WALT KARWICKI'S HOMEPAGE...

My Favorite Links

Freedomland,World'sFair,Palisades Park etc
Fritz Leiber Adventure Stories in Lankhmar
HP Lovecraft stories

...11-14..9-18 8-15-02 7-30-02... 4-24-02.. 3-22-02...2-17-02.... 3=10-00 4-4 1-27-00 THIS IS FOR THE GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN PAGE_.......9-13-01... 7-6-01. .6-11-01... 5-7-01... .4-5-01 ..3-2-01 2-6-01.. .. 1-4-01....... 12-8-00.... .11-10-00 ,.. 10-2-00, ,,, 9-5-00 . --- _-2000 -/9999// --.- ._-- ..__.__... _____ Stuff added Fri.Dec.4,1998 ____ ____ ____ _____ My memories of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. :::::: I was born there Sunday, Ocober 30, 1949 at 7:10 am. Adelphi Hospital, wherever that was/is. I was never there since. Too big for the newborn's basinette, they put me in a laundry basket. I guess 10lb 8 oz was considered big back then. I grew up on 13 Clifford place, which was one block long and then the name changed at the next block which was all factories until McCarren Park. Down the block across the street there was a factory and across the street from it on Meserole Ave as well. Behind my house on Banker street they were all factories as well. My father always said he bought the second TV set on the block and his sister bought the first. I guess that was 1949, Im not sure. It was a DuMont. My favorite shows were Rootie Kazootie ( I still have the Little Golden Book) and Beany and Friends, a Bob Clampett puppet show ( The captain on the show always said, "Oh, Ishefoof! when he got angry and I named my kitten after that). Across the street from me at 14 (?) lived my friend Timothy McDaniel upstairs and a few houses down on my side towards Meserole lived my friend Anthony Zlocki upstairs. There was also a slightly older kid who moved away about 1958 or 57 but I forget his name. Around the corner in the other direction were the brothers Wally and Chucky (The mother wanted him baptized Chuck but the priest wouldn't do it so he wound up Charles). A couple of doors towards Meserole were kids who played Monopoly in the little fenced in concrete spot in front of all the tenements every Summer. There were no storm windows, I recall seeing them when I returned for a quick visit a few years later. I recall people selling things in the street in the 1950s. There was a guy who walked down the middle of the street clanking with metal things banging against his legs and he had a wheel on his back for sharpening. Mothers would give their kids knives and scissors for him to sharpen. There were ancient ice trucks ( My father worked on an ice wagon before I was born). And horse-drawn large grocery wagons. And the Good Humor Truck. I had both a toy ice wagon and a toy G.H. truck. 1950s teenagers would gamble for silver quarters on the steps of 14. My baby sitter lived a couple of houses down towards Meserole from 14. On the corner of Clifford and Meserole across the street was a Pontiac factory and it always had the sidewalk strewn with plastic pellets. Across from it on my side was a restaurant on the corner. Between the restaurant and my house, next to the Zlocki's apartment house, someone accused of counterfeiting was once taken out. Every once in a long while, stickball was played in the street (but I saw a LOT more of it when I moved to Astoria, Queens). The factories in the area always had their doors open in the summer and I could hear the Brooklyn Dodger games. One winter, 1956? 57? there was a snowfall so deep I walked down the middle of the street with t up to my chest. I once sold Kool-Aid out of my front window and kids had to stand on a pipe there to reach the window. The Zorro fad was big in 1957 (It was my last fad) and I used to collect bottles at all the factories with Tim McDaniel to get Zorro cards. I still have some. I recall playing with water balloons across the street, Id put a pinhole in them and write my name. Then one burst. At the other end of the block (I dont recall the street name) was a grocery. The entrance was just around the corner. There was a garage just before it and one year I got a Rootie Kazootie ball and glove in Williamsburg and I was allowed to play with it against the garage until a while after dark. I still remember when my father taught me to read, to tie my shoes and to cross the street on Clifford. Around from that grocery was a factory on the corner of Banker Street and we'd get 'chalk' there to write with. And there was always a small hole in the fence between two buildings so kids could get into the yard. On Banker street there was no sidewalk and it always smelled of creosote. Also where cats went to die. There was a Tootsie Roll box factory there. Around the corner from the restaurant on Meserole I did my first trick or treating. There was one house there. I was on Clifford and a slightly older boy showed me a silver half dollar he got from a