Subway Music: A Christmas Journey

By Reynold Joseph Paul Junker

Subway Music is about finding things Reynold Junker thought he had lost forever: his subway music and his name.

Subway Music begins in a Manhattan hotel room the day after he and his wife celebrated their Christmas anniversary. She coaxes him into taking her to Brooklyn to see where "all those stories you tell all of the time about growing up" took place. As a certified Californian, that's the last thing he wants to do. Subways were then. Freeways are now. But they go.

At Prospect Park he "finds" his father and learns about both courage and reverse prejudice-prejudice against his "Nazi" father. At Coney Island he remembers his Jewish best friend and futile attempts to convert him to Catholicism using the holy waters of Coney Island to turn him into a Jewish Cary Grant. At Kings Highway he visits the house haunted by his old ghosts.

At the end of Subway Music he realizes that subway music and Brooklyn will always be as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or the color of his hair. Being from Brooklyn was his fate. Being a Californian is just the way things sometimes work out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 29, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595812592

Reynold Joseph Paul Junker

Reynold Junker’s writing credits include, among others, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. His short story, The Volunteers, was later included in the anthology of Hitchcock’s personal favorites, Tales To Make You Quake And Quiver. He has published work in the magazines America, U.S. Catholic, Crannog(Ireland), Italian-Americana, Feile-Festa, West Marin Review, VIA-Voices In Italian Americana, The Herald(Portsmouth,UK), Flash Frontier(New Zealand), Skive Magazine(Australia), Ky Story(Christmas anthology), East Coast Literary Review(Poetry) and 50-Word Stories. He currently has a short story pending publication in Tuscany Press. His U.S. Catholic short story, Dancing With The Jesuits, was awarded first place in the Catholic Press Association’s Best Short Story category for 2008. His short story, The Accordionist and the Sparrow, was awarded first place in the Marin California Writers Group’s fiction competition for 2012. His short story, The Test, was awarded Honorable Mention in the Tuscany Press 2013 international short story competition. Subway Music , his memoir about growing up Italian and Catholic in Brooklyn, New York, was awarded first prize in the Life Stories category of the 16th Annual Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book Awards competition.

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Copyright © 2005 by Reynold Joseph Paul Junker

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Contents

Prologue…A Prism in My Pocket

Crossing the Bridge to Brooklyn…Take the D Train

Subway Music

Prospect Park

Newkirk Avenue

Kings Highway

14th Street

The House on Avenue P

Saint Brendan‘s

Sammy

Crossing Back

Finis

Epilogue

For Holley. You were the sunshine of my life long before those words ever occurred to Stevie Wonder…and that’s why I’ll always be around.

And in memory of my father who, as it turns out, was not the last Reynold Junker after all.

I am especially grateful to my son Eric whose idea all of this was and who along with my wife, Holley, jump started me and, once started, wouldn’t let me give up. And to my daughter Karen, son Christopher and his wife Robin and my aunt Marion Gaccione for their input and constant support.

To my first editor and great friend, Elizabeth Byerly and to those who finished the job she started: Bruce and Diane Rogers, Jane Novick, Anne Dubuisson Anderson and to Brian Thomsen who finished the job.

To Pete Hamill who saw something in me a long time ago that, until now, I didn’t see in myself. To Ron Tobin who taught me the difference between story telling and literature and to Joe Bernardini who, with the mind and heart of a true professional, wisely counseled patience when patience was called for.

And, finally, to the usual suspects, Frank Sica, who reminded me that in an Italian family talking loud and fighting are totally unrelated, Ed Jentz, John Russo and Jim Paul and to the rest of the noble hearted B’hoys of Regis ‘53 for their remembering and their sharing time and stories.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence of time, but in their significance to ourselves they fnd their own order, a timetable not necessarily…perhaps not possibly…chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation.

—Eudora Welty from One Writer’s Beginnings

Prologue…A Prism in My Pocket

There is then a world in me which is utterly unlike any world I know of. I do not think it is my exclusive property—it is only the angle of my vision which is exclusive in that it is unique.

—Henry Miller from Henry Miller on Writing

"One in seven American families can trace its roots to Brooklyn, and if the borough were on its own, it would today rank as America’s fourth-largest city.

