In September 1973, my mom asked my dad to leave. We’d moved, the month before, from a small 2-bedroom apartment on Hicks and Pierrepont in Brooklyn Heights, one block east, to Henry and Pierrepont. The new apartment, on the 7th floor, had eight big rooms and wrapped around the corner. One side faced west toward the East River, the other south, with a smack-on view of the Verrazano Bridge. My dad had grown up barely working-class; his mother was a waitress at Schraftt’s in midtown Manhattan, and his father, before he committed suicide when my dad was three, had been a chicken farmer. But my dad was smart, very. He skipped two grades at Our Lady of Pompeii in the West Village, and was dean’s list at Fordham, where he also played on the basketball team. He’d had to leave after his freshman year - no money - but he finished up at City College, married by mom, and by the time he was 27, had two kids and was on his way to becoming a partner at the brokerage firm Neuberger Berman. My mom did not work. She was not a spendthrift but did not, my dad would tell me, understand money, and several times recalled how, soon after they were married, he had gotten a charge plate to a department store. He came home from work one day and my mom shows him a new coat. But how? he asked, they didn’t have any money…
My dad would say something similar like "The day I stop looking is the day I am dead." He also made sure to explain to me and my brothers that there is a big difference between looking and leering and I will never forget that.
Weirdly I had a dream about Chris last night (I owe him a call on some Moto Guzzi parts) but also not so weird. He saved my life one night in that enormous apt when I had fallen asleep on the kitchen floor and was apparently choking on vomit. And yet this was the golden era for many of us and I could read an entire book of Rommelmann family history. Didn’t see you much at Remsen Street as you were off to Wesleyan. It was the preeminent man cave of its time and like your catalog offered me respite from the unease and dysfunction of my own home. Funny how these places and things haunt our memories.
My dad would say something similar like "The day I stop looking is the day I am dead." He also made sure to explain to me and my brothers that there is a big difference between looking and leering and I will never forget that.
Weirdly I had a dream about Chris last night (I owe him a call on some Moto Guzzi parts) but also not so weird. He saved my life one night in that enormous apt when I had fallen asleep on the kitchen floor and was apparently choking on vomit. And yet this was the golden era for many of us and I could read an entire book of Rommelmann family history. Didn’t see you much at Remsen Street as you were off to Wesleyan. It was the preeminent man cave of its time and like your catalog offered me respite from the unease and dysfunction of my own home. Funny how these places and things haunt our memories.
Remembering that last line to say to my own kids.
Great piece and wicked cool photos. I LOVE the "throw dirt in my eyes" line!!!!!
This is wonderful reading -thank-you Nancy. Your articles are always riveting.
Good stuff as always Nancy. Those pictures are amazing. What a time warp.