Everyone's Blog Posts - PS 164 Alumni

What Memories

2010-05-10T13:05:30.000Z

I went to PS 165 from 1961-1966, moved then went to PS 165. I fondly remember some of the teachers and classes that I took as well as my classmates. I hope to hear from all of you guys and gals who can remember me.

Looking back I only wish I had a time machine and relive the great times I had growing up and going to school. It sure makes you think what was and what could of been and what it is now. I wish all my classmates the very best and for those teachers and folks I went to school with are no longer here I say REST IN PEACE MY FRIENDS.

Scott Rudnick

Class Photos

2010-02-21T22:49:41.000Z

Hi... Does anyone have class photos of - - - Mrs. Feldman's 2nd grade 1958, Mrs. Goldman 3rd Grade 1959, Mr. Edelson's 5th grade 1961 and Mrs. Giordano's 6th Grade 1962. I believe I saw a few of them here but they are gone now. If you have them, I would so appreciate them being posted. Thanks, Andrea Ross

POST-REUNION

2009-07-03T00:26:15.000Z

JUST WANTED TO EXPRESS MY THANKS TO PATRICA WEPPLER & HOWARD GOLDMAN FOR A REUNION NIGHT TO REMEMEBER. I AM SO HAPPY THAT I WAS ABLE TO BE PART OF HISTORY IN THE MAKING .

LETS ALL STAY IN TOUCH

BEST REGARDS,

MARIA SCLAFANI-CIMBOLIC

Ed Flynn and the Battle for the Schoolyard, '64

2009-06-04T02:29:53.000Z

I promised to tell my Ed Flynn story here one of these days. With the Reunion coming up, I guess I’ve procrastinated about all I can.

It’s a long reach back to the summer of ’64 - too long for most of you, but you can Google all the clues you need to set the scene:

It was the year of the British Invasion, when the Beatles claimed the top five spots in the top ten at the same time. The Stones made their first American tour that June.

It was the last year of the old “Twilight Zone”, the first year of “Man From U.N.C.L.E.". Spies and secret agents were big. Sean Connery was hitting his stride as 007 in "Goldfinger". I was eyes glued to Diana Rigg and “The Avengers”. The Brits were everywhere.

No hippies, no ‘Nam to speak of yet; but Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that August. LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam while Goldwater was busy nailing down the Republican nomination.

Shea Stadium, now closed, opened in '64, with the miracle Mets and the newly renamed Jets from the old AFC. It was Mickey Mantle’s last world series.

Simon & Garfunkle released their first album later that year.

Yeah, it was that long ago. If you don’t remember it, you can place it: it was the 60’s before “The Sixties.” You could feel it was a year of transition – to what, it wasn’t clear; but that summer had a punky, in-your-face smell to it. I was 15. Ditto for me.

So here’s what I remember about the Battle for the Schoolyard that summer of ‘64…

Truth is, I think I started it. I do apologize, and only pray that I’m beyond the statute of limitations…

My parents (rest their souls) had gone to North Carolina over Memorial Day weekend and brought me back a big souvenir box of fireworks. Inside were a dozen packs of firecrackers, a couple dozen skyrockets and roman candles, and a 12-count box of ashcans – the originals: M80’s (military ordnance) with the silver tube, declared illegal (along with cherry bombs) by federal statute only later, in ‘66. Which isn’t to say they were exactly legal in NYC even then.

I couldn’t believe my luck. My eyes were like pie plates. I kept mumbling thank you's. My old man told me to be discrete, which made us all laugh. Say what you like about my folks, they knew the way to a young lad’s heart. Hey – times were different then, nobody got hurt, and I lived to tell the tale…

Anyway, I put most of the rockets and candles aside for the 4th of July (a whole ‘nother story), and sold a good portion of my cache, which I figured was more discrete than setting them all off myself.

