Monday, March 4, 2013

Buying Beer in Brooklyn

           Imagine being insulted because you couldn't buy beer! When I was kid, younger than my sister my father would send us on weekends to buy beer. We first lived on fifty-ninth street below fourth avenue and then moved to fifthy-sixth street between fourt and fifth avenues. There were at first seven kids then Jimmy came along once we moved to fifty-sixth street.
    I don't know why this subject just hit me. My sister and I used to talk about it with a younger brother at times, but for me those times are no more. It doesn't matter as well all have different memories but when one person has memories much different than the rest, it causes a drift, and those memories are not what people want to be reminded of, so what's best for the whole is...you guessed it-almost. I was teh one who decided to seperate from the rest.
   Well this family was a hoot. We were mostly good kids as we were too afriad to be anything else with the kind of being my father was. He would send us kids to buy beer on Friday and Saturday nights. The horrors alcohol brings on a family many know about and I think I found out worse than the rest.
   Okay back to beer buying. My brothers and sister always wanted to go because it meant, mainly getting away from them, the so called adults. One night a step brother (who I just learned about since he another another brother were born two months apart in the same year) went to buy beer and pick up shirts from the Chinese laundry, lost the twenty-dollar bill our father gave him. It was windy and winter, but not snowing. Three of us took turns going out with him to find it. But he found it and returned with two large six packs of Schaefer Beer and a bag of shirts wrapped in brown paper with white string.
    All was good. Now a brother, R. and I went out one night, also to get beer. He and I always laughed, were very close as we were the two idiots to the father of the house and even at time to the mother, yet in many ways she felt sorry for us, more for the brother. So he and I went to buy beer. I remember wearing my long boy coat. It was navy blue, double breasted and just as we got close to the Deli, we both see a giant puddle of water and dare each other to jump it. I am laughing as I just think about this fifty years later. I said to him, R no! Don't do it,please. I knew he would make it. He said to me you go first, and I did. I jumped it ad cleared it, very much a Tom-boy. Then when I saw he was about to, I yelled at him, Please R. no, don't do it, you know I'll laugh! He jumped, I laughed and then I peed. Then his high pitch giggle came on and I went myself again.
     Oh what a bad habit I had. Anyway we brought back the beer and there was my sister , waiting. She said, that's not fair, I'm old enough, you two aren't, but I can't buy beer. Maybe, just maybe they knew,the store owners, that my brother and I would never whine about buying it or not. We would keep the secret, because we were use to it.

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