FATHER KNOWS BEST!

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Today, out on Long Island, to walk would be a hardship, a real inconvenience. People will buy a new home and the listing says: “In walking distance of shopping and local houses of worship.” So what do you do? Well with that accessibility, you buy the house then drive to shop or church, of course!

In the old days in Brooklyn I asked dad one day:

“Dad, why don’t we own a car like the other families around here: Anthony’s dad owns a car, Michael’s dad owns a car, but we don’t?”

“Why would I need a car? You want to go somewhere? I’ll tell you what, take a bus. You take a bus, they treat you like royalty, you stand there, they come to you, they open the door for you, you get on, sit down nice, they take you where you want to go, and then when you get up to get off, they open the door for you again!”

Dad had a point. All my time living in Brooklyn, I walked. If you wanted to take a bus and not walk, you walked first to the bus stop. The technique wasn’t too complicated: you put your head down, place one foot in front of the other and then switch feet, all the time moving… forward of course.

Some of the most interesting walking was done on my way to school. As I turned the corner onto Stone Avenue, past the fruit and vegetable store of a very cranky Old Italian, conversations would start up and things were learned. My older sister Tessie (much older) would inform me that if I stepped on a crack, I would break my mother’s back! So the whole time walking, I avoided the cracks, and by the time I got to school, my legs were aching from stretching over the cracks.

Mom had a very bad habit of liking to shop along Broadway, under the El, and along Picking Avenue among the old Jewish shop merchants. Together with my aunt she would travel by foot the many miles to and from our apartment, and for a 6 year old, I was in the best shape of my life because we walked.

You needed something at the store, in Brooklyn it was easy, you walked to it. Once Dad had a car and left it parked across the street. After about two weeks of not driving it, he got a ticket, and decided we weren’t getting enough exercise, so he got rid of the car.

But walking or taking the bus weren’t the only ways to get around. There was of course the subway. The subway was an interesting phenomenon in itself. First you had to walk to either the El or the subway and climb or descend stairs, usually at a fast clip. Once on the platform, you raced to the train before the door closed, or if the train was pulling out of the train station, doing your dance that halted your momentum. All of this was exercise. Getting off the train was an exercise in ballet! You had the body motion of a running back as you side-stepped, feinted and then slid through the crowd wanting to walk over you to board the train, and once on the platform, the rush up the stairs, where you went into your walking mode.

The point I’m making here is that you took all the walking in stride!