The Angry Typist

I was writing a short story about growing up in Flushing, New York and couldn’t recall some details so I Googled it.

I typed in my old address and a small panic filled me as I couldn’t find the brownstone I called home. It is an address that I had committed to memory and even after 37 years, the address still rolls off the tongue as if I still resided there.

But the images that were on the screen were unrecognizable. I didn’t see any brownstones with the Japanese Maplewood sitting just off to the right of the top of the brick steps. The sprawling trees which used to line both sides of the street were largely gone, a few staggered here & there but hardly noticeable. Each brownstone used to have a small grass patch with hedges outlining the property lines that were replaced with cement patios, cement walls, and metal gates – stripped naked, void of any greenery, robbed occupants of any temporary illusion from life in a busy borough of Queens. The shared walkway to the front doors used to be separated with a long line of hedges and now only a mix of bricks & concrete, steel, and clutter are all that remains.

The machine shop on the corner of 76^th Road and Parsons Blvd had been replaced by condominiums. Even the empty lot at the end of the street which was rumored to be an Indigenous cemetery had been converted to be an official shortcut, apartments, and soccer fields.

Flushing never felt like home but now it felt even more foreign. Although I did not hold that brownstone with any level of endearment, I was surprised with the feeling of being punched in the stomach when I saw all the changes. It’s as if my childhood – the good and the bad, were all uprooted and tossed into the bin … only existing in my memory.