|
Yes, I grew up in the Bronx -- and I loved every minute of it!
You see, the Bronx was the place to live in the thrities, forties and most of the fifties. It suffered from its own success. Everyone wanted to live in the urban paradise and the strain on the infrastructure proved too great. Changing social values may have contributed to the downfall of the Bronx as I knew it during the sixties and seventies. People who had lived all their lives in the Bronx decided that the place was too crowded or too 'working class' and moved to Westchester or across the river to Nyack, Nanuet, New City and points north. Many people blame the decline of the Bronx in the eighties to one ethnic group or another. I don't believe this is an accurate assessment. It was the vaccuum of people that drew in an economically poorer stratum of society. Landlords panicked and formerly well-rooted familes pulled up their stakes and fled. The CIty's financial crises of the seventies left little solvency to either maintain or expand development or even merely patch up the roads. [Above, right: Uncle Larry, Grandpa and Uncle Bill circa 1917 at house on 216th Street.] I grew up at 4345 Ely Avenue, a street lying roughly between White Plains Road and Baychester Avenue. The Wakefield section. The forgotten section. I read Back in The Bronx and own a copy of The Beautiful Bronx -- and neither of these wonderful resources give ample coverage to this small jewel of a community. My parents shot 8mm film the day they drove home from the hospital after my birth. In that film Baychester Avenue is a tree-lined dirt road from 233rd street to 241st and White plains Road! It was still rural when I was growing up--until the Grand Union was built on the corner of Baychester and Pitman Avenues, there were private chicken and pig farms along the northern side of the street. When people think of Bronx life, it is invariably 'apartment dwelling' that springs to mind. Metropolitan Oval, Parkchester, Pelham Parkaway, Fordham Road, lower Riverdale--all large apartment buidlings. Ely Avenue--and much of Wakefield was built with the My Dad cultivated two peach trees, a weeping mullberry, an arbor of white grape vines and numerous flowering plants in our yard. The peach trees as well as the tomato vines he tended every summer were a huge draw to the bigger kids in the neighborhood who would raid the yard late evenings in early September. This was the height of crime in our quiet little neighborhood. Most of the houses on the northern end of the 4300 block were what I believe were called 'Ford" houses after the archetect/developer who built much of the neighborhood. You can see three such Ford houses behind the garage in the picture above. These houses fronted Brunner Avenue, where my Mom grew up. The Ford house was a three bedroom, one bath unit. Two of the bedrooms were on the street front of the house and were tiny. The master bedroom was in the rear corner of the house adjacent to the bathroom. My parents opened the two tiny bedrooms into one larger bedroom and made the former master bedroom my room as a child. I had a neat walk-in closet that harbored all sorts of strange and macabre demons--to my five year old imagination. The closet door would later support a host of Rock and music posters starting with Pink Floyd, passing through the Monterey Jazz Festival and ending with a Rory Gallagher poster.
The house to the right in the photo belonged to an elderly couple, Martin and Catherine Ryan. They suffered greatly as they appreciated peace and quiet--something my friends and I never really understood. In 1972 they relocated back home to Ireland where the passed away. The next house up the street belonged to a family named Ebert. They sold eventually to a a family whose name I forget, but they had a son, Franky, who was not the sharpest tool in the shed, though he kept us all amused. The house next in line, though not visible in the photo, belonged to the Silvestros. Paul was my best friend from the time we were in diapers. His older brother Larry was the bass player with The Regents and started me playing the guitar. On the left hand side of the house as viewed in the picture above stood the last Ford style house on the street, belonging to a Wolrd War One veteran by the name of Walter Shupbach. Old Walter was a wonderful source of information on the early years of the twentieth century and I'd often sit on his front porch and listen as he spoke and smoked his White Owl cigars. I still love the smell of those things.
We had a fairly mixed bag of kids on the street, Italian, Irish, German, Jewish, Catholic, and inert ingredients as well. Silvestros, Brennans, Rooneys, Gigas and Liebermanns all in strength and living together in relative peace. Of course, a balmy summer afternoon's peace could always be shattered by a killer rock fight. I still bear a small scar on my chin and one over my right eye from one of these biblically proportioned fracasases. Most articles about the Bronx mention that magnificent contribution to our Western culture, the CANDY STORE. The Bronx was peppered with these small Mom & Pop establishments. Purveying candy and newspapers, this is also where Dad bought cigarettes and where us kids bought small toys, Spalding (Spaldeens!) balls--those hairless tennis balls that were the only ball useable for stickball and even model cars. Our Candy Stores were Danny's (owned by Danny and his sister Rose) up on Pitman Avenue at Wickham and Sam's right across from the PS 87 school yard. Each of these stores seemed to have its own slant on the business -- Danny's had the soda fountain and egg creams (fifteen cents) and Sam's had a small stock of groceries.
