My Grand Aunt Rita

 Margarita Cuddy Bick Fitzgerald was born in Manhattan on July 2nd, 1899.  Her sister, Mary, was born 2 (or 3 ) (I have to find my paper work) years later. Mary was my grandmother. 

My grandmother died before I was born, so my Aunt Rita was more of a grandma to me, than an Aunt.

Here she is near the end of her life with her second husband, Uncle Billy.  He was a wonderful kind man and all the children loved him.

Looking at this picture it's hard to believe what a wild woman she was.  In this picture you can also see Geraldine. That is their youngest child.

By all accounts, Rita was a beautiful woman. My grandfather actually chased after her, but was turned down, he then married her sister.  My father had a crush on her. 

She  married Charles Bick. He was German,  he was a butcher and  he was very athletic and liked to show off his skills and body. When I find the pictures of them two at the beach I will put them here.  They had money,  he had a butchers schedule, he had to be in bed early to get up for work around 1am.   They had a son, Charles Bick. 

They were at the beach one day when show off Charles dived off a pier. Now days they always warn, DON'T jump/dive off anything without inspecting the water below first!  He dived and hit something that killed him.  

What a shock that must of been for Rita. She is now a  young widow with a young boy.

Here is a picture of them, probably soon after the death of her husband.

Rita always loved to dance, so she joined a dance troop that traveled to different clubs.  She was a flapper. Her son was left with her sister a lot of the time.  Rita liked her booze too. She drank and danced her money away.  She met Bill Fitzgerald and lived with him for 9 months before getting married.  My mother told me this in hushed tones many years later. lol

They had  4 children. Billy, Rita Ann, Bobby, Geraldine.  When Rita Ann  was 6 years old she died of appendix. The doctor was treating her for a cold. My mother told me because of the poison in her body making her bloat she looked like a 9 year old in the coffin.

I was named after her, my name was supposed to be Rita Ann. But when my mother gave the nurse the information when I was born, the nurse put the Ann down as my middle name.  I used to be called Rita Ann by family,  which I never liked. 

I loved going to visit Aunt Rita because she would make me strawberry malteds! She lived in Brooklyn and she would take the buses and trains to visit us in Queens. I would be told to wait up the corner for her and I can still see her coming and me running towards her.  She did pinch my cheeks pretty hard. I did not like that so much. lol  My father would drive her home.

When Ag was little  we would visit Aunt Rita in Staten Island. She loved Agnes and the feeling was mutual. Agnes had a stuffed baby superman doll that she called Aunt Rita and she had to keep it near her at bedtime. 

Aunt Rita told me her mother was afraid of storms and during a storm she would light holy candles to keep safe. Rita did not like storms either.

On July 17th, 1982, Rita told Bill she was going in to nap. She would put a hankerchief over her face when she napped.  She never woke up.  

My aunt Mae told me they went to visit them one night and looked in the window and saw them watching TV, holding hands. They had a great marriage. Uncle Bill did not live long after the love of his life died.

* Because her first born, Charles was with my grandmother so much, he was closes to her, not his mother and he always resented the fact that she did not put some money aside that his father left for them, for him, instead of partying it all away.

*Rita was talking about some woman when her sister picked up a plate of butter and smashed it in her face saying, "you  have no right to talk about other people!"  Bringing up the fact that  Rita "lived in sin" with Bill for 9 months. lol

*We were at a wedding, it could have been the wedding of the picture above and there was a piano (we would walk her back and forth to the bathroom) and I asked her play. 

She did play a little tune and showed me her fingers, how her nails turn up a bit and she said that is because she played the piano.

UPDATE: More pictures! 

Here they are, handsome couple.

I am guessing it is their car. I don't know who the woman on the left is, but she is in a lot of pictures and I wonder if she is a relative of Charles Bick. 

These pictures are  almost a hundred years old.  So the quality of this picture is pretty bad, but you can see Charles posing for the picture. And there is Aunt Rita in her black bathing suit posing for the picture too. 

