Older Generation Shares Glories of Growing up in NYC

Groups of enthusiastic youngsters learned all about how their parents and grandparents grew up on the world’s biggest playground – the streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx – at an event that brought three generations together this past weekend at .

Brooklyn/Bronx Day was complete with street games, toys from the '40s and – best of all – those sweet confections that evoke a nostalgic childhood memory for people who grew up in the city, especially egg creams, penny candies and Charlotte Russes, the regal ambrosia of Brooklyn street foods.

The idea was that people who lived it would teach today’s children how to play stickball, pick-up sticks, jump rope, potsy, and all of the other celebrated games of a bygone era in New York.

Out in the parking lot, the finer points of stickball were explained to eager youngsters who didn’t  seem to need all that much explaining as they hit the ball and raced from base to base.

Inside, people were cheering the official "girl’s game" of the streets: jump rope. One high-jumping six-year-old even managed to jump right through the alphabet, one letter per jump, to a triumphant Z.

Local history came alive with the recreation of Levine’s Stationary Store, a mecca for people who grew up in Sea Cliff from the mid-20s through the mid-60s. Levine’s was founded in 1924 at 54 Sea Cliff Avenue by the grandfather of David Levine of Glen Cove. His parents took over the store in 1942 and he recalls working there alongside his mother Zelda, throughout his youth. David's wife, Sandy, modeled the apron that Zelda, well-known and esteemed throughout Sea Cliff, wore each day behind the counter. 

The games, the toys and the fondly-recalled sweets made for a great day, but the synagogue’s rabbi Irwin Huberman explained that Brooklyn/Bronx Day had a loftier goal: “We’re trying to teach the meaning of the Biblical phrase, ‘Honor your neighbor as yourself.’” He said that the street games and the corner candy stores of a bygone New York “helped create strong neighborhoods and personal relationships.”

In these days, where the screens of electronic devices absorb everyone’s attention, “there’s a lesson to be learned from the fair play, physical activity and personal interaction that were the benchmarks of the games played on the streets of New York.”