Author Archives: Barbara

Stuff That Was Important in the 70’s That Doesn’t Exist Anymore

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There were several things I regularly encountered in the 70’s that were important components of my daily life. Many of them are gone now. Here are just a few.

  1. Photo booths. If you were feeling bored and silly, you could go to a store like Woolworth’s and for a quarter you could have a series of black and white pictures taken showing you and your friends doing something stupid. Note to readers born after 1995: this was the closest thing we had to Snapchat, but kids today are much smarter because they can make their Snapshot photos disappear in a matter of seconds. People like me end up with friends who find photo booth pictures in the back of their closet and post them on my Facebook page. Today it’s a lot harder to find a photo booth and when you do, it’s generally only used for passport pictures or as a source of nostalgic entertainment at Bar Mitzvahs and Sweet Sixteens.
  2. Foot X-rays. Up until 1970, mom would take us once a year to the Buster Brown shoe store for new school shoes. The excitement around this outing had nothing to do with getting new shoes and little to do with the free helium balloon you received after your visit. The highlight of the trip was getting a turn at the X-Ray shoe fitter machine. The machine allowed you to see all the bones in your feet while simultaneously getting a healthy dose of radiation. The machine was generally operated by a shoe salesman blowing cigarette smoke in your face while buffing a pair of new Mary Janes with some toxic shoe polish. Our foot x-ray days ended around 1970 when these machines were banned.
  3. Rotary phones. Dialing a number with a lot of 9’s in it was a bitch, you had to memorize important phone numbers in your head because there was no auto-dial, the long phone cords were always tangled, and if another caller was trying to get through while you were on the line, they were out of luck. If someone tried to call you with an important message and you weren’t home, you were screwed because there was no way to leave a message back then. But on the positive side, at least you always knew where the phone was because it was cemented to the wall. ,
  4. Arcade games. It used to be that you couldn’t walk into a candy store or newspaper shop without seeing a pinball machine, Pong, Asteroids, or PacMan. Today the only  place I ever see arcade games is at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens with a sign that says, “Do Not Touch.”
  5. Typewriters.  When I was a teenager, I got a typewriter before I went to college. It was considered essential. There was no such thing as a Royal Ultra Book or a Smith Corona Air. There was one weight of typewriter…heavy. Back then, copy and pasting meant copying someone else’s term paper, not moving text around on the computer screen. There was no spell-check which meant students required a lot of white-out, which for many, replaced the mimeograph paper we were all getting buzzed off of back in first grade.
  6. Records. Part of the fun of listening to music was going to the record store or Alexander’s and leafing through the album covers. The photos, artwork, or images on the covers were often just as exciting as the album itself. Back then, you couldn’t Google the lyrics to your favorite song, so it was always eye-opening when you purchased the album and realized you’d been singing the wrong lyrics.. After months of belting out Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence singing “silence like a casserole” I finally realized that the duo was singing “silence like a cancer grows.” I still like my version better.
  7. Toaster ovens. We didn’t have a toaster oven growing up, but I always thought we needed one because everyone else seemed to have one. Apparently no one thinks this anymore, since I never see them anymore, except in my mother’s house because she bought one after I moved out!
  8. Subway tokens. Long before NYC Metrocards, everyone had to carry around tokens that were usually stuffed all the way at the bottom of your pocket and covered with lint or used tissues when you finally fished them out of your jeans. Despite the inconvenience, I miss subway tokens and I have been known to oogle over the New York Transit Museum store’s kitchy, gaudy, noisy, subway token charm bracelet with genuine tokens from different decades. Note to close friends and family: this would make a great gift for me if you’ve missed Christmas or my birthday.
  9. Skate keys. Before there were roller blades, kids had skates with keys that were used to adjust the size. Every kid was told to wear their key around their neck so it wouldn’t get lost. By the time I got my first pair of skates, Super Skates were invented which were adjustable without a key but never really gave you a snug fit. Fortunately Super Skates prepared me for the dozens of uncomfortable, impractical shoes I would purchase for decades to come.
  10. Captain Crunch ice cream bars. This was the best ice cream bar on the planet. I thought it was pure genius to blend a breakfast cereal with ice cream. Was I the only one? How could these gems have ever disappeared? I am still scratching my head.
  11. Rectal thermometers. Who doesn’t remember the embarrassment and discomfort of having a rectal thermometer shoved up your ass? Today this is reserved for people who are unconscious or for whatever reason can’t seem to use a mouth or ear thermometer, but back in the 70’s if your mother suspected you had a fever, there was no escaping the rectal thermometer.
  12. Lollipops at the doctor’s office. Sometime between 1980 and 1990, offering lollipops at the doctor’s office fell out of vogue. Ever since my kids started going to the pediatrician’s office, I have tried my best not to roll my eyes at the end of the visit when they are offered stickers. Big whoop. If I’ve just been poked and prodded (and perhaps just had an encounter with a rectal thermometer), I expect some compensation in the form of candy; not a piece of paper with glue.
  13. TV antennas. Before high definition, we had rabbit ears and snow. TV antennas were used to help make the picture clearer or more stable, get rid of weird zig zag lines on the screen, and eliminate snow, a euphemism for no freaking picture at all. Adjusting the rabbit ears was never an exact science and required a great deal of creativity. Each member of the family would take turns moving the rabbit ears close together and far apart hoping our actions would result in a clearer picture. Getting the rabbit ears in the right position for a clear picture usually required certain sacrifices like holding the antenna in a certain position with one hand, eliminating sudden movements, or suppressing breathing.
  14. TV test patterns. Before television was 24/7 and five-hour marathons of Law & Order and Hoarders didn’t exist, people used to go to bed no later than 1:30 am, when television programming ended for the evening. After Johnny Carson and the late night movie, a picture of an American flag would come on and the national anthem would be played. After this, all you could watch on TV was a test pattern with colors or more snow.
  15. Anything with a dial. Before there were remotes, people were forced to get up off their asses and change the channel when they wanted to watch a different television show. The same was true of the radio when you wanted to change the station. My father actually invented the concept for the first remote which was essentially any child in the family who walked past the television while he was watching. He would point a finger at one of us and ask us to change the channel for him, never leaving his chair. We served his purpose and we never ran out of batteries.

