Brooklyn Boy

By Jim Farrell

It is 1945 in Long Beach, New York, when three-year-old Brian Farley receives the scare of a lifetime. As little Brian bounces on his fathers stomach in a second-floor bedroom of their summer house, his father suddenly loses his grip, sending Brian out through the screen window and onto the sand below. As the summer house, normally a place of peace and respite, disrupts into chaos, little Brian has no idea that this particular event is just one of the many escapades he will experience growing up as an Irish Catholic boy in Brooklyn and Long Beach.

Brian embarks on a memorable coming-of-age journey as the Farleys spend their winters in a borough thats undergoing many changesthe influx of Puerto Ricans, neighborhood deterioration, and the desertion of the Brooklyn Dodgersand their summers in paradise at their grandparents summer home. As Brian matures and falls in love with a beautiful, Puerto Rican classmate, only time will tell if their relationship will survive his mothers judgment and the shifting demographics of Brooklyn. But it is only after the family matriarch suddenly dies that everything Brian has ever known suddenly changes.

In this compelling story, as a Brooklyn boy matures into adulthood amid a warm, loving, and sometimes conflicted New York family, he soon discovers he is responsible for his own happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491719664

Jim Farrell

Jim Farrell earned a master’s degree in accounting from the University of Rhode Island and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Gregorian University in Rome, Italy. He spent eleven years in a Roman Catholic seminary, served as a captain in the U.S. Army, and worked with Air America in Vietnam. Now retired, he lives with his wife, Marianne Collinson, in Palm Coast, Florida. He has published four novels and two collections of short stories.

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CHAPTER ONE

The Defenestration of Little Brian

He will command his angels concerning

you and with their hands they will

support you lest you dash your foot against a stone.

Matthew 4, 6.

One of Little Brian Farley’s earliest and most vivid memories is that his father tried to kill him when he was only three years old. Whether the endeavor was intentional, attempted murder, or unintentional, an almost tragic accident, Little Brian never did find out, but he always hoped it was the latter. Little Brian slept in his parents’ second floor bedroom in The Summer House at that time, he in his crib and his parents in their big, comfortable bed. The main entrance to The Summer House was on the second floor and the main living areas, as well as four bedrooms, were on that floor. The first floor, called the basement, had an additional four bedrooms. Even at that young age, Little Brian envied his parents’ spacious sleeping accommodations and, on Saturday mornings, he would invade the privacy of their bed to play with his father.

On this particular Saturday, which occurred during the summer of 1945, Little Brian was playing on his parents’ bed as usual, bouncing on his father’s stomach without a worry in the world. His father’s side of the bed was next to the window, and during the summer, the window was always open. The windows in The Summer House were screened to keep out intruders from the insect world, especially mosquitoes, but the green wooden screen on his parents’ window was not strong enough to support the weight of a healthy three-year-old boy. Little Brian’s father miscalculated on one of his tosses, and Little Brian bounced off the bed and through the screen. Little Brian dropped fifteen feet after exiting the bedroom – a very unpleasant surprise! Fortunately the house was in Long Beach on Long Island’s south shore, and had been built on sand, contrary to Biblical warnings, and Little Brian was not seriously injured. But his parents did not know this. Little Brian’s mother leaped from the bed and ran screaming into the dining room where Nana, Little Brian’s paternal grandmother, and Aunt Sadie were sitting around the table drinking tea. Weren’t they always?

When they heard Little Brian’s mother’s shriek, they joined in the scream not yet knowing why they were screaming. Aunt Sadie dropped and broke her teacup.

Aunt Lucy, who was downstairs playing with her dog, Cottonpuff, became very frightened when she heard the screaming from above and added her scream to the uproar.

Meanwhile back in the bedroom, Little Brian’s father, known as Big Brian since Little Brian’s birth, jumped through the window to rescue his son, fortunately landing near him and not on him. In the excitement, Big Brian had forgotten that he, Big Brian, always slept with the waist cord of his pajamas untied which, in this instance, caused the pajama bottoms to end up around his ankles as he stood in the sand. It was at this point that Big Brian realized that he and his wailing son were not alone in the alley. The Jewish lady who owned the bungalow next door was standing outside her side door shaking out a dust mop. She uttered something akin to, Well, I never! and retreated into the safety of her house. She would later tell her friends about the Irish pervert who deliberately hurled his son out of a second floor window and then jumped out and exposed himself. "Only a goy!" said one of her Jewish friends.

Little Brian’s father, to add to his son’s sense of rejection, picked up and retied his pajama bottoms before attending to his crying, possibly dying, son. He actually tied the pajama cord in a bow. Little Brian was driven to Doctor Rosen’s office, and Doctor Rosen, the family’s summer doctor, examined him and then declared, to everyone’s relief, that he had only been frightened.

Little Brian’s mother, Agnes, said to Big Brian, I told you this would happen with your roughhousing. Big Brian did not remember her ever saying that.

The Jewish neighbor, Sarah Rosen, had a wooden picket fence erected between the houses the week after the incident. She did this for two reasons: first, to protect herself and her family from the Gentile pervert and, second, to prevent a re-occurrence of the defenestration she had witnessed. "Not even a goy, she said to her friends, would deliberately impale his son on a picket fence. Don’t be too sure where a goy is concerned, one friend said. Don’t be too critical, Sarah, said Mrs. Silverstein from across the street. You can never know the true reason behind anyone’s actions. Remember Abraham and Isaac."

Brian Farley is no Abraham, answered Sarah.

Little Brian always thought his family, the Farleys, was a very intimate and closely knit family. At least he thought so until August 11, 1958, but that is the end of the story and we have a long way to go before we get there.

