My Old Neighborhood Remembered (19 page)

The Expressway accelerated the pace of existing changes in the population of the south and east Bronx. More and more low-income blacks and Hispanics moved into the newly created slums. Whites continued to leave the west Bronx and Concourse area out of upward mobility or out of white flight. And then Co-op City opened its doors.

Built on the site of Freedom Land, a defunct amusement park in the far reaches of the northeast Bronx, this monolithic cluster of high-rises opened in December 1968. More than 15,000 apartments were made available for purchase at very inexpensive prices, and by the thousands whites evacuated the Concourse and other areas of the Bronx to live there. It was the final bell.

When I told people that I intended to go back to the Bronx to look around, they were concerned about my safety — Don't be up there after dark. I went uptown several times, walking for miles along the Grand Concourse and its adjacent streets. The walks extended into nighttime, yet I never felt in any danger. One tough-looking youth fixed me with a hard stare as I walked past him. I took it to be an expression he cultivated for all outsiders. I imagined him working on it in front of a mirror. Two flashily dressed men driving a convertible stopped the car and leaped out to have an intense conversation with a man in a doorway who then rushed into the car with them, and they drove away. I had the distinct impression that I should not go up to them and say, “Excuse me, I'm doing some research. Might I enquire as to the specific nature of the business you are conducting here?”

That was it. Nobody took notice of me. The streets were busy with the city life of a pleasant evening: children playing, street-corner conversations, parents strolling with infants.

As someone who grew up in the Grand Concourse area, and who was told his Bermuda shorts were a disgrace to the Bronx, I found walking through it now frustrating, perplexing. I would pass an abandoned building or a vacant lot and nearby would be a recently restored building, with well-dressed people on their way in and out.

I eventually concluded that the realtors and civic leaders are, to a certain extent, right: there is a sense of renewal in the Bronx. Neighborhoods that were once middle-class and white and became blighted now have the chance of becoming middle-class again and racially mixed. But I know what this place looked like years ago, and the parks today are still too littered, the streets are still too dirty, there are too many abandoned buildings still standing. The only way this situation can change is through the pride of the people living there, a pride that can be helped along by a sense of the commitment of public officials. As a small start, those damn highway signs, which shouldn't be there at all, could be taken down overnight with the same kind of edict that ignored the community and put them up in the first place.

One scene from my trips uptown stays with me. A group of young Hispanic girls are playing on a sidewalk. They are singing and skipping to
London Bridge is Falling Down
, forming arches with their arms, slipping under, singing the song in soft accents. They are so beautiful, the moment is so pure and lovely that it stops me in my tracks. It is possible that these children will grow up in a neighborhood clean and stable, and feeling good about themselves for that; one day they will move up and out as previous generations have done. Or perhaps their children will. For that to happen the Concourse area has to be a kind of model city within the city. It has to be valued by Government so that every effort is made to keep those streets clean and safe.

“The Bronx is rebuilding its future with pride.” One hopes. In 1988, the Grand Concourse area is at a tipping point as crucial as the one in the late 1960's when the area unraveled. The progress of these last years will continue, or it will all slide back.

You can take the boy out of the Bronx, but you can't take the Bronx out of the boy, and I am still rooting for the place.

What's Happening On The Street Of Dreams The New York Times, November 20, 1988.

Since I wrote that piece, I still root for the place, and the tipping point has passed — with the Bronx on the positive side. The progress has continued.

After the 50th anniversary of our 6th grade graduation, Richard Kobliner, who had told me about that gathering, said he was going to try convening some of the people not specifically from our 6th grade, other people from our neighborhood. He was only partially successful; we were a small group. I came, as did Richard, and two people I barely knew while growing up, but one of my good friends from the neighborhood was there. We reminisced over dinner in a Manhattan restaurant. As we were leaving, I stood apart from the others with my old friend, Bobby, who had become Robert C. Grogin, professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan. My remark to him, the fact that I would even say it, indicated how much my family history and my profound embarrassment about it were a part of me back then, and still in my emotional DNA. “Children can be known to be cruel,” I said, “but I can't remember a single time anyone out of anger threw up to me that my parents were divorced and that I lived in a household of deaf-mutes.” His response went to the heart of the sense of community we all shared in those years and how much we meant to each other. “It would have been,” he said, “unthinkable.”