Sundays in the Park with Dad

August 11, 1953 no responses

My father and I, before the days of air conditioning, often went to the park on Sundays to escape the heat during then the Dog Days of summer. It is ironic and coincidental that the parks we visited were all designed by Olmstead and Vaux.

When we lived in Brooklyn, my father took me by the hand for a short two block stroll up 9th Street to the entrance of Prospect Park, the jewel of the designs of Olmstead and Vaux. We would toss my red ball that he had bought me, back on forth on the Long Meadow. My father was very lean and athletic and we would sometimes race up to the Picnic House to get out of a sudden summer shower. He always let me win.

One day the whole family went to the park and while Dad and I were playing catch, my younger brother Michael somehow wandered off up into the Ravine when my mother wasn’t looking as she tended to my newly born sister in her ornate big, black baby carriage. After a short frantic search, a policeman returned the crying lost boy to us. He cried harder when dad gave him a good smack. I was rewarded for my help with a paddle boat ride on the lake followed by a vanilla custard ice cream cone. In the early 1970’s when I came back to Park Slope after graduate school, I returned to Prospect Park only to find it in disrepair and crime ridden.

I have always thought of Central Park in Manhattan as my back yard, living from 1966 at various times only a block from the park on West 83rd Street; West 110th Street and now West 96th Street. My father first took me there in 1953 after we attended a rally for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in Union Square. We drove up in his car and he put me on a stationary horse on the great carousel by the Dairy Barn. It wasn’t long before I was leaning out on the moving horses that went up and down, reaching out to snatch the brass ring. That is my only memory of Central Park with my Dad, so Central Park belongs more to me than to us.

When we moved to Newburgh New York in 1958, my father would take me to Downing Park for his outdoor exercises to stave off his encroaching Parkinson disease. Downing Park was in the middle of Newburgh and designed by Olmstead and Vaux in memory of their landscaper mentor Andrew Jackson Downing who designed the Mall in Washington DC and who died an early tragic death. Downing Park was a green oasis in the blighted chaos of Newburgh, a rundown river city in the Hudson Valley.

His sickness was the reason we moved upstate, since his factory relocated there in that great mass urban exodus to the suburbs of the 1960’s. The gravel paths that wound around the lake and up the hill to the Pergola were perfect for my father’s peregrinations; it gave him good traction. He was very self conscious about his stumbling and shuffling due to his disease, and the park was usually empty early evenings when we took our walks. He would lean on me as we walked around and around; his fixed glance straight ahead,

concentrating on his impaired motor skills to build up his agility. We didn’t talk except to point out a squirrel, bird or roller skater coming precariously close to our path.  Sometimes he would build up momentum and he would be able to walk a short distance without faltering. This made him very happy and a smile would somehow shine through his rigid face. I could sympathize with this forward movement and joy of being able to walk without assistance for those few steps. I would feel the same way when I sometimes could get a string of words out, glide along and not stutter till the last syllables.

“Let’s go feed the ducks!” My father used to love to feed the ducks on Polly Pond in the park. He would give me 25 cents to purchase corn feed. I would go into the Stone Shelter and the lady behind the counter would give me a tiny brown paper sack with the top folded ever so neatly down and stapled shut. We would walk to edge of the pond and the duckies would waddle up to our hands and peck up the corn. In the fall came the aggressive geese that would bellow and bluster and suck up the corn like an angry vacuum cleaner. I Ioved their warm breath on my open palm.

Downing Park, Newburgh by sisudave.

Downing Park after a storm

In July and August, after my walk with Dad, our family stayed for the weekly band concerts. An amphitheater was built in 1936 out of flag stone and granite. Green hedges lined the upstage while a moat filled with goldfish separated the platform from the audience. The audience sat on long green wooden benches on a hill that slightly rose up, a mini-Greek theatre. The concert band was comprised of Italians who wore crisply pressed white shirts, captain hats with black pants and ties looking like a Good Humor Ice Cream Man in his truck.

