499 West 135th Street

On the east side of Amsterdam there were only three apartment houses, 499, 487 and 485. They were on the north side of the street and next to them going towards Convent Avenue was another building sometimes referred to as the "home". It was part of City College and I used to go to Cub Scout meetings there. Across the street was the water tower. It was a mysterious place as it had a fence all around it and almost no one was ever permitted in there. I got friendly with "Red" , one of the guys who worked  there and he let me and a couple of the guys, I forget who, inside for a tour. There wasn't much inside that would impress anyone. The tower was some kind of monitoring device for the water pipes that were supplying  the NYC water system. When the city put the new water tunnel into use in the nineties, I'm not sure when, the water tower was declared obsolete and was actually put up for sale. Next to the tower going back towards Amsterdam was the Annunciation Park. We always just called it the playground.
499 was a big building with many families. The Rooney's, the twins, Jack and Jerry, Leo and Kevin. I believe there was also a sister who passed away at a very young age. The twins were very bright and also great athletes. They went to Regis and were great basketball players both at Regis and in the neighborhood. I believe they played for some of the famous Vinegar Hill basketball teams. Mr. Rooney was an officer for the Sanitation. I always remember him in his fancy green uniform.
The Mugan's were there also. That would be Peter, Steve, Bartholomew,(Bart) John and Tommy. I hope I don't have myself confused but I think they also had a sister who also passed away at an early age. (Maybe I have the Mugan's and the Rooney's confused). Bart was in my crowd and now and then I run into John. Mr. Mugan was a bus driver for the Fifth Ave. Coach.
Jerry and Anne Marie Sullivan were there too. Jerry was one of the great Vinegar Hill basketballers and Anne Marie was one of the neighborhood beauties. Mr. Sullivan had a little Boston Bull terrier and I always remember him walking his dog.
Tommy and Mike Sexton and their two sisters were there. Tommy and Mike were fraternal twins. When I was little I thought twins always had to be identical and I couldn't understand when I heard Mike and Tommy were twins. They didn't look anything alike. One time I went "hiking" with Tommy and Pat Dunican and a couple of other guys, up to Van Cortland Park. We took the train up and then went "hiking". Klutz that I was I took a header off one of the paths and fortunately the Sexton's had an uncle who worked in the Van Cortland Museum. They lived in the house. Anyway, the guys got me to the house and got me bandaged up and I think we all got a soda and a tour of the house.
John and Pete Clark were there. They had two sisters, Joan and I can't remember the other one. I always remember John sitting on the stoop of 499 studying. He went to engineering school at Manhattan and at one time he worked for my dad in the camera store. In fact a  few of the guys who lived in 499 worked for him. I believe the Rooney twins and also  John and Pete Clark. One time when were all learning to smoke we would go up to the City College grounds and hide up there and smoke. Well Pete Clark had a pack of Kools, they were new then and the first mentholated cigarettes. Evidently they didn't agree with Pete as he turned ghost white and started to pass out. We had to carry him home. Mr.Clark also worked for the Fifth Ave. Coach.
Next, there was the Murphy's. Jackie and his sister Marie, I'm not sure if there were more. Marie was in my class at Annunciation. Mr. Murphy was a cab driver and he was killed in a robbery around 1948. It was a terrible tradgedy and it was very rare for an attack on a cab driver then, no less a homicide. Small world that it is, Jackie and my brother Harry are now related, through marriage. Jackie and my sister in law are cousins.
As much as we would like to believe, the buildings were not all Irish and 499 was a great example of that.
Georgie Asfendis and his sister Pepper were there. It was not uncommon to identify a guy by his nationality and Georgie was known as Georgie the Greek. George was the first guy I ever knew who got a tattoo. It was a skunk,Peppy La Pew. Georgies sister Pepper used to hang out with Bernie Campbell's little brother whose name escapes me, but they were together so often that we called them Salt and Pepper.
The Campbell family was there, Bernie and his unnamed brother. Bernie married a beautiful red head from 136th Street, Rae. She was related to the Mc Goldrick's from 1525 Amsterdam and her dad and Mr. McGoldrick could always be found playing handball up at the Oval.
The Miller's were there. There was Hughie and his sister Nellie. They had a dog named Rusty who looked like Little Orphan Annies dog. Nellie opened up a bakery and frozen custard shop in the middle of the block between 135th and 136th St. on the east side of  Amsterdam. The shop didn't last too long, the baked goods came from a commisary. Frozen custard was new then and it was hard to come up with a tasty formula. Carvel had a lock on the business, even then.
