Original Message:

From: Jay Pastor (jspastor@cinci.rr.com)
Date: 04/04/2008

Hi Tony,
I guess it takes someone from Wisconsin to email someone in
Cincinnati to get into a good conversation about PS16 (also
named the Leonard Dunkley School - don’t ask me who he was).
It’s amazing how many memories stay with you without your
realizing it. If I remember right, the principal’s name was
Mr. Salon, and his assistant, Miss Greenwald. The secretary
in the main office was Sally Polands.
Facing Wilson Street, there was a balcony on the front of
the building’s second floor, from which Lincoln supposedly
once spoke. There was an Old building (grades K-6) and a New
building (grades 7&8).  But there was no schoolyard. If you
wanted to play punchball, you did it, by taking over three
sewers (manhole covers) and getting in the way of traffic on
your own street. The inside walls of the Old building rolled
open to convert the whole floor to an auditorium. Sometimes
they showed slide shows (hand colored glass slides). I
remember seeing the now- politically incorrect Little Black
Sambo, which was entertaining, although unconsciously
bigoted.
When the walls were closed, you had to walk through each
classroom to get to the next. There was also an auditorium
in the basement where the music classes were held, and where
a Magic Clown visited every so often to entertain during
assemblies.
Across from the school there was a bicycle rental and repair
place, and a candy store where you could get egg creams to
drink, buy notebooks, and pick up all sorts of cheap junk
from pre-war Japan for a few cents.
My home was two blocks from Bedford, between Marcy and Lee
Avenues, half a block from Eastern District H.S., and about
2-1/2 blocks from the Hewes St. BMT station.
I could hit over a sewer in a punchball game, and we also
had our share of stoopball and stickball on our own street,
and handball at a playground on Havemeyer Street near the
bridge. Ebbets Field, of course, was still around at the
other end of Bedford Avenue (there was a fountain at our
end).
Your grandson went to a fine school. I wish him success in
his career. I can also understand why you stop in Covington;
it’s like camping by the Brooklyn Bridge. 
 Jay