The Town You Grew Up In, "The Little Library", Lynn Cohen

This library was literally just a half a mile up the same street where I grew up! I went with my mom as a little girl and later with friends and on my own. It was a very small house. The tennis courts where I took tennis lessons in the summer were just across the street! The high school is just half a block down the street, the junior high school one more block down the same street and then my house where I grew up!

The Town You Grew Up In, by Joan Tavolott

Rather than just sketch my town I will be sketching the area where I grew up.
My house was in Jamaica but I went to high school in Richmond Hill, one of the next towns over. After every event at the school...basketball games, dances, etc...we would head over to Jahn's Ice Cream Shop. This was the in place! If you were lucky you would go there for date night too. It was a chain of a few shops, but this one is no longer open. It was such a great place!

There were round stools at the counter, but they had these great dark red leather booths in the back. I think they liked that we all sat back there because when we were there we were rather noisy, like most groups of teens are. We liked to sit back there and order the gooiest concoctions off the menu. A favorite was the "kitchen sink sundae" which had to be shared. It had scoops of almost every flavor on the menu and supposedly was large enough for 8 people. We didn't order that very often because it was so big and expensive. There was another called "Joe Sent Me" ( I don't know who Joe was or where he was sent) which had strawberry ice cream and lots of chocolate and whipped cream. I was never a lover of whipped cream which always delighted my friends because I would pass mine to them. Doesn't this look like a great place to hang out? This particular location closed in 2007, but there is one still open somewhere in Queens. They also served food but aside from burgers and fries I don't think we ever ate anything else there.

The Town You Grew Up In, "Joann's House", Lynn Cohen

I hope you can read my page, as the whole story is there. I lived across the street from this house! My three girl friends lived in houses across the street. This is the first of three I want to draw for this theme. Our Jr. High and High schools were in walking distance just up the street. Our elementary schools were also walking distance a little under one mile away.