I wonder if this was the day....he died.  We will never know.

This is their son, Charlie, all grown up.  He  had AAA, abdominal aortic aneurysm, that they did not know about and died having minor surgery when it erupted.  Aunt Rita had it too, but she did not die from it. (Aunt Mae had it too)

He was a wonderful man,  lots of fun, I miss him. 

Growing up Catholic and sinning in 1950s-60s

My parents were Catholic, and grandparents etc.   In the Bronx my sisters and cousins went to St. Peter and Pauls Catholic school.  I went to St.Fidelis when we moved to Queens.  

We had to say, I am a ROMAN Catholic.  It seems there are  also Greek Orthodox Catholics and it had to be made CLEAR we were not one of them, although I have never met one.  

My family was a bit odd, they did not (thankgoodness!) force us to go the church and they did not go, yet we had to go to Catholic school and do the sacraments. (Baptism, First Penance  First Communion,  Confirmation).The school forced us to go to church though and you could be thrown out of school if you constantly missed church.

So, any THOUGHT, DEED or ACTION could send you straight to hell if any of those were a Mortal sin. But a Venial sin, a little sin,  will not cause the soul eternal damnation.  

Confessions were every Saturday, so you could receive communion on Sunday at church.  Father Conway was a mean priest and NO ONE wanted to go to him for Confession. We would all line up at different confessionals (these were around the sides of the church). A nun would have to force some kids to stand at his confessional.  A priest would sit in the middle and there would be two lines, one person would enter on one side and confess, when he/she left someone would enter on the other side.

Not our church but you see the confessional booths.  On more than one occasion, Father Conway would start screaming, get out of his booth and throw the boy who was confessing out of the church! Thus, everyone that had to go to him to confess...lied.  You made up little venial sins so he would not embarrass the hell out of you.

 After confessing your sins, he would bless you and give you prayers to say at the alter rail, appropriate to the sins you confessed.

Afterwards, all will be forgiven and your soul was clean and you will go straight to heaven if you died at that moment. But just one little tiny venial sin ( I wish I had Laura's hair, O NO, sin of Envy!) you would end up in Purgatory.

~Purgatory, the condition, process, or place of purification or temporary punishment in which, according to medieval Christian and Roman Catholic belief, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for heaven. ~

You can still go to heaven,  I used to pray all the time to get my family out of there. Because, you know, there was no chance to go straight to heaven. 

We were taught, gay people, were going straight to hell. 

You could NOT eat meat on Friday. All Fridays.  Because Jesus died on a Friday and this was a recognition of his sacrifice. I had to look it up because I forgot why. (how stupid..) You had to confess if you did eat meat on Friday.

You had to dress decent for church and females HAD to have their head covered in church. I remembered being told it was because Mary covered her head. Hello..that's how they dressed back then. Males were not to have their head covered.

When you received the host (body of Christ) you had to just have it lay on your tongue and let it dissolve. I'm pretty sure if you chewed it you would go straight to hell with thorns in your eyes. 

If you married a non-catholic, your children HAD to be brought up Catholic.

We were taught ONLY CATHOLICS, probably ROMAN Catholics, went to heaven.  I was so happy I was born Catholic. My cousin Mary became an Episcopalian to marry her husband. I was HORRIFIED she would give up her hope of getting to heaven! 

The Jews killed Jesus. I don't think we were really ever taught that Jesus was a jew.  

I slowly started to question a lot of things. 

It took me awhile, I was an adult before I told my mother that I did not believe in the church any more because I did not know how she would react.   But she was ok about it and we had some good conversations about life after death. 

When my mother was dying, my very religious Aunt Lee (although she drank beer every day and swore like a sailor) called her Bishop  and he gave my mother the sacrament of Extreme Unction right before she died. 

The Last Rites are a religious process for cleansing one of his or her sins before they leave this earth. Since Catholics believe in judgment after death, they want to leave this life as clean souls free from sin. The practice and prayers of the Last Rites protect the recipient on their journey to the afterlife.