If you were a kid in our part of the the Wakefield section of the Bronx in the early 1960's you probably went to church at St. Frances of Rome on Barnes Avenue -- many were schooled there as well. This was a minor schism in my group of friends, the Public School kids and the Catholic School kids. We all knew the same nuns though, as even us Public School rats had catechism classes at St. Frances' on Wednesday afternoons (early dismissal from PS 87 --seen above-- and a long walk up the hill) and Sunday school after church -- which our Catholic School chums got to miss! Now, if you lived on Ely Avenue -- and I'll warrant on any other surrounding street as well-- you'd have the following items in your pocket: A Duncan Yo-yo -- the butterfly model was considered the more prrofessional model, A Duncan Top -- White bodied with a green snap off top, hollow with room for string storage. The tips also were replacable which was fortunate as we spun our tops on the concrete and asphalt of the Bronx! Baseball Cards , which could be used for trading, flipping or when coupled with a clothes pin, inserted into bicycle spokes and clipped to the forks for realistic(!) motorcycle sound effects. Other trading cards also had brief reigns-- Beatles cards, Batman cards and other popular TV tie-ins. Remember the Man From Uncle? A Spaldeen , while not necessarily in your pocket, was standard issue for all kids and could be found somewhere on his person.
We lived one subway train fare from the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Gardens. It was also only a forty minute subway ride to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan or the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West. These fine establishments were totally free when we were growing up and our parents took advantage of this. I still believe that the great later-life successes and love of art, music, culture in general stems from the fact that we were often dropped into a cultural oasis as a good (free) way to keep us busy for an afternoon. What do parents do these days? In 1967, Ely Avenue--indeed all of New York--experienced its greatest natural calamity. Well, at least to us kids. There was a major blizzard that year.
There was one great factor that divided our neighborhood--and although I'd remained in the old 'hood after the event, for most of us a marriage would begin the exodus away from the haunts of our youth. Many Bronx boys in our neighborhood met their wives at college and these girls were invariably out-of-towners, They'd wind up moving their husbands out of the area. And let me tell you, you never can go home again. I found this picture today and spent a good long while just staring at it. It shows five young men from the Bronx at my last stand. You see, it was the day of my wedding. June 7, 1980. We are pictured in the basement reception hall of Ehring's Restaurant in Riverdale. That's (L to R) Mark Berlingeri , the other guitar player in my first band, Larry Silvestro , the great player and friend who turned me on to the guitar, Paul Silvestro , his younger brother and childhood chum, sound man par excellence , me , and lastly Mikey Moretti , the other guitar player in my last Bronx band. We were all so young!
But this is the way I'll always remember myself, age nine years on Ely Avenue, Bronx, New York. Wonderful Wakefield.
Little Harry on Ely Avenue in 1966
Harry Pellegrin performs weddings and gallery openings in the Capital Area!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
| LOW END DEEP END, the exciting sequel, is being shopped by my literary agent even as we speak. |
The Guitar Sessions:Weekly tech tips and exercises to help the guitarist improve. This feature has really taken off. Each week a new page is posted with either an exercises to get the left and right hands moving more The page is updated every Thursday. Visit the 2004 Archive as well! |
As a native New Yorker and an American, I am still angered by the cowardly attacks of 9/11. Unless we restore New York City's skyline to its condition prior to September 11th, 2001, the miserable scum who attacked us will have won! Visit www.makeNYNYagain.com and rebuild America!
|
|
|
|
|
And when you make that statement, most people who weren't born in the Bronx wonder how you managed to do it. Unfortunately, the Bronx has picked up something of a bad reputation. Does it deserve the rep? Yes and No. 
small family in mind--one and two family houses on small tracts of land. This photo at left, taken in 1957, shows my Dad's Chrysler Imperial parked in the driveway of 4345 Ely Avenue. My Dad's parents had purchased the house new in 1923 (for the kingly sum of $2500) with two building lots. This gave my friends and I our own private park to play in. 
Here is the view of 4345 Ely Avenue from the driveway gates. In the 1960's, a hedge and a pair of wrought iron gates was sufficient to keep most people from trespassing. On my last visit to the old neighborhood most houses sported steel strockade fencing with locks! These were simpler times. 
In this picture to your right you see the side of Walter's house. That's my Dad's Imperial in the foreground. The peonie bushes to the left were always a total ant infestation. My mother would never allow the things in the house, pretty as they were. 
Here's a picture of Walter. 
White Plains Road between 233rd Street and 238th Street was my Mom's (and most of the neighborhood ladies') shopping area. Along that five blocks under the elevated subway were numerous butchers, bakeries, fish stores, two five and dimes, a number of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and a hobby store. Pizza first appeared in our enighborhood on White Plains Road. We had it all. Prices were probably not as good as could have been had by going to the larger department stores, but convenience and trust in the merchants made White Plains Road the staple. 
High School was another dividing factor in our neighborhood. There was a variey of choices for one's somewhat higher education. Some of us went to Mount St. Michael Academy, some went to Cardinal Spellamn High School. I don't think any of us went to Evander Childs, the public offerring. A few of us even went as far as Cardinal Hayes and Rice in Manhattan! Mount St. Michael appears to the left. 
This is a view of Ely Avenue (facing south east, the Edenwald Projects on the horizon) with a City Sanitation garbage truck--outfitted with a snow plow--totally stuck in the snow! I believe we only had fourteen inches of actual precipitation, but the winds dirfted the stuff up to my bedroom window--on the second floor. 
What's new with the book that came out over a year ago? After being on back-order at Amazon.com for what seemed like a century, it is my understanding that copies are once again shipping. Barnes and Noble's website is on-again-off-again, but PAB (on Amazon as an authorized vendor) has LOW END in stock and it comes with a CD! 
efficiently and effectively or an interesting piece from the standard repertoire , demonstrating a necessary technical ability. Judging by the hits these pages receive, you guitar players love this feature! 
