Everything old is new again

Innovations in shopping?

One of my father’s favorite jokes was about the telephone company. “Someday, the telephone will get so advanced that all when you pick up the receiver, someone at the other end will say, ‘number please.’”

This week at a technology meeting in Portland, the invited speaker told about a supermarket chain in southern New England where you can use special hand-held devices while shopping that scans your items as you put it in your cart and when you get to the checkout you hand over the device and the sale is already totaled up for you. This “shoppers’ convenience” was imperfect, according to the speaker, who envisioned that a better device would know where you were physically in the store and be able to offer you more services as you shopped. I thought, well that will probably be available in the next version.

Today, I read a NewYork Times article about Instacart, a two-year-old grocery delivery start-up that is now available in some larger US cities. The article explains, “When you buy groceries from Instacart, the company summons a green-shirted ‘personal shopper’ through the firm’s smartphone app. The shopper receives your list, scurries through a grocery store to pick up your items and then heads across town in his own car to deliver your stuff.” New idea?

Both these stories, and my father’s old joke had me reflecting on my childhood in Brooklyn, NY and made me think that we were now seeing was a re-invention of an old idea.

Myrtle Avenue, the business nexus of the Clinton Hill/FortGreen neighborhood where I spent my youth was a panoply of small businesses that provided for the wants and needs of the tens of thousands of local citizens. In those days, the large, one-stop-shop megastores and shopping malls were still futuristic, albeit we did have a couple of smaller, locally-owned supermarkets (Bohacks, A&P, and Key Food), but these carried a very limited line of products and were tiny as compared to my 50,000 sq. ft. local Hannaford in Augusta, Maine.

Competing in the next block of Myrtle Avenue were butcher shops, bakeries, greengrocers (stores that sold fresh produce), drug stores, fish markets, and hardware stores. In those days we had local clothing stores, shoe stores, and even a store that sold notions – whatever they are. There were also a host of smaller grocery stores and delicatessens that even had prepared foods. Add to that several smaller restaurants and pizzerias.

And all these stores “picked out” your item and offered free local delivery.

Add to this list, the local Laundromat, several dry cleaners, liquor stores, and even a florist. They all delivered and many of them offered free credit to local customers. This was a time before revolving credit cards. I think my father got his first Uni-Card (later to become VISA) in the mid-1960s. Many neighbors would purchase their daily groceries, have them delivered and pay off their bill at the end of the month. In many cases, we would pay the delivery guy with cash and he would even make change (“Make sure you tell that when you call in the order to bring change for a ten!”).

Yes, I think we have gone in a full circle. Number please!

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Photo credit: Found on line at New Yorks Past

'I Became a Catholic and Found Happiness'

This text was written by my father, Arnold Brandt in 1959 at the time he converted to Catholicism and just before he received the sacrament of Confirmation at the Church of St. Joseph on Pacific St.. It was published in The Tablet, the Catholic faith newspaper of Brooklyn. This article was transcribed from a yellowing proof version that I found among his possessions after his death in 1996. 

In one of his last acts as pope, Benedict XVI designated the Pacific Street church as co-cathedral of the Brooklyn Diocese – sharing responsibilities with the smaller St. James Cathedral Basilica in Downtown Brooklyn. The churches will house the chair of the bishop, and split duties hosting major diocesan events. Read more about this church in the NY Times...

ONE OF SUNDAY'S CONVERTS

Arnold E. Brandt

This coming Sunday, May 25 (1959), I will be one of the converts to be confirmed at St. Joseph's Church, Brooklyn. Last Saturday I received my first Holy Communion when my six-year-old daughter (Sigrid) received hers. Anyone who has received these Sacraments knows what a happy week this has been for my family and myself.

Both my parents were born in Sweden, but they were brought to this Country when they are quite young. Living in a small Connecticut city (Hartford), they first met when they joined with other young people of Scandinavian background in a program of building a new church. The church, of course, was Lutheran, because the Swedes have been Lutherans for many centuries.

My father (Eric Brandt) at one time had though of entering the Lutheran ministry. In preparation for entering a seminary, he finished two years of college. But then he decided not to go on for the ministry.

Worked for Government

The home in which I grew up with my brothers and sisters was a religious one, which mirrored the deep faith and devotion of both my parents. Sundays in my family mean attendance at church service. And among my earliest recollections are the small cookies, tasting vaguely perfume, which my thoughtful mother would slip from her purse, to quiet a small boy who sometimes squirmed in the pew when is concentration on the services began to waver.