 Although I did not believe it any more, it was a comfort to me. 

The Church became more lenient over the years, from what I understand.  My personal opinion is all organized religions are just a business to get your money and keep you like sheep so you continue supporting them.   

The Church works for many people.  I say, whatever gets you through this life,  is fine with me.

St.Fidelis, where I spent many happy and sad moments of my life.

Why old people talk about the past...

 Although I can't speak for all old people, I can speak for myself.  

I talk about the past so the grandkids can understand what it was like to live back then.  But mainly, so it's not forgotten. 

I am sure these stories are boring and they thought..."oh no there she goes again talking about when she was little.."  

When I was a kid, I loved hearing these stories. But I know not every kid likes them. 

My father told me he used to ride his tricycle in their apartment hallway. The wood stairs had metal protectors on the edge of the steps. He fell down the stairs and that is where he got that deep scar by his widows peak. 

My mother and her sister were sleeping with their mother when there was a loud crack from the ceiling above. Their mother pushed them out of the bed just before the ceiling came down that cut their mothers face.  She got to live there rent free till she moved.   It was not unusual for kids to go to the bar when the parent (s) went. My mother and her sister would sit in the corner on top of a table and have a soda and snacks while their mother danced and socialized...etc. Their parents were separated for many years.

So, there is nothing special about the stories I heard, it just tells about their life, how they lived, what they did...

Like how my mother, when she was a teen,  was fired from Woolworths because  a co-worker ordered a soda from the fountain, where she was working, and my mother would not take the 5 cents from him,  a boss saw her and fired her.    I'll probably do a post about each of my parents one day.

It is a way of life that we had, that is gone forever and we try to not let it be forgotten.  Many of my thoughts are.."they will never know what it felt like to..blahblahblah. Or  thank goodness they will never know blahblahblah... 

So, that's why old people talk about the past. And since they have been through so much in their life, they try to pass down advice, so you  don't make the same mistakes. But, making your own mistakes is how you learn.  We try to protect you the best we can..

Going to Grandma's house....well, Apartment.

 When I was little, the only grandparents still alive was my father's mother and my mother's father.

My Grandmother was married to her second husband, Joseph Brincil. They lived in a Tenement  apartment building in Manhattan. 

I have photo's of spending Thanksgiving there. How she managed to cook for everyone is amazing!  Her daughers and daughters in law would also bring dishes to eat and help with the setting up and cleaning up. She had 5 children, they were all married with kids. I know there had to be a kids table. 

My mother said grandma Maude  would get up around 4am to start cooking, so soon after dinner she could be out cold on the floor, drunk but also very tired. We have pictures of that too, and I was told she was playing games with us grandkids. 

I remember playing with my cousins. The Silk boys, Tommy, Kevin and Bobby. DeMonte boys, Tommy and Andy. Symmonds boys, Philip and John and my sisters. 

The apartment was a railroad apartment. You came in the apartment at the kitchen  and you walked straight down a hall through (no doors) bedrooms, usually two and ended at the living room that might have a small side room off the living room. 

At some point we would get packed in the car and the trip home back to the Bronx. 

I don't remember a great deal, large gatherings like that, consumed lots of alcohol. So, lots of laughing and talking loud and smoking. Just about everyone smoked.  

I will have to post about the Grandparents one day. 

Grandma with Grandpa Joe, my dad in a white shirt and Uncle Andy. I think they could be his sons.  In grandma's kitchen.  

sweating in the 1960s

Needless to say, we did a lot of that in the summer time.  There were no air conditioners ,just fans for the most part.  Yes, there were air conditioners but they were expensive and who could afford the electric bill! 

So, windows were open, screens kept the bug out.  An exhaust fan in the kitchen help blow the heat out. But it was always unbearably hot in the kitchen,in the summer.  Window fans offered tiny relief.  

