I walked home emotionally spent, battered and confused. I fell asleep wondering what had happened, curious to know what went wrong. Had I made a mistake? I would never know. I had promised to say nothing about our misadventure to anyone. I had a streak of honor and I kept those moments to myself until now. Soon Lee stopped hanging out with us on our street corners. I ran into her in school several times, in the hallways and in the cafeteria. We nodded hello and went our separate ways. When the Spring term started February, Lee was no longer in school or in the neighborhood. Passing her house one day I saw a for sale sign posted on the front lawn. Lee had become a memory for a missed opportunity, a wrongfully placed hope or me. She was my first rejection and my first note that women were mysterious. To my surprise, none of my friends asked how I’d done that night. I have to wonder, though, did my friends know what it took me to learn on my one walk with Lee? Did they know all along, alone or together the truth about the girl we all coveted? That, too, would forever remain a mystery.

Public School 217 was my last grade school before going off to Midwood High School. In the schoolyard, we played all manner of games on badly cracked concrete in need of repair. Broken and uneven under foot, we tried not to do serious injury to ourselves. After the school day ended, whatever the weather, we played touch football. Hard tackling and throwing opposing players to the ground spelled survival. Scuffed and scraped elbows and knees were common. Much to the chagrin of our parents, torn pants, shirts and jackets were also common. Basketball games, mainly two or three to the side, played half court well after dark, were also a daily activity, especially when the weather was warm. Basketball was very rough where toughness replaced finesse. No wimps could play on our courts.

We played softball and a schoolyard variation of stickball for two players. We drew a box on the brick wall, and we played one-on-one, with one pitcher and one batter. The pitcher threw the ball as hard as he could on the fly anywhere toward the box. Using one of our cadged broomsticks, the batter swung at a pitch and tried to get a hit. Throwing a curve by snapping my wrist inevitably left me with pain in my arm and shoulder. Sometimes the curveball worked, but mostly it did not. The most I could do was throw a straight fastball in the hopes the batter could not catch up with it. We had designations for singles, doubles, triples and homeruns. A homerun had to hit the apartment house beyond the fence and across from the schoolyard. More often than not, if we hit a homerun, the ball landed on a terrace, and sometimes broke a window or knocked over a flowerpot. Then we ran for cover to protect ourselves from retribution if someone had seen what we did. The next day, as if nothing happened, we were back trying to throw a curve ball or knuckle ball, pretending we were baseball players.

In school, we played softball and basketball as part of our daily PT activity. I was the first in my class in the seventh grade to hit a ball over the fence and onto Coney Island Avenue. After that majestic clout, at least then it was majestic, my gym teacher grounded me from playing softball for the rest of the term. He said what I had done was dangerous to people on the street, the cars driving on the roadway and to the trolley cars that frequently passed by the school yard.

After school closed, we played softball on our own. My aim, as well as all the kids I played with, was to hit a passing trolley car or at least come close to one. As we got bigger, we all wanted to do the same. Our other goal was to hit the Italian deli on the far side of the street where we bought sandwiches, chips, and soda. To our disappointment, and good fortune, we never achieved those goals.

There was never much liquor in my home. Beer never crossed the threshold. My parents and their friends drank only on special occasions, such as the High Holy Days or a celebration. We had a bottle of thick, sweet Jewish wine, Southern Comfort, sweet Vermouth, Rock and Rye, one bottle of Scotch and one of rye whiskey. Never any gin or vodka. Sometimes when the adults played cards, they had what they called a cocktail, rye and soda, a Manhattan, Scotch and water, never a Martini or fine wine. My parents never offered me a drink so I did not learn to drink at home, as some of my friends did.

I learned to drink beer at a gin mill, a bar and grill on Coney Island Avenue near Avenue H owned by the father of a friend with whom we played softball and touch football. Going into Mike’s as a kid, I knew I was entering another world. The place had a highly polished and worn, mahogeny bar that ran the length of the room. There were spittoons, still used by the patrons, and everyone sat on high bar stools that had leather seats and no backs. Cigarette smoke clouded the air. There was no jukebox in Mike’s. A radio played popular music softly in the background. A small black and white TV sat high on a pedestal over the back of the bar in the far corner of the room. During baseball season, the only station the TV had on was the Brooklyn Dodgers, the neighborhood’s favorite team. Mike kept the blinds on the front windows shuttered so tightly that no light seeped in from the outside. It felt like time had stopped in Mike’s. It was always night. Day had no meaning. That was true for the regulars who sat at the bar every day sipping their icy Rheingold or Schaeffer beer served in narrow, seven ounce glasses. Beer cost fifteen cents then. Beads of water slowly edged their way down the outside of the glass. The stale smell of malt and hops hung in the room like a permanent cloud. These men and the rare woman stared quietly into their beer with a vacant look. Cigarettes dangled from their yellow, stained fingers. These people rarely moved, except to lift their glass to their lips. Living in the dimness of the bar, they were in shadows, mysterious, and alone.