Happy Birthday Ma

Today's my mother's birthday (8/24/19). She lived in this apartment, the ground floor of 516 E. 11th Street, between Avenues A and B. I believe she and my grandmother ("Bobbi") and my Aunt Lilly moved here in the mid to late thirties. My mother moved out in 1944 when she married my father. They moved into an apartment at 76 Suffolk Street. Aunt Lilly stayed there I think until she married Uncle Hy and then they moved, with my grandmother, into the newly built Jacob Riis Projects. In the 30's my mother got her first job working as a library assistant at the Mary Help of Christians School, which was right across 11th Street. She told me she was proud of that job, that the sisters at the school were very particular about who they hired. I picked up a Bobby Darin CD today (at Academy Records). It had some different songs than the usual Darin compilation. One stuck out at me, Rodgers' and Hammerstein's "Love Look Away." I distinctly remember my mother asking me to play Tony Bennett's 45 version of the song over and over on our big Zenith console. It was unusual for my mother to make any request of me. The lyrics must have gotten to her in regard to her pretty loveless marriage: "I have wished before, I will wish no more. Love, look away! Love, look away from me. Fly, when you pass my door, Fly and get lost at sea. Call it a day. Love, let us say we're through. No good are you for me, No good am I for you. Wanting you so, I try too much. After you go, I cry too much. Love, look away. Lonely though I may be, Leave me and set me free, Look away, look away, look away... from... me.
Here's the Darin version, which is a lot less maudlin than Bennett's BTW I read the Darin biography, "Roman Candle." Poorly written. I was hoping to find the exact LES location where Darin lived. The only mention is the fact that he was embarassed to have his Bronx High School of Science friends come to Baruch Place. I imagine he might have lived in the Baruch Houses which had been built around the time (early 50's) when Darin was at high school age. At this moment Randy Johnson is getting pounded by the Mariners-not a nice birthday present for my mother.