Wiretap - Forgotten History

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

People tend to assume that the way things are is how they've always been, but sometimes history can surprise us...

If you're listening to this, I already know you have great taste in podcasts. But maybe, if you like me, you still wonder if you're missing out on the best stuff. That's where the Sounds Good newsletter can help you out. Every other Thursday, the audio files at CBC Podcasts highlight one must-hear show and lots of other new and noteworthy titles. They do conversation starters, they do hidden gems, and they also tell you about the stuff they love that they didn't make. Go to CBC.ca slash sounds good to subscribe. This is a CBC podcast.

I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and you're listening to Wiretap on CBC Radio 1. Today's episode, Forgotten History. Here's a New York City secret treasure for you. Get on the 6th train and stay on board past the last stop. That means after everyone else has gotten off, stay put. The train re-enters the darkness of the subway tunnel to loop around and restart its route, and as it does, you can catch a brief glimpse of New York's forgotten history, a ghost station, the now empty City Hall subway stop.

Built in 1904 to look like a miniature Grand Central, It was once the most beautiful station in New York. It had brass fixtures, vaulted arches, and skylights. But in 1945, falling into disrepair and deemed too expensive to renovate for modern trains, those skylights were boarded up. If you think about it, glimpses of the past, signposts marking what once was are relatively few. What once was just isn't anymore. So it's easy to forget that it ever was. And sometimes we even forget that we've forgotten.

I spoke with historian Ed Ayers and asked him why this human tendency to forget. Basically, we have only a part of our brain that we're willing to allocate to a collective memory of what used to happen. And so we just tell ourselves the same stories over and over again, because it's more convenient. You know, we're trying to make it through the day. You need basically enough information about the past not to get lost in time. And so, you know, I think about an episode of The Simpsons where At Pooh is going to get American citizenship,

and he studies hard for his exam, he goes in for the test, and guy says, so what causes civil war? He says, well, there are many causes, both domestic and internationally. Guy says, just say slavery. And so I think we're constantly filtering out information that could be interesting so we can have a few fixed places in the past that we can navigate from. Do you ever feel like conversely like when you pick up a newspaper, say, from say the early 30s or whatever, and you look at the advertisements and the day's events?

I mean, I find it kind of overwhelming. It's almost like science fiction almost. Yeah, exactly. No, you're exactly right. And when I've taught, I've just thrown students into that. Go read a single issue of a newspaper. And they just come back and it blows their minds. And the main thing they discover is the past actually occurred.

It was different in every way. That's what surprises me even now. So, you know, the history business is never going to dry up. I remember I told my mom I was going to go to graduate school in history. She was a fifth grade teacher. And she said, well, what for, honey? We already know what happened. But we don't because the president's constantly forcing us to see things in new ways.

So I think history is going to always be with us, and it's always going to be interesting, but we're always going to be in danger of forgetting it. My father, Buzz Goldstein, has a great memory for the past. He remembers the sound his Uncle Freddy's 1935 Ford made when you crank the windows open. He even claims to remember the color and odor of the carriage he was strolled in as an infant. Nonetheless, sometimes, like any son worth his salt, I find myself doubting my father.

He grew up in 1940s, Coney Island, and has told me stories about that moment in history that are downright astounding. Stories about premature baby incubators lined up on the boardwalk that people visited for entertainment. Stories about clowns who were four feet tall and chased women around with cattle prods and air pumps to blow up their skirts. But perhaps his most outrageous memory of all, that Google as I might, I can never find any confirmation of, is this. In the small beach-side apartment in which he, his brother, parents, and grandmother once lived,

my father says that in their bathroom, right beside the hot and cold water taps, was a third tap and from this third tap there flowed sea water directly from the ocean and into your home maybe you dreamt it i say whenever he brings this up careful of his feelings i did not he cries so recently i enlisted the help of super-slooth starly kine Starly is an amateur detective, separating forgotten facts from fiction as she solves small-scale mysteries. So I gave her my father's phone number and hired her for the case to uncover the truth once and for all. Hello? Hello, Buzz? Yeah.

