Sheepshead Bay |
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I usually think of America as a song. We’re a big country from California to the New York Islands. Looking out on top of Purple Mountains’ majesty, the view on a clear day is not only forever, but peaceful, reassuring, and complete. The furthest reaches from those natural wonders are as much a part of our country for their differences as they are uniquely separate. There is a calm by the water, at the south of Brooklyn in a place called Sheepshead Bay. There is a wooden bridge I’ve heard mentioned as far away as the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco, in a Director’s speech at a corporate meeting. To those of us who lived there, that wooden bridge remains a symbol, sculptured in our minds. It is timeless and though a bridge, acts as an anchor to that place and our particular years spent by those waters. We all have childhood homes. Mine was Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I spent much of that time looking west, thinking adventure, hungering for Yellowstone and Yosemite, idolizing the Cartwrights and their bonanza. Lewis and Clark left St. Louis by boat. My gateway, and perhaps many more of us, used the Verrazano Bridge. There is much interesting history in Sheepshead Bay. Not many of us who lived there knew about it. For sure, my friends and I weren’t conversing much on Austin Corbin, Leonard Jerome, or William Vanderbilt. My comrades had encyclopedic knowledge of subjects as Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Nets, Jets, Giants, Rangers, Islanders, and layups, double play pivots, stop and go patterns, blocking goals, and the better Diners for those endless conversations to take place. John Phillip Sousa first performed "Stars and Stripes Forever" in a band shell belonging to the palatial Manhattan Beach Hotel. And football fans, this place was home to Vince Lombardi and Joe Paterno. Many of us Sheepshead Bay High School grads have long known Rico Petrocelli, a member of the ’67 and ’75 AL Champion Red Sox is counted among our alumni. While other communities have their mortal heros, Sheepshead Bay was the first earthly home of Glenda, the good witch. Testimonies to the area's lasting culinary gifts fly from business signs spread to the furthest reaches of America that declare for their business: Coney Island Hot Dogs, Brooklyn or NY Bagels, NY Subs, and NY style pizza. There’s no better compliment to an area than a business copying someone else’s success, and for us who lived there the memories of satisfied taste buds remain. Further looks into a far away past reveal cycles that repeat again and again. There’ve been bull markets and depressions. Hurricanes and rebuilding. Gambling and anti-gambling referendums around millionaires’ row and red brick working class apartment houses. If life is a combination of yin and yang, and a dynamic process, then so is the life story of the neighborhood. History repeats itself has been repeated enough through the ages, and is glaringly apparent when charting the ups and downs of Sheepshead Bay. There is much more of 20th century life to be found in the 1600s. Inflation, depressions, rising stock prices, toll collecting, gambling and horseracing, all had their moments in 17th Century New Amsterdam/New York. next: Chapter 2: |
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New York Around 1600 and Brooklyn Names |
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Copyright © 2003 Ira Leitner