The Farley family as Little Brian knew it began in 1907 when John Farley, hereinafter referred to as Grandpa Farley, met Sadie Burke, hereinafter referred to as Nana, and whom you already met in the dining room of The Summer House drinking tea. Grandpa Farley’s parents did not approve of Nana and were opposed to a matrimonial link between themselves and the Burkes. This did not deter Grandpa Farley, however, and he and Nana eloped and joined hands in holy matrimony on August 17, 1908. Prior to the wedding, Nana had been working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, and crossed from Brooklyn to Manhattan each day over the Brooklyn Bridge. Not having much money, and not earning much at the factory in Manhattan, she crossed that magnificent structure on foot each day. The bridge was only four years old when Nana was born in 1887, and close to thirty men had died during its construction. Nana loved to stand on the bridge in the very center and look at the river traffic flowing under her. She, of course, left her job at the factory when they married, which was perhaps a sign that God favored the union. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurred less than three years after she quit, on March 25, 1911, and there is a high probability that Nana would not have survived the fire had she not agreed to marry Grandpa Farley and had remained at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Then there would not have been a Little Brian nor a story to tell.

The Farleys did not approve of Nana for three reasons: first, she was born in 1887, and Grandpa Farley was born in 1889, and not even a lovesick, and very young Grandpa Farley could deny the absolute mathematical truth that this made her two years older than he, and respectable men just did not marry older women; second, they were not educationally compatible – Nana had only finished sixth grade, and Grandpa Farley was a high school graduate; third, and most important, their social backgrounds were dissimilar – Nana was from a poor, working-class family while Grandpa Farley’s family, in defiance of the Deity, had not earned their bread by the sweat of their brows in over a century in the new world. Grandpa Farley’s mother, Great-Grandmother Farley, had said to him before he eloped, John, I don’t want you getting mixed up with shanty Irish. You’ll live to regret it. This obvious mismatch did not quite last fifty years, but that it did not was God’s doing, and not man’s.

Great-Grandmother Farley was very nervous during the first nine months of the marriage. She was sure that Grandpa Farley had married Nana because she was pregnant. Why else would he get mixed up with low Irish like Sadie Burke? she said to Great-Grandfather Farley. She was very relieved, and a little surprised, when nine months passed without a new Farley entering the world.

Grandpa Farley had two older brothers, Brian and Robert, but they had both died in their pre-teens, one of illness and the other in an unfortunate riding accident. The fact that Grandpa Farley was the only surviving child added to Great-Grandmother Farley’s distress when he married below his station.

Nana also had two siblings, an older brother, Tommy, and an older sister, Gertrude. Fate was a little kinder to the Burkes than it was to the Farleys, and both Uncle Tommy and Aunt Gert lived relatively long, if not very full, lives. Neither married. Uncle Tommy, who had the gaunt, under-nourished look of a drinker, was remembered for two things after he died: he drank a little more than was considered proper, and he expressed surprise by saying, Go way! He didn’t accomplish much, Nana said at his wake, but he never hurt anyone either, a better epitaph than many men earn. After struggling financially for many years, Aunt Gert moved into the fourth floor apartment of Nana and Grandpa Farley’s house in February, 1930, from which location she unintentionally terrorized Little Brian and the other Farley grandchildren until her death in 1947.

After graduation from high school in June, 1907, Grandpa Farley began work as an office manager for the Wilheim Construction Company in Brooklyn, a company he remained loyal to until his death. Bertram Wilheim, the founder and president of the Wilheim Construction Company, was a close friend of Great-Grandfather Farley’s, and looked upon Grandpa Farley like a son. All concerned predicted a bright future for Grandpa Farley with Wilheim Construction, and they were not disappointed.

Nana gave birth to her first child, a son, on Independence Day Eve, 1909. She and Grandpa Farley christened him Brian after Grandpa Farley’s older brother who had died as a young boy. Thirty-three years later, a very meaningful timespan for Catholics and other Christians, he was to become Little Brian’s father and a major character in this story. After Big Brian’s birth, Grandpa Farley decided that it was time for him and Nana to move out of their small apartment on Douglas Street and to become homeowners. He purchased a four-storey row house at 398 Sackett Street, a very nice location in the middle of one of Brooklyn’s better Irish-German ghettos. This house became known as The Winter House in Farley lore, and it will be one of three important residences in this story. A second son, Uncle Jack, named after Grandpa Farley, was born in 1911, and a daughter, Aunt Sadie, named after Nana, was born in 1914. When another son, named Robert after Grandpa Farley’s other deceased sibling, came along in 1918, Grandpa Farley told Nana that he was very glad that he had bought the large house when he had. Nana agreed. Nana always agreed with Grandpa Farley. The final child, another girl, named Patricia after no one in particular, was born in 1921. Grandpa Farley did not like the name Gertrude and he vetoed Nana’s suggestion that their youngest child be named after Aunt Gert. Little Brian’s sister was later named after this youngest Farley sibling and she never realized how close she came to being a Gertrude.

Grandpa Farley was doing very well financially at Wilheim Construction, and in June, 1923, he announced to the family, and Nana, at dinner that they would be renting a bungalow, a big one no doubt, for the summer in Long Beach. Long Beach, one of four small municipalities on a long, narrow island off the southern coast of Long Island, is just east of the border separating Queens, still part of New York City, and Nassau County. This rental would enable the family to escape the city during the hot summer months. Beginning in 1923, summers at Long Beach became a Farley tradition, and Long Beach is the locus for about half of this book; the site of the other half, of course, is Brooklyn. They rented the same bungalow on Delaware Avenue in Long Beach’s West End for the next seven summers, and the house became known as The Delaware House in family conversations. Many people who did not know the Farleys very well thought the family went out-of-state for the summers when they heard the children speak of The Delaware House. Some of these people had had husbands or sons in Europe during the Great War, but no one in any of their families had ever traveled on their own as far away as Delaware! They all agreed that John Farley was indeed doing very well at Wilheim Construction.

