Radio

We probably already felt it, but from radio stations we knew that teenagers were a big thing.

Teenagers were almost adults (independent; tall), but not serious. They had money, from allowances or jobs, but didn't have to spend it on food or housing, or give it to school or church; therefore they could have fun with it. This is where the radio came in.

There were radio stations for adults, of course, and for news, and sports, but the loudest and liveliest were for teenagers. WINS, WABC, and WMCA were the big ones.

Teen radio was full of commercials: for cola, clothes, Clearasil, concerts, batteries, cameras, the Navy, the Daily News, Palisades Amusement Park, Thunderbird, and much more. One learned from Thunderbird's ad that it was The Word, and that the price was thirty twice. Lots of ads had good jingles, which could blur the line between ads and songs.

That reinforced the point that everything was for sale. Of course, the songs themselves were for sale, at record stores. The Hot List changed every week, so it kept listeners spending money to keep current and cool.

Everything was a brand. Every station had a swingin' name for its announcements for time and temperature. The DJs had nicknames or names that sounded like nicknames. They even had team names. WMCA was the Good Guys. WABC was the All-Americans.

And you were branded, too. You were a Cousin of Cousin Bruce Morrow. You were Kimosabe to Danny Dan Daniels, the Tall Talented Texan.

As a kid, I didn't care too much about the reasons why. I didn't have money to buy anything. I didn't covet anything. I just enjoyed the tumult of it all. It was a sonic Mad Magazine, something entertaining that your parents didn't like, which of course lent appeal. And even though it seemed to be a lot about spending money and getting things, itself it was free, and fun, all day.

Big Questions, Short Answers

There was a question in my mind about parents and children, and how you were different between your mother and your father.

Mothers seemed to have a lot more patience. Maybe because they had us in the first place. Maybe because they spent so much more time with us.

Our mother seemed immune to puzzlement from weird observations and misplaced notions, of which we provided plenty.

One morning, my mother was combing my hair for church. The radio was on, as it always was. WNEW, which played Frank Sinatra, and like that.

The record began to skip. It went on a bit. Finally the host broke in and apologized.

"Wow, he really gave it away now, didn't he, Mom?," I said.

"He sure did," my mother said.

I am quite sure she had no idea what I was talking about, that until that minute, I thought all music on the radio was played and sung live.

After all, the guy said, "And now, here's Frank Sinatra singing 'Here's That Rainy Day'," not "And now, here's a record of Frank Sinatra," etc.

Nor did she care.

Our father, on the other hand, seemed to fret about things we said and questions we asked that made plenty of sense to us, but swerved around his comprehension, somehow.

"Hey, Dad," I said one day in the car. I was riding in the front seat with him, just the two of us out on some weekend errand.

I was contemplating the car's hood ornament, a largish, silver airplane.

"How did you get that airplane on your car?," I asked.

"They put it there," he said.

"How did they know you work at Pan Am?"

"They didn't."

"Then why did they put it there?"

"They just did."

For some reason, apparently, he did not feel like explaining to me the process by which some people got an emblem of the place they worked put onto the hood of their car, and some didn't. My next question was going to be how come Mr. Levine, our neighbor who owned a fruit company, didn't have an apple or something up there. I let it go.

I guess the car was a dangerous place for him to be with me. There was no Mother to intercept the inevitable daffy question.

One day we were driving past Holy Cross cemetery, a large fixture in the neighborhood.

I viewed, and considered with some depth, the various markers of the graves.

Even driving by, from Brooklyn Avenue, you could see some massive statues: angels, crucifixes, in heavy gray stone.

I knew there were plenty of small markers in there, too. I asked,

"Dad, how do they decide what kind of marker you get on your grave?"

"What?," he asked.

"How do they decide whether you get a big one or a small one?"

"It depends how much money you have," he said.

I reared back my head, aghast.

Money? After all that talk in church about helping the poor, and the least of my brothers, and the last shall be first, and the rich man getting to Heaven like a camel through the eye of a needle? You get the religious honor of a big monument in death depending on how much money you made in life?

I did not realize, of course, that somewhere between my straightforward question and my father's simple answer lay a big chasm.

My supposition was that the grave marker was bestowed, as a judgment - a report - of the way you lived your life.

It did not occur to me that they were items of purchase.

