Weeksville Calling
A fragmented life by Dominic Ambrose
Note: In Central Brooklyn a community of free Blacks flourished from 1840 on into the early Twentieth Century. It was called Weeksville. However, over time, the last surviving remnants of that community, the Hunterfly Road Houses, sunk hidden ever deeper behind the later structures of working class Brooklyn and were eventually forgotten. My family lived in a home on that street from the 1930s onward, and I still vividly remember the mysterious allure of the black, dilapidated structures that lurked just out of vision, moldering silently in the belly of our block. Beginning in the 1970s the Hunterfly Road Houses were restored and a historical museum, incorporating other original structures found elsewhere on the block, was completed and opened to the public. The museum represented a godsend of revitalization for a street that had reached an absolute nadir of urban decay.
In a fit of musings, I made a call from my apartment on MacDougal Street in Manhattan to the old apartment house in Gravesend, Brooklyn. It was May 7, 1983:
“Hallo?” (That familiar, dazed voice answers, my brother.)
“Hi, Nick, is daddy there?”
“Yeah, he’s sleepin’. (pause) Yeah, the phone woke him up, he’s goin’ to the bathroom now. I don’t know if he’s gonna wanna get up.”
“Well, I want to talk to him.”
“Dad! It’s Dominic!”
(Some vague grumpy sounds.)
“He wants to talk to you.”
(Silence, then:)
“Hallo!” (He shouts, very old, into the phone.)
“Hi, Dad. How’re you doin’?”
“What?”
(I repeat, even louder.)
“Terrible! Terrible! I was sleepin’. Whata you want?”
“I want to talk to you about something. About Bergen Street.”
“What?”
(I repeat.)
“Fer cryin’ out loud, are you crazy? Is that all you gotta think about? Bergen Street?”
“I wanted to ask you about the shack in the back of the yard.”
“The what?”
(I repeat.)
“Whata you want to know about the shack for? How do I know?”
“You still own the property, don’t you?”
“Fer Chrissake, would you let me rest in peace?”
“Don’t you still own it?”
“I walked away from it! What am I gonna do with that property?”
“So you mean the city owns it now?”
“I don’t know. The people that lived there gave me five hundred dollars so I would walk away. That was five years ago.”
“I was wondering about the shack way in the back. Was that somebody’s house?”
“What are you talkin’ about? That was a shack.”
“I don’t mean the wood shed, y’know. I mean the real old shack behind it.”
“Nobody ever lived there. That old pile o’ junk? What are you crazy?”
“I don’t mean in our family, I mean anybody, ever live there.”
“That thing must be over a hundred years old. I don’t know. It’s a shack.”
“You mean it’s still up, it didn’t burn down?”
“It burned down?”
“I’m askin’ you. I thought you told me it burned down.”
“I never told you that. How do I know?”
“It wasn’t an outhouse?”
“An outhouse? No, it was a shack!”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what an outhouse looks like.”
“That wasn’t no outhouse. They don’t make outhouses for six people to shit in at that same time.”
“So it was a house?”
“Let me go back to sleep!”
“I was thinking that maybe it’s part of Weeksville. Maybe it’s a historic spot.”
“What?”
“Weeksville! Maybe it’s part of Weeksville!”
“I don’t know if it’s part of Weeksville. Was there something in the paper about Weeksville?”
“No, I’m just wondering. They’re restoring down the street. I wonder if anybody even knows about that shack, except us and the people that lived there. You can’t see it from any other yards.”
“I don’t know if it’s part of Weeksville. Leave me alone. Here, here’s Nick.”
© Copyright 2007 Dominic Ambrose. All Rights Reserved.