"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
Home is where the heart is and for me it is Brooklyn. Original home of the Brooklyn Dodgers (dem bums).
The Dutch pioneers founded the city in 1636 and named it
"Breucklen" after a town in Holland. Some individuals refer
to it as the Rooming House of New York City, and also the
home of Sir Winston Churchill's mama.
Our "spa" in the 1950's was in those days a candy store with
a soda fountain. There we delighted ina 2 cents plain (* a
large glass of seltzer (*carbonated water) or fruit drinks
for a penny made of syrup in containers with a spigot holding
green (lemon/lime - voila the Lime Rickey) - red (cherry)
and orange.
But what defined the imagination of a soda jerk and the customer was the all famous EGG CREAM. This was a concoction of chocolate syrup, milk and seltzer, which had neither an egg nor cream in it. But for us Brooklynites, a candy store minus an egg cream was as inconceivable as a kitchen table without an oilcloth.
Growing up in our neighborhood-a radius of 3 blocks-was how we were defined. The trademark being the "Stoop" (*alias the outside staircase accompanied by a wall or balustrade to sit on.) The grownups sat on the stoop on those cool or steamy evenings surveying the street life while our friends applied decalomanias to the back of our hands (*decals today, cockamamies then.
When the adults abandoned the stoop, "stoop ball" came into play (i.e. a Spaldine ball was thrown to catch the edge of the step and be caught by the thrower.) This was a simulated game of baseball. Much like solitaire, this could be played alone, accumulating points by catching the ball either on a fly or many bounces.
It was a Sunday night tradition when Daddy rescued Mama from the kitchen. Off we went in our Chevrolet station wagon to our favorite Chinese restaurant to taste the exotic Cantonese cuisine -- one from Column A and one from Column B. This was accompanied by a tiny dish of dark thick duck sauce and fried rice. Here we savoured the "forbidden food" of shrimp and lobster sauce.
Our hangouts were huge cafeterias and we ate sour pickles from the barrel. Our treats consisted of a delicacy named a Charlotte Russe (*sponge cake topped with a dollup of whipped cream topped with a cherry held together in a small mound of cardboard.)
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.
The End.
Hi sweetheart - Here it is - hope you find it sort of suitable. Kisses-
Contact Mama Diva at 5a7@avivalasvegas.com. Make sure to put Mama Diva in the subject line.
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