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Irving Bronsky |
Dr. Irving ‘Itchy’ Bronsky is a psychiatrist, psychologist, psychotherapist, mystic, teacher, artist and person. Read more about him and his work at http://www.irving-itchy-bronsky.com
Marco Polo Discovers The West Bronx 1931
Sid heard about a subway being built on the Grand Concourse, a mile from our house. I adored his ability for risk-taking, initiative, improvisation and "chutzpah." He suggested that he and I go with to see this wonder and I agreed. I was 7 years old.
I stayed downstairs while he bounded up to our fourth floor front-facing tenement apartment to tell Momma that we were going "to play in the park". He got her approval and we moved out.
We came to Park Avenue; it carried the channel coming and going from downtown New York City to upstate New York. We were fascinated by the comings and goings of trains; the climax came when a long freight train slowly approached; the engineer leaned the upper part of his body out of the cab and we waved to him and he waved back!
The next block was Webster Avenue; this major thoroughfare was three times wider than the street where our elevated ran. He led us into the street and we zigzagged through the traffic until we were safely standing on the island sidewalk. A streetcar was just leaving and Sid told me to stay put. He nimbly stepped on a metal strip on the outside rear of this accelerating trolley.
I became frightened as I thought Sid was leaving me stranded. When he was half a block away he turned his head and waved a hand in a smiling greeting. The trolley slowed down at the next corner and Sid jumped off. He waved again, crossed to the opposite side of the tracks and in no time was riding the back of a trolley to our station.
The Grand Concourse was the widest street I had ever seen. There were no streetcar tracks, no overhead electric wires. There were buses, bigger than trucks, and one was coming into the station near where I was standing. When it stopped there was a loud hissing sound that I recoiled from, and then the doors folded in and opened up. Magic.
A few people got on and off and I approached the open doorway, but then there was the loud hissing and folding and the doors closed. With a rumbling roar the bus was on its way, leaving behind it a trail of sour black smoke.
In 1931 there was not much vehicular traffic on this boulevard yet it had ten traffic lanes. There was general agreement in the East Bronx that the Concourse was the unofficial dividing line between the poorer east and the richer west Bronx. A half a block from where we were there was a huge hole in the ground that was fenced in by wooden horses and extended almost to the center of the Boulevard. There was a focused flurry of action in that area: trucks were being loaded with dirt and rubble; there was a wide assortment of machinery, equipment and men around the construction site.
We ran to the edge of the wooden barrier and ducked under it. The size of the hole filled me with awe; then I stared in fascination at an elevator cage rising from the depths. When its floor was on the street level it stopped with a rattling shudder. Wire mesh gates opened in the middle, one half rising and the other descending.
Several men got off, pushing in front of them a large metal wagon that was filled with earth and rocks. Then several others pushed an empty wagon onto the metal-screened elevator. The doors clanged shut and it was only then that I saw the operator sitting on a high stool. He turned down a big lever and the elevator began to descend and the men and machines disappeared into the hole.
Sid told me to wait and he approached the next elevator. He asked the operator if we could ride with him. His brazen request brought forth a cursed response from the operator: "Scram, you rotten kid. If you don't beat it I’ll have a cop run you in". Sid retreated back to where I was.
We walked north on the Concourse until we reached the Lowe’s Paradise movie house. This theater was the best the Bronx had to offer: a carpeted lobby, marble stairways and a balcony that was so high you could almost touch the sky. The ceiling of this huge hall showed a starry sky and the stars moved! It was the only theater in the Bronx that had a combination of a first-run movie and a vaudeville show, all for the price of one.
Beneath the marquee there were uniformed ushers controlling the long box office line. At the outer lobby entrance there was a tuxedoed ticket taker standing in front of a series of highly polished brass doors that were open.
I had been to Saturday afternoon films in the neighborhood Deluxe and had been enchanted by the cowboy movies and weekly "chapters" of "The Perils of Pauline." The "Deluxe Theater" on Tremont and Belmont Avenues was a loved treat. But this "Paradise" palace was overwhelming. I thought that I would never be able to get in there no matter how much money our family had.
Sid thought otherwise; he led me towards the open, unguarded door on our side and just as we were about to cross under the velvet rope barrier a uniformed usher appeared out of nowhere. No word was spoken as Sid led me out of the lobby into the glaring sunshine.
Suddenly, I was aware of being hungry and Sid said not to worry. We moved back down the Concourse to the construction site and then started back home. There were stores and Sid looked for one in which he could steal something, but the storekeepers eyed him warily. Maybe now I thought we would go home. Besides my hunger I began to miss Momma. I made the move in the direction of Fulton Avenue but Sid was holding my sleeve and I looked up at him in surprise. He said that we still had to ride in an elevator before we go home. I forgot my hunger and yearning for Momma and we moved back to the Grand Concourse.
Sid chose a very tall apartment house without a doorman. That had an automatic elevator. We rode up and down in it, thrilling each time to the powerful acceleration and deceleration that caused our stomachs to rise and fall accordingly. Several people got on and off but they said nothing to us. We would have continued even longer were it not for a curious resident of the building who asked us if we live there. We didn't answer him and when the elevator stopped on the ground floor we rushed out of the building.
Then we headed home.
What was waiting for us were our anxious mother, our older brother and sister, and some people from the neighborhood. (Poppa was unaware of the drama since he was at work.) As the hours of our disappearance passed Momma began to worry. She sent our two other siblings to look for us and they returned without us. She went to the street to look for us and didn’t find us. She was sure that something terrible had happened to us.
My frantic mother decided not to wait for my father to come home and was about to go to the police when we showed up. We both ran crying into her soft, secure embrace.
A large crowd had gathered and there was a good deal of happy talk with some of the mothers blessing God for our safe return. Holding each of us by the hand our mother led us up to our 4th floor apartment.
We went in and Momma gave us something to eat, without saying a word. Then the punishment began: she began to "talk" to us. She never hit us. She began to speak in a loud, stern voice, angrily telling us how much she almost died of fright because she was worried. She repeated these phrases over and over, emphasizing how we had made her suffer. We were blamed for being the cause of her premature demise.
In no time both of us were crying and begging her to stop and pleading for her forgiveness. When it seemed that we had been forgiven and adequately punished, she would start all over again. She became more hysterical, and we repeatedly promised that we would never do anything wrong again. Finally it stopped. At last it was all over and we went to bed, with full stomachs and our minds and hearts filled with guilt, shame and repentance.