When HG was a little lad during the Great Depression, the HG family of four (and sometimes five) spent summers in a Rockaway Beach boarding house. Two rooms (a kitchen/”dinette” and bedroom connected by a foyer. Mom and Pop slept in the bedroom. Sister slept in the foyer. HG slept on the kitchen floor. When brother occasionally joined the family, the kitchen table was shoved to a side and he joined HG on the kitchen floor. The rudimentary sleeping pads were rolled up in the morning and stored under the parental bed. Toilet was in the hall outside the apartment and was shared with another family. The arrangement encouraged alertness. Showers were in the basement of the boarding house and the water had two temperatures — cold and very cold. The summer season began July 1 and ended the day after Labor Day. Rent: $25 for the season. Did HG (or any of the other family members) feel deprived because of the crowding and primitive facilities? No. It was heaven. Life was lived (during the day) on the beach and in the sea and (at night) on the boardwalk cooled by salt air breezes. HG’s father commuted to the hot city and (rain or shine) upon his return spent an hour being refreshed in the Rockaway surf. The kitchen had no refrigerator. It had an ice box (serviced by a muscular Italian ice man named Vito). There was a basin beneath the ice box to contain the melting ice and it was little HG’s responsibility to make sure the basin was emptied before it could overflow. HG was dedicated to that task. As a reward, HG could use the ice pick to chip a bit of ice for a cooling treat. HG’s Mom would often chip some chunks of ice to put in her bowls of pink, cold beet borscht (best cold summer soup in HG’s long culinary experience). The ice pick got a lot of use. During that same time period ice picks were being used for lethal purposes by the Murder, Inc. killers from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhoods. The renowned Jewish assassin, “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, would plunge an ice pick into his victim’s ear or temple. He was so deft that many medical examiners assumed the victim died of a cerebral haemorrhage. According to a recent New York Times story, the ice pick (after a decades long absence) has reemerged as a an anti-social utensil. It is now a weapon of choice for many Bronx street gangs. Obviously, these thugs have an affection for retro artifacts.
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