The Emergence of Words

I don't really remember a time when I couldn't read - only when I couldn't read so well, though that barely lasted past age 3.

I wasn't prodigious on all fronts. I didn't speak until age 2, except for two words: "Popeye" and "cookie."

It was a meager vocabulary, I guess; or perhaps a select one. The problem with learning more words than you personally need is that then people expect things of you, like responses. Why not put that off as long as possible, is possibly an advanced way to think.

So I always got to see Popeye on TV, with cookie(s), and everything else was somebody else's problem, at least for a while.

Of course, concerns of idiocy arose, but there again: someone else's problem.

At any rate, those concerns evaporated when I began to speak, in complete sentences, and apparently in rather an adult style. Then there was a concern about what gives with this kid, or more accurately what doesn't give, like hints of normal development before achievement.

That concern intensified with reading.

I don't remember any kid's books around our house. But we had the Daily News, which my father read every night, and I would look at with him. I remember seeing certain words a lot - Kennedy, Capitol, Yankee, Yogi - and getting the idea of how to write down what you say.

When I turned 3, or actually slightly before, there was a massive flood of words in the house, and my head, when my older brother Eddie started school.

He brought home books. I guess because he looked at them all day he didn't care about them at home. I looked at them every afternoon.

It was fascinating to me that they had stories that stayed the same. The newspaper changed every day. But readers, as they were called, had dozens of stories, with numbers on the pages. With the numbers, you could go back to where you were before, and try to figure out the words and story.

So this was my hobby in our sunny autumn bedroom every day. Somehow the words came readily, so to speak.

One day I had trouble with a word. It looked like it meant a piece of furniture, but that didn't make sense. No way I looked at it made sense.

Outside, my mother was hanging clothes in the yard. I stuck my head out the window. "Hey, Mom?"

She turned from the clothesline and looked at me. "Yes?"

"What does c-o-u-n-t-r-y spell?"

She was silent, with a strange look on her face.

"Why are you asking me that?"

"Because I'm reading this book and it says something about 'a city mouse and a c-o-u-n-t-r-y mouse'."

"It spells 'country'."

"Oh - yeah! A city mouse and a country mouse. That makes sense! Thank you."

In a minute, I had company. My mother came in from her work and asked me to read her the book. I showed her a couple of stories I liked. I got a lot of questions that had more to do with reading than with the stories.

She got a look on her face that seemed both happy and sad. It was a look I would come to know well, yet puzzle about, too.

Goyish Supermarket

Once a week, on Saturdays, we went to a supermarket. I say we because my mother didn't drive, so my father had to go, and they couldn't leave us kids home alone, so we all went.

The supermarket, King Kullen, was a mile away in distance; miles away otherwise. It wasn't fancy. But it had chicken in packaging, not on hooks. It had bread on Passover. It had a parking lot.

They spoke English there, presumably, although no one ever talked to you. At any rate, they didn't speak Yiddish.

You couldn't tell who owned it. They had a symbol of a cartoon character King Kullen who looked like Mr. Monopoly with a crown, but he didn't seem to represent anyone in the place.

We liked this weekly trip because it was a regular thing we could do all together. Our parents didn't particularly want us there in the first place and they did not seem to consider this all that much fun, so we could run around. No one working there knew you, so you could misbehave.

It was also an opportunity to refine your pestering skills. You needed practice against our mother, who was full of surprise in battle.

"Ma, can we get this?": Hershey's syrup.

"No."

"Why not?"

"It makes you drink too much milk." Tough, you see.

Navigating the Neighborhood

The streets of the neighborhood were easy to navigate: 51st, 52nd, 53rd, etc. Officially, they were all "East," but it was a lost point. We didn't know any Western ones.

The two-way streets were called avenues, and named for cities in upstate New York - Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Utica - providing not just order, and a theme, but appropriate grandeur.

We lived in a row house, about 15 feet wide, in a stretch of them that ran one side of the block. On another side were bigger houses, some stand-alone, some attached. The other two sides of the block were apartment buildings. By code, a six floor building requires an elevator. Therefore, in lowdown and unshmancy Brooklyn 3, all were five, tops. Walk-ups.

Most apartment buildings had retail on the ground floor. Most commercial buildings had some housing above. Altogether it made for a lot of people and commerce.

Across the street from us were a dry cleaner, a dress shop, Louie Fink's luncheonette, Smilin' Jack's Appetizing, and a butcher shop. The butcher shop was known as Jerry the Jew's - even among Jews; even though Jerry seemed no more Jewish than 90% of the neighborhood population, i.e., Jews. I suppose it was just the allure of alliteration.

That was one block. On the next were a pharmacy, a variety store, a luncheonette, a fish monger, another butcher (live chickens in the yard), the Egg Man (from the chickens next door?), a hardware store, TV and radio repair, a bakery, a barber, a small grocery, a small supermarket, and another luncheonette.

