Gerritsen Avenue

Gerritsen Ave is the Main St of Gerritsen Beach, just about anything you needed was on Gerritsen Ave. My Grandfather "Pappy" was well known on the avenue, he use to take me with him every morning to visit his favorite stores, every store we'd go in they'd yell "hiya Pappy". This warm Summer morning we walked down to Channel Ave towards Jimmy's Deli we go in and there is no one there, Pappy yells out Jimmy because he wanted to pay the ten cents for the two packs of baseball cards for me, Jimmy pops out of the back says hi to us then runs back to the back room. We continue walking down the avenue Solly Ryback and his Dad are standing outside their store Pappy says hello and tips his hat as Solly and his Dad return the hello. Ryback's is right across the street from the bus stop and the Barracks housing for the WWII veterans, the Barracks starts right there and runs to Florence Ave. Each Barracks was home to eight families, four families on each floor. There were many buildings in the Barracks complex including a three room school for first to third grade. We continue our walk down the avenue going past Hobans bar, Sal's Barber shop, Cardboard Joes shoe store, the Cort Club to Fran & Izzy's candy store. This is the middle 1950's so Fran & Izzys was still on the corner of Gerritsen Ave & Devon ave. When you walk in Fran & Izzy's you see rows and rows of candy under the cash register on the counter you see big jugs of penny candy, bubble gum and baseball cards. The stools and counter where you drink your 6 cent cokes, egg creams, malteds and eat your devil dogs, ice cream or bag of potato  chips is on the right. Izzy made the best malteds in town and I still have his recipe. They also sold comics, magazines, newspapers ( remember the four cent NY Daily News), toys such as water guns, cap pistols, tattoos, they had everything a kid enjoyed. Pappy goes in and buys the News and Mirror like he does everyday, I had five two cent bottles to return so I buy two more packs of baseball cards. Pappy kibitz's a bit with Izzy a big burly guy with a small mustache and Izzy jokes with Pappy, Fran working on the other side of the store comes over to say hello. We continue our stroll down the street go past the Park Tavern (It was always called Tagney's after owner Pat Tagney, I hung out and played ball with his son John when I was older). Next to the bar was Doc's Pharmacy later it was owned by Marty who I worked for delivering prescriptions, Marty was just out of the Army and loved telling war stories. As we go down closer to Food Haven we see D-TV owned by Vinnie who was a tall skinny guy with a mustache, I hung out with his son George a few years later, Vinnie could fix just about anything you brought in. We arrive at Food Haven our local grocery store it is owned by John McBride a wonderful hard working man who worked there for years before he bought it from the original owner of Ralston's grocery store. John had his son working there part time, later on Bob Olson took over when his son went in the service then I worked for John when Bob went in the service. After chatting with John and buying some bananas and a loaf of bread we went on to Bill Doyle's Meat market to buy a 1/2 pound of Bologna, I also hung out and played ball with Bill Doyle's son Billy. Now we were ready to go home for lunch, I will visit more places in Gerritsen Beach in my next Blog.