To make mom suffer even more, a sheet was put up in the door way of the kitchen and living room. Plus the swinging door was closed to keep the heat out of the bedrooms making the kitchen an infurno! 

I can still see her, face red and glistening with a wet dish towel around her neck, cooking over the stove. sigh

Livingroom sofa and chairs would be covered in a sheet to sit on, so you sweat on that.  The sheet would be shaken out , turned and put back on for the drier side to be sat on. 

I had this little round trinket box ,mom gave me,  that had powder and a powder puff.  She told me, when you feel too hot (I used to faint in school too)  put some powder on your wrist where the veins are, that will cool the blood and make you feel better.  It was a placebo, but it worked. lol

Beds just had sheets and if you woke too hot and called for mom, she would come, shake out the top sheet, turn it and put if back on the bed, Plus you would turn the pillow to find a dry spot.  You were stuck with a sweaty bottom sheet. 

School was not much better. The windows were all opened, top and bottom but most classrooms did not even have a fan.  Sometimes a nun would say, put your pens down, put your head on the desk and let us rest a bit in the hot classroom.  

Deodorant was awful in the 60s! They were a roll on.  You had this liquid in a plastic bottle with a rolling ball on top so when you put the rolling ball on your underarm it would "roll out" the liquid. But many things would go wrong. To much might come out or it would stick and nothing would roll.  Also it was very COLD in the winter. You are not cold enough you have to put cold deodorant on!  It was also sticky. Just horrid! 

Getting dressed, doing your hair and make up in the summer while sweating was a nightmare! 

I always look back to the past with fond memories, but I never forget how terrible it was during a heat way in the summer. 

I will also do a post on good summer memories, since there were many. 

This was the type of deodorant we had. 

The Great Northeast Blackout-1965

I was 14 and living in College Point, Queens, New York when the power went out.  It was Tuesday, November 9th. I got home from Flushing High School, had dinner and I had just left the house to hang out with my friends down Grantville, 3 blocks away.  I was around the corner  when the lights went out at 5:27pm. 

I just thought it was a local outage. But continuing on my walk, I saw all the lights were out in the area.

When I got to Grantville, friends were there and of course we all talked about the blackout.  Some of us had our radios and we heard it was more than a local outage. 

It was....exciting!. 

To show that I was even weird back then....I was pissed that we had a full moon, because I wanted to see how really dark an area could be with no lights because I read that Jack the Ripper actually killed  with people only being feet away but they never saw him do it. 

We decided to jump into cars and drove to Flushing to see what was going on there. We only went to Mainstreet and Northern Blvd (By the movie house) Because traffic was horrendous, people were trying to direct traffic  to keep it moving with flashlights.  

The lights were out about 13 hours.  People were stuck all over the place, elevator, trains, buildings.  

Of course some people took advantage and robbed stores since the police were all busy and alarms didn't work.   

They said there was a baby boom nine months later. lol

We had more blackouts and brown outs after that, but nothing again like the Great One.

Some games we played

We were always outdoors.  If you were moping around the house you were given a bucket filled with soapy water and a scrub brush and you had to scrub the stoop. 
We rode bikes and we roller skated. Once, two blocks away they newly tarred the road. I probably drove the people on the block nuts because I would roller skate up and down that road for hours and for many days. lol

Besides the usual games of Tag and Hide N go seek, we played many other games usually needing a ball.

We played, War. You drew a big circle (depending on how many kids were playing) with a small circle in the middle.  You divided the circle and named each a country. Germany, Japan, England,  etc.  Kids would pick a country and stand in that spot.
Someone would stand near the middle with a ball and say...I Declare war on...Germany! Then pound the ball in the middle circle and everyone would run,  Germany would catch the ball, step into the little circle and yell, STOP. We all had to freeze. Germany could take (I forget how many) giant steps and then try to hit someone with the ball, who then became the next person to declare war.