guy upstairs in that house. He told me about trick or treating and how people got candy and pennies (good money in 1955,56 or whenevr that was) but this guy just got married and was handing out half dollars!!! So I went to his apt and, sure enough, he went into a room and brought out a bottle of them and gave me one. I trick or treated from then on. Across Meserole from that restaurant was a bar on the corner which we kids would trick or treat because the guys gave us lots of money. Down that street towards the park was a place that made dogbone treats and one of my friends who had no dog said he did so he could eat them himself. I also knew a kid name Gaylord Bissell. From Banker Street on there were no homes, just factories and warehouses. One time as a kid my father took me there at night and my mother came out of the plant to the door wearing a welder's mask. Another time at night we went to another place and a lady gave me a whole bag of Little Golden Books. I know that a couple blocks farther towards the East River there was a big street and my father worked at an Esso gas station fixing cars some blocks south. Way south was the stinky beer plant (Rheingold?). Toward the other end of Banker Street there was a confluence of numerous streets coming together which I was no allowed to cross as a kid. There was a restaurant on the far side. Now if I walked down to Meserole and turned leftand crossed the street there was that Pontiac plant and one Halloween I came home from PS 126 and saw that a worker had painted a big, impressive Halloween scene on the factory window near the corner. It stayed there for years. Across Meserole was that other factory and farther up was the post office. Then came Franklin Street. Around the corner and across the street was a candy store. I would buy sci-fi comix there. Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space. I loved Space and the future. Then they had a box of 'vehicles of the future" in a box they'd bring out from the glass case on the left. On the left was also the fountain counter. The comics were on the wall in the back. 10 cents. So I'd get the toy future cars. (I later became a NASA Astrophysicist and my grad school buddy Ron Parise went up in the Shuttle twice). One day i went ot that candy store and while I was inside the soda truck, which had all its sodas in bottles piled up on its triangular sides, fell over for some reason. Soda all over the street. So the driver came inside and called his bosses. He then told everyone who was watching that they could take any bottles still intact as the whole shipment was being written off. Note how people honestly waited in those days. Now up Meserole a little more was another candy store across from the school ps 126 and it was way up high stairs. They sold toy watches in there. Father up, I believe , were the Knight of Columbus (I had no idea what they were at that time) and the police station which used to collect toys for kids. In about 1958 another candy store opened closer to Manhattan ave on Meserole on theat side of the street and once when I bought a few comix the guy wouldnt let me go fo a penny short so my father drove me back so I could pay him. Then there was that Chinese Restaurant way, way up those inside stairs that my mother and Aunt Marie Temborski used to like (My Aunt Marie still lives in G'point. She used to live in an apt near McCarren park where there was a big Michelin Man across the street). Of course on the other side was PS 126 where I went from Kindergarten to half way through 4th grade. John Ericsson. I had no idea who he was. I do recall the stage said "Knowledge is Power" on the front. Kindergarten teacher, Mrs Bearle. First grade, i forget. Second grade Miss Ragusa got married and became Mrs Smith. 3rd and 4th grade: Mrs Hamilton, my favorite teacher ever in 24 years of schooling. I still remember our Humpty Dumpty subscriptions and the periodic table of the elements she gave 'our little scientist' (me).. If I left my house and turned left towards the grocery at the other corner. There was a kid I knew who lived at the corner house. Then up that street towards town there was a bar on the corner (was that Franklin?) and up and across the street were a few little stores, including another candy store where they had their comix near the front window. Also had punch out carboard stand up little figures of Vikings etc. Counter on the left. I showed up there in June 1973 right when the guy was moving out forever. I also blew thru G'point quickly in 1981. But farther up that street were, I believe, the side entrance of the Greenpoint Savings Bank. They added that extension in the back when I was a kid and I kept walking thru it with my parents to get free balloons and something else. 1957?? Across was the side exit of the movie theatre. all those fire escapes. On the street