—Nathan Ward from Brooklyn Rising, American Heritage Magazine

August/September 2005

The Webster’s Dictionary that I use now defines a prism as a polyhedron with two polygonal faces lying in parallel planes and with the other faces parallelograms. It is a definition that holds no meaning for me and my guess is that, if I asked around, most people that I know would agree with me. Webster, high school physics and high school geometry aside, most of us learned about prisms as children the first time we saw a ray of sunlight caught and reflected through a glass paper weight or ash tray and projected against a living room or kitchen wall. We didn’t see polyhedrons or polygons or parallelograms, we saw magic—a magic that we would never forget. A prism was then and is now just another piece of glass—until light shines through it—simple white light in, reflected rainbow magic out—and what was just a piece of glass becomes a magic lantern. Some childhood things never change. Some childhood things never should. A prism is a childhood gift that can become part of who you are and how you see things—forever.

Brooklyn is a prism through which many authors have shone their special light, each creating his or her own magic lantern show—from free verse poetry to a black spring to trees pushing through dry and hardened concrete to baseball to smiles and shoeshines and the death of a salesman to gardens in the night to taverns and tenement rooftops and churches and synagogues. From Walt Whitman and Henry Miller to Betty Smith and Roger Angell to Arthur Miller and to Harvey Swados and Pete Hamill, each has shone his or her unique light through the prism that is Brooklyn—each using the same prism turned to the different angle of their vision—each allowing us to see what they saw—the way they saw it.

Born on a cold February morning in 1936, I had the unique experience of growing up Catholic and Italian in Brooklyn during World War II and the years immediately following. For me World War II itself was a war at once remote and global when measured in terms of language and geography but made personal and intimate when measured in terms of German language lessons from a Nazi father and hastily written letters from young soldier cousins—charter but anonymous members of an otherwise and formerly amorphous group that newsman Tom Brokaw would later come to recognize and anoint The Greatest Generation. Much of the whole of my growing up was an experience shared by I don’t know how many thousands of others growing up there in the same place and at the same time—but a unique experience to me nonetheless. Like all of the authors mentioned above, the uniqueness of my experience was the source of the light that shone through the prism in my case—a light source controlled by a small army of uncles and aunts and cousins and an only slightly larger army of friends and playmates in houses and on streets and playgrounds and movie theaters.

Seen and remembered through the prism of my childhood, Brooklyn was a time of war movies. Every platoon and every squad in every Hollywood war movie made was sure to feature a character named either Brooklyn or Flat-bush—always a little funnier than everyone else, always a little angrier than everyone else. There was Brooklyn William Bendix dying first on Wake Island and then on Guadalcanal before returning to Flatbush as radio’s Chester Aloysius Riley. There was Brooklyn John Garfield in Pride of the Marines, blinded sightless by enemy fire, burning hands wrapped in smoking rags, mowing down wave after wave of dirty Nip infantry. Nobody named Brooklyn or Flat-bush was ever an officer. There was Brooklyn Jimmy Cagney falling on a live hand grenade and saving Pat O’Brien and George Tobias and the rest of New York’s Fighting 69th—boys from Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island and, as Cagney so memorably put it in The Fighting 69th, duh Bronx. Nobody from Scarsdale or Pelham or even duh Bronx ever fell on a live hand grenade. At the time, movies were black and white. At the time so was my Brooklyn.

Seen and remembered through the prism of my childhood, Brooklyn was a time of radio. On any of the quiz shows of that time—quiz shows like It Pays To Be Ignorant and The $64 Question and Can You Top This—whenever a contestant announced that he or she was from Brooklyn, that announcement was sure to be followed by loud whistles and hoots and applause from a large portion of the studio audience—an audience either remembering or recognizing.

Seen and remembered through the prism of my childhood, Brooklyn was a time of baseball. Leo Durocher—the Lip, Eddie Stanky—the Brat, Peewee Reese—the Captain, Duke Snider—the Duke of Flatbush and the rest of The Brooklyn Dodgers laid claim to the title of America’s team long before Roger Staubach or any of the other Dallas Cowboys ever dreamed of or touched a football or an America.

Seen and remembered through the prism of my childhood, Brooklyn was a place of quiet—a subway place—everybody rode the subway—nobody owned an automobile. I was born and raised in a house at the corner of Avenue P and East 14th Street. Passage of an automobile on Avenue P, as close to a major thoroughfare as you could find in my neighborhood at the time, was cause for questioning pause in childhood play and conversation.