Some games were girl games and some were boy games.  
Johnny on a pony was a boy game. You can see why...lol

Girls played jump rope, chinese jump rope and potsie. There was also double dutch jump rope. 

Potsie was a favorite and it was similar to hop scotch.  Lets not forget the hula hoop.

I would play punch ball, I was not good at stick ball. Checkers, chinese checkers, chess, pick up sticks. Hit the stick. 

Marbles, I did not play marbles. 

One of my all time favorite games was nok-hockey! I loved playing this game.  I got this exact game for Christmas one year. Now it goes for over $125! I wish I still had mine.

We played all kinds of board games too. Girls played with dolls, boys with GI Joes and trucks.

These are just some of the games we played, I don't remember seeing one over weight kid on the block, now that I think about it. Nope, not in the Bronx and not in College Point when I was young. In school there were a few chubby kids. 2 or 3 in our class.

We built forts and carts and climbed trees. 

In the summer, after a bath, we were allowed to sit outside on the stoop in our pajama's.  It was one of the few times we just sat. I loved the dusk/evening. Listening to the trees moving in the breeze, hearing frogs and crickets,  and of course, looking at the sky....always looking at the sky.

garter, panty girdle and nylons

More crappy underwear from the 60/70s 
I am sure the expensive underwear were more comfortable than what the average woman wore at a price she could afford.

I guess a garter belt in of its self was not uncomfortable. 

The average garter belt was plain and white. You clipped your nylons on at the end, making sure you did not go past the double top of the nylon or else you had an instant run in your stocking. As you can see you could adjust the length of the garters too.  It would be lumpy under pants, best worn with a dress or skirt. 

If you were in need of a girdle but not the usual heavy duty girdles, you could wear a panty girdle.

Not that comfortable but more light weight than the heavy duties.  And again, lumpy under pants. Although it was called a panty girdle, you did wear panties underneath. 

Nylon were miserable affairs, even when they started to reinforce them at the toes and heels to help prevent runs.

If you got past 2 uses out of one without a snag or run you were doing pretty good. If you saw a snag a dab of nail polish was good to help prevent a run.    Going to high school with a run half way down your leg ending with a dab or nail polish was not an uncommon sight.   

At least the nylons with the seam up the back was going out of style although you could still by them.

Like all these garments they came in different sizes.  Nylons also came in short, medium and tall.  How annoying when you bought the wrong height!  Too short and you had to make the garters longer which might show when you walk because skirts were short back then! 

Or too long you had to clip the garter right onto the nylon and not the double top which almost guarantees a run before you even got to school.

Pantyhose was starting to become popular and more comfortable than anything else being worn. 

That did away with garters and girdles and nylons for the most part. 

 Just like slips and half slips were hardly used any more.  It was not too long ago I got rid of my last half slip.  I had not used it in years,  

A bra from the past was a torture device invented by a man.

I HATED BRA'S! 
They were one of the most uncomfortable  garments made by man. No wonder we burned them in the 1960's! 

First of all think of a bra you are probably wearing right now.  Now think of your bra without an ounce of elastic or stretch material.  You can not imagine how uncomfortable that is.  And to think I could not wait to wear one. My first bra was a 30 AAA. I know why bother but you could tell if a person was wearing a bra or a tee shirt when you wore your St.Fidelis uniform,  and the boys would make fun of you if you wore a Tee.

I went to Flushing and bought my first bra and then called my mother from a phone booth and told her I bought one.  I was not sure how this subject would go down, so I did it this way in case I had to return it. But all my mother said was...what for?  

The back of the bra was about the same today, different hooks to adjust the size.  The bra's were all cotton and shaped into a point.  Yep, a point.  The straps were a BIG problem. You could adjust the strap, the thing is, if you had to reach up for something, the strap was too tight.  But if you left it looser, the strap would fall off your shoulder. A rub burn from the strap was a pretty common thing. Even the part under your bust could cause a rub burn.  I am not sure if expensive bra's had any elastic but I know mine and my families had none.  

