One of the big kids

14. Third grade brought with it a new experience at St. Pete’s - I had my first lay teacher. Mrs. Higgins must have been in her fifties - she was definitely a lot older than my mother but seemed younger than my grandmother, at least younger than Nonna Ma. She began the year by admonishing us to use our cursive writing, not printing anymore. Printing was for the little kids and we were now in THIRD GRADE. We all must have had a brain drain over the summer - how could we forget the hours spent practicing cursive with Sister Ann Josephine? Apparently, it took us a while to get back on track, only to begin another challenge: multiplication tables. For most of us, flash cards became the key to learning our “times” and before too long, the simple rote methods got us through.

My third grade classroom was back in the lower level, right next to my first grade classroom and next to the infamous lunch area. I sat next to one of the curtain “walls” - thick folding curtains which, when pushed back, opened most of the lower level into one huge area for parish activities. One day as I was taking my books out of my school bag to start the day, I notices a ripped tuition envelope on the floor between my desk and the curtain. I knew money was put in the envelope and students brought them in, turning them over to their teachers. Tuition for the entire year was something like $36 and parents would often send four dollars in cash each month. I picked up the envelope, noticed nothing was inside and decided to give it to Mrs. Higgins.

“I found this on the floor Mrs. Higgins,” I said casually, figuring she would just toss it in the waste basket. She looked at it very curiously and asked, “Where did you say you found this?”

“On the floor, next to my desk,” I said. She smoothed the envelope out, realigning the ripped portion, to get a better look at the writing on it. Student names were written at the top.

“You may take your seat,” she told me without looking up. I watched her open a spiral book from her desk and check a listing of students, no doubt trying to determine if the student whose name was on the envelope had a current tuition balance.

Before the end of the day, the principal and a couple of other adults had been in and out of your classroom, quietly talking to Mrs. Higgins, usually out in the hallway. Our regular routine had been changed to working in spelling or reading workbooks, without the benefit of much direction. Finally, in the afternoon, Mrs. Higgins announced to the class that we were to speak with the principal one at a time in the hallway. None of us could understand what was going on.

Sister Superior was sitting on one of the benches near the lunch table. She had been in and out of our classroom so much that morning that we soon dispensed with the standing up and “Good Morning Sister Superior,” greeting by her third entrance. She sat down, hands up into the sleeves of the opposite arm, and asked us each our names and told us to sit on the bench beside her.

“We are talking to each one of you in Mrs. Higgins’ room,” she explained. “And asking about the tuition envelope. Do you know anything about what happened to what was inside of it?”

“No Sister,” I quickly answered. “The only thing I know is that I found it when I got to my desk this morning.”

“And nothing was in it?”

“No Sister, it was ripped and empty.” It was probably the most information she had gotten out of anyone since the interrogations began.

“OK, you may return to your desk,” she dismissed me and then followed me back in, where she made a quick comment to Mrs. Higgins.

One by one, kids went out into the hallway while we plugged away in our workbooks. The silence was suffocating - we all wanted to at least stand up and stretch, but no one dared do anything except the assignment. Whether we all realized it or not, someone was in very big trouble. Stolen tuition money was a capital offense - almost like stealing money from the poorbox in church. All evidence seemed to point to the kid who was supposed to turn in the tuition envelope, but what if he or she had dropped it and someone else picked it up, took the money and tossed the envelope? We were only seven and eight-year olds and very incapable of plotting out any kind of scheme, especially one that would work.

We went home that day without any announcements from the teacher or Sister Superior, without a note to parents, and without finding out the whole story. Whatever the outcome, St. Pete’s chose to keep the incident quiet.

Third grade definitely made me feel like one of the big kids, even though I still didn’t get to stay for lunch. This was also the first year of school for my sister Susie - at least there was someone lower on the totem pole than I.

By this time, my godfather's family was growing rapidly and my mother turned to her cousin, Anita, who lived at the end of Concord to take me in for lunch. This worked out well because I left for lunch with Anita’s daughter Kathy who was a couple years older. Kathy’s older sister, also named Anita, was a few years older than Kathy, but way too cool to have anything to do with me, Kathy or Sue. Anita was probably in seventh or eighth grade, wore bobby socks, straight skirts and a thin babushka type scarf on her head that she tied on her chin - not under her chin, on it, just under the lips, like all the big girls at school. The rest of us younger ones still struggled to get all our outerwear clothes on - or off - in time for the bell, to get to lunch, or to get back to school on time. Anita just seemed to float in and out of her family’s apartment.

Sue and I had probably come to know Concord Street as well as our own Courtland Street. My grandmother, aunt and uncle, godfather and my mother’s cousin all lived on the same block and we were there for holidays, trick or treating, birthdays or just weekend afternoons playing with my cousin Donna.

My mother had her eye on a bungalow a few houses west of Anita’s two-flat that appeared to be abandoned. She even buried a statue of St. Joseph in the front lawn in her efforts to buy it. It was the scary house on the street and the bigger kids on the block would tell stories about it just to frighten the little ones. Once when we were all hanging around in the overgrown grass of the front yard, a kid lifted another on his shoulders so that he could look in the windows of the front living room. The looker was a guy named was Jim and he was kind of a leader of the kids on the block, living directly across from my grandparents. He had blondish-orangey hair, was skinny but tall and I had more than once seen him smoking a cigarette.

Jim shaded his eyes and pressed his face against the dirty glass of the big picture window.

“What’s in there? What do you see? Can you see anybody?”

“I’m trying to make it out...it’s real dark in there...there’s a couch and stuff on the floor...”

He shifted his hands like a submarine captain with a periscope, surveying the interior of the living room.

“I think there’s a broken mirror on the wall, or maybe it’s a picture...newspapers and boxes...an empty bottle on the floor...”

“Does it look like anybody still lives in there?” someone asked. We all stood around, listening to the report, curious and hungry for answers.

“Nah, I don’t think there’s anybody....ah...ah....AAAHHHH!!!!”

Jim jumped off the shoulders of the bigger boy and we all quickly scattered toward the street, running fast and frightened.

“What did you see? What was it?” we screamed after him. In the supposed safety of a few houses’ distance from the spook house, he stood under a streetlight as we gathered around him for the details. He was breathing hard.

“It’s all messed up in there,” he began. “Like someone was looking for something and threw stuff around.”

“So? That’s not scary,” another boy said.

“No,” Jim said, then taking a breath, he started his retort in almost a whisper, getting louder with each word, “but they dead guy in the chair with blood on his face sure is!!!”

My sister Sue, Donna and I all screamed, along with every other kid under ten who hung on Jim’s every word. We didn't know which way to turn.

“Let’s go home,” I said, grabbing my sister and cousin. We began racing the rest of the way down the block to my grandparents’ building. Jim’s words were ringing in our ears and causing horrible pictures to form in our heads. As our feet hit the sidewalk with each stride, we could see our homebase getting closer and closer...almost there, almost there...finally, we turned onto the front walkway and Sue and Donna clambered in through the front door.

Before going in, I looked back at the group of older kids moving as a group out from under the glow of the streetlight, and I heard the sound of loud laughing boys.