As we would say today, 499 was multi-ethnic. The Wrobel's were there. There was the Aunt and Uncle and then the guys I remember, their nephews, Leo and Bernard. Once again, Bernard was known as Bernard the Pollak. I guess you would say Leo and Bernard were refugees as they came to America when times were very hard in Poland.
John Keskis was there,too with his son Chris. John opened up a lunchonette between 135th and 136th Street on the west side of Amsterdam. The store had been for the longest time Joe's Candy Store. It was between Bill's Deli and Mary Esposito's fruit market. John and his son Chris ran the store. At one time they had one of those juke boxes that had a movie of the person singing the song. It was the forerunner of today's "videos".It was very popular and we would all crowd around the machine to watch the movie. French fries were not as common then as they are today. We had no MacDonalds and the White Castle down on Broadway and 136th Street didn't sell them. John had french fries and they were a big attraction. If you got them to go, the bag would be dripping with grease by the time you got home but we loved them. At one time when I was twelve or thirteen I had a fake pistol but it looked very authentic. It was a copy of a Baretta. Jokingly, one afternoon I walked into John's, pulled out my gun in front of John and announced that it was a stick up. John's hands flew up and the color in his face disappeared. I realized I had made a terrible mistake and it took a lot to convince John that I was only kidding and that it wasn't a real gun. John and Chris ran the shop for a number of years but like everything else in the neighborhood , they eventually closed up. I remember Chris went to work for E.J. Korvettes up in Westchester.
The Cinnonetti's were one of the younger families in the building. I remember they had a little boy.
I think it was around 1953 that the O'Connor family took over as the supers for 499. Eileen O'Connor was one of the older sisters and when she married she moved to Pearl River, NY. It turned out that my wife and Eileen worked for the same real estate agency in Pearl River. We  were talking one day,. when I discovered that it was her family, the O'Connor's, who were the supers. She told me how she so looked up to Anne Marie Sullivan and I was able to get the two of them together. They met at one of the Pearl River St. Patrick's Day parades. They were both thrilled to see each other again. Sadly, shortly after that Anne Marie passed away.
My dad had the camera store that was on the corner of 499. The address of the store was actually 1519 Amsterdam. The store had a basement that he never used. One time Pete Mugan and Buddy Clancy (1525 Amsterdam) made arrangements to rent the basement and they turned it into a gym. All the guys who wanted to get on the fire department or the police would worked out there so they could pass the physical. I remember Buddy Clancy, Pete Mugan, Frankie Nugent, John Kelleher, Bernie Owens and a bunch of other guys working out there.
Next door to the camera store was a Puerto Rican Evangelical store front church. They had services two or three times a week. For music they had a piano, a drummer and a tambourine . My dad claimed their music "drove him crazy". Fortunately for him, they didn't meet every day. Next to the church was a shoemaker, I think his name was Pete. Around the corner, on 135th Street next to the stoop was a big Chinese laundry.
It was a wholesale operation in that they did the laundry for other Chinese laundries. You could stand outside and watch the guys pressing the shirts. There must have been ten to fifteen of them in a row and all day long they pressed these shirts. They even took their meals there at a big communal table in the rear. The boss was a guy named Pang. As I said in one of my early posts we used to practice our Chinese cursing there; rub your index finger on your teeth and shout mach a how ding ding. Then you ran like hell. Pang never caught us.
I mentionded the guys working for my dad. That was one of the many after school jobs that were in the neighborhood. Guys worked as soda jerks in the drug store or behind the counter in the deli or delivered groceries. The A &P was always hiring part timers and so was the Safeway, when they came in. When the summer came there was always work at Lewishon Stadium for the "concert under the stars". We worked as hustlers, for every one hundred dollars worth of what ever you sold, beer, soda, ice cream, you got thirteen per cent or thirteen dollars. Beer was thirty five cents a bottle. In order to sell one hundred dollars worth of beer you had to sell two hundred and eighty eight bottles of beer. Supposedly you had to be eighteen to sell beer. Nobody ever checked our birth certificates. If you didn't hustle inside the stadium, you hustled outside. Guys would open taxi cab doors with one hand while the other one was out to collect the ten cents tip. The other hustle was "minding" cars for the concert. The guy would say, "what do you mean, mind my car?" You'd remind him what a terrible neighbor hood he was parking in. Cars were always good for a quarter. The problem with minding cars was there was territories. Most of the territories were spoken for and if you horned in on a territory you were looking for a fight. If one of your buddies had a territory and he didn't want to work a particular night he'd let you work the territory for him. A territory never went unprotected.
Next up will be 487 and 485. Don't forget to pass the word to any Vinegar Hillers and drop me a line if you have any comments or criticisms. Either way I'd love to hear from you.