behind Manhattan Avenue there was a back exit from Woolworth's. One day i was walking down that street and two kids came out and one goes,"Hey, do you want an airplane?" So I said sure. And then these two kids took off running. Then a grown man comes up to me and says, "Did those boys give you that airplane?" And I said yes. So he runs down the street after them. I was so dense i had no idea that it was stolen. I never thought of it until I was an adult. On the corner of Meserole and Manhattan was, I believe, a drugstore. It sold holiday Scotch tape and i bought some and put it everywhere in the house. Next was a hat store. Then I recall the A&P where my mother worked for years. It had two levels and conveyors for the groceries. I used to push carts around for hours in the summer. I still recall where many things were. Especially all the weird straws. When Super Cooler, the first soda in a can, came out they gave some away for free. Same when chocolate graham crackers appeared. Then there was the coffee grinder on the first aisle on the right 9but on the left side of the aisle). They had one person who just ground constantly. I still don't know how they worked out the carts on two floors. Those steps were wide and steep with a rail down the middle. Of course I got to see the inner workings as my mother worked there. Dumbwaiters to move boxes up and down in the back. Next to the A&P was Woolworth's. I don't think I've been in it since 1958 and they're all gone now. In front of it and the A&P was a subway grating where the air would come up and kids would fish for coins with gum and string. The old trolley tracks were still there for years and cars would get their wheels stuck. My father hated that. I still vaguely recall the trolleys and the old bridge on Manhattan Ave. I also recall how a piece of it on both sides stayed up long aferwards. Then they had those ELECTRIC buses with the wires overhead. The sparks got exciting near McCarren Park where the lines all came together. (I think for either my 8th or 9th b'day in 1957 or 58 I wanted to ride on buses, trolleys, subways and elevated trains all day and my father and I did so but we had to go to Queens Plaza as only it still had all that, including trolleys). I used to hang out in front of Woolworth's and the A&P a lot as my mother worked at the A&P. I recall reading th original Superboy/Bizarro comic while sitting there at a step inbetween. Once a guy walked by with a portable TV that was ON!! Amazing back then. I was in front of the 5&10 when the Hula Hoops came for the frst time on a truck. They gave other kids and me each a pack of Charms lollipops for carrying in lots of hula hoops which were hung up on a string from the ceiling. Naturally we told every kid in our neighborhoods. That was my first 'paid' job, unless you count the collecting bottles. On the left in the Woolworths was the long counter and there was a smaller one on the right towards the back more, but it was taken out in 56?? After the long counter were pinball machines including one with a dancing clown whose arms and legs one manipulated. To the right at the entrance were machines filled with plastic charms (once, the vendor gave me two handfuls of them. A real surprise). Down the middle was the candy and cookie counter. A woman always worked behind it. There were lots of employees in 5&10s back then. I always liked the long wafer bars; choc,van,straw, which I brought in to pass out in class. Behind it were the toys and near Christmas all the Lionel stuff would be there including tracks sold separately. They also sold clay in pound packages and plastic models of people( Vikings, Scotsmen, Knights etc.) Towards the back were adult things for homes. I forget what was between the Woolworths and the Greenpoint Saving Bank. Across from the Woolworths were a candy store where I bought my first cough drops. And down on the corner was a Bohacks which had Sugar Jets when the A&P did not. Maybe across from the drugstore on Manhattan/Meserole there was a restaurant. Because I recall that when I was really young I was in one on the corner on Manhattan Ave and the man behind the counter handed me a red car made out of something I had never seen before: plastic. It was of the original rubber-type developed in the war for a tire substitute and I had to be careful with it as it bent like flaky rubber and could crack and split. There was also a store on that side of the street which was a BIG clothing store but it had a CAROUSEL inside in the left rear!! (Speaking of that there were also trucks that came around with carousels and tilt-a-whirls and cars on a track in the back. Noone ever mentions them anywhere nowadays). Beyond that block things get vague. Way back in Kindergarten I was a latch-key kid and would walk the two blocks to and from school twice a day until we moved but I rarely walked too far down Manhattan Ave. I do recall going to the corner store that sold jello-cups and charlotte-russes thru the window on the corner. And there was the theatre a litle farther that had cardboard cutouts pushing movies including The Blob and The Fly. Somewhere there was a long lunchroom with colored beverages (ades) stirring continuously on the counter. And there was a drugstore which sold games and I bought a DISNEYLAND game with popout pieces. And a Barracinis (sp?) and another big Five and Ten across from the St Anthony's church where I made my Communion. 