Non­fic­tion

My Old Neigh­bor­hood Remembered

Avery Cor­man
  • Review
December 18, 2014

With a title like My Old Neigh­bor­hood Remem­bered, Avery Corman’s mem­oir about grow­ing up in the Bronx of the 1940s and 50s could be sac­cha­rine; instead, it is evoca­tive, bring­ing stores, schools, and streets back to life, remem­ber­ing peo­ple and the way they lived, relat­ing per­son­al­i­ties and build­ings and what became of them. In vignettes that are often only a page long, the author of Kramer vs. Kramer pres­ents us with the mosa­ic of the Bronx of his childhood. 

There are the can­dy stores where coun­ters were piled high with can­dy store items” like Spaldeens, wax lips, Bro­mo-Seltzer, bub­ble gum, and but­ton can­dy, and where a res­i­dent book­mak­er holds court; there is the Cre­ston school­yard court where the neighborhood’s bet­ter bas­ket­ball play­ers prac­ticed their skills after school. All the youths, it seems, were caught up in the bas­ket­ball-mind­ed­ness of the place.” There is the cus­tom of going out for Chi­nese food on Sun­days, not be­cause peo­ple par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed Chi­nese food (accord­ing to Cor­man, it tast­ed the same no mat­ter which restau­rant one went to), but because it was afford­able, and Sun­day was fam­i­ly day, and going to a restau­rant was a fam­i­ly thing to do. 

There is also, for the Jew­ish kids, going to Hebrew school between the ages of ten and their bar mitz­vahs at thir­teen, being off on puz­zling Jew­ish hol­i­days like Shem­i­ni Atzeret, and hav­ing to dress up on those hol­i­days even though nei­ther they nor their par­ents attend­ed ser­vices or even under­stood what ser­vices were about. The Catholic kids envied the Jew­ish kids those days off, and the Jew­ish kids envied the Catholic kids their ready-made reli­gion and their play­ing ball while the Jew­ish kids had to cram ancient texts into their heads for that equal­ly baf­fling rit­u­al of a bar mitzvah. 

Over­all, judg­ing from this account, Corman’s was a hap­py child­hood, yet here and there the under­ly­ing tragedy of his grow­ing up with­out a father man­i­fests itself. One chap­ter sifts through his mother’s lies to find out his father’s fate. Anoth­er relates that his moth­er would scrape togeth­er her hard-earned mon­ey to take him to ball games, even though, as he lat­er real­izes, she had no inter­est in sports: I thought a boy grow­ing up with­out a father should go to sports events.” A boy grow­ing up with­out a father also need­ed a sta­ble home and a tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty, where every­body had his or her spot in a pot­pour­ri of eth­nic­i­ties, and that, it seems, Cor­man sure­ly got in the Bronx he remembers.

Relat­ed content:

Discussion Questions