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.

Good Examples Versus Onions and Shoes

Adults should present good examples for children, but this was not always easy in Brooklyn 3, where there was so much reality.

Missing Mass on Sunday was a mortal sin. In our house, everybody went, every week. But not all families went, particularly not all fathers.

Some fathers got migraine headaches a lot. It was practically epidemic on Sunday mornings. It was transmitted by bottles the night before.

Most women didn't drive, so if the fathers didn't go, nobody went, although some kids with compelling fear of Hell would walk it, if they were old enough. If the mother had a baby, or babies, walking was out, unless the mother had a notion to shame the father, which of course could be as compelling as avoiding Hell.

You weren't supposed to curse, or take the Lord's name in vain, and this never happened in our house; our parents were good communicators, and could express bad feelings without vulgarity.

But this was not common, and even good kids learned powerful lexicons, and creative ways to use them.

With immigrant grandparents, some kids could curse internationally. We learned the expression "Tre cipolle culo di tuo fratello," or "Three onions up your brother's ass," from Cathy Dimarinis's grandmother. She would say it to people she didn't like, who didn't capish Italian, in a cheery tone of voice, and they would smile and wave.

You weren't supposed to steal, but sometimes the men found things, and would trade them for money, or for things other guys found, such as cartons of cigarettes, frozen meats, and new clothing.

Once, Jamesy Coppola's father actually went to jail for a misunderstanding about selling some shirts he had. The misunderstanding was with the owner of the House of Ivy clothing store on Church Avenue, where Jamesy's father worked.

There was much scorn in the neighborhood for Mr. Coppola being so stupid, getting caught selling some lousy shirts, when the store also stocked nice shoes.

I didn't second-guess the adults. I knew no one was perfect. I also knew not to note too hard what didn't involve me, and especially, not to ask stupid questions about things adults did. You can just as easily learn from bad examples as good.