HOME SWEET HOME

Growing up in Brooklyn, life was tough. Dad was not making the money that J.P. Morgan did, and I asked him how come. Not directly but in the form of another subject.

“Dad, why don’t we own a car like the other families around here: Anthony’s dad owns a car, Michael’s dad owns a car, but we don’t?”

“Why would I need a car? You want to go somewhere? I’ll tell you what, take a bus. You take a bus, they treat you like royalty, you stand there, they come to you, they open the door for you, you get on, sit down nice, they take you where you want to go, and then when you get up to get off, they open the door for you again!”

Our apartment was not what you call spacious, luxurious or even comfortable. It was the top floor of a three-story building, and although it was well lit for a Brooklyn apartment, that was because it sat next to an alley that had a very short two story single family dwelling next to it.  I must say it had a very interesting heating and cooling system. The problem was the season and the system didn’t coincide. Three sides of the four were exposed to the weather and the roof, when in the heat of the summer, would contain all the heat of the day, and bring it into our apartment, making it stifling, yet in the winter due to the single oil burning stove that sat in the kitchen, at the far end of the line of rooms it was extremely frigid in the winter. There was no heating, no radiators or even a fireplace, just this small wrought iron stove that was supposed to heat the whole apartment.

Sleeping at night in the winter was a challenge. Up until I was in third grade, I had to share the bed with my older sister, (much older). The room was the last room in the house, the one room not in line with the others. There was the kitchen, dining room, ‘parlor’ my parent’s bedroom, then you hung a left and there sat my bedroom.

Tessie was the student in the family and I was the observer. She’d study and I’d watch. She would bring a flashlight to bed so she could study. Under the covers she would shine the light on the book, while eating saltine crackers. Of course the saltine crackers would begin their migration to my side of the bed and so I would sleep with all sorts of crumbs winding up on my back, or even into the waist of my pj’s.

The kitchen wrought iron stove was not to cook on, we did have a regular gas burning stove, with an oven, the wrought iron stove would need periodic feeds of oil that meant going out into the cold hallway and getting the oil that the janitor would leave outside our door. This usually occurred at night after dinner, and it was my job to get it. But the stove did have this one thing that made it special, we would put orange peels on it in the winter, and as the peels burned, a wonderful aroma, almost a perfume would emanate from it filling the kitchen and dining room with the wonderful aroma of the skins.

We were poor and really didn’t think about it. Whatever money was had went for three basic things, rent, food and Catholic School. The fact that dad did not despair over the lack of it, was because he always believed that someday, just like Ralph Kramden, his ship would come in. Working for the NY Laboratory and Supply Company, his paycheck was steady and he always paid his bills.

But it was around the kitchen table that life existed. Not only did we eat three squares there, we did our homework, paid our bills and discussed the issues that affected us. Mom read the newspaper there, as did dad, who would pour a cup of coffee and light up a cigarette, a Raleigh, and read the NY Daily News from the back of the paper, (The sports pages first) to the front. He would pinch the newspaper in the middle and turn the page. Often he would then go into the bathroom with his cigarette and leave the smell of the cigarette there. Who needed a room deodorizer?

We lived by the rules, and there were many sets to live by. There were the Church rules, that carried over into the classroom as well, there were the house rules, such as being home on time for dinner or you don’t eat, and if you didn’t like what mom prepared for dinner, you went to bed hungry. I had chores and they had to be done and on time as did my older sister (much older). If you went to my grandmother’s house, there were even more rules, and then there were the street rules, the ones that you followed so that you could walk the block and it is now called street smarts.

But in the end, we always had food on the table, our shoes polished and our clothes clean. For that I thank my parents.