Queens to English Dictionary

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My first roommate in college was from Albany, NY. During summer vacations when I returned to Queens, we would chat on the phone. Come September she would admit to me that the second I was back in Queens, my Queens accent kicked in, my voice sped up to 50 miles an hour, and she couldn’t understand anything I said on those calls so she just “yessed” and “ah ha’d” me until I returned to college and could once again be understood by those outside the borough.

My guess is that she was not the only one to struggle with understanding people from the borough, so as a public service to my non-Queens readers, I have put together a little Queens to English translation guide.

A few things to know about a Queens accent: it is very nasal, it could take weeks to complete the sound of a word with a w in it, and r’s are optional. The further east you go in the borough, the more pronounced the accent becomes, until you hit Lawn Giland (Long Island) which is beyond the scope of this post. Some natives of Queens have gone on to have successful careers, like Cyndi Lauper, famous for such hits as True Culas and Tiwwwwme Afta Tiwwwwme.

Now, practice with me. Here are two typical Queens conversations. Try to read along. Then check the words in the English/Queens translation guide below.

I was bowww-na in Queens, New Yawwk whay-a it is against the laww-wa not to clean up af-ta ya dawwwg. I hey-ar from some goy-a der was a tiwwwwme when dawwwgs cud drink wodda and then piss whereva they wan-ed to but dose days are gawwwn, thank Gawwwd.

Wait until ya fatha gets home mista! The cula of ya baa-tam is gowen to be red by tomarra and faww weeks ta come.

Translation Guide:

part: pawwwt

water: wodda

guy: goy-a

born: bowww-na

dog: dawwwg

calf: caaavvv

going: gowen

there: der

bottom: baa-tam

whatever: whadeva

wherever: whereva

mother: mu-tha

father: faaa-tha

fog: fowwwg

your: ya

wanted: wan-ed

tomorrow: tomarra

law: laww-ah

thick: tdick

thought: thowwwt

color: cu-la

New York: New Yawwwwk

God: Gawwd

walk: wawwwwk

far: faaaa

for: faww

there: der

them: dem

those: dose

shirt: shwirt

whisper: whis-pa

word: wawwwd

hear: hey-a

like: liwwwk

time: tiwwwwme

love: luv

why: wuhy

right: whryte

going: gow-en

where: whay-a

after: af-ta

could: cud

mister: mista

wanted: wan-ed

would have: wood-a

Next time, we will examine what happens when you combine a Brooklyn-bred father who loved cawwwww-fee and cake with a mother from Pennsylvania who spelled out the family name, Lewine, L-E-DUBYA-I-N-E to whoever needed to know, which was pointless anyway, since everything with the family name printed on it always ended up misspelled as Levine.

 

 

 

 

 

Jalar The Everything Store

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At the age ten, I got my first job walking a miniature white poodle that lived in a building nearby. My friend Laurie had the job first, but she would often invite me to walk the dog with her and later I was asked by the owner to walk the dog when Laurie wasn’t available. Since I knew there was no way in hell I was ever getting a dog, or any pet for that matter, (please don’t ask me about the fish we killed after just one week), I was very excited to get paid to walk a dog.  And back then, no one even expected you to clean up dog shit, so the job really was good, clean fun. I can’t remember if I earned 50 cents a walk or 50 cents a week, but I do remember putting the money to good use, mainly for buying Mr. Softee and maybe even my own cup of Chow Chow truck french fries once in a while. After that job, things went downhill, and I spent much of my early and late teen years in a series of  boring cashier jobs.

During my summer break, following my first year of college, I returned to Queens to make some money to help finance my second year of college. For most students this meant landing some crappy minimum wage job that required you to work for people who had that same crappy minimum wage job years before you and were now crappy managers. I found all that and more when I landed a cashier job at Jalar, the Everything Store.

Jalar the Everything Store was on the south side of Queen’s Boulevard. It was like a Woolworth’s or Five & Ten store, and it really did seem to have everything. Aisle one had assorted sundries like shampoo, hair dye, and deodorant. Aisle two had a large shopping cart perched precariously on a hook several feet above the ground and items in this aisle included housewares and things for the laundry. But perhaps the most interesting display was in aisle three which housed a toilet seat suspended from the ceiling. Luckily it was the soft foamy kind that became popular in the 70’s, so at least if it fell and someone was struck in the head with it, it wouldn’t be fatal and Jalar wouldn’t be held liable for murdering someone with a toilet seat.

The cigarettes, their most popular item, were kept at the front of the store, behind the counter. I had become a pro at quickly guessing and then dispensing a customer’s cigarette choice from earlier cashier jobs selling cigarettes to all the under-aged kids, pregnant women, and older adults sporting portable oxygen tanks. So by the time I got to Jalar, I already knew that the 18-year old boys smoked Marlboro (hard box only), young women with big hair smoked Parliments,  old women with blue hair smoked Kools, ladies with nice handbags and long fingernails smoked Virginia Slims, and men with leathery skin and mechanical voice boxes smoked Camels (unfiltered).