The program was usually comprised of marches; famous classical miniatures and Broadway show tunes. I was in heaven. Stars and Stripes – William Tell Overture – A Symphonic Portrait of Porgy & Bess (arranged by Richard Russell Bennett) – Leroy Anderson’s Bugler’s Holiday – The Blue Tango. Sometimes a local soprano would sing “Un Bel Di”, “I Could Have Danced All Night” or “Summertime” There were theme nights too: Oktoberfest! – Italian Night! – Salute to Broadway! – Victor Herbert Tribute! and Down South American Way! etc. There would be guest appearances by a barbershop quartet, a Dixie land band, jazz combo or student accordionist playing “Lady of Spain”. I would get goose bumps when he shook the accordion to vibrate the last chorus. I would sing to myself “Lady of Spain, I adore you. Pull down your pants and I’ll explore you!”

My Dad sat in our car parked on a roadway right above the rise of the hill to listen to the program since he didn’t want anyone to see him shake from his palsy. I would sit in the front row all by myself while my mother and sister sat a few rows behind me. I sometimes had to chase down my brother Michael running around behind the stage. We usually didn’t stay for the whole program and left after intermission. My mother got bored easily. I would try to spy out a friend or neighbor who could drive me home. I hated to leave and miss the second half. I am sure I made a pest of myself to people I hardly knew, begging them for a car ride home. I felt trapped in Newburgh, you couldn’t get around unless you had a car and my mother was not a “soccer mom” type who would gladly chauffeur her children to their activities.

It was always sort of sad looking back up the hill to see my father sitting in the car alone like Quasimodo, a lonely gargoyle silently listening, hidden in the shadows of the green cathedral of leaves. Parkinson had left his face expressionless, set in a fixed dull stare of non-emotion. I would run up between numbers and bring him an ice cream cone that I bought from the Good Humor truck. At times I would gently wipe off the vanilla drips from his stubbly chin.

One night there was a sing-along and all the audience joined in. My family was not the sing- around-the-camp fire kind of family. We would watch the TV show, Sing-along with Mitch in silence. I was particularly self conscious about singing around people even though I sang along to my Broadway LP’s when no one was home. I gave John Raitt a run for his money when I sang both parts of “Hey There.” This is curious to me, since I never stuttered when I sang so you think I would “Sing Out Louise!” any chance that I could get. I had a beautiful voice when I was younger but when I became a teenager and to this very day, I can not hold a tune and sing flat. I worry that I don’t sing good enough. I never play a game I can’t win so I guess I don’t sing out loud from fear of my mother’s ever present criticism that lingers till.

However that night the voices of the audience so filled the night air in the park that it was hard to resist. Everybody was lustily singing along as I looked back and saw my father mouthing the words from the car with a big smile on his face. I couldn’t hear my father singing but like a deaf man I could “lip read” the melody of his voice.

“Casey would waltz

With the strawberry blonde

And the band played on.

He’d glide ‘cross the floor

With the girl he’d adore

And the band played on.

But his brain was so loaded

It nearly exploded

The poor girl

Would shake with alarm

He’d ne’er leave the girl

With the strawberry curl

And the band played on.”

I mimed the words…”C-C-Casey would w-w-waltz…”

Downing Park is still there up in Newburgh; Prospect Park is there and has had a renaissance in Brooklyn. And I walk every week in my beloved Central Park that will be there for all time. My sister and brother are still here. My dad however is long gone.

I remember our days in the parks – Prospect, Central and Downing – whenever I hear a marching band or a duck quack or a goose hiss, or the ding-a-ling of an ice cream truck, or the organ at the Carousel. I hear my father’s silent voice singling along. Maybe one day I will sing a song out loud and not give a damn.

“And the band played on …”

Thank you Dad

and

thank you, Olmstead and Vaux.

“Sing, sing a song  (press to listen to this song)

Sing out loud

Sing out strong

Sing of good things not bad

Sing of happy not sad.

 

Sing, sing a song

Make it simple to last

Your whole life long

Don’t worry that it’s not

Good enough for anyone

Else to hear

Just sing, sing a song.

 

Sing, sing a song

Let the world sing along

Sing of love there could be

Sing for you and for me.

