Family History
This week I went to see a rough cut of a documentary about Queensbridge Houses, the housing project in Long Island City where my family lived after the war, in 1945-50. I hadn't been born yet--by the time I was born, in 1958, my family had moved to Brooklyn, to another housing project that had just opened for low- and middle-income families, in an area not far from the ocean that was still surrounded at that time by small farms.
I went to see the documentary because my 83-year-old father, along with his 90-year-old actor friend R., were featured in it. My father had seen a piece in The Daily News about a young filmmaker who was making a documentary about Queensbridge and was eager to hear from residents past and present. So he called her up and she came out to Sheepshead Bay one evening several months ago and interviewed him. (My parents had moved out of the projects for good in 1974 but my father still lives in Sheepshead Bay, around the corner from the development in which we lived when I was growing up.)
At the "premier" of the film this week, which occurred, appropriately enough, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, not far from Queensbridge Houses, the filmmaker explained that she had been galvanized into making the film when a cabdriver refused to drop her off at her apartment building within the complex. "I'm not going in there," he said. Selena, the filmmaker, decided she wanted to make a film that would show the world that there was more to Queensbridge than gang warfare and drugs, which was apparently the cabdriver's vision of the place.
The film that resulted is a melange of interviews with old-timers like my father and more recent or current residents. The old-timers are mostly white, the current residents mostly African-American and Hispanic. Their stories remain separate, reflecting in miniature the shift in population and economic well-being that took place there and in a multitude of other urban neighborhoods in the 1950s and 60s. The old-timers--a mixture of Italian, Irish, and Jewish people now in their 60s and older--have fond memories of the projects. They reminisce about things like calling out to one's mother to throw down the ice cream money, watching for the bride to come out on the way to her wedding. Many of the more recent residents also remember Queensbridge as a good place to have grown up but they share sorrowful stories of the influx of drugs in the 60s and the schism that grew between residents and the police. In one of the few moments in the film where the story of race relations was made explicit, one of the older African-American residents recalls, "During the 60s, with all that we were seeing on TV every day, you didn't look at your white friends the same way, you suddenly realized they were white, and then you couldn't really be friends anymore."
The film made me remember things about my own project childhood that I had not thought about for a long time. I had forgotten about how the bride would come out of the building in her wedding dress, all exultant and grand and beautiful, and the children and grownups, but especially the children, would be waiting excitedly and would throw rice. (The buildings were set back from the street, so it wasn't as if there would be a car waiting for the bride when she stepped out of the building--she had to walk to the curb, or, as likely as not, to wherever the wedding was taking place.) Closer at hand is the memory of yelling up to one's mother to throw something out the window--or to ask, "Can I go to Esther's house?" And we would always say, "so-and-so's house," a habit that I still have when I talk about visiting anyone, whether they actually live in a house or an apartment.
My father's friend R., being an actor (as recently as five or so years ago he was in an off-Broadway production of The Jazz Singer), got lots of play in the movie, my father somewhat less. They have known each other since the Queensbridge days, 60 years now. R. came to the premier too, but dozed off through some of the key scenes in which he appeared. After the movie he was in his usual feisty form, though. A man came up to him and complimented him on his appearance in the movie. R. turned to me, and in his best deadpan delivery, mimicking the persona of a somewhat confused old man, asked bewilderedly, "Who was that?" He waited just long enough for me to think I had to come up with an answer, and then added, "Clive Barnes?"
The four of us--my older sister, who spent her first three years living in Queensbridge Houses, my father, and R., got a ride back to Brooklyn from a friend. We went through Manhattan to drop R. off where he lives on the Upper West Side and drove straight down Broadway. My father, whose mobility is limited and whose usual circuit of activity ranges only a few blocks from his home, hadn't been to Manhattan in two or three years. He was bowled over by the lights and activity of Times Square. "Wowee," he kept saying. "Holy smokes."
It was quite an evening.
I went to see the documentary because my 83-year-old father, along with his 90-year-old actor friend R., were featured in it. My father had seen a piece in The Daily News about a young filmmaker who was making a documentary about Queensbridge and was eager to hear from residents past and present. So he called her up and she came out to Sheepshead Bay one evening several months ago and interviewed him. (My parents had moved out of the projects for good in 1974 but my father still lives in Sheepshead Bay, around the corner from the development in which we lived when I was growing up.)
At the "premier" of the film this week, which occurred, appropriately enough, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, not far from Queensbridge Houses, the filmmaker explained that she had been galvanized into making the film when a cabdriver refused to drop her off at her apartment building within the complex. "I'm not going in there," he said. Selena, the filmmaker, decided she wanted to make a film that would show the world that there was more to Queensbridge than gang warfare and drugs, which was apparently the cabdriver's vision of the place.
The film that resulted is a melange of interviews with old-timers like my father and more recent or current residents. The old-timers are mostly white, the current residents mostly African-American and Hispanic. Their stories remain separate, reflecting in miniature the shift in population and economic well-being that took place there and in a multitude of other urban neighborhoods in the 1950s and 60s. The old-timers--a mixture of Italian, Irish, and Jewish people now in their 60s and older--have fond memories of the projects. They reminisce about things like calling out to one's mother to throw down the ice cream money, watching for the bride to come out on the way to her wedding. Many of the more recent residents also remember Queensbridge as a good place to have grown up but they share sorrowful stories of the influx of drugs in the 60s and the schism that grew between residents and the police. In one of the few moments in the film where the story of race relations was made explicit, one of the older African-American residents recalls, "During the 60s, with all that we were seeing on TV every day, you didn't look at your white friends the same way, you suddenly realized they were white, and then you couldn't really be friends anymore."
The film made me remember things about my own project childhood that I had not thought about for a long time. I had forgotten about how the bride would come out of the building in her wedding dress, all exultant and grand and beautiful, and the children and grownups, but especially the children, would be waiting excitedly and would throw rice. (The buildings were set back from the street, so it wasn't as if there would be a car waiting for the bride when she stepped out of the building--she had to walk to the curb, or, as likely as not, to wherever the wedding was taking place.) Closer at hand is the memory of yelling up to one's mother to throw something out the window--or to ask, "Can I go to Esther's house?" And we would always say, "so-and-so's house," a habit that I still have when I talk about visiting anyone, whether they actually live in a house or an apartment.
My father's friend R., being an actor (as recently as five or so years ago he was in an off-Broadway production of The Jazz Singer), got lots of play in the movie, my father somewhat less. They have known each other since the Queensbridge days, 60 years now. R. came to the premier too, but dozed off through some of the key scenes in which he appeared. After the movie he was in his usual feisty form, though. A man came up to him and complimented him on his appearance in the movie. R. turned to me, and in his best deadpan delivery, mimicking the persona of a somewhat confused old man, asked bewilderedly, "Who was that?" He waited just long enough for me to think I had to come up with an answer, and then added, "Clive Barnes?"
The four of us--my older sister, who spent her first three years living in Queensbridge Houses, my father, and R., got a ride back to Brooklyn from a friend. We went through Manhattan to drop R. off where he lives on the Upper West Side and drove straight down Broadway. My father, whose mobility is limited and whose usual circuit of activity ranges only a few blocks from his home, hadn't been to Manhattan in two or three years. He was bowled over by the lights and activity of Times Square. "Wowee," he kept saying. "Holy smokes."
It was quite an evening.
posted by Sarah Sometimes at 10:23 PM
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