This is Starly Kind. Who? Starly, John's friend. this? I'm Starly. I don't, I can't hear you, Eileen. No, no, no, not Eileen. It's Johnson friend Starly. Dean, I don't know who this. Hello? Hello? Who is it? It's Starly. Oh, hi, Starly. Hold on. I'm going to give you my husband. Okay. Starly, I'm sorry. I thought you said Eileen. No, it's just me. Good old Starly. Oh, so what can I do for you, Starly? I hear you have a mystery involving your

childhood in Coney Island and the Fossits. Is that true? Oh, you're talking about the fact that we were able to get salt water. Yeah, Jonathan asked me to investigate whether it's true or not. Well, my first experience with Coney Island, I was six years old. This was 1941, and we moved into this building called 2998 West 29th Street. It was right facing the beach. It was an old building. And in that building was a bathroom with a bathtub, and it had three taps. One was hot water, one was cold water, and one was salt water. Like the cold. was on the right, the hot was on the left, and the salt was in the middle. So if you wanted to bathe in salt water like you were bathing in the ocean, you opened that tap. It just, it was a direct

line to the ocean? It would have been a direct line to the ocean. Did it have like seaweed or anything in it? Did it have stuff from the ocean in it that would come through the faucet? No, it must have been strained out because we got just the water. I mean, it seems like kind of a health hazard to have this dirty ocean water coming out of a tap. It wasn't what we would consider clean. Yeah, you wouldn't want to bathe in it. No. But you wouldn't want to bathe in it, even though it did go into a bathtub. Well, Starly, in those days, salt water was thought to be very therapeutic.

Why didn't you just go in the ocean if you wanted to bathe in salt water? Well, you could, but I'm thinking of the possibilities that people were shut in, couldn't get to the beach, and they had the benefit of having salt water in their own bathtub. The access to the ocean through a tap. It sounds like, you know, when you get a conch shell and you put it up to your ear and you can hear the ocean. Well, that's been a decisive. Spelled that myth about holding the conchel up to your ear. That's only your own blood flowing through your hair that you're hearing. Right.

That's a solved mystery. We're doing unsolved mysteries. This is the real thing. This is water coming out of a faucet, and you're getting the feel, the taste, and the smell of the ocean. Did you like it? How often did you use it? I wasn't thrilled. I used to go around across to the beach.

You went walked under the boardwalk, and you were on the beach. In fact, when you lie down at night, you could hear the ocean. So did you fall asleep to the sound of the ocean? I don't remember whether I did, but it was a nice sound. To this day, I remember it. It was just beautiful. Did you ever try to turn the saltwater tap and fall asleep to that? You're something, Stolly.

Have you ever seen this represented in any movie? Have you ever watched a movie and been like, oh, there's the old saltwater tap? No, I can't say I have. Because, you know, Jonathan found it kind of hard to believe. since there doesn't seem to be much of a record of these taps existing. He looked online and didn't find anything. This is something that probably wouldn't be on the Internet or in a history book. But you're 100% positive.

110%. Salt water taps are real. Yes. Do you know of anyone else who could back you up on this? No, the only one that would remember would be my brother. He would be the only one that would remember that. And your brother, he's not around anymore? Oh, he's around.

He's living in Florida. it. Oh, he is? Yeah, you want the number. You can call him and ask him. Yeah, what's the number? What's the number, Dina? Give him the number. His phone number is 1.772. Mm-hmm. 9-4-0. Okay.

You want to call him in now and then get back to me? I'm going to call your brother. I'm going to see what he has to say about this. Absolutely. And I'm going to get to the bottom of it. I'm sure he'll confirm it. He has a good memory, too. His name is Sheldon. Okay. I'll let you know what I find out. Great.

Thank you. Hello. Hi, Sheldon. Yes. Hi, my name's Starly. What's your name? Starlie? Eileen?