After cigarettes, probably the most widely sold item at Jalar was condoms. Men would typically buy their condoms along with other manly things like a screwdriver, a can of paint, a pair of work gloves, and nails. They would toss everything from their cart onto the counter as if the condoms were part of their shopping list or the list of “things I need to get done this weekend.”

When I first started working at Jalar, the condoms were kept at the counter with the cigarettes and the boxes were held together with rubber bands so they wouldn’t fall over or be easily stolen. The first time a customer asked me for a box of condoms, I grabbed a set of boxes in rubber bands, and charged him as if this was one box. Judging by the looks of this guy, I had easily sold him his lifetime supply of condoms for just 99 cents. This explains the huge smile he flashed me as he tipped his policeman’s cap and left the store.

There was a lot of theft at Jalar and the manager took matters into his own hands to manage this. Each time a shoplifter was caught, he would break out a Polaroid camera (note to readers born after 1990: this is the 1970’s equivalent of Instagram without the ability to adjust the color, making everyone look green) and force the thief to pose for a picture which he would hang up at the front counter with a sign that read, “People caught stealing from Jalar.” One shoplifter posed with a big smile on his face and underneath his photo read the inscription “second time!” You would think the picture taking would serve as some sort of deterrent, but after the one shoplifter claimed the “second time” title, every crook wanted to have their picture taken to steal the title of person caught stealing most frequently at Jalar. 

The manager lacked good judgment in other ways as well. He was having a very blatant affair with one of the other cashiers and when his wife came into the store (with their baby!) looking for him, we were supposed to act like we didn’t know where he was. I would usually use this time to reorganize the condoms, so I wouldn’t be seen and wouldn’t have to lie for him and this is probably when I realized that three condoms, not 300 were 99 cents.

 

See Dick Get High; First Grade Revisited

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First grade was a time of academic and personal growth. It was the year I traded in my botox-inspired ponytail for shorter hair and barrettes, learned how to read, and learned how to add. Mastery of that last skill is somewhat questionable, as evidenced by my inability to balance my checkbook, but in any case, first grade was an exciting time.

My first grade teacher taught us how to read from a large book that was propped up on an easel at the front of the classroom and creatively named, “The Big Book”  This was before Sesame Street began airing on PBS and before today’s notion that children should be literate in-utero, so for most kids, this was their first exposure to learning to read.  Before going to school, I remember my mother reading to me on a haphazard basis from a book of fables, but when she got to the mind numbing and redundant story of Chicken Little where the names  Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey, Gander Lander, Turkey Lurkey and Foxy Loxy are repeated over and over again, she got fed up, taught me the meaning of the word etcetera, and decided to put her tax money to good use and let someone else take over any duties related to literacy.

In The Big Book, the characters had names like Dick and Jane and these kids went about their daily business exploring life through their phonetically-correct world. There was never a kid named Phoebe or Xavier or a story about a kid who came down with pneumonia or had tickets to see Phantom of the Opera, because if there had been, we would have all realized how much of a mind f*&k the English language was and we would have given up on learning it in two weeks. The Big Book focused on words that were easy to figure out like run, eat, and stop, but it was just a matter of time until we started scratching our heads and wondering who the prankster was who came up with words like laugh and thought and what idiot thought it was a good idea to create words like effect and affect which would continue to confuse us for decades to come.

When we weren’t reading The Big Book, we sometimes had worksheets that were printed on mimeograph paper. For those of you born after 1970, you don’t know what you were missing. The scent of the ink omitted from a single sheet of mimeograph paper was sweet and somewhat addictive and would give you a decent buzz. Mimeograph paper was basically a six-year-old’s version of LSD. The teachers were constantly telling the kids to stop sniffing their math worksheets, but to no avail. Years later, mimeograph machines were replaced with copy machines and many of the school’s students went on to harder drugs like Elmer’s  Glue and Aquanet hair spray. A few others entered MA, a 12-step program for those trying to break their mimeograph paper addiction.

By the time we were adequately high from the mimeograph paper, it was usually time for recess. In first grade we graduated from the baby park for the kindergarten kids to the big yard for grades one through six. During recess, we learned how to play a game called Rattlesnake in which 15-20 kids held hands and chanted R-A-T-T-L-E-S-N-A-K-E spells Rattlesnake while going under the arms of the first two kids on the line. By the end of the song, all the kids were linked in one huge twisted human chain and everyone would then sing R-A-T-T-L-E-S-N-A-K-E spells Rattlesnake once more while jumping up and down since no one could move an inch at this point. I’m not sure if I actually enjoyed this game, but at least it wasn’t Red Rover. On another occasion, the aides assigned to watch the first graders in the yard decided it would be fun to put on a Charlie Brown play during recess.  I thought this was a good idea until I was not cast for the obvious role, The Little Red Haired Girl, and at that point I decided Rattlesnake wasn’t such a bad game after all. 

During inclement weather, we had to spend recess in the auditorium where we were forced to sit in silence for 45 minutes while an aide with a Russian (or was it German?) accent screamed “Who’s talking???” anytime she heard a peep. On a few occasions, they would show some sort of film in the auditorium but this was before there were VCRs and DVDs or CDs and the pickings were slim. I remember once being shown a film about three kids who are walking through some woods alone and happen upon an abandoned refrigerator. One kid gets in and the others close the door. I’m not sure if the moral of the story was don’t get in a refrigerator and close the door or don’t trust your friends, but either way, it was a pretty creepy film to show kids in grade school. And besides, it’s not like there were any woods next to the apartment buildings we lived in, let alone abandoned refrigerators. I just couldn’t relate to the film. And if I really wanted to put myself in harms way, all I had to do was walk up to Queens Boulevard.