398 Sackett Street is located in St. Agnes Parish, one of the few parishes in Brooklyn not to sponsor any organized sports programs for the parish youth. In 1925 Big Brian and Uncle Jack formed their own baseball team and asked Monsignor Flynn, the pastor, for permission to call the team the St. Agnes Parish baseball team. Monsignor Flynn, a firm believer in the separation of church and sports, demurred, but this did not deter the clever and ambitious Farley boys. They inverted the letters in Agnes, Senga, and called themselves the Sackett Street Sengas. The Sengas became one of the best amateur baseball teams in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. Monsignor Flynn never realized that the Sackett Street Sengas were the St. Agnes Parish baseball team. The formation of the Sengas had other, more long-lasting, consequences for the Farleys. Aunt Sadie attended all the games to watch her brothers play and fell in love with the Sengas’ catcher, Harry Feeney, who, consequently, would become Uncle Harry. The Sengas did not have the best, or even very adequate, baseball equipment, and Harry, the catcher, suffered the greatest misfortune on that account. He lost all his front teeth during that first season when a foul tip hit his unprotected mouth. Big Brian and Uncle Jack thought he was dying – there was so much blood! All the Sengas chipped in and bought him a mask for the 1926 season. The financial setback for the Feeneys far exceeded the price the Sengas paid for the new mask. In those days, when no one had dental insurance, the Feeneys had to come to an agreement with Dr. Goldberg, their dentist, to finance the purchase of an upper denture for Harry over sixty weeks, at two dollars per week. Dr. Goldberg would have taken a hundred dollars in cash up front, but the Feeneys did not have that much cash on hand.

Grandpa Farley came home with great news one Wednesday evening in the middle of winter, 1927. Bertram Wilheim, Jr., who had replaced his father as president of the Wilheim Construction Company, made Grandpa Farley a full partner in the company. The earlier rosy predictions were truly being realized. Grandpa Farley was also taking great strides in the Church. In 1930 Monsignor Flynn made him president of the parish Holy Name Society.

In 1929 Big Brian became the first Farley to enroll in college. Grandpa Farley thought it might be good to send his firstborn away to college so that he could expand his horizons and separate himself from Brooklyn during his higher education years. Grandpa Farley and Big Brian narrowed the choice down to either Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, or Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. Big Brian chose Holy Cross, but alas Holy Cross did not choose him. So Big Brian enrolled at his second choice, Fordham, and became educated by Bronx Jesuits instead of Worcester Jesuits. He lived on campus and only came back to Brooklyn on week-ends. Uncle Jack followed in his older brother’s footsteps and enrolled at Fordham in 1930. The summers after Big Brian’s freshman, sophomore, and junior years at Fordham were three of the happiest summers of his life. With help from an influential friend of Grandpa Farley’s, he was able to obtain work as an usher at Ebbets Field, the most desirable, enviable summer position in Brooklyn. Big Brian had always been more interested in sports than the other Farley boys so it was only meet and just, as they say at Mass, that he should have the opportunity to work for the beloved Dodgers.

In June 1930, the Farleys made their own Louisiana Purchase, a bigger bungalow at the intersection of Louisiana Street and Park Avenue in Long Beach. This naturally became known as The Louisiana House. The Louisiana House had one geographical disadvantage: the West End fire house was located at the intersection of Park Avenue and Indiana Avenue, just one short city block away from The Louisiana House. Long Beach had a volunteer fire department, and the volunteers were notified of a fire by horn. Whenever a fire occurred, a very, very loud horn on the roof of the fire station blasted out a numerical code which, when deciphered, indicated the location of the fire. The Farley boys enjoyed the system during the day since they had broken the code and could beat the firemen to all West End fires, but all the Farleys, children and adults, found the system annoying, to say the least, at night when they were trying to sleep. Luckily nighttime fires, for whatever reason, were a rarity in Long Beach. I said the Farley boys had broken the code. Actually the code was printed in the back of a booklet published by the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, but the Farley boys preferred thinking they had broken the code. They considered breaking the code to be on an intellectual par with creating the name Sengas.

In June 1931, Uncle Jack married Aunt Lucy, dropped out of Fordham, and went to work for Grandpa Farley at Wilheim Construction. Outwardly Grandpa Farley protested when Uncle Jack announced that he was discontinuing his higher education, but inwardly he was pleased that his namesake was following him into the construction business. His first son was still in college, anyway. Also in June 1931 Harry Feeney graduated from St. John’s University in Brooklyn and enrolled at Columbia Law School. All the Farleys, especially Nana and Aunt Sadie, were very pleased when they heard that Harry was going to become a lawyer. And he’s not even Jewish, Nana had said. Big Brian graduated from Fordham in June of 1933 and, armed with his English major and Journalism minor, he approached the New York Sun where he was hired as a sports writer.

Tragedy hit the Farleys in November 1933. The youngest child, Patricia, only twelve years old, came down with scarlet fever and died. This was the Farley boys’ and Aunt Sadie’s first contact with Death, and it made them realize that Death was a very arbitrary selector who could strike anywhere and anyone regardless of innocence or age: a very sobering thought for the young Farleys, one they would never forget. But life went on, and Life replaced Death as it usually does. Aunt Lucy gave birth to a healthy boy, the first grandchild, the following April. His name shall be John, declared Uncle Jack unknowingly echoing Zechariah. And so he was christened after his father and grandfather, but called Johnny by everyone in the family. In June of that year, 1934, Harry Feeney graduated from Columbia Law School, passed the New York State bar exam, and was hired by the Manhattan law firm, Pierce and Robinson, specializing in corporate law. He and Aunt Sadie decided not to get married until he was firmly established with Pierce and Robinson, and everyone remarked how sensible they were.

In October 1935 Big Brian married his Brooklyn neighborhood sweetheart, Agnes Connor, and began his own branch of the Farley family. Reflecting on this wedding years later, Little Brian and his sister, Patricia, agreed that it was fortunate for them that it had occurred.

Grandpa Connor, Agnes’ father, purchased a small diner on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn in 1910 and by 1920 he had become a restaurateur of no mean reputation and ability. During Prohibition, Grandpa Connor’s restaurant rose to new heights of prosperity giving rise to rumors that he was serving more than just excellent cuisine. Grandpa Connor made sure that he had friends among New York’s mostly Irish constabulary, and the local policemen, if no one else, were convinced that these rumors were nothing more than that.

Grandpa Connor married Hilda Gruen, a daughter of German immigrants, in 1912. Great-Grandmother Connor, like her Farley counterpart, opposed the marriage, and Grandpa Connor and Hilda Gruen also had to elope. Grandpa Connor and Grandma Connor had four children, three daughters and a son. Agnes, Little Brian’s mother, the oldest of the children, was born on March 3, 1914. Aunt Amy was born in 1919, Uncle Phil in 1921, and Aunt Hilda, the baby, was born in 1923.