Greenie - the big fat bike

13.
The summer after second grade I had definitely outgrown the 16-inch bike that thankfully no longer had training wheels, but didn't have any brakes, either. Off and on, I whined about needing a bigger bike, but with all the other outdoor activities we found to keep us busy, I usually forgot about it -that is, until one day a neighbor approached my father with an offer I couldn’t let him refuse.

The man was walking a newly-painted green and white 26-inch woman’s bike with big fat tires, a big, wide seat with bell springs under it, big fenders and a light on the front that actually worked. It was a used bike, and a lot of effort had gone into fixing it up and making it look pretty good, but more for someone twice my size. Our neighbor offered it to my father for $10.

“It’s way too big for her. She’s only seven,” my dad countered.

“She’ll grow into it - and it’s a sturdy bike. The other kids will be able to use it too,” the neighbor persisted, looking past me to Sue playing in the yard.

I was already straddling the bike, my feet planted on the sidewalk. The new paint job was done with care and the two colors made it look like the most beautiful bike in the world to me. I prepared to ride it but there was no way would I be able to reach the pedals while sitting on the seat. And "sturdy" didn't begin to describe the bike. It was monstrous, tremendously heavy and difficult to steer. But I was determined it would be mine.

“I can ride it, Daddy. Watch me.” I gripped the white rubber handlebars and headed off down the sidewalk, barely able to keep my balance while having to keep all my weight on the pedals; it was like I was on a moving elliptical machine. I struggled to keep it in the center of the sidewalk, steering carefully to avoid the dreaded dirt gutter between the grass and the sidewalk on some of the lawns. With each rotation of the pedals, I could feel the point of the seat jabbing me in the middle of my back. It was hard work keeping my balance and I never built up much speed, but I made it to the corner, turned the bike around and started to head back toward my father.

Getting the hang of it a little better enabled me to gain momentum which helped me gain some confidence, but that quickly disappeared once I realized that stopping at a faster speed created another problem altogether. Using footbrakes was still new to me and as I attempted to reverse the pedals, I slipped off of one and fell onto the sloping frame that supported the front of the bike. The pain between my legs was nearly unbearable, but I couldn’t let my father see that this one short trip already resulted in an injury. Still, I managed to stop the bike and kept it from tipping over all together.

I smiled up at him with a shaky, “See? I can ride it real good!”

Daddy bought me that bike and it seemed to last forever - after all, I couldn't ride it to school or in the street - just up and down the block on the sidewalk. But after a while, I got big enough so that I could actually pedal around on it while sitting on the seat. And when it got a flat tire, Dad taught me how to find the leak by placing the inner tube in a tub of water and looking for the bubbles. Together, we patched the hole with glue and a red patch from a repair kit we got at a bicycle store. Greenie was good for another summer.

Years later, when the fat tires, chipping paint and broken light made it finally become too uncool and dilapidated of a bike for any of us to ride around on, we took it apart to use piece by piece for go-carts or replacing something broken on another bike.

There are probably still parts of it somewhere in my mother’s garage.

Those Lunchtime Walkers

12.
Getting me to school during my first two years was a challenge for my mother since, like most Catholic schools, there was no bus service, and my two younger sisters were still at home. My dad’s work in construction had him leaving the house much earlier than I needed to leave and as a result, my grandfather took me pretty often. Coming home, I walked with Joyce, girl in my class and her older sister Janice. They lived down Cortland street and their dad was the area’s milkman. “Walk home with Janice,” was usually the last thing my mother told me as I left in the morning.

Lunchtime was another issue. Lots of Catholic school kids went home for lunch and since my grandparents and Aunt Mary lived two blocks from the school, it would have been a natural place for me to have lunch. The problem was that both my Aunt Mary and grandmother worked during the day - Mary did waitressing and other jobs and of course, Nonni was at the radio station. However, in the basement apartment of my grandparents’ building, my godfather, one Robert (known as “Red”) and his wife Rose lived with their growing family. “Uncle Red” was a school friend of my dad’s, who took his role of godfather very seriously. As a result, Aunt Rose had me for lunch everyday during first grade. She often made me French toast with powdered sugar and syrup.

Leaving each day for lunch, I watched many of the kids grab their bag lunches and head for the tables set up in the center of the basement level of the school. I wanted to desperately to stay for lunch like the other kids, but my mother was not big on any of her kids staying at school at lunch time. I don’t know if it was because I was small and not much of an eater or if she simply wanted me to have the contact with a family member in the middle of the day.

Finally, I convinced her to let me try it once. On that momentous day, I could hardly keep still during the morning, waiting for lunchtime. Of course, Mom made me an enormous lunch and I excitedly took my place with the rest of my classmates at the big table in the lunchroom. I was now one of the lunchtime kids - no longer a lunchtime walker.

I watched as the older kids sat down and took their lunches out of their paper sacks or lunch boxes. I also had a lunch box - I think it was a gift because my mother knew I certainly didn’t need one. It was all pink, with a pink thermos bottle inside. Mom had put hot chocolate in the thermos and made me a healthy-sized ham sandwich, cookies and some fruit. It was much more than I would usually eat at home or at aunt Rose's.

I was so thrilled to be eating at school, especially with all the big kids from the upper grades that I really didn’t have much of an appetite. Still, I knew I would have to bring home anything I didn’t eat and if I didn’t do a good job on my lunch, I wouldn’t be able to stay again. The nuns also did their little sermon to all the kids at the lunch table about the sin of wasting food and to think of all the poor children in China who never had enough to eat. I continued to eat, forcing myself to finish the sandwich I never felt like even tasting.

The result was inevitable. I tried so hard to keep it down, but before the end of the lunch period, I threw up all over myself and the table, much to the disgust of the bigger kids around me. Lunchtable panic ensued.

“Oh no!”

“Yuck!”

“Move over!”

“Oh that stinks!”

Kids were falling over themselves in an effort to get as far away from me as possible. In tears, I turned to look for the nun on duty who did her best to restore order. She extricated me from the bench at the table and turned me over to an older girl, instructing her to get me cleaned up in the girls’ bathroom.

I followed her upstairs and she took me over to the sink. I was just seven and she could not have been much more than ten. But she ran the warm water, dipped in a few brown paper towels and gently wiped off my face and uniform. I was still crying but her gentleness calmed me down, telling me it was ok, asking if I felt better. Of course, my stomach was completely settled now, having lost the entire lunch, but my crying persisted, knowing that once my mother found out what happened, I’d never be able to eat lunch at school again.

Which is exactly what happened.

White Patent Leather Shoes

11. That spring, in 1958, I made my first Communion. As the oldest child, and oldest grandchild on my father’s side, it was a major event. The official outfit, navy blue suits with white pointed collars for the boys and white chiffon dresses and veils for the girls, entailed no special shopping on my mother’s part since we ordered everything through the school, except for shoes. Finding those shoes was a major pain for my mother since most dressy shoes were always way too wide for my skinny feet. She finally found a pair at Madigan's - a place on the west side that she could always depend on for kids' clothes. The shoes were white and pretty with one strap that buckled - they rubbed my ankles raw but I liked them because they were the fanciest shoes I ever had.

