In a black-and-white photo of me, one of the very few I have of myself as a little kid, I am sitting on the concrete steps of our apartment building. I’m about two years old. I’m bundled up in a full-body snowsuit; only there is no snow in the photo. I’m smiling, but my eyes are looking to the side, like, What am I supposed to do here? Somebody must have propped me up against the step because I’m so padded up, I don’t know how I could move around on my own without help. But I had help. I had my older brother, Clyde.
When it snowed in New York in the ’50s and ’60s, it really snowed. It would come down for hours. It would pile up against the windows and freeze them shut. A good blizzard changed the look of the whole neighborhood. The playground equipment was buried. You couldn’t tell where the edge of the sidewalk stopped and where the street began. There was no place for the plows to move the snow, so most of it stayed where it fell. The street traffic would stop altogether.
Those were the best times with my older brother. He’d carry his Flexible Flyer outside, and we’d sled down Tenth Avenue. He’d put me on the front of the sled and push the back end until it picked up some speed. Then Clyde would jump on. We’d laugh and holler, and I’d try not to tip over our ride by leaning too much.
There really aren’t any hilly streets in Chelsea, you know, so it was all about momentum. We probably only slid half the block, but for a little kid, it could have been the Matterhorn. I would wear my brother out. As soon as the sled stopped moving, I’d say, “Again, Clyde. Do it again.” He’d grab the rope, pull me back to the other end of the street, and repeat.
Sooner or later, all the kids in the surrounding buildings would tumble outdoors, and we’d stay for hours, having snowball fights and sledding until our faces were frozen.
It didn’t matter who you were, or thought you were, when there was a good New York City blizzard. From Wall Street to the George Washington Bridge, everything came to a standstill. Nobody was going anywhere. It was the great equalizer.
The projects, at that time, were an ethnic enclave of a wide variety of folks: black, white, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Korean, Mexican, Italian, and Jewish. It was one big confusing jumble of languages and cultural traditions, but the kids adapted easily. We just rolled with it because that’s all we knew. You didn’t have to understand the words when a Puerto Rican mom scolded you in Spanish. The tone alone would dress you down. There were always five or six moms sitting on the benches surrounding the big playground between the buildings, ready to step in if you messed up. You didn’t dare shove anybody or cut in ahead of your turn in double Dutch jump rope. Or you could look up at the buildings and see mom faces popping up here and there in the windows, checking on all the kids below. You couldn’t get away with anything. By the time you rode the elevator to your own floor, your mom would already know what had happened and when.
On summer days, most of the kids would be sent outside after breakfast and told to come home when the sun went down. Instead of taking the time to go upstairs, the kids would call up to the open window of their apartment if they needed something.
When the Mister Softee or Good Humor ice cream truck would pull up next to the playground, I would shout up to the sixth-floor window of our apartment: “Ma! Ma! Can I have a quarter?”
She’d wrap a quarter in some tissues and drop it from the window into the hedges next to the building so it didn’t smack anyone on the head and I could find it. Or sometimes I’d wait for the old guy with the Italian shaved ice cart. He’d wheel around a block of ice in a cooler and shave it off into a paper cone. Then he’d pour orange or cherry Kool-Aid over the top.
That was the only way we could cool off on summer days unless we got lucky and some teenage boys uncapped the fire hydrant. There was no air conditioning in any of the apartments. We didn’t even have a fan. When it was a humid 95 degrees outside, it would feel like 115 degrees inside. The concrete-and-brick buildings would absorb the sun all day long and then be like radiators at night, pumping out the heat. We would run rags under the cold-water tap and wear them wrapped around our necks. That was our high-tech cooling system.
In the evenings, the buildings would peel open like a can of sardines, and people of all ages would bring down kitchen chairs and folding tables and set up outside, trying to catch any cool breeze possible. Old men would play dominoes and the young women would play cards, and I’d listen to them all talking and gossiping. Folks would stay outside as long as they could because trying to sleep in bed was impossible. You’d lie there all night long, flipping back and forth like a burger on a hot grill.
Whenever I could, I’d hang out with Clyde for the day. There’s a big difference between ages six and twelve, but Clyde was such a cool cat that even his guy friends couldn’t talk him out of having me go along.
They’d say, “You gotta take your sis with us?”
Clyde would answer, “I like taking Caryn. If you don’t want to go, then that’s okay. But I’m taking Caryn.”
He took me everywhere. Before I was old enough to keep up with him, he’d make a skateboard by putting a two-by-four plank of wood between two skates. Then he’d wedge a box between the skates on the board. He’d put me in the box, push it along, and off we’d go. I learned a whole lot about how to be around boys and how they think.
I was Clyde’s biggest fan. It didn’t matter what he did. He was really good at softball. I’d stand off to the side and yell my head off when he was up to bat.
We’d ask our mom for some money before going outside.
She’d say, “Listen. If I had it, I’d give it to you. But there’s quite a bit of money right over in that corner.” She’d point over at the empty Coca-Cola and Hoffman soda bottles. “If you gather those bottles and take them back, you might get enough money to enable you to do what you want.”
