Now a magnet for publishing professionals, then Park Slope was home to large families of diverse cultural heritages. The story of it's rebirth as a desirable address for affluent professionals is well-known. My story is about the people who settled there pre-1930 and planted the seeds for the neighborhood it was then, and is again today.
I believe there are circumstances in everyone's childhood that forever define who we are. Such a circumstance for my generation was the Great Depression. Growing up in those difficult times, when financial disaster was always a payday away, would have an enormous influence on the adults we would become.
My father had a soft-drink business called, appropriately, Park Slope Beverages. But soda was a luxury and when the economy went downhill, so did the business. In spite of that, I don't remember being poor. We had everything we needed. And, contrary to that famous symbol of the Depression, we never had holes in the soles of our shoes. It wasn't until much later that I learned why: my father worked in a shoe store two nights a week and was paid in shoes for his family.
Life may have been a struggle for everyone around me, but I remember thriving in a structured environment of clearly defined responsibilities: first my schoolwork, then my chores, then my reward -- pasting movie stars' pictures into a cherished scrapbook.
This simple, innocent life took shape at a place that is a landmark address for my family. If home is where your history begins, then 410 Second Street is where history began for my four siblings and me. We were all born there.
This four-story brownstone housed a large part of my mother's family. We had an aunt on every floor and another across the street. Our grandmother lived a few blocks away on Garfield Place. And there were, literally, dozens of cousins. We wrote the book on the extended family. Because our mothers had so much to do, the older children looked after the young. No one was allowed to cross the street without holding the hand of an older sibling or cousin.
I remember listening on summer mornings for the sing-song proclamations of Andrew, the produce peddler, whose offerings determined what we would all be eating that night. His lethargic old horse, hitched to a sagging wagon, clip-clopped through the spray-washed streets of our neighborhood every day, in good weather, and in bad. As he pulled into Second Street, one of us kids was sent to alert our mothers, who would stop what they were doing and gather around the wagon. If a vegetable was specially priced on a given day, all the aunts bought it. If it was broccoli, all four floors of 410 smelled of broccoli as dinnertime approached, even the dumbwaiter, a ramshackle wooden car that rattled between floors in an enclosed shaft. Working it manually with a rope pulley, my mother and her sisters used it to send each other whatever was needed at a moment's notice -- a spool of thread, two aspirins, a bowl of soup for a sick child.
On Saturday mornings, my sister and I went with my mother to the live chicken market. We were greeted by a raucous flock of birds that squawked and fluttered across the feather-strewn floor, vainly seeking escape from a foretold doom. When my mother had made her choice, she would say, "That one," pointing to the unfortunate bird that would be our Sunday dinner. Knowing it was as good as cooked, the chicken flapped wildly across the market floor, the ill-tempered butcher in pursuit, spewing profanities meant only for the ears of the hapless hen. When caught, the bird's neck was broken with one expert twist. With a triumphant grunt, the butcher delivered the beheaded bird to my mother. On the way home, she assured my sister and me that the chicken hadn't felt a thing.
Entertainment was not in our budget during the Depression. But money wasn't an issue for the children; most of our fun was free. The boys played stickball in the street, the girls played hopscotch in the fenced-in airy-way. Roller skates, adjustable with skate keys, were shared. A set of jacks was amusement enough on a rainy afternoon. Prospect Park, within walking distance of 410,was our escape to the country, providing the only open space in our lives. In winter, we raced our sleds down Dead Man's Hill. On summer days, we picnicked in the shade of its venerable trees, trailed our feet in the cool waters of its lakes. The broad beaches of Coney Island were a 5-cent ride away at the end of the line on the Fifth Avenue elevated train. On the way to the beach, we walked along the perimeter of the Cyclone rollercoaster, experiencing its thrills vicariously through the blood-curdling screams of riders on the descent. Occasionally, my mother wouldn't pack lunch and we were treated to a hotdog, fries and a soda at Nathan's, a feast for fifteen cents.
