Popp’s - Parting

This last Blog entry regarding my memories of Popp’s and Woodhaven is the most difficult for me to write. I think it is because I am dreading having to say a final goodbye to a part of my life that was magical and relatively carefree. ( I guess teenage heartaches and unrequited love can seem monumental at the time you are going through it )but in general they were wonderful years. Truthfully I said “Goodbye” to Woodhaven a very long time ago but when it was actually happening it was so subtle and not too noticeable. All of a sudden I turned around and it was over.  Now as I recall events, places and most importantly people, I have been looking very deliberately at these things and for that reason it is almost like saying goodbye for the very first time.  I am feeling sad and nostalgic and hesitant to leave. 

 

Every holiday season, my family would watch a favorite, old classic movie entitled,  “ The March of the Wooden Soldiers”.  It featured the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, but I always found it a bit sad.  There is one song in the movie that really defined the sadness which I am trying to explain.  The name of the song is “Toyland” and the line that always got to me is this:  “Once you pass its borders You can never return again”. 

In thinking back, this is what I remember about my departure from my Popp’s Ice Cream Parlor Days.  In my senior year at Our Lady of Wisdom Academy, my community service activity for the Legion of Mary was going to St. John’s Hospital on Queens Blvd. once a week to distribute dinner trays to the patients.  After we were attacked on our way down the subway steps after feeding the babies at St. Mary’s Hospital in the bowels of Brooklyn, it was decided that it would be safer to head to a hospital in Queens.  I missed feeding the babies but that wasn’t an option at St. John’s Hospital, so handing out dinner trays was all that we were allowed to do.  On one such occasion, a young male patient in bed # 1 of a 4-bedded room, egged on by the three older men in the room, flirted quite dramatically with me.  When I came back to the room later to retrieve the trays after dinner, Jerry, (the Bed  # 1 Patient) was able to convince me that it made sense to give him my phone number.  Shortly after he was discharged from the hospital, Jerry called me for a date and we went bowling together with another couple.  We had a lovely time and Jerry was a complete gentleman. I did not know, however, until after the date that Jerry was a full 5 years older than me!  I was not yet 17 years old and I was in a very real sense, “in way over my head”.   My rigid Catholic School training concerning sexuality came in handy in this relationship.  To put it mildly, Jerry was a man of the world, and had been around the block a few times.  He had a classy car, owned a Harley Davidson Motorcycle, belonged to a storefront men’s club in Williamsburg. Having dropped out of High School, he worked as an auto mechanic and had a few dollars in his pockets.   Jerry began to pick me up in his car after my weekly stints at St. John’s Hospital, and he would treat me to dinner at the diner before taking me home.   On one of these occasions, Elvis came on over the car radio and began to sing, “I can’t help falling in love with you.”  Jerry looked at me in his rear view mirror and sent me the loud and clear message that these words were meant for me.   

My trips to Popp’s became less frequent, as Jerry monopolized most of my time. 

However, Jerry did appear in Woodhaven on a few occasions and some of you may have even gotten to ride on the back of his motorcycle. 

On one other occasion, Jerry took me to a Drive-In Movie. I believe this date was motivated by the fact that Tom Marski wanted to double date with us so he could get in the back seat with Muriel.  Tom had “the hots” for Muriel and what better place to take her than to a drive in movie. I don’t remember much about Muriel other than she seemed like a sexy looking siren to me.  I also remember Tom and possibly others saying that she had “ bedroom eyes “.   When Jerry “ put the moves on me” in the hospital he said I had a “shiny nose”!  What a far cry from “bedroom eyes”.   I don’t think anyone in my whole life said I had “bedroom eyes”.  The next time Bob has a martini or two I’ll have to ask him to tell me that. LOL 

So in spite of the fact that I was taught that going to a drive in movie with a date was a near occasion of sin and should be avoided at all costs, I consented to this date.  I think Tom had a good time but I remember it as a tense and difficult experience.  By the way, did I ever mention the fact that I received the medal for Religion when I graduated St. Michael’s Elementary School?  I took everything I learned in religion to heart and it has taken me a lifetime to overcome the trauma. 

In September 1962, I started St. Vincent’s Hospital School of Nursing in the heart of Greenwich Village, NY, NY and the first couple of nights as I tried to fall asleep in the nurses’ residence at 158 West 12th Street, I actually cried.  I knew I had crossed a certain border and could never return again. 

Toyland, toy land

Li-ittle girl and boy land

While you dwell within it

You are ever happy there

Childhood's joy land

Mi-istic merry toy land

Once you pass its borders

You can ne'er return again

When you've grown up my dears

And are as old as I

You'll laugh and ponder on the years

That roll so swiftly by my dears

That roll so swi-iftly by-why

Childhood's joy land

Mi-istic merry toy land

Once you pass its borders

You can ne'er return again