Page 81 - WhyAsInY

1771 oCean (anD M)
of Ebinger’s, the bakery favored by my mom, was Esposito’s, where I had my first—and, therefore, best—pizza ever, at fifteen cents per slice. I would stand transfixed as one of the aproned men would flour and knead the dough, toss it spinning into the air, and then catch it on his knuckles, making the circle widen with each throw and catch. My parents liked that pizza as well, and we frequently brought pies home when my mom was not going to be preparing dinner. It turned out that Mr. Esposito was a patient of my father’s, so I pressed Dad to find out the secret of the recipe. He later told me that, according to Mr. Esposito, neither the sauce nor the cheese, each of which I liked, was the key. The secret lay in the crust, which, it just so happens, was formed from dough that Esposito’s purchased from, of all places, a local bagel factory! In retro- spect, this was not so surprising.
Even farther up that side of Avenue M, between East 16th Street and East 15th Street, and hard by Cookie’s, a family restaurant that occupied the East 16th-Street corner, was the entrance to our closest BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company) subway stop. The BMT also had stations at the same cross streets on Avenue U and Avenue J, which pretty much explains the presence of another Cookie’s at the southeast corner of East 16th Street and Avenue U and the southeast corner of Avenue J and East 16th Street as well. The first Cookie’s was at Avenue U. With its success came the second one at Avenue M and, with more success, the third at Avenue J. Avenues U, M, and J (and Kings Highway, an express stop on the BMT) were the principal nearby com- mercial streets, at least to the west of Ocean Avenue. Whether or not it was a coincidence or a function of changing demographics over a series of years as more successful Brooklynites moved to “the Island,” meaning Nassau County, each of the Cookie’s restaurants suffered an unfortu- nate—some said miraculous—fire and died, only to be reborn soon thereafter as a Cookie’s Steakhouse, somewhere in or near Hicksville, Hempstead, or Manhasset, New York.
Although the BMT was a “subway” train, all of the foregoing sta- tions had platforms that were elevated above street level. I don’t believe that I was permitted to use the subway alone until I was a teenager, at
• 63 •