Update 2-8-11

Hi,

A note -- more or less about the present -- a reminder, a new name for the mailing list, and then we ease back to the 1950s and 60s.

The note, from Linda Tobin Kettering:  Thanks to Bernie Scheidt for the information about the PBS documentary, Colorblind.  Amazingly enough, years ago -- when she and I were living in Manhattan right after college -- I was friends with Pamela Peak, the director and writer of the film.  We had lost touch, and I had recently wondered whatever happened to her.  I knew she was from the Detroit area, but now I have a way to contact her and share memories about each of our favorite teachers.  Thanks again, Bernie.

The reminder, from Emily Kleinman Schreiber:  If it doesn't snow this Thursday, February 10th, we'll have the next Alumni Association meeting at South.  As usual, everyone is welcome.  The meeting starts at 7:15 PM.

The addition, from Barbara Blitfied Pech:  Please add Elyssa Sonkin -- bubbelissa@aol.com -- to the weekly mailing list.  She's another amazing and great Facebook find.  Elyssa left South at the end of her junior year, when she and her family moved to Baldwin, but she's excited to find us and would like to keep updated on everyone and everything.

And to continue the often overlapping notes about stores formerly in Valley Stream, first, from Eric Hilton, who began this:  Barbara, yes, Escar's was the shoe store, not far from Tom McAnn’s.  My mother bought all my shoes there, because I had wide feet, and the store specialized in that.  The gym clothes store was Jay’s, and across from that was Lang’s department store.  It specialized in husky boy clothes, so that's where my mother bought my pants when I was a little chubby kid.  Things haven’t changed much in 50 years.  I still buy husky boy jeans, now from JCPenney, because it's the only place I can get 29” length pants -- still very embarrassing.
    One of the soda fountain stores across the street was Itkens', but there was another soda fountain place called Teddy’s.  Don’t ask me how I remember that, but it just jumped into my 64-year-old-brain.  I also remember the old police station on the side street off Rockaway Avenue.  As I've said before, Down’s Music was on the side of the movie theater, but the fruit store I remembered -- owned by Mimi and Suzan -- was on the east side of Rockaway Avenue just south of Sunrise Highway.  It was across from the 3 Brothers Barber Shop, near La Marr’s Cleaners.  Dominick’s Deli -- where Danny Stellebotte and I were both fired from a few times -- was next to Brown’s Hardware, also on the east side of lower Rockaway.  Around the corner was Jess White Cleaners.  And don't forget the bra and girdle shop -- I think called The Corsetorium, also on Rockaway Avenue.  As I've also said before, my mother would drag me in there and make me wait while she tried on underwear -- unless that happened in a store in the Green Acres Shopping Center, before it was enclosed.  One more thing coming back to me -- there was a hobby shop where my friend Frank Longmore and I used to go to buy chemistry sets and other experimental stuff.  We bought powered charcoal, potassium phosphate, and sulphur to make gunpowder and stink bombs.  And I forgot that the 5 &10 -- Woolworth's -- was in town.

From Joanne Shapiro Polner:  Barbara, thank you for the name of the shoe store -- Escar Shoes -- and the gym clothes store, the Morris Shop.  I'll have to take you on your word. You remember so much, it is amazing, but I am not sure about the bakery information.
    Near the library and Mitchell's, the ice cream shop, was a bakery, in my recollection, and I think that it was on the same side of the street.  I offered a name, Barenberg's, though I'm unsure of the spelling, and I had the bakery placed in my mind in town.  You gave the same name but associated it with good jelly donuts and placed the bakery on the south side of Sunrise Highway.  Maybe the bakery had been in the center of town and then moved.  I don't know about that.  Or maybe Barenberg's was on the south side of Sunrise and the bakery I remember in the center of town had a different name -- one that doesn't come to my mind.  Can anyone else help out here?

From Eric:  No, the gym store was Jay’s.  It was near the Lantern Sewing & Knitting Shop, owned by Steve and Marsha Leidner’s parents.  My mother use to knit, she always took me there, and she spent about 100 hours every time she went in.  I hated it.  Across the street was a German photographer named Ralph Goetz -- that may be how he spelled his name.  He and his wife owned and operated the business.  I also remember a novelty / magic / costume / trick shop, and I think there was a German deli named Karl Ehmer's Meats.  Plus, Larry’s Army & Navy store was off the corner of Rockaway Avenue and Merrick Road.

From Barbara Blithfield Pech:  Jay's -- of course.  I think that Teddy's was sold and became Itkens'.  As much as I would love to think there were 3 ice cream shops in Valley Stream -- maybe in heaven -- I don't think that was true.  I worked in The Corsetorium in the Green  Acres Shopping Center in my junior year, 1964, but I don't remember a foundation shop on Rockaway Avenue.  Also, I went to Down's Music, but it was on Merrick.  Maybe that store moved, too.  Oralee Pelton's dancing school was on Rockaway Avenue.  My mother had great hopes for my talents, but my feet proved her wrong.

[Rich -- Jane Arden's School of the Dance was on Merrick Road, possibly just west of Rockaway on the north side of the street.  My sister went there.  The studio was on the second floor, "up a steep and very narrow stairway," as the folks on Broadway described a different dance studio.]

