Walking Home from School - A Photo Essay

More photos from my last sojourn to Mount Vernon, New York. I am replicating here the sights I would have seen as I walked home from school. Both my junior high and my elementary schools were within walking distance of my home. I had no clue what the inside of a school bus looked like unless, of course, we went on a field trip to some incredibly dull museum. Washington Junior High was on 6th Avenue. Grimes Elementary School was on 11th Avenue. I lived on 15th Avenue. Do the math and connect the dots. It was all walkable.

This is the cavernous auditorium of my junior high school. Now it's an elementary school named after Nellie Thornton, whoever the hell she was. The best part of going to this school was going to assembly in a hall that was as huge as the Yankee Stadium upper deck. Tough shot to get any spitball onto the stage.
Grimes Elementary...or what's left of it. This could be Berlin in 1945 for all I know. On the far left windows (boards, really) of the first floor was my sixth grade class with homeroom teacher Mrs. Hartmann. Who knows? They could still be using the school and the window treatments are used as practical lessons for some class that teaches 10 year-olds what it's like to be a hostage.My first stop on the way home would be this grocery store for a snack. These days, it's probably a crack den with convenient sidewalk parking. I remember the place didn't feature name brands. Instead of Wise or Lay's potato chips, you had Tom's. No Hostess or Drake's Cakes either. It was some other knockoff bakery. It all went down the gullet nonetheless and fortified you for that long four-block trek home. Midway through your hike home along Second Street, the incline changed sharply. When I was seven, this was a steep hill that required the aid of a sherpa. I look at it now and the real challenge is stepping through all the trash on the sidewalk.As I am ready to make the turn onto 15th Avenue from Second Street, this was the house I saw. Well, sort of. We thought it was haunted. Back when, the yard was covered with trees so the mystery was enhanced. Now, the place is probably nothing more than a safehouse for two dozen or so illegal Haitians.On the other side of the street (my side of the street), these two homes are the first ones I would pass. The house on the right is where these two little kids, Guy and Michael, lived with their mother who had this Cockney accent. The neighborhood legend is that, while sliding down a slick street sign, Michael castrated himself. Never proven. The house next door is where the first Black family to enter our neighborhood planted themselves. Indeed, the first Blacks were the Browns. Four boys who didn't look remotely related, except for all sharing the same mother. Also suspected but never proven.Across the street we find the home of one of the really lunatic kids, Dominick. I've heard he turned out to be a respectable adult, but back then, he was criminally insane. The kind of kook who ran around always putting bugs in a jar to watch them die. Dominick also loved to put me into a head lock for no reason. If I had been even the least bit litigious as a ten year-old, I would have hauled this shithead into jail for assault and battery. Never liked him and the fact that his home is now being auctioned to some lowlife for $50,000 is a wonderful tribute to his legacy.The home of my childhood best friend, Leo, who remains in my life to this day and often comments here as "15thavebud." We did everything together from the age of five through high school. Movies, baseball games, Strat-o-Matic, Tibbets Brook Pool and Good Humor ice cream in the summer. The home on the left is where another childhood best friend, Dolores, lived. Also still around and she is the mother of my pseudo nephews and my goddaughter. Bright lights in an otherwise bizarre group of neighborhood psychopaths.
This is the house that was next door to ours. Except during the first eight years of my life when it was a vacant lot. When the house was being built, we loved to hide in it and essentially turn trespassing into an art form. The first occupants were this older Jewish family. The man, Max, was a baker and I will never forget the day he came over to introduce himself. He told us that we would never have to buy bread again as he would bring it to us fresh every morning. And he did just that until the day he died. My family was also probably the first Christian people they ever befriended. They came to my grandfather's wake and said it was the first time they ever went to a Christian funeral. Nice people. Even nicer pumpernickel.Ta da!! My house. The home of me and my parents (second floor) and my grandparents on the first floor. There are now three satellite dishes there and I am sure my grandmother would be wondering if the owners are trying to contact the moon. The flagpole is still there. My grandmother religiously ran the flag up there on all holidays and she taught me how to fold it in proper military style. There are bars all over the windows on the first floor, so I am guessing that there is a soupcon of crime now in this hellhole of a neighborhood. The green and white aluminum siding remains as it should. My grandmother paid a lot of money to have it installed. The process took one whole summer and pretty much took over the backyard. On the stoop in front of the house, Leo and I would spend many a late and warm summer evening sitting and talking. About what? We were 13 year-olds. There were a host of topics before us---from Mickey Mantle to nuclear disarmament. Another angle and the first window on the second floor was my room right up until college when I escaped. But, just to show you that all was not idyllic at 11 South 15th Avenue, here's the view we had.This ugly apartment building which housed we don't know what. I heard that, when my grandparents bought the house in 1948, they were challenged as to why they would buy a home across the street from an apartment house. My grandmother scoffed and probably waved off all the suggestions. She ultimately was sorry she did as the neighborhood turned rancid when this apartment complex did. And it never was the same again. God knows what's in there now. Perhaps another four dozen or so illegal Haitians. Okay, now that I'm home from school and I have changed into my play clothes, maybe I can go get an ice cream treat from the Carvel stand. Except I'm now apparently out of luck unless I'm dying for a chocolate covered mango or a plantain split.

Or maybe Leo and I have some time for a little pre-dinner softball game at the vacant lot around the corner. Except that's now an even more vacant-looking row of townhouses. Who would want to live there now? With a great view of some radial tires. The Firestone outlet was there when we were playing, so, at least, there is one or two constants in an otherwise dismal series of urban un-developments. Change that nobody can believe in.

The pictures are current, while the memories are not. But, still, in my mind, nothing is more vivid than those years on 15th Avenue.

Time to do my homework.

Dinner last night: Prime rib birthday dinner at Dal Rae in Pico Riviera.