Sure.
Well, to start, when and where were you born?
In 1930. Brooklyn, New York. Do you want to know about my parents?
Please.
My mother’s parents both came here from Norway and settled on Staten Island. My father’s mother had ancestors from England. His father’s father came over here from Germany.
Germany? You spell your name c-o-l-e-m-a-n. That doesn’t look very German.
No. My dad figured some immigration agent at Ellis Island gave up on the German spelling and just wrote it down the English way.
I’m not sure how my father’s parents met, but they settled in Brooklyn.
How did your own parents meet?
They both worked for the same insurance company.
They married and settled in an apartment in Brooklyn.
So what was life like there?
I don’t remember much about that time. My recall starts around age 5. That’s when I was school age, and my parents wanted to live in the suburbs. So we moved out to Long Island.
Where on Long Island?
Nassau County. Know where that is?
No. Afraid not.
Well, Long Island is divided — sliced maybe — into four counties. From west to east there’s Kings County — that’s Brooklyn — then Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk. We moved to Nassau County, the yellowish one in this map.
Where in the county?
The town was Baldwin
I’ll tell you about it in our next session, okay?
Okay. See you then.