Born in the Bronx
A few years ago I tried to figure out where my identity came from, or to put it another way - what was the first thing that came to mind when I searched for an identity. The best I could come up with was that I saw myself as a kid from the Bronx.
That was my home town. For about three years, whenever I had a chance, I took the 6 train or the 4 train up to my old home town and took pictures. Sometimes I brought a tape recorder along and did interviews with strangers.
I took hundreds of pictures and was even able to get back into my old Bronx apartment (which we left when I was 12).
We lived on the first floor, 1636 University Avenue. I had no idea why it was called University avenue (later found out why) - but it was a fitting name as just about whatever I learned was on that Avenue.
Fragment:
I remember the night before we moved. We had spent the day shaking out roaches from the large collection of my fathers books. It was a horrible night. Roaches were all over the place, and our greatest fear was bringing even a single one to our new apartment. There was white roach powder spread on the floors; the Raid spray was suffocating.
The story goes that when my younger sister and I were sitting in the doctor’s office (she was 5, I was 7) - a roach was seen crawling up the wall. The women in the waiting room scrambled. My sister, five year old sister coolly rolled up a magazine and squashed the offending bug, then sat down without a word.
When I returned to our apartment 40 years later, I asked the woman who was moving out if they still had trouble with roaches. She told us the place was infested with them. When my father and I walked in - we found white powder sprinkled in all the corners and crevices.
Who says you can’t go home again.
[editor’s note: I have warned Dave that stories about roaches is not a way to begin his book on the Bronx, but so far he has ignored me as usual. I would suggest something a little bit more heartwarming, though he claims that he doesn’t have any heartwarming stories.]
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Comments
Comment from dave
Time: December 17, 2007, 12:29 pm
Boric acid. This was, and believe is still used - as a cheap roach killer, though the roaches got immune to it after a while.
In fact, when you had nothing to do and wanted to go hunting - you could usually find little white tracks left behind by the critters, and you could follow the tracks with a magnifying glass. (I kid you not).
This would have been around 1963, and the sniffing of white powder wasn’t big yet - but within a few years there would be the big crack epidemic which would destroy a good portion of my little home town.
Comment from Lester
Time: December 17, 2007, 1:35 pm
There’s a website gothamcenter.org where you type in your old NYC neighborhood and you can blog with long lost friends. I grew up in a housing project in Queens and found hundreds of entries from kids who grew up there in the fifties. In fact, I ran into a girl in my court who I used to hang out with and we email each other now.
I don’t remember roaches being the biggest problem. Instead we had what today would be referred to as environmental issues. For example, tenants would dump their garbage into chutes in each hallway and every few days it would be incinerated. I remember the acrid odor and cinders raining down on the project whenever they burned the garbage. Nobody complained. Then there was the asbestos. In each apartment the radiators and pipes would be protected by white asbestos tubing, which would flake off. I remember hiding under the bed a lot, my head rested on the asbestos. Add to that lead-based paint and the fact that my mother filled the apartment with her cigarette smoke, and it’s a wonder any of us made it through childhood.
Comment from MitchK
Time: December 18, 2007, 6:40 am
Dave, don’t dismiss the roach theme as a lead-in. Just mentioning them is a potent way to bring out old memories in the reader. For example: College. The 80’s. Baltimore. My apartment. Roach-infested, like all apartments in Baltimore. Their main hangout was behind the stove. They’d come out and party on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night, or whenever I used the oven and their quarters got too hot. Disgusting bastards.
I really like your cover photo theme for “Born in the Bronx”. It brings back memories of visiting my grandparents (father’s side) in Manhattan when growing up. I’m sure that my implicit suggestion of similarity between Manhattan and the Bronx is a NYC faux pas, but it all looks like “New York” to me, having grown up elsewhere.
Comment from Stephen Bray
Time: December 17, 2007, 8:27 am
As I recall 1970s marijuana smokers used ‘roach’ to refer to the unsmokable remnant of a joint, and to ‘roach’ a joint was therefore to destroy it.
To Bogart the joint was to inhale it for more than social convention demanded, but that’s a different story.
But what exactly was this white ‘roach-powder’ your father used to sprinkle around your childhood home? Did one sniff it?
Stephen