In the afternoons, following recess, we were often able to do more creative activities, like drawing. The eight-pack of Crayola Crayons mom purchased at the beginning of the school year paled in comparison to some of the other kids’ 64-packs (with a built in sharpener) and it was here that I realized the valuable lesson that not all things are equal, life isn’t always fair, and sometimes you have to improvise when drawing a cover for your Harold and the Purple Crayon book report when the closest thing to purple in your pathetic eight-pack of crayons is blue. These tough lessons prepared me well for the new challenges I would face in second grade when the work got harder, the teachers got stricter, and my eight-pack of crayons dwindled to four.

 

 

Quiet Down; It’s New Year’s Eve

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new-years-party-hatEvery New Year’s Eve at my house was basically a repeat of the year before. My parents were creatures of habit and had no expectation that January 1 would be any different than December 31 or March 12 for that matter. Nevertheless, they did try to create their version of a party scene which generally commenced around 9pm and ended at 12:01am until they realized we could start celebrating at 10 pm and wrap it up by 11:15 pm or earlier if we ran out of food.

I might have created high expectations for New Year’s Eve because this was the seasonal holiday that Cha-Cha’s family celebrated and every year in the 70’s they partied on New Year’s Eve like it was 1999. After most of the other kids had already broken or lost half the playing pieces from their recent Hanukkah and Christmas gifts, Cha-Cha was still waiting around for her loot which was kept under the tree until December 31. Between December 25 and December 31, I was frequently invited over to inspect her gifts by holding, measuring, and shaking them and taking educated guesses as to what might be inside the packages. For a kid who faked getting gifts, I was pretty good at guessing other people’s gifts or at least I could figure out the difference between a new shirt, a record album, and that bottle of Love’s Baby Soft that every 11-year-old girl hoped to receive as a gift and reeked from for years to come. I was allowed to stay at Cha-Cha’s house until the early evening, at which point I needed to leave so her family could prepare for the evening’s festivities. By 9 pm, their house basically resembled a nightclub; the bar was stocked and everyone changed into their fancy clothing while her mom blasted music that she was already dancing to.

Meanwhile, back at my house, dad had changed into his wife beater undershirt and mom was wearing a slightly more festive version of one of her housecoats with slippers. While the vibe at Cha-Cha’s house was 70’s style Studio 54, the vibe at my house was 70’s style Bowery.

The evening’s festivities included certain snack foods that never made an appearance at my house any other time than New Year’s Eve. Cocktails were served, but not the alcoholic kind. As a matter of fact, the only time of year I ever even saw my parents drink was New Year’s Eve, and even then it was usually a glass of champagne and never a cocktail. Yet the word cocktail seemed to be present in every food mom selected for the occasion. We often had Planter’s dry roasted peanuts during the year, but we had to wait until New Year’s Eve to get the cocktail peanuts. We ate hot dogs regularly but could only have cocktail franks on New Year’s Eve. Mom often made meatballs in tomato sauce, but only on New Year’s Eve could we have cocktail meatballs. I think my parents thought that if we were eating foods with the word cocktail in them, we were partying hard. One year, mom expanded the hor d’oeuvre list to include fondue, which she tried to pass off as dinner until January 5 when the cheese and bread supply were exhausted. By the next year we had switched to using the fondue maker to melt chocolate and dip fruit in it. It probably goes without saying that in my house, fruit and chocolate were never mixed on any other day.

For several years, while we had the piano that no one played, mom cleared all the junk off of it and for that one night only created a makeshift buffet table out of the piano top. If we put any food or even a tchotchke with a coaster under it on the piano any of the other 364 days of the year, mom would kill us. But on December 31, she let her hair down for a few short hours to ring in the New Year.

In between eating the fancier mini-sized versions of the same food I ate all year round, I would run into my room to check on Casey Kasem’s top 100 countdown that aired on the radio every New Year’s Eve documenting the top 100 songs of the year. I made a list of all 100 as they were counted down and tried to predict which songs would make the top 10. In 1975, I  started praying every day from November 1 on that the Captain & Tennille’s Love Will Keep Us Together would be the #1 song of the year. This consumed my thoughts from December 20 until New Year’s Eve and made it hard to eat or sleep until the big day. I jumped for joy when the song took first place and this was by far the most exciting thing I ever remember happening on New Year’s Eve. While most viewed the song as a silly little ditty about love, last time I checked,  the Captain & Tennille were still together, which is more than most people who were married in 1975 can say.

In the early years, before I discovered Casey Kasem and before anyone could pronounce the word fondue, my brother Jeffrey and I would try to figure out ways to create the party atmosphere that seemed so deficient in our home. One year we got the idea to take one of dad’s yellow legal pads and tear the paper into hundreds of tiny pieces. At midnight we threw it all in the air and screamed Happy New Year while watching our homemade confetti rain down on us. Dad was amused until about five seconds after midnight when he said, “Happy New Year and be sure to clean up all this pepairluch before you go to bed.” The New Year was off to a rocking start with us down on our hands and knees cleaning up our mess and counting down the 364 days we now had to wait for our next cocktail.

Sights, Smells, and Sounds From the G Train

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The subway line that was closest to my house was the G line. This line had been built decades before I was a rider and the trains looked like they were better suited for a war zone than a one-fare transportation zone in Queens. The cars were a horrific shade of army green that resembled what you might find inside a used tissue. The train always looked dusty and dirty, like it had just driven through a sand storm and taken a detour to observe some nuclear fallout. The sound of an incoming train barreling into the station was ear numbing, and while this was way before anyone had ever heard the term noise pollution, we were all sure repeated exposure to a screeching train would cause hearing loss. Luckily in the 80’s we all got Walkman players with headphones and opted for losing our hearing in a more civilized and pleasurable manner.

