Much too soon, we were back at the Queensborough Bridge and Dad would always cruise in onto the level we hadn’t taken out.  Unless the traffic was too heavy.  We would be home in time for breakfast.  It was always the same:  scrambled eggs, bacon and toast.  Coffee for dad.  I had orange juice.  We would eat in the “Breakfast Nook,” a small extension of the long, narrow kitchen, where there was room for a small round table and three small chairs.  From the nook you could see out into the gardens behind our house.  This wasn’t our garden, but a “common” garden that was owned and considered the property of all houses that surrounded it.  These were all attached, small two or three bedroom houses.  Together the rear of each house formed a common, each house having a back porch and a small back yard.  It was like country in the city.  It was marvelous.  The families mingled back there, among the grass, the bushes and the small and tall trees.  They talked to one another, held a variety of get-togethers, including cookouts and such.  The children loved this greenery.  They could play games like “Hide and Go Seek” and “Catch Me If You Can.”  But most of all, we were still playing “War,” hiding in the shrubbery with our wood guns and crashing through the bushes when an attack had been called.  It was during one of these games that a new kid in the neighborhood (he was from somewhere in the Midwest) turned to me when we had taken cover behind a particularly dense bush.  He looked me square in the eye and said:  “You know, you’re the first Jew I ever met.”  It startled me.  I never knew I was somebody important.