Growing Up in Da Bronx is about growing up in a family that I loved in a house that I loved on West 179th Street in the Bronx, New York City. It is about various members of my immediate and
extended family and some friends who had an impact on my life. It is about growing up with white-collar, blue-collar, upper-middle-class, and lower-middle class people all living on the same street. It is about growing up interacting with adults and playing with kids from different socioeconomic, religious, and racial backgrounds. It is about growing up in a religious family in which practicing the Jewish faith was very important and, as such, we were members of the congregation at the Hebrew Institute of University Heights, where my brothers and I were very active in the Isadore Diamond Youth Congregation (the IDYC). It was about playing stickball, punchball, football, potsy, hit the penny, captain, and so many other games that we played in our backyard, on the sidewalks, and on the streets with our friends. It is about our crew sitting on the Katz's stoop for hours, especially during the warm weather months.
It is about growing up with television, baseball, Hollywood movies, and Rock 'n' Roll. It is about growing up during some very turbulent times in our nation and the world. There were the Korean War, the Cold War with Russia and the air raid drills, the beginning of the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the assassinations of President John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the movement for racial equality, and the hippie counterculture movement, to name a few.
It was indeed a unique time for growing up in a unique place... called da Bronx.
