"This was a time and a place - my address said Brooklyn - but I really came from Bensonhurst -only a short subway ride to Coney Island and the famous Nathan's for a 5 cents hot dog..." So begin MamaDiva's Brooklyn Memories. Join her as she walks down Bay Parkway and takes us to a world so wonderful, no virtual world can even come close. This column is so sweet, we can hardly believe we had the good fortune for MamaDiva to grace our pages. What can we say? This lady is a gem.
A View from the Pickle Barrel
MamaDiva's Brooklyn Memories
Saltwater Candy, Saltwater Kisses:
Welcome to Mama Diva's Brooklyn memories. Today, we are going on an excursion to Coney Island on a suffocating, steamy, sweltering weekend in the 1950's.
The Coney Island I knew had salt water kisses under the boardwalk, taffy apples and a carnival atmosphere with its blazing art deco colours. There was a certain innocence --absent was the technology of Disneyland, and we loved its very essence.
It was a quantum leap backwards to the age of the Flintstones. In my neighborhood of Bensonhurst, the hip mode of transportation was the Local Seabeach train. Now, conjure in your mind a swarming mass of thousands; little and big brave soldiers, the Mama's and the Poppa's holding their precious gear of army blankets, beach chairs and shopping bags converging the EXIT to Surf Avenue for their very own place in the SUN.
The rewards at the end of the day were blisters and Noxzema - (no bras for a week). SP30 was an unknown as was porcelain or alabaster skin. This was not the "in" thing until some of us enrolled in Brooklyn College in an Arts History course and found out being fair of skin was a thing of beauty. Yes, it was the perfect elixir for that perfect glow- Baby oil and a tincture of iodine. It burned your body to perfection i.e. a crisp chick - It all blended well with my perfect lipstick aptly named Flame-glo, which was in total harmony with my face.
In the early evenings my family would stroll and wander on the boardwalk which consisted of beveled planks and went on for miles and miles. All over the boardwalk were food concessions, penny arcades. - Guess Your Weight - Guess Your Age. Daddy was a slight man with a strong steady hand. He always won at knocking down the pins in one swift pitch and voila he won his girls our favorite Kewpie dolls.
These were made of hollow plaster painted gaudy colours and decorated with gilt or sequins that stained our hands and clothes. Daddy yearned for a lake and trees and a fishing rod; Mommy yearned for the ocean since she grew up in the concrete environs of New York tenements where an egg can be perfectly fried on the sidewalk.
Then off to Nathan's for a 5 cent frankfurter smothered with mustard and sauerkraut and a cold root beer. The counter boys served a frank a second. The air tingled with the smell of grease, cotton candy, sweat and the salt of the ocean.
When I became an early teenager a group of us sat under the boardwalk - someone brought along a ukulele and we sang off key our favorite ballads. The boys would look under the cracks and air spaces and watch people walking overhead, spending hours looking up the ladies dresses.
Yes, The Coney Island I knew had salt water kisses under the boardwalk, taffy apples and a carnival atmosphere with its blazing art deco colours. "The days of our youth are the days of our glory" said Byron. He must have been to Coney Island at least once.
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