The nuns approached preparation for First Communion like basic training in the army. We practiced our procession for weeks and weeks, girls in the front rows, and the boys behind us with the shortest kids in front. By the spring of second grade, we were pros at walking in and out of church in a procession but now Sister Ann Josephine had to get down to the nitty gritty: learning about Mass. She painstakingly took us through each portion, telling us what we were to do at each part. She was young, energetic and raised with an Irish-Catholic upbringing that moved her to instruct us with a zealousness that instilled an enthusiasm and excitement at preparing for our first communion.

“No, genuflect with your back straight, you love God and you are honoring Him with a GEN-U-FLEC-TION, (her black robes swished around her as she demonstrated) now this is so special children, your special day and you will be filled with God’s love, you must be ready to receive it!!!” She smiled a broad wide smile, her arms wide open as she spoke, she hugged herself when speaking of God’s love and we smiled back, sitting up straight, hands clasped on our desks and ready to have her show us the way. Even though this was pre-Sound of Music, she looked like Julie Andrews twirling away on the mountain top.

At the offertory, we were to sing our Communion song, a child’s song that the class practiced every day for at least a month, and that my whole family knew by the time Saturday, April 13 rolled around:
Dearest Lord I love Thee
With my whole, whole heart
Not for what Thou givest
But for what Thou art.

Come oh come Sweet Savior
Come to me and stay
For I love Thee Jesus
More than I can say.

We had started learning the song in school, but then Sister brought us in church. It was empty, except for our class - already we were experiencing the specialness that she spoke of - and the echoes of our footsteps as we walked in added to the building excitement. We moved into the front pews, knowing the exact places she wanted us to sit.

"Stand up, children. Let's practice our song," she said, a little above a whisper. Her hands raised up, and we began. Our young voices resonated like bells in the church, sounding so different from our sessions in the classroom. The words came out so pure and clear, perfectly on key, we had practiced so much. As we finished, Sister smiled at us. Her hard work had paid off.

On the Friday before the big day, we had to have our first confession - with the strongest admonition that we had to remain in the state of absolute grace throughout the evening and into the next day. We memorized the words and knew them flawlessly: “Bless me Father, for I have sinned and this is my first confession.” We had practiced with Sister in listing our sins and she helped us to figure out what they were; seven year olds did not have much to tell beyond fights with their siblings, disobeying parents, a lie here and there, and if you were really bad, you might have to add swearing.

Again we filed into the church, but this time with butterflies in our stomachs, looking at where the priests were hidden in the confessional boxes as they awaited the penitent second graders with their lists of transgressions. We watched carefully as each one of our classmates came out, wondering what penances they were given, if they had been yelled at, if it was scary in the dark. Sometimes a kid came out crying and it scared us beyond belief.

By the next day, we were more than ready. We had fasted since the night before, confession had cleaned our souls, and Sister had prepared her charges with the precision of a drill team. The church was filled with proud parents and relatives and we processed down the aisle in our white and blue finery. Strains of music came from the organ above in the balcony. The priest and altar boys entered from the side sacristy. They approached the steps below the altar, bowed, and began the opening prayers in Latin. The priest stepped up to the altar, his back to the congregation, and continued in this language that was foreign to us, but one that was becoming very familiar to us.

The consecration, we had thoroughly learned by now, was the most solemn part of the Mass. Heads bowed down and the first bell, complete silence in the church, heads go up as the priest raises the host above his head to the tone of the next bells, heads go down as he brings the host down to the altar and genuflects. We repeat the exercise for the chalice of wine. Even if you were a chronic mass-talker, you NEVER talked during the consecration - we were convinced such a sin came with major punishment, on earth or in the hereafter, and never risked the sin.

When the big moment finally came, communion time, we had the movements all down pat. The smallest kids were in the front pews, and each row stood, carefully filed out to the communion rail and knelt down. The priest came down the rail, altar boy holding the patent under our chins as we received the hosts on our tongues. The patent was a flat, gold plate with a handle at one end, used to avoid the disastrous possibility of a host falling on the floor. (At home, we would play with badmitton rackets and Necco wafers, pretending to go to communion. It was a good way to make the candy last longer, and if you got to be the the priest, you gave your sister all the Neccos you didn’t like.)

Everyone was curious as to what communion would taste like. We had asked Sister questions like, “what if it sticks to the roof of my mouth? Can I touch it to get it off?” Answer: never touch the host with your fingers. “What if I get sick and throw it up?” Answer: Call a priest. “What if I don’t like the taste?” Answer: It doesn’t really taste of anything. Later, we found out that communion tasted just like the edible fake flowers the bakery put on fancy cakes.

As each row knelt at the railing, the second row stood up and began to file out. When the new communicants left the railing, the next row was ready to kneel down. We returned to our pews, waited until the last kid was in the pew, then knelt down as one - perfectly done and no one was over the age of eight! Once back in our places, we buried our faces in our hands, head down so low, praying so hard as the Sisters taught us, filled with gratitude at such a wonderful blessing.

After Mass, the procession out of church began with the short boys and girls from the front pews, followed by the parents, family and friends. A professional photographer had taken photos from the balcony during the mass - all done very unobtrusively to maintain the solemnity of the ceremony. The resulting black and white photos remained as crisp and sharp decades later as the day on which they were taken.

We also took pictures afterward in the classrooms (see Mom and me at right). The girls paraded around the room showing off our white gloves and making our veils blow in the breeze. We felt we were like brides. As we walked out the door to go home where a big family party would begin, my uncle Swede drove up in front of the school, got out and handed me a bouquet of roses - I was so touched by the special attention, but it was a classic Uncle Swede move. Throughout my life he would do things like that.

My grandmothers, mother and aunts had prepared the huge meal that awaited us back at our apartment. Relatives, friends and neighbors all stopped by to enjoy the feast and have a few drinks on the cool spring afternoon. They brought gifts, of course, usually what we called a "boosta" - money in a card. I also received a few prayer books and a statue of Mary.

All the kids played in the lot and I got to wear my communion dress most of the day until my mother suggested I wear something else so it wouldn't get dirty. Nonno took some movies as we ran around, encouraging us to stop and wave to the camera. It was a special day for the whole family, and no matter how many years have gone by, I can remember almost everything about it.

The Palmer Method and Gold Stars

10. Second grade was very different from first and it was a big deal in many ways. Our classroom was on the second floor, very close to the principal's office. It was during this time that St. Pete’s seemed to hit the maximum number of students it could possibly hold in one building and hurried to construct a new building east of the convent to take the overflow. There were 113 kids in my communion class and undoubtedly it wasn’t the largest grade in the school.

Sister Ann Josephine, my second grade teacher, (shown above) was a sweet nun with a very Irish face who could always make her students smile, but who still demanded good discipline. Once, when a very tall blond boy named John kept putting his head down on his desk as he did his assignments, Sister finally stuck a yardstick down the back of his shirt to remind him to sit up straight. He did sit up but was embarassed to tears, his fair skin beet-red. Still, Sister was popular with her students and would come out on to the playground to talk to the girls or throw a ball around with the boys. Susie would eventually have her in second grade too, and Sister became one of her favorite teachers as well as a favorite of my mother’s.

