MOVING DAY
And now for
the conclusion of My Bronx Tale.
On October
30, 1960, fifty-two years ago today, my family left the Bronx and moved out to
Long Island to a town called Centereach. Yup, it’s about in the center of the
Island. The reason we moved was because the plastics factory where my Dad
worked was relocating from the Bronx to Bohemia, a town close to MacArthur Airport
on Long Island.
Saying
Goodbye
We left the
Projects by car, although I am not sure who the car belonged to. It may have
been Richard Serrano’s car. The Serrano’s were our closest friends. You read
about them in previous posts. Mom said Richard
had a car because his barber shop was in Harlem which wasn’t easy to get to
by bus.
My brother
Mike told me yesterday that all of the neighborhood kids stood in the lollipop waving
goodbye as we drove away. He remembers looking out the back window of the car and
waving back. He said we were all sad to be leaving our friends. I imagine we
were.
The ride
out to our new home seemed to take forever. I remember we stopped a few times
because we thought we had a flat tire. Thump, thump, thump. Someone in the car,
maybe my mother, kept saying it sounded like we had a flat tire so we'd stop and someone would get out and look at all the tires. It turned out
it was just road noise. To the untrained or inexperienced ear, those breaks in
the pavement can make it sound like you have a flat.
Our New
House
Mom and Dad
purchased a cape cod style house in Centereach. It had a small eat-in kitchen, an
equally small living room, a really small bathroom, two bedrooms on the first
floor and two unfinished rooms on the second floor. It also had an unfinished full
basement. It sat on a lot a little less than a quarter acre in size.
Me and my
oldest brother Bill had the two rooms upstairs. Mike and Ricky had bunk beds in
the room downstairs next to Mom and Dad’s room. Several years later when Bill
graduated and went into the Air Force, I moved downstairs so Mike and Ricky
could have the upstairs. I remember Mom’s dismay when she discovered the wall
map of the United States that hung in the boys bedroom was used by Mike for target practice with his BB gun. There
were tons of little holes in the wall!
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This is a color
picture of our house taken in 1962.
I am using it so you can you see that the
shingles are pink.
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What can I
say? I lived in a pink house. I think it was the only pink house on the block.
Mom and Dad paid $9,000 for it. I’m not sure if that was the going rate then or
if it was that cheap because of the color! :-) I remember whenever I would give anyone
directions to my house, I would say, “It’s the fourth house on the right. It’s
the pink house.”
The
Neighborhood
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One of the
first pictures taken of our street, Reizen Avenue.
Funny that Mom had to put an
X over our house so she would
know which one it was. It’s hard to see, but that
is me,
Mike and Ricky on the front lawn with our Dad.
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There were lots
of kids in the neighborhood. Linda Vitale, a year younger than me, lived across
the street and we became fast friends. Henry McDowell lived next door and he
was the same age as my brother Mike. Henry was the second boy I thought I was
going to marry if things didn’t work out with me and Richie. I guess I was a
little boy crazy!
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This is the
basic layout of the neighborhood today.
I didn’t venture much past Reizen
Avenue except to go to my friend
Gail Casserly’s house on Dianne Avenue. Coles Drive
came in off
Middle Country Road (Rt 25). It was the only way in or out of the
neighborhood.
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The day
after we moved was Holloween. We loved Holloween! Trick or treating in a nine
story apartment building with eight apartments on each floor was very lucrative…and
easy. Trick or treating in our new neighborhood was outdoors and required a lot
of walking, but who cared—we were kids. We pulled together some lame costumes
and with our newfound friends, off we went. People were generous and we came
home with lots of candy and treats.
Our First
Car
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Spring 1961 - standing
with Dad next to our new car.
We were
getting ready to go visit friends we left behind in the Bronx.
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With buses
and trains, you didn’t absolutely have to have a car in the City. That was not
the case on Long Island. To get to work Dad had someone he worked with pick him up each day. I imagine that was a pain. It wasn’t long after that my parents purchased a car. It was a 1954 Ford Customline 4-door sedan. It was nice having our own car and not relying on others to take us places.
I have to say that I am
thankful that my parents decided to leave the City and move to the Island. I
have great memories growing up there and can only believe my life was better
because of it.
This concludes my six part miniseries, My Bronx Tale. For those
of you who have stuck with me for all six episodes, thanks for being loyal. As
a writer, I am not always certain that what I write about will be of interest
to any of my readers, but I write it anyway. That’s what writers do.
Be blessed,
~ P
