21. Wait Up!

How else I gonna get your attention?

What does 'wait up' mean? 'Slow down' I can understand, but 'wait up'?

Ya want stories about East Flatbush, like when you were a kid?

Of all the stories in this collection I agonized most over this title.  We both know that a sure-fire case of something not being read is to call it 'instructions'. Come on. You return the leased Toyota three years later and the Owner's Manual is still wrapped in plastic.

Some of my stories may interest you more than others. Hey, even as a teacher I knew there was no way I was going to reach all thirty kids in each class.

Here comes the long-awaited 'instructions.'

Somewhere around story 13 when you've absorbed as much nostalgia as a person can handle there's a 'click here' for 'older' stories. Look, you've come so far, what's another five or six hours? Hey, I slaved over a computer writing them; the least you can do is read them!

But first, let's see what follows.

Pete Hamill, wrote in New York Magazine, 

"Brooklyn was not on those [classroom] maps.  New York was, but to us, New York was some strange, exotic city across the river, where there were people who rooted for the Giants and the Yankees. Brooklyn was not there. Even Battle Creek, Michigan, where we sent a hundred Kellogg's box tops, was on the map.  Brooklyn was not. People who secretly ruled the earth did not recognize us, and we did not really recognize them."

"It'd take a guy a lifetime to know Brooklyn t'roo and t'roo. An' even den, yuh wouldn't know it all."

OK.  Here we go.

I ain’t talkin’ ’bout your parents’ generation. 

If you lived in Brooklyn and went to school in the 1950′s and 60′s I’m talkin' about you. Now, all a sudden, a half century ain’t so long ago, ya know what I mean?

I grew up in East Flatbush - the East Flatbush of the 50's and 60's - a totally different East Flatbush from the 21st century version. Those who write about the current East Flatbush might as well be writing about Cleveland! 

I'm still trying to figure out this fascination with a life and a time more than a half century ago. 

After graduating from Brooklyn College I taught English in the neighborhood (Meyer Levin and Tilden).  I've been out of teaching and East Flatbush and Brooklyn for more than 45 years, but you can't take da Brooklyn outta the boy.