Memory Of The Mind, Recollections Of The Old Neighborhood

When I was growing up, the neighborhood row houses (now called townhomes) were occupied by all nationalities and religions. There were Christians, Jewish people, Italians, Greeks and others. We all got along and we all liked each other. We learned from each other their customs, their religion and most of all we learned, we were all the same persons living and loving.

On the end of our street was a young man, Jewish, who played the piano by ear. By that word, it meant, he could hear a song on the radio (no T.V, in those days) and he could go to the piano and play it. We all envied him because we had to take piano lessons and buy the sheet music to learn to play a popular song. I would go downtown with mom and go in a store Kresge’s and look over the sheet music, purchase it and then try to play the song on our piano. There was a shoemaker, Mr. M. who fixed all our shoes. In those days, you always put heels and soles on your old shoes to mend them and so you could still wear them. Now days, most people get rid of worn out shoes, though shoe repair shops are still around and they are fewer and far between in 2012.

Dad use to take our shoes to Mr. W. because his prices were cheaper than Mr. M.Then there were the neighbors the R family who moved in next door and they had six children. When Dad heard they were going to be our neighbors and the family was so large; he hesitated in thinking we could all be friends or neighbors with all of those people. However, he was wrong. They were fine people and the children were nice kids. There was Earl who was nicknamed Buster, why I do not know and he became a fireman and his station was on the way home from my high school and when I would walk by, all the firemen were sitting outside and he would whistle at me, like I was a sexy young woman and the fireman all applauded. There was Ralph who was close to my age and he was quiet and nice. There was Marguerite the oldest and she actually got married right way and moved a few blocks from her folks. She had a son named Michael and we loved riding him in his stroller around the block. Mom use to give him a long pretzel because he loved them and one day he said to her “I am not talking to you today.” Mom laughed at his three year old rant and he took the pretzel and laughed.

There was Dorothy the next oldest daughter of the R family and she married Danny M.. who was the shoemaker’s son. I thought them a sweet family. There was Bobby and he went away to war and was a sailor and when he came home for a visit, I thought, as a thirteen year old, how handsome he looked in his sailor uniform.There was the other son Billy who came back from the war and married the Greek girl from across the street and he adopted her daughter, she had had out of wedlock (as called in those days) and everyone knew it was not his child, because he had been away for many years in the service. They turned out to be a fine family and she and Billy had several other kids together. Mr. R. was a nice and quiet man and Mrs. R whose name was Ruth and mom became good neighbors and friends.

When we all moved away from our homes when I was fourteen, Mrs. R. and mom kept up their friendship via phone (no internet yet) and Mom and I went to visit her once in her new apartment. They chatted and a fine time was had by all.

Mrs. R. would come in Friday nights to visit and to eat some of Mom’s newly baked from scratch sweet desserts. She was a smoker and Dad did not allow her to smoke because it was the Sabbath and that was forbidden. In those days, everyone smoked and no one knew of its bad effect on health. She respected Dad and knew she could not light up. We all respected each other in our religions and our attitudes and everyone got along. You almost always knew everyone’s business and their social happenings. No one was really nosey; they were just interested in each other. No one was envious, if someone got a new sofa or chair or painted the outside of their house. The predominant colors on the two story row homes were either tan or gray.

The children all grew up and some moved away and some stayed in the area. There were stores we shopped in up the road. There were food stores, delly restaurants, hair salons, cleaning establishments. Dad had the habit of shopping for most of the groceries. There were small mom and pop stores and many miles down were some larger stores. He use to go to one of them in his new Plymouth car he bought for the grand sum of five hundred dollars. He would go to one that had a bakery and buy one dozen chocolate and or vanilla iced buns, huge in size and they cost two cents apiece. He brought the huge box home and we exclaimed such happiness in seeing them. Mom usually baked all the sweets for us, cakes, pies, cupcakes, cookies, mondel bread bars, but this was a great extra treat.