In order to get down to the subway platform, you had to navigate your way down a few flights of stairs that were often covered with cigarette butts, chewing gum, old newspapers, and occasionally someone who was asleep. Once you got downstairs, you had to make sure you had a subway token which was always mixed in with your loose change and took you hours to fish out. But at least there was no real skill necessary for inserting the token into the turnstile slot, unlike today where you get assorted messages after inserting your Metrocard like swipe again at this turnstile, too fast, too slow, insufficient fare, or do not pass Go; do not collect $200. Despite the ease of token insertion, the turnstiles were not without their own problems. They were made of thick slabs of wood that were old and stiff and could knock the wind out of you if you tried to push your way through them using your stomach rather than your hands (which I tried to do on numerous occasions).

Once you made your way through the turnstile there was yet another flight of stairs to descend to catch the train. If you were traveling with an adult, they would force you to take 5,000 steps back from the platform to avoid the obvious…tripping over your shoelace and being catapulted onto the track, landing smack on the third rail.

When the train arrived and the doors opened, you had the option of sitting in two types of seats. One seat had some sort of fake maroon leather that was usually ripped (nothing like the cool, plush pleather at Jahn’s); the other selection was the wicker yellow and green seat that gave your bottom the same sensation as sitting on a splintered bench at the Saxon Hall playground.

Frequently you couldn’t get a seat anyway, because during certain hours of the day the subways were quite crowded. In this situation, you would do your best to find a pole to hold on to. No kid dared lean on the doors to keep their balance, because their mother had already explained another obvious fact; it was quite likely that the wrong door, the one exposed to the open track, would accidentally open while you were leaning on it and you would once again fall on the tracks and die.

There was also the option of holding on to one of the straphangers that were placed on the ceiling of the train, above your fellow seated, more comfortable passengers, but that was never an option for me because I was too short to reach the straphangers. I’m actually still too short, but if I’m wearing my non-Instant Pants, non-altered jeans with high heels, I can loop my pinky finger in the handle and further steady myself by placing my other hand on a member of the nearby Mariachi band that often performs on my train route.

Once we began our journey on the G line, we would look to our parents for instructions on when to get off the train. This was challenging, even for seasoned train riders for several reasons. First of all, none of the train stations that I can remember had subway maps. And the trains that had maps were difficult to read and easily misinterpreted (kind of like the famous illusion that looks like a young woman to some and an old hag to others). If you were savvy enough to figure out the map, it was usually pointless anyway, since by 1972 all the subway maps were covered with graffiti and impossible to read. Stops were sometimes announced, but more often not and frequently any service change announcements were difficult to hear. The conductor’s message was announced over a crackling, buzzing intercom and you would have thought the guy was broadcasting from an Apollo moon mission instead of a few subway cars away. A typical service announcement might sound something like this. “Attention passengers, this train will be making all local stops until #$%* and then will switch over to the #@%$ line and make all express stops until %$#@ Street. Of course today it’s not much better and it’s not unusual to hear, “Attention passengers; there has been an incident at @#$% Street and $#@& people have been taken into custody after police spotted a suspicious %%$$ in lower %$#@.

To make matters worse, riders also had to contend with the extreme weather conditions that are always magnified when you are hundreds of feet below ground. The trains were cold in the winter, but the real memorable rides were in the summer. Trains did not have air conditioning back then, but instead had old rickety ceiling fans that looked like rejected wood token turnstiles and were just as inefficient for cooling or moving for that matter. Sweaty, grumpy passengers would open the train windows because back then you could and obviously the air circulating in an underground 103 degree inferno would bring much needed relief and a pleasurable scent to boot.

As I got older some of the ancient subway lines were replaced and the city contracted with a Japanese manufacturer to give us some spanking new trains with alternating orange and light orange? seats. The only problem was that the average Japanese ass is about half the size of an American one and we were stuck in seats with half our asses spilling into the seat of our fellow passengers. Call me crazy, but I believe there is a direct correlation between the introduction of these trains and the rise of liposuction in the greater New York area. Hey, it’s just a theory.

Despite my griping about the New York City subway system, I actually enjoy train rides and am in awe of the fact that I can travel across four boroughs, get to a beach, a zoo, the Empire State Building, or even the Shalimar Diner for under three bucks.

Zagat’s Guide to Tween/Teen Dining in Queens

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Before we had easy access to sushi and Thai food and the closest thing the neighborhood had to ethnic fare was Italian ices, we frequented a few neighborhood eateries that were more often than not dives, but hold many special memories. Here are just a few.

Jahn’s. Jahn’s was an area ice cream chain that looked like an old fashioned ice cream parlor with booths with red leather and stained glass light fixtures. You could get an amazing ice cream sundae with hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry and if you happened to be with a big spender you could grab a few spoonfuls of their Kitchen Sink, which was a trough of ice cream that could feed eight. It was probably a few dollars in the 1970’s, but the last time I checked the price it was $51.95. I don’t even have eight friends, let alone eight friends with more than six dollars to spend on an eighth of an ice cream sundae.

Jahn’s also had a party room downstairs and I had a birthday party there when I turned nine. In addition to the ice cream, I had live entertainment; my brother Jeffrey, who attempted to make animal balloons for our guests. He was shooting for dogs, but most of his creations ended up looking like huge phallus’. Fortunately, the ice cream made up for the lack of age appropriate party favors.