My mother died the day after I graduated from high school (Hartford Public HS). With her death and my preoccupation with finding a career, I gradually drifted from any steady religious practice.

After moving from job to job, finally I was accepted for a government post in Washington, D.C. Anxious to improve myself, I applied for admission to Georgetown University while working in the capital. Previously my attempts to enter other schools had been frustrated by lack of money. The Jesuit Fathers at Georgetown raised no such barrier.

This new effort to continue my education was applauded in many quarters and, in particular, by one of my fellow workers (name?) who himself resigned to take "a better job." He entered the seminary and is now a priest.

War interrupted the cycle of work and education for me. After the war, however, I was back in the same pattern. As I continued At Georgetown, I learned a great deal about Catholicism.

Upon graduation, I received a very fine promotion on my job, which brought me from Washington to New York. My first date in New York was with a beautiful girl (Marcella) who worked in the same office. This wonderful girl was a graduate of a Catholic college. We continued to date. We often discussed religion. And I talked and talked over again about the Catholic Church.

Well, we were married by the priest (Rev. Philip Shannon). We have been blessed with three wonderful children.

Early in our married life we attended Mass together. But with the arrival of babies it seemed a pleasant arrangement for me to stay home and take care of the family while my wife went to church.

Our oldest girl entered a Catholic school. I was impressed with the training she is receiving. I knew that soon she would be receiving her first Holy Communion. I decided that I must receive mine along with her.

Accordingly, I made the special effort required to get to early Mass on Sundays, so that I still would be able to take care of the little ones when my wife would go later. I learned to follow the beautiful action of the Mass by use of a missal which my wife had given me. I read the Latin. A language which I first had been able to decipher almost forty years earlier when I stumbled across a Latin grammar among my father's old books.

Thought I already knew quite a bit about the Catholic religion, I realized that I still needed some systematic instruction. And so, I attended one of the instruction centers of the Diocesan Apostolate. Happily I became a Catholic in time to make my First Communion the same day my little girl received hers.

I have many friends who have been Catholics all their lives. I had to find my way in the Church for myself. With my heartfelt thanks to those many friends, who prayed for me, I now can tell them that at last I have found way into the Catholic Church. I have been helped to this complete conversion by the grace of God, the good example of my wife and the blessing of my children.

Smoking Punk

Someone posted a message in the Jean Shepherd listserv today about "smoking punks." I knew exactly what he was talking about. He wrote:

PUNKS, a primal odor that must be encoded into our DNA.

As kids, we'd light a punk and hold it between our teeth. It was supposed to repel mosquitoes but the real attraction was the curling tendrils of delicate smoke. I imagine Paleolithic campfires smelled like punks.

Years passed and the ancient folkways disappeared. DEET reigned supreme. It may be toxic but, by gum, it does the job.

But my take on "smoking punks" took a different bend. I responded:

Wow this brings a blast to some hidden recesses of my brain. Haven’t thought of “punks” – at least not this type – for a long time. Their official purpose was supposed to be for the lighting off of illicit fireworks which of course were illegal in NYC. Every summer for several years I would invest in a package and “smoke” them surreptitiously around the old Brooklyn neighborhood. I am not sure if the punks were the only attraction. I was a bit of a pyro in those days and the use of illicit matches was also an allure.

Apparently the circumstances were different in Connecticut where we traveled each summer for our annual two week vacation. There the use of punks as an insect repellant was totally acceptable and we were allowed to “smoke” them. There was even an old 8mm home movie of me circa 1963 sitting around a campfire with punk in mouth. Yes, yes, I was communing with my Paleolithic ancestors…

Thankfully, the film was lost, but I think I still have some scars on my hands and wrists from burns associated with the careless use of the dang things.

And if, after reading this, you need to go and invest in some punk to smoke. Here are some links where you can still buy the stuff.

Vermont Country Store

Sparklers, Smoke, etc.

Big fireworks

Old Pictures

I was cruising the web one night when I came upon a website devoted to a late 19th - early 20th Century French artist named Maurice Utrillo. I remembered that, as a child, we had "prints" of several of Utrillo's works hanging up in our Brooklyn apartment living room. I think they survived the move out to Queens in the early '70s and were hung in our "rumpus room" basement. I hadn't thought of the name for years and as a curiosity, sought out and found two images which I recall.