Second grade meant learning cursive handwriting, using funny looking Palmer pens. They were shaped to fit our hands and we began to learn the process by drawing continuous rows of up-and-down strokes followed by rows and rows of circles. The alphabet above the blackboard now had the letters in both printed and cursive styles, with little arrows indicating the direction the pen should move to create the letter. Before too long we had developed callouses on our middle fingers, but by the middle of the year, most students were well on their way to a fairly decent looking handwriting - all due to Sister's close attention to the Palmer method.

"Don't grip the pen so tightly, you're choking it to death!"

"Smooth movements, boys and girls, don't jab at the paper."

And it didn't end there. Each year we all participated in handwriting contests and by fourth grade, our class managed to produce a winner. Catholic school kids always had an edge, since most of us were taught by a nun.

"Nun handwriting" was forever known as the most beautiful handwriting in the world. It was used for your official name on your report card, for stern warnings on work and test papers, "Stay within the lines! You can do better!" or the more hoped for, "Keep up the good work! Very nice!"

One of the first things we learned to write, as opposed to print, were the letters A.M.D.G. at the top of our work papers. "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam" or, “to the greater glory of God” is the motto of the Jesuit order of priests and since St. Peter Canisius was a Jesuit, I guess that's why we had to use it. Most other Catholic schools used J.M.J. for "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" but the Jesuits always did like to stand out among all the rest. Sister didn’t really explain all of that to us; the Latin pretty much went in one ear and out the other. Some kids repeated that it stood for “admire the might and glory of God,” - close, but no cigar. We only knew it was supposed to be done in our very best capital letter handwriting.

Sister also had a collection of angel stamps that she used on assignment papers. The cute little cartoon-y stamps complemented her handwritten comments with, for example, a sweet angel looking with prayerful hands and eyes looking heavenward was used with a “Very Good!” The stamps continued down the range to an angel with its halo askew, dissheveled gown and a “Very Messy!” admonishment. Boys usually got the “very messy” angel and it was usually because of excessive erasures on handwriting papers or a ragged edge from not tearing a sheet out of a workbook carefully.

Throughout the year, we were given gold stars after completing certain milestones in our studies. Sister created a large chart with everyone’s name in alphabetical order running along the left side. After each accomplishment, we received a star next to our names, forming a row of stars growing toward the right side. Once we filled the row with stars, we would receive a Miraculous Medal that was waiting at the end of the row - the girls had pink ribbons on the medal and the boys had blue. In looking back, it was quite an effort on Sister’s part - I was number 55 in the class and my last name began with an S! When we finally received the medal, Sister also gave us the entire strip with our names and the accumulated stars.

It stayed in my underwear drawer for years.

Losing the training wheels...

9. Christmases on Cortland were a time of eating, visiting family and a bounty of presents. Christmas morning we would wake up to find the living room crammed with toys: dolls, dishes, miniature tables and chairs, games, and candy in our stockings. Sue and I loved all the girlie stuff and had Revlon dolls one year, and Shirley Temple dolls another. Judy got a Betsy Wetsy (or maybe it was Tiny Tears) that she usually dragged around by one leg. There was always the temptation to wash our dolls' hair, despite our mother's warnings and inevitably someone would also try to give Shirley a haircut, becoming completely distraught that it didn't grow back.

Just after my sixth birthday, Santa brought me a 16-inch two-wheeler. And even though it came with training wheels, I was thrilled to be riding a big kid bike. Sue got a tricycle and the two of us would softly pedal around the apartment, Dad taking pictures as we came down the hall. We couldn't wait for the snow to melt so we could ride outside along the sidewalk with the rest of the neighborhood kids. Of course, we wouldn't dare go in the street.

By springtime, the training wheels had come off and my father would run along side of me holding the seat as I quickly learned to keep my balance while pedaling as fast as I dared. The problem was, bike had no brakes and I usually stopped by dragging my feet along the sidewalk or purposefully riding onto the grass of the parkway or someone's lawn to slow down. I loved riding the bike and would spend hours going up and down the block. On one afternoon as I rode past our neighbor’s building, I felt something wet on my head. I looked up to see a robin hop from one branch in a tree to another, and immediately knew what little present had been deposited in my hair. Bursting into tears, I ran home, up the stairs and into the house. Through my sobs my mother managed to figure out what was wrong and found my situation extremely funny. She could hardly contain her laughter as she stuck my head under the faucet in the sink to wash my hair, probably with dishwashing liquid. For some reason, that little incident and the bike remain connected in my mind. It was a good little bike to learn on but when August rolled around, I had already almost grown out of it.

At some point around this time, our paternal grandparents became more involved in our lives - or at least a number of occasions stand out as quite memorable. Nonni Amabile and Nonno Cenzo were lovers of the arts. As immigrants to this country, they always looked for ways to preserve their heritage and to share a love for Italian culture with others who had made America their home. One great love was the opera. During the 30s, they helped to found an operetta club in Roseland, their first neighborhood on Chicago's south side. They worked on a number of productions and this avocation eventually led to my grandmother's career as one of the first female radio announcers in Chicago.

One night they took me to an opera downtown. I don't remember much about it except that I was only six and may have fallen asleep but otherwise was well-behaved. Because of my grandmother's connections, we went backstage after the performance. I remember being held in my grandfather's arms as I met one of the actresses who was still in costume. Her dress was very feathery, very chiffon-y and very purple - I was in complete awe.

My grandmother was also a bit of a celebrity in Chicago at the time. She was one of the few women in radio and had her own program. It was a daytime show that covered news features of local interest, particularly for Italian women who would listen as they ironed or cooked - and who hadn't quite come on board to soap operas on television. Nonni really knew her audience and with the interviews and stories she told, she truly connected with them.

One day my grandmother decided she wanted to have me on her program. She talked to my mother - who obviously couldn't say no - and took her time preparing me for for my five minutes on the air. The plan was for everyone in our family to listen from home while I went down to the station with her. I watched and waited nervously as the program began. It was all in Italian, of course and my "part" was very well rehearsed. I was to recite a little prayer in Italian after she introduced me and gave me my cue. The prayer was about a little angel with golden hair and eyes full of love - it all rhymed and I managed to pronounce the words fairly well, even though I had no idea as to their exact meanings. When I finished, all the people in the studio applauded, even while we were still on the air.

Back home, my parents and sisters sat in the kitchen and listened to my voice coming from the red radio with black knobs that sat on top of the refrigerator. It's pretty safe to say my first day on the radio was also my last, but I did a fairly decent job for a six year old - and at least my family got a kick out of it.

Saving Grace...and Judy

8.
Despite my minor transgressions during the early years of grammar school, my mother had already become a favorite of all the nuns in St. Pete’s convent even before I started first grade. But the way she found herself in their good graces was not a path she would every want to take again.

Earlier that year, my little sister Judy developed pneumonia at only three months old. Sue and I did our best to keep out of the way - we knew something terrible was happening, just by looking at the worried looks on our parents faces. Judy's crib was brought into the dining room and the doctor came to the house, spending a long time examining her and talking to my mother. He determined she had to go to the hospital as her fever continued to climb and, being the smallest baby my mother delivered, she didn't have a whole lot to fight with. It was during this time that my mother looked to her faith and her family for comfort and support.

