Jackson Heights Life

When I was growing up in Montclair Gardens in the 1940s and 50s, Jackson Heights didn’t sound like it does today.  In the winter, you awoke to the jingle tire chains. . . and if it had snowed that night you knew it immediately thanks to the rhythmic scrape of shovels in the muffled air. 

Spring arrived with the racket of roller skates and cap pistols.  Coal rattled on steel coal chutes, laundry flapped on the roofs, the Good Humor man rang his bicycle bells, and street singers performed under our windows for small change wrapped in pieces of paper.  There was even an organ-grinder.

Summer days were punctuated by the bang of illegal fireworks, the clatter of cards on bicycle spokes, and the “pock” of a broomstick hitting a pink “Spauldeen.”

I am old enough to remember the clip clop of the ragman’s horse and his cry of “Buy old clothes!” A man with a portable grindstone sharpened scissors and knives with a shrill shower of sparks.  Milk men and Seltzer men clinked and rattled on their appointed rounds.

Walk down any street back then and the sound of the World Series or a political convention poured from open windows and followed you from block to block. By the late 50s, the chorus of radios and TVs had been replaced by the ubiquitous hum of the air conditioner.

I still remember the percussion of women’s high heels late at night outside my window.  It was just like I heard on The Shadow and The Green Hornet, mysterious and suspenseful, except it was real. 

And then there was the day I heard the drone of  bombers over P.S. 69.  I looked up and saw hundreds of war planes flying in formation and bound for some government junkyard far from the neighborhood.  Even on this sad last mission the planes looked mighty. They had changed the world and, as I would learn in later life, the world they changed included Jackson Heights. 

That was really cool Nagelberg.

My memories of the neighborhood are somewhat later, but I do recall sounds you don't hear anymore.  Like the knife grinding truck that would go down the street, and all the kids would be send out with the knives from mom and dad to have them sharpened.

And the trains were louder, or maybe there was less noise to cover them up?  Planes seemed louder too, but that could be memorie sof laying on the bike field on 82nd and Astoria watching them whoosh overhead.

In the 1940s and 50s, Jackson Heights didn’t sound like it does today.  In the winter, you awoke to the jingle tire chains. . . and if it had snowed that night you knew it immediately thanks to the rhythmic scrape of shovels in the muffled air.  

Spring arrived with the racket of roller skates and cap pistols.  Coal rattled on steel coal chutes, laundry flapped on the roofs, the Good Humor man rang his bicycle bells, and street singers performed under our windows for small change wrapped in pieces of paper.  There was even an organ-grinder.  

I am old enough to remember the clip clop of the ragman’s horse and his cry of “Buy old clothes!” A man with a portable grindstone sharpened scissors and knives with a shrill shower of sparks.  Milk men and Seltzer men clinked and rattled on their appointed rounds.

And then there was the day I heard the drone of  bombers over P.S. 69.  I looked up and saw hundreds of war planes flying in formation and bound for some government junkyard far from the neighborhood.  Even on this sad last mission the planes looked mighty. They had changed the world and, as I would learn in later life, the world they changed included Jackson Heights.  

If you publish, I'll buy a few copies because I was there somewhere alongside of you.
Regards,
74 tears old in December, 2010