Yes, Trees Grow in Brooklyn

Argyle Road - Brooklyn

Jim and I moved into an apartment on Argyle Rd. late June1957. Jim had just graduated from Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore. The first time we went to look for an apartment we took the  train from Baltimore to Brooklyn . Jim was scheduled to start his internship at Kings County Hospital on July 1. That left us very little time to find a place to live. We saw six or seven apartments that day but none that would accept a child. Which is why we ended up renting the third floor attic of 991 Argyle Road. 

Some one told us to check the local freepapers in the neighborhood drugstore. We finally found an ad in the Christian Science Monitor. We had about ten days to  find a place.

When Jim called an elderly woman gave him directons and said she was at home morning. This time we had driven to NY in our car which made moving around the city- - - and we had our nine month old son, Jimmy with us. He was adorable but he was a child.

My Neighborhood - The Elizabeth Section

When memories began to flow earlier today I was sitting out a heavy rainstorm parked in front of my house.  Rather than waste the time or/and lose the train of thought filled with childhood memories I dictated them in the Dragon App on my phone. I am keeping these in Evernote.

 The Elizabeth Section - in Charlotte, N.C. was developed around a train crossing - so the sound of soulful whistles was the Musak of my childhood but I did not realize that until 45 years later when Jim and I spent a week-end in a B and B off Seventh Street and I heard that music again during all hours of the night and day. 

The houses I lived in on 7th street had wide porches  on the front nd some wrapped around the sides of the house. W.e played on them in the hot summer and on rainy days. Or anytime we wanted to "put on a show".  A neighbor lady loved hearing me, at age 6, sing The White Cliffs of Dover. She was serious about ecouraging me so she took me downtown to audition for a local radio talent show.

It was held at the Visualite Movie Theater. I was selected and the Saturday morning I faced a large audience for the first time ever I was scared and shakings. The announcer coached me with a kind voice. "Go ahead, Ellouise."I took a deep breath and sang. I had forgotten all about that morning but when I remembered it the other day I could hear the sound of the applause.

Have to keep thinking about those days in the Elizabeth Section .

My children or grandchildren have never lived in a house with a porch.

February 2, 2019

February 2. Snow on the front walk shining in the sunshine. Hope it warms enough for the sun to melt it.

I have said for a long time that I would write down bits that we lived through - - maybe that will be a memoir - or a story - or a crumpled paper tossed away.

For these "snowed in" and fiercely cold days I am thinking about other days in our lives which were controlled by snow - a blizzard in Brooklyn in 1958 - over-snowed here in DC a dozen times where we all shoveled snow on the walk ways, hoped the food would hold out and snow-plows would clear the streets - -and the 1970s year that JIm and I went to Italy to see our son who was living there for a college year. One morning we were stunned to pick up an English newspaper at breakfast and see pictures of the blizzard that had stopped and stalled the East Coast USA- leaving one daughter at home in DC with a friend and the other daughter at college -

Talk about plans messing up.... especially when we were helpless - to talk with them or to get home.