Judy’s condition grew worse; her breathing became difficult and she needed to be in an oxygen tent. My mother spent as much time as she could at the hospital in Oak Park and it was not easy to make the trip everyday, with Susie and me still at home. Oak Park was a bit south and west of our home. If my father was working, my mother had to depend on cabs to get back and forth. The trip didn’t take more than twenty minutes, but considering that she had to arrange for our care, call the taxi in advance and only guess at when she would be home, the whole effort was unwieldy and time consuming. Both my grandmothers helped out as much as they could, but Nonna Amabile worked each day and Nonna Ma had to be picked up by my dad or driven by my grandfather. It just wasn’t possible for my mother to get to the hospital inside of twenty minutes if she had to. As a result, she stayed as long as she could once she got there.

The experience at the hospital became particularly difficult one day, as, upon her arrival, Mom encountered student nurses surrounding Judy’s crib. As she got closer, she discovered they were using my baby sister’s tiny bottom as target practice in their efforts to learn how to give injections. It slowly dawned upon her what they were doing to her seriously sick baby. Their giggling and ineptitude, in addition to all the stress of the situation, was finally more than my mother could handle.

“Just what do you think you are doing???” she demanded. Judy’s weak, kitten-like cries were ignored as the young nurses had attempted and failed at the injections. My mother literally grabbed the primary offender by the neck and pushed her against the wall. The other stood by motionless.

“Touch her again and I’ll kill you,” was all that my mother could gasp out of her throat as she glared into the eyes of the young student. It was a threat that both nurses firmly believed would be their fate as they quickly dropped the hypodermics and fled the hospital room. My mother then made it clear to the head nurse that under no circumstances were the two offenders to step foot in Judy’s room. Returning to her baby daughter, she tried to soothe her and comfort her until it was time for her to leave. She did manage, after the difficult experience and nearly a week of very little sleep, to get to church where she could light a candle and pray for Judy’s recovery.

Hers was a prayer of desperation and the pain that only a young mother with a seriously ill child could know. No doubt, in addition to innumerable supplications and prayer, she offered her own life in return for her baby’s health.

It was a late Saturday afternoon. Some of the nuns from the parish convent walked into church, bringing in laundered altar cloths for Sunday Mass. As they neared the communion rail, they found my mother unconscious on the floor in front of the Blessed Mother’s statue. She was very pale and weak but they managed to get her over to the convent where they let her rest while they contacted my father. Fortunately, he was only two blocks away from the apartment building where his mother and sister lived.

When he came to pick up my mother, he had good news. Approximately an hour before, Judy had made considerable improvement and the doctors guardedly told my father that they thought she would be fine. My mother felt this turn for the better happened at the precise moment she was praying to the Blessed Mother. At that point, she made a vow that she would do something for the sisters in the convent every year for ten years on Judy’s birthday - it was a vow she never failed to keep.

From 1956 to 1966, my mother prepared a complete Italian dinner for all the sisters on December 13. She prepared everything from the antipasto, meatballs and pasta to the wine, dessert and coffee. As we got older, we were able to help her with this meal for anywhere from 16 to 30 nuns, and even as she was busy with all the preparations and transporting of the feast, she didn’t forget to get a cake for me and Judy as we celebrated our birthday with the rest of the family later in the evening.

You Can't Run from the Nun

7.
There were about 50 of us in one classroom with one nun to teach us all. Beneath her full habit was a rather plain, thin, young face with wire rimmed glasses. I knew she was a “she” but the habit took away any real indication of her gender, save the flowing black skirt. No hint of hair edged out from the severe white starched linen surrounding her face. The black wool sleeves came down to her wrists and she often hid her hands in the baggy oversleeve of each opposite ar m. She seemed very tall to me, and as one of the smallest children, I feared her but respected her; there really was no alternative - or escape.

For as young as she must have been, she knew how to strike fear in the rowdiest of boys or the sassiest of girls - though girls rarely caused any trouble. Her nun training was very effective - without any teacher aides she kept us all in line, and while her techniques may have caused tears among some of my classmates during the first few weeks, she knew how to take control and keep it.

Our room was small and separated from the next classroom by a thick folding curtain that moved along a track in the ceiling. The desks were miniature tables and chairs of blonde wood with a shelf beneath the surface for books and supplies. They touched one another on the sides, setting up the room in wide horizontal rows.

It was in this room where Sr. Joseph Ann patiently taught us all to read, write, learn basic arithmetic and begin our first instruction in catechism. One of the methods of learning to read was with a letter kit. With a box of single letters printed on heavy yellow paper, we placed them in a large card with sleeves across it for inserting the letters. We created words, then phrases, then sentences, all of which complemented the efforts in our readers and the stories of David and Ann. Over the months we progressed from “Oh, look! See Ann go.” to “Mother and Father teach the children to pray.” No early reading lesson was complete without someone knocking over a box of letters on the floor, much to Sister’s chagrin and immediate direction to “pick up each and every one of them!”

We had to line up for everything in grammar school - coming in, going out, going to lunch, going to the bathroom, going over to church - during first grade I got to know the back of Marie’s head pretty well. Many times when we were in church, however, it wasn’t just lining up and walking in, we were "pro-cessing" (as in walking in a procession) for special holy days. It was during one of these processions that I encountered a different side of Sr. Joseph Ann. As we were coming out of church into the vestibule, I dipped my hand in the holy water font, only to have Sister slap it away. “You don’t take holy water during a procession!” she scolded me. I was more shocked than hurt and managed to hold back the tears, if only because of my own pride. When I told my mother what happened, she was not happy to hear that someone, even a nun, had laid a hand on her child. I don’t know if there was any retaliation on her part, but where her kids were concerned, my mother’s protectiveness was like that of a lioness.

The church experience in those days was one filled with awe and not a little fear. We memorized basic questions and answers from the Baltimore Catechism and were taught the Ten Commandments, but to a six year old, “coveting your neighbor’s wife” didn’t hold a lot of meaning. We pretty much knew that disobeying your parents and teachers, fighting with your sister, telling lies or stealing could get you in pretty hot water with God, let alone your mother, and if you had any doubt that God called all the shots, you just had to spend a little time in church during 40 Hours Devotion or Lenten Benediction. The statues, stained glass windows, the organ you could hear but not see, the Latin prayers and hymns, incense, the big crucifix, vigil candles, all contributed to an air of solemnity and ritual that left most of us fearing for our souls if we dared let our butts touch the pew while kneeling. Talking to your neighbor was unthinkable. Of course, by the time third grade rolled around, Mass was the best opportunity to sit next to your best friends and trade holy cards.

“I already have a St. Catherine,” I would say in a whisper to my friend Helen, showing her the card placed perfectly as a marker on her feast day in my St. Joseph’s Daily Missal.

“That’s St. Catherine Laboure, this is St. Catherine of Siena," she said. "Want to trade her for a St. Patrick?”