1957? The 5/10 had Classics comix and lead knights and green plastic tanks and cannons and army men. But all American soldiers so you had noone to fight. In some toy store down there (was it this 5/10? ) I went down for a sparkling engine rocket ship but they sold out so I got a sparkling jet. Across the street was a Chase Manhatten Bank with a little red faced man with a square head as a logo (I always wondered if he 'chased' or was 'chased' as his legs were in motion) who later showed up on the Freedomland ads. Down farther was a candy store and a couple of all night outside newsstands at Greenpoint Ave where the subways are. (Remember, I havent seen Greenpoint in decades). Around from there was a closed 'bathhouse'. I had no idea what that meant as a kid. And a place where I went to wedding receptions with my parents. Across Greepoint ave was a newstand and down past there I RARELY went. I do recall that Tim McDaniel's mother worked in a smal restaurant on the other ,west, side of the street and that there was a kids store farther down with two entrances where my parents bought me some blocks once when i was tiny. They both originally lived way up there.. Now on the other side of Manhattan Ave way back, I recall a Johs Bargain Store and a Carvel icecream where we'd get LOGS for Washington's Birthday. Then the church. And there was a street across from the church and i think the POLISH Catholic church where my father had gone was down there. Across Greepoint was also an old theatre. The Eagle? Up Greenpoint Ave towards the new bridge there was a big billboard for years which showed a guy in a car saying to a cop that his speedometer was broken . The board said it was no excuse and to get your speedometer fixed. Even as a kid I wondered how the price of the board could be paid for by fixing speedometers. Now down Manhattan the other way from Meserole I recall little and its all mixed up. There was a sort of dept store on the west side where I got boardgames, a fire station toy and a crosstrack. There were things stuck to the floor to lead you places. A theatre was farther on where an old lady was always selling something outside. A really fancy ice cream parlor. (Only the post war affluent fifties could have something like that) and then down to where, I believe Bedford Ave began, and there was a little triangle block. Around that corner was a barber who would 'shave' little kids, hot towel and foam. There was the Triple Decker restaurant (wasnt there another restaurant just past Meserole on Manhattan??). Up closer to the park was a bakery where I got a Howdy Doody cake with plastic toys and then a parking lot that had carnivals. The park was farther on. Now across the street from Meserole I recall nothing until the Darling toy store. Then a Polish bakery farther. Then nothing until the park. I remmeber that across from the park was a restaurant with open windows to serve customers outside in the summer. I wish BROOKLYN still had 'city directories' like most cities in America. They list EVERY store in order and who lived in every house. Oh, across from the little triangle block was Jungle Jims fountain, at least that's what my teenage uncle Johnnie Temborski and his friends introduced him to me as.The place had jungle decorations. I'll have to see if I remember any more later.... My father also worked for Milton Can Company, Industrial Displays and Todays Displays. My mother, before I was born, worked at that little lunch counter in Woolworths, and at a Horn and Hardart in Queens, an A&P on Ditmars Blvd in Astoria and at Macy's Central Warehouse as a bigshot. We moved from Greenpoint to Astoria the first week of February in 1959. My mother and I wanted to while my father did not. We bought the house here in July 1964. My mother and I wanted to move here. My father did not. My father was the TRUE Greenpointian. Although he was technically born in Astoria (which shocked me when he finally told me), he was brought to Greenpoint while still very young..... MORE MEMORIES: I recall getting my first library card at the old library on the other side of town. The bldg looked like a stone castle to me. I recall the librarian handing the card and pencil to my father and he bending over to hand them down to me. The desk was in the center of the