Snow, Memory & Violence
Walking around the City today is like walking around the inside of filthy dingy Snoopy Snow-Cone machine. The plastic sides of it long ago discolored to a sickly yellow-gray that does not wash off.
I only remember the deep snows of my childhood. School closed and I would wander around Sunset Park climbing along the tall mountains made by plows and shovels as people cleaned their storefronts. The streets would be mostly empty of cars and I could cross back and forth by myself imagining I was crossing some Himalayan ice field, or climbing the mountains of frozen Pluto.
My mom would send me to the supermarket for milk and it was a wasteland in there as people bought every last carton and plastic jug, as if another milk truck would never get through again, as if herds of cows somewhere were all frozen and would never give that delicious calf-sustanence again.
I spent a lot of time on my own back then. Ten years old and wandering a Brooklyn washed in my imagination. I had friends from school that I sometimes went over to their house to play, or they'd come over to my house, but every afternoon was me at home alone building worlds with Lego, or writing stories. Hmm, if I think about it, except for the Lego, my afternoons/afterwork are not very different.
My older brother and sister both worked at Edelman's Jewelry store on Fifth Avenue, and we lived above it. I would sometimes do odd jobs for the owner, Danny. Things like cleaning all the jewelry cases, sweeping the storefront, or wandering from bodega to bodega to find him mallomars when he had a craving.
The jewelry store was robbed twice. My sister was there both times, but luckily I wasn't. The first time I came home from being at friend's house and was watching TV when my sister came into the living room and calmly told me that someone had put a gun to her head that afternoon and she had filled a bag with cash and jewelry. I think she was still in shock, but she continued to work there.
The second time was about a year later. I was up in the apartment in the bedroom, playing with Lego and listening to my brothers records on the sly as he wasn't home. Someone rang the bell and I went to look out the window, and saw a crowd gathered in front of the jewelry store. The woman that lived downstairs yelled for my mom to come down.
I might have only been 10 (maybe 11), but I knew something was wrong and I ran to the kitchen to tell my mom, screaming that if someone had hurt my sister I would fucking kill them. It is my first memory of rage and worry. I ran down the stairs ahead of my mom, even as she yelled for me stay back and pushed my way through the crowd.
I could see blood splattered on the storefront, and my sister was leaning down by someone slumped against the counter, applying pressure to a wound. There was more blood on the shattered rear counter, where shotgun pellets had scattered.
My mother ran past me, and pushed me back and the woman that lived downstairs grabbed me so I would not go in. My sister came to the door. She was okay, but her hands and clothes were covered in blood. The owner and another worker (his brother-in-law) had been shot, but one of the robbers had been shot as well. It was his blood that was smeared across the storefront. Luckily my sister had just been about to step out to sweep the front when the shooting started, and was able to run off.
My sister gave up working there soon after, and just around the time we moved to the projects in Red Hook, Danny sold the store and the building to the Korean couple that owned the liquor store across the street.
I don't remember snow in Red Hook, though I know for certain I was there for one winter and it must have snowed. All I really remember of it was fighting crackheads and drunkards as occasional entertainment, and beautiful dirty children running wild in empty lots adjacent to those maroon brick buildings.
Snow in high school was clean and beautiful and a warning that rough horseplay was imminent. The gorgeous campus of my boarding school would be draped in that pure white, and the great south lawn would be mostly undisturbed all winter - except for occasional sledding and wild wrestling romps, where three or four upper classmen would grab one underclassman and shove him down and bury him in snow and then pelt him with hard-packed snowballs when he tried to get up and then knock him down again. About once a year, the teachers would let us out of the dorms after midnight to let us blow off some steam, and we'd run around and scream and fight playfully, as the boys harassed the girls, or other boys in front of girls, and taunted the freshmen in their dorm, who were never let out, and had to watch the fun from their windows.
I remember my sophomore year, a group of students wandered out into the woods to drink when we had a rare snow day and classes were totally cancelled. The day students could not make it in, and the same went for about half the teachers. Of course, one junior had way too much to drink and she laid down in the snow to "rest a minute" and was left behind by the others, and nearly died of hypothermia - and then got in trouble for drinking on top of that - though if I remember correctly she never gave up the names of the other folks with her. I wasn't there. I was still a lower classman, and not cool enough to be invited, or to even know about it until after everyone was already gone.
In college, I remember a deep snow that led a sculpture class to go out onto the Heart (a round area of grass in the middle of campus) and make fairy tale characters. In the dying light of the day, a girlfriend and I stood by a stairwell window and looked at all the mythological creatures illuminated by a lamp-post coming to life and she said, "It reminds me of Narnia."