“Oh, everyone has lots of St. Patricks. My mother gets them at wakes - you know, when your parents go to see sick people?” I had never been to a wake and when my parents dropped us off at my grandmother’s on their way to one, this was how they softened the story.

“What do you mean sick people? People at wakes are dead.” Helen was Irish, had older siblings and knew a lot more about such things than I did.

“Dead?" I was incredulous. "All of them?”

“What do you mean all of them? One person is dead and everyone goes to see them for the last time in a casket.”

“You look at a dead person?” Not only had I never thought my parents had seen a dead person, the very idea scared me silly. Helen, however, thought me the complete idiot.

“Jeesh! Yeah, they’re dead.”

“Girls! Stop talking!” Our teacher had gotten wind of the whispering and brought us immediately back to perfect form for Mass: head slightly bowed, clasped hands on the back of the pew in front of you, butts no where near the seat behind you. Unfortunately for me and Helen, it was too late. As we left church to go back to our rooms, our teacher pulled us out of line and told us that for talking during Mass we had to write the Hail Mary three times.

My parents were not pleased.

Give that Kid a Cigar...Box

6.
In September of 1956, I started first grade at St. Peter Canasius School. St. Pete’s was a large, active parish with lots of Irish and a good smattering of Italian families. It was founded in 1925 with the gradual construction of a church, rectory, convent and school, all situated within two blocks along the 5000 block of North Avenue. In the early years of the parish, the area consisted of clusters of houses separated by spans of prairie. The northwest corner of the city had bec ome a desirable area for raising families and as the years passed, the prairies gave way to city blocks of two flats and bungalows. The urban spread continued and by the 1950s, over 1200 students were enrolled in the school.

My anticipation of starting school was heightened by the knowledge that I would be attending with lots of kids from Cortland Street as well as many others from along the half mile of blocks we walked to get to school. The day I started first grade, everyone in my family prepared for it as a big event. I had my uniform - a white blouse under a navy blue jumper. A blue ribbon bow tie was pinned at the collar and a patch with the letters “SPC” was stitched near the shoulder of the jumper. New school shoes - saddle shoes, a style which I came to hate by fourth grade - all stiff and free of any scuffs or marks, white socks and barrettes in my hair completed the outfit.

Dad was waiting in the car as my mother and I scrambled down the stairs with my two sisters. We settled in and he was about to pull away when I realized I was missing something.

“Who has my cigar box?” I asked. My required cigar box with two safety pins, a ribbon and two very fat pencils without erasers had been left behind on the dining room table.

“I need my cigar box and we’re going to be late for school!” I was near tears; my father had to race up the stairs, unlock the door, retrieve it and return. While he was gone my mother discussed with me the importance of being responsible for my school supplies, now that I was in first grade.

“You make sure your uniform is hanging up each night and your schoolwork is in your schoolbag, Nancy. Your are in first grade now and you have to be responsible for your things. I have to worry about your little sisters - I can’t be looking for your things, too.”

This was big time school and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it. I was only five years old and had not been to kindergarten, the reason being that my December birthday was beyond the November 1 deadline of the public schools. When the teacher at the public school told my mother to come back the following fall, my mother responded with, “Why should I? St. Pete’s will take her in first grade next year.”

Instead of kindergarten, my mother did a bit of home schooling on my alphabet and numbers, but it was frustrating for both of us. I can still remember working on a page of letters on which she had me copy each line of A’s or B’s. I thought I did such a great job but she gave it back to me with what she called a “goose egg” at the top because my printing was still so undeveloped. I cried at her criticism and tried to do a better job, but she was not a teacher and I would have rather played with my sisters or watched tv. By the time September of 1956 rolled around, I was more than ready to be in a real classroom.

We arrived at St. Pete’s, turning off North Avenue onto LeClaire, the street that separated the school from the convent, and my whole family went with in me, walking right to the first classroom off the stairs in the basement. Sister Joseph Ann greeted the parents in the hall and made us say our goodbyes before I walked in alone to find my seat. I found it in short order, put my cigar box in my desk and made friends with a dark haired girl named Marie who sat next to me. Mom stood in the doorway, Judy in her arms and tears in her eyes. Sue was very curious about the classroom with so many kids. I smiled and waved goodbye - I wasn’t about to cry like some of the other kids who wouldn’t leave their mothers, and as soon as she was gone, the very thought of crying left me, too.

The Garden in the Yard

5.
The small size of our Courtland Street apartment and our growing family gave my parents a good reason to start looking for a larger house. They had originally bought the two flat in early 1955 when I was four and Sue was two. By December of that year, on my fifth birthday, Judy was born. My mother joked for years about filling nut cups with M & M’s and peanuts for my birthday party in between labor pains.

The room Sue and I shared was quite small, but since we had bunk beds - beautiful maple four-poster beds that could be used stacked or side by side - it gave us a bit more room, especially once Judy entered the picture. The previous owners of the building had wallpapered our room with a circus mural that wrapped around the walls. What wasn’t part of the circus picture was white with red polka dots. To match it, my mother had bedspreads and pricilla-type curtains made for the single window of red dot material.

When our room was tidy, it looked quite nice. The annual flood of Christmas toys and birthday presents created a bit of a storage problem since, during the winter especially, we preferred to play in our room instead of the unheated sleeping porch off my parents’ room. Sometimes we did play out there, wearing jackets while we dressed our dolls, served our pretend meals with our dishes, miniature table and chairs. The room was cluttered with an assortment of stuffed animals, games, coloring books, and dressup clothes we had pilfered from my mother’s drawers and closet.

My parents’ room was painted a rather dark green. Judy’s crib alongside one wall, their bed, two dressers and two nightstands filled the room to capacity, but more often than not, one of us would wake up in the room most mornings. A belly ache for me or a bad dream for Sue would bring us climbing into our parents’ bed in the middle of the night - a tight squeeze that sometimes sent my father back into our bedroom, if only for some uninterrupted sleep.

Still, we made good use of the space we had - the side yard made it feel like the most spacious building on the block. We were always playing there or in the back yard and during at least one summer my maternal grandmother came over to plant tomatoes, zucchini and basil. No matter her age, Nonna Modesta - or Nonna Ma - always seemed a large, older woman, her gray hair constantly tied in a bun. I can see my mother hanging clothes on the lines while Nonni puttered through the vegetables, weeding here, watering there. Whisps of hair came free from her hairpins as she bent down and up, and her rough hands becoming dirty from the soil. She always wore a dress with an apron pinned to the bodice and tied around her waist. She and my mother would talk now and then, always in Italian, each woman intent upon her chore.

I would amble between the swings, playing in the dirt where our feet had worn away any semblance of grass. The dirtier I got, the more my mother wanted me to stay clear of the laundry, even though I loved to run through the sheets, smelling the soap and bleach and trying to catch the edges as they blew above my head.

Nonni called me away, knowing my mother wanted no part of dirty handprints on her laundry.

“You like tomatoes?”

She showed me the vines, heavy with green tomatoes just about ready to begin turning. I looked with some interest as she pointed out the little yellow flowers that would soon give birth to the final crop of the season. I squatted down next to her, watching her hands trim the plants, dig away at the weeds and pat down the soil. I started digging with a stick, working on some planting of my own.

