Brooklyn 593
My Sisters and Me
by
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BROOKLYN, HERE WE ARE – MY FIRST DAYS IN NEW YORK
I don’t remember much about the trip to New York. And, even today, I can’t imagine how 8 people (4 adults, my teenaged older sister, me and my 2 younger sisters) fit into one mid-sized car to make the thousand-mile trip from South Georgia to Brooklyn. I can’t even remember how long the trip took. Maybe we were all just too excited to be aware of anything except that “WE WERE GOING TO NEW YORK, TO LIVE.” However, I do remember that when we arrived in Brooklyn in late December, it was icy cold outside. But, we were in a nice, warm house, so who cared about the cold. This was my first time living in a house with central heat, hot & cold running water, electric lights, glass windows, an indoor toilet and more than one story tall. It even had a basement where the heating furnace and the hot water heater were located. This house was awesome. My sisters and I were simply overwhelmed. We had never lived in a home like this before – not even in our dreams.
However, it wasn’t long before the glamour started to wear off and circumstances started to change – and the change was for the worse. First, we were given a formal tour of the house along with strict instructions on where we were allowed to go and where we were not allowed to go – what we could eat and what we could not eat. For example: we were not allowed to enter the living room, except when either dad or our new step-mom told us to do so. Since we already called him “Daddy-Simon,” we were told to call her “Mother-Lillie.” However, because of our growing disdain for her, we soon gave her the nickname “Lady-P” which has stuck to this day. We got the name “Lady-P’ from a popular comic book character of that era – “Lord Plushbottom” and his wife “Lady Plushbottom, whom he often called “Lady-P.” Lady Plushbottom was a fancy dressing, slick-talking, snobbish lady who behaved as if she was superior to everyone else. She was a “Holier-than-thou” instigator who caused lots of trouble for the other comic strip characters. We thought that character trait fit our “Mother Lillie” to a “T,” so she became our “Lady-P.”
Dad and Lady-P told us not to touch any of the fruit so prominently displayed in large bowls in the Living Room, or the boxes of chocolate candy sitting alongside the fruit. Those items were for company only. Of course the temptation was too great, so we eventually took a piece or two of the candy. But that came to an abrupt halt when Ellen saw Lady-P counting the pieces of candy in the boxes. Ellen told Joyce and I, and we didn’t dare take any more. Lady-P didn’t have to count the fruit. She stacked it a certain way in the bowls, and could tell at a glance if even one piece of fruit had been taken.
We eventually did get to eat some of that fruit and candy, but that was only after the chocolate had turned gray with age, the bananas had turned brown and mushy, the oranges and tangerines had lost their juice or the apples had started to rot. Nobody else would eat them then. That’s when Lady-P placed them on our kitchen table for us to eat. Not knowing any better, we ate the candy with no hesitation. We cut out the worst parts of the fruit and ate that too. Not knowing any better, we were happy to get them.
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About the Book
“Brooklyn 593” is my own true story. Its the story of the life and times of a teenaged African-American youth who was born on a small farm in Southeast Georgia during the 1930’s – into a loving, caring, sharing family that suffered immensely from the ravages of the kinds of social and economic injustice and exploitation that ran rampant in the American Society of that day. After the untimely death of my mother and my father’s subsequent remarriage, my sisters and I were uprooted from the backwoods of Southeast Georgia and transplanted into the hustle-bustle of big-city life in Brooklyn, New York, where we grew up in a dysfunctional and abusive household at 593 Halsey Street.
These memoirs are designed to provide a written record of some of the many difficulties that my sisters and I encountered during our teenage years. Hopefully and prayerfully, our children, their children, our kinfolk and others who read about our experiences will gain some useful insight from them, and will take whatever steps are necessary to see that children over whom they have parental, custodial or supervisory control, do not have experiences the same as or similar to ours. Hopefully and prayerfully, our memoirs will inspire others who grew up in dysfunctional and abusive surroundings, and who received little if any parental or custodial support. Hopefully, they will be able to overcome bad past experiences and build their own successful futures – futures that contain an abundance of the love, affection and acceptance that was missing during their earlier years – just as my sisters and I have been able to do.
About the Author
James “Jim” Plummer was born on a farm in Southeastern Georgia and – at the age if 12 and in the 6th grade – moved to Brooklyn New York, where he attended Elementary, Junior High and High School. Upon graduation from Brooklyn’s Boys High School, he joined the US Air Force where he retired after 26 years of service. His overseas assignments included tours of duty in Germany, Libya and Vietnam.
While serving in the Air Force, Jim earned a Bachelors Degree in Business Management from The University of Nebraska and a Masters Degree in Management & Supervision from Central Michigan University. Jim then turned to university teaching, where he has taught a wide variety of business-related courses for The University of Maryland, City University of Chicago, Saint Leo College and Hampton University, in their Off-Campus Education Programs, both overseas and within the USA.
Jim is married – the father of 2 sons and a daughter, and the grandfather of 8. Jim and his wife – Mary – live in Hampton, Virginia.