Grandpa Connor was a strict disciplinarian and tidy to a fault. His children called him The Old Fusspot, but never when he was around. He was a good provider and a good father and he had a heart filled with love and good will. His children not only respected him; they loved him very much. And he loved and idolized Grandma Connor; there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

He bought a little summer place for his family in Ulmer Park in 1924 to give the children and his beloved Hilda the opportunity to escape from the sweltering heat of Brooklyn during the months of July and August. So beginning in 1923 for the Farleys and in 1924 for the Connors, summers were spent away from Brooklyn.

Although the stock market crash did not affect the Connors, there was sadness in the Connor household in 1929. Grandma Connor died suddenly from blood poisoning that year, in the days before penicillin. Consequently none of her grandchildren, including Little Brian, would ever know their maternal grandmother. Agnes, only fifteen at the time, quit high school and assumed the duties of a surrogate mother for her younger sisters and brother. Aunt Amy was ten; Uncle Phil eight; and Aunt Hilda only six when their mother died.

As you know, Agnes Connor married Big Brian Farley in October, 1935. After the wedding, she turned over her surrogate maternal duties to Aunt Amy who had reached the adult age of sixteen by then. Aunt Amy married Uncle Sam in 1939 and relinquished control to Aunt Hilda who became sixteen that year. In 1940 Grandpa Connor sold the restaurant and moved with Uncle Phil and Aunt Hilda into a small apartment on 41st Street in Brooklyn. He devoted his retirement to cooking, puttering around the house, and talking about old times with friends at the corner tavern.

Now that we know a little about the older generation, the grandparents, aunts and uncles of Little Brian, all of whom will play major or minor rolls in this story, we can get on with this tale about Little Brian, the Brooklyn Boy.

But first, let us take a small diversion to familiarize ourselves with The Summer House, the pride of Long Beach’s West End and home to the Farleys for many adventure filled summers. We will spend a lot of time in that wonderful house with Little Brian.

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CHAPTER TWO

The Summer House

A Place of Joyful Memories

In my Father’s house there are many rooms.

John 14, 2

In June 1935 Nana and Grandpa Farley sold the house on Louisiana Avenue, and bought a whitewashed stone and cement manor at 73 Tennessee Avenue in Long Beach’s West End. Unlike the Louisiana House and the Delaware House before it, the new house was never called the Tennessee House, but was always known simply as The Summer House. The Long Island Railroad Station separates Long Beach into The East End and The West End, but we will be mainly concerned with the west end of The West End. Beginning at New York Avenue on the east and ending with the Atlantic Beach border on the west, with streets all named after states, the west end of The West End narrows into a two-block wide strip of land which in the 1930s and 1940s was primarily a summer resort for Jewish families from New York City.

The Summer House, on Tennessee Avenue between Park Avenue and Beach Street, stood like a giant among the little, wooden bungalow-boxes. All the wooden parts of The Summer House, the window, screen and door frames and the side porch, were painted green. The roof shingles were also green, and the green contrasted well with the white, stone background of the structure itself. Uncle Jack took it upon himself to make sure that the house never looked like it needed a painting or whitewashing, and it never did!

The crowning glory of The Summer House was the red brick and cement front porch from which the ocean or The Bay could be seen over the roofs of the smaller bungalows. The porch was shaded from the sun by a green canvas awning which was put up by Uncle Jack in June and taken down by him in September. The front of the awning, the side facing Tennessee Avenue, had a white F on it for Farley. The most comfortable outdoor furniture on all Tennessee Avenue, and probably in all Long Beach, could be found on the front porch at number 73. First thing every morning, the Farleys carried the thick, blue cushions for the four chairs, glider and chaise lounge from the inside porch to the front porch, and last thing every summer evening, they returned the cushions to the inside porch. The four porch chairs were shaped like 5s without the top bar and would bounce up and down when sat upon. The Farley grown-ups (they were never called adults) were forever telling the Farley children, Not so hard! You’ll break the chair. But the children bounced, and the chairs withstood the assault. The arms of the four chairs, the glider and the chaise lounge were painted white, again by Uncle Jack as needed, and all the Farleys agreed that white was the only color that went with the blue of the cushions. Nana also pointed out that blue and white were the colors of the Blessed Virgin. No one else had thought of that, not even Aunt Lucy, and she was very religious.

The Summer House had four entrances: the main, second floor entrance from the front porch which no one was allowed to use when returning from the beach (you would get sand in the house!), the kitchen entrance from the side porch, which was also a second-floor entrance and consequently off-limits to beach returners, the downstairs side entrance (the beach entrance!), and the garage entrance. No one was ever permitted to use the garage entrance; Grandpa Farley did not want it known that you could enter the house that way. He felt it would be an invitation to thieves. Little Brian always thought that was strange because, as far as he knew, there had never been a crime committed in Long Beach. Come to think of it, in all the years Little Brian spent in Long Beach, he rarely saw a policeman.

The side porch was a utilitarian porch in contrast to the front porch which was purely a pleasure porch. The side porch had four, and only four uses: it was the shopping entrance to the kitchen; it was the storage area for the kitchen mop and the empty milk and soda bottles; it was the shakedown area for dust mops and tablecloths; and its railing was used as a clothes line for wet dish towels and bathing suits. If a Farley child’s presence on the side porch was not related to one of these uses, one of the grown-ups was sure to ask, What are you doing on the side porch? No answer was ever satisfactory. The side porch was made of wood, as were the steps leading up to it. Half way up the steps there was a landing approximately five feet square. This would later become the stadium for Red Barber baseball league games, but we’re jumping ahead of ourselves. Neither the steps leading to the top of the side porch nor the cement steps leading up to the front porch were a stoop. There were stoops, and stoop ball, in Brooklyn, but Long Beach only had steps.

The Summer House had eight rooms upstairs, four bedrooms, one bathroom, the dining room, the very small kitchen and the inside porch, which doubled as the TV room after 1949. Downstairs had four additional bedrooms and a bathroom/shower combination.

