Page 29 - WhyAsInY

Chapter Two
Manhattan Beached
NOVEMBER 1944 – SOMETIME IN 1946
Wherein our author escapes to the south and is surrounded by numerous natives who appear to be well-meaning.
After my father had shipped out, my mother had moved in—at that time with the older of her two sisters, Beatrice, and Beatrice’s family in Manhattan Beach, a confusingly named place in Brooklyn that will, like Doctor’s Hospital, be heard from again.
Consisting primarily of lovely single-family homes, the Manhattan Beach neighborhood is bounded on the south and east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by Sheepshead Bay, and, illogically enough, on the south and west by the strand that is known as “Brighton Beach.” You would think that those facts would have led Manhattan Beach to have been named “Brighton Beach,” but that name had already been appro- priated by another neighborhood. Some comfort might have been taken from the fact that the Manhattan Beach neighborhood was apparently named for the Manhattan Beach beach, but it transpires that the Man- hattan Beach beach, unlike the Brighton Beach beach, does not border the Manhattan Beach neighborhood.
Why the Manhattan Beach neighborhood carries the name “Man- hattan” at all is also a puzzle: both the beach known as Manhattan Beach
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