Starly, like a star. Oh, Stiley. Okay. I'm a friend with your brother. Okay. And I'm calling because I was wondering about the saltwater tap from when you were growing up in Coney Island. Do you remember this? Yes, I remember.

Well. That's, it's true? If you wanted to bathe your feet in salt water or you wanted to take a a saltwater bath, you had that option. And it would just come rushing through the faucet into your bathtub, the actual saltwater? As far as I remember, yes. Did you ever take a bath with salt water? Well, it was ocean water. Would you want to take a bath in ocean water?

I don't know. It could be kind of exciting. I've never heard of anything like this. Oh, really? Well, there's a lot of strange things in the world that you may have never have heard of. Did you know that snakes had more than one sexual organ? Snakes can perform the act on themselves if there's no female snakes around. I guess I didn't know that. Yeah, well, that's just one of the things I can tell you about. But for you to find out about a saltwater tap, I'll tell you the truth. I don't find this subject at all intriguing or fascinating.

So I'm going to end this conversation right now. Oh, okay. Well, I guess I'll just go to Coney Island to see if I can get to the bottom of this. Nice talking to you. You too. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye.

Bye. Hello. Hello? Buzz? Hi. I wanted to just bring you up to speed on a few things. Okay, Starley. Let's go.

So I talked to your brother He said he remembered Saltwater Tabs too Which was pretty good But you know I needed something more concrete So then I went to Coney Island And I didn't find any buildings

That still have these taps Uh huh But I did find the Brighton Neighborhood Association In Brighton Beach Which is just a few blocks From where you grew up Right And the people here know everything

About the history of these neighborhoods And I have found someone Who remembers the Saltwater Tapp That's fantastic Okay here she is Her name's Pat Hi Buzz, how are you? Hi, how are you, Pat?

Good. Did your salt water work, though? Mine worked in Coney Island, yes. By the time I moved here in 64, there was no more salt water coming in. Oh. And I remember seeing the spigot, but it never really worked. How was it labeled? Was there hot water, cold water, and salt water?

That's exactly right. You had a hot, cold, and S. I think it was an S on it for salt water. But didn't work. When I moved in, 64, it was already, you know, disconnected. But I remember the pipe. I remember the pipe on the beach coming out of the ocean, Because I had asked about, I inquired, once that pipe, it was broken, it was corroded,

and I think that's how they, it was pumped into all the ocean front buildings out here. Well, yeah, sure, it came from the ocean, yeah. Exactly. So that tap was put in in the 30s, because the apartments were considered luxury living. I think when they built the Brooklyn Bridge, that's when people started to really migrate to live here. And this is part of the selling tool to come here. You have the beach, you have salt water coming into your apartment. Okay, and salt water was going to sit a luxury because it's good for your body to soak in salt.

And I tell you, if they had it today, I'd be soaking myself. At this stage my life, I could use that. That's living by the sea in Coney Island. Only in Coney Island. But in those days you have to stand. They didn't have, they had phone booths in the lobby because people didn't have phones. It was a different lifestyle. And Mrs. Goldberg would yell out to Mrs. Cone outside a window.

You're coming up a tea, and the laundry would be whipping on the ropes out there. outside the window, even when I moved to them saying this is true. So it was colorful times in these old world communities, you know, and it's life. Coneyon was a great place growing up. Growing up, it was a wonderful place. There was always all kinds of activities. I was wonderful. Coney on a world within itself. Do you remember there was

a dwarf who used to, there was a thing that blew up skirts, and he had a... Yes, when he came up, there was a little guy there, and he blew your skirt up. That's right, and he used to run after you. It was a little like a low electric cow prod like thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Buzz, it's been a pleasure.

Same here, Pat. Nice reminiscing with you. Absolutely. I love going back in the past. You know, you don't know where you're going unless you look where you've been. That's right. Absolutely. Hold on.

Hi. Hi. Did you enjoy taking a little trip back? Yes, it was very enjoyable. It was very nice. Yeah? You really did your research. Do you feel validated?

