The Canonical Penguin: Characters of 215th Street - Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Watson

When I was growing up in Queens, NY, each block was almost a neighborhood in and of itself. There were plenty of other kids to play with, lots to do, places to go and doorbells to ring and run from. Two people we did not ring and run on were Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Perkins and I would like to tell you a bit about both.

Mrs. Watson was a family friend, she had some connection to my mother but I do not know the circumstances of that relationship. She was a sturdy, traditionally built woman who you would see almost daily sweeping her porch or walking down her steps on the way to the grocery store or some civic meeting. She lived across the street from us, the third home in a row of 3 story Victorian giants. The first two were bought and demolished when we were very young, replaced by a dry cleaners and row of townhouses. But Mrs. Watson’s home remained intact. Her side yard was one that we would cut through to get to the other side of the block. Her yard was a bit overgrown with bushes and had no fence so we could slip through it without being seen. She always had a kind word for anyone who passed her on the street. She slipped getting out of my parents car one day, they may have been taking her to vote, and she broke her hip. I can remember my mother feeling responsible in some way even though she was not and it seemed that after that Mrs. Watson was never the same. We rarely saw her doing the things she had always done, rarely saw her out anymore. Years later I heard she had passed away and someone bought her house, tore it down and built more townhouses in the row.




(Not Mrs. Watson's home but a good representation of how I remember it...)

Mrs. Perkins lived up the block in the garden apartments. She was very old when I was a kid. She was rail thin, always wore fancy dresses and heels and lived in a dark, second floor apartment. We would be sent over to her place by my grandmother and she would give us some money to go to the local A&P to pick up a few items – milk, bread, some fresh ground coffee. She would take her money out of a silk purse and always found an extra dime or quarter for us. My grandmother would go over and visit her occasionally but we rarely if ever saw her out walking in town. Her skin was like parchment and I can remember seeing the veins on the back of her hand when she reached into the purse and being a bit scared but she was not someone to be scared of.

Both of these women were examples of the high society that existed in our neighborhood at that time and both exerted strong influences on all of us growing up. They were some of the characters in the neighborhood.

(These are stories about things that actually happened with plenty of witnesses. It has passed from the apocryphal to canonical in nature. Wiki says of canon – “material that is considered to be "genuine", "something that actually happened", or can be directly referenced as material produced by the original author or creator.”)