My father's supposition was that I had at least that much sense.

Neither of us spoke for the rest of the ride. Me, out of shock and stupefaction, my religious beliefs riddled to the core. My father, I guess, from confusion, or relief.

The Nina, The Pinta, And The IRT

Our mother was a powerful person, controlling all facets of daily life, except whatever small aspects we could hide from her, or were naturally private. These did not amount to much.

Our father had power, too, but it derived from outside the house, where he spent most of his time.

We figured he did a lot of work out there, because when he left in the morning, he smelled fresh (shaving cream) and looked sharp. When he came home, something had obviously took the mickey out of him: wrinkled clothes, loose tie, immediate beer.

He seemed all right, though, and would stand in the kitchen with his beer talking to our mother while she finished cooking dinner.

The fact that he could even get to this job mystified me.

He took the bus on Clarkson and Utica Avenues in the opposite direction from everything I knew. I knew Clarkson Avenue, Lenox Road, Linden Boulevard, Church Avenue, Snyder Avenue, Tilden Avenue, Beverly Road. The library was on Beverly Road, a pretty far walk, and I didn't know anything beyond that.

In the other direction, I didn't know a single thing. Not even one street. He went that way because that's where the subway was.

The subway was a gigantic mystery. He tried to take me on it once. It didn't work out. I didn't like the noise or the smell or the fact that it was underground.

Underground? How do you know when to get off? I refused to get on, and that displeased him. I didn't mind the swat I got as he dragged me back upstairs. At least I was still alive and aware of my surroundings.

He also had the ability to drive a car. That was good, but I really admired his capacity in knowing where things were.

He knew how to get to Flatbush Avenue, Prospect Park, and Manhattan Beach, places we drove to regularly, but not frequently, so how did he remember? I sure didn't.

Every once in a while we would go to a different beach. Riis Park. He knew that, too. Or somewhere new. Shea Stadium. Are you kidding me? It was an hour away with a thousand turns. He never even asked for a second opinion.

Columbus was a famous guy, so I could see it was considered a valuable skill to know how to get places. Some day I would, I figured, though it might be by bus, for me.

Table Money

Clap hands, clap hands
Til Daddy comes home.
Daddy has money
And Mommy has none.

Our mother used to sing this little ditty to her babies.

It was related to the well-known couplet about fathers working, but not all day and night, like mothers.

I wasn't sure these things were strictly true, or even remotely so, but it showed you should get your message out there.

You didn't hear fathers singing or rhyming about their situations, which I could see was a blunder.

As far as I could tell, our father didn't have more money than our mother. He had less.

He had change. When he came home from work, he emptied his pockets onto his dresser. There was a torrent of change, but no bills.

He had nothing in his wallet, because he did not have a wallet.

On the other hand, "Go get my purse," our mother would say when the beer man delivered, or the milkman collected, and it was filled with large coarse notes.

On weekends, going shopping to King Kullen or Sears, my mother had the money. If our father was going out alone, to the auto supply or hardware store, our mother gave him money.

Where would he get any money? Our mother went to the bank. It was closed at nights and weekends, when he was home.

He had a piece of paper called a paycheck. On Friday nights he handed it to our mother.

Our mother turned that into a lot of papers. She had a big, brown accordion file filled with envelopes, and typewritten letters, and sheets of papers filled with numbers.

Our father never touched this file. Every once in a while, when our mother was working with these papers on the table, she would call, "Eddie, come in here," and he would get up, sit with her, and talk.

He got out of a lot of work at that table, no doubt, so I'm sure he would not have beefed about the judgment about who works more hours, mother or father.

He might have felt differently about who had more money, if asked. But really, what would he care? His answer probably would have been, "We have our money."

Paper Bag Credit Cards

Credit cards did not exist in Brooklyn 3, but a there was a system of consumer credit by merchants based on paper bags and clothesline.

People needed to eat every day, but payday was once every two weeks, and sometimes by the end of the cycle the household money had run out, or even before the end, like at the beginning.

So the butcher, the grocer, etc. would hang you credit.

Come in and place your order. Tell the store you need credit. They add up your order and reach not towards the register, but for a small paper bag.

They write your name on the bag. They write the amount you owe. They hang it with a clothespin on a clothesline behind the counter.

It is revolving credit. There is room on the bag for more owing. But not that much. It is a small bag on purpose.