No padding in the cups, tissues were a filler. Some girls would cut up undershirts or socks for fillers too because no one's breast filled a cup evenly. I searched but can not find the bra's I wore. Here is just an example.

My bra's were not this pretty and the straps were thinner around the back. But in this picture you can see the clips and how you adjusted the straps.

When elastic was being introduced, they still had those type of clips for adjustment. 

So even though bra's got better, much, much more comfortable, I still never liked wearing them.

AND don't get me started on Nylons and Girdles!  That will be another post. :) 

Fountain Pen

We used only a pencil in the first few years of school.  I think it was 3rd grade that we started using a pen. A fountain pen.
 It was a love hate relationship.  I had my fountain pen for a long time till I left  it on a bus on my way home from school. 

My pen looked like this only a maroon color.

Many things could go wrong with your pen. The split could widen and you had a blotch on your paper. A pen could leak from just about anywhere and destroy books and anything else in a book bag.

But what was worse...was when your ink bottle leaked.

I am pretty sure I have used this exact ink. I kept my bottle inside it's box as more protection if any spilled out.  Filling up your pen was a little dangerous. You could splatter and get the ink on the back of the uniform of the person in front of you. Or on yourself and then have to listen to your mother as she tries to scrub it out of whatever you got it on.

It was not unusual to hand in a paper with some blotches of ink on it.  And just about always some ink on your hands.

If you forgot to tell your mother you are low on ink, you had to beg someone in class to let you use theirs. 

In old cartoons and movies you see a boy, sitting behind a girl,  dipping the girls hair braid into an ink bottle. That never happened in my school. A nun would have slapped him silly if he did that.

Eventually, Ball point pens became more common and we were allowed to use them in school. We were so happy, but that did not last long.

Early ballpoint pens were horrible! 

They did not write with a smooth line of ink, sometimes. 

It might skip, it might not write at all. It might only use up half the ink in them and stop. You always had to have a few pens on you.

Here is the pen.

Some times the pen would only write on parts of the paper which made you wonder why the heck it would not write on certain areas.

They look like some of today's pens, but they are NOT.  They improved with time, thankgoodness.

TV Part Two

When I was 8,  This is the age of my family and what they liked to watch. Of course they liked a wide variety of shows, this is just movies.  We all seem to agree on what TV shows to watch.

Not my family but you get the idea how we all watched TV together. If we were all home, there was not enough room and some of us had to sit on the floor. 

Watching the Ed Sullivan show was fun and most of us watched it on Sunday Night because he had a wide variety of acts that appealed to all of us. 


MOVIES
Mother- Westerns, War Movies, Drama's

Father- War Movies, Westerns, Drama's

Peggy 17,  Romance, Drama's 

Barbara 15, Romance, musicals

Me 8, Science Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, sometimes Drama

Charlie 7, War movies, westerns

Thomas, to young to count.

Everyone liked a good mystery movie including me, so that was not much of a problem either UNLESS it was opposite  a War or Western Movie. 
I liked all the Science Fiction, Thriller movies besides Mystery movies.  

If I wanted to watch something that was opposite a War movie and my father was home, I was not going to watch my movie. No matter how much I begged.   Now if I wanted to watch something opposite a Western movie, I had a 50-50 chance of my mother letting me watch my movie.

My father worked nights and slept during the day. So it was only a problem with him on his days off. 

We liked comedies, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, I liked some drama's but I was not a fan till I was much older and watched some of the old movies,  watch any Gregory Peck movie, nothing gets better than him. 

The Best times were movies that only showed once a year. (The VCR ruined this).  When the Wizard of Oz, or The Miracle on 42nd street  or A Christmas Carol or Charlie Browns Christmas was going to be on TV, you prepared for it.  
You were excited for weeks leading up to the movie.
  You made sure you would be home to watch it, popcorn was made (jiffy popcorn made on the stove) and everyone watched it together. 
Those are very warm memories. sigh

We don't have one picture of us all in the livingroom, watching TV. It's a good thing I have it all in my mind...