At the height of its glory, 1946 – 1958, The Summer House was inhabited by eight grown-ups, nine children and two dogs. Nana and Grandpa, Big Brian and Agnes, and Aunt Sadie and Uncle Harry slept upstairs. The three Feeney girls occupied the fourth upstairs bedroom. Uncle Jack and Aunt Lucy were the only grown-ups downstairs. Johnny, his brother, Perry, and Little Brian slept in one of the other downstairs bedrooms, Perry and Little Brian sharing a double bed. Patricia and her cousin, Doreen, also shared a double bed in another of the downstairs bedrooms. The girls called it their boudoir. The final bedroom, also downstairs, was called the guest room, but actually was little more than a passageway with a cot in it. Perky, Little Brian’s and Patricia’s cocker spaniel, and Cottonpuff were the two dogs. The members of the family mentioned who have not been introduced previously will be formally presented to the reader when they appear in the story itself.

As far back as Little Brian can remember, Grandpa Farley always had a blue Oldsmobile 88. He and Uncle Jack rode to and from Brooklyn every summer workday in the Olds. Uncle Harry and Big Brian, who worked in Manhattan (which was always referred to as New York), commuted daily on the Long Island Railroad. None of the fathers complained about the daily commute because they all realized it was a small price to pay for the enjoyment they and their families derived out of spending the summers in Long Beach.

Big Brian and Uncle Harry always came home for dinner at the same time, never early, never late, which made Little Brian wonder whatever happened to the Long Island Railroad to make it the butt of so many jokes twenty years later. Uncle Harry and Big Brian rode the West End bus from the railroad station to Tennessee Avenue, and that bus arrived at the corner of Tennessee and Beach at exactly 6:35 each evening. The West End bus was unlike any other city bus Little Brian had ever seen; it looked more like a school bus painted blue than the real buses that rode on the streets of Brooklyn.

As the perceptive reader probably has noticed already, one of the Farley boys was not mentioned when the occupants of The Summer House were listed paragraphs back: Uncle Robert.

Uncle Robert spent the summers in Long Beach like the other members of the family, but he and Aunt May bought their own bungalow on Delaware Avenue between Beach Street and Ocean View. This caused them to be called the Delaware Farleys.

Uncle Robert graduated from high school in 1936 and announced to the family that he was not going to college. Nana, of course, was very upset, but Grandpa Farley surprised the whole family by saying, Let him do what he wants, Sadie. Grandpa Farley had not gone to college and he was considered successful in life. Uncle Jack dropped out after only one year, and he was started on a successful career. Uncle Robert went to work for an insurance company in Manhattan and fell in love with, and eventually married, a young, pretty secretary who worked for the firm. The wedding took place in 1941, and the young, pretty secretary became Aunt May after that. She and Uncle Robert rented an apartment on DeGraw Street, not far from The Winter House on Sackett Street.

The great conflict against Hitler and Mussolini in Europe touched the Farleys in January, 1942, when Uncle Robert received notice to report for induction into the Army. He was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey, for basic training. He wanted Aunt May to give up the DeGraw Street apartment and move in with Nana and Grandpa, but she liked having her own place too much to follow that advice. She did promise Uncle Robert, however, that she would move in with her in-laws if he were sent over there. Uncle Robert came home on leave the following February with bad news: he had just received orders to join the Fifth Army overseas. Aunt May cried a lot while he was home and then moved in with Nana rather than with her own mother both because she had promised this to Uncle Robert and because she believed she would be able to comfort Nana who would also be very worried about Uncle Robert. Aunt May was a good woman.

On September 9, 1943, Uncle Robert followed General Mark Clark into Italy. The following week Aunt May gave birth to a son, Bobby. Everyone said that it was terrible for a son to be born while his father was away at war. But at least, they all added to themselves, his line will go on even if he doesn’t return. Uncle Robert returned to the United States and was discharged in June, 1945. He brought the Bronze Star for Valor back with him for bravery above and beyond the call of duty performed somewhere in Italy. Uncle Robert never wanted to talk about it and never did.

Uncle Robert was the first of the Farleys to abandon Brooklyn as a winter home. He used the G. I. Bill to purchase a house in Forest Hills, a section of the borough of Queens. Everyone wondered why he wanted to live way out in the country. He also returned to the insurance company where his old job had been held for him. The Farleys all expected Uncle Robert and Aunt May to spend the summer of 1945 at The Summer House, but they surprised the family by announcing that they had purchased a bungalow on Delaware Avenue, just a few blocks away. None of the other Farleys could understand why they did that. It did not seem to make financial sense. It had been Aunt May’s idea, and Uncle Robert had given in after a very short argument. Aunt May liked the idea of having her own summer house where she could cook what she wanted, do what she wanted, and, most importantly, entertain whomever she wanted whenever she wanted. And we’ll only be around the corner from Nana and Grandpa, she said to Uncle Robert.

Agnes had always wanted the same thing for basically the same reasons. She did not mind spending the summers in Long Beach – she knew how the children loved it, even if she wasn’t crazy about the beach herself – but what she did not like was living in someone else’s house for two to three months each year. She even priced a few bungalows and found one for sale right on Tennessee Avenue for the ridiculously low price of $500. But Big Brian thought it was foolish to buy a house on Tennessee Avenue when they already had a house on Tennessee Avenue, and refused even to discuss it which was very frustrating for Agnes.

Uncle Jack and Aunt Lucy rushed out to a commanding lead in the grandchildren race with the first two and three of the first four. Two years after Johnny was born, Aunt Lucy, in October, 1936, gave birth to a daughter who was christened Doreen after Aunt Lucy’s mother. A second son, Perry, came into the world in December, 1940. Doreen and Perry each had reddish-brown, curly, almost unruly, hair when they were little, and many who saw them remarked that it looked like they were wearing rusty Brillo pads on their heads. Aunt Lucy did not appreciate those remarks.

