My Coney Island Memories

all stories written by JK Sinrod

      The following pages contain some short stories and observations of my life growing up in Brooklyn, NY. Excuse the fact that they are in no particular order since they were written separately over the years.  At the end of each page click NEXT PAGE to continue.....

  A Hot Coney Island Night

                       It was 1962 and our transistor radios played the Beach Boys and The Four Seasons.  We could hit those high Frankie Valle notes till we turned about 13 and our  voices cracked and changed for good.  We hung in groups where there was strength in numbers. We were loyal to the block, loyal to the neighborhood, and Brooklyn was our world. We thought we ruled the streets. and never used words like, LOVE, HELP, THANKS.  Most of us were poor kids.  Jews, Catholics, Italians,  Irish, Polish.  We could see that our parents were different, but we were all the same. Some called us white trash, but not to our faces. We had our rules. Cursing, cheating, conning were all fine. Making fun of someones heritage or color or race was fine too, as long  as you could take it in return. But above all mother's were sacred. Your father may have been a bum or a drunk but, you never ranked on anyones Mom.... NEVER.

             We played street games, not for fun, but for blood. Winning was everything.  Didn't Vince Lombardi come from Brooklyn? We played stickball, ring-a-leevio,  johnny-on-the-pony, punchball, poison ball, stoopball, single double triple, kings, box ball,  I declare war on Germany,  red light green light. (How many of these can you remember the rules to?). We did arm wrestling and Indian wrestling. We raced from sewer to sewer, jumped fire hydrants, climbed barbed wire topped fences, till we spent the last ounce of our  sweat, or till our Moms stuck their heads out the windows and screamed our names to come home for supper. We battled all day and night and seems like we were always testing ourselves. Who was the fastest, strongest, even the best long distanced spitter. Loyalty, strength,  speed,  power,  quick wit,  and a big mouth, yeah those were the tickets to survival.
             As tough as we were, we were still little boys, who stayed up late at night under the covers compulsively waiting for our favorite song to come on our earplugged transistor radio or we couldn't go to sleep. Sherry, The Gypsy Cried, are two special ones that I can recall waiting for. The girls were even tougher.  They had to be I guess? They had big heaps of stiff, crispy crackly hairsprayed hair. They would pop big bubble gum bubbles in our faces to show us who was boss. Eyes thick with black makeup, lips with white.  Skintight peddle pushers showing off every curve to torment us with... (you can look but  don't touch!).  Man oh man did they smell sweet, with cheap perfume and scented hair lacquer.  The girls were always smarter and more mature, and would use those street smarts to tease and torture us. Us boys would jump over garbage cans, and engage in near mortal combat like knights of olde for their favour. If you blasted them with your best serious curse word and said,   "F you"... they would quickly and calmly say, "you wish"... always having a better answer that left us speechless. (What did that terrible F curse really mean anyway?).  When you got close to one.... I mean really close, your blood pressure and the sweet smell would make your head swim.  I ask you.... what feeling comes close to the first time you put your clumsy  arms  around the slim waist of one of those girls, and drew her near.... closer.... for that first kiss? On her breath may have been, Dentyne, Sen-Sen, Bubble gum, Violets, Chiclets, or milk..... ugh.., and hopefully no cigarettes!
             I find today, that when the right song comes on the radio, like Under The Boardwalk, or Up On The Roof, I find myself back there... smelling the salt air and the perfume, on a hot Coney Island night.

 The First One

              The first was an immigrant girl from Belgium we called "Frenchy". I was about 12 she was 15.  Man was she cute. Short with dirty blond hair cut in bangs, and a gorgeous toned boyish figure that drive boys wild to this day. She had real charm speaking broken English with a slightly crooked smile. She tried her hardest to educate me about sex, but I didn't really understand the facts of life as yet.  I helped teach her some choice "American" phrases and street smarts, and spent the entire summer, along with every boy on the block trying to get her attention. She ignored me. I ran like the wind, hit sewer length home runs, and wrestled other would be suitors to the ground. By the end of the summer I had won her over. Someone told me she "liked me". (The old Brooklyn "human telephone" chain of command, succeeded where direct contact simply wasn't done). Before we knew it we were spending the nights together on the stoops holding hands, in private of course.  I think she was embarrassed at being with a younger guy. We would meet in darkened hallways and make out with the tiny radio blasting AM tunes in the background. The first kiss was strange and awkward for me.  "Do You Love Me" by the Contours screaming in the night, she immediately went into a teenage mode of really wet kissing. "In my country this is called French kissing", she said. I was shocked and pulled back. She had to explain it all to this little boy. Really she did! Through her teachings and my as yet undiscovered sex drive & work ethic, we managed to spend the entire Winter exploring this brave new world together.  Once in awhile my parents were out and we got to be inside, but mostly it was with heavy winter coats, gloves, woolen hats all disgarded and thrown down. Freezing temps, huddling in hallways we emerged that spring as different people. I was now a savvy bigshot junior high school 13 year old man of the world who had an older girlfriend. She was an "old" 16 year old that I had used up too early because I had no idea how lucky I was.  