TV-Part One

I asked my mother once, did you have TV when you were little and she said no.  We had radio. Radio? How did you live without TV!? 

So, the year I was born (or shortly before) we got our first TV in the Bronx. 

You can see our first TV here, in 1951.  The stand it's on came with us to Queens when we moved. It was too big for this TV and I wonder if a radio used to sit on top of it. 

Here is a TV I remember the most when we moved to College Point, with my brother Charlie.  Notice it is the same stand in the above picture. Now that stand looks too small for this TV.

The picture was not much better in person. The rabbit (antenna) ears sat on top.  The remote control was not invented yet  

So if you were walking within eye sight of my father he might  tell you to move the antenna, to get a clearer picture or change the channel. 

 Many times we would have to  stand there moving the antenna, complaining that we have to go out! 

Aluminum foil would be put on the tips of the antenna to try to get a clearer picture.

A bad picture had ghosts.  I had to look it up to try to explain it. lol

In television, a ghost is a replica of the transmitted image, offset in position, that is super-imposed on top of the main image. It is often caused when a TV signal travels by two different paths to a receiving antenna, with a slight difference in timing.

There were other knobs to turn to try to tune for a  better picture , but it was hard work.

TV programs did not stay on all night. I don't remember when it went off. Maybe around 1am  with the Flag blowing in the wind.   Maybe it came on at 5am. 

It was many years later that color TVs came out, with remotes!  I was married a few years  before we could buy one. 

Next I'll talk about having ONE tv with 4 kids and 2 adults. 

Banging on the pipes

In 1971 Tony Orlando and Dawn recorded a song called, Knock three times. 
In Apartment buildings this was one way for kids to communicate. The things we had to do before THE Internet. lol

My friend Martin lived a floor below and sometimes we would tap out messages. We'd use a utensil, I used a spoon.  Probably what we never thought about was...the whole building could hear us tapping out. 

The kitchen had the best pipes and that's where I remember sending messages from.  

If I got too crazy with the tapping, I'd get yelled at by my mother.

Sigh, that was a cute short and sweet memory. 

The Ice Cream Man -1950s

Like all kids, we looked forward to the ice cream man in the 1950s in the Bronx. If we were out playing when he came we would scream up at the window for ma to throw down money. That is, if we were allowed to have ice cream. 

Money would be thrown down in a hanky that was tied or pinned.  If she didn't hear us screaming we would have to run up the flights of stairs (8 in my case) burst in the door screaming the ice cream man is here!

This is how we got ice cream back in the stone age. 😄

Yes, a push cart. I remember we had a nice ice cream man on our block.  Sometimes he gave out little gifts to the kids.  One time he gave me a big chalkware piggy bank! I was So Happy!

My mother put it on top of her bureau. Soon I had a nickel to put in it! I am saving money!

Even sooner I wanted the nickel to buy candy.  I grabbed the pig...and dropped it. 😢

It cracked all over the floor, but I got my nickel while my mother swept up my piggy bank. I hounded the ice cream man for awhile but he never gave me another piggy bank. sigh

At times he would run out of ice cream.  Just on our long block, with apartment (tenement) buildings on both sides of the road,  would have hundreds of kids. 

After all, we were the baby boomers.

My First PC

The 1990s was an exciting time. People were buying PCs, Personal Computers. My sister, Barbara, had one. My daughter had an old one. 

I....did not have one! 

My sister would "see" my daughter on line and ask me if I wanted her to send Ag a message from me.  I had no idea what she was talking about. "You see her online? Do you see her face? How do you see her?!" 

I wanted to "see" her online! 

One of my bosses mentioned he was getting a new computer. I asked if he was getting rid of his old one, I would buy it. He said, let me talk to my wife.

Every time he came I would ask, he would forget to ask his wife.  I was almost begging for it!  He finally told me they were giving it to their niece. 

