Memories of a Life Well Lived

From Childhood and Beyond

How are kids going to learn to socialize, play games, develop properly and have fun in the fresh air these days? We were always busy with activities especially after school and in the summer. Now kids are cooped up at home with their parents. Do they play card games or board games? What are they learning about the world and other people?

Recently watched Atlas Shrugged again, seemed appropriate, and downloaded Swiftly Tilting Planet, which am reading again. Would love to make it into a movie. And I found out that Amazon no longer has Brave New World and 1984 movies online, interesting.

I was dreaming that I was writing an article for a teacher about The Guess Who. Don’t know why, they were never a favorite group of mine. I liked the Eagles, Crosby, Stills Nash, and Young, James Taylor and Johnny Rivers.

I had a crush on Sir Paul and would have liked to meet him, Felix from The Young Rascals, Frankie Valli from The Four Seasons. I also loved The Bee Gees, Beach Boys and imagined what it would be like to BE Annette Funicello, wore my hair like hers and pretended to I was popular like her. It was not that I wanted to be with Frankie Avalon on the beach in those bikini movies. I wanted to sing like Barbra Streisand and dance and be a regular on American Bandstand. Lesley Gore, Carole King and Stevie Wonder were also favorite singers of mine. And I longed to play the guitar and write my own songs like Melanie, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell.

Later, my favorite singers included Barry Manilow (who I met once at a seminar), Chicago, Carly Simon, Dusty Springfield, and Motown singers (The Supremes, Sugar Pie Honey Bunch-4 Tops, Temptations, The Jackson 5, and others).

Every summer, we took road trips to nearby states including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. We also went to the pool at Jones Beach but never rented a bungalow like our neighbors did at Far Rockaway. We visited relatives at Sea Gate sometimes.

My favorite times were staying with my grandparents in their apartment in the Bronx. On Sunday nights I’d be tucked into a small couch in the living room, sipping hot chocolate and eating my favorite marshmallow cookies while watching Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle and Red Skelton. I’d go shopping with my little grandma Rae along the Grand Concourse. And do cartwheels to and from the park with my grandpa Danny (wheels). They took me out to eat sometimes at Chinese restaurants (Chop Suey) and escorted me to see The Rockets at Radio City Music Hall.

My other favorite shows were I Love Lucy, The Millionaire (I made lists of how I would spend the money when John Beresford Tipton came to our house to give me a check), Danny Thomas, Dick Van Dyke, Loretta Young Show and My Little Margie. I liked Gidget and later dreamed about Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare. The Twilight Zone gave me the creeps. 

We visited the Catskills and I went to summer camp once at the Adirondacks. It was cool to get away from the summer heat and enjoy the fresh mountain air.

Every Fourth of July we watched Yankee Doodle Dandy and sang all of the George M Cohan songs at the top of our lungs.

I imagined that my real parents would come back to get me one day. I just knew I was an orphan and the parents I grew up with weren’t my real ones.

We loved going to Kiddy City (the local amusement park for children) and walked to the local Carvel store for black and white cones with sprinkles, the pizza place for a slice and Chinese restaurant for egg rolls. There was also a candy store and diner where we got milk shakes and malteds. We did not really hang out at the mall but we liked going shopping when I became a teenager at May Company in Glen Oaks. Senior year of high school I had a crush on a boy who worked a the movie theatre. He wore a tuxedo and had lunch at the Hamburger Express (they brought customers food via Lionel Trains).

A Little History

Bayside was first settled by the British around Alley Creek, the East River inlet now leading to Alley Pond Park, in the early 1700s. It was named Bay Side in 1798 and by the time the one-word spelling appeared in the 1850s, it was a small but potent community giving rise to governmental leaders and statesmen. The neighborhood has always retained a small-town atmosphere centered around Bell Boulevard. The street, a former Indian trail and dirt road, is named for Abraham Bell, an Irish Quaker who was a partner in a shipping firm and owned a vast farm in the area (the name has nothing at all to do with Alexander Graham Bell). The City, however, has added to the confusion by naming PS 205, as well as its playground at 75th Avenue and 217th Street Bell Park and later, Telephone Park, in honor of the inventor.

We went on school trips to museums, Planetarium, Empire State Building and maybe went on the Staten Island Ferry. We girls were warned to stay away from the perverts on the bike path and the subways when we first started to work in the city. I was the neighborhood babysitter to make money for clothes and make-up I wanted to buy.