 

Sing, sing a song

Make it simple to last

Your whole life long

Don’t worry that it’s not

Good enough for anyone

Else to hear

Just sing, sing a song.“

“Golden Days” Summer – 1953

July 1, 1953 no responses

In the 1950’s, when you walked into any tenement building in the Bronx, you were greeted by the rich aromas wafting from landing to landing of each family’s Sunday afternoon feast:  the fiery tomato sauces of the Sicilians; the beefy, peppery briskets of the Jews; the sweet potato pecan pies of the “Negroes”; the pungent cabbages of the Irish; the pulled; savory pork of the Puerto Ricans; and the garlicky kielbasas of the Poles. From the laundry rooms, filled with huge apothecary like bottles of bleach and bluing, pungent smells floated up of clean sheets that mixed in with sour/sweet rot of garbage left over night in the basement before the morning collection.

Each morning I woke up in our Belmont neighborhood to an aromatic miasma of hot yeasty breads just baked in coal ovens at Madonnia; of glistening salty sea-air fish being laid out on chipped ice at Randazzo’s; of ripe cheeses, salami and baccala at Teitel Brothers and luscious slightly over ripe peppers and melons at the stalls at the Arthur Avenue Retail Market.

As the 6am Angelus bells rang out in counter point to the sound of trash cans thrown down by burly garbage men, my Nonna brewed hot espresso and munched on biscotti encrusted with almonds.  She would dunk the hard, hard biscuits in the thick dark sweet froth and chomp and chew like a dinosaur.  Sometimes she made American coffee in a coffee pot where the brown brew bubbled up and percolated up into a small glass knob signaling it was done. Instead of gnawing on the indurate biscuits, Nonna sometimes whisked a raw egg into her cup of “café Americano”.  She always offered me some and laughed loudly when I made a pussy face and refused. Afterwards she would take a basil leaf out of the icebox and rub her gums and teeth with it; a sort of Italian mouthwash or “Pepsodent”!

It was a hot, hazy, NYC humid summer Sunday and we were all going to Orchard Beach in the Bronx. Orchard Beach was a mirage, an oasis, a miracle. Robert Moses struck his staff into the land along the Long Island Sound and the waters parted to reveal a beautiful white sandy beach with Art Deco pavilions, promenades, and wooded cooking areas. The master builder, Moses has delivered us from the heat and given us all a municipal city beach to rival any in the Hamptons or Jersey Shore, – “the Bronx Rivera.”

On Sundays in the 1950’s, all the stores were closed except for the drugstores and bakeries which usually closed right after the noon mass. As my mother and I left the Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, I dunked my hand in the holy water font and secretly sprinkled an Old Italian lady kneeling and praying the rosary. My mother, catching me, tugged my ear and pulled me along. Our first stop was the candy store to get the Daily News with its rotogravure in color. We then went to Addeo’s for lard bread before we waited on the long line at Artuso’s Pastry Shoppe to pick up the cannoli.

At 11am, we packed into my father’s car: Mom, Nonna, Aunt Mary & Uncle Nick, and my cousin Viola, their daughter. It was already 90 degrees, the air thick and sticky. Still the ladies wore sun dresses below the knees and I never saw my Uncle Nick without a white shirt & tie. My grandmother always wore black since the day she was a widowed in her twenties. I jauntily had doffed a white sailor hat with battleship gray swim trunks and white “guinea” tee. On my pretty feet were brown sandals over white socks. I loved their smell of musty, tannic leather.

Dad and me at Orchard Beach

This was no ordinary trip:  it was an excursion, a safari. Napoleon in all his glory did not travel with so much of an entourage and supporting camp. My Aunt was chargé d’affaires undiplomatically ordering us to carry the supplies down two flights to the curb: picnic hampers containing real dishes; utensils and all the makings of a full dinner; boxes filled with pots and pans; linens, lids, graters, cutlery, colander, and wooden spoons; blankets, umbrella and an ice cooler layered with bottles of red wine and 7-Up.

My Dad pulled up the car to the front of our place at 2350 Beaumont Avenue, singing along to Rosemary Clooney’s “Botcha- Me!” on the radio. My grandmother rode up front like Lewis and Clarkes’ guide, Sacajawea, eyes straight ahead. I sat in the middle so I could play with the radio, dialing back and forth, forth and back till I got a swift slap on the wrist from Nonna. Aunt Mary (or Titsie as I called her), sat in the back and I could see her jungle red lips in the rear view mirror, glowing like the devil from the “Hell Hole” ride at Coney Island. Somehow Uncle Nick sat back there unflummoxed and never sweating next to Mom and Viola.