I only remember the deep snows of my childhood. School closed and I would wander around Sunset Park climbing along the tall mountains made by plows and shovels as people cleaned their storefronts. The streets would be mostly empty of cars and I could cross back and forth by myself imagining I was crossing some Himalayan ice field, or climbing the mountains of frozen Pluto.
My mom would send me to the supermarket for milk and it was a wasteland in there as people bought every last carton and plastic jug, as if another milk truck would never get through again, as if herds of cows somewhere were all frozen and would never give that delicious calf-sustanence again.
I spent a lot of time on my own back then. Ten years old and wandering a Brooklyn washed in my imagination. I had friends from school that I sometimes went over to their house to play, or they'd come over to my house, but every afternoon was me at home alone building worlds with Lego, or writing stories. Hmm, if I think about it, except for the Lego, my afternoons/afterwork are not very different.
My older brother and sister both worked at Edelman's Jewelry store on Fifth Avenue, and we lived above it. I would sometimes do odd jobs for the owner, Danny. Things like cleaning all the jewelry cases, sweeping the storefront, or wandering from bodega to bodega to find him mallomars when he had a craving.
The jewelry store was robbed twice. My sister was there both times, but luckily I wasn't. The first time I came home from being at friend's house and was watching TV when my sister came into the living room and calmly told me that someone had put a gun to her head that afternoon and she had filled a bag with cash and jewelry. I think she was still in shock, but she continued to work there.
The second time was about a year later. I was up in the apartment in the bedroom, playing with Lego and listening to my brothers records on the sly as he wasn't home. Someone rang the bell and I went to look out the window, and saw a crowd gathered in front of the jewelry store. The woman that lived downstairs yelled for my mom to come down.
I might have only been 10 (maybe 11), but I knew something was wrong and I ran to the kitchen to tell my mom, screaming that if someone had hurt my sister I would fucking kill them. It is my first memory of rage and worry. I ran down the stairs ahead of my mom, even as she yelled for me stay back and pushed my way through the crowd.
I could see blood splattered on the storefront, and my sister was leaning down by someone slumped against the counter, applying pressure to a wound. There was more blood on the shattered rear counter, where shotgun pellets had scattered.
My mother ran past me, and pushed me back and the woman that lived downstairs grabbed me so I would not go in. My sister came to the door. She was okay, but her hands and clothes were covered in blood. The owner and another worker (his brother-in-law) had been shot, but one of the robbers had been shot as well. It was his blood that was smeared across the storefront. Luckily my sister had just been about to step out to sweep the front when the shooting started, and was able to run off.
My sister gave up working there soon after, and just around the time we moved to the projects in Red Hook, Danny sold the store and the building to the Korean couple that owned the liquor store across the street.
I don't remember snow in Red Hook, though I know for certain I was there for one winter and it must have snowed. All I really remember of it was fighting crackheads and drunkards as occasional entertainment, and beautiful dirty children running wild in empty lots adjacent to those maroon brick buildings.
Snow in high school was clean and beautiful and a warning that rough horseplay was imminent. The gorgeous campus of my boarding school would be draped in that pure white, and the great south lawn would be mostly undisturbed all winter - except for occasional sledding and wild wrestling romps, where three or four upper classmen would grab one underclassman and shove him down and bury him in snow and then pelt him with hard-packed snowballs when he tried to get up and then knock him down again. About once a year, the teachers would let us out of the dorms after midnight to let us blow off some steam, and we'd run around and scream and fight playfully, as the boys harassed the girls, or other boys in front of girls, and taunted the freshmen in their dorm, who were never let out, and had to watch the fun from their windows.
I remember my sophomore year, a group of students wandered out into the woods to drink when we had a rare snow day and classes were totally cancelled. The day students could not make it in, and the same went for about half the teachers. Of course, one junior had way too much to drink and she laid down in the snow to "rest a minute" and was left behind by the others, and nearly died of hypothermia - and then got in trouble for drinking on top of that - though if I remember correctly she never gave up the names of the other folks with her. I wasn't there. I was still a lower classman, and not cool enough to be invited, or to even know about it until after everyone was already gone.
In college, I remember a deep snow that led a sculpture class to go out onto the Heart (a round area of grass in the middle of campus) and make fairy tale characters. In the dying light of the day, a girlfriend and I stood by a stairwell window and looked at all the mythological creatures illuminated by a lamp-post coming to life and she said, "It reminds me of Narnia."