From reading Utrillo's bio on Wikipedia, he died in 1955 around the time my parents got married and set up the apartment. I suspect they were prints that someone either gave them as a present, or perhaps my mother liked them and purchased them for the new apartment. We'll never know. But here are the prints. I've including information below where these came from if you are interested in purchasing them. No copyright violations are intended. The bottom one I believe is entitled: Le Maison de Mimi (Mimi's house). Not sure about the top one. Anyone know?

Photos from two locations: All Experts; SuperStock

Gluey the glue-worker's working!

Digital photo taken by User:Postdlf Licensed through Creative Commons

When I was a child in the 50s and 60s, we would often travel along Greenpoint Ave on our way from Clinton Hill to my grandmother's home in Sunnyside, Queens. This necessitated a trip over the Greenpoint Ave. Bridge which crosses Newtown Creek. There was a glue factory on the east side of the shore that appeared to be the primary source of the "fragrance" that was everpresent in that location. From the back seat of the car we kids would announce in unison, "Gluey the glue-worker's working!"

Now, I see someone has finally started to do something about "the stench.". According to the Gotham Gazette, Newtown Creek has been nominated to be listed on the controversial federal Superfund funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. According to the GG, "Newtown Creek is the site of the country’s largest coastal oil spill, dating back to the 1950s when the site was the home of a refinery operation by Standard Oil — Exxon Mobil’s predecessor."

No mention of Gluey...I think that if they go ahead with this plan they will find that there was a lot more than one oil spill and they will find a few dead horses at the bottom of that creek.

I also predict it will be another 50 years before the smell goes away.

See also NY Times article on the same topic - including a photo from the bridge by: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

~jeb

Free range kids

Just got finished reading an article in Edutopia called "A Conversation with Lenore Skenazy on Free-Range Kids." You may have heard about Skenazy. She's the mother who became an unwitting international celebrity when she allowed her nine-year-old son to take the New York City Subway home from Bloomingdales in an effort to allow him to experience some independence. As I recalled the story that took place some time ago, I found myself remembering my own childhood growing up in Brooklyn and the freedom we had then.

Growing up in Clinton Hill in the late 50s and early 60s was an ideal experience. Kids at that time were allowed to travel away from the womb in increasing expanding concentric circles until the umbilicus was snapped from stretching. This was quite a feat for me considering my mother was not one to let her little darling steer too far too fast. Still, by the time I was 10, I was regularly hopping onto the Vanderbilt Ave. bus and traveling with my (slightly) older sister up to the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza.

By my mid-teen age years I had free reign of the "City that Never Sleeps" and eventually could be found taking the subways in the wee hours of the night.

My greatest feat of early-adolescent independence took place when I was about 12 or 13. At the time, my concentric circle of freedom and independence had expanded to about 3-4 blocks in all directions. Whether on foot, bicycle or roller skate, the opportunities and adventures continued to expand.

That summer, like most boys growing up in NYC, I was transfixed with everything baseball. The daily activity from March until September involved copious amounts of stickball played on Waverly Avenue, in traffic, with a stickball bat made out of an old broom handle an either a Pensy Pinky or the, quite-preferred Spalding (correctly pronounced Spaul-deen) ball. And yes, a homer was usually the result of a shot hit two sewers (aka, soo-ahs) distance; a feat that I was known to frequently accomplish. I was good.

That summer - it must have been 1965 or 66 - we had tired of stickball and longed for the real thing. You know, grass, a hardball, real bat. But alas, our little neighborhood had no such location for this kind of activity. The nearest bonafide baseball field was located at the Parade Grounds, a newly developed park just south of Prospect Park. The Parade Grounds contained a number of regulation baseball diamonds and was where the local little league teams (or school leagues like CYO) played. The distance from our neighborhood was a good three miles and required traversing through some "interesting" neighborhoods.

One day, quite spontaneously, my fellow scallywags and I decided that we should walk the distance armed with our bats, ball and gloves. I'm not sure why we chose not to take the bus which would have been a lot faster, safer and a lot less strenuous, but the likely reason was that we were all a little low on dough, and walking was free.

So off we went without a care. None of us had even bothered to tell our mothers where we were going. We just went. Ah, youth!

I seem to recall that I chose to be the the navigator and directed our posse up Vanderbilt to Grand Army Plaza. This was the way the bus would have taken us, and it was the route my father took when he drove us to The Park. Much like the scene in the movie Stand By Me, my troops and I talked up a storm and didn't seem to mind the long walk which was mostly uphill.

When we got to Grand Army Plaza we headed right into Prospect Park. I figured this was the most direct way to the Parade Grounds and I think secretly I was thinking we might find a suitable place to play much closer than the Parade Grounds which were still quite a distance away.

