Why Yonkers? Stories from Home.

Yonkers, NY is the fourth largest city in New York State and the 14th most depressed city in the country according to a recent men's magazine poll. This is based on anti-depressant sales and suicide rates. I'd base it on the fact that the city boasts The Son of Sam, child murderer Joel Steinburgh, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Linda Lovelace, star of Deep Throat, as claims to fame. Four names that don't exactly make the Who's Who in America.

Yonkers is a big city with a small town mentality. There's always a cousin or a sister whose geographic tunnel vision refuses them thoughts of ever leaving and as a result, you never really leave either. To them, "Yonkas is fuckin' great. It just fuckin' is." How can you argue with that? Cue eternal guilt. It's hard to argue with the greatness of the smoke screen. Yonkers' value, like most places we grow up, is best understood through the lens of nostalgia and dashed hopes than of realistic greatness.

"Do we have to go to that place where nothing happens and everything is sad? It reminds me of MA*S**H*." That's my boyfriend. Anything that was drab or contained the monocromism of army fatigues reminded him of M*A*S*H. He's speaking of my mom's house, more than Yonkers. There's lot's of muted greens and browns and there are causualties. But it's a fitting metaphor for the entire city. Yonkers is M*A*S*H sans the laugh track.

Here's a brief Yonkers history lesson -- Yonkers was a Dutch settlement called Johnkeer, before other immigrants bastardized the pronunciation to Yonkers. Blame the Italians. Or at least the one's from my family who, because none of them ever completed the 7th grade, bastardized everything - mostly children. Had their mother not died from a cantaloupe sized tumor in her stomach after mistaking it for her 13th pregnancy, those kids might have fared better. Instead, I give you YONKERS instead of Johnkeer and lots of grease under the fingernails, mortar, concrete and dropped "R's".

Ella Fitzgerald is also from Yonkers and there's a statue of her singing by the Metro North Train station. When I worked at the local TV station, a cameraman I knew videotaped the two of us fondling Ella's breasts one slow news night in 1999. Another point of interest in Yonkers is the Polish Community Center, where I once made out with the prettiest girl in the 9th grade. When the football team found out that I'd made out with her I received high fives in the auto shop breezeway. This was a coup of sorts. I was not cool and obviously gay, to those who paid enough attention to my hair and comportment -- I always walked a little more upright than the other boys, as if I was on alert, because I was. When I touched Claudia boobies, I was given a pass to momentary straightdom that I clung to until I graduated.

In addition to the Polish Community Center, Yonkers also boasts The Yonkers Raceway, where scores of family members gambled away social security earnings and pension checks; Central Avenue, a strip mall cemetery of forgotten department stores and Untermyer Park, the most frightening park in Yonkers as it is said to have been the place where burgeoning serial killer David Berkowitz (aka: The Son of Sam) and his minion of crazies would practice their Satanic worship. This was a popular spot for local Yonkers teens to drink, smoke pot and have sex. And for me to fantasize.
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