I wanted to become a famous writer and kept a diary. I read books like Anne Frank’s Diary, James Baldwin, ee cummings poems, Ray Bradbury, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Marjorie Morningstar and of course Gone With the Wind. We had a library within walking distance where I could read for hours and dream of traveling to faraway places like California (where I yearned to live some day).

Later, my favorite books included Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Swiftly Tilting Planet, The Good Earth, Atlas Shrugged, cowboy books by Louis L’Amour, and romantic comedies by Jennifer Crusie and Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum series).

My high school yearbook photo. (Went to Martin Van Buren in New Hyde Park, NY).

When I grew up I would marry a rich man, write books and travel around the world. (It did not happen like that exactly but before I was 30 I had already realized more of my dreams than I could have possibly imagined thanks to meeting Rannette Daniels Nicholas when I was 25. She was my mentor, teacher, coach and friend for 40+ years until she passed in 2015. Through her, I became a published writer, got my BA degree, traveled around the world, led and wrote seminars and workshops and connected with my spirituality in ways I could never have dreamed of.

I yearned to have a relationship with God but did not know how to do so. Most of our neighbors were religious, kept kosher, went to synagogue and observed the Sabbath and other holidays. We ate pork, ham, Chinese food (shrimp, lobster) and only went to the Orthodox temple because it was in walking distance (once we drove a few blocks from there). I did not know Hebrew and did not know what they were saying or what was going on in the synagogue. No one explained to me either. We listened to Bible records and sang songs. On the Holy days you were not supposed to spend money, go shopping, cook or have fun in any way (like jumping on my pogo stick). I found religion kind of boring and restrictive. Why did our neighbors sit in the dark every Saturday? None of it made any sense to me. Chanukah was 8 days but we got gifts like socks and underwear not toys and games.

When I was a teenager I belonged to B’nai B’rith to go to parties and meet Jewish boys. I did not care if a guy was Jewish but my parents did. I wanted to date guys I thought were cute, funny and smart and who would like me and treat me decently. Senior year of high school I had a huge crush on a non-Jewish guy named Bob. When he finally asked me out and had to meet my parents, I told them his father (who he looked like) was not Jewish but his mother was (which counted) so that I could go out with him.

I dreamed of moving to Los Angeles (Southern California) and living near the beach. When I was 19, I realized this goal after saving up my money and finding someone to go there with.

After I met Rannette and had led seminars in Los Angeles and Munich, Germany. My parents lived in Windsor Park now and I lived there for awhile in 1978 until I got an apartment (the Penny Lane building) in the city (Manhattan) with a dear friend (23rd between Park and Lexington). I also went to John Roberts Powers Modeling School (charm school).

Below is more nostalgia from my childhood.

Growing up in Bayside, Queens, NYC  we lived near 73rd and Bell Boulevard and Union Turnpike and Springfield Boulevard in the Windsor Oaks apartments near to the Windsor Park apartments

local places: Pee Pond (Alley Pond Park), Kiddy City, Ice Skating at Roosevelt Field, Bowling Alley, Fresh Meadows, World’s Fairgrounds, Creedmoor (State mental hospital), Mays in Glen Oaks and Lake Success (Longyland) plus the pizza place, delis, candy stores, luncheonette, diners, five and dime (Woolworth’s) and the hamburger joint near Mays which brought food on Lionel trains

we not only had an assortment of ice cream trucks that came around from Good Humor to Mr Softie all with different sounds, but we also had Chow Chow Cup (Chinese food that came in an edible bowl. The bowl was made of a fried crispy noodle wrapper), Pizza, Knish Knosh and other foods

we had milk delivered to our apartment, it came in glass bottles

we also had donuts and cake and seltzer (in glass bottles) delivered. The delivery man Johnny sang to me a song whenever I saw him sweating and hauling those bottles in the sun. Tell me a story he sang to me.

we got our ice cream from cows from a farm my dad passed by called Gouz (rhymes with cows)

candy:

maryjanes

candy cigarettes

little bottles with colored sugar water

ootton candy

toasted marshmallows

rawhide (apricot) and licorice ropes

filled jelly candies from lower east side nyc

necco

pez

desserts/ice cream stores:

