I got a cool email from Debbie Falb:

This afternoon I was reading a stack of old family correspondence and stories and found something written by my great aunt called “Penny Walk.”

Turns out that in the early ’20s on Staten Island my great grandfather would get all his kids and a lot of the neighborhood kids out of the house every Sunday morning by taking them on a 3-hour “penny walk” around the neighborhood. Same idea: at (almost) every corner they’d flip a coin — although at the time it sounds like there was lots of open space on Staten Island, as she writes of going through “fields, meadows, woodlands, across brooks, and through the old iron mines.”

She notes that no matter how many adventures they had on the way, they always arrived home right at noon for Sunday supper.

She ends the story (written not too long before she died):

“. . . it occurred to me that I conduct my life just as Father led the Penny Walks. My path, tao, halacha is not random. It has been mostly a win-win choice at the crossroads or forks. I have had many options. So far, in spite of obstacles, real or imagined, I’ve come home in time for lunch from adventurous Penny Walks.”

The name of Debbie’s great aunt, by the way, was Marion Friedman (nee Siegel). The story was written in 1996, when she would have been almost 80.

So this week’s flipwalk (#33) is dedicated to Marion and her dad, pioneers in New York City flipwalking.

The teaser image:

I’ve also updated flipwalk #29 with the correct information (and the story of the walk).

posted 15 August 2008 in Photos and tagged Flipwalks, Staten Island. no comments yet