Brooklyn

Our Family’s Berlin Wall Crisis/Vacation

Our Family’s Berlin Wall Crisis/Vacation

5 min read

September 1961. We were at my grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn. But something wasn’t right. For one thing, my father hadn’t finished dinner with us. He had to rush off to a special meeting of his army reserve unit at nearby Fort Hamilton. This was unusual - not planned and predictable like all the other countless visits with my grandparents. Also, the grownups seemed tense and as the hours went by, my mother told me to take a nap on my grandparent’s bed. I never had to do this before. What was going on? 

Engine Trouble Plus Vomit

4 min read

Family vacations and car trouble. Does that bring up anything for ya? For our family, sometimes the trouble was mechanical. Sometimes it was intestinal. We’d take off for places with names like Fort Ticonderoga or Blue Sky Lodge. Sometimes we got there. Sometimes the vacation ended thirty minutes later on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn – the car wheezing with a flooded carburetor.

Hizoner, John Gotti And Me

4 min read

This is a New York kind of story about a New York kind of trip. I love traveling to that tough talking town and there was a special bonus this time: I got to cross paths with a couple of Wise Guys.  Plus a future mayor of New York and a New York Times reporter.  Like I said, it was a New York kind of trip.