Passing between the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Garden on Fordham Road, we joined the exodus of other Sunday drivers to Pelham Parkway, leading directly east to Orchard Beach. Dad maneuvered us into the gigantic parking lot holding thousands of cars built for the wave of post WWII new car owners.  He was a New York expert and knew all the ins and outs of the city. He had figured out exactly where to park the car so it would be in the shade at the end of the day and not hot as all hell in those days before air conditioning.

Dad, our Virgil, guided us to the groves all the way up to the left. It was emptier there almost like Parnassus, secret and cool under the leaves of the umbrella-like trees. We reached a picnic table with a stone grill in the shade under the dabbled light of the afternoon sun. Mom was out of breath and Nonna enthroned herself on one of the wooden green, canvas chairs I had to carry. We unpacked the entire larder under the direct supervision of Titsie. My Uncle Nick quickly found a bottle of wine to slake his thirst. My Dad, now like Prometheus, made a fire out of some mysterious materials of I don’t know what.  My Aunt set the dented, aluminum pots on the grate and started to re-heat the sauce she had made on Saturday morning, simmering with contents of meatballs, sausages, pork chops and bracciole.

Getting antsy, I started to pester my cousin Viola to take me to the beach to wade in the salty waters. Never in all of our excursions did my grandmother, Aunt & Uncle ever venture near the sand or go into the water. Finally Viola gave in and took me down the hill to the crescent of sand that had been conjured up by Mr. Moses.  At the end of the path, I took off my sandals and put on little white rubber bathing booties. The last time at the beach I started to scream at the top of my lungs when my bare feet hit the hot sand. I hated the scorching heat on the flat of my feet and the textured grittiness of the sand between my toes. My father had to carry me from the boardwalk all the way down to the beach where the sand was moist with the lapping, cool waves of the Sound. This time I was ready as I strode down the Sahara in my rubber shoes that Mom had bought me at Alexander’s on the Grand Concourse. Like young Prince Moses I arrogantly kicked sand on people’s blankets, carrying my tin pail and shovel like scepter and orb.

Viola was like an older sister to me. She often told me the story how she held me up (like the cub in The Lion King) a few days after I was born to admire her new “Cuz” and how I peed in her face! We were close ever since. Viola (in her bathing cap) and I frolicked in the water. I splashed her when she wasn’t looking and she screamed how cold it was as I gleefully laughed in delight.  I made a few sand castles surrounded by moats. I loved to fill them with the water scooped up from my pail and watch the water swoosh around the towers. When I started to nudge her to buy me an ice cream from one of the vendors walking the beach, she announced it was time to go back. “I have had enough of you!” She dragged me like a puppy straining on a leash, not wanting to return home after its walk.  My sandals were so hot from lying out in the sun. I dunked them in my pail of water to cool them down before our trek back up the hill.

Like an Impressionistic picnic painted by Manet, our sylvan area had been transformed: our table being set out with crisp white linens with china, silverware and glasses. The white smoke from the grill circled around the area as the sunlight magically streaked though, keeping the gnats and flies at bay. In the distance a man (or was it Pan), was playing the mandolin and softly singing “Santa Lucia” which blended with a nearby family’s laughing like satyrs at a dirty joke told by someone’ s uncle. We joined them in contagious mirth. The pot was boiling as my Aunt threw in two boxes of Ronzoni macaroni. We never called it pasta. It was either spaghetti or macaroni, no matter the size. I helped stir them round and round the steaming, bubbling cauldron under Titsie’s watchful eye. I foolishly burnt my tongue trying to taste a shell to see if it was done. “Strunzo” my aunt said curtly with no pity.

She doled out the steaming “macarone”, the amounts based on ones status and sex, Nonna and my Dad getting the biggest heaping plates. She ladled the wine dark tomato sauce over them and with a flick of the fork, sprinkled cheese lightly all over the mouth-watering mound surrounded by the savory meats falling apart in their tenderness.  We never called it parmesan; it was cheese. It had been my mother’s chore before lunch to grate the wedge of cheese since she was Polish and “couldn’t cook” or so covertly said my Aunt in Italian behind her back but I understood. I noticed one of Mommy’s knuckles was scraped from trying to get the last bits grated. My Aunt would not tolerate any waste.  Uncle Nick mixed the red wine with 7-Up in small clear glasses as I passed them all around. My Mom didn’t want wine and drank only the lemon soda. She wasn’t feeling so well that summer.