The third grandchild, who appeared between Doreen and Perry, belonged to Big Brian and Agnes and was named Patricia after Big Brian’s deceased sister. Everyone called her Patty when she was little and Patricia when she became older. Even when little, she preferred Patricia since she felt it sounded more sophisticated. After Patricia was born, in November, 1937, Big Brian and Agnes moved into the first floor railroad flat of a row house in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, number 27 St. John’s Place between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in St. Augustine’s Parish. The apartment was called a railroad flat because the rooms were arranged railroad car fashion. To go from the front of the apartment, facing St. John’s Place, to the back of the apartment, you had to pass through all the intervening rooms. The St. John’s apartment was located in a good, clean, safe neighborhood inhabited mostly by Germans, Irish and nice Eye-talians – to distinguish them from not nice Eye-talians. The city planted a tree in front of every other house. Cooperation between the residents and the Department of Sanitation sweepers with their long-bristled brooms and garbage cans on wheels also contributed to the block’s neat appearance. Yes, St. John’s Place between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was a very good block in 1937.

Big Brian’s and Agnes’s flat had six rooms, not counting the inside hall. The inside hall (every apartment in Brooklyn had one) was the first room a visitor entered in the flat and came in very handy on cold or rainy days when, of necessity, it was used as the hanging and drying area for outer garments. The bathroom was off to the left of the inside hall halfway between the apartment’s entrance and the kitchen. The inside hall ended in a fork, the left fork leading to the kitchen, and the right fork leading to the dining room. Both of these rooms had a view of the fenced in back yard. Between the dining room in the rear of the flat and the living room in the front of the flat were two bedrooms. Patricia’s bedroom, later hers and Little Brian’s, was the one closer to the back of the house and the dining room. Big Brian’s and Agnes’s bedroom bordered on the living room. The living room windows provided a view of the airey gate, the enclosed area in front of the row houses. Everyone in Brooklyn called this enclosure the airey gate which was a corruption of the area in front of the house enclosed by a fence with a gate. Ah, Brooklynese! There was another entrance to the apartment besides the one mentioned above leading into the inside hall. This entrance led from the outside hall to the living room. Actually the designers had intended this to be the main entrance, but the Farleys never used it, except at Christmas time to bring the tree into the apartment and after the Epiphany to bring the now dead tree out of the apartment. Not only did the Farleys never use it, but they had it chained on the inside. The key, which was a very big key, was placed on top of the bookcase in the living room, and the Farley children were never allowed to touch it or disclose its whereabouts. Originally Agnes had kept the key in the keyhole making it impossible for anyone to stick anything into the keyhole from the outside. Then Uncle Phil, her baby brother, pointed out to her that someone standing in the outside hall with a powerful magnet could turn the key and open the door. Someone clever enough to do that would not be stopped by the chain! Agnes followed her brother’s advice and removed the key to a safer location.

One thing Agnes insisted on when she and Big Brian went apartment hunting was that their bathroom be inside the apartment. Aunt Gert, who was living on the fourth floor of The Winter House had to go down to the third floor whenever she had the urge to relieve herself. And Agnes’s cousin, Phyllis, had to go to the outside hall on her floor to use a toilet which she shared with another family.

"They’re EYE-talians, but they are clean EYE-talians," Aunt Phyllis had said to Agnes.

They may be clean, but what about their visitors? Agnes had retorted. It’s almost like using a public convenience, she added to Big Brian later after leaving Aunt Philsey’s President Street apartment.

Agnes and Big Brian bought their first set of chinaware for the new apartment soon after moving in. It was basic white with a blue, flowery design around the edges. The children loved the scenic design in the center of the plates and bowls: a Chinese pagoda in the middle of a real Chinese forest. There was a little bridge over a stream in front of the pagoda, and a little Chinaman and a little Chinawoman stood on the bridge. He was fishing. Patricia and Little Brian knew that this chinaware had come from China – didn’t the design prove it? And both young Farleys became confused when they learned to read and saw the inscription: Sterling Ceramics, Paramus, NJ, on the bottom of one of the serving dishes. This was a time, of course, when Made in China on household items would have been rare indeed. Until Agnes was able to convince Big Brian that they should have two sets of chinaware, the original blue pagoda set served both for everyday use and for use on special occasions.

Little Brian carried three very visual images from the St. John’s kitchen into adulthood. First, there were always red, clay flower pots on the kitchen windowsill. The flower pots were always filled with dirt, but there were never any flowers in them. Give the seeds time to grow. You’re too impatient, Little Brian’s mother would tell him. Second, Patricia’s toy table in the corner of the kitchen under the dumbwaiter always had a two-foot-high pile of old newspapers on it – never a shorter stack and never a higher stack. They were always being saved for the junk man. Third, as far back as Little Brian could remember, the linoleum floor in the kitchen was ugly and worn out. It was always clean – Little Brian’s mother was a firm believer in the Cleanliness is next to Godliness maxim and scrubbed the kitchen floor on her hands and knees at least once a week, but there were unsightly black patches all over the floor.

The Grassos, Gus and Anna, the owners, lived on the second floor of the St. John’s building. Both Grassos were four and a half feet tall and four and a half feet wide, and, quite understandably, swayed from side to side as they walked. Anna always followed two feet behind Gus when they were in public, and Little Brian, who didn’t know anything about the customs of the old country, thought they did this because they could not fit side by side on the sidewalk. Gus spoke very little English (he had only been in the United States for eighteen years!), and Anna, who didn’t speak much more, acted as his interpreter.

The third floor of the building was occupied by Mrs. McCormick, Little Brian’s mother’s favorite gossip partner. When either one was talking, the listener would repeat over and over the word Things. This confused Little Brian when he was small, but when he grew up and thought back on it, he understood it even less.

The final inhabitant of the St. John’s Place house was Mr. Moeller, a widower, who lived alone in the top floor apartment. Mr. Moeller worked as a conductor on the Fifth Avenue trolley line and his return home on Saturday evenings was always awaited eagerly by the Farley children. On Saturdays, he always brought home for them the funny sections of the New York Post and the Journal American, which passengers had left on the trolley line. The funnies section of the Post was the only part of that Communist paper Agnes allowed in the house. On occasion Mr. Moeller would also bring home for Patricia and Little Brian toys that had been left on the car. Agnes always thanked Mr. Moeller for the toys and then threw them out after carrying them into the apartment. "You never know who might have been playing with them. Could have been a little colored boy or girl or a dirty EYE-talian from below Fifth Avenue."