On the next, a kosher restaurant, a pizzeria, a shoemaker, a Chinese laundry, a beauty salon, another barber, and another luncheonette. (It was not that we ate so much lunch, but that they all made book.)

There was a lot more than this, too, on streets I never traveled, near as they were. The density of your own few blocks made others seem strange. People on 54th Street seemed distant. 55th, foreign. I never went out there but once a year, to Trick-or-Treat.

He Quit

Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Dolan, did not have a medical degree, and in fact did not even trust or like doctors, but he was convinced that cigarettes were evil, and a great hazard, and had to be eradicated from life.

He would discuss this while smoking at our dining room table.

Mr. Dolan came to our house often after dinner. My father was a good listener, and they were best friends.

Mr. Dolan was a great talker, practically Olympian. He could talk on any topic and, strictly speaking, did not even need particular topics.

But one of his favorites was smoking.

The monologue was frequent, with minor variations.

"They're killing us, Burke. You know that, don't you? We sit here sucking on these things, and we're sucking on death. Deep into our lungs, and our hearts." Like my parents, Mr. (and Mrs.) Dolan smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and had for a long time.

Jimmy Dolan was a strapping guy, prepossessing, loud, undaunted by anything in life, it seemed, strolling the street in plaid pants and shiny shoes. His name was Irish, but his mother was Italian, and Mr. Dolan had a personal blend of Italian toughness and Irish gab.

But for all his confidence, he was afraid of cigarettes. He tried, and tried, to quit.

In the midst of successful respite, he was a pleasure to hear, describing to my father the blessings of life without smoking.

"Burke," he would say. "You walk down the block and feel free. You're not a slave anymore. You know what a beautiful thing that is?

"You can hear the birds in the trees. The air smells better. Food tastes better. A meatball sub is like filet mignon. This beer tastes unbelievable to me," pointing at his bottle of Rheingold. "What does it taste like to you? Smokey piss.

"That's terrible. To me it tastes like Champagne. That's what my life is like now. Like a big glass of Champagne that never stops. And you don't have to pay for. How much are you paying for cigarettes a week? That you could put away for the future? If you have a future? You know what your future is, with those things? A coffin. A coffin for a tragic, early death.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not gloating. I'll miss you. I'll speak at your funeral and I'll probably cry like a baby. I'll never mention this, but I'm asking you now: quit. Like me. Do it for me. Holy Christ, do it for yourself! For your kids! What are those kids going to do without a father? And a mother, God forbid? Jesus. You got to talk to Pat. I'm talking to Barbara. But she's thick. She's hooked, like you. Like all of yous. You know, time is fleeting. Do it now, before it's too late."

This kind of talk would go on for weeks, or even days, until Mr. Dolan succumbed, and started smoking again.

And then it would go like this:

"You don't know what it's like, Burke. It's not easy. It's the hardest thing you could ever try to do.

"It's like moving a mountain. Like moving it, then moving it over and over again, every day. Back and forth, like unbelievable torture.

"You get up in the morning and you know that's what you face. Another day of hell. And the cigarettes are right there. They'll save you from this hell.

"Oh, yeah, they'll take you to a deeper one. A cold, dark grave. But, Jesus Christ. What am I supposed to do, live in torture every day? Even a war ends. This don't end.

"But you wouldn't know. You don't know about the torture. You don't know about the pain. You never tried. You never been in the war. Well, I'm telling you, pal. Here's a report from the front. It's a killer. And we're losing.

"It don't look good. The prospects are dim. There's no way out. It's like we're in our graves prematurely. Right now. This very day is just a stop post to your grave. And these cigarettes are taking you there. You and me.

"But I don't know why I'm talking. It's like a veteran in the war doesn't tell the folks back home. There's no way they could know. No way they could understand. It's a hell I know, but you don't know, because you never been in the war."

I heard all this countless times, sitting on my father's lap at the table. There was practically nothing I liked more than hearing any summation of life or observational thing from Mr. Dolan.

Usually, my father didn't say much. But this time, stabbing out his cigarette in the ashtray between them, he said to Mr. Dolan,

"You see that cigarette?"

"Yeah, I see it," Mr. Dolan said. "What am I looking at?"

My father looked at him, then pointed at the butt. "That's the last cigarette I ever smoke in my life."

Mr. Dolan was silent. Uncharacteristically. But, in character, not long.

"Yeah, right!," he said, with big laughter. "You think it's that easy! You'll see, my friend. Now you'll see. I wish you luck. But you don't know what you're up against. I'm glad you're trying. Now you'll finally know what I'm saying."

My father didn't save the stub. Too bad. It was exactly what he said. It would have made a nice artifact.

They Smoked

In Brooklyn 3 New York, cigarettes weren't bad for you.

Everybody smoked. All adults, and lots of kids.

People smoked indoors and out. In cars with the windows closed. In supermarkets. While pregnant.

The only adults who didn't smoke were sick, frail, or fussy. Smoking was for good healthy people.