After dinner, the heat of the day brought out the loud humming chorus of the cicadas. After we cleared up and scraped off the plates and flatware, we all found spots to lay back and laze. I fell asleep on a wool red & bIack plaid blanket. On my back, squinting up, I spotted a seagull circling above searching for the scraps it knew we would leave behind.  Dad and Uncle Nick, smoked panatelas and got out the cards to play briscola and drank lots of wine sans 7”Up.

Mom and Me

 After a couple of lost hours, Titsie heated a pot of espresso and set out the demitasse cups with tiny doll house like silver spoons to match. The herbaceous smell of licorice filled the air as the Anisette was used as the sweetener in our café. The clear syrupy liqueur drew gnats and flies bombarding us like kamikaze pilots. A huge bowl of mixed nuts of pecans, walnuts and “nigger toes” (Brazil nuts) was placed on the tablecloth now spotted with red wine stains like a Rorschach test. I loved the freedom of being able to toss the shells into the woods until Uncle Nick told me to stop. My Aunt, like Ariadne, cut off the pink & white twine and opened the virginal white boxed filled with cannoli. My chest was covered in white confectionary sugar as I picked out the candied fruit (or spit them out if I had missed any). Nonna slapped my hand again.

At the end of the day, a golden haze started to stream in from the west as we packed up everything carefully. We rinsed everything off at a spigot at the WPA Building restrooms. Even though the car was in the shade it was damn hot. We opened all the doors and waited for it to cool down. Uncle Nick lit up on one last Camel. Some boys set off Roman Candles on the beach and we all clapped as the Technicolor streaks were reflected on the rooftop of our dark shiny car. I skidded across the front seat and cried out as my bare sunburned thighs hit the blistering vinyl. Dad turned on the radio and of course, I started to race through the dials. He made me stop when the Four Aces were singing:

“‘Heart Of My Heart’, I love that melody

‘Heart Of My Heart’ brings back a memory

When we were kids on the corner of the street

We were rough ‘n ready guys

But oh, how we could harmonize”

Dad started to sing and we all sang along except for Nonna who was looking out for Indians.

“‘Heart Of My Heart’ meant friends were dearer then

Too bad we had to part

I know a tear would glisten

If once more I could listen

To that gang that sang ‘Heart Of My Heart’”

We inched along through shaded arcade of Pelham Parkway. When we arrived home, Dad gave Viola and me a nickel each and we ran back to Artuso’s for Italian ices.  We never called them “Italian” ices, there were ices! What else? There were lots flavors but I was a purist – Lemon Ice was king.  The ice was so cold a pang of pain shot up my nose and like an aardvark I licked the last tart lemony drops from the bottom of the small white paper cup. With sticky hands we returned home.

Mom put me in the bath tub to rinse off the detritus of a day in the sun, sand and salt water. I left behind a gray dull ring of baby oil in the tub as the final particles of sand washed down the drain.  After she toweled me down, Mom lay down on Nonna’s full sized bed with white heavy cotton sheets she had to be ironed after washing. I was so sleepy; I made no usual scene when I was asked to go to bed. I slept in a Hollywood bed in the parlor. As I drifted off, the gray flickering light of the DuMont television was my night light and the Burns & Allen Show theme song, “Just a Love Nest” was my lullaby that was given over to some boys in the enclosed courtyard crooning Doo-Wop like love sick alley cats.

That night, I dreamed of seagulls, castles, and forests with witches chanting a wordless song.

This would be my last golden summer living in the Bronx.  We would move to Brooklyn and join Ralph and Alice leaving Marty and Molly behind. In a few years, Aunt Mary & Uncle Nick with Cousin Viola would move to Woodside, Queens not far from Archie and Edith. Nonna stayed behind like a bit of black anthracite coal firmly stuck in the good earth. In 1974 the Goldbergs moved to Co-Op City and my grandmother moved in with Aunt Mary. She gave me the entire the contents of her house for my first apartment. I guess with time and aging, the glowing diamond underneath she had always hid was finally released by the burning of the Bronx.

