Brooklyn State Hospital

Most households had multiple children and not much square feet, so we were encouraged to be outside a lot. "Children should be seen and not heard," goes the expression, although the "should be seen" part did not seem heart-felt with most families I knew.

So you were shooed outside early in the day. It was okay because there were plenty of kids to play with, and adults to bother.

One slight complicating factor was Brooklyn State Hospital, home to a large and special population you couldn't play with and shouldn't, as a good person, bother.

Brooklyn State was a mental hospital, with many, many residents.

The hospital stretched long blocks north to south, and ten blocks east to west. Our side, east, was the only one with stores. So we had lots of visitors from the hospital, at all times.

The cautionary catechism from parents to kids was that "they" were like children, harmless, and wouldn't bother you if you didn't bother them.

We did find them to be harmless, though this made them unlike children, in our experience.

Good kids did not need to be warned about bothering them, and bad kids had the idea that it was bad luck to pick on on people "like that," so there was no trouble, or not much.

We didn't really speak of them much, prevalent as they were, and what you might call occasionally obvious. Bad luck or not, such mention was considered rude.

Of course, we were not always so genteel, and the words "retards" and "nuts" were used freely.

But we felt bad for them, because they caught a bad break; and the common wisdom seemed to be that hospitalization made the bad break worse, rather than helping.

There was sometimes shouting on the street, for no good reason, by a person to himself. But to be fair, this was not restricted to hospital residents, in Brooklyn 3. At least, we thought, the guys in green pants and laceless shoes had an excuse. More than one.