People smoked on TV. TV had a million cigarette ads, with sayings and songs.

It was the ads that disinterested me in cigarettes. The songs were lousy and the sayings made no sense.

The things I knew were good, like bagels, didn't have ads on TV. So I had the vague idea somebody was kidding with these cigarettes.

Suddenly, they decided cigarettes were bad for you. Just like that. Not just bad like to stunt your growth - which had always been a rumor, but clearly untrue, as many tall people smoked plenty - but like to kill you.

Now on TV, new commercials said that the Surgeon General, who was like the sheriff of health, said that cigarettes could give you lung cancer.

Lungs. I knew what they were. They were disgusting. You didn't want anything to happen to them. You didn't even want to know you had them.

These health commercials didn't have songs. They had pictures of hearts beating slow, slow, slow, then stopping. Announcers talked low and scary.

But they still had the ads telling you to buy cigarettes. So which was it?

I asked my mother and she said cigarettes are rotten and you should never smoke.

So why do you?, I asked.

Because I started young, she said, and it is a very hard habit to break. Maybe I will someday but it is better never to start.

Why did you start?, I asked.

Because my friends smoked, she said. Isn't that stupid?

I could never think of my mother and stupid in the same sentence, so I didn't say anything.

She smoked a lot. She would send me to Mickey and Sarah's luncheonette sometimes to buy her a pack when her carton ran out. It was hard for her to leave the house, with my little brother Paddy and baby sister Maryann.

I would tell Sarah they were for my mother, not me. She would make me hide them and tell me, run home. Don't get caught. She must have laughed as I scrambled. I never liked this errand.

I don't remember the first time I tried one. I must have fairly young, as they were all around. But I don't remember it. My older brother, Eddie, started early - at age 11, about a year after the surgeon general's report. It was a secret I didn't know. He told us when he was 16. He wanted to be able to smoke at home. There was a big argument, maybe the worst ever in our house. He got his way. Sadly.

Peace In the Alley

There was yelling in households, and scuffling in schoolyards, but violence rarely raged in the neighborhood. People seemed not to hate each other enough to bother acting on it.

We were so close together, it would be hard to get away with criminal violence. We heard through walls between houses and apartments, and through windows outside them.

Summer nights, when tempers might have flared, there were ball games to watch on television, and people would turn their TVs to the windows and sit and watch outside. So there was wholesome outdoor entertainment, and a lot of beach chair vigilantes, or potential ones.

Usually, violence comes with drugs, and their illegal trade. In Brooklyn 3, drugs were limited to alcohol and airplane glue.

Drinking was done at home, and presumably was tolerated. It was known as "a good man's failing." It was all right, as long as he got up and went to work.

There were no bars in the immediate vicinity, which was mostly Jewish. Bars were concentrated where there were more Irish. On Church Avenue, you would see cops outside whiskey bars like Buckley's throwing flailing guys into squad cars.

But any neighbor of ours on Clarkson drinking on Church had a good hike home, with time to fall down once or twice, and forget what he was so mad about.

Airplane glue was a phenomenon among teenagers. There probably wasn't enough per tube to cause respiratory failure. Once in a while a guy would get it in his hair.

You could get it at variety and toy stores, and even candy stores and luncheonettes. They sold models just for the glue trade. You had to buy a model to get the glue.

On Friday nights, you could get all the models you wanted for free. Kids would come out of the store with the glue and throw the models on the ground. They were all over the streets. But I never developed an interest.

Syreens

The streets of East Flatbush were corridors to Kings County Hospital, with ambulances wailing all day, and especially night.

One of the first words I learned, then unlearned, was "syreen," the noise-maker on ambulances and cop cars. I never heard it pronounced any other way until school, where our nuns, who were from Baltimore, told us the word was "siren."

They had to use their full authority to convince us of that. We gave it to them, but kept our pronunciation anyway. It sounded truer - or, as I learned much later, more onomatopoetic.

We were close enough to the hospital to drive there ourselves, when necessary, rather than by ambulance. Faster and cheaper both, I suppose.

I never knew an adult to go to the hospital. Kids did, with lifestyle mishaps: Deirdre Morgan, who once ate some shoelaces and drank bleach in the laundry; Jimmy Dolan, who liked to shove mothballs up his nose, but occasionally overdid it; and me, once, at age 4.

At Easter, I was entertaining some company at our house, running in circles and shouting "Heyyy, Abbott," to fine comic effect.

But you can't please everybody, and at one point Mary Sullivan, a full ten years my senior who should have known better, or at least been kinder, stuck her foot out in front of me in full throttle and sent me flying head-first into an iron radiator.

I remember the flight, and the passage from consciousness out of it. Apparently there was a good deal of blood, and some concern about loss of life. Thus, a trip to the hospital.

It turned out all right; my only hospital visit ever. Unlike Jimmy Dolan, I learned a little lesson, in deciding to never go back, if I could help it. Of course, maybe he simply couldn't.