Dad was the manager of a cleaning store about six blocks from home and he would carry over his shoulder the cleaned clothes that were ours. I can see him walking still now with the plastic or maybe then they were paper covers over the dresses or suits. Some of the relatives would bring their stuff to the store and Dad would bring the finished products home and they would come to our house and pick them up and pay Mom. I think Dad added a few cents to each item for his work and he surely was due that for his time bringing them home and the bookwork; and of course, times were tough financially so the few pennies may have added up to a few dollars for us to have and we needed it.

Mom baked chocolate two layer cakes in heart shaped pans. For everyone’s birthday, if she really liked them, they were the recipient of one of her delicious cakes usually baked on Friday mornings because she did not work at her job on Fridays. They would come and visit and take home the prized delicacy and thank her many times. Everyone wanted an Aunt Lea’s home baked chocolate heart shaped cake with either chocolate or vanilla icing, always they had their choice.

Our treats were to go the Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch 17 (all the libraries were known by their number) and use our library card to take out six or seven books. I would devour the words and read many books a week. I did get to work there in that library putting returned books away and made the grand total of about forty-five cents an hour for a five hour work day. I was so proud to do that, though it was a very boring job. I did have the nonpaying job then of writing reviews of teenage new books and they were published and copies were on the library counters of all Pratt libraries all over the city. I was so proud to be a published writer and each time the reviews came out, perhaps twice a month from the books I read and commented on, I would go there and grab about 10 copies because I was so delighted to see my name in print. I wish I had a few to look at now, almost sixty-three years later.

The neighborhood made up of a rainbow of people, all different, all nice, and all pleasant, all of many religions and nationalities was really a delightful one.

The woman who works in my gynecological office has her mom Elaine who lived down the street from us. Her dad made fish coddies, similar to a crab cake in style but made of cod fish. That was his business, the coddie work. He sold them to stores and drugstores. She told me the other day that once she and her mom rode back to our street of Westwood Avenue and toured the old neighborhood; saw the elementary school and the shopping area and this brought the daughter Jodie into knowing where her mom Elaine grew up with her family. This helps to recreate family thoughts and moments and I have often had that desire. We may now try it someday in the spring.

It will be interesting to see the old home at 2017 Westwood Avenue and think about being a little girl living there up to she was fourteen. It will be delightful to see if the old school #62 is there and I doubt if the Pratt library is standing.

Those were delightful days and even though we did not have many monetary possessions that are prevalent with all of us now; we had love, good food, friends, neighbors and security.

It was for some of the time, the Second World War going on. Dad was an air raid captain as they were called and he toured the streets at night to see if everyone had pulled down their darkener shades in case there was an air raid. If not, he would rap on their door, to advise them to do that. There were some rich people in the city that had the money to build in their cellars what was called an air raid room where they could run if we were being bombed. I knew of no one wealthy enough to install one, but there were many who did and we heard about them and they invited if possible to get there in time, their family and friends to partake of the opportunity to be safer.

So even though the war was going on, we had the security of each other in the neighborhood and we felt safe in our naïve way. We were safe because we were all friendly and cognizant of the fact if something could go wrong and if it did, we would band together somehow.

These were what neighborhoods were all about in the 1940’s and in 1948, we moved away to another location. We hardly knew our neighbors then and stuck to ourselves and there was no library #17 to go to. If I wanted a library, Dad would take me in his five hundred dollar car and I thought I was a princess going to get books and being driven there.

The old neighborhoods were really a compound, blend and a mixture of all people and all people got along and we were happy in what we knew about our world in those days.

Someday soon, my husband and I will drive to the old neighborhood and I will see Mr. and Mrs. R. and the six kids, the old library where I placed the returned books to their home shelf, the delly where we got a delicious Kosher style meat hotdog on a delightfully baked hotdog roll and most of all the old homestead where I lived with my brother who was five years older than me and there will be Mom and Dad in memories only, but we will all be together. Everything will only be a recollection and as was said by Francis Fauvel-Gourand “memory is the library of the mind." Also said by James Barrie “What God gave us so that we might have roses in December.”

It is now March 2012, but there are roses and every flower you can imagine, when you relive some sweet memories.