In those days, as the summer sun went down, our parents would gather on the half circle of benches in front of building 3 for an evening of gossip and laughter, chess and card games, and even though it was prohibited by the management office, maybe a cold beer or two.  Thick curlicues of blue-gray cigarette smoke wafted under the conical sphere of a street lamp above the row of concrete checkerboard tables.  Doo-wop oldies echoed from transistor radios.  Kids played tag, or hide ‘n seek, or some other game that involved running and screaming, and occasionally crying because someone accidentally got hurt. 

For a while, the best hide ‘n seek location was under the first bench, right behind Freddy’s father, Big Lou.  Lou was a six foot six, two hundred and seventy-pound avalanche of a man with ham shank forearms and voice projection like a tuba.  Hiding behind Lou made me feel like an evil genius because none of the other kids ever thought to look there.  I kept that clandestine spot to myself for a long time before Freddy finally found me.  Freddy swore that he didn’t, but I still think Big Lou ratted me out.  After all, Freddy was his son. 

During the week, Lou drove a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer truck.  At night, he was often the first one online when the Bungalow Bar ice cream wagon rolled up to the curb at exactly 8 pm.  Upon arrival, the driver, a not-so-old gray-haired man named Frank, jangled a row of miniature cowbells that hung on a wire just below his rearview mirror in the open cab.  If you were among the first few kids in line behind him, chances were good that you would get a free ice cream courtesy of Big Lou. 

Lou was typical of the fathers in our housing complex, big physical men who worked manual labor, had a domineering presence, and a genuine love for kids.  But it was the mothers who had the real influence and control, and no one understood this better than the fathers.

 I was always fascinated by the stories I overheard through the neighborhood grapevine regarding other kids’ fathers.  Most of the tales were near-legendary for the way that they embellished the truth.  Like the one about Troy’s dad using a trash can lid and a car antenna to beat the crap out of five guys who tried to mug him on the way home from work one evening on payday.  Some kid in every neighborhood told a similar story about his dad.  It was pure fantasy, but like most rumors, the stories circulated quickly and were widely accepted as fact.  The real stories were far less entertaining, and sometimes outright lies. 

My first crush was a beautiful little blond girl named Rosalind who lived in the apartment three doors down on our floor.  We were no more than twelve years old and had no idea then how the world really worked.  Her father had been an infantry soldier who was wounded in World War II, still walking with a pronounced limp, and with the aid of a cane.  When he was transported back to the States, he ended up at a base in Louisiana, near a small town with a Cajun name that he was still unable to pronounce correctly.  This is where he met Rosalind’s mother, working the cash register at a dry goods store.  In a moment of candor, that must have been uncomfortable for both women, Rosalind’s mother once told my mom, who was also a Southerner, that her father and grandfather had been in the Ku Klux Klan, and that she had witnessed a lynching when she was a young girl.  Then she stared at her shoes through liquid eyes, as though she was counting the number of threads in each shoelace, and with a gentle voice still thick with Dixie, quietly said, “I am so sorry, Eva.  I’ve never told anyone about this, but it has been burning through my soul for my whole life.”  My mother, who didn’t know a baseball from a frisbee, but who always seemed to know so much more, sensed what was happening, gently touched her shoulder, and said, “Sorry for what, Cordelia?  You didn’t do anything.  You were a little girl.  Besides, that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

 From third grade through sixth, my best friend was a kid named Sammy.  His mother died while giving him life, and although he never said it, I always suspected that he lived with an insurmountable feeling of guilt.  His father was a mean womanless man, chronically unemployed, always scowling, always solitary with his anger and rage.  He drank and smoked excessively, had no friends that anyone knew of, and appeared to dislike everyone including, or perhaps especially, his son.  Sammy was raised by his live-in grandmother, who also took care of two female cousins, the daughters of Sammy’s violently insane aunt who had been committed to an institution after repeatedly burning both girls’ arms with cigarettes while they slept.  For three years, we hung out together every day, defended each other like brothers, never had one argument or disagreement.  At the time, I was an only child, and my mother, who was eager for me to have playmates, always made Sammy a welcome guest in our apartment.  Were it not for our different skin color people would have thought we were brothers.  We were that inseparable.  But I never saw the inside of Sammy’s apartment, always had to wait in the hallway when I followed him upstairs, and I sometimes wondered why.   Every now and then, his grandmother would open the door just wide enough for me to see her sympathetic smile, her dusky kind-hearted face with its roadmap of deep wrinkles, as she offered me a small plate of warm homemade cookies or a piece of fruit.  I remember being moved to tears sometimes when the sound of his father’s voice could be heard scolding him so loud that it could be heard outside on the street.  It would be difficult to overstate the pain and disappointment I felt that day when Sammy finally found the courage to tell me why I was never allowed inside his apartment.

“He don’t like Negroes,” Sammy said, his eyes avoiding mine. “He told me don’t ever bring you inside.  I’m so sorry.  I hate him.  I really do!”

 Like many old-world immigrant women of her generation, Sammy’s grandmother spent most of her adult life in misery without ever realizing it because back in the old country this kind of life was the norm, not the exception.  She suffered without complaint, hidden away in what amounted to a domestic imprisonment, mothering her alcoholic adult son, raising her children’s children, cooking an endless flow of meals, washing clothes by hand, pressing them out with a hot piece of iron that was heated over an open flame.  She left the apartment only to empty the trash, or to fetch the day’s mail from the lobby boxes downstairs.  Occasionally, she would walk up the block to the corner vegetable stand, where the owner spoke her language, making it unnecessary for her to ever learn English.  Whenever I saw her she was dressed in black, head to toe, like an accomplice to the grim reaper, forever in mourning for one lost relative or another, her life an unending cycle of sacrifices for others, even when the others were no longer alive.  She lived like this for many years, until us kids were teenagers.  And then suddenly one day she died. 

A few weeks later, Sammy, his father, and his two cousins left the housing projects under the cover of the moon and the stars.  No one knew where they went.  He was my first real friend, and I always wondered how life turned out for him.

 With time, many things changed in the old neighborhood.  The round patch of open grass in the center of the complex, the place where so many punchball, softball, and touch football games had been played, the area that everyone called The Circle, was now a fenced-off housing department storage zone that looked more like a sanitation facility dumping ground.  There were large black numbers painted on square yellow blocks at the top of each building, which made them look more like components of a prison compound than a housing development.  Throughout the projects, grass had been replaced by concrete in many areas, and there were fewer trees, and everything seemed gray and grim. 

 But on warm summer evenings, the Mr. Softee ice cream jingle could be heard throughout the projects, as the truck pulled up to the corner.  Kids ran hollering and shouting for their parents to give them ice cream money.  Young mothers pushed children in strollers.  A few middle-aged men and women sat on the benches in animated conversation, playing cards and dominoes, and it was us out there, me, Sammy, Troy, Debbie, Calvin, and Rosalind, and it was like 1965 all over again.

The landscape was different, and so were the people.  But the only thing that had really changed was the passing of time.

– Michael Martin

Author’s Note: I grew up in a public housing project, and although I haven’t lived there since the early 1980’s, I know a few who still do, and I’m often struck by the changes and similarities in the landscape and people. Back then, the projects were probably more integrated than most New York City neighborhoods, and while things weren’t always perfect, overall it was a good place to live.