I would never be alone nor “Prince of the City” again.  My brother Michael would be born that fall in September. Ah the 7-Up without wine!  I would become the big brother having to set an example. “Don’t you know any better, you’re the oldest? You big ciuccio!”

I return to the Bronx often. I stop at Beaumont Avenue hoping to see Uncle Nick sitting on the steps puffing away, cursing “somma-bitch” under his breath as Aunt Mary calls him inside to do some chore. I imagine I hear my grandmother in black yelling at the TV screen as some histrionic wrestler throws his opponent down Slam! on the mat. My cousin Viola takes my hand and we go roller skating at the Parish Hall. I hear my father pull up in his car to pick my mother up for a ride to City Island, singing along with Eddie Fisher, “Oh Mein Papa.”

I enter the hushed church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and stick my hand into the Holy Water font held by a life size marble angel. The angel and cool baptismal water transport me to the beach, the water lapping up to my bare feet. Outside again, looking up, a pigeon nests next to be big church bell. It is 6pm, the final Angelus rings out and the startled bird flies high, circling the spire.

I smile to remember the seagull – now lifting me up up over the tree tops, looking down on Belmont, circling round and round, trying to go home again. I hover over the mean streets of Arthur Avenue, spotting some kids rapping on a corner of a street besides a heap of black plastic trash bags; swooping down for a Lemon Ice; pecking at a bite of prosciutto bread; snatching up some discarded candied fruit or nuts; sipping an espresso – all my Proustian Madeleine’s – reminding me, trying to re- capture those idyllic days of family, smells, tastes and sounds; music and the laughter; of the warmth and love of time lost…of golden days…

“Golden days in the sunshine of our happy youth

Golden days full of gaiety and full of truth.

In our hearts, we remember them all else above,

Golden days full of youth and love.

How we laughed with the joy that only love can bring

Looking back through memory’s eyes.

We will know life has nothing sweeter than its springtime,

Golden day, when we’re young,

Golden days”

*************

Click here to hear

“Golden Days, sung by Mario Lanza in the 1954 movie, The Student Prince

that I saw with my Aunt Mary at the RKO Fordham..

Tony’s Chronology

December 31, 1947 no responses

1917

My father, Anthony is born in Ciminna, Sicily and moves to NYC in 1921 with my grandmother Michelena and my Aunt Mary. They first settle on the lower East Side before moving to the Bronx.

1927

Josephine Krotki, my mother is born in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

1947

My parents meet at my father’s factory in downtown Brooklyn today known as DUMBO.

1948

My parents are wed in February and I am born November 18th at 2350 Beaumont Avenue in the Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx. Due to the housing shortage of post World War II, we all live in my Italian grandmother’s one bedroom flat.

1952

My parents move to Brooklyn to an apartment over a Irish Bar on the corner of 7th Avenue and 10th Street in Park Slope.

1953

My brother Michael is born.

1954

We move to larger apartment up the block to a brownstone on 10th Street. I attend St. Thomas Aquinas Parochial School on 9th Street and 4th Avenue (grades 1- 4).

1955

My sister Karen is born.

1958

Parents buy a small Cape Cod style house in New Windsor NY – 60 miles north of NYC. Sacred Heart Parochial School in Newburgh NY (grades 4 – 8).

1962

Its only one year at my first public school, South Jr. High (grade 9).

1966

I get my high school diploma from Newburg Free Academy (NFA) Newburgh’s public high school (grades 10-12).

1966

I am happy to be back in Manhattan, studying for the priesthood at Cathedral High School (college freshman – sophomore) and reside at the Bishop Ford Residence on W. 86th Street. My first semester weekends are spent with my Polish grandmother in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

1968

I finish up college and one year at graduate work at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, Yonkers NY (junior – senior with 1 year of graduate work). I receive a BA in English/Philosophy.

1969

I get my first car, a Fiat 500 that I buy used from my New Windsor neighbor.

1971

I leave the seminary and matriculate at CUNY City University of NY at Brooklyn College to attain a graduate degree in theatre directing. My Aunt Mary lets me live in her finished basement in Woodside Queens NY for 3 years till I graduate.

