anyone remember one of the first large discount stores. It was first called baby town then renamed bargain town. We took the EL from chauncey st to the Kosciusko st stop. Last stop before manhattan
Hello everyone.
Anyone for a game of hot peas and butter?
I found this site a couple of years ago but never posted.
Every once in a while I check it and I was surprised that the posts from 2007
hit so close to home. I think I must have known some of the people who posted here, so I had to put my two cents in.
The reason I checked the site today was I was trimming my mustache today and noticed an old, fading, barely visible scar on my lower lip. Something deep in the past gnawed at me for a few minutes. Then suddenly I remembered. “Labesky’s” I said out loud. I looked around and was happy no one was around least I be accused of talking to myself.
I may not have the spelling right but Labesky’s was the candy store on the north side of Broadway right at the entrance to the Manhattan bound L train
in Bushwick at Chauncy street. I received the cut on my lip from one of the penny candies I bought there. Does anyone remember the little pie plate filled with some kind of flavored sugar that came with a little metal spoon. It was that spoon that delivered the cut. Well the spoon had an edge on it like a Gillette blade.
It would never passed the consumer protection agency today.
He had a cigar box on the news stand. People would put the money in it and grab a paper.It was an honor system and nobody cheated.
The money wouldn’t last two seconds today.
My name is Bill Rohan. I lived at 39 Granite street from 1956 thru 1964.
I went to school at Our Lady of Lourdes from first thru seventh grade until we moved to Queens when we kept getting beaten up on the way to school by those
“public school kids”. I remember so clearly many of the places mentioned here.
No one mentioned Labesky’s. It was our favorite place. It had about ten million kinds of penny candy and an endless supply of pennsy pinkys, waxed teeth and the large sticks of chalk we used to crush up in a sock to hit others with on Halloween. I was an altar boy and a member of the granite street gang. But
worse thing I remember doing as a gang member is losing a stick ball game to the Chauncey street kids. We had an agreement that no one past the sixth grade
could play. The only reason the Chauncey st kids won was they had a kid who was about 19 but had a room temperature IQ and was in the sixth grade. He hit the L train tracks five times for automatic home runs. We called “ Hindu” but it was disallowed. We finished the game under protest. The commissioner hasn’t ruled to this day.
I bought so many stickball bats at the broom factory they offered me a job.
I still get heartburn from those pickles. You would give the guy a nickel and you would submerge your arm up to the arm pit into the great big wooden barrel
and try to fish out the biggest pickle you could wrap your hand around. We would lick the juice off our arms before biting into that juicy treat. Not very sanitary. Another practice the health dept would never permit nowadays.Evey time I buy a pickle at the supermarket out of the sterile plastic bin with the tongs and put it in the clean neat plastic bag I think about those pickles.
Nothing tasted as good, and probably never will.
I remember:
the test of manhood that climbing up the fence at the end of Granite St.to Beanbelly hill was.
In the summer a horse drawn wagon selling watermelon. The black man driving the wagon singing out in a rich, deep, baritone voice “WAR-TEE- MELL-OOOOO”.It said “Sweet as Honey, Red as Fire” on the side of the wagon.
The Good Humor man and the Bungalow Bar man almost coming to blows over who’s time it was to be on the block.
Kicking on the street lights
Weinsteins grocery and Portelli’s deli on B'way between Granite and Furman. Henery Portelli was in my class.
Old man Weinstein would take out a note book to keep track of your family’s tab. He would add up the order on the paper bag and was more accurate than a Texas Instrument calculator. Every payday it was my fathers first stop to pay off the weekly food bill. Everyone in the neighborhood owed Weinstein.
Flipping base ball cards in the school yard. Who knew baseball card collecting was to become so big. I know for sure if I had all my cards from back then I would be a millionaire.
I could write a book on the forth of July in Bushwick.
We would get chances to sell for the school. I would sell them in Grimm’s bar.
I was fortunate enough to raise my kids in a nice semi rural area in upstate NY. Like most parents I sometimes catch myself telling my kids how lucky they are to be brought up in a nice safe place. But then I think maybe I was the lucky one. I’d love to hear from anyone with the same sweet memories.
