"The Stoop:
Growing Up In Small Town New York City"
by: Frank J. Dmuchowski
Recently, over lunch, a colleague and I were discussing a news report about an ordinance passed by a Midwestern city requiring front porches on all new single family dwellings. The reasoning, the news report stated for this ordinance, is to promote a greater sense of community by moving the locus of living from the privacy of the back of the house to the openness of the front. Reasoning further, if people had a front porch perhaps they would use it, thereby allowing more opportunity for people in a neighborhood to get to know each another. This would then result in creating a greater "sense of Community." In essence, the goal is to turn suburban, subdivisions into pseudo small towns where the front porch and front-of-the-house life, as in the earlier days of America’s past, played a prominent role in connecting individuals into a Community.
In theory it works like this, in a small town everyone knows everyone, usually by name, or by association with someone who knows them by name. Since in small towns everyone lives more in "front" of the community rather than in "back", this familiarity and openness between persons exerts a greater pressure on each member of the community to conform to the values and mores of the greater community. Violations of these values and mores are more difficult to conceal. Thus, communities such as these are more orderly and peaceful. Sociologists have given the term Gemeinschaft to this phenomenon.
In contrast, "City" dwellers, and suburbanites - who after all usually are former City dwellers - are supposed to live in a more anonymous, aloof and secretive environment. For example, in the “City” people living in close proximity to one another for years, like in apartments across the hall or, above or below one another, usually do not know each other's name, the names of each other's children, or each other's occupation, etc. They pass each other on the street, going up and down their apartment building’s stairs and elevators never to say hello or to talk with each other. Suburbanites build their homes with spacious, fenced off and private backyards. Hence, these people live in the “back” rather than in “front” of the community. The term sociologists use to define this phenomenon, is Gesselschaft. Implied in the comparison and contrast between these two phenomena is the notion that small town living is more superior, and perhaps, more human to that of the City. The result is less crime, violence and deviance.
My colleague was suburban born and raised, while I am a product of the City. More specifically, Greenpoint, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Our discussion then turned to comparing and contrasting our own experiences of Suburban vs. City living. My colleague grew up in a subdivision on Long Island consisting of homes all with back yards and none with front porches. Whereas, I grew up on a City block of attached row tenements without front porches or backyards, at least those that anyone did much of anything in. My colleague stated she and her family hardly knew the names of their neighbors of twenty plus years, even to this day. In contrast, I and my family knew most of the people living on our entire block, and, many of those living on adjacent ones. This seems to contradict the sociological theories. One would think suburban living would be closer to small town living. Therefore, my colleague should have had more of the living experience I had growing up in the City, but she did not. I began to wonder why? What factors contributed to this seemingly troublesome conundrum?
This discussion and the questions it generated set my mind to reminiscing about my early years growing up in Greenpoint during the 50's and early 60's. Perhaps somewhere in there is a solution to this dilemma. Greenpoint was in those days a working class, blue collar neighborhood located across the East River from Manhattan. From the roof of my house, the skyline of New York seemed so close one thought one could almost reach out and touch the Empire State Building, or throw a rock and put out a window of the United Nations Building. I lived on Russell Street. The block on which I lived is between Nassau and Driggs Avenues. The block itself is a series of attached, three to four story, tenement houses on one side of the street, with a block square park on the other. The park’s official name is Monsignor McGoldrick Park, but anyone from Greenpoint in those days knew it by its original name, Winthrop Park. Also, I believe this was because of the old Winthrop Theater that used to be at the corner of Russell and Driggs which sometime in the 60’s gave way to build an A&P supermarket.
As I reflected on this environment, I began to see what it was that helped to create the "sense of Community" that existed there. While we did not have front porches, we did have something else just as important: we had the Stoop! The Stoop is that massive structure of stone and mortar, often adorned with a latticework of steel and wrought iron that provided the tenement houses with steps leading to the front door of each house. On my block, most of the stoops had three to five steps leading to a platform area, roughly the size of a queen size mattress, that in turn, leads to a final step to the doorway of the house. However, there were some other stoops, magnificent mammoths, six, seven, even eight to ten steps high! We could get ten to fifteen kids at a time on one of those beauties.
Unlike the private, wooden, porch structures that are found in the front of many small town dwellings, the Stoop offered a place of communal activity. To us kids, the Stoop was many different things at various times. Among other things, it was a nursery, a game room, a school room, a fortress in King Arthur's kingdom, a mighty pirate ship, a home base, a sports center, a prison where the cops locked up the robbers, a jail in which the Sheriff locks up the bandits or, a space ship going to Mars in search of little green men. It was where one made friends for life, played one's first games, had one's first fight, and stole one's first kiss. It was a place where the older kids passed on their knowledge and skills to the younger ones. It was as if there was an unwritten obligation to, in turn, pass on to the younger kids what was passed on to you. In many respects, it was like living in a large extended family.