I went home. They were selling Gateway Computers on QVC.  I bought one. I will do what I never did before. Take money out of my CD to buy it. 

I called Ag and told her. After we hung up, I called QVC and bought her a computer. 

There was no way I would be able to enjoy my PC if Ag was still on her crappy old PC.  

I am not sure what they cost back then. I want to say $1200, but that could have been for both of them.

It looked like this.  I had a great/frustrating time learning this  new technology! 

I got  to see Ag and my sister online and learn about codes  and html. I said, I will not just do email on this expensive machine, I was going to learn how to do things! 

One of the first things I did was find, Ancient worlds and join that group which was my second home  for Leah Enkidu.  I learned codes and html, I could make webpages.  I got a second job online! Stories for another day. 

My first ring

On my 8th birthday in 1959, my sister Barbara gave me a cloth handkerchief  for my birthday. I looked at it and thanked her. 

But of course I was so disappointed!  I stared at it a bit and then turned to put it in my  dresser draw, when she yelled at me. LOOK IN the HANDKERCHIEF!  There was a ring! 

A few weeks ago she brought home a ring sizer and we all played with it to see what size fingers we had.  I had no idea it was to measure me for the ring. 

The ring was gold, with a small heart shaped amethyst stone. I just loved it.

This was not my ring, but you get an idea of what it looked like.  I wore it all the time. 

Then one day at school I looked down at my hand and....THE STONE WAS MISSING! 

I was heart sick, I search all around my desk and the class room. But, who knows when I lost it. 

I kept the ring and did not get rid of it until the 1970s (?) when gold prices went UP and people were selling their gold.  

Bronx Apartment building

I was born  in the south Bronx. We lived on Bergen Avenue on the 4th floor of a 5 floor walk up,  apartment (tenement) building. I was the 3rd of six children. An older brother, Johnny, died two years before I was born  at the age of 4.

We had a 3 room apartment.  How my mother kept it neat and clean with 4 kids is amazing, but she did.  We had a fire escape running up the front of the building. It was there we would sleep on occasion in the summer.  

We called the roof, Tar Beach. You would sun yourself up there, there were clothes lines for the summer. I don't know why we never slept up there.  I guess sleeping on a fire escape infront of your apartment would be more....private.

We were a block away of the 3rd Ave. train line.  When we moved to Queens it would be hard to sleep without hearing those trains. And we had to get used to the airplanes from LaGuardia Airport. 

This was not my apartment house, but you get the idea.  At this time, the only black people on our block were the custodians and their family. They lived in the basement. 

Those are the fire escapes we would sleep on in the summer. 

There were 3 or 4 (can't remember for sure) apartments on each floor.  My Aunt (mother's sister) and Uncle and cousins lived right next door to us. When we moved to Queens they lived downstairs in our two family house. 

The rooms by today's standards were pretty small.  Small kitchen.  A livingroom with a wide archway into the bedroom which was in front of the house. A tiny room off the bedroom was my bedroom that I shared with my brother. My sisters slept on a pull out sofa in the living room.

No elevators so we walked up and down, 8 flights of stairs.  It must have been a nightmare dragging the carriages  up and down and food shopping must have been fun. 

That is a dumbwaiter, every floor had one.  You would pull a cord to bring it to your floor and you put your garbage on it. Needless to say it smelled wonderful.  It always scared me a bit. 

Playing outside we would yell up if we wanted money or something and your mother would wrap the money in paper and throw it down. If we wanted to cross the street we would yell until mom came to the window and crossed us. 

We were NOT allowed to let any other mother cross us.  Sometimes to shut us up a mother would try to cross the kid, but we were not allowed to let them.

There were PLENTY of kids on the block and we always had something to do and someone to play with. 

A fond memory was when it rained hard enough we got our bathing suit on and floated popsicle  sailboats or just popsicle sticks along the gutter till it went into the sewer. Yep we would play in the rain in the dirty gutter in the summer time. lol

It was the best of times....it was the worst of times....