The same year, 1937, that Big Brian and Agnes moved onto St. John’s Place, Harry Feeney was made a junior partner in Pierce and Robinson. Everyone, including Aunt Sadie, thought he would propose to her then, but when he explained to her, and she explained to everyone else, that he wanted to get his feet wet as a junior partner before taking on the added responsibility and challenge of marriage, everyone again remarked on how sensible they were. When he did not propose in 1938 or 1939, everyone began remarking that maybe they were being too sensible. Grandpa Farley spoke to Harry Feeney just before Christmas, 1939, and Harry Feeney and Aunt Sadie finally married in June, 1940. They waited until June because Nana and Aunt Sadie couldn’t imagine any other month for a wedding than June. They had waited so long, what was another six months?

Uncle Jack was made a construction boss at Wilheim Construction in 1937, and with his raise in position and salary, he and Aunt Lucy were able to move into a larger apartment. They remained in the Gowanus Canal area and rented a three bedroom flat on Union Street.

It seemed, to Agnes at least, that everyone but Big Brian was getting ahead in their chosen careers, and she pointed this out to him a few times. But he was satisfied with his job. He enjoyed the work, if you could call watching and writing about sporting events work for Big Brian, had received a few small raises, and knew that he was doing well and would have his day. His day came in 1938, and he was very happy to be able to tell Agnes that he had been made an assistant sports editor at the Sun. An even bigger day came in 1943 when he was made the sports editor. Nana and Grandpa Farley were very proud of their children in 1943: the oldest was a successful journalist; Jack was doing well at Wilheim; Sadie had married a lawyer, a junior partner no less; and Robert was honoring the family fighting tyranny in Europe. And they had eight grandchildren, all healthy: Jack’s Johnny, Doreen and Perry; Brian’s Patricia and Little Brian; Sadie’s Nanette (born in October, 1942) and Georgette (born in November, 1943); and Robert’s Bobby. The only worry was Robert’s safety, and they knew in their hearts that God would not let Bobby grow up fatherless. Nana and Grandpa Farley were very content with the first thirty five years of their married life, and Great-Grandmother Farley would have been surprised at how well everything had turned out.

The war had also touched the Connor side of the family. Uncle Phil, Agnes’s younger brother, had been drafted into the Army in December, 1941, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was sent to the Pacific Theatre to fight the forces of General Tojo in August, 1942, just two weeks after Little Brian was born. One evening in June, 1944, the doorbell rang in the kitchen of Big Brian’s and Agnes’s apartment. Little Brian, who was not quite two years old, was already asleep in his crib in the room he shared with Patricia. Patricia, who was in the first grade at St. Augustine’s School, was sitting at the dining room table doing her homework. Big Brian pushed the button that released the lock on the door separating the vestibule from the outside hall and he could tell, by the heavy footsteps, that a man was approaching their apartment.

I wonder who it could be, Agnes said half to herself.

Who is it? cried out Big Brian from the inside hall.

It’s me, Grandpa, answered Grandpa Connor.

Big Brian immediately opened the door to let his father-in-law into the apartment. His eyes were very bloodshot, and at first Big Brian thought Grandpa Connor had been drinking, but Agnes recognized immediately that the redness was the result of crying and not of drinking. She went into the dining room and told Patricia to take her work to the living room.

What’s wrong with Grandpa Connor? Can’t I say ‘Hello’? asked Patricia.

Later, Honey, later, answered Agnes. Then she joined Big Brian and her father who were sitting around the kitchen table.

Daddy, what is it? Is it Phil? she asked her father. Agnes had a way of knowing what people were going to talk about.

Oh, Aggie. Yes, it’s Phil. Read this, he replied handing her a telegram. It was from the War Department and stated very bluntly that Phil and five other members of a patrol he had been on were missing in action, and that every effort was being made to locate them and rescue them. Agnes handed the telegram to Big Brian after she had read it and then went over to the stove to get some coffee for the three of them.

The news could have been worse, Daddy. There’s still hope. We’ll have to pray hard and not despair.

They sat in silence for a few moments, then Grandpa Connor said, Of course you’re right, Aggie, but sometimes this hoping is worse than knowing.

Do Amy and Hilda know yet, Daddy? asked Agnes.

No. Hilda was still at work when I came over here, and I didn’t call Amy and Sam.

I’ll call Amy and Sam, said Big Brian, hoping that Sam would answer. Big Brian and Agnes had had a phone installed in 1940. Amy and Sam had had one since 1939, when they married. Grandpa Connor still did not have one in 1944. Sam did answer, and Big Brian passed on the news.

Patricia had been listening from the living room and had heard Uncle Phil’s name mentioned a few times, but she could not hear enough to make any sense. She was afraid that something bad had happened to him; she knew he was far, far away fighting for America against some bad, yellow people. She felt guilty now because she had never prayed for Uncle Phil like her mother told her to. It wasn’t that she did not love Uncle Phil – she did – but she was only four when he went into the army, and she didn’t know him very well and she always forgot to pray for him. She forgot to pray for Uncle Robert and Uncle Willie too, but she vowed that she would remember them every night from now on in her prayers before going to bed. Uncle Willie wasn’t a real uncle, but she and Little Brian called him Uncle Willie. He was married to Agnes’s best friend, Wheezey. She hoped it wasn’t too late for Uncle Phil.

Agnes startled her from her thoughts. She had not seen her mother coming through the bedrooms, and now she was afraid that Agnes was going to punish her for eavesdropping or for not reading her school book, but Agnes just smiled and said, Come out to the kitchen. That made Patricia feel very good and very much like a grown-up.

Hello, Grandpa, she said, giving him a big hug and kiss. She saw that Grandpa Connor had been crying and feared that it was too late to pray for Uncle Phil.

Well, Patty, aren’t you getting to be a regular young lady, said Grandpa Connor causing Patricia to feel very proud.

Patty, said Big Brian, we have some sad news to tell you and we’re going to ask you to do something very important. We think you’re a big girl now and can handle it.