When you were old enough to go solo from your apartment, the Stoop provided a safe haven from which to venture onto the sidewalk and to the world. You were not able to stray too far from the safety of the Stoop's harbor until you clearly demonstrated mastery of the skills needed to navigate the sidewalk. You were watched and closely supervised, not only by members of your own family, but also by both neighbor adults and older kids on the block. In this respect, the Stoop functioned as an institution of social learning. You learned many things on the Stoop. Among your real and surrogate brother's and sisters, you learned the social conventions of the block. You learned things like when to speak and when to shut up, how to compete and how to cooperate. Through this process, and in this secure environment, you were able to learn your place in the pecking order of the block. If your behavior got out of line, you were just as likely to be reprimanded or cuffed by a surrogate parent or, older brother or sister, as you were by your own!
Everyone had a nickname. There was Chicky, Father Frank, Horsey, Sonny, Schultzy, the Mad Russian to name a few. Mine was the Monk. I earned it by wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt when we played touch football in the park. Much about life and living was relayed through the games we played. Games were our mainstays. We played sports games such as, Stickball, Punchball, Slapball, One hand touch football, Stoop ball, Hand ball, Baseball and Roller Hockey. We played board games such as Chess, Checkers, Sorry, Monopoly, Slap Hockey, Chutes and Ladders, Life, Risk and Chinese Checkers. We played action games like, Hide and Go Seek, Tag, Statue Tag, Simon Says, and Truth, Dare and Consequences.
We also had our own game legends. For example, there was Tubby! Tubby was a wooden game player piece. Regardless of the game, it seemed that whoever played with Tubby was sure to win. Before the game started we would first roll the dice to see who played with Tubby. Winning the right to be Tubby was just as important as winning the game.
We also played some unconventional games, some of which I wonder if anyone else ever played or even know about. These tended to come and go in what we called, "Seasons." There was, Dice Baseball; Cardboard guns, rubber band powered, cardboard squares shooting (and for those more sadistically inclined, linoleum squares) wooden guns made from the frames of fresh produce crates; Water guns; Pea Shooters; Scooters, home made vehicles constructed from an orange crate mounted on a two-by-four board using a separated old metal, street roller skate nailed to either end for wheels; Bottle Caps; Baseball Cards and, Swords, using wooden swords and shields. These were not just play games but, they were also the means by which one was socialized to the ways of the block. One was taught how to function in groups, how to win and lose and, how to gain mastery of one's world. The Stoop provided a microcosm in which we gained the necessary skills to survive in the World away from the block. As we got older, we eventually went on to school, work and some to war never to return. One thing was certain. The Stoop prepared us well to succeed in the macrocosm of the World.
Recently, several of us had a reunion of sorts at the 50th Wedding Anniversary of the parents of a Stoop graduate. For some of us, it was the first time we had seen each other in 25 years. Each in his and her own way has turned out to be upstanding citizens and successful in their careers and marriages. I took David, my at the time, thirteen year-old son with me to the party. He really enjoyed the stories and reminiscences of me and my "Stoopmates."
Shortly after this re-union, and still filled with the stories he heard there, I took David to Manhattan to visit China Town and the Statue of Liberty. On our way from the Long Island suburbs, David asked if we could go through Greenpoint and visit the block on which I grew up. The old neighborhood is pretty much the way it was when I was four or five years of age. Apparently, a new wave of Polish immigrants has moved in. The Polish language is being spoken again by children on the streets. There was one other thing I noticed as we drove around the neighborhood. Kids of varying ages were sitting on stoops, one group playing a board game here, another group just talking there. It then dawned upon me, apparently, the phenomenon of the Stoop lives on! I took great comfort in this. However, as we drove on to Manhattan I glanced over at David and momentarily felt a twinge of sadness well up in me. My sadness came from the thought that my kids never had, and will never have, the experience of the Stoop.
Now I think I understand why, after leaving Greenpoint for rural Wisconsin, I so easily adjusted to living in a small town environment. When I tell people about my migration from Greenpoint to Wisconsin they have often asked me how I dealt with the culture shock of going from the “Broadway” to “Main Street.” For me there wasn't much of a shock at all. The Stoop and Greenpoint prepared me well.
©Copyright, 1995, Frank J. Dmuchowski
All Rights ReservedPublished by: "To The Point!": http//www.greenpt.com
e-mail to: fdmuchow@optonline.net