Yes, I do. And, yeah, I feel that my memory is still good, and I feel validated. You were right, and Jonathan was wrong. He's a doubter, you know, the idea of saltwater coming into a bathtub, and you went out and you validated it, and I feel good about it, and I thank you. You know, you're welcome. Mystery solved. Another case closed. Terrific.

If you're absolutely loving your summer read and don't want the book to be over, your experience doesn't actually have to end when you finish reading. I'm Matea Roach, and on my podcast bookends, I sit down with authors to get the inside scoop behind the books you love. Like, why Emma Donoghue is so fascinated by trains, or how Taylor Jenkins Read feels about being a celebrity author. You can check out bookends with Matea Roach wherever you get your podcasts. Our memories, even the seemingly small, inconsequential ones, join to form something much larger, our personal history. Sometimes, though, this history can be a heavy burden, and so we may choose to forget where we come from

and free ourselves from the ties of antiquity. Sometimes we can exchange our mythology of origin for a new, reinvented mythology. After all, that is a man's right, or even a half-man's right. The Minotaur in Apartment 3A was lonely, and if he nabbed you in the hallway, you were done for. A head the size of mine, he'd ask,

making small talk in the elevator. Forget about wearing t-shirts. Mind you, a big head's not so bad, he'd say. I've heard of baby, bowls with human heads. The Minotaur worked hard at fitting in to the Brooklyn apartment building where he lived, helping with grocery bags and holding elevator doors open, and never allowed party either. Parties took friends, and he didn't have a single one.

The Minotaur and 3A couldn't be nicer, is what he longed for his neighbors to say. Almini Toro, he imagined the Puerto Rican sisters on the fifth floor saying, Sweet-like sugar. He'd moved to Brooklyn about a year earlier, after a great loneliness befell him in his old place, the labyrinth. The minotaur was desperate for the company of others, and as there was an old society of minotaurs per se, that choice had to be made.

Leave the labyrinth to live among bulls, or leave the labyrinth to live among men. no more half-assing it. Without knowing very much about men or bulls, he examined the pros and cons of each. Grazing by day and chasing Spaniards by night, he said to the mailman, not for me.

So it was that he rented his Brooklyn apartment, choosing a building with twisting carpeted halls that reminded him of home. On the subway platform after work, he was often tempted to bull hit his way on board, keeping the crowded bay with snorts and menacing looks. But he never allowed his animal half to win. It wasn't always easy.

While sparring in his Iketo class, his testosterone level often went through the roof. And one time, after waiting 15 full minutes at a Starbucks for his chai latte, he accidentally steamed his soy milk with the exhaust from his nostrils. He'd always managed to keep his full bullish nature in check. though, until one Wednesday afternoon. It was while hanging out dressed shirts on the clothesline that he spied a red brazier

and silky red underpants across the courtyard on his neighbor's clothesline. They waved tauntingly in the summer breeze. The bull in him surged. He tried breathing the way he'd learned in Bikram Yoga. He tried clearing his mind the way he'd learned at the Shambala Meditation Center, but none of it worked. He withdrew inside and closed the blinds to shield his gaze,

but the Minotaur could not help returning to the window every few minutes to steal a peak. Instinct was instinct, and he feared that against all reason, he would charge through the glass at the sight of all that red and fall three floors to his death. He was such a quiet Minotaur, he imagined his neighbors telling the police. Couldn't have been nicer. The following Wednesday was the same, red stockings and a red teddy. And the Wednesday after that, three pairs of red G-strings and a red garter belt.

He had no choice. This was life or death. And so the minute or headed across the building to this neighbor's door to talk. About her underwear. As the Minotaur wound his way through the corridors, these were his thoughts. Did women still actually wear garters? He always suspected there was stuff like that going on that he didn't know about. And who did this woman wear these underclothes floor?

