Brooklyn Memories - 40's, 50's & 60's: Nostalgia, Memories, Thoughts, and Stories about growing up in one of the best of times and in one of the best of places. The people and memories of Brooklyn are special. Coney Island, Kings County, Prospect Park, Flatbush, Dodgers, Brooklyn Bridge, Ocean Parkway, Parade Grounds, Kings Highway, Brooklyn Day, skate keys, kites, spaldeens, stickball, Beverly Theater, stoops, Millard Fillmore, Crazy Country Club, undie-elves, weathermen
 
 
 
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Monday, January 23, 2006
 
Hi,

The posting of a week ago generated a "flurry" of emails both challenging and confirming my points.

Two of the senders brought up points particularly worth repeating.

Lana Levin of Bushwick, now in the Boston suburbs, wrote of how when she was a kid in Brooklyn the snows often came up to her waist and now even in a colder climate they seem to rarely get past her knee. Her laments of the good ol' snows were shattered when she saw four year old granddaughter gleefully playing in a recent snow where the snows came up to the granddaughters chest. Lana admitted that maybe the height of the snows hasn't fallen but that her growth has only made them seen smaller.

Bob Mason wrote that he's not sure that the Brooklyn winters have gotten warmer but that they seem to have. Bob wrote that one of the historical reasons for the building of the Brooklyn Bridge was that when the East River froze over and the Brooklyn residents had no way to get to jobs in Manhatten and vice versa... commerce simply stopped.

A Google search revealed claims that the East River never freezes because it is a saltwater body and is inherently warmer. The Hudson on the other side of Manhattan is a fresh water body fed from upstate where it is colder so it is more likely to freeze. Another claim Bob reported is that the East River is so polluted that it couldn't now freeze.

Since I'm in Texas and Bob is in Florida neither of us could validate (a little help here would be appreciated) whether any of the waters in the New York area freeze.

I personally can recall that in the late '50s I could see mini-icebergs (5 to 10 feet across) from the windows of the subway as it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn.

The refreshed memory of the mini-icebergs is one of those Brooklyn Memories that cause me to smile. Of course as an ex-Brooklynite I tell everyone that the 'bergs were even larger that the one that sunk the Titanic. What do the ya-hoos know.

TTFN,
Ken2@BrooklynMemories.com


Sunday, January 15, 2006
 
Hi,

I was just talking to some friends up in Brooklyn and their freezing their arses off!

Sitting here in 72 degree sunny weather, I forget about some of the miserable weather we went through growing up in and living in Brooklyn.

As a kid I walked about 3/4 of a mile to elementary school and later on a little over a half mile to the subway for High School and work. Back then I didn't know better so the cold, windy weather wasn't too bad... I didn't know their were options.

I remember sweaters and heavy coats with scarves. As a kid I wore dorky hats, ear muffs, and mittens, 'cause my Mom made me. These items I gave up in high school but took up wearing my coat collar up and my head scrunched down, as far as possible, into the coat. The mittens disappeared and were replaced with gloves that I got for Christmas. These never seemed to last because I would lose one, or both, or used them in a snowball fight and the dried on the radiator to be stiff and cracked.

The worst places on a cold winter Brooklyn day were rounding an apartment building or a office building where the wind seemed to be able find and enter any opening no matter how microscopic, in your clothing to freeze you unbearably. The second worst place was at corner with a traffic light. Robert Moses, the rotten basset, was able to get traffic lights programmed to make pedestrians wait extra long to cross on winter days no matter what direction you were heading. He is also responsible for the slush and hidden icy puddles I always seemed to be magically pulled into at the intersection.

Come to think of it, he contributed to me leaving Brooklyn. (Only contributed.)

I spoke with Stanley Gerowski (?) who attributed cold weather to the communist, baseball hating Russkies who were able to control our weather and make it miserable for Brooklynites to exist. Stan also says that our geography books showed only inhospitable, barren lands west of Manhattan so that we would never go there and had to stay in Brooklyn. To this day I tell people I came to Texas in my late thirties, as soon as I learned the truth about it.

Not all Brooklyn Memories are about spaldeens and Coney Island. Some are about more mundane matters but they are still Brooklyn Memories. Thank goodness for them.

TTFN,
Ken2@BrooklynMemories.com

 

 

 



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