Want to hang out for awhile?

I was an apartment kid. More specifically, I was a Flushing, Queens, New York City apartment kid. Growing up in my neighborhood, there were two basic types of kids: house kids and apartment kids. House kids were, in my young mind, a higher class of kid. House kids had things like attics and basements they didn't share with hundreds of other people and staircases that were IN their home. They had their own driveway, and their fathers didn't have to hunt for 30, 45 minutes for a parking space blocks from where they lived. They probably had their own rooms that looked out on a backyard, a backyard with real grass. Maybe it had a tree, and their own barbecue. In my mind, in every way, they had it made, but not us. We lived in an apartment.

Now I’m talking a REAL apartment, in an apartment building, not a second floor in somebody's house. An apartment building had to have at least 4 stories, and no less than ten apartments on a floor. Not that there was a written rule someplace, (like an apartment requirements guide that I had read,) but as a kid, you just knew. Apartments were different from houses, a totally different living experience, and therefore apartment kids were different. Different, and to me never as good or cool as a house kid.

My building was 6 stories, built somewhere in the 1920s. When my mom came to this country from Ireland in the early 1950s, she came to live with her aunt Susan, her father's sister. Aunt Susan lived in something my mother had never really seen before; growing up in the heart of the country: a 6-story apartment building, with an elevator, no less. Back then, the building actually had a name: Harold Towers. It was made to look like a castle, with round towers on the top and a throne in the building lobby. There was a luxurious carpet on the floor of that lobby, along with a grand fireplace, red velvet curtains and two large mahogany wooden cabinets. Mr. Laney, the building superintendent, kept his charge neat as a pin, washing the floors weekly and keeping all the apartments in good repair. He died when I was very young, 2 or 3 years old, but I remember him vaguely as a small, squat, fireplug of a man, ruddy face with a tuft of white hair on his head, in a grey uniform with his name on the lapel, and always with a smile on his face and dirt on his hands.

Mom moved into apartment 4J with aunt Susan and her husband, uncle Martin, and got a job in the city at the phone company, working one of those peg boards you sometimes see in old movies. Later, right after they got married in 1956, my mom and dad moved into their own apartment, 4A, and after I was born (2nd of three kids) they moved upstairs to apartment 6D, for the extra bedroom.

By the time I came along, the building had already seen better days. My mom would tell the story that she came home from work one day, and the beautiful carpet was gone. Everyone in the building assumed that the carpet was taken out to be cleaned. Back then there were companies that would come about once a year or so, roll up your carpet, and take it away for a week, and return it wrapped in brown paper, looking brand new. Problem was, the carpet company had not taken it, someone else had. As hard as it is now to believe, back then there were no locks, buzzers or any security of any kind in some buildings like there is everywhere today, coming and going was kind of on an honor system. So apparently, some people just walked into the lobby, rolled up the carpet, (which had to weigh several hundred pounds) and walked out with it.

The carpet incident was, as they say, the first nail in the buildings coffin. Many more would come. The throne would also soon disappear. When Mr. Leney died he was replaced by some idiot, whose name I can't remember. The new superintendent was a big hulk of a guy who would talk to himself and never smiled. One day, he thought that the beautiful mahogany cabinets would look much better if he painted them flat baby blue, and proceeded to do so. My mother cried when she saw them. Shortly, those cabinets vanished also, and that was a merciful act, the offensive sight was too hard to look at every day as you waited for the elevator.

So the Harold Towers I grew up in was a mere shadow of its former glory, diminished by time and neglect. But that building was my home, the only one I had ever known, and like an old friend that had been with you through thick and thin, I loved it anyway. To this day, at 50 years old, when I have a dream where I'm going home, that's the place I go to.

My mom and dad met here, in New York City, but both came to the United States on their own. For the most part, they had very little family here. As often happens in a New York City apartment building (at least it did back in the 60s, when I grew up), your neighbors become your extended family. Aunts and uncles surrounded me; ones I had no actual relation to. Mrs. Hartnagel, a senior widow in her 70s, became my “grandmother”, or at least as close to one as I would ever know. When my Mom had errands to run I often spent afternoons in her apartment (6F), sitting on the floor talking to her or her parakeet, Happy, who did not live up to his name… he was one of the most vicious creatures I have ever met. Put your finger near Happy’s cage and odds were you’d not get it back. Mrs. Hartnagel was also a big soap opera fan, and often we would watch “Day Of Our Lives” together. Of course, I had no idea what was going on, but in the times before Sesame Street, let alone whole channels like Nicolodeon or Disney, “the sands through the hourglass” still kept me fascinated.

As I got older and started school, I started to make friends. One of my first friends was a kid named Richie, who at first lived across the street, in another Apartment building. Eventually, he moved into our building, on the 4^th floor, and we would visit each other, up and down the stairs. Then he moved again, this time to the 6^th floor, just opposite me in 6B. I don’t remember how it started, but on a regular basis one of us would ring the other one’s doorbell and ask if he wanted to hang out. Privacy was not to be found in either apartment, and guys needed to talk about guy things, and not under the prying ears of sisters, brothers or parents. The most logical place was right in between our apartments, and the apartment stairs to the roof was a convenient place to sit. Those stairs became the place where we, (and later many more of my friends) and I discussed everything: tv shows, comic books, baseball cards, stupid teachers, science fiction, and eventually, girls. Eddie, another friend who lived in another apartment building a few blocks away, became another stair sitting friend. We would talk, as Douglas Adams would say, “about Life, the Universe, and Everything.” In those discussions I have to say we solved most of the world’s problems; right there, on the stairs to the roof. Problem was, nobody knew it except us. But believe me, we had it all figured out, you bet.

So here I am, a 50+ year-old guy, and now I realize there are many times I miss those old roof stairs. Maybe life was easier then; problems were simpler. I guess it just didn’t seem that way back then. So I suppose this will be my roof stairs, the place were I will tell tales to anyone who wants to listen. Much less personal, and the discussion will go only one way, but at least it will be easier on your butt than those marble flagstones. I hope you’ll plop yourself down and sit a spell. I’ve some tales to tell.