The Road To The Poconos – A Street View

This morning, I took a magical memory tour, of sorts, thanks to Google Maps.

I may have harmed a brain cell or two as I strained to remember many of the stops along the way that have brought me to the present.

All of the photos in this post, except the last one, were obtained using Google’s street view feature.

This is the building in Brooklyn where I lived from age five through twelve. My mom, my five siblings, and I lived on the second floor. Two memories stand out from this place: (1) the bathroom was in the hallway, and (2) we weren’t allowed to play in the backyard because my Mom did not want to impose on the landlord, who lived downstairs. In fact, we were not allowed to play out on the street either. We did our running around when we all went to the park together. Mom didn’t want us to be street kids. Mom’s a smart lady. Instead, we played a lot of inside games.  She felt that it was safer this way.

Our parochial school, Fourteen Holy Martyrs, was just a half a block away. The school has since closed, but I recently came across a Facebook page of people who went there and remember it fondly. There was one girl with a very unique name who I liked back then. Being the nerdy, gawky, alter boy kid that I was, I never told her. She was listed on that Facebook page and I sent her a “Hi, how you doin’?” message. She responded with an Email, but ignored my friend request.

How’s that for an ending to a story that was thirty-eight years in the making?

Strangely, the thing that I remember most about going to school, back then, is that there seemed to always be an afterschool fight across the street at Halsey High. Two kids would square off as students gathered around. After a lot of whooping and hollering, a few punches would be thrown – some would connect – the fight ended and everyone would leave.

My family moved to The Bronx in 1972. For us kids, this was a great improvement. The apartment was much bigger and we had Crotona Park across the street. The park’s many baseball fields and lighted handball courts provided us with a great place to run and play. Summers were great there.  I loved that park.

As teens, my brother Rafael and I would take the subway down to the City and hit the discos. Although under age, we never had any problems getting in. It was great! One of our favorite clubs was ipanema. It’s gone through many name changes since then.  It’s currently called TOUCH. I remember my brother and I freezing our butts off on our way home from those clubs because, for some reason, we thought that it was more important to look cool than to dress warmly.

I don’t know how we arrived at that conclusion.

I rented two other apartments in the Bronx and spent some time back home before my future wife and I moved to Queens. We lived in Lefrack City. Like any large development, there seemed to always be bad news being reported about that place.  We had no problems during the time that we lived there, so we stayed for many years. Twelve years ago, we decided to leave the City, so we moved to the Poconos in Pennsylvania.

There are some things that I miss about New York, like Broadway shows, the subways, the Mets, and the 24-hour lifestyle. But we’ve come to enjoy the slower pace of life in the Poconos and the peace and serenity that comes with it.

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Have you used Google Maps and their street view feature to visit some of your old stomping grounds? Are the places that you remember fondly from many years ago still there?

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Tagged as: brooklyn, covert street, disco, fourteen holy martyrs school, grammer school, ipanema, lefrack city, New York, poconos, queens, ray colon, raycolon, The Bronx, the road to the poconos – a street view, Tobyhanna

Author Bio:

Ray Colon has written 136 posts on Ray's Blog.

He works with numbers for a living, but don't judge - boring accountants need love too. His blog has no niche (unless writing about things that are important to him is a niche). Some folks cringe when he gets “all political” on them, but he does it anyway when he's in that kind of mood. Sometimes, he writes something nice about someone, but you shouldn't get used to that. His first book, the one he hasn't written yet, is not available on Amazon. Subscribe to Ray's Blog via RSS  or Email.

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