From Evelyn Roedel Read: I remember the bakery as being on the same side as the library.  I think the librarian was a Mrs. Bird, though I don't know how she spelled her name, and I seem to remember that there was so much bluing in her hair that it looked bluish/purple and artificial.  I couldn't stop looking at it as I had never seen such a sight before.  The movie theater was on the opposite side of the street -- on the same side as the 5 & 10.  That sold live goldfish at the back of the store, where the pet center was located.  There were also artificial plastic flowers there, in their "garden" center.  And, yes, there was a store on that side of the street that sold tricks, like buzzers that gave a bee-like buzz vibration when the wearer shook hands with another person.  I was interested in magic at the time, and magic tricks could be bought there as well.
    On a different topic, I remember getting a colored card around 1953 for the movie theater.  Various colors of cards were given out in class on Fridays, and if your color matched the one in the ticket booth window -- maybe just on Saturday -- you were admitted free.  When King Kong was playing, my protective mother wouldn't let us -- my brother Walter and me -- see it because she didn't want us to get frightened.  Walter had previously been terrified by a movie I believe called The Thing -- about huge ants. 
    It seems that the stretch of stores at the southern end of Rockaway Avenue, from Bohack's to Sunrise, was rather short, and that's what -- in my mind -- places the library, movie theater, and most of the other stores north of Sunrise.  I know there was a liquor store in the Bohack stretch that was owned by George and Florence Tauber.  Their son, George, known as "Nicky," attended South and was adored by my first boyfriend's sister, Gayle Ulrich, possibly in the class of '65.  Nick unfortunately died a few years ago.  I kept in touch with his mom, who lived nearby in Leisure Village in Ridge, until she passed away about 6 months before her son.
    I moved to Valley Stream on May 1, 1950, at the end of my third grade.  And, boy, was I surprised to see my former third grade teacher, Miss Main, from my school, P.S. 100 in Queens, shopping in Bohack's!  Those are my memories.  I hope I have them right.  Perhaps they will help stir up a few more from other people.

From Barbara Blitfield Pech:  There must have been a second bakery.  I just don't remember it.  Or it, too, moved across the street, as it seems that many places hopscotched around.  I know the Lantern Knit Shop did, although it was after its fire that it relocated next to Kent Cleaners.  And I do now recall a very tiny, narrow shop called Robert's -- "the little store with the big name."  Was it Robert's or was Robert's a jewlery store?  I also bought my first Everly Brothers' record, "Cathy's Clown," in a shop near the library.  Eric and Evelyn's mention of a magic shop seems ironic as I remembered the magic shop last night, too.  I wonder how many other people were doing the same.
    Completely unrelated to stores, if you recall, I wrote some time ago that "for fun" I found a copy of The Tingler, a movie that my younger brother was terrified of and walked out of midway through.  I'd like to add now that the big wuss, now 60-years-old, still hasn't opened the plastic wrapper, and I gave him the present in October.  But he did pop the popcorn I included in the gift bag.  Wait till he sees his Christmas gift this year.  The Tingler will seem like a comedy.  Damn big sisters, 

[Rich -- To jump back a bit, Robert's, on the west side of Rockaway just north of a drug store I think, was, indeed, a narrow watch, watch repair, and jewelry shop.  It's where my dad had my bar mitzvah ring made, modeled after my grandfather's signet ring, which my grandmother wore.]

From Eric Hilton : Thanks, Barbara, for clarifying that The Corsetorium was in Green Acres.  My wife Gilda wanted to know exactly where in the shopping center it was situated.  And as I've said in other notes, I, too, went to Down's Music.  Jimmy Downs played accordion, but I took guitar lessons there when I turned 13.  At that time, Down's was attached to the movie theatre, but it was on the side street.  I think there was a temple across the street, though it later became a church.
    You might be right about Teddy’s.  Perhaps someone can contact Walt Itkens and ask.  Every time I go in there, the place skeevs me out because it looks so filthy.  My daughter said the sons took it over, and they are not very nice people.  They hire young school girls who don’t seem to care much, and the service is less than awful.  What a disappointment.
    Years ago, my friend, Tom Sisco -- the son of the owner of Ed’s Aquarium -- and I were were kicked out of there after we played at a sorority or school dance.  Tom stuck about 15 straws together and drank some stranger’s Coke from the next table.  I though it was funny, but Tom got caught, and Mr. Itkens asked us to leave.  I loved Easter time there because of the huge chocolate bunny, which cost $100, that was in the window.  Also because of the huge milk- and semi-sweet nonpareils -- my favorites.  Since you lived in Green Acres, Barbara, and since I played in a band with many guys from Central High School, I probably had more ventures to the northern end of Valley Stream and hung out at Whitey’s across from the Valley Stream movie theater.  Also in town was Suprina, which was a place to get clothing, and there was a sporting goods store, which I forget the name of.  Again, perhaps others might know.

[Rich -- Following what Eric said about the temple or church -- there was a building around the corner from the movie theater -- north or south, but on the east side -- which seemed to be the starter for churches and temples.  Gates of Zion was there in the early days when I only went to Sunday school.]

Still more next week.

The South '65 e-mail addresses:  reunionclass65.blogspot.com

The South '65 photo site:  picasaweb.google.com/SouthHS65 


Rich