Part 2

We might have stayed longer in Ireland or remained there indefinitely but for the rumblings of war in Europe. The American consulate warned all US citizens to return home while there was time. I often wonder what would have happened had my parents not heeded that warning. As it turned out we would have been safe where we were, in Dooneen. But how, I wonder, would my line of history have developed had they not come home? In more recent years I learned that there was some protracted discussion in the late 1930s as to what would happen next. My father wanted to stay in Ireland and continue to be a farmer. My mother insisted that her children would be educated in the United Starts rather in the Irish National School system. At the time, she was right.

 

We returned to the United States in 1938 on the same ship that took us to Ireland: the SS Manhattan. I believe that at the time it was the flagship of the United States Lines. My memory of what happened immediately upon our return is fuzzy so I will check this out with my sister Mary and our cousins Mary, Helen and Beatie. It seems we moved in with Beatrice on West 138^th Street until my parents found an apartment at 168 Morningside Avenue. By contrast, I have vivid memories of hearing about the aviation adventures of Wrong Way Corrigan at that time In September of that year, I was enrolled in the first grade at St. Joseph School (Harlem) directly across the street from where we lived. St. Joseph’s is still there and is still functioning as a school. The school was run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, (not now) and during my tenure, Sister Mary Petronila and Sister Mary Fernandela served as Principal. Other nuns I remember were Sisters Wuna, Morilla, Gratian, Dolleur, and Eileen. St. Joseph Church was a block and a half south of where we lived ,at the corner of 125^th Street and Morningside Avenue. These details are important because for the next eight years, these landmarks would pretty much define my life.

 

Our home was a five-storey walk-up with two railroad flats on each floor. We lived in the south flat on the fourth floor from the summer of 1938 until the summer of 1942. One entered the apartment at the rear, stepping into the large kitchen-dining area with a bathroom even more to the rear. A railroad flat is so-called because the rooms were connected like the cars on a railroad train. You could see through the bedrooms from the kitchen to the living room if there were no portiers hung. The smallest room, with a doorway (no door)and a window opening on the kitchen was my room. The next smallest room was my sisters’ and the third room was my parents. The living room, or parlor, was at the front of the house facing Morningside Avenue. From the windows at that vantage point my mother could watch us cross the street to go to school and watch us again when school was dismissed. The apartment house was on DC electricity. Direct Current meant electrical appliances. The city, and perhaps the country, was in a transition from DC to Alternating Current, AC, for a number of technical reasons that have no place in this essay. The importance here is that a householder had to be very careful when buying a new-fangled electric iron, or a toaster or a radio because if you plugged on in the improper electrical socket, you would burn out the appliance and maybe even start a fire. While we were there, the power was generated nearby and the power would service only certain fixtures. Then the apartment was converted from DC to AC. Before the conversion we had an old Atwater Kent floor model radio which worked on DC only and could bring in programs, with lots and lots of static, and was difficult to listen to. After the conversion, Westinghouse in collaboration with Consolidated Edison came around door to door selling a package of floor lamp, tabletop radio and toaster and iron that could operate on AC or DC, for a bargain price of $19.95, payable over a year. My sister Mary says the price was $24.

 

These apartments came furnished with an ice box only, and this led to certain restrictions in the way we lived. When you shopped for food, you bought what you needed. Milk was delivered in one-quart bottles of pasteurized, but not homogenized milk, or you could buy it at the grocery store. We bought our milk by the quart at the grocery store because it cost a penny or two less than delivery milk. You could see how much cream was in the milk since the cream would float on top. To use it as whole milk, you simply shook the bottle; to use the cream, you would spoon it out from the undisturbed bottle. With vitamin enriched homogenized milk, I’m not too sure what you’re getting. Ice was delivered every few days in the winter and daily in the summer. The iceman made his rounds in a horse drawn wagon and delivered a “ten cent piece,” a cube about 12 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches right into your ice box. My mother always wrapped the ice cube in newspaper to insulate and slow down the melting. Eggs and butter were bought across the street in a store specializing in those items. Butter came to the egg store in a furkin, a wooden tub that was returned to the dairy to be refilled after it was emptied. Furkins were a very desired property to a young boy because with a little modification and a membrane of some tightness stretched across the top, the furkin became an acceptable drum. Butter was cut in a piece depending on how much the buyer wanted. We bought eggs in that store until my father started bringing eggs home from Hearns on Fulton Street. My mother usually shopped on 125^th Street. For food it was Weisbeckers, for clothes it was Blumsteins. When we went to Weisbeckers, my mother would buy meat and the butchers would offer us (the children) frankfurters from the case. We ate them “raw” and they were far more delicious than any hot dog I’ve tasted since. From these recollections it must be clear to the reader that I have always had an interest in food. It’s easy for me to remember that my mother would stop at the butcher shop next to Mack’s bar and grill on Saturday morning to get one half pound of Tobin’s sausage in a cellophane package These would be kept until Sunday morning after Mass. Ordinarily, the package would contain eight sausages, but on a rare occasion, the same half pound might contain nine or ten. Eight sausages meant two sausages each for my mother, two sisters and me. And we enjoyed them. If my father was home an eight pack would still do, since my mother would choose not to eat them that day.

 

During the early years in this home, my father owned a grocery store on Amsterdam Avenue near 109^th street, which meant he arose early and came home late. Often, we were already in bed and asleep when he came home. I don’t know how long he had the store but with the Great Depression still on, his allowing patrons to run up “the book” charges, helped put him out of business in a year or so. Then, with the help of Robert Clark he found work as a bartender at the Old Mill Inn in Mattatuck, Long Island, and later with General Motors in New Haven Connecticut. In both these jobs, my father came home one day a week.

 

Upon entering school in September of 1938, I had a brogue which endeared me to some of the Sisters but drew teasing from some of my fellow students. I was in class over the years at St. Joseph’s with blacks, we called them Negroes or Colored then, Indians from India, Mexicans, Filipinos, Brazilians, Cubans, Spaniards, Italians, Germans and lots and lots of Irish-Americans. I’m aware of this now, but was not so much aware of the differences then. It never dawned on me not to play with someone who was different from me, nor fail to invite him to my home. The same was true for Mary and Kathleen. Though we lived in Harlem, I never knew anyone to think in racial terms. We lived across the hall from a family named Spafford. Mary was a friend of their daughter Eleanor who attended public school. I have no idea what religion they were but I can remember thinking there were two kinds of people in my little world, Catholics and Publics—this to be determined by the school they attended. Eleanor went to public school. One day we came home from wherever we were visiting and there was a bushel basket of live blue point crabs, covered in wet newspaper at our door. We enjoyed a feast of crabs and the next day learned Mr. Spafford had come home from crabbing with several bushels. After that we were more friendly with the Spaffords.

 

As time went on my brogue lessened, probably because I sang in the children’s choir and was selected by Professor Pangrac later to sing with the adult choir. Since the time I lost the brogue, very few people through my life have ever been able to figure out where I come from based on my speaking voice. Many are surprised that I am a New Yorker.

 

Grammar school was a unique time for me and rather than tell about it year by year, what follows is more episodic. All in all I was a fair scholar but felt no need to study or excel. I was happy within myself and managed to accomplish all the tasks I was assigned without much effort. I learned my math tables with little or no effort, learned to write in a near proximity to the Palmer method, loved geography and history as most daydreamers do, and when tested, managed to get by. By contrast, Mary studied every night and routinely earned the General Excellence medal each month. I cannot count the number of times I sat with my mother and