It's 1952, and Where Is Betty Kirby...

Where Is Betty Kirby??......Who WAS Betty Kirby??

 Saint’s Candy Store, or as the storefront sign read: ‘Fountain’, was at it’s usual afternoon August quiet. It’s 1952 in Flushing, Queens, New York City, Long Island NY. The traffic from Horace Harding Blvd outside, which years later became a frontage road of the New York claimed “World’s Longest Parking Lot” LIE - Long Island Expressway, from cars, trucks, Q17 buses, could be easily heard inside.

(This is a Traffic Cam the day I’m writing this Blog - Jan 23, 2016 - as Snow Storm ‘Jonas’ hits NYC - obviously NOT a hot muggy August day). (And now, after that distraction, back to Flushing circa 1952..)

‘Saint’ himself was reading the New York Times, and keeping a watchful eye on the kids sitting in the booths, who, every once in awhile had to decide whose turn it was to buy a 12 ounce bottle of Mission soda - lasted longer than a 10 ounce Pepsi, or a 6 ounce Coke, or 7 ounce 7-up (get it?) - and most critically, was the money available to pay for it. Saint did not run a library or waiting room, so when the drink or pretzel was gone, so were the kids. And Saint, probably in his mid 40s, had the muscle to move you. And nobody wanted to leave ‘refrigerated- air-cooled’ Saints to go out into that hot humid day.

“Lover” by Peggy Lee had just ended on the jukebox, and “SugarBush” by Doris Day and Frankie Laine was just starting.

 I was at the big red Coca-Cola metal box in the front of the store where the bottles were kept in icy water, picking out a Mission Cream to take home to drink. Yes, at home. There was no way I was going to share with my ‘friends’ in the booths, who did not collect newspapers to sell to the ‘junkies’ - not drug junkies, but junk dealers who went past your house collecting, well, junk, but paying you by the pound for newspapers. I also stacked smelly beer bottles in Harding Food Center a number of hours a week, where Bob worked delivering groceries, and me, too, a few years later.

So no sharing with these guys my Dad called “bums, juvenile delinquents” even though he knew them all, and liked them, except they didn’t work like his sons did. I gave Saint my dime. He smiled. He liked the Field boys, and liked I wasn’t going to share my hard-earned soda with those “bums” - he agreed with my Dad, even if those bums were his customers.

Out into the muggy heat, past Costanzo’s Plumbing, down 160th St to 59th Ave, and then, instead of turning towards my house, second from the corner, staying on 160th St to see if, maybe Betty Kirby was sitting on her stoop, which was across the street from the P.S.163 school-yard.

The school-yard was where the guys in the neighborhood, from 12 years old up to the late teens, even a few guys in their early twenties, all ‘hung out’, playing stickball, touch football, basketball, softball, handball, chinese handball, fast-pitching against the wall, the wall being the chimney stack of the school building. And all this on cement, and part gravel made of ashes - that’s right - ashes - and hurt when you fell

 Softball in the summer, for 15 year olds up, was just about every evening till it was too dark to see, or, like me and Bob, till our Mom stuck her head out of the kitchen window, nearly a block away, but visible from the school-yard, yelling: “Bobby, Genie, get home - Now”!

 If it was supper time, we would eat fast, get back to the game, and then, when dark, sit on the front stoop and wait for ‘Gus’ the Bungalow Bar Ice Cream man, to come up 160th Street in his white uniform, coin changer on his belt, and driving an ice cream truck that looked like, well, a bungalow. We did not buy from Good Humor who came on 59th Avenue right in front of our house, more convenient, but more expensive, smaller sizes, and, not Gus, who was Greek: looked it and sounded like it. Not ever hearing another Greek talk, we assumed all Greeks sounded like Gus’s accent.

 I don’t remember Betty Kirby in any of my P.S.163 classes. I’ve also searched my P.S.163 June 1952 graduation picture, taken in front of the school, which included all 8th grade classes.

She may have been a year older than me, but I just don’t remember ever seeing her inside the school at all. Certainly not in the schoolyard - girls were not in the schoolyard except during school hours, or ‘summer day camp’ week-days till noon. (And then out into the heat of New York City summer days). Maybe Betty Kirby went to parochial - Catholic - school. I don’t know, ‘cause I never talked with her, I just walked past, or, when I delivered groceries, rode my delivery bike past her house, or delivered to her next door neighbor. And at times two guys in their very late teens or early twenties, also sat on the stoop, drinking bottles of beer - Rheingold - remember, I stacked beer “for a living’, so I knew beer brands. They wore old man’s trousers and white undershirts, now called tank tops. I guess they were her older brothers, and looked like the kind of guys you don’t talk to their sister when they’re around. Anyway, I just never talked to Betty Kirby.

 Sometimes as the many years have gone by, I wonder if there really ever was a Betty Kirby, or did my feverish young boy mind just make up this exotic girl to picture as I read ‘A Stone for Danny Fisher’ or ‘Battle Cry’ or ‘God’s Little Acre’ - the books of romance and fantasy (not meant to be, but to a teenage boy…) . That’s a story for maybe a future time.

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The Field Boys of Flushing     May 29, 2015

In the winter, ice hockey games on the frozen swamp water were rough. The weeds from the landfill under the ice blocked the puck. The rules were simple – just play but no blood.

It was the undeveloped area of Kissena Park in Flushing, Queens, New York City.

