For me the Bronx of 1953-1959 in the Throggs Neck Housing Project was also an innocent paradise. Our apartment building had whites, blacks, Hispanics, and everyone got along GREAT. If there were racial problems, we kids were blissfully unaware of them then.
We were neighbors.
It was OUR neighborhood.
We took care of it…

I was dragged kicking and screaming away from that HOME in 1959, at age 12, by parents looking for “The American Dream”: A chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage, 2.2 kids, and, most of all:
A home of your own in the suburbs…

When they told me we were moving I wanted to run away from home instead. 🙁

Nassau county LI was already $$$ out of reach, so we went to Suffolk county.
A place called Deer Park which, for all I knew, still had Indians lurking in the woods! Who was I going to play stick-ball with?
Or ringalievo?
How could I leave the only life I’d ever known?

I think that’s what we miss most, the carefree innocence of a youth in a different world, with friends that stuck by you cause you all “BELONGED”.

I suppose in the long run, it was beneficial to the family to move, but I wish I could have stayed in the Bronx a few more years…