“You like this guy, too?”

I turned to see her outstretched hand with a caterpillar the same shade as the tomatoes, and as thick as one of her fingers. I stood up and stepped back, immediately frightened or repulsed by the creature inching along her hand. She smiled at me.

“He likes the tomatoes and he puts holes in them. He looks like the tomatoes so the birds don’t eat him. But I don’t want him in the garden.”

She flicked her wrist toward the alley and the caterpillar flew off, now exposed for any hungry crow.

At my grandparents greystone house on Harrison Street further south in the city, they always managed to plant tomatoes, flowers and an overflowing grapevine in their tiny yard. Even after she reached 90, Nonni planted her tomatoes and put them up in Ball jars with basil. When age caught up with her, though there were no longer any tomatoes or grapes in the yard and only wild sage that grew year after year, she still thought the plants were there, and she would tell me to take something home “for when you’re cooking.”

Love and the Ironing Board

Dad had dropped out of college to join the Army. He spent about three years as a soldier during WWII, and some time in the Philippines. Like many of his friends, he joined because it was the thing to do and their assignments often reflected their tender age and inexperience. My grandfather, on the other hand, was doing work for the government during the war. As an engineer, he helped develop a stabilizer for signal lights on boats. His work even sent him to Washington a few times.

By the time Dad returned home from the service, my grandparents had started a banquet hall called "The Belvedere," Italian for "pretty view." Actually, the only view from the place was busy intersection of Grand and Austin Avenues, and a number of small storefronts across the street. The neighborhood around this intersection, like many further south in the city where both my parents grew up, had many first or second generation Italian families. Many of the parents, including my grandparents, spoke Italian as their first language. However, my father’s parents recognized the importance of learning English and as a result, Dad and his sister grew up speaking both Italian and English.

The Grand and Austin area consisted of working class families living in small but well cared for homes and apartment buildings. Riis Park over on Fullerton Avenue, a few blocks north, provided recreational facilities such as a swimming pool, basketball courts, softball diamonds and picnic areas, as well as a hangout spot for the local young males who had aspirations directed toward juvenile delinquency. St. John Bosco Church on Austin Avenue was the one of the growing parishes, and where I was baptized.

The storefronts along Grand Avenue featured all kinds of retail endeavors including fresh fish, fruits and vegetables, a restaurant with a counter and a few booths and a body shop. One of them was occupied by Nuti Bakery, started by my great grandfather on my mother's side. At the time, my mother's uncle and cousins ran the bakery which specialized in simple breads and Italian pastries. My mother and her sister Alice spent some time working there and when it came time for Alice's wedding shower, the logical place for it was across the street at the Belvedere.

The story goes that my father was working behind the bar when my mother walked in for the shower, struggling with a large gift - an ironing board. Dad was quick to assist, and the rest, as they say, is history. By the time they married in January of 1950, the only place they could afford was one of the apartments in the back of the Belvedere. My grandparents lived in the other apartment with my father's sister Mary and her husband Swede, whose real name was Donald but everyone called him Swede because he was the only Swedish guy among all the Italians and Irish. Actually, he had very little Swedish blood - mostly German and French. He was a bricklayer by day and helped tend bar at the Belvedere at night, moving in after he and Mary married in October of 1949. By December of 1950, I lived there too.

Everyone worked the banquets. My grandmother cooked, my mother and aunt waitressed, my dad and uncle were behind the bar, my grandfather kept an eye on the operation, even though he had a full time job as a mechanical engineer. One thing everyone joked about was how my grandfather always took on the job of cutting the sheet cakes for dessert. Every piece was cut precisely the same size. The only problem was that he took so long concentrating on the exactness of the procedure that the waitresses were backed up waiting to serve the long awaited dessert to the banquet guests.

As the only child living with my parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle and a variety of friends, busboys and waitresses, it was pretty easy to be the center of attention. My mother says I talked and walked early, taking first steps across the top of the bar for the amusement of the patrons. She also said I was the only one on the premises who wouldn’t get in trouble for knocking over a bottle of scotch if I was playing behind the bar. The only real memory I have is the bright lights of the juke box where I often bounced around under the selection buttons to the tunes of Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Theresa Brewer. (at right, Daddy, me and Mom at the Belvedere, my first birthday)

From what I’ve been told, Uncle Swede was a source of constant amusement during my toddler years. No matter what the meal, wedges of lemons were always on the table when the entire extended family had supper in the evening. Swede would offer me a lick of the lemon just to watch my face contort at the sour taste. He would hide the lemon for a while, then offer it again, and again I would eagerly try it, only to make another sour face. He would roar with laughter with would get me smiling again, too.

“Swede! Leave that kid alone!” my mother or aunt would yell, and he did, only until the next time. Another favorite activity of ours was playing on the living room floor after he came home from a hard day of construction. He would be snoozing, flat out on the floor, and I would come along and wake him up. As he sat up, I would “push” him down into a prone position, walk around to his head, and “push” him back up again. Obviously, he was doing situps just for my enjoyment.

Over the years he loved telling the stories time and time again, and if we were at a family party, the sentimentality combined with a bit of alcohol, resulted in great hugs, a few tears and the constant comment, “you kids are all the greatest!”

Swede and my dad were close friends and enjoyed each other’s company. But working at the Belvedere didn't promise too much of a future for my father. By the time my mother was pregnant with Sue, we made the move to Elmhurst and he had switched to working construction - probably the job he enjoyed most. During the winter, the business would slack off and he found other jobs to make up the difference: taxi driver, vacuum cleaner salesman (he sold one, to my mother) and bartending stints as he was needed. The irregularity of his income, two children and DuPage County taxes soon became too much and we were headed back to Chicago after less than three years.

Mom and Dad

3.
Rena married Leno at 21 and had me, her first child, eleven months later. The children continued coming every two or three years until there were five. She was the youngest of three girls and grew up in the Taylor Street area of Chicago.

She was a devoted mother who never stopped worrying about her children. She was passionate about them, wanting them close by and always in line. Never one to hide her feelings, she always spoke her mind particularly with her husband and kids. Hers was not a quiet house with voices often raised in joy as well as anger. The battles she fought over the years - with her weight, her husband, her children, her religion, her in-laws - were sometimes painful but often healthy ones. Fires seldom smoldered within her for very long - loud eruptions either brought them to an end or at least put them out temporarily to be stoked up another time.

Rena kept a clean but disorderly house; she was always doing laundry, giving her kids baths or putting forth monumental efforts to sanitize one room while the others fell into chaos. She was an exceptional cook, able to feed twice as many as the table was set for at any given extraordinary meal.

“If I can cook it, bake it or wash it, I can do it,” she would say. “Just don’t ask me to sew it, draw it or paint it.”

She was as quick with a swat as a hug and worked hard to make sure her children were polite, respectful and unspoiled. She had her pet peeves about discipline and they were often enumerated in her discourses on “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a kid who...” The list expanded well over one thing, but included: “a kid who spits...who says ‘no’ to an adult...who lies (I just hate a liar!)...who is sneaky...who has a big mouth...who doesn’t wash…who listens in on adult conversations... who whines...who throws a tantrum...who gives Indian burns...” Spitters, liars and whiners were probably the greatest of kid criminals in my mother’s eyes, although tantrum throwers were kids we held in complete awe. Whenever we witnessed such behavior in a grocery store or at a party, we would look from the performer to my mother, mouths agape at his stupidity.

