Reply #39: What a beautiful account of your childhood! You have me yearning for a pastrami sandwich with a

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

knish right now! The pastrami sold here is way too lean. I did have an excellent deli a few blocks from where I lived in Kew Garden Hills, Queens.

I was born in Queens, moved for several years to LI and moved back to Howard Beach, Queens when I was 10 then to Kew Garden Hills, Queens at 12. These 2 areas of Queens were a lot less urban from where you grew up in Astoria. From the time I was 6 I was very independent, wandering and exploring and playing for hours outside of my homes. On Long Island, my most favorite places were nearby woods, where I loved to sit and read with no sense of time. I don't think my Mom ever had a clue where I was, nor did she limit me. She and my Dad were born and raised in Brooklyn, and had their own freedom in their youth.

When we moved to Kew Garden Hills, I walked with new friends to the 1964 Worlds Fair (my brother worked there). Being in a 2 fare zone, without a subway or in your case, an el, right nearby, I didn't venture with friends into Manhattan and Brooklyn (Coney Island of course) until I was older than you were. I was 14. I loved theater and would save up my allowance, and once a month catch Broadway matinees, balcony seats cost $5.00. Manhattan became my weekend playground, and when I got a little older, one of the places I went to when I cut out of high school, the other place was Queens College which was across the street from my home. I would sit in on much more interesting classes. When I went into "the city", I used to go down to the Village and hang out in Washington Square Park, listening to folk music. Check out the stores in the East Village, or go uptown to the Metropolitan Museum and touch Van Gogh paintings (no one caught me) or play in Central Park. At 15 I went to the Be-In on Easter Sunday in the park, and I fell in love for the first time, and received my first real deep kiss (inside the NY State Theater at Lincoln Center) and these were 2 different guys!

Also at 15 I started to go into the city at night and saw free concerts in Central Park ... the ones I remember vividly, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, Linda Ronstadt, and Barbra Streisand's huge concert. After the Collins/Cohen concert, my friends and I decided to see how many cigarettes we could bum off of people (we didn't smoke), and we hit pay dirt at The Plaza Hotel and I asked the doorman if he had any cigarettes. He asked us to wait a minute, went inside this grand hotel, and came out with a carton of Marlboros. We said thanks, proceeded down Fifth Avenue when we saw a homeless man sleeping on the steps of St. Thomas' Church. We woke him up and gave him the carton and left before he realized what happened to him. There were also free concerts at St. Mark's Church in the East Village. I saw King Kong at Buruch College on a big screen, haunted Horn and Hardart's Automats, and saw experimental art films for free. This was the late 60s and the time and place was exciting.


The Catskills was where my parents would take me on vacation for 2 weeks out of the year in the summer. They moved up to So. Fallsburg and then to Monticello for a few years when my Dad first retired.