The owner's expectation is that you will make good on it by the end of the bag. You probably will, because if you don't, you will have to consult with the finance department, which is the owner telling you that your hung credit is dead. You do not wish to be told this when your family is hungry.

You also don't want it known by the neighbors. Chances are they have already seen that your bag has a lot of numbers on it, preceded by plus signs, and no minuses. It is shameful among the people, and also hurtful to your credit rating at other stores.

Some people, however, were hard to shame, or even cajole, and were good at extending credit for themselves. My grandmother was among the best. I suppose you could say worst, if you were an economist. But if you appreciated art, the best.

I was with her one day on Church Avenue. She had money for the bakery and the butcher, but was holding out on the deli, where we stopped for a small treat.

- This is going to be cash, isn't it, Mrs. Keane?

- Ah, no, Morrie. I think I need a little more credit today.

- Well, I was thinking about asking you to settle up some, Mrs. Keane. I mean it's getting a little heavy here.

- I haven't got it, though. Not today. Soon. Just this little purchase, and we'll settle up before you know it.

- Well, I'd like to know it, Mrs. Keane. I mean you owe us quite a bit on this tab here.

- Well, you know, Morrie. I'd rather owe it to you than to have to cheat you out of it.

In the face of such artful intransigence, not only does Ma not get screamed at, or even scowled at, she gets today's order on the line, too. Morrie knows that otherwise he does not see her for a while. And if he is to tell others about the day's dealings with Mrs. Keane, they will only laugh. So the shame factor is non-existent.

She is funny. Chances are Morrie laughs, at least later.

It's not about the money. It's a dance, a bit of theater on the street, in the middle of bland afternoon.

A day's tedium is shattered for a while. No worries. A laugh today. The money? Maybe tomorrow.

Our Other Mother

There was no such thing as divorce in Brooklyn 3. No kid ever lost a parent, nor got an extra one, that way.

Some kids got an extra parent through family, if a real parent got sick.

This happened with us.

Early in her marriage, our mother was hospitalized with polio. She had little kids. So her mother, Maryann Keane, stepped in.

Maryann lived a mile from us, with her husband, Patrick, in a fifth-floor walk-up, on the corner of Church and Brooklyn Avenues.

Maryann Lynch and Patrick Keane were from Ireland. Both came to America as children, fleeing poverty.

Maryann came alone, at age 16.

She'd had the misfortune to be born a girl, first child in a dirt-farming family.

"That's one for America," her father said when she was born, not male. He shipped her to New York as soon as it was legal.

There were boarding houses for such as Maryann. She went to work scrubbing floors in Manhattan.

On weekends, she went to dances for the Irish. She met a man - from Tuam, back home. He was good.

They married. Maryann was 24. Things were good enough that she stopped working.

She bore three children. She was thrilled with it and so was her husband.

Like herself, her husband was denied education as a child, thus choices later. Patrick worked digging ditches and pouring asphalt in the streets.

Their three girls slept in one bed. Maryann washed clothes by hand, in a tub with a washboard and wringer. By no means was there money.

But her husband was faithful, kind, and pious. Also, good-looking and fun. He played the accordion at parties on Saturday nights. Sunday mornings, he cooked breakfast for the family, before ushering at church.

Their girls were all spirited, smart and beautiful.

How much did she love Brooklyn? She loved the place entirely, she told me many times, in a brogue she never lost - jute-strong, song-sweet.

She'd built a life, against all odds, more solid, by a million, than the stone house she was cast from in Longford.

Presumably, to help a sick daughter raise children was no great burden, in her mind.

Maryann came to our house by bus each morning before our father left for work, and took the bus home once he returned. No need to bother him with driving, tired as he was. Some nights she stayed, if needed. On weekends she drove with her husband.

We children were small, and of course had all bonded normally with our mother, but there arose some confusion about the role of these two women in our lives.

Other kids saw their mothers a lot, and their grandmothers a little. With us, it was the opposite.

We referred to our grandmother as "Ma." Of course, our mother was Mom. But whatever a grandmother was, or was supposed to be, ours was more. Hence the splitting of the title.

I don't know if anyone tried to clarify the issue for us, or correct us. If they did, it didn't stick. We never referred to nor addressed Maryann as anything but Ma, our whole lives.

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.