Update 10-15-02


Hi,

Three short notes and a long one -- that's kind of the letter V in Morse code:

From Irene Augustin Wehn: Hi!  I so remember that pizza Barbara Blitfield mentioned.  It was my first introduction to Italian food.  Growing up in an Irish-German family, we never even ate spaghetti.  Anyway, I thought that Green Acres pizza was the best thing I ever ate.  Thanks for reminding me of it.

From Terry Shields:  Interesting to see the comments on Niagara Falls. I went to Niagara University (the land of Calvin Murphy, for those who remember) and can well relate to the abysmal look of the American side.  It was just one bar after another down Main Street.  Of course, when you're in college, does anything else matter?  As Zelda White pointed out, the Canadian side was the place to go if you wanted to see the Falls.  Then again, crossing the Canadian border back in the late 60's required a draft card, a student ID, and, at one point, guys weren't allowed to have any beards.  It's true -- if you had a beard, they figured you just had to be one them Draft Dodgers (early American profiling).
      As far as the next reunion being in Nebraska:  we might ask Mr. Bittman if the following Nebraska laws have been repealed before further consideration is given:
      If a child burps in church, his parent may be arrested.
      It is illegal to go whale fishing.  (Now, this is something that really needs looking into.)
      It is illegal for bar owners to sell beer unless they are simultaneously brewing a kettle of soup.
      It is illegal to sell doughnut holes.
      Regards to all.

From Barnet Kellman:  Just so we can all appreciate the true isolation (some would call it exile) of Jerry Bittman -- I stopped in a Starbucks on my way to work, one of the four Starbucks I pass on my 15 minute drive.  In this Starbucks, they had a map of the USA with pins pushed into it indicating the locations of all the Starbucks branches.  In Nebraska, there are three Starbucks!  (and one is on the border of Iowa).  Raise your hand if you knew that Nebraska has a border with Iowa!  Jerry, come home!

And from Barbara Blitfield Pech:  If this is the week the infamous hot tub 3 are splattered all over the Reunion tabloid, so be it.  Ah, to be so anticipated at this stage of life.  Although the irony is that we have all had a grand laugh over how, at 54, we're the class hotties.  Especially when at 18 -- when we all looked 18 -- it seemed no-one wanted us at all.  Well, better late than never.  And, please note, that we are all available again!
      Also, Happy 55th birthday, on the 31st, to Ed Albrecht and Sue Atkins (whose e-mail address we seem to have lost).  Ed was my first friend and across-the-street neighbor in 1949.  His mom always had the best Halloween birthday parties.  Other upcoming birthdays:  Eric Hilton, 11/2; Barnet Kellman, 11/4; I'll be celebrating my double digits on the 14th; and Carol Ewig's birthday is on the 23rd.  (Our sons are also born the same number of days apart in the same year, and, actually, I was on the phone with Carol when my water broke.  Now that's friendship!)
     A cousin on Long Island was good enough to send me a clipping from a recent Newsday midsection article called "Names of Long Island."  It also had a lovely fall foliage picture of what seems to be Valley Stream State Park.  Part of the article reads as follows:  "Present-day Valley Stream was originally inhabited by the Rockaway Indians.  Europeans arrived in the late 1700s, forming small communities including Hungry Harbor, Fosters Meadow, and Tigetown.  In 1843, a merchant named Robert Pagan campaigned for a local post office, choosing the name "Valley Stream" because it described the area's valleys and streams.  It is the only American community with this name.  Rural for centuries, its growth surged in 1921 when developer William Gibson built hundreds of houses.  The village was incorporated in 1925.  Famous natives include actors Ed Burns and Steve Buscemi. Today, it has 36,369 residents."       On a personal note, when my family emigrated from the depths of Brooklyn in 1949 to rural Valley Stream, the only house my parents could afford was in Gibson.  My dad's law practice was a fledgling two years old.  He had one kid -- me -- and one pending, so money was not abounding until 1959 when we moved to Green Acres.  The original 1935 lease on the Gibson house we owned on Garden Street made a strong note of advising that the properties would not be sold to Jews or Negroes.  
We discovered this footnote when the house was fire-bombed shortly after we moved in, and my arm was broken in the name of all Christ-killers.
      Also, you may well remember me as one of the few girls to attend Hebrew school at Temple Gates of Zion -- not that my father really believed that I should attend, or be bas mitzvahed.  I was signed-up the same day I came home after playing at Linda Passaro and Rich Viscecchia's houses just down the street, and I begged my parents to tell me who my patron saint was so I could get a white Communion dress and be blessed at Holy Name of Mary with Linda and Rich.  (I had a mean crush on Father Swan, too, which, of course, was immediately redirected to Rabbi Resnicoff.)

Some quick housekeeping:  Yes, indeed, the hot tub pictures are now online.  But I'm running out of space again on the home page, and this time I can't squeeze more out of AOL.  So I had to delete the following four grade school pictures:  Harbor -- Lindroth; Forest -- Bronner and Dikeman; Brooklyn Avenue -- 6th.  I'll try to figure out how to reorganize things more efficiently over the Christmas break, probably by deleting similar pictures from the April reunion taken by different folks.  Meanwhile, check the Florida pictures -- of which I could only use half of those sent, again due to space limits, not censorship.

The home page address (possibly a link as I'm at my home computer):   http://hometown.aol.com/falcons1965a


Rich