Bill Rohan
warren, take a valium.
anyone remember one of the first large discount stores. It was first called baby town then renamed bargain town. We took the EL from chauncey st to the Kosciusko st stop. Last stop before manhattan
.
Hello everyone.
Anyone for a game of hot peas and butter?
I found this site a couple of years ago but never posted.
Every once in a while I check it and I was surprised that the posts from 2007
hit so close to home. I think I must have known some of the people who posted here, so I had to put my two cents in.
The reason I checked the site today was I was trimming my mustache today and noticed an old, fading, barely visible scar on my lower lip. Something deep in the past gnawed at me for a few minutes. Then suddenly I remembered. “Labesky’s” I said out loud. I looked around and was happy no one was around least I be accused of talking to myself.
I may not have the spelling right but Labesky’s was the candy store on the north side of Broadway right at the entrance to the Manhattan bound L train
in Bushwick at Chauncy street. I received the cut on my lip from one of the penny candies I bought there. Does anyone remember the little pie plate filled with some kind of flavored sugar that came with a little metal spoon. It was that spoon that delivered the cut. Well the spoon had an edge on it like a Gillette blade.
It would never passed the consumer protection agency today.
He had a cigar box on the news stand. People would put the money in it and grab a paper.It was an honor system and nobody cheated.
The money wouldn’t last two seconds today.
My name is Bill Rohan. I lived at 39 Granite street from 1956 thru 1964.
I went to school at Our Lady of Lourdes from first thru seventh grade until we moved to Queens when we kept getting beaten up on the way to school by those
“public school kids”. I remember so clearly many of the places mentioned here.
No one mentioned Labesky’s. It was our favorite place. It had about ten million kinds of penny candy and an endless supply of pennsy pinkys, waxed teeth and the large sticks of chalk we used to crush up in a sock to hit others with on Halloween. I was an altar boy and a member of the granite street gang. But
worse thing I remember doing as a gang member is losing a stick ball game to the Chauncey street kids. We had an agreement that no one past the sixth grade
could play. The only reason the Chauncey st kids won was they had a kid who was about 19 but had a room temperature IQ and was in the sixth grade. He hit the L train tracks five times for automatic home runs. We called “ Hindu” but it was disallowed. We finished the game under protest. The commissioner hasn’t ruled to this day.
I bought so many stickball bats at the broom factory they offered me a job.
I still get heartburn from those pickles. You would give the guy a nickel and you would submerge your arm up to the arm pit into the great big wooden barrel
and try to fish out the biggest pickle you could wrap your hand around. We would lick the juice off our arms before biting into that juicy treat. Not very sanitary. Another practice the health dept would never permit nowadays.Evey time I buy a pickle at the supermarket out of the sterile plastic bin with the tongs and put it in the clean neat plastic bag I think about those pickles.
Nothing tasted as good, and probably never will.
I remember:
the test of manhood that climbing up the fence at the end of Granite St.to Beanbelly hill was.
In the summer a horse drawn wagon selling watermelon. The black man driving the wagon singing out in a rich, deep, baritone voice “WAR-TEE- MELL-OOOOO”.It said “Sweet as Honey, Red as Fire” on the side of the wagon.
The Good Humor man and the Bungalow Bar man almost coming to blows over who’s time it was to be on the block.
Kicking on the street lights
Weinsteins grocery and Portelli’s deli on B'way between Granite and Furman. Henery Portelli was in my class.
Old man Weinstein would take out a note book to keep track of your family’s tab. He would add up the order on the paper bag and was more accurate than a Texas Instrument calculator. Every payday it was my fathers first stop to pay off the weekly food bill. Everyone in the neighborhood owed Weinstein.
Flipping base ball cards in the school yard. Who knew baseball card collecting was to become so big. I know for sure if I had all my cards from back then I would be a millionaire.
I could write a book on the forth of July in Bushwick.
We would get chances to sell for the school. I would sell them in Grimm’s bar.
I was fortunate enough to raise my kids in a nice semi rural area in upstate NY. Like most parents I sometimes catch myself telling my kids how lucky they are to be brought up in a nice safe place. But then I think maybe I was the lucky one. I’d love to hear from anyone with the same sweet memories.
Bill Rohan
posted by pennsy pinky on Aug 7, 2007 at 10:10pm