And indeed we did. Soon out into the middle of the meadow we caught up with another group of boys who were already playing a pick-up game of ball. Within minutes we had the Clinton Hill boys in hot pursuit of the Park Slope boys and a grand time was had by all.

I don't remember much of the game but mostly I remember walking home and how tired we all were. Despite the fact that it was all down hill, I think the extent of our exertion had taken its toll.

We got back to Clinton Hill just before supper time and most of us just peeled off and when into our respective apartment buildings.

I don't recall much of what happened after that except that I knew better than to tell my mother where I had been that day. She heard about it some time later and yelled a bit, but it was all part of the game.

I can't say that I would let my nine-year-old solo the NYC subways these days, but Ms Skenazy does have some good points to make. And perhaps the kids of today would be just a little better off if they had a chance to get out and about more often.

~j

Back to Brooklyn

A couple of dozen years ago one of my old campers wrote a song and made a video about going back to Brooklyn. It is an experience all ex-patriot-brooklynites have to do from time to time. Sorta like "returning the to scene of the crime."

The purpose this time was a college reunion which will be blogged separately. Here are the warm-up photos of the Old Hood - Clinton Hill. Enjoy.

~j

We begin with some landmarks...

Grand Army Plaza, looking north from PPW and Carroll St.

The Giant Phalus of Brooklyn

This needs no explanation to any Brooklynite.

The Corner. There used to be mailboxes on this corner that we sat on to "discuss philopsophy."

My block.

My building...looks pretty ratty now, don't it

This was my dentist's office....he, The Butcher of Brooklyn has long since departed, but there is still a dentist in that location...a good one I'm sure.

Tired Puppy

It could be the time change to Daylight Savings Time over the weekend, the 13 hours spent driving to and from New York City, or the lack of quality sleep due to my stay in a hotel, but regardless, I'm one tired puppy. I really think having spent 10 hours with friends from 30 years ago and having to tap into long-abandoned memory centers in my brain is the real cause for the delirium.

It's been four days since I have returned from our wonderful Treaty Stone Reunion Folk Festival at St. Francis College in beautiful downtown Brooklyn, and my head is still spinning. I have provided pictures, but little commentary, on the TS-SFC blog, but in some ways I don't think words can capture the experience. Clearly the photos have not; you should have been there!

For those who wonder, Treaty Stone was a loosely formed group of "hippie types" who attended SFC from about 1969 - 1977. The group, officially a "club" under the Student Affairs rubric had as its primary purpose the pursuit of happiness, art and camaraderie. I just made all that up, but I would expect that if you could find written documentation of the group's existence in the annals of SFC lore, you would find something pretty close to this description.

Treaty Stone was the brain child of founder and leader Dominick Delsante who was a man wise beyond his years and equally mysterious. A true free spirit, Dominick organized this merry band of "long-haired, hippie freaks" as part of the anti-war movement of the time, but our primary activity was the folk festivals that we held 2-4 times per year.

I joined the group in 1971 and probably played in my first folk fest in early 1972. I had only been playing guitar for a few years at that point and had tried to master a singing and performing style based upon my idol Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame. But my repertoire of songs were not limited to CSNY and over the years I managed to get a little better with each folk fest. Well, at least I thought so.

The folk fests were always held in the study hall outside of Founders Hall and were low maintenance affairs which included tables with candles, simple junk food and a BYOB policy. We spent more time with making arrangements for sound equipment than anything else and we only charged students a few bucks to get in. The folk fest were always on a Friday night and would run until around midnight. Most of them, for obvious reasons, are a blur. You can see images from the SFC year book on the TS blog.

After Dominick and I graduated around 1975 the remaining members kept the TS tradition alive for a few more years until interests changed, the Vietnam war was over, Nixon was gone and disco had invaded.

We held a couple more folk fests in 1986-7. The one in '86 was successful with a nice turn out, but I recall the attendance was lacking in 1987 and we put the idea back on the back burner.

John Kiely who, like me, was one of the later members has been instrumental in making all of the arrangements for each of the reunion events. This one was a big success with probably close to 200 people in attendance. Bill Boyle and Brian Dennigan should also get lots of credit for making this year's event a success. Bill and his family provided the sound system and served as The Lord of Illumination. In addition to Bill, John K, Brian and myself, other performers included Pistol Pete Mancuso and his son, Emil Baccash and Ellen Tucker.

When my head stops spinning, I'll write more.

~jeb