Episode Eleven: East 93rd Street

I don’t know what you think of when you hear the word “gang” in a New York City context. There are a few possibilities. You could be thinking of the Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis movie, Gangs of New York. That movie contained elements of truth about New York in the decades leading up to the American Civil War, but it didn’t have much to do with my experience. Around the time the Five Points gangs were duking it out in lower Manhattan, my great-great grandparents were helping establish Grace Church in Brooklyn.

You could be thinking of Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and their cronies, who populated the “Dead End Kids” and “Bowery Boys” movies. They epitomized the ideal of street-wise youth with hearts of gold hidden just beneath their rough exterior. Street-wise we were, I suppose. After all, most of us survived well into adulthood. But our hearts clung mostly to our sleeves rather than below a tough-guy image.

That leaves the Sharks and the Jets of West Side Story. Those gangs carried switchblades, tire chains, and zip guns. People died in that play. People also sang and danced—a lot. Except for the tire chains and zip guns, that was our incarnation of the 93rd Street Gang. Toody Marciano showed us a switchblade once, but I think he was scared to carry it; something to do with it springing to life in his front pocket. We all understood—no switchblades. So, without weapons of street war, the 93rd Street Gang followed the lead of the Sharks and the Jets: we broke into song at the drop of a hat.

Music dominated our lives. Why wouldn’t it? From Fats Domino and Buddy Holly to the Everly Brothers, Dion, and Little Richard to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Stones; we lived in what is arguably the best musical epoch in history. And then there was Broadway.

As far as I know, no member of the 93rd Gang saw a real live Broadway show during our collective childhood, but that didn’t matter. Show tunes topped the music charts in the 1950s. I didn't know it at the time, but the songs Pop sang around the house—when not practicing gospel tunes—songs like Surrey with the Fringe on Top and Some Enchanted Evening were straight from Broadway.

I remember falling in love with show tunes when Isaac Bildersee Junior High’s orchestra first played excerpts from Fiddler on the Roof. I was in ecstasy and not just because I had a crush on a flute player. Until then I didn’t know music could bring out the emotions of a story better than words alone. I was hooked.

The rest of the gang, being one or two years older than I, had known about this magic for a while. I remember the fierce competition between Billy Knudsen and Eddie Gentile over who could do the best Anthony Newley impression. I never joined in, being too timid for solos even in the gang, but I loved it. Today I often listen to the On Broadway channel on Sirius XM radio. No longer inhibited, with gusto I join Newley in belting What Kind of Fool Am I?. Billy went on to a long career in some giant corporation. Eddie made it into show business as a performer, choreographer, and teacher. And what kind of fool am I? I make occasional appearances in community theater musicals, sing in a folk duo, and write songs about dragons, Tiffany boxes, and a house in Canarsie that’s no longer there.

My house was an anomaly in a Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1960s. My junior high friends called it a museum. I used to give tours of the attic and cellar. Yes, we had a cellar. It in no way resembled the basements most houses sit on.

You reached the cellar by descending a rickety wooden stairway. No one ever took the time to install a light switch at the top of the stairs, so you used a flashlight to get to one of the pull chains on the bulbs that illuminated most of the cellar. Boxes and barrels lined the walls, and in the center of it all was an oil furnace. It smelled like, well, I guess the smell was oil. One time it smelled worse. Apparently the burner malfunctioned and the old contraption began emitting carbon monoxide. Mom was the first to smell it when she returned from driving one of the church ladies to a hairdresser appointment. Like most women of her era, before turning to a professional to deal with the potentially deadly problem, she called her husband. Eventually, even before I got home from school, a repair man came and fixed the furnace. Pop, as usual, was the hero.

Near the furnace stood my favorite piece of cellar furniture, the wringer washer. For Mom, wash days were weekly events, each one consuming eight hours of loading, unloading, and wringing. This repetition led to hanging the wet clothes on a washline that stretched from the back corner of the house to a pulley high on a wooden utility-like pole in the backyard. Shirts, socks, and underwear flapped in the breeze some twenty feet above the ground, for all to see.

I loved washdays in the summer when school was out. Perhaps my fondest memory of all was lying just inside the backdoor while Mom hung laundry on a sunny afternoon. I lay there with my head on a red pillow that was shaped like a horse. I think it actually was a horse when I was a preschooler. It was shaped for riding if the rider was a toddler. For a schoolkid it worked as a pillow. As the sun beat down on my skinny frame, I felt so warm, bathed in its radiance and Mom’s love. I suspect heaven has a backdoor; not for letting people in or out, but just for lying around on a stuffed horse and basking in light.

The attic at 1304 was reached by ascending a steep stairway. Treasures awaited. Pirate chests filled with old clothes stood side-by side. Ancient lithographs of forgotten Baisleys lined up, each covered with a piece of white sheet or pillowcase. A dozen oil lamps filled the base of an old end table. Flatirons like soldiers at attention defended the area under the front window. A vacuum cleaner from the 1930s watched over a commode chair (yes, a chair with a toilet in it, the pot discreetly veiled by a flowered curtain). My friends loved that part of the tour best.

1304 East 93rd Street was an amazing place to visit and to play. When my parents sold it to a developer to be replaced by four three-family dwellings, and the giant ballfield/garden yard was bulldozed, the neighbors felt betrayed. I really couldn't go home again.

A few years ago, I read a short story titled The Piano Tuner’s Wives by William Trevor. The author described a house so vividly that it took me back again to 1304. Immediately, I wrote the following song about my no-longer-there home.

I had to change some numbers around for rhyme and rhythm purposes, but you’ll figure it out. If you listen carefully toward the end of the third verse, you just might hear the 93rd Street gang. 

PART OF MY HEART
Words and music by Philip C. Baisley © 2012 Baisltunes (ASCAP)
(inspired by William Trevor’s short story The Piano Tuner’s Wıves)
 
There were doilies on the tables on both sides of the sofa
And a stain deep in the paper near the clock upon the wall
If you listened you could hear the mice gnawing on the plaster
Somewhere in the space between my bedroom and the hall
 
Every Christmas Eve there was a tree, it reached as high as heaven
And oatmeal raisin cookies for when Santa came to call
Each wear spot on the carpet, every finger-painted doorknob
Just the way we left them, in my mind I see them all
 
But thirteen-ten North Ninth Street can’t be Googled, can’t be plotted
By any satellite or GPS found anywhere
It’s just a few apartments, thirteen-two –eight –twelve and twenty
But somewhere in the middle part of my heart’s still beating there
 
They said, “You can’t go home again,” I guess they really meant it
When someone takes a bulldozer and buries memories
But I still hear the Ninth Street Gang singin’ Sherry Baby
And I still smell the sweet perfume of the evergreens
 
But thirteen-ten North Ninth Street can’t be Googled, can’t be plotted
By any satellite or GPS found anywhere
It’s just a few apartments, thirteen-two –eight –twelve and twenty
But somewhere in the middle part of my heart’s still beating there
 
No ghost can haunt a place when there’s no place a ghost can haunt
No self-respecting spectre would appear
There’s not a speck of dust to mark the place I spent my childhood
There’s just a part of my heart I left there
 
And thirteen-ten North Ninth Street can’t be Googled, can’t be plotted
By any satellite or GPS found anywhere
It’s just a few apartments, thirteen-two –eight –twelve and twenty
But somewhere in the middle part of my heart’s still beating there

What does the term “real man” mean to you? You’ll meet my role model of a real man in the next episode of Tales of a Canarsie Boy.

To hear this episode, please click the YouTube link below.