Red Hook, Brooklyn

By Ronald A. Feldman

Alan, Richie and Johnny-Boy, ten-years-old all, share friendship, adventures and life in the Red Hook Housing Projects in 1953.
The trio enjoy idyllic summer days playing in Coffey Park, (games like Johnny-on-the pony, marbles and more) … working to make enough money to see the Brooklyn, Dodgers … exploring their world … building friendships that will forge a lifetime of memories. Along the way, life's universal lessons of family, friendship, loss and money are learned all wrapped in the joys of growing up Brooklyn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gemini Book Publishers
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780997843330

Book preview

Mystery in Rio de Janeiro

Coming soon for Young Adult Readers

Jessica and David, The Crossover Mystery, in this 5-Star Reader’s Favorites review, are entangled in magical mysteries that Rio’s favelas make darker and far more foreboding for these intrepid teens.

Read the preview at this book’s end.

This book is a work of fiction. The names of characters, places and events arose from the author’s imagination and are wholly fictitious.

––––––––

Copyright http://tb-productions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/copyright-symbol_Silver-on-Transparent_Small1.png 2016 by Ronald A. Feldman

All rights reserved except where permitted under the

U.S. Copyright Act of 1976

Gemini Book Publishers

Boca Raton, Florida

––––––––

Book Cover Graphics by

Renee Luke of Cover Me Book Covers

––––––––

ISBNISBN:  0-9978433-3-0

ISBN: 978-0-9978433-3-0

CHAPTER

1

Brooklyn, My Brooklyn

––––––––

In the summer of 1953, my tenth summer, if you must know, life got really interesting.  It was okay before that.  We did stuff, good stuff and fun stuff mostly.  But that summer, well, things got a lot better.

My name is Alan, and I have spent the last ten years in The Projects, as we called them, but it was really the Red Hook Housing Projects - that's in Brooklyn, South Brooklyn.  Don't ask me why it's called South Brooklyn when there are parts of Brooklyn farther south.  It just is.  The folks who lived there were not very rich; poor was closer to the truth, but we didn't know it then. We would find out later once we moved away.  You see, sometimes being poor is okay, especially when you don't know it and you got enough to eat or when you got used to eating the food you had. If everyone is in the same boat it helps too.  When you find out about the others, the people who are not poor, and how they live, well then that's when a little bit of envy slips in.

Anyway, I had just been promoted from the fourth grade to the fifth grade into Mr. Kay's class.  My grades were pretty good, so my folks were happy.  Somehow school was easy for me and I'll admit it was fun too.  Public School 30, we called it P.S. 30, was only a few blocks away from my street, Lorraine Street.  So, it was an easy walk most days, depending on the weather. I suppose the worst days were those cold, windy wintry days when we had to bundle up with sweater, coat, scarf, boots and gloves, or worse - mittens and an ugly hat - always an ugly hat.

Thanks for the summer though.  It was always hot; right on cue the heat and humidity would come around the Fourth of July and stay through the rest of the summer, until school started and sometimes after the beginning days of school.

It's funny how the weather changed the look and spirit of the Projects.  I mean when it was cold and wintry people stayed indoors and visited one another after dinner. Our apartment was warm and cozy when everybody was together in one place.  Sometimes we'd visit the Cassesse's who lived in Apartment 6-F. The Cassesse apartment greeted visitors with the luxuriant aroma of pasta sauce - they called it gravy - filling the apartment from the dinner they'd eaten that night.  Johnny Boy and I would play in the room he shared with his older sister Vita.  She stayed with the adults - she was nice about that - when the adults were around.  In the summer, we were usually outdoors playing, fighting and exploring.  Exploring was the most fun, but it also got us into trouble a lot; not real trouble, but then we thought it was real.

One time in the summer of 1952, right after Richie Boles had moved into the Projects, and after we met and became friends, we decided to take a walk around.  I was kind of the ambassador for Richie who had just arrived from Africa he said.  He had talked about the wild animals he had seen.  I suppose he was convincing, but I always had an inkling that he was just telling stories—not real events—but stories he made up.  I didn't mind, because they were interesting, and he was a good kid, like me. 

Richie's family moved into the first floor of our building Apartment 1-F, we were on the fifth floor, Apartment 5-A. One day we were sitting on the front stoop to the building doing nothing when Richie suddenly got up and announced.  Let's go exploring.

Since I had no better idea, I said, Sure.

Now if you walked out of the building to Lorraine Street and turned right you were headed toward the school and farther down toward the docks.  If you went left you were headed south toward the small strip of stores and farther down toward the community pool.  The pool was always packed with people during the hottest days of the summer, so since this was a not-so-hot day we went right toward the school, P.S. 30. 

The patch of streets between the school and the Projects were lined with semi-attached houses and some unattached, single houses.  The houses were small and modest, but they were considered a step up from the Projects since they didn't pay rent - they owned the house, along with a bank.

Owning a house was a really big deal to the people in the Projects.  I heard my parents talk about the time, ...when we have enough money and get a house, we'll be okay.  We had a special reverence for the people who owned their house on those compact little streets.

Anyway, we turned right and walked along the narrow streets, crossing Otsego Street and then Dwight Street on beyond Richards and Van Brunt Street, where I got my hair cut, up to the school and turned back around Conover Street toward the Projects and eventually to Coffey Park. 

Coffey Park was the place of firsts: first time I roller skated, first time I rode a two-wheeler bike, and the first time I got mugged by three older kids on the way back from getting a haircut.

Wow! What's that over there? Richie exclaimed.

That's Coffey Park, I said as tour guide, come on.  We ran for no good reason but to run.  Richie was really fast and he pushed me, I was very fast - just lucky I guess.  The race ended in a step for me.  But, I guess I should tell you, I was tall for my age and I had longer legs plus I was strong for a kid of nine years.  Beating Richie, who was about four fingers shorter, was no great shakes.

His eyes lit up his round, brown face and a big smile cracked his face in half.  Wow! he exclaimed again.  Look at this place. We had some places like this in Africa too.

Really?  Tell me about them.  I always did that as a way of challenging him.  'Tell me about it,' I would say and he would.  He never flinched or stopped to think, he always went on to tell me strange and interesting things.

We didn't need parks like this where I was born because we had all the world to discover, but when we moved to a large community, bigger than a village, there were swings, and climbing things...

Monkey bars? I asked.

Yes, yes, monkey bars - I thought we were the only ones who called them that, he mused.

"Were