Unexpected Company

The memories of that summer Saturday so long ago come unbidden. I was watching the rainfall from under the small porch of our two family home. I can still smell the perfume of the red roses blooming along the white picket fence, so vital and exquisite even when their petals were laden with rain. The sky was black and I was a twelve-year-old boy with nothing to do and all day to do it.

Mama was working an extra shift at George's restaurant and Poppa was off to Sheepshead Bay for a weekend fishing trip. Pounding my paddleball against the brick wall of the porch, I realized how much I missed my best friend and upstairs neighbor, Danny Dorino, who was still away with his parents in their cabin in the Catskills.

Brooklyn was a special place back then, when the Dodgers played at Ebbots Field and chocolate egg creams cost a nickel. It was oppressively hot that summer of 1955 and the streets of the great metropolis were as deserted as a ghost town. Those brave residents remaining either broiled on the crowded beaches of Coney Island and Riis Park or languished quietly behind their airconditioned doors. My youth might have been misspent, but in my mind's eye I've often returned to those days and the memories of my parents, Uncle Gray, Aunt Marie and Danny Dorino.

Looking out from the porch, the neighboring houses were jammed so close together that they all seemed like one continuous building. Yard space was as precious as diamonds; no one I knew had much of any beyond enough room to hang a clothesline. My uncle Gray lived a few blocks away past the traffic light on Coney Island Avenue in the first brick building on the right hand side of the street. I knew the way by heart because my school was just a few yards away. I yearned to go and see him; something that never happened without him knowing beforehand.