where i'm from

Awhile back, I asked people to write stories about the place they grew up. This is a story that came from one member of the group:

Where I'm From, by: Anonymous Woman

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in the ghetto. It's hot there in the summertime and the teenagers used to undo the fire hydrants and get us wet to cool us off. One time, they threw me in and I thought I was drowning.

This guy came around once with a merry go round and other rides. Mom would have my sister babysit and we would climb out off the roof of the saw dust mill. It was easy to get up and down on. A man from the mill had get me down once though. We played on the roof and jumped roof to roof.

One time this guy gave us a free watermelon off the back of a train and me and my brother told everybody that they were giving watermelons out at the train tracks. Everyone and their uncle came to get one and by the time they came back from lunch the train was empty!

You'd see people pushing carts down the streets with hot dogs, pretzles and cotton candy -- all kinds of stuff. My mom always took us to Coney Island, that's the coast in New York. We'd swim in the water. My brother always ended up at the police station eating ice cream. One day he went by himself -- it was a long way with lots of subways. He was going to take me with him and we snuck under the fence but there was a police officer there so we snuck back home and hide under beds.

My older brother was in the airforce. We always waited for him to come home. He let us play with his shaving cream. When I got back out there to visit again, I went out with my two brothers, Barney and Barney. They took me to the trade center where they were serving Italian. We went inside the twin towers -- the inside of that building was like glass imagery. It was the most beautiful building I ever saw. Then they showed me a boat that looked like the love boat cruise ship.

New York is like being in another world. In every section of town you see every kind of people there is. It really is interesting.