Hey look at that.

It’s a Buick.

Nah. It’s a Packard.

It’s a Buick I tell ya.

It’s a Packard. You can tell from the boobs on the dame on the hood ornament..

There was no traffic to speak of on 14th Street. 14th Street was for stickball and, absent a stick of any sort, punchball. 14th Street belonged to its kids not to its cars.

Seen and remembered through the prism of my childhood, Brooklyn had its own language. When referring to someone like the Earl of Kent or Earl Wilson, it came out Oil of Kent and Oil Wilson. Conversely olive oil came out olive earl. Church came out choich but choice came out cherce as in first Dixie Walker and later Duke Snider, the people’s cherce. The rest of the world called it Brooklynese. Brooklyn didn’t call it anything.

"What a lovely view from

Heaven looks at you from

…the Brooklyn Bridge."

Seen and remembered through the prism of my childhood, Brooklyn had its own music. In the movie It Happened in Brooklyn a young Frank Sinatra sang Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne’s love song to the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Isn’t she a beauty? Isn’t she a queen?

Nicest bridge that I have ever seen.

Like the folks you meet on,

Like to plant my feet on the Brooklyn Bridge." and Folks in Manhattan are sad Cause they look at her and wish they had A good old Brooklyn Bridge..

Young Italian Francis Albert Sinatra singing Samuel Cahn and Jules Styne’s words and music—typical Brooklyn neighborhood action. Hoboken, New Jersey born but Brooklyn adopted Francis Albert Sinatra was planting his feet on the Brooklyn Bridge long before Tony Bennett even dreamed of leaving his heart on another bridge in another city on another coast 3,500 miles removed from the nicest bridge that young Francis Albert had ever seen—still the nicest bridge that I have ever seen.

The one time that he sang opera in a movie, Frank Sinatra sang Don Giovanni in It happened in Brooklyn. He may have lost the girl to British accented Peter Lawford, but he sang the music to Brooklyn. It happened in Brooklyn. It could only have happened in Brooklyn.

Even Larry Hart, whether celebrating his Brooklyn boyhood or simply searching for a rhyme, paid momentary tribute to her language and song in Rodgers and Hart’s otherwise selective paean to Manhattan: The city’s clamor could never spoil The dreams of a boy andgoil.

Seen and remembered through the prism of my childhood, Brooklyn was a place of immigrants—mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts. I may have been born into an Italian Catholic household but I was raised on the streets and in the playgrounds of an Italian, Irish and Jewish neighborhood. The only people missing from our neighborhood were Protestants. My Uncle Harold’s parents were Protestants—English Protestants—Plymouth Rock Protestants. His brothers had names like Roy and Walter and Stuart. When he married my Aunt Emily and converted to Catholicism, he both angered his parents and diminished the number of Plymouth Rock Protestants by one. When he started eating his meals in my Aunt Jessie’s Italian kitchen, he must have decided that it was worth it.

Brooklyn today is still a place of immigrants. Going back with my wife to visit one more time and to find myself’ made me realize that. Going back to Brooklyn made me realize that I am the immigrant in Brooklyn now. Going back made me realize that we are all immigrants as we wake each morning into a world that is so different from the one that we left as we passed into sleep the night before. Going back made me realize that experiences worth remembering are experiences worth recording and sharing. My wife helped teach me that. My wife is and comes from a family of anthropologists and archaeologists. Somehow that seems appropriate to the stories that follow. These stories constitute a kind of’ memoir—a memoir unearthed—dug up—using memories and words as tools.

For me that memoir and its stories are of a time and a Brooklyn seen and discovered through the prism of a child’s eye—an eye that sees the hidden humor in everything—child and adult—an eye that nourishes in its seeing. What follows is the story of a day spent in Brooklyn finding that memoir and those stories, remembering and reflecting, as an adult, through the prism of that same child’s eye—revisiting what for most of us is truly the final frontier—childhood.

None of these stories is entirely true. Some are more true than others—but there is truth at the heart of each of them. We selectively remember and catalogue the butterfly rather than the moth. Sometimes, though, at twilight and at dusk, it is difficult to tell the difference between the two.

All of the characters in these stories are real—at least as real as I can remember them. The only names that aren’t real are names that I couldn’t remember or remembered but confused.