The Chow-Chow truck. The Chow-Chow truck was an Asian- influenced food truck that sold the best french fries in the world. I have no idea why french fries would even be on the menu with egg rolls and other Chinese food options, but I didn’t care and I would stop at nothing to savor a few of these grease-infused fries served in a cone-shaped paper cup. Usually by the time the Chow Chow truck made a stop by the school playground, we had already spent our money on ice cream. As an alternative to purchasing a cupful, we would stand on line near a paying customer and wait for some of the fries presented in the overflowing cup to fall out and into our waiting hands. We often missed and when the fries fell to the ground we applied the dubious five second rule…if we picked the fries up in five seconds or less, they were safe to eat. And we counted very slowly. Heck, let’s be honest; a few times people trampled on the fries that fell to the ground and we still picked them up and ate them. Yes, they were that good.

Alexander’s. In addition to being what I was sure was the largest department store in the world, Alexander’s had a full-service restaurant with pretty good hamburgers and great pickles served in a metal bowl. Most of my time at Alexander’s was spent in the record department purchasing 45’s (note to readers born after 1980: this was the 1970’s version of downloading a single song), looking at albums, or paying for toys I pretended my parents purchased for me, but occasionally I did get to eat at Alexander’s (usually when someone else was treating).

Queens Center Mall. The first real mall in the neighborhood opened when I was 11 and moving into prime shopping age. After browsing the assortment of tee-shirts from the popular Ancil House, a novelty store that pressed decals of various images onto shirts and added felt letters spelling out your name (the full name, not the initials; it’s totally different!) we worked up an appetite and needed to treat ourselves to some good eats in the food court. It was here that I got my first taste of all the crappy chain food that most New Yorkers are lucky enough to avoid, like Orange Julius and Panda Express.

Knish Nosh. Hungry but short on cash? No problem. Eat a knish from this popular eatery and enjoy the week and a half it takes to digest one of these things.

Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips. Truly disgusting and not worth the trauma of crossing The Boulevard of Death to get there. Why would anyone want to imitate British cuisine anyway? Mom refused to bring home McDonald’s or Burger King, but this was on the approved foods list.

Jay Dee Bakery. The Jay Dee Bakery was generally reserved for special occasions like school birthdays, visits from our grandparents, and the appearance of other relatives in our house which generally only occurred on leap years. My grandparents would stock up on the prune and cheese danish from this Hungarian Jewish bakery on their visits and usually throw in a pound or two of bakery cookies that looked much better than they tasted. Up until the age of six, I seriously considered pursuing a career as counter girl at the Jay Dee Bakery because I assumed the job entailed eating whatever baked goods you wanted and occasionally serving a customer.

White Castle. Oh, the thrill of walking into a hamburger joint and being able to order burgers by the dozen. The hamburgers were so small that 12 of them was the equivalent of one Swedish meatball. But the real treat for me at White Castle were the shakes. They were so thick that if you attempted to drink them with a straw you could easily have a brain aneurysm, so you quickly grabbed a spoon and opted for a major brain freeze instead.

Wine Gallery. We started going here in high school even though we were too young to be served wine.  If we were lucky, we would hang out with some 18 year old who managed to score a pitcher of sangria.  I’m not sure what the appeal of this place was, other than that it was a step up from White Castle, but I remember thinking you were with the “in crowd” if you were hanging out here.

Shalimar Diner. This was another “place to be seen” in high school. Kids seemed to end up here after every major school event even though it wasn’t located that close to the school. But it was open late and the over 50 waitresses in their orthopedic shoes seemed to tolerate the nonsense and mayhem that only a group of teenagers can cause. I think most of the guys ordered hamburgers here and most of the girls ordered sweets. The muffins were the size of softballs and a piece of cake was so big it came with its own zip code. I remember the food being fair, but the company always made up for it.

The hot dog cart lady. Outside the school playground there was an old German woman who had a hot dog vending cart. After we had spent our money on ice cream and eaten trampled on french fries, we scrounged around for five cents between five kids and asked the hot dog lady if she would give us five cents worth of sauerkraut. One of my friends once asked for two cents worth of mustard and I think this is where she finally drew the line.

Jewish Chinese food. Growing up, I ate the same Jewish Chinese food that all the reformed Jews in the neighborhood ate; spare ribs, pork fried rice, pork egg rolls, pork-filled wonton soup, and egg foo young. My parents ordered Chinese food every Friday night and it was always the same thing. Once I left home and occasionally visited my parents for this Friday night tradition, I would attempt to order something “outside the box” like chicken and broccoli and my father would look at me in disbelief and pray that this was just a phase I was going through and hope I would soon return to my senses and chow down on something that had pork in its name. The last time I had a spare rib was 1981. Sorry dad.

The Lemon Tree. This was a disco (it was the 70’s people!) that was open to kids under 18 on certain days of the week and served non-alcoholic beverages. I assume they served food too. I wouldn’t know. I never went. Perhaps I was waiting to be asked; I don’t know. I defer to my hipper friends to recount tales from The Lemon Tree. I have none,  even though I perfected my “hustle” in gym class in the 7th grade.

 

 

 

 

The Real Housewives of Queens County

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No memoir of growing up in Queens would be complete without including some thoughts about the moms that were such a big part of my early memories.

Harlan was one of my first childhood friends. He lived next door and his mom and my mom were friends which is rare because adults often can’t stand the parents of their kids’ friends and spend years praying one kid will bite the other so the parents have a legitimate reason to end the friendship. Harlan’s mom kept a candy dish in the living room that actually had candy in it. And I’m not talking about sucking candies or mints. Harlan’s mom always kept Chunky bars in the candy dish because Harlan’s dad worked for the company that manufactured them. His mom also introduced me to chocolate ices, another food we never had in our house, and she taught me how to turn over the ices to get at all the frosty, sugary gunk at the bottom. She worked at one of the neighborhood candy stores and would let us pick out a candy or sometimes a comic book. We always felt like VIPs going in the store and claiming our treats. That Harlan was a keeper…I don’t bite the hand that feeds me.

