Birth of a Brooklyn Boy

Let us start at the real beginning December, 1941. Let me give you some family background. My mother Rose Lang was German and immigrated to the USA in 1924, and her brothers joined her shortly after. My father was a Greek and came to the USA in 1918. Dad started a business called “The Little Three”. It was a cafeteria style restaurant on Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn. My mother’s brothers worked for my father at the restaurant. However, they returned to Germany during the depression. Dad lost his business due to fire and no insurance. Mom and Dad married in 1931. My sister was born in 1935 and was 6 years old by this time in December 1941. My dad had come back from defeat and opened a restaurant on Bay Parkway and 63st. in Brooklyn.

“December 7, 1941 a day that will live in infamy!” As an adult thinking about my conception and the month that it took place must have been a most trying for my mother and father. The US had just gone to war with Germany and Japan. Greece ended up fighting against the Germans. My mother and father must have been distraught thinking her brothers and her whole family would be fighting her adopted country. Then there was Christmas for my sister, which I am sure my parents wanted to make special for her. This was the atmosphere in which I was conceived.

My name was given as to Greek custom, first name was taken from the fathers’ father Anthony and the second name was the name of the mothers father Ferdinand. The surname was the fathers, Psaris which is Greek, means Pepper gray horse. I am sure on of my forefathers was prematurely gray.

When I came home my sister told my parents to take me back. I guess a baby in the house took all the attention away from her. That sibling rivalry continued her whole life. Mary my sister died in 2008.

I remember little of my early life except the house I grew up in. It was a three story attached brick Trump home. The Donald’s father developed much of Brooklyn and Queens in the 30’s and 40’s. I grew up in the best house on the block. It was the model house at the beginning of the row with a side walk around. At the time it was an upper middle class community. Our neighbors were predominantly Irish Catholic. There were three Police captains, and two Fire Captains and one Brooklyn Dodger living on my street. Our next door neighbor was a police detective. He investigated my father because he wanted to know where my father got his money as an immigrant living in this fine place. He went to my father’s Diner and spoke to the waitress. In those days dishes were washed behind the counter with soap and water on a kneeling board. My father was washing the dishes. They asked the waitress about the dishwasher. She laughed, “OH! That dishwasher, he is the riches dishwasher I know, he owns the place.” Then my father bought them dinner.

As a child I hardly ever saw my father. He would be up and out before I awoke and usually came home when I was asleep. He worked long hard hours and never complained because he had seen worse and felt prosperous. Speaking to Margie, a neighbor and classmate a few years ago, she confirmed that she did not think I had a father because she had never seen him. She also said that then neighbors did not know what a Greek looked like. But I do remember that he would come home and put his clothes on the banister knob at the bottom of the stairs, so not to awake us.

He has a new RCA radio, short wave; he would sit late at night and listen to the news during the war. Then one day the FBI came to our door.

With fear my mother would not open the door. My father had to come home from work to talk to them and because my mother was German they ripped out the short wave. It was only a receiver, but they did not want anyone listening to German broadcasts on the short wave. During the war my mother was a virtual recluse, being the “Kraut on the Block.” She tried to shelter me from taunting I would receive form the other children. All I knew was that I could not go out and play.

After the war was over in 1945 things got much better, my father had made money during the war and we went on vacations to the Poconos where we had relatives, and drove to Florida in 1947 to see Uncle Gus and his wife Irene who retired there on the Tamiami Trail which was a main road then in Bradenton. He had guest cottages and a Liquor store. You could not drink the water, only bottled water. These are some of my early remembrances in middle to late 40’s.

Then came grammar school years, this is for another chapter.