One aspect about remaining in one place all your life is that you alone know how the neighborhood used to look. My earliest recollections tell me there once was an amusement park where now are an expressway ramp and a mall. Who remembers Kiddy City? Back then, Queens Boulevard looked like a boulevard, with tall shade trees along the median and wooden lampposts. Now it resembles a junior league superhighway, a concept that goes badly with the heavy pedestrian traffic of an endless shopping street.
Children would never believe that there were two chocolate emporiums right here in Rego Park--Barton's and Barricini's. There was a small restaurant called Hamburger Train, where every burger order was delivered on a Lionel train. "Order a burger, will you?" the tiny tyrant in me would silently mutter, as tuna sandwiches did not get to ride but were handed over conventionally by a fellow resembling the short-order cook in Dagwood's favorite eatery.
Speaking of food, the tank in Scott's Seafood Restaurant's window provided not-so-lively entertainment for a child who never could have dreamed up a creature as ugly as a lobster. I watched fascinated by two crustaceans wrestling in slow motion--was it amatory or competitive? The winner would reappear, broiled and red, a trophy for the diner.
Of course there was Howard Johnson's, with its famous orange roof, where I consumed many beef burgundy dinners without knowing they were created by the then new immigrant Jacques Pepin. I had a friend who would wolf down the fried clams, and I fondly salivate in memory of the Indian pudding, served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. Whatever happened to menus like that?
My stomach has a memory of its own. It reminds me of the posh Stratton Restaurant in Forest Hills, which had the best coffee I ever drank to excess. And the Horn & Hardart's, where you could buy a good takeout meal for small change. And back in Rego Park, Evelyn's Bake Shop, where the gypsies were edible and the rum babas, chestnut cakes, and indianas formed the fifth major food group.
Whatever happened to all the bakeries in New York? What economic environmental disaster forced them all to dry up like farms in the Dust Bowl?
One more gustatory remembrance is reserved for the passing of the Homestead Delicatessen, which left a black hole in my life still unsatisfied by anything else alimentary. A moment of silence, please, in recognition of the contribution made by their apple strudel, their black forest ham, their napoleons! I am now too depressed to continue, but all those who lived and still reside in Rego Park/Forest Hills will know the same pangs of nostalgia--or is it hunger?