Only first, of course, we had to experiment. The firecrackers were soon a bore. But I was fascinated by the ashcans, which were scary: "one and one-half inches long and 5/8 of an inch in diameter, with a green waterproof fuse sticking out the side. They contained two grams of flash powder and were 40 times more powerful than what’s legally sold as an M80 today". They were small sticks of dynamite, really. And they could float…

We should have gone down to Park Drive East and sent one out on the lake. But we didn’t want to hurt any fish. Yeah, yeah. Truth is, all my buddies and I could talk about was setting one off in a toilet. This was what ashcans were famous for. And one evening, after Ed Flynn the parkie had gone home, I did just that, in the girls room in the parkhouse. It was incredible.

The explosion in that small, tiled room was air, ear, and nerve shattering, even standing safely outside (we weren’t total idiots). When we looked in, the porcelain was, needless to say, shattered and water was gushing from the pipe sticking out of the wall. We ran away, too terrified to laugh or even talk about it later. We just looked at each other, shook our heads, and filed that one away forever. Almost...

I made sure I wasn’t around when Ed Flynn came in the next day. It was his park, and he was no one to mess with. I heard he was swearing up a storm that morning. That evening when I came by for bball, I couldn't get in, On his way home, Ed Flynn had quietly locked up all the gates to the schoolyard, for the first time ever so far as we knew. And he locked them again the next evening. Things had changed. He was mightily (and rightly) pissed off.

But this was summer and the schoolyard was the place to be in the evenings, for basketball and stickball and just hanging around. Lots of us were pissed off, too. Finally, someone came by with wire cutters one night and snipped a couple of the wire ties holding the chain link fencing to the post out in center field. A corner of the fence was pulled back, and we had access once again.

Ed Flynn wasn’t about to give up so easily. He re-fastened the fence with extra reinforcement. But neither were the opposing forces so easily defeated. Two nights later, the wire-cutter returned with a vengeance, and in the morning the entire outfield fence, from the corner of the Salgo’s yard in deep left-center field to the third base line, was hanging loosely rolled over the sidewalk. We kids basked triumphant.

Ed knew when he was licked. He reattached the fencing and from then on he left the front gate open and, eventually, the back gate as well. Things went back to normal, almost...

Coming to the schoolyard one morning soon after this, we witnessed an odd sight. A large dead fish had appeared on the very far edge of the backstop over the softball diamond. It had to weigh 15 pounds. No one thought much about it until it began to rot. And by then, it smelled so bad that no one had the intestinal fortitude to crawl out there and knock the fish off so we could dispose of it. For the next week or two, stickball and other activities on the school end of the playground came nearly to a halt as the stench ran its course.

As stickball was my life back then and I hadn’t yet heard of karma, I was more than a little pissed off myself with Ed Flynn, who seemed in no rush at all to remove the fish. With school out, there was apparently no pressure on him to deal with it. Then too, his parkhouse was on the other side of the schoolyard, and being a fisherman himself, he was naturally more used to the smell…

Guess I deserved it. But those of you old-timers who remember these events most certainly did not. So let this be my long overdue confession and apology to Ed Flynn and to all those who suffered the collateral damage of our anonymous summerlong skirmish: I was the clearly the punk in this affair and Ed Flynn, if he didn’t win the battle, most definitely and deservedly had the last word. I stand here chastened and corrected, having never lit another firecracker from that summer on, I swear. So here’s to you, Ed Flynn, wherever you may be – may the fish always be biting!

P.S. 164 beginnings

2008-10-19T14:43:22.000Z

I remember P.S. 164 being built (I lived across the street). When the main steps were almost completed, they were destroyed by a bulldozer and a kid (I think), and had to be rebuilt. The first classes were all students transferred in from far away schools. I started in Kindergarten and went all the way through sixth grade until 1957, but my brother started in the third grade (Matthew Oren, along with Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon, they all started that year, graduating in 1953?). My cousin Carl Harris started either as a fourth or fifth grader and must have graduated in 1951 or 1952. When did the school open? (Was I in the first class to go all the way through?) I think that I can still sing the song, taking "sing" advisedly. I had Mrs. Jaffee in sixth grade and Mrs. Rosenberg in fourth grade, my very two favorite teachers. If there is anyone who knows the early, early history, I would love to hear it.