Carvel’s

Dunkin Donuts

Jahn’s ice cream parlor, free ice cream sundae on your birthday

charlotte russes (sponge cake topped with whipped cream)

we lived in what we called the court (yard) of garden apartments. we had lots of trees  and grass behind the apartments and played a lot of different street games… including:

ringolevio

stoop ball

jacks

checkers

something with bottle caps

freeze

table hockey

monkey in the middle

softball

jump rope

card games like War, Spades,  Hearts, Casino, 21, Poker, and Rummy

cowboys and indians

forts

king of the mountain/jungle

tag

ball games such as A my name is Alice and I come from Alabama and I make apples (with your spaldeen you bounce the ball and raise your leg over the ball every time the A (or B C D etc) is said, A Alice Alabama Apples

hopscotch

arm wrestling

sledding in winter

we used a hose to cool off… and one of those small plastic pools at home

caught caterpillars and fire flies in jars

did not step on sidewalk cracks (it would break your mother’s back)

got dressed up for Halloween

mean boys (usually, sometimes girls) would put huge chunks of hard chalk inside socks and hit you with it

when we were bored inside on snow days :

we’d make phoney phone calls, call people we did not know up and ask if their refrigerator was running and hang up

listened to the radio and made dedications, ask for a particular song to be played for a particular person and hear our names on the radio

came home from school to watch and dance to:

American Bandstand

Soul Train (later)

we played in the playgrounds:

in the sandboxes

on the monkey bars

swings

slide

see-saw or teeter/totter

we raised money for our cats (alley) who we named and took care of although we were not allowed to have pets in the garden apartments… my cat’s name was Ginger

sang songs and made up songs:

Susie and Johnny sitting in a tree K I S S I N G

First Came Love Then Came Marriage

Then Came Susie with a Baby Carriage

we put on shows, circuses, sometimes to raise money

adults had BBQ’s and Mock Marriages where people would pretend to marry other people’s husbands/wives after they got tipsy drunk

the housewives in Yenta Center (where all the women would sit outside and gossip about everyone in the neighborhood)

played mah jongg

board games like Monolpoly, Chinese checkers

played with

hula hoops

pogo sticks

bubbles

collected and traded:

marbles

baseball cards

dolls

we were crafty:

made laniards

pot holders

crocheted baby items

braided chewing gum wrappers into necklaces

pop-it beads

cut out paper dolls

sea shells

imaginary games:

 tea parties

watched TV shows:

Howdy Doody

Little Rascals

Bowery Boys

Lone Ranger

Sky King

Wagon Train

Lassie

Mickey Mouse Club

Capt. Kangaroo

cartoons (Rocky and Bullwinkle; The Jetsons)

Superman

Merv Griffin

Dragnet

Roy Rogers

Donna Reed

George Burns and Gracie Allen

Beat the Clock

Hopalong Cassidy

Jack Benny

Truth or Consequences

Honeymooners

You Bet Your Life (Groucho Marx)

Kukla, Fran and Ollie

Life of Riley

Ozzie and Harriet

Father Knows Best

Leave It to Beaver

The Real McCoys

Dobie Gillis

Adventures of Rin Tin Tin

Soupy Sales

I’ve Got a Secret

Topper

Abbott and Costello

77 Sunset Strip

Three Stooges

Movies:

Old Shirley Temple movies

West Side Story

Musicals: King and I, Sound of Music, Oklahoma

Ben Hur

Spartacus

The Time Machine

Songs:

Purple People Eater

Lion Sleeps Tonight

Louis, Louis

Duke of Earl

In the Still of the Night

Itsy Bitsy Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

You Don’t Own Me

Que Sera Sera whatever will be will be

Tears on My Pillow

A Teenager in Love

Hey Paula

Book of Love

Who Put the Bop in the Bop de Bop Rama Lama Ding Dong

Tell Laura I Love Her

You Belong To Me

Sherry

Peppermint Twist

Songs by: Dion and the Belmonts, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Johnny Mathis, Peter, Paul and Mary, 5th Dimension, Mamas and Papas, Herman’s Hermits, Paul Anka, and others

Dances:

Twist

Cha Cha

Monkey

Mashed Potatoes

Read comics:

Archie

Superman

Nancy Drew

we had:

rank out sessions (traded insults) your mother wears army boots;

gave people knucks (hit knuckles hard with baseball cards)

slam books (wrote who was most popular, best dresser, smartest person, etc in class)