It was August of 1956 when my older sister and her husband sold their house on Ford Street, and bought a new home out in Massapequa on Long Island. Displaced by that sale, my mother, sister, baby brother and I had to leave our beloved Brooklyn and move thirty some-odd miles (it might as well have been one hundred and thirty) away to the little town of Lindenhurst also on Long Island. At least the new place had two bedrooms. I was twelve years old then, and it didn't take long to realize that the move was definitely going to be a much different chapter in my life. For starters, no kids out there gave a fiddler's damn about the Brooklyn Dodgers specifically, or the sport of baseball in general for that matter. Most of the kids that I fell in with were into beaches, boating, and water skiing (now that really doesn't sound so bad, right?) but not one of them so much as owned a baseball glove. I don't think I ever played another game of catch until I was married and had kids of my own. Bummer man! That fall I entered the seventh grade at Lindenhurst Junior High. Kids there were quite different from the sixth graders I had left behind at good old P.S. 52; they seemed tougher and more mature. Many smoked, some of the girls were already into makeup, and I found myself somewhat intimidated by the whole experience. I wished I could go back to Brooklyn.
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