            A year after our last date at a then closing Steeplechase park, she got herself in trouble with an older guy this time. I saw her with a big belly in the streets. She laughed at me with a still proud expression on her face.  Her English was now as trashy and street smart as the next. The little girl had grown up and out of her naive charms.  I was crushed.
            I didn't see her again for years. I was 17 or so, sitting on the bus coming home from high school, when a very tired looking woman boarded. Tattered clothes, hard lines of a tough life on her face, and greasy dirty blond hair. She was holding the hand of a small child, with another baby in her arms, and evidence of yet a new one on the way. Our eyes met, then turned away. She still had that proud, tough look on her face but no smile now. I felt sick. Not so much by what had happened to her, but by the fact that we were unable to say a simple hello. What we once had was between two different kids in another time and space.
            I've spent many hours reflecting on that time. Remembering those hot Coney Island days running through the streets, and those frigid nights in the hallways with her as well. Wondering if it was fate that had me meet her at an age where she was just a teacher and not yet a mate. Had it been a few years later, I might have been riding that same bus, but not as a cool 17 year old student with my entire life and career in front of me... but as a tired and beaten down teenage father.  She was the first and although only a young boy, I loved her.                      

A Day In The Life..... 1967

              The alarm went off it's about 7 something..... gotta get going. Wash... comb hair... look in  mirror. Hair short and neat. Little hint of longer sideburns. Jeans black skin tight size 32... they look good, just bought  them at the dungaree factory on Coney Island Ave yesterday.. about $3 bucks. They are poured right down into my brown penny loafers,  Can't wear bluejeans to school, not allowed. (Why I wonder?) Button down shirt. Need a little cool touch. Look in closet at 4 inch wide Mod ties. Which one, hummm...... polka dots? No. Here's a nice paisley one. Grab books bound by a one inch red rubber strap. Run out the door to catch the Seagate shuttle bus.  Just a few people on it.  Caryn, Tina, Butch, Nancy, Jimmy.  It's too early for a hello. Just a nod of the head will do.  We get off and I run outside the gate to transfer to the Surf Ave bus.  Almost empty now but by the time the bus makes it past the Surf Ave. projects, I'm packed in like a sardine with fellow babybomers. There's Mitch, Alan, Mike, Dave.  Mitch and I always get a kick out of the stupid early morning cartoons.  Alan and I argue baseball mostly. Still too early and hot to talk much.  What's air conditioning? Luckily I'm pressed full body up against a sweet young thing. Is that Este Lauder? Man it's just perfect mixed in with my gallon of Canoe. We can barely breathe we are so close. Hope I don't embarrass myself, did I remember to brush my teeth? No  matter, I don't speak, either does she. I'm going steady with someone else anyway and  its 1967.  I hear music through the perfume and the deodorant.  The Monkees are wailing, "Take the Last Train to Clarksville".  Someone has a transistor radio on the bus. It's near the window of course, for reception. Hard to believe but by the next year or two, we'll have our hair down to our shoulders and be listening to Hendrix  and Joplin on FM,  smoking pot and having "free love" as much as we can get!
              About 15 minutes later we all disengage and walk the couple blocks to Lincoln HS.  I don't have a class for awhile so I walk down to the cafeteria to get a snack for breakfast.  I run into a couple of friends and get the reaction to my wide loud tie I craved. "far out  man".... "groovy"..."psychodelic"... "oh wow".  Makes me feel good, a little different than the rest. Yet I also belong. Isn't  that what we all wanted? I had a bread and butter hero with a milk for a quarter.  I walk up around the study hall. Poor suckers don't have a friend like I do in the program office, so they have to sit there and silently read for 45 minutes while I can roam the place. The halls were dead quiet then the bell rings. All hell breaks loose. Wall to wall boys and girls struggling to get to class. With each change of classes it was a social  event. Saying hi, flirting, making plans for the weekend, slapping fives. All done in about  10 minutes. God help you if you had a class on the first floor and the next was on the other side of the building on the third.... and a creep of a teacher who couldn't wait to mark you late each day.  I think 3 lates equaled an absence? Made no sense did it? Some teachers were awful. Some of them were terrific. Mrs Edelman comes to mind. She was one of the rare ones, whose verve and passion for her English class, helped her draw out an insecure young writer like me now and again.  
              Last class is done. School is over now. I pick up a soft pretzel, (we also called them bagels then),  from the guy on the corner for a nickel, and head for the bus trip home. I'm wearing my team jacket and damned proud of it too! Maybe I'll get together with some friends that drive, and cruise Kings Hwy this weekend? Why was it that the other school's cheerleaders always seemed to be  prettier? On the slow bus ride I'm  thinking about getting home in time to watch "Where The Action Is".   Paul Revere and the Raiders  are on  today. I'll probably do my homework with Soupy Sales on in the background.....  but hey the weekend is coming. I spend most of the evening on the phone. Can't go to sleep or breath without my girlfriend and I exchanging a few "I love you's" on the phone first. Young love, or is it lust, is all consuming. We are all there is in our world.  Seems different for our kids today.

              There's yet another sweet sixteen this weekend. Which jeans will I wear? The black, blue, brown, or white? Gotta arrange the timing so we walk in late to make a cool entrance.  We are a cool couple alright. I'll be slapping fives with the guys, while she'll be off in a corner whispering gossip with the girls. Better practice the Skate, The Jerk, and the Slop in the mirror.  I  lay in bed thinking, with my  radio on..... "A Whiter Shade of Pale" playing in the background. What will become of me? Of course I'll marry her (I never did), the  war in Vietnam,  graduating High School, going to College, my girlfriend, the Mets, the Jets, my girlfriend, the Rangers, the Knicks, the next weekend, my girlfriend. How could life get any better than this? Little did we all know..... it never would. 

Kim and June 1967                                        Kim and Linda 19

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