Rhythms of Cement

Very little of the world in Brooklyn 3 had to do with nature. Rhythms and substance were defined by people - where they were and what they were doing.

Mornings were delivery trucks. If I was aware that birds sang mornings, I don't recall it.

Kids watched for good delivery guys to arrive at the stores, to catch free stuff. The best was Cake Man. Stand on the curb and chant "We want cake," and he would hit you up with first-class strudel.

Twice a week was garbage trucks. They were important to note because you could get tipped by neighbors for retrieving their metal cans, after the garbage gentlemen emptied and blithely flung them in random directions.

Mid-morning was the mailman. Larry was the regular. He had big thick glasses from years of address-reading. He had a great conveyance, two big brown leather pouches on a three-wheel frame. If you caught him he'd let you push it to the corner.

At lunch, unlike dinner, one was permitted to watch TV, and I liked game shows, as an indice of strange adult behavior. None of the adults I knew were ever silly, but on game shows they all were.

Some shows were edifying and not just mere curiosities. I found "You Don't Say" splendid, with a cunning tag line at show's end: "Remember, it's not what you say that counts, it's what you don't say," which struck me as archly insightful. I had the mistaken notion that Tom Kennedy, the host, was President Kennedy's brother.

In the mid-afternoon, kids returned from school. They tended to travel in packs. For some reason, kids walking alone, or in smaller groups, tended to be smart kids. Not that none of the kids in packs were, but you couldn't tell, and the odds were against it, considering the limited quantity of this commodity around us.

Late afternoon and early evening was the return of breadwinners; and the setting of tables.

Evenings were exciting, as the neighborhood was full, together again. In good weather, adults came out to talk, and kids to play.

The streetlights were stars, announcing night. They came on and mothers called children they couldn't see, somewhere out there - back to the nest, I guess.