We would wonder, has this kid lost his mind? Doesn’t he know what fate awaits him at home when he pulls a stunt like this? Nothing is worth the punishment for throwing a tantrum!

Actually, none of us ever had the nerve to do such a thing because my mother’s threats, from a very early age, were enough to permanently dissuade us. After seeing her reaction to one tantrum, - the flashing eyes, the set jaw - and hearing “Give me just five minutes with that kid and we’ll see if he ever throws another tantrum,” we never tempted fate. It just wasn’t worth it.

Raising and caring for her children was my mother’s greatest joy. Cortland Street was where her family started to grow and where, in a short time, the family passed some of its own milestones. For my father, it was a time of changing from one job to another, still under the watchful and often critical eye of his parents who lived only a mile away.

Cortland Street

Whenever I think of Cortland Street, it is almost always of a hot, sunny day with a dozen assorted kids playing up and down the street. I’m dressed in a sleeveless button-up shirt in red checks with faded shorts and gym shoes with a half-moon of white rubber across the toes. My white ankle socks irritatingly ride into my shoes when I run and I’m always stopping to pull them up. My sister Sue, four years old, is also a member of the neighborhood gang, and though she sticks with the younger kids, she usually has an eye out for me, just in case. Even at this early age, she’s stubborn and won’t admit to needing me for anything. Still, we have a secret understanding that we share without saying - we know we have each other.

Sue looks like me only shorter and fairer. We’re slight, skinny kids with pixie haircuts and big brown eyes. We share the same room and a mutual skepticism about that baby who cries so much. But this is summer - a time for endless play, and we take off each morning for the yard and beyond, while my mother stays in the house. The city heat and humidity gives us all rings of sweaty dirt in the creases of our necks, arms and behind our knees, but we don’t seem to notice. We lived for playing in packs, all day long, roaming from one yard to another. We dreaded the sing-song call of any mother, beckoning any player home for dinner. By summer’s end, most of the grass on the parkways and in many of the yards had been trampled away.

The parkway in front and on the side of our building gave us room for bike riding and the adjoining empty lot, though less than 25 feet wide, seemed like a huge playground. There was never a shortage of kids, games or things to do, only sunny days to do it all in.

Ours was a pleasant, if small, apartment with a non-functioning fireplace in the living room. The front living room windows looked south, down Long Avenue and the one west window gave the view up Cortland. It was the window my mother called us from, the early evening sunlight shining on her like a beacon, as she shielded her eyes and yelled out our names so the whole block knew it was time for our supper.
"Nan-ceee, Su-zeee, come iiinnnn nooowww!"

There was an unheated tandem room, often called a sleeping porch, off my parents' bedroom that was used as a playroom when the weather was warm; a second bedroom, a dining room, kitchen and small back porches for each apartment. In the lot next to the house, my parents put in two diamond shaped flower gardens. Gladioli and carnations grew as best as they could, despite the abuse of kids running over and through the beds. We had a swing set in the back that my father anchored into the ground with cement at each leg. I would push Susie on the swings until she learned to pump for herself, giving her “underdogs” to make her go higher.

We lived on the second floor and my parents rented out the first floor apartment to a couple of different families during the few years we lived there. There was a separate garage at the back of the lot but I can’t remember my father ever putting his car in it. The building itself was not very old and my father’s abilities in carpentry helped to keep it in fairly decent shape.

The alley behind us backed up to a train yard and across the street on the east side was a disposal company - two good reasons right there that might encourage my parents to move. Long before environmentally sound practices were the norm, a time when the smell of burning leaves only indicated a foreshadowing of winter, big red Roy Strom dump trucks regularly emptied their contents behind the company’s fence, much of which they proceeded to burn. Often it was a load of old tires. And it always seemed to be at a time when my mother’s freshly washed sheets were hanging in the back yard.

“It stinks! It stinks!” we would yell to her as we ran into the house, our hands covering our noses and mouths, whenever the burning and smelly smoke interrupted outside play on a summer day. She became fiercely angry whenever this happened and I can still see her storming across the street to the Strom offices, sooty sheets in hand, to give whomever a piece of her mind. She wasn’t a very tall woman, but like a cat encountering a larger enemy, the anger in her eyes and voice made her appear to be a formidable opponent. She had soft brown hair with a little bit of a wave that obeyed her much less than her children. She had a lovely figure in those days, something I’m sure my father noticed when they first met.

Going back to the beginning...

1.

I don’t know if there was just one reason that made my parents want to move from the two-flat on Cortland Street. Thinking back, it was probably a combination of things. Cortland Street was in an active neighborhood with lots of kids and our “house,” as all kids called their buildings, was on a double lot on the corner where Cortland met Long Avenue - about 1900 north and 5400 west in Chicago, just inside the border of the Austin community of the city.

We moved there in the late summer of 1955 after a few years in the suburb of Elmhurst. Our family was actually returning to this part of the city. My parents started their marriage in a small apartment behind the restaurant/tavern/banquet hall that my grandparents ran just a couple miles north at Austin and Grand. They moved to Elmhurst before I was two and moved back before I was five. The property taxes were killing them and they simply couldn’t afford to stay in that cute little ranch home. No doubt my grandfather had a lot to do with finding the two-flat; it was near his own apartment building and with an extra flat to rent out for additional income, it was the answer to my parents’ financial straits. Still, I know my mother had loved that little house, her neighbors and living in the suburbs.

Maybe the white picket fence helped a bit. It was the only fence on the block and surrounded the Courtland property. During the early summer, blue irises grew along the walk up to the front door, which was painted a bright turquoise. Three white diamond shaped designs decorated the door, the top one with a glass insert which I could only look out of if I stood on the landing inside, next to the door of the first floor apartment. The brick of the building was dark brown and the very top, in the front, had a castle-like design that you didn’t really notice unless you were at least half a block away.

It was on the front walk, behind the fence, that I set up my first business endeavor: a petting zoo of stuffed animals in milk crates made to look like cages. I was perhaps six years old and collected anything in the house that vaguely resembled an animal, including my favorite stuffed monkey that my aunt and uncle had brought back from their honeymoon in Cuba.

“Mom, look, I made six cents!” I yelled as I ran up the stairs.

“Where did you get that?”

“From my zoo on the front walk. You have to pay a penny to see it.”

She looked out the window to see my handiwork. To her, collecting money for such a thing was pretty close to shaking down unsuspecting kids - not the best in neighborliness as far as she was concerned.

“Well, you can march right down the block and give everyone their money back. You don’t take money from people for something like that! What were you thinking??”

I would have willingly handed over every penny to her, and then some (if I had it) to avoid facing the six kids I had charged. The embarrassment of payback prevented me from ever setting up a KoolAid stand and, as anyone in my family will attest, I’m still pretty lousy at bargaining, haggling or any kind of retail. Still, I brought the pennies back, mumbling my reasons and quickly darting back down the street.