REUNION PARTY!!!

2008-02-21T17:02:25.000Z

Hi Everyone.........

I was thinking that maybe we should have a reunion with all of us getting together that would be so great..

LET ME KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK OF THAT IDEA

Talk to you guys soon
MARIA

SITE FAQ ~ Please Read!

2008-02-19T19:00:00.000Z

Here are the answers to your most frequently asked questions. If you don't see your question here, please email Patricia Weppler.

There isn't much activity on this site anymore. What happened?
The P.S. 164 Alumni site was very active until our reunion in 2009. After that, our activity dwindled to new alumni finding the site and joining, Howard and I decided to continue maintaining this site as it is the only one on the internet about the history of P.S.164. This is truly an archive of the school's history!

How did this site come about?
Patricia's PS 164 time warp odyssey began in 2000, when reuniting with a classmate led me to designing a 164 tribute web site, which in 2008 evolved into this alumni site. In 2009 we had a reunion at PS 164, celebrating the school's 60th anniversary!

I joined the site but my link doesn't appear on the main page.
This is something that has to be done manually by Patricia.

HOW DO I LEAVE SOMEONE A COMMENT?
There are two ways to contact people on this site: comments and messages.
Comments are public (any registered user of the site will see them.)
Everyone has a "comment wall" on their personal page. When you visit someone's page you will see a text box that says, "Leave a comment for ________". Enter your text, then click ADD COMMENT.
When someone leaves a comment on your page and you want to reply, you have to click the link in their text box that says COMMENT BACK. If you do this, your reply shows up on their page.
(If you use your ADD A COMMENT box, your reply only shows up on your own page and your friend won't see it unless (s)he happens to return to your page.)

HOW DO I LEAVE SOMEONE A MESSAGE?
If you'd rather not leave a public comment on someone's page, try using the SEND A MESSAGE feature which appears under everyone's photo on their personal page.
If someone sends you a message, you will receive email notification that a message has been sent to you. The next time you are on your page, click the little envelope icon at the top of the page.
(If you have new messages, you will see the word NEW next to the envelope icon.)

ADDING A PROFILE PHOTO
When you are on your page, click ABOUT ME (this is where you can add info about yourself), then click ACCOUNT.
You'll see where it says YOUR PHOTO. Click that little box to upload your photo.
Click the BROWSE button to find the file you want on your computer, click on the photo, then OPEN, DONE and SAVE. (Make sure you save your changes!)

ADDING PHOTOS
To add other photos, go to your page and in that big green box at the top you'll see the link for ADD PHOTOS. Click that, then on the next page click the BROWSE button. That will open up a window where your files are, look for the photo you want, click on it, then OPEN and it will show up in the first box on your ADD PHOTOS page.
Keep doing that until you have all your photos, then click the box that says UPLOAD PHOTOS.

DELETING PHOTOS
Go to your page, in the box where you have your profile photo look down and you will see a link that says PHOTOS, click that, then click on the photo you want to delete.
To the right of that picture you will see a link with a big red X next to it that says DELETE PHOTO.

WHY DO MY PHOTOS HAVE "ME" UNDER THEM INSTEAD OF MY NAME?
When you look at your photos, you see "by Me" under each picture. When anyone else looks at them, they see your name. You'll have to trust me on that, since you will keep seeing "Me" under your pictures! (Your name is there! Honest!)

FINDING CLASSMATES BY GRADUATION YEAR
There's a text box on the main page called MEMBERS where you'll find people listed by class year. I'm adding the links manually so there will be some lag time between joining and appearing on the list.

LOST PASSWORD
When you try to log onto the site, you will see a link in the sign-in box called "FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD?"
Click that, enter your email address and click the RESET PASSWORD box.