Archive – Day 5
Wednesday, April 14, 1993
Looking Back...
It looks like this day I was hired to write a travel brochure for Brooklyn. And it was aimed at people with no short-term memory, because I keep repeating myself like an idiot.
Also, I apparently overslept and woke up in Mayberry, because I keep jabbering on about a place where the paper boy and milkman know your name. WTF does that have to do with New York?
Ah, Brooklyn. I am writing this entry at night, after wandering around the city all day. Visiting Dad’s old neighborhood, and talking with the neighbors especially, reminded how I would like to live in communities like that, where everybody on the block knows your name and a simple greeting could become an hour-long conversation, where hospitality was almost a contest of who could have the most neighbors over for dinner. Having everything you needed close by and living your entire life without having to go more than five miles from home. Every shopkeeper would know your name, and you could go into any restaurant and order “the usual”. Paper boys, milkmen, bus drivers, on a first name basis with all of them and knowing their schedule so you could be out to greet them. A full day would be comprised of sitting on the porch and talking with your next door neighbor who was also your best friend and probably your barber. It didn’t matter what you talked about – weather, news, bullcrap – it wasn’t important what you discussed. It was only important that you discussed it.
That is the small town dream I have always had. It doesn’t matter how else my life turns out, but that is one thing I want to find. If I could find that the rest of my happiness would fall into place around it. And yet I found it in the center of the largest city in America. Odd.
But still Brooklyn is unique. It has no equal anywhere. Even through all its different neighborhoods there is no other city you can point to and say, “That’s just like Brooklyn”. Even the separate areas are unmatched. Look down any street in Brooklyn and you can tell it’s Brooklyn. It just can’t be anyplace else. No place in Orange County looks like Fourth Avenue. Or Eighty-Sixth Street. Or the corner of Eighteenth and Seventy-Fifth. Nowhere! It’s unique! It doesn’t remind me of anyplace. The sky is like Southern California’s, but looking out over the streets and houses I am reminded of nowhere else from my travels. It is Brooklyn. The end. Nothing else can be said. “What is Brooklyn like?” I will be asked. And the only answer I will be able to give is “It was like Brooklyn”. Because it has no comparison. It cannot be mistaken for anywhere else in the world.
But walking down Eighteenth Avenue was overwhelming. With the endless rows of shops, most of them smaller than our garage. And none of them, it seemed, wanting for patronage. Owning a business here seems to be as common as owning a house; there’s one on every street, and if ownership is no longer preferable there are always hundreds of prospective buyers.
Well, it is now quite late, so I believe I will quit. Tomorrow, lower Manhattan!