I read somewhere once that Ernest Hemingway carried in his pocket, as both a good luck charm and a guard against writer’s block, a chestnut that he had picked up from the ground at the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Like Hemingway, I carry a charm in my pocket. I carry a prism. Unlike Hemingway, I have no choice. I seem to be its captive. If you’ve been a rover, Your journey’s end lies over …the Brooklyn Bridge.

Crossing the Bridge to Brooklyn…Take the D Train

„Joe. Joe. Honey, I could hear someone calling from somewhere deep in the back of my mind. I was trying not to let go of a dream—a very pleasant dream. „Honey, I‘d like to go to Brooklyn. The Brooklyn in question sounded like it was spelled with about six ‚o‘s. „Joe, Joe, the voice said again, louder, more persistent, poking me now. „Wake up. It‘s almost nine o‘clock and I‘d like to go to Brooklyn. Only two ‚o‘s this time. Poke. Poke. POKE. Joe, Honey, you promised.

The sun was filtering through the dust motes into the small, overly warm hotel room in Manhattan’s Central Park South. It was December 23rd, 1994. My wife and I had celebrated our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary the evening before. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I certainly didn’t want to go back to Brooklyn. All I could see through my half closed eyes were dust motes and the backs of champagne bubbles. I could barely tell the difference except that the champagne bubbles seemed to be numbered. I was still dreaming.

It was cold outside. It was almost Christmas. I was inside. I was warm. I was cozy. I could feel the silk nightgown coziness of my wife’s warmth beside me. I could smell her perfume—French, ‘Je Reviens‘. I could smell last night. I was content to just lie there beside her and try to read the numbers on the backs of the champagne bubbles. Appropriately enough, they appeared to be in French too.

Brooklyn? I promised? That was last night. Last night I had been promising anything.

„Honey?"

„Huh?" I answered. It was a response. It was not a question.

„I‘d like to go to Brooklyn, she continued, sitting up. „I‘d like to see where all of this started—all of those stories that you tell all of the time about you and your brother and growing up in Brooklyn.

Those stories, told to our three children before they started building trunks of memories of their own, always begin, regardless of subject or intent, „Once upon a time, when I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn…"

My wife had been born and raised in New Mexico, Winifrede Holley Hening of the Albuquerque Holleys and the Albuquerque Henings. I never called her Winifrede and I rarely called her Holley. I called her Honey. She mostly called me Honey too except when she really wanted my attention. Our children had been born and raised in New Mexico, Michigan, Virginia and California. New Mexico, Michigan, Virginia and California are places. You can find them on any map. The Brooklyn that I told my children stories about was not a place that you could find on any map. It was something built of time and innocence and memories. It was something that my children might expect to dig up in a time capsule buried by my brother and me in the yard behind our house on Avenue P in Flat-bush.

„I think the house we grew up in burned down in one of those urban Brooklyn riots—maybe when the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles. It would have been alright if they hadn‘t taken Sandy Koufax with them. My guess is that it turned out to be the only Jewish riot on record," I said.

Walter O‘Malley, Buzzy Bavasi and the rest of the Dodgers organization knew what they were doing when they moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Until they moved to Los Angeles in 1957, the words Dodgers and organization had rarely, if ever, appeared in the same sentence. Walter O‘Malley and Buzzy Bavasi were sensible people. It was a sensible move. The last sensible move that the Dodgers had made had been named Jackie Robinson.

„Come on, Honey. I‘d like to go to Brooklyn. We may never have the chance to do this again. Humor me," she said shoving me gently and pulling the covers back from my hunched and hidden shoulders. She kissed the backs of both my shoulders. I tried to turn to face her but the champagne bubbles, not cooperating, changed shape and bounced en masse against the backs of my eyelids. I grimaced. She stretched, yawned once and, trailing silk and French perfume behind her, left the bed for the bathroom.

Finally, I sat up in bed shaking dancing champagne bubbles from behind my eyes—not counting them as they went. I looked around the room. It was just a room. Nothing exciting was happening. Anything at all exciting that was happening, was happening inside my head.

Brooklyn. She wanted to go to Brooklyn.

Actually my blonde, blue-eyed, Anglo-Saxon wife had been to Brooklyn once. It had been during our Christmas honeymoon in 1959, to meet my dark haired, brown-eyed, Southern Italian family. But since we came and went under cover of