Have I Become My Father?

The concept of my book started back in 2002 and then through the years morphed into what it has become today, a glimpse into my past and the people and the environment that have molded me as an "adult." At first I wanted to just recount my growing up in a certain place in a certain time that does not exist anymore. My thoughts about that time, Brooklyn, New York, actually the Brownsville section, from 1942 to 1955, that realization dawned on me when I was living in Biloxi, Mississippi in 2001. That's when I started to see similarities of growing up in a small town, Biloxi, and growing up in Brooklyn a large Borough of one of the largest cities in the world, New York City. The more I experienced life in Biloxi, morning breakfasts, just sitting talking with residents, who of course went to school with everybody in the town, knew all the local gossip, good and bad, I finally realized that growing up on one block in Brownsville in the forties and fifties was like growing up in a small town somewhere in the United States, of course without all the grass and farmland. I started thinking about my Brooklyn neighborhood, this tight-knit community which encompassed only one city block, and probably had a population which surpassed a great majority of the small towns in our country. The thing that was constant with both these environments was the people who were part of these communities and how they cared for the other people in their community. This is what ties towns and even single blocks together. The fact that the inhabitants felt a duty and cared about the other people who shared their environment, made the community work on every level. Then I began to think back to those early years growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn and the more I thought about it the more I saw the parallels of living in a small town. Of course the more I explored my past I realized that one of the biggest parts of growing up was due to the influence of my father. So my thoughts expanded and I started to remember not only the environment of the street which I grew on but also the man in my life who truly shaped me as an adult for better or for worse. So in attempting to tell my story of growing up in a small town, one city block in Brownsville, Brooklyn in a very different time, I have to include the story of how my father, Harry Piotrowsky influenced my life during what I think was a very important time for a child to grow physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.