bldg. On or near that same street the Police Athletic League had some games one summer afternoon. I don't remember how I got way over there. And a cop talked me into doing the three legged race with another kid i didnt know. We decided to start with the inside leg first, and were the only ones to do so. The others fell all over themselves and we were WAY in the lead. BUT THEN THE ROPE CAME LOOSE even though we put no strain on it. And he said, "Oh,no. He didnt tie it right". And we came in last. That was my first and last competition in anything that I can remember. I was too studious. I was sick and puny all the time and my homework always had to be brought to me in my sickbed. Once I missed ten weeks of school due to illness but still stayed in the top class of each grade. Heck, I mostly read books. My parents taught me before Kindergarten. Once when I was at William Schaefer's birthday party his older sister told me I couldn't read her schoolbook. But my parents taught me from L.Paul DeKruif's books on the Bio-sciences. So I read it and the next monday she showed up in my classroom and her teacher had me read it in front of all these big kids and then she yelled at them for a little kid being able to do it better than they. But there was a Chinese brother and sister just as smart as I was in my class: Ken Lee and Susan Lee. It annoyed me that when we got tests pages log we had to wait until the teacher said to start before we had to write our names on each and every sheet and he only had to scribble "Ken Lee" and I had to put "Walter Karwicki" on each one. The whole idea was to see who could put his pencil down first at the end of the test. I then eventually got in trouble for using "Walter K." My pediatrician's name was Dr. Walker whom my father thought was a great guy. He was a few blocks up Meserole from Clifford and to the right, then across the street. ... .... ..... under construction, Dec 2, 1998.... There was some park we little kids called "Caterpillar Park" because it got infested by them every year (Well, so did McCarren). One year i filled a whole big box with caterpillars and brought them home but my mean old mother for some crazy reason would not let me take thousands of caterpillars into 13 Clifford Place in an open box. So my friend Timmy's sister told me I could put them in her basement overnight. The next day she came running over from across the street to tell me that they must have all crawled away during the night and she couldn't find them anywhere. I was about seven and what puzzled me the most was how they took the box with them...... MAIN EMAIL PAGE FOR THIS SITE NOW ACTUALLY AT kenchandler@mailexcite.com I was once walking down Manhattan Ave a couple blocks from the A&P/Woolworth's block towards the creek about where the drugstore/gift shop/whatever it was where I got the Disneyland game and it was the day of the nationwide civil defense drill (they recently mentioned it on PBS). All us pedestrians had to get off the sidewalk and squeeze into doorways and I remember the cars pulling over and the adult drivers having to lay on the floor of their cars. Guys with civil defense helmets (With the CD triangle) walked along and made sure we were in doorways and they were on their carfloors. Now when I remember these things it's unbelievable as I must have been allowed to walk the streets very young. I was a latchkey kid at 5 and went back and forth to PS126 twice a day by myself, and I was then allowed to walk up to where my mother worked at the A&P and I recall often walking alone on Summer afternoons between Meserole and Greenpoint Avenues. But I don't recall ever walking alone beyond them. I left G'point at age 9 so I must have been quite young. ...... I recall how the old Polish families alway had these HUGE photos hanging on the walls. Marriage photos and/or that of Marshall Pilsudski (I had no idea who he was at my age. But he sure looked stern and menacing when I'd go into the unlit room of one of my parents friends and there he'd be hung way up on the wall of those high-ceiling apartments looking down on me. I used to back out of the rooms, keeping an eye on him, just in case. Some of the adults would also put flowers around his huge portrait. "He saved Poland and the church from the BOLSHEVIKS and ATHEISTS" I was later told. But I didn't know what either word meant. But I got the idea that a "Bolshevik" was even WORSE than a "Communist". Such people SPIED on people like us, the adults said. And once, when the lady on ROMPER ROOM did her daily "Hello" to all the kids names she said she could see through the screen she said WALTER and I ran and hid behind the chair as I know knew she was a BOLSHEVIK!)