Nostalgia Tour

Another one from last June.

My best friend in junior and senior high and I lost touch after college and a couple of years ago, 25 years since we'd last talked, she emailed me. Ah, the wonders of the internet, and Google. We had a reunion, in a diner not far from where I'm living now and spent hours catching up. We've been in touch via email since. Today, she drove down from CT and we took a nostalgia tour, to the elementary schools we each attended, to our junior and senior high schools, and to our former homes. And it's got me in a nostalgic mood.

Howard Beach is in south Queens, NY, on Jamaica Bay, not too far west of JFK International Airport. It was Idelwild Airport back then, when were growing up. I just finished looking around the official HB site's message boards and have been reminded of a lot of things. Unfortunately, I didn't recognize any of the names of folks posting. But the photos in the history section, showing the swamp and beach land where now there are houses and businesses, gives a good feel for how much this neighborhood has changed. I guess I lived there in its transition period. Built up but no big chains, except for the White Castle that's still over by the high school.

My old neighborhood looks so different now. New Park Pizza is still there, but the Cross Bay Lanes bowling alley is gone. Waldbaum's supermarket moved across the boulevard and everything's been built up so much on Cross Bay Blvd that I don't recognize it, anymore, and I can't tell where anything used to be.

There was the Big BowWow food place where we went with our mothers after each school year to celebrate a good report card. There was the small kiddie amusement park, Ditillio's, owned by my first grade teacher and her husband. There was Heller's Drugstore where I bought my Spalding balls and other necessities of childhood. There was the ditch at the corner where we used to go sledding until they filled it in in the mid-'60s and put up 4 houses. I remember when they put in the sewers (it was septic tanks til then) in '64 or '65. I remember a house we were all convinced was haunted and the little terror of a Chihuahua that lived next to the grade school and terrorized me for years whenever I walked past. There was the old HB movie theater that showed serials, travelogues, and short subjects before they got to the movies and they had raffles, too. I saw "Psycho" and "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" there, and many other wonderufl movies. There was the old Howard Beach Jewish Center in an old house with a veranda and more memories than I can name.

The photos, from the top: Entrances to my elementary school. Third photo is the rear of the school where the playground was and where we entered.

Next is the house I grew up in. I lived there from 1958-1969 (age 5-16). There was no deck. There were 3 short trees (more like large bushes) under the window, instead. The windows have been changed and the doors are different now, too. The brick walk used to be plain old concrete. We played stoopball against those brick steps. That white fence is new. We had a chain link fence and gate along the side.

The junior high we went to is next. It was a fairly new school back then. And below that is the high school. I don't recall the lawn looking that nice

Feeling:

hometowns