The woman in three-hour opened her door, wearing a white bathrobe. There was a towel wrapped around her head which made her look like the queen of some exotic land where nobility wore terry cloth instead of fine silk. The Minotaur explained the situation the best he could, trying to sound sweet like sugar, or at least not perverted. It wasn't easy. Of course none of this is any of my business, he concluded. I'm just telling you my end of it. Of course you are, she said, leaning into the door frame and sizing him up. I'm no Puritan, he insisted. It's just the rarer. Red. The red, she repeated. It makes me sort of, the Minotaur stammered. I lose myself.

I thought that was an old wife's tale, she said, suspiciously, and that bulls are actually colorblind. We are, he said. I guess I experienced it as a kind of gray, a very exciting gray. She laughed and thought, he's not unhandsome for a bison-headed man. His eyes were sweet. They reminded her of the eyes of a calf she'd connected with as a girl while visiting a dairy farm on a class trip. She'd looked deeply into the calf's eyes and felt a moment of terrible empathy passed between them.

She could not drink milk for several days after, or eat hamburgers, not for weeks. An agreement was made. His neighbor, whose name was Jess, would dry her red under things on the radiator, indoors. The Minotaur thanked her profusely, and their conversation turned to recycling and the building's new compost. Then just as they were saying goodbye, in a bold bullersleep, the Minotaur suggested they get drinks and Jess said yes.

At the Brooklyn Alehouse, the Minotaur and his neighbor shared their family histories. She came from the Midwest, descended from a race of beautiful Icelandic farmers, and he was sired by a glamorous snow-white bull. My mother was under a spell, he said, politics of the gods. He waved his hand dismissively, not wanting to get into it. Into his second pint, he tried to explain to her the loneliness that seemed to follow him everywhere he went. In the labyrinth, he said, loneliness made sense because I was alone there's a different kind of loneliness

when you're lonely among people though the Minotaur explained how when he'd first moved into their building he'd gone through this period when he romanticized his youth way out of proportion remembering the labyrinth as being quainter than it was I went back last summer he said

would you believe I actually got lost just before closing time just leaned in and looking at the Minotaur with tenderness touched the tip of his left horn. It was less pointy than it looked. Soon Jess and the Minotaur started dating and the Minotaur's loneliness began to dissolve.

They spent their evenings together, eating out at new and exciting restaurants and watching popular TV programs on Netflix. They went to Vernet's Ashes, pottery barns, and even a Super Bowl party, where every time the bulls made a successful play, everyone patted the Minotaur's back and yelled, Hooray! Life was good.

But it was while preparing breakfast for them one weekend, a meal of baked goods and non-fat Greek yogurt, that the Minotaur caught a glimpse of himself in his hallway mirror. He was arranging a bouquet of lilacs and wearing an apron. He sat down at the kitchen table and placed his enormous head in his hands. I used to be feared, he told Jess as she joined him to eat. Now I care less about headbunning than I do about plating pastries.

My horns are growing soft, and the teenagers next door have started calling me old Bessie Mumu, as vanquishing my solitude diminished my soul. Ah Minotaur, said his girlfriend, as she rubbed his soul. elders. You think you gave up your great power to live among men. But don't you know we all do that? Eventually, the Minotaur lifted his great head and poured himself a cup of coffee. For a while they sat in silence. But then Jess began to tell him about the tickets she'd got them for a pippin, and about how her friends Steve and Cheryl wanted to have them over to their chalet. There's a lake there,

she said and plenty of trees you can chase coyotes that sounds nice he said and mostly he meant it the minotaur had finally become a man in full which as we all know often means feeling like half a man at best On Wiretap, today you heard Ed Ayers, co-host of the Backstory Podcast. You can find it at Backstory Radio.org. You also heard Starly Kine, Buzz and Dina Goldstein, Sheldon Goldstein, and Pat Singer, founder of the Brighton Neighborhood Association. And at the end of the show, you heard Martin Duckworth, reading My Short Story, Brooklyn Minotaur. Wiretap is produced by Mira Bertwintanick, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com slash podcasts.