...... My relatives always spoke in English unless it was something they didn't want kids to hear. Then it was Polish. I figured that Polish was the world-wide secret language of grown-ups that we would all be brought into, like a secret club, when we were old enough.... As I was born in 1949 and left in 1959, most of my memories have to be of 1955, 1956, 1957,1958. I remember thinking about Mickey Mantle and the Yankees while standing on the corner with the grocery store about late 1957 or 58 because someone was talking about the Yankees because the Dodgers just left. There was an old man a few doors left of my house where the brownstones ended and fancier house began who would entertain the kids by just sitting on his front steps waiting for bees to land. And he could amazingly spit out of the side of his mouth without turning his head, drench the bee, and then step on it! I've never seen anyone repeat that trick. ... I found a Superman comicbook around the Meserole corner and across the street about 1956 or 1957 and it was dated something like 1953 and I remember thinking, "Wow, I never knew Superman went back that FAR!!" (Hey, at that age, each year is equal to a hundred grown-up years). .... My parents and I got locked inside the huge swimming pools one time. I don't know what we were doing in there as we never actually went into the water. There must have been some dry reason to be there. We were shocked to see the huge, very high gates locked. And it was NIGHTTIME with noone else around. But my father said not to worry about it and with one bound he incredibly jumped to the top of the gate!!! Then he went down the other side and got help. I have no idea who he thought of going to but he came back with a guy who let my mother and me out...... One year my father couldn't get a Christmas Tree in Greenpoint. It was too late. Then he saw one scraggley tree in a place where they had been sold and it was way in the back against the wall locked far behind the big metal gate. It was Christmas Eve and the guy who sold all the rest locked up the lot for the night. So a COP comes by and says, "You want that tree for your kid?" And the COP cups his hands for my father to step into to jump the gate and get the tree.... .... ..... ..... There was a theater down from Meserole towards McCarren and they always had someone selling something along the long, wide ramp between the ticket office and the theatre itself. I was about 5, had no sisters and had no idea what dollhouse furniture was, but I saw the first 'miniature furniture' I had ever seen and I wanted it. And I got it. I still remember what it all looked like. Interestingly, my parents didn't lecture me about it being 'girl's' toys. I turned out straight. In the future I wanted mostly toy guns and other macho stuff. ..... I especially recall seeing Viking movies at that theatre and walking home from them at night from Manhattan to Meserole to Clifford. Always wondering when I'd see knights come out of the "Knights of Columbus" building.... ______ I almost forgot Anthony Zlocki's father, Mr. Zlocki. Mr. Zlocki was the only grown-up I knew who smoked a pipe and every day he'd come home from work at the exact same time and read his paper in his chair. And he read EVERY WORD OF HIS PAPER. He started on the front page and read every word of every page for hours until he reached the end sometime after I had already had to go home to bed. Anthony and I could do anything we wanted in the room with him and he did not care. We would move furniture, jump on things, unravel all the masking tape along the floor, throw things around, ANYTHING. And anytime we'd ask him to, "Look at this, Mr. Zlocki", "Look at this, dad", he'd glance up, take the pipe out of his mouth and say, "Fine, boys, fine" and smile and nod his head. Then he'd go back to his reading. He was never angry. But when ever MRS Zlocki came in she'd go into hysterics at the sight of the shambles of what used to be a living room before we threw everything around and turned sticky tape into spiderwebs. .... Once Anthony and I had a contest as to who could stand in the hall outside the bathroom and pee into the toilet from the farthest distance. She went ballistic over that and Mr.Zlocki thought it was hilarious. I still remember her screaming,"OH, My God!! WHO PEED ALL OVER THE TOILET SEAT!!!!!?????"..... ..... correction, those stores on the north of Greenpoint Ave were on the EAST side of Manhattan Ave. I never thought of it as walking north as a kid. I always thought of walking UP Meserole to Manhattan Ave where I turned 'left'. ------- ------ I was just watching a show on the cold war and it said that the Cold War national alert was in 1955. That doesnt sound right. Because I was standing alone on Manhattan Avenue. I was 5 then. I figured it for 1957. Unless I wasnt as far down Manhattan Ave as I thought and I was still near the A&P where my mother worked. Only then would a five year old be on that block without a parent with him. Beats me.

Email: yorkpa@prontomail.com