For everyone at 410, mothers, fathers, and children of all ages, the center of family life in the early days of the Depression was the stoop. This is where we gathered on warm summer nights and watched the searchlights sweep the sky. Legend (our mothers) had it that there were baskets at the end of those lights that would swoop down and pick up naughty children who were never seen again. As if that wasn't terrifying enough, the older children told ghost stories to the young and, though scared sleepless, we begged for more. If our fathers felt flush, we were treated to a 2-cent lemon ice when a jingling bell announced the arrival of the ice cream truck. Life was good.
And holidays were great. My mother and her sisters were some of the most frugal women I have ever known, but on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, the heavens rained food on their tables. Everyone was welcome. Unexpected arrivals were warmly received by the adults and dreaded by the children who were often bumped from their place at the table to make room for the drop-ins. The festivities began early and continued into the night. Afternoon dinner segued into evening supper, each capped with the desserts of the season: the pies of Thanksgiving, the cheese cakes of Easter, the Italian pastries at Christmas. Mothers cooked and served, chestnuts roasted as fathers played cards, children stuffed with goodies played games, and everyone wished the holiday would never end.
When it did, it was back to school at P. S. 77, just across Sixth Avenue on Second Street. I made my first friends in school. Until then, all my playmates were cousins. But having friends was not enough. It was important to have a "best friend." Being part of a twosome who studied together, taught each other to dance, styled each other's hair, each an acknowledged member of the other's family, gave one a sense of importance and confidence. How I had envied my sister her Dorothy. In first grade, I met Annabelle. It was friends-at-first-sight for both of us and it lasted all eight years of elementary school. When she moved away, I was left with a gap in my life that, for many years, couldn't be filled.
On Wednesday afternoons, we were released early from P.S. 77 and sent to Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church for religious instruction. We were prepared to receive our sacraments by an order of nuns whose discipline rivaled that of our mothers. We were drilled until we got it right, and when we did, we were sent home with laminated pictures and plastic statues of heavenly VIPs. In all areas of my life -- home, school, church -- discipline was on the curriculum. As I passed from one sphere of authority to another in the course of a day, so the responsibility to mold my mind and my character was passed from mother, to teachers, to nuns.
While we were dealing with the Depression in our simple, innocent way, the rest of the world was fighting World War II. When America, too, went to war, it ended the Depression, and it ended our childhood. The next five years was a very serious time for us. We all had family members in the service. The neighborhood boys were gone and everyone on the home front mobilized to support them. My sister and I went door-to-door selling war bonds. My mother shopped with food-rationing stamps. Sugar became a luxury, and nylon stockings were just a fond memory, parachutes taking precedence over hosiery. At P. S. 77 there were routine air raid drills when we crouched under our desks and didn't feel safe until the all-clear whistle blew.
Though under strain of "The War," as those of us who lived through it still refer to World War II, the economic burdens began to lighten, and luxury entered our lives in the form of Friday night movies. My sister always chose Goobers as her treat, and I chose Good 'n Plenty. Seeing those chocolate-covered peanut and candy-coated licorice boxes at the refreshment counters in today's multiplex cinemas never fails to send me hurtlng back to childhood, to a time when Shirley Temple sang and danced and all the endings were happy.
After the war, life was never the same for any of us at 410. As we entered the years of peace and prosperity, the neighborhood went down and my family moved up. We joined the exodus to the suburbs.
In later years, my mother, remembering the day-to-day struggle to make ends meet, would say, "Those were hard times." When I look back at that time in my life, I remember being surrounded by a large family of aunts and uncles and cousins, and the grandmother who started it all and kept it all together. I remember the safe environment they provided the children. I remember the good times.
More than fifty years later, nostalgia for my Brooklyn beginnings prompted me to revisit the past. On a pleasant summer day, I set out with my husband to retrace my steps in the old neighborhood. We took the Metro North rail into Grand Central Station and boarded the F Train at Rockefeller Center. A half hour later, we emerged on Seventh Avenue and Ninth Street. I was home.
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