MY, HOW YOU SHRUNK!

After yesterday’s blog “Can’t Go Home Again”, I went a little further back to my origins in Brooklyn. I typed my old address into Google Search, and up came this fantastic view in virtual tour of my old Brooklyn Neighborhood. There stood my house, and all the houses in the hood. I was able to virtually go up or down my street, and visit all the old haunts!

After the fascination of doing so, discovering which homes had disappeared and /or been remodeled, I came to realize how miniscule my old neighborhood is! The distance from the stoop to the curb was shortened, as was the size of my street.

My school, Our Lady of Lourdes on Aberdeen Street is a lot smaller than I remember it. I guess with age comes shrinkage for buildings too.

My Grandmother’s house really shrunk! I saw her coming down her street, a big bag of meat in her arms, as she saw me, and smilingly waved. Although she had a very large kitchen, I would be afraid to see it today, it might have shrunk too, and she would never have been able to fit all those people on a Sunday morning in!

As I went down the streets, I noticed that some places had really changed, some remained the same, and some, were not quite like I remember them.

I began to see all the old friends coming out of their homes to play stickball, punch ball, stoopball, and I saw my sister, once again playing jump rope with her girl friends, as the pages were turned back over 50 years!

I looked up to my third floor apartment, and saw Mom, pitching down a quarter to buy a loaf of bread at Curialie’s grocery store. I heard the clop, clop of the vegetable peddler, his wagon brimming with fresh produce, his horse leaving a tell tale sign, that he was in town. I walked by the vegetable stand, the butcher shop, and Hoffman’s Bakery on Fulton Street, and all of it came back.

The schoolyard was strangely silent; the cars are all parked in the same places, only newer. A new generation of kids occupies my block, with their own games, own way of playing them and forming their own memories.

I went home again, only for a short while.