: Deirdre Morgan, who once ate some shoelaces and drank bleach in the laundry; Jimmy Dolan, who liked to shove mothballs up his nose, but occasionally overdid it; and me, once, at age 4.

At Easter, I was entertaining some company at our house, running in circles and shouting "Heyyy, Abbott," to fine comic effect.

But you can't please everybody, and at one point Mary Sullivan, a full ten years my senior who should have known better, or at least been kinder, stuck her foot out in front of me in full throttle and sent me flying head-first into an iron radiator.

I remember the flight, and the passage from consciousness out of it. Apparently there was a good deal of blood, and some concern about loss of life. Thus, a trip to the hospital.

It turned out all right; my only hospital visit ever. Unlike Jimmy Dolan, I learned a little lesson, in deciding to never go back, if I could help it. Of course, maybe he simply couldn't.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

A Good Clout

Neither of my parents were hitters, though they often were forced to threaten it.

My father, like many fathers of the time, I guess, had the role of punisher when he came home from work, and heard all the bad things we did that day.

If hitting were warranted, he would discuss it first, in a way that was so rote, and comical to me, the hardest thing was trying not to laugh.

"I'm gonna take off my belt," he would say, "and...I'll hit ya; and you'll cry..." and his voice would trail off in the sad inevitability of it all.

So I would say I was sorry, maybe crying a little for authenticity, thus avoiding any smacking, and then I would rush off and imitate the ritual for my siblings. It got us every time.

My mother also would allow us the chance of an out through words. Caught at something, or simply annoying her, she would turn and say, eerily deadpan, "Do you want a good clout?" - our introduction to the rhetorical question.

Once and only once she ever hit me. There was no question first. It was when President Kennedy died.

He was shot and killed on a Friday. I was in first grade. They didn't tell us at school. I remember getting off the school bus, and all the mothers were there. That was unusual, as they usually took turns meeting us.

They took our hands, which was also strange.

I remember coming home, and the news on TV - all day, and into the night.

When I woke on Saturday, my mother was up, standing in front of the TV.

I stood next to her. She wasn't speaking and might have been crying.

Personally, I was wondering what was happening with cartoons. I was a big fan of a new show, Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales.

"Is this going to be on all day?," I asked.

"Of course," my mother said, and not kindly. "The president is shot dead."

It sank in. I shook my head - at the thought of the morning ruined; and said, as I gazed at the TV:

"Why did stupid President Kennedy have to get shot on a Friday?"

Wham, came the answer, a swing of my mother's arm, with the back of her hand to my face. She was crying now, and I sure knew why.

I found my footing, and looked up at her with tears in my eyes. She looked shocked, and sad, but she didn't say she was sorry.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Brooklyn 3

Brooklyn 3, New York was my address as a kid: 880 Clarkson Avenue, Brooklyn 3, New York.

We didn't move, but in 1964 it changed: to Brooklyn, New York, 11203.

It had to do with mail. There was no actual Brooklyn 3. The 3 had simply meant postal code 3, that's all.

That was a shock. Until then, I'd wondered why we were Brooklyn 3. Where were Brooklyns 2 and 1? Were they vastly different? Was there a Brooklyn 4? 5? 6? How many Brooklyns were there?

Or did it mean time, not place? Was Brooklyn 2 when they had the Dodgers? Brooklyn 1, horses?


It turns out, now, that Brooklyn 3 does mean a time. It also means a place, distinctly, if an indistinct place.

The place was East Flatbush. How it got a number so high, a place so low-down, I don't know. It was so undistinguished, it barely got a name.

Elsewhere in Brooklyn were places. Sheepshead Bay. Brooklyn Heights. Bensonhurst. Bushwick. Bay Ridge. Gravesend. Coney Island. Bed-Stuy. Flatbush. Distinct places, with names.

Our place was so devoid of anything, it had to cop a name. East of someplace? That's it?

It was fitting, though. In a borough everyone knows, and has always known, we were unknown.

There are no famous sites in East Flatbush. No famous streets (East Flatbush Avenue?). No tourist attractions. No parks. No subway stop.

No one comes from there. No one goes there, unless they live there, or get shot.

Shot, because East Flatbush has Kings County Hospital - our one thing. That, and next door to it, Brooklyn State Hospital: a mental hospital, immense, half a mile long.

The wounded and shot. The crazy, caught or not. East Flatbush, Brooklyn 3, New York.