To the Field Boys of Flushing, as ‘Bobby’ and ‘Genie’(me) were known in the P.S. 163 school yard, and to the neighbors: Mrs. Hansen, on the east, Mrs. Sutherland, on the west, Mrs. Morrow, whose dog Duchess Bobby walked a few days a week (for money – no altruism here) , Mrs. Ford, (no, not the President’s wife), Mrs. Twilliger, the end corner house with the big side lot, hedged and fenced to keep us out), Mrs. Renda and Mrs. Kral across the street, Mrs. Brewster, and Mrs. Romanoff (PTA President as long as I went to P.S. 163), Mrs. Ianone,  all across the street from the front of the school, and others to whom Mrs. Field (Mom) (all the adults were Mr. and Mrs. – no first names) would acknowledge walking past or met in Associated Food Stores  or Harding Food Center – where Bobby and Genie worked for years stacking shelves, sorting bottles – beer and soda – in the basement, and what we loved most of all because of the tips : delivering groceries on those funny looking front small-wheeled/big basket bikes seen in ‘old’ movies on TCM today,  to the blocks of neighborhood streets, and to the ‘projects’ – Pomonok – low income housing (good tippers), and ‘Electchester’ – the electrical union co-op apartment complex (not such good tippers). (These hundreds of apartment, thousands of people  ‘projects’ were not welcomed to the neighborhood because  they replaced Pomonok Golf Course – not that any of the neighbors played golf, but sleigh riding in the winter, and ‘making out’ land all year were lost. Well, maybe only the kids in the neighborhood were opposed; who knew what the adults thought – kids were not involved in adult conversations.

In the summer, if the wind was from the north, which, thankfully, it was not too often, the stinky stench of the land-filled swamp, would have Bobby and Genie sent to replenish the supply of ‘punks’, some type of plant (which actually grows today at times of the year in our Florida condo home retention pond) which was used by burning while sitting on the ‘stoop’ – the front steps of every house (no air-conditioning) in the summer to keep the mosquitos from biting while waiting for Gus, the Bungalow Bar Ice Cream man.

The Field boys also used the wooded area of the park to spy on Janet B, and what-ever guy was lucky enough to go to the park with her, and the ‘hobos’ who camped out by the drinkable water creek that flowed through the park, and for fire-fighting training by Bobby and Genie and Jamsie R from across the street who tagged along at time. I’m forbidden by Bob (and who knows what he could do to me today if I told) to accurately describe the training which utilized matches, swift movement, and, sometimes, city fire trucks to come with red lights flashing and sirens heard for miles, resulting in our running very fast training.

The Field Boys played stickball, basket-ball, soft-ball, hand-ball – well, only Genie (me), because I could wipe out every kid in the neighborhood, especially Bobby, who learned eventually not to challenge me.

Camp William Carey on Long Island in Jamesport, on Long Island Sound’s south, stony shore, home for 2 weeks in July, and then again in August for $9 each time,  taught The Field Boys what life was like on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, because all the other kids, except us and Bobby Kral, from across the street,  were ‘tough’ kids from that area (think East Side Kids/Bowery Boys from the old movies) where Dad came from, and wanted us to taste that life, run by the Boys Club of New York from the building on Ave A and 10^th street opposite Tompkins Square Park. (In “Miracle on 34^th Street” the original with Natalie Wood, John Payne, Maureen O’Hara, Gene Lockhart, and Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle tells us that Daniel D Tompkins (for whom the park was named) was John Quincy Adams’ vice president, “and I’ll bet your Mr. Sawyer (the psychologist examining Santa) doesn’t know that”)

Syl and Milton were the main staff:  Syl was tougher than any of the kids, and any number of bruised butts and arms were souvenirs for rule-breaking. Milton was, among other jobs, the lifeguard, both at the Manhattan Club-House pool, and Camp Carey’s Long Island Sound beach, and ‘lake’ (which I just looked up, was really Hallock’s Pond).

Syl liked the Field Boys – we obeyed all rules – our Mom did not raise dumb kids.

Milt did not like us – me, because I nearly drowned three times – at the pool, the beach, and the lake.

And he didn’t like Bobby, as he was the reason I had to be rescued:  he had dragged and/or pushed me into deep water on all three occasions – and Milt had to dive in, with his fancy watch on (it was waterproof – but he told us each time, we owed him a new watch).

The Field Boys went swimming SUNDAYs (much to Mom’s disapproval (but we went to school or worked every day other than Sunday) at the Aqueduct outdoors pool in Corona, the scene of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fair water events, and learned how to ‘get along’ with the Italian gangs (the Corona Dukes, The Corona Dukes Midgets, The Corona Dukes Seniors – they were well organized) that ran the neighborhood around the pool (and sometimes inside the pool area itself until the cops banged a few heads).

These were some of  the lessons of life for the Field Boys of Flushing.

My brother  Bob would’ve been 79 today if that fickle finger of fate had not slammed him in November 2010 and put an end to his adventure.

I know. I’m told among other rationalities: on another mission, with our parents, needed somewhere else…we’re all familiar with the re-assurances. Whatever personal faith one has is employed.

For me, he’s gone.

 I don’t know where.

 I do know he would tell me about his current existence if he could – either as a warning, as Jacob Marley did for Ebenezer Scrooge in Dicken’s Christmas Carol, or, a re-affirmation of “Life is it’s own significance” as is my Gene’s World theme.

He hasn’t.

Maybe too busy, as in Wilder’s “Our Town”

Or ……….

Happy Birthday Bob…I miss you…the gone part of The Field Boys of Flushing.

http://floridagene.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html

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