We’d gather up the empties and take them back to the store for the deposit return. Sometimes, if we were lucky, it was enough to get a burger and fries at the Five & Dime counter. Most often, it would only be enough for penny candy. The jackpot was having an extra nickel for a Bonomo Turkish Taffy. The tough part was picking between chocolate, banana, strawberry, or vanilla. I’d carry it home, put the bar in the fridge, and get it really cold before taking it out to the playground. The trick was to put the cold taffy flat in your hand and smack it down on the sidewalk. When I opened the package, it would be broken up into about twelve pieces I could share. The kid with the candy was always popular, at least for a few minutes.
A couple of times during the summer, we’d get up in the morning, and Ma would be making spiced-ham-and-cheese sandwiches with Miracle Whip. Clyde and I knew what that meant. We were going to Coney Island. It was a big deal!
Ma loved Coney Island, and Clyde and I matched her enthusiasm. She’d pack up a plastic cooler with the sandwiches, Wise potato chips, and maybe some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, too. Then she’d hand the cooler to Clyde, and we’d head to the Eighth Avenue train stop. The train would go underground for a while and then come up into the daylight, and we’d be in a different neighborhood, as if Brooklyn was a whole other country. At our stop we’d step off into a station that smelled of hot buttered popcorn, cotton candy, ocean air, and sweat. There was a long line of booths even before you left the station, selling all the carnival and beach things that were possible: balloons, beach balls and float rings, things that chirped and whirled, water pistols and yo-yos, and plastic Kewpie dolls tied to the ends of long bamboo sticks.
I really wanted one of those Kewpie dolls with a purple-and-pink feather dress and glitter glued on her head in the shape of a cap. I wanted to walk through Coney Island holding that cane up high like a victory flag.
My mother would stop me and say, “Look. We aren’t buying that today. We’re going to stick to where we are going and have a good time. You won’t need a Kewpie. It won’t be important anymore.”
I’d say, “Okay. Okay.” And she’d be right. We’d head out into Coney Island, and five minutes later I wouldn’t think about the doll on a cane at all. At least until the next time we got off the train at Coney Island.
We’d spend the whole day going up and down the boardwalk, standing in lines for the Wild Mouse coaster, the Scrambler, and the centrifugal-force ride, a big tube that spins and then the floor drops out from under everybody. And you’re laughing your ass off looking across at other folks just dangling on the wall.
Then there was the shop where you could buy a hand-dipped candy apple. They were making them there, right in front of you, swirling the apple on a stick in the hot red candy syrup, letting it cool a minute, and handing it to you on a cupcake paper. I’d have red candy stuck to every tooth in my mouth, but I didn’t care.
We’d stop after a couple of hours and eat the lunch Ma had packed, saving the food money to get the best dinner: Nathan’s hot dogs. Near the end of the day, we’d each get a hot dog in a paper boat and crinkle-cut french fries that came with a skinny wooden fork with two prongs. We’d sit there as the sun dropped down, eating our hot dogs and fries.
The sound of folks laughing, the clanging of the rides spinning or rolling, the merry-go-round music, the games, the smell of fried dough and cotton candy, hot dogs and fries. For me, it was heaven. My mom, brother, and I would spend the whole day at Coney Island, and I felt like we were untouchable, completely untouchable.
Another summer tradition was taking the Circle Line boats all around Manhattan, up the Hudson River, and out to Staten Island. We’d walk up the Statue of Liberty all the way to her crown, where you could stand and look down at the water and over at the Manhattan skyline. Mom would have us climb up all 354 steps every year, even when we complained. She’d say, “Come on. It’s good for you.”
It was good for me, even if I didn’t know it at the time. From the top I could see the big picture of what humans were capable of making, all the skyscraper buildings, and the vast ocean surrounding our hometown city.
When I was a little older, Clyde and I would board a bus with most of the other kids in our neighborhood and go to Camp Madison-Felicia in Putnam Valley. The camp experience was provided by the Fresh Air Fund, which made it possible for city kids to get out into nature. Camp was days of activities: doing craft projects, roasting marshmallows, and eating hot dogs cooked on wire coat hangers over burning logs. We’d sing camp songs around the campfire every night, moving around to avoid whichever way the smoke was blowing. Camp was where I learned to swim in a lake, dive off a dock, and row a boat. We slept in wooden bunkhouses. I don’t remember being worried about tick bites or having life jackets on in the rowboats. No one wore sunscreen, hats, or sunglasses. We even whittled pieces of wood with open jackknives, something they’d probably never let kids do now. It was all for fun. I don’t think anybody had to go to the hospital.
As an adult, when folks heard where I grew up, they would act like I had survived a tough childhood. That’s not my memory. I always thought as long as I had my mom and Clyde, that everything was going to be good. We watched out for each other.
I’m sure Clyde, being older, saw it all from a different perspective. He probably felt more responsibility being the male in the house. He never said that to me, but I did know there was always a special love between my mother and her firstborn, a place nobody else would hold. I mentioned that to my mom once, and she said, “It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I love you both the best way I can.”
I’d eventually see harsher realities as I got older, but it never came from her. Her whole day-to-day perspective was to live in the most practical manner possible. For my mom, that meant not letting other people’s opinions take your attention or energy. She thought the most important opinion was what you thought of yourself and how you lived your life.
She held on to those standards her whole life. As I got older, I eventually understood the backbone that it took.