Grandma's Been There

Winter is a season of multiple personalities. When we were kids, we loved some of its personalities, but hated others. Its long cold days were depressing. Just the length of the season tried our patience. But when it gave us snow, the winter was our best friend and it could stay as long as it liked.

Today, I'm going to tell you all about my school uniforms. They were outdated, impractical and humiliating. I hated  them.

This week, I think we need a vacation. And where do Brooklyn people go to get away from the congested dirty city? To the Catskill Mountains, of course. We're goin' up the country!

As I've said many a time, life in Brooklyn sometimes left a bit to be desired. On the other hand, it had some very special and unique places that plenty of other cities didn't have. This week, I want to take you with me to visit one of those places.

Since "Grandma's Been There" is turning one year old in about another month, I thought I'd make the last episode of 2025 about the podcast itself.

Now the seasons pass with the speed of shooting stars, but at a time when a year represented one tenth of my entire life, it always felt as if holidays would never come. And out of all the holidays, Christmas was by far the hardest one to wait for.

Sometimes shooting stars appear to us in human forms. They get caught in our gravitational fields and produce streaks of light across the heavens of our lives. The imprints they leave remain with us forever.

This week, as we tumble down the wormhole, we're going straight past the 1960s and 1950s and time traveling back to the early 1940s. Today's episode brings us to the Brooklyn Skating Rink on Empire Boulevard in December of 1942. The story is based on real places, actual events and real people. Come with me and let me introduce you to some "Unknown Legends."

A temperate zone is defined as an area that has a moderate climate and distinct seasons with relatively mild temperatures. "Mild?" That is a relative term. Even though I knew there were plenty of hotter, colder, wetter and drier places on this earth, the middle latitudes didn't always feel so "temperate" to me when I was a kid.

It's often said that anyone who's old enough to remember the day can tell you exactly where they were on November 22, 1963. As trite as it may sound, it's the truth. For me, the memory of that afternoon and the days that followed will never fade or disappear.