1973

My grandmother, Michelena buys me a brand new Toyota Corolla. I teach one semester of English to the freshman boys of Holy Cross High School in Bayside, Queens.

1974

I direct my thesis production of an original musical “Domenica” written by my cousin, Michael Vassallo. I am awarded a Master of Fine Arts. Loretta and I meet at the Shakespeare Institute in Bridgeport Connecticut. I bunk up at my friend, Dennis’s place before I share my first apartment with his brother, Robert at 215 Garfield Place over a drugstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

1975

Robert is out and Loretta with Fran move from West Virginia to live with me. I found the GAP Theatre Company and continue directing up to 1988.

1976

I direct two productions at St. John’s University in Queens.

1978

Leaving Brooklyn behind, I find a rent stabilized studio apartment at 68 W. 83 St. on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
1979 My mother dies

1981

I go on a trip to China with my then boyfriend, John Lee.

1982

The fateful year I meet Gary Newman at a play reading.
1983 My father dies

1985

To pay the rent I become a tour guide and work for Red Carpet Associates.

1986

One of my first jobs in the travel industry is the centennial of the Statue of Liberty followed by a full time job at a DMC, McNabb & Associates.

1988

Gary and I with our dog RuB, move and buy a condo at Towers on the Park, 110th Street and Central Park West.

1989

I quit McNabb and become Director of Operations at Tour de force Events.

1990

My involvement in the SITE International Conference in NYC introduces me to June Briggs.

1991

June Briggs hires me as Director of Operations at Briggs Convention Associates.

2000

Gary and I buy Briggs Red Carpet Associates from June Briggs.

2002

The first June Briggs Awards are held.

2004

After 15 years at Towers on the Park, we sell our condo, and move into an art deco 3 bedroom co-op, 7 W. 96th Street across from Central Park.

2006

We purchase our weekend home, Cheerio Cottage in Stoneridge, NY.

2007

www.tonynapoli.com

A Family Tree Grows in Brooklyn – 1940’s

November 5, 1947 no responses

My sister was rummaging through our family home attic and she discovered an “autograph album” from my mother’s graduation from the 8th grade.

My mother, Josephine Krokti, graduated in June of 1943 from the Catholic Parochial School of the parish of St. John the Evangelist in a Polish Section of Brooklyn on 21st St. between 5th and 6th Avenues.

My Polish side of the family grew up on the “wrong side of the highway,” Robert Moses decimated and sliced the neighborhood in two with his Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE). So the Krotki’s lived on the side closest to acrid, backwater bay of Red Hook Brooklyn in New York City among industrial buildings, warehouses, factories and stables.

My grandfather, Roman Krotki owned a horse and cart and would plod the local neighborhood streets selling fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately I never knew my grandfather since he died of diabetes from excessive drinking. Therefore our family was a matriarchy led by a stern, Slavic grandmother born in Krakow, Poland named Josephine. There were two sisters: Josephine (my mom) and Laura and four brothers: Philly, Larry, Eddy and Joey. I never called my uncles by their full names always Uncle Joey or Uncle Larry. There was a younger sister but she tragically died when her clothes caught on fire.

The Polish side of my family was cold and bitter as a cheap, Polish potato vodka, warm when first going down but hot and bitter when it hit the stomach.   The BQE cut off them off from the nourishment and sunlight of the community. They were isolated, living on the cold, hard, stony cobble-stoned streets in the gray shadows of the elevated highway. They were embittered by their poverty and the sourness of their existence flavored my upbringing.

Meanwhile, this “autograph album” is a wonderful window opening up some sunlight and insight to the mores of the day, June 1943. It took staring at that date several times to dawn on me that my mom was in grammar school during the height of World War II.

I imagine my mother passing the book around for her classmates to sign.  I love the innocent naiveté of the entries undimmed by the cold reality of the war being waged. You can sense the anticipation and the youthful dream growing for a happy family life of a home of ones own filled with loving husband and beautiful babies. The same Brooklyn soil for these seedlings would bear sweetness for some and unexpected fruit for others.

I have scanned some pages from the album-

Josephine Krotki

2 Good 2 Be 4gotten