Meaning To Leave

Everything changes all the time and there's no sense worrying, I thought. Try to sway things, though, into changing right. You could do that by talking or, better yet, my new intention, writing.

After all, what did politicians do but talk? What were laws but words? What was anything but what you said it was?

God started everything with the Word. He talked all this stuff into being. Why not take a shot yourself?

Don't worry, the things that were really good would never change. The beach, bagels, jokes, the library, Christmas, candy, girls.

The things that were bad, maybe you could help.

I didn't like this war in Vietnam, for instance. They said we had to fight it but they couldn't tell you why. I thought of the older Jewish people in my neighborhood, from Europe, with numbers tattooed on their arms from concentration camps. Someone once in Germany said all that had to happen, too.

I didn't like prejudice. It was kind of a new word for an old thing. Once it was slavery.

I knew about it. There were few black people in my neighborhood and there were none in nicer neighborhoods. There were plenty in neighborhoods east of us, with grimy streets, big projects, no stores, no trees.

I didn't like Brooklyn State Hospital. They had hundreds of mental patients - maybe thousands, counting those you couldn't see, but I'd hear screaming through bars, when I'd walk (illegally) through the grounds.

I knew a lot of the patients from the street, but not any of their names. Did they have names anymore? If no one used them?

I saw a lot get worse, but never better.

So, this was a writer's job. To help things get better. Righting a wrong, or trying to. Or, less grand, just artistically, simply writing a good sentence. Or expressing a thought well. Those were also good goals.

A good sentence was like from super-powers. It existed and you couldn't kill it. Walls couldn't hold it. It could fly: fly anywhere. It could be anywhere and everywhere at the same time.

Words could place me where I was. They could also get me out.

I knew my days were numbered in Brooklyn 3: my daytimes, at the very least. I'd have to go somewhere else for high school. Tilden was our high school and had a good baseball field but beyond that you wanted to know about knives to thrive there, and I was not interested in knife fights on a daily basis.

I'd be gone within 5 years, tops. I could and would leave, but I had things to do first. Didn't I have to prove myself to the place, how good I was? And prove it to anywhere else I would go?

The #46 bus ran through the heart of Brooklyn 3. It had the heaviest ridership of any bus line in the city of New York. There was a reason for that. Brooklyn 3 was a place meant to leave.

The World Swirled

Two things most ubiquitous in life in Brooklyn 3 were baseball and newspapers.

In season, there were two home team baseball games a day. You talked about them til the next day's games. Every day we got 2 newspapers, the News and the Post, of the 7 or so available.

Now that I was a seasoned ballplayer, I was ready to take on the other thing, by starting a newspaper at school.

I wanted to learn to write with the same simple impulse I had to learn to play ball: to do something important well.

Writing was important because you could direct people's attention. You could teach them. Entertain them. Annoy them.

(My father to his brother Robbie one afternoon: "Did you read Breslin today?"

Robbie to my father: lips slightly pursed: "I wouldn't read him."

"What do you mean, you wouldn't read him? You mean you didn't read him? Or you don't read him?"

"I wouldn't read him."

My father knew - as I knew - that Jimmy Breslin made fun of cops. Uncle Robbie, NYPD.)

The world swirled, especially New York, so writers were important because they straightened it, or at least held it down for a minute so you could see it.

I saw the world turning and it pleased me.

Brooklyn 3 was now Brooklyn NY 11203. That was modern.

The Mets had a new stadium and it had mod panels on the sides, in team colors of blue and orange, suspended in mid-air on cables. It was hip and the Beatles would play there.

The Mass had been changed from Latin to English, so people could understand it. They turned the priest around on the altar so you could see what he was doing. They said you were allowed to eat meat on Fridays now and not go to hell. Bad news for fish sticks and pizza, but good otherwise.

LBJ was a funny-looking president, and not Irish, but he was doing good things, calling for a war on poverty, and talking about civil rights. It meant all people were equal.

My homeroom teacher in St. Catherine's, Sister Eugenia Joseph, told us that Spanish would someday be a common language in the U.S., and that she asked Father Grady, our pastor, and Sister Superior that we be taught it. It wasn't happening, so Sister was taking a class herself, and would teach it after school to anyone who wanted to learn.

The next day I brought in a notebook with "Espanol" on the cover and said sign me up. She hugged me and kissed me. Nuns were changing too. I asked if I could write a story about the class for a new newspaper I was planning and she put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me misty-eyed. I guessed I was on the right track.