Here’s the latest installment of Michael Nolan’s Brooklyn Memoir:

One of the joys of genealogical research and the enormous amount of original source documents now on-line is the ability to check the veracity of family legends. One story often heard when I was growing up was that my Uncle Itsche (pronounced Itch-eh) would secretly meet his wife-to-be, my aunt Fanny, on the fire escape that connected their apartments on Rivington Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. How quaint. A Yiddish version of "West Side Story" – music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomashevsky.

Well, I found Itsche (nickname for Itzhak later Irving) Porgoman in the 1920 US Census living on Rivington Street with my mom, Lena, and aunt Etta, and in the very next entry was Frances Hirschkopf.

So, it’s very likely that they romanced there as teenagers and married quite young. And, come to think of it, since Itsche’s boat (the USS Grant, if you’d like to know) arrived in 1910, he probably expressed his words of love in Yiddish. Oy, I’m kvelling at the very thought of it.

Today, we live in an era of "play dates" and "on-line dating". I prefer the Proximity of Yore and love affairs blossoming on a fire escape.