Cha-Cha was also an early childhood friend who lived in the building. Cha-Cha’s mom was beautiful and elegant and could wear a potato sack and everyone assumed she was wearing something from some fancy designer. She played Turkish music, danced around, and screamed a lot when a song came on that she liked. The house was decorated with Persian rugs placed over the mandatory wall-to-wall carpeting everyone had in apartments in the 70’s and the house always smelled of exotic foods, nothing like the TV dinner being served up at my house. She let us have multiple pieces of fruit with absolutely no repurcussions and let us make as much noise as we wanted to. Cha-Cha’s mom nicknamed me Bar-bree and showered me with the same affection she showed her own kids.

Once I entered grade school, my circle of friends expanded. Laurie’s mom wore her hair in two long ponytails and had jeans in multiple pastel colors. She would pick Laurie up from school with their huge English Setter in tow and invite me over to spend time with Laurie. Laurie’s mom made cakes from a mix and let us frost them. She took us for ice cream and sometimes even a hamburger at Alexander’s restaurant. She was frequently the mom on class trips and always had my back on the trips with Mr. Nelson’s class. She threw tree trimming parties and invited all the holiday-challenged Jewish kids to help with the decorations. She invited me and a group of our friends to the house to work on a research project for social studies where we attempted to recreate archeologist Louis Leakey’s discovery of Zinjanthropus using homemade clay she helped us make. Our skull head looked more like the Pillsbury dough boy than a 1.75 million year old skull, but Laurie’s mom told us it was great and luckily our teacher, Ms. Rifkin gave us an A.

Jackie’s mom made us hot chocolate (from a mix!) after we returned from sleigh riding with red cheeks and frozen asses.  She threw awesome birthday parties for Jackie where she would mimiograph copies of a Broadway play like the Makado and let us raid her closet and makeup drawer so we could perform the play with our scripts and costumes. I barely remember my own birthday parties, but Jackie’s were truly unforgettable.

Gaby’s mom was the youngest of all the moms. She wore bell-bottom jeans (maybe from Instant Pants?) and turtleneck sweaters with rainbow stripes. She always chewed gum and cracked it constantly Her house was spotless; the floors were shiny (this is the only apartment I remember without carpeting) and everyone was required to remove their shoes upon their arrival. Gaby once dared me to eat a piece of guinea pig food, which I did because I was stupid enough to do anything including putting toothpaste on my eyelids. Her mother found out and was not amused, but only Gaby got in trouble. Another time, a few of us went to Gaby’s house to work on a social studies project about the Pilgrims. We created a display on green oak tag that we were sure would earn us an A until Gaby called us the next morning to inform us that her little brother had thrown up all over the project the night before. Gaby’s mom scrubbed it clean, and while I noticed a few remnants of puke on the back side of the oak tag, Gaby’s mom saved us from getting an F.

Amy’s mom helped us make lemonade for our lemonade stand and gave us money to go buy some candy to sell with the lemonade.  We sold the candy for less money than we purchased it for and while she might have questioned our lack of basic math skills, she was glad to see us having fun. I think she’s also the mother who tipped my mom off to the Hair So New product, but she was so nice, I will forgive her for that one.

And then of course there’s my mom. Once or twice a year, she made these special apricot cookies that were very difficult and time consuming to make. I learned every curse word while watching mom make these things, but in the end it was worth it. My favorite part was watching her and later helping her make the frosting in four primary colors. Today these cookies are only made when grandchildren visit and usually only for the ones that live out of town (not mine). So now my nieces and nephew are cursing up a storm and the traditional lives on. My mom took me every year to see the Christmas windows at all the big department stores (perhaps to make up for the whole Santa debacle) and to the annual Purim Carnival which must have been mind-numbing for her. She taught me how to ride a bike in Alexander’s parking lot, how to float on my back at the pool, and how to trace pictures using wax paper when I needed to decorate a cover for a book report.

I’m sure there were so many other wonderful facets to these women, but as with many memories, it always seems to be the little things that stand out. A kind word, an interesting mannerism, a special recipe, a different way of doing things…these are the memories that are indelibly etched in my mind.

 

I Crossed Queens Boulevard…and Lived!

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Queens Boulevard is a major thoroughfare that runs throughout a large section of central Queens and ends at the 59th Street Bridge which connects Queens to Manhattan. When I was in grade school, it also served as a barometer of sorts for how much autonomy your friends had or how little their parent’s cared about their well-being and safety. Here’s why.

Queens Boulevard was so dangerous that the locals affectionately referred to it as “The Boulevard of Death” or “The Human Bowling Alley.” Every year you would hear stories about someone who was mowed down while trying to cross the gauntlet of traffic lanes and islands that made up this road.

Most of the parents had strict rules when it came to getting across Queens Boulevard. Many allowed their kids to get from one side of the boulevard to the other by crossing via the underpass available at the G train subway stop. It’s questionable whether this was actually a safer option, because the subway system in the 1970’s was pretty seedy and smelly, but several parents believed crossing underground was the lesser of two evils.

Either because no rule had ever been put in place by my parents regarding Queens Boulevard, or because they already had two kids that had survived it, I started crossing it on my own at age eight. Sometimes kids with the “no crossing rule” crossed anyway in an act of defiance, but that always seemed to backfire as their parents ultimately found out. It was like there was some sort of invisible parent safety patrol or network of parents that secretly transmitted information about their kids’ whereabouts via Morse code or smoke signals (which was the closest thing to text messaging in the 70’s).