Yes, Daddy, said Patricia expecting the worst. She almost said, Is it Uncle Phil?, but that would have let them know that she had been listening in, so she held her tongue.

Uncle Phil is lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and the Army is trying to find him, and with the help of God, they will, but we have to pray very hard for him.

I will, Daddy, I will, said Patricia, feeling very, very bad that she had forgotten to pray for him before he got lost.

And I have a note here that I want you to take to Sister in school tomorrow. It explains what happened to Uncle Phil and asks her to have the other Sisters and the boys and girls in your class, and the other classes, pray for Uncle Phil.

I’ll give it to her as soon as I get to school, answered Patricia, very proud that she was being treated like a grown-up and being given grown-up responsibilities.

That’s a good girl, said Grandpa Connor. Agnes realized that it was almost eight o’clock and told Patricia to get ready for bed. Patricia said prayers for Uncle Robert and Uncle Willie and an especially good one for Uncle Phil, all on her knees, before getting into bed.

Aunt Amy called a half-hour after Grandpa Connor had left and she and Agnes had a good cry over the phone. Big Brian thought it was good for Agnes to get the tears out of her system.

Uncle Willie, as we have said, was an uncle by association, not by blood. His wife, Louise, called Aunt Wheezey by Patricia and just plain Wheezey by the grown-ups, and Agnes had been friends since grammar school. Uncle Willie had been with the Navy in the North Atlantic since May, 1942, and, like Uncle Robert, was away at war when his first child, a daughter, Wilma, was born in October, 1942. All his relatives, both by blood and by association, remarked that it was terrible for a daughter to be born with her father away at war, at sea no less, and thought, but never said, What if he never comes home?

Agnes had at least one thing to be thankful for during the summer of 1944 in Long Beach: Nana, Aunt Sadie or Aunt Lucy was available to watch Little Brian, enabling Agnes to go to daily Mass for Uncle Phil at St. Ignatius the Martyr Church, the family’s summer church on West Broadway between Grand Boulevard and New York Avenue. Patricia asked her mother if she could go with her to pray for Uncle Phil. Agnes was very happy that Patricia wanted to accompany her to church, and Patricia felt good because she knew she was making her mother happy. Mass attendance might also make amends for not remembering to pray for Uncle Phil which only she and God knew she had forgotten to do, and neither she nor God was going to mention that.

Even though Patricia had not yet made her First Holy Communion, and therefore could not offer up her communions for Uncle Phil, Agnes believed that, since Jesus loved little children, He would be especially pleased with Patricia’s prayers. Doreen, who was inseparable from Patricia, also went to daily Mass with them. Doreen had made her First Holy Communion and, although Uncle Phil was not her uncle and she did not even know him, she offered up her communions for him as a special favor for Patricia. She also offered up her communions for Uncle Robert, who was after all her real uncle, but she did not disclose that fact to Patricia. Patricia had not yet reached the age of reason, theologically speaking, and Doreen did not think she would be able to comprehend the doctrine that communions could be offered up for an infinite number of people without diluting their efficacy. And Uncle Robert is Patricia’s uncle too, thought Doreen

One night in October, back in Brooklyn, Grandpa Connor came to the apartment on St. John’s Place with another telegram and with a smile on his face. Uncle Phil had been found and was safe and relatively healthy.

Thank God, said Agnes and Big Brian.

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CHAPTER THREE

The Foof Incident

Let the one among you who is without sin

Be the first to throw a stone at her.

John 8, 7

But what if there are no stones, Master?

Two very important things happened in 1945: Patricia made her First Holy Communion, and World War II came to an end.

Patricia received the Body of Christ for the first time on a warm, sunny morning in June, approximately one month after V-E Day. Patricia looked like a little angel wearing the new, white dress, gloves, shoes and knee-stockings that, along with the wreath of green leaves she had brought home from school, made up the uniform for the holy occasion. One of the elderly nuns who was no longer able to teach made the crowning wreaths for all the female First Holy Communicants. It was her sole responsibility in the convent, so the wreaths were well made.

Instead of staying home to mind Little Brian, which one of the parents always did while the other went to church, Big Brian decided to take his son to church for the first time (other than his christening, of course) so that he, Big Brian, would not miss his daughter’s First Holy Communion. The thought of hiring a babysitter for two hours that morning or of making some other arrangement never occurred to Big Brian or Agnes. Little Brian acted as should have been expected during his first visit to St. Augustine’s Church, and Big Brian had to leave the Mass during the reading of the Epistle. He attempted re-entry when his son had calmed a bit, but Little Brian was not about to allow himself to be carried back into that cavernous, crowded, loud building. So Big Brian missed Patricia’s First Holy Communion. And he was one of the very few members of the family who did miss it. Nana and Grandpa Farley were there; Aunt Lucy was there with Johnny and Doreen (she and Uncle Jack agreed that Perry was too young for the ceremony, so Uncle Jack and his youngest child skipped the Mass and went straight to the St. John’s apartment for the party); Grandpa Connor and Aunt Hilda were there; Aunt Amy and Uncle Sam were there; Aunt Philsey and her husband, Uncle Pete, the policeman, were there; and even Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ralph were there. Aunt Ruth was another aunt by association on Agnes’s side of the family. All of the Connors, including Grandpa Connor, called her Aunt Ruth, and there was a rumor, never verified to Little Brian’s satisfaction, that through a second marriage of somebody’s uncle or cousin, she was actually family by blood and not merely by association. Aunt May, who was still staying with Nana while Uncle Robert was away, Aunt Sadie and Aunt Wheezey could not come because their children were so young. Uncle Harry had to work.

After the Mass, everyone went back to the St. John’s apartment where they found Uncle Jack and Perry waiting on the stoop. Before the food was served, Patricia was asked to open her presents. Grandpa Connor gave her a little, white prayer book to be used during Mass. Nana and Grandpa Farley’s gift was her first pair of rosary beads, white ones of course. The prayer book and the rosary beads made Patricia feel like a real Catholic and a grown-up. Big Brian gave her a Donald Duck camera, which, not counting clothes, was the first non-toy anything she had ever received. Big Brian had already loaded the camera, and Patricia just had to run out on the stoop immediately and take a picture of Big Brian and