The Block

"The Block," Lefferts Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y., sandwiched between the neighborhoods of Crown Heights and East Flatbush; a block divided between race, culture, and religion. Sometimes this mixture led to volatility, and other times it led to nothing. But on the whole, we all tried to get along . . . whenever possible.

By the way, the block consisted of basically two types of people. African/Caribbean Americans, and Hasidic Jews. You see, the neighborhoods of Crown heights and East Flatbush are a melting pot for both of these cultures; and the practice of one-upmanship, through political means or otherwise, was and still is very rampant. I’ll try to bring this out as we go along.

But for now, let’s get back to the block. I ran with a group of guys who had a lot in common, with me . . . most of us came from West Indian Heritage. Believe me, on any given day, you could walk into any one of our homes and hear the dialects of Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, Panama, Honduras, or Grenada. We had families from the South also, and we were pleased to find out how close the culture was to ours.

This led to a camaraderie amongst the guys that have lasted for about thirty-five years-- and in all likelihood will continue.

Let’s see now, there’s Bob, Bart, Larry, Winston, Pat, Sal, Vinny, and Burt . . . who’s no longer with us. OH! And then there’s me . . . Ryan.

We basically got along because there were no over-inflated egos in this group. There were, however, people who felt they needed to be heard.

Let’s start with Bob. Bob is a classic example of an extremely talented guy with a penchant for the opposite. This guy excelled in whatever he did, but he did certain things better than others; and would choose what he was more deficient in to brag about.

I’ll give you an example, growing up, Bob was the funniest guy on the block. We always said ‘why don’t you become a comedian.’ But no, Bob felt football was his calling. To listen to him, the NFL needed him, not vice-versa. He eventually became a comedian, but damn, what a hard head.

Now Bart was a football head. That’s all he knew. He was the biggest, and liked to flaunt his size. What made Bart unique was that he spoke his own language. He was "Mr. Slang." He made up so many words and sayings, his name should have been called Webster.

Larry was one of the youngest guys on the block. But oh, was he smart. This was mainly because he would look at the mistakes of the older guys and make a concentrated effort not to repeat them. He also had much older brothers to steer him in the right direction.