Despite the fact that I was allowed to cross Queens Boulevard, I didn’t take the mission lightly. We would start gearing up for the journey across about a block before we got there, plotting how we would make it across the multiple lanes without having to stop on one of the islands due to a red light. Sneakers were mandatory and even once I was in high school and was parading around in my Candies, even I considered this unsuitable footwear for a trip across Queens Boulevard.

Once we arrived at the street crossing we would press the button to signal that we wanted to cross the street (which I have since learned is one of the biggest mind-f@$% out there, since pressing that button has no correlation to when the light changes). Once the light turned green, you would grab your friend’s hand and run as fast as you could, trying to get to the other side which was pointless because making it across on one light was as likely as winning the lottery. You were then forced to wait on the island until the light changed again, which from an eight-year old’s perspective, took hours.

You may be wondering, what was so great about Queens Boulevard anyway, and why were we willing to risk our lives to cross it. Well, if you lived on the north side of Queens Boulevard, you had to cross it to get to Instant Pants, Baskin Robbins or the jewelry shop once your mom said you were old enough to have your ears pierced. (interesting side note-my mom thought it was safe to cross Queens Boulevard at age eight, but getting my ears pierced was deemed unsafe before age 11).  If you lived on the south side of the boulevard, you had a more important reason to cross the boulevard which was to get to Alexander’s department store, which was one of the best places for records, toys, and even pickles which were served in their restaurant.

In recent years, the city of New York has put in new measures to improve the safety of Queens Boulevard, and 2011 marked the first year where zero fatalities occurred from pedestrian crossings. Recently, the city put in new traffic lights with timers to let pedestrians know how much time they have left before the light turns red. I’m on the fence as to whether this makes the boulevard safer or not. When I see the light, I am immediately drawn back to my eight year old much nimbler self and I often assume that seven seconds is plenty of time to cross from start to finish. But I’ve successfully made it across every time, even in my high-heeled shoes.

You Call This Candy?

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candyI don’t claim to be an expert on many things, but I do consider myself somewhat of a candy aficionado, particularly when it comes to chocolate. In the early days, before we were old enough to go to the store and get the family dessert on our own, my dad would come home with a candy bar for each of us. He would throw the loot on the couch (because the piano was already full) and we would get to select a Milky Way, Snickers Bar, Three Musketeers Bar, or Hershey Bar. He always brought chocolate and since then, I have always been a bit of a snob when it comes to candy. Once we were old enough to go with friends to the store to buy candy, I was often surprised by their ill-informed, non-chocolate selections (yes, perhaps I was a bit judgmental). Below are a few of their misguided choices.

Wax harmonicas. Play a little tune on the wax harmonica and when you get bored with that, chew on the flavored wax. Yum.

Wax bottles. These gems offered equal chewing pleasure, but before you chewed, you could down the putrid warm liquid inside the wax filled bottles that tasted like the liquid polio vaccines of the 60’s.

Candy necklaces. Fashionable. Functional. Edible. Kids would wear these necklaces and try to eat them at the same time, nearly chocking themselves while trying to get the chalky candy into their mouth.

Partridge Family Bubble Gum. While the boys were buying bubble gum with baseball cards, the girls were buying Partridge Family gum which came with a poster of one of the famed Partridges. Unfortunately, the coveted Keith Partridge poster seemed to only be in one out of every million packs, and after acquiring three posters of Laurie, one of fellow ginger, Danny, and one of that little brother who I’m sure never touched a real drum kit in his life, I gave up.

Red Hots. The kids who selected these candies at the store were the dare devils and the ones always challenging authority. By age 9 they were probably using heroin.

Lemon Heads. Same idea as above but these kids opted for Quaaludes (like some of the other candies on the list, Quaaludes too have been discontinued).

Good N Plenty. You already know how I feel about black licorice. 

Black Jack Gum. So now you expect me to not only eat black licorice, but keep it in my mouth for hours on end?

Halvah. I don’t remember any kids actually buying this at the candy store, but my dad bought it and kept it in the house from time to time. This was the family’s candy equivalent of really bad cookies. This actually did last in time for dad to claim it, because we would sooner eat really bad cookies than halvah.

Marzipan. I have no words to explain this. I just never understood marzipan.

Jelly Fruit Slices. These only made an appearance in our house during Passover, when we broke out the “religious desserts” which included Manischewitz macaroons in a can and these sorry-ass mouth-puckering excuses for candy.

Milk Duds. Yes, they were duds. On your first bite, the candy became lodged in your lower molar and stayed there until your next visit to the dentist.

Jaw Breakers. For the kids who had too much spare time on their hands and were willing to dedicate the muscle and brawn necessary to crack these things.

Candy Cigarettes. The packaging for these was frighteningly realistic and you could buy them in chocolate or bubble gum flavor. The bubble gum ones had a sugar-based powder on them that enabled you to pretend you were blowing real smoke. Oy.

Pretzel Rods. This is what you ended up buying when you didn’t have enough money for real candy. The rods were in a large plastic container at the front counter and you could pick your own ,which often entailed touching every single one to find the right one, which was delightful, because inevitably, the kid who picked his own before you had also recently picked his nose.

To my dentist’s delight, I still eat chocolate just about every day (fortunately, I gave up the chocolate cigarettes decades ago). And every time I have a piece of chocolate, I’m reminded of the happy sound of the thunk of those candy bars hitting the couch and the wonderful memory of greeting my dad with a big hug upon his arrival home from work.