Interesting that Jack's son (Sandra's brother) divided that front basement room in half so that the room facing the street would be a private place for him ... that was before his getting married. It's also sad that when reading the NY Times one day in October, 2003, I noticed the address of the house reporting a fire in that room where two young children died. As of this writing they suspect it was no accident; that's called "arson" and the fire is alleged to have been started by the father (or the mother's boyfriend); I'm not sure. Canarsie is not the way it used to be. But isn't that the way everyone compares the present to the past?

Canarsie is not my home anymore and as that famous quote goes, "you can't go home anymore". Anyway, my grandma died in 1943 and the ownership was divided three ways; to her husband (my grandfather), to her son (my uncle Jack who was married and lived on the first floor) and to her daughter (my mother). Whether that was in my grandmother's will or it was just decided that way; I don't know. I do know that an arrangement had to be made for my grandfather’s upkeep and it was decided that we would move from Manhattan back to Canarsie. This would be the fifth time I changed schools before starting high school.

We asked the upstairs tenant in my grandmother’s house (I still call it that), good friends of the family, to move across the street, and we took their apartment where my grandfather then lived with us (he had a tailor shop on East 92 Street near Avenue L). My brother was born the following year and I remember his crib in the front room next to the porch. I was the babysitter when one was needed and I remember trying to get him to sleep by “shaking” the crib in a position where he couldn’t see me; and it worked. Eventually he and I shared one of the bedrooms in the back of the house (apartment).

A word about Brooklyn, maybe the entire east coast: the best summer exposure to have in a bedroom is facing west. That’s where the breeze comes from all night. That back bedroom faced east and with no air conditioners (who ever heard of an air conditioner?) sleeping wasn’t easy. Air conditioners then became the trademark of the movie theaters; that’s where people went to cool off in the summer. That was maybe once a week; the rest of the evenings were spent sitting outside on the stoops. Whoever invented the “stoop” should have a statue made in his honor. Hey, it could have been a woman ... well, as we might say in that unique Brooklyn idiom, “so tell me, do I know, big deal.” When Jack died at age 48 (seems grandma's heart problems also went to her son and daughter), his share went to his wife, Anne. When my mother died, her share went to my father. So my grandmother originally bought the house for around $7,000 and it eventually went to two strangers (not blood relatives) who after enjoying living there for almost a lifetime, then sold it for $200,000 ... that's life.

My grandmother's kitchen wasn't the only place for good eating. All of Brooklyn was rich in culinary delights and food emporia (cute word); from Charlotte Russes (oh that delicious whipped cream) to real pizza (with mushrooms, of course) to hot bagels and bialys to pastrami on rye (with real kosher pickles, potato salad, and cold slaw) to egg creams to Italian ices (the man with the pushcart holding a large container of chopped ice, covered by a rag or top to slow the melting, and bottles of syrup for flavoring, and scooping it out into little white cups) to Nedicks, found all over the city and sometimes called "The Orange Room."

The Charlotte Russe always makes me think of a special scene in Sergio Leone's masterpiece, "Once Upon a Time in America" ... a movie that's been shown in many versions (I think there are five) with different endings. We'll always wonder what happened to Max at the end but that's another matter. One of the finest examples of acting (and directing) is where the young boy is sitting on the stairwell, waiting for a young girl who lives in one of the two apartments on that landing (typical of tenement houses of that time) and he is gradually seduced by that Charlotte Russe. Great acting; great directing, and you should know that the director plays a brief cameo as the ticket seller in the bus terminal ... and he speaks an excellent English.

A little information on Leone ... he was born in Rome, January 3, 1921 (?) and died April 30, 1989. He was an Italian film director and was the son of the cinema pioneer, Vincenzo Leone, and the actress, Francesca Bertini. With this background he started working in film in his teens. At the same time he was (encouraged by his father) studying law, so it's no surprise that he was fluent in English.

"Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), was Leone's most ambitious work, and is a bloody tribute to the American gangster film. Though praised at the Cannes Film Festival and across Europe (3 hr 46 minute version), it was then severely cut to the 2-hour slot for USA release in such a way that made it almost incomprehensible.

And back to Brooklyn, there was White Castle on Utica and Empire where we'd stop for the square hamburger and a cup of orange juice if walking home from the Utica IRT subway station and going the length of Remsen; a long walk but within reason for late teens and early 20's), and Dairy Queen (and those root beer floats), and Carvel (they're still with us, and I know they're kosher), and Ebinger's (incomparable blackout cake, jelly rolls, lemon being my favorite, and the chocolate cake and the mocha layer cake, and, and, and). Ebinger's was the best bakery chain ever; all freshly baked goods displayed on glass and mirrored shelves behind the counter. A delicious two-layer chocolate cake and great crumb cake, cut in half if requested, for a quarter, then put in a cardboard box and neatly hand-tied with white string.

My favorite commercial cake was the three o'clock snack when coming home from school, the Yankee Doodle tasty chocolate cup cake with the yummy cream in the center. The challenge was to eat around the creamy part until you got to the center. Of course, there are many more ways to eat an Oreo; eating those crackers is almost an art. Even now I can still enjoy a dozen in a half dozen different ways (separating the crackers, eating the halves with cream, scraping the cream, accumulating the cream, eating crackers plain, eating the newly formed sandwich with all the cream from the aforementioned crackers; you can write a book on it). The famous television program "Saturday Night Live" (great comedy, horrible music) did a skit, took place in a confessional, ending with an Oreo eating style (most erotic) and funny; not appropriate to describe it here; you'll have to see that for yourself.

I mentioned bialy's and many readers might not know what a bialy is. William Safire (New York Times) says that the bialy is rising on the American horizon thanks to Mel Brooks, creator of "The Producers" ... one of the few smash-hit musicals without one popular song. His central character is Max Bialystock, an unscrupulous impresario out to bilk investors by producing a sure-fire flop.

It so happens there is a place named Bialystok. It is a city of about a quarter million residents located in northeast Poland; its most famous sons ere the Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvonov and the microbiologist Albert Sabin. Its most famous product is known locally as the Bialystoker kuchen and to the hungry world as the bialy.

A bialy, pronounced "be-ah-lee" almost rhyming with Charley but with three distinct syllables and with the accent on the wide open Boston "ah" syllable is definitely not a bagel; they are worlds apart. A bialy is a round, saucer-size pletzl, "flat bread" (rhymes with "pretzel"), that has its center mushed in (indented) to form a depression made delectable with bits of onion, and ringed by a softer, higher rim, all generously flecked with toasted onions and, when really authentic, with poppy seeds. It has an affinity for sweet butter and fluffy cream cheese. I haven't had a real bialy since the old Canarsie days where they were hand made in two bagel/bialy stores, opposite each other (nothing like good competition to get quality) on Flatlands Avenue and East 80th Street.

And back to what used to be: There was no end to the restaurants available, not that we could always afford to eat there (and that was in "better times" and I don't mean the fancy hoy-ploy places in Manhattan where you'd have a "maitre d" telling you there are no tables available; those was always out of reach). There was Junior's in downtown Brooklyn (still there with their famous cheesecake with strawberries, the best in the world), Senior's where I now live (they closed shop), Gargulio's in Coney Island, Cobe Diner on Remsen and Ditmas and which had that original look of a train car, Jahn's (remember the Kitchen Sink and Tall in the Saddle?), Martin's on Avenue W and Nostrand (open until the wee hours every night), Lundy's which just made a "come-back" and I am disappointed in the results (bad pastries and they use paper tablecloths last time I ate there), Chock Full o' Nuts all over the city with tiny but delicious cream cheese and nut sandwiches, Cookies under the "el" (elevated train) on Avenue J, Cousins Deli, Carlucci's on Eastern Parkway, Ben & Sol's on Franklin and President, and Schaeffer's ice cream parlor near Eastern Parkway.

I have to share this gem with you. You are in Manhattan and you enter one of those very fancy restaurants with no reservation, and the "maitre d" (I think it should be capitalized, I'm not sure) apologizes saying "there are no tables available this evening" or he might tell you there will be a long wait.

You say, "I bet if the President came in and asked for a table, there would be one available, and you certainly wouldn't make him wait."

He'd probably say "Yes-s-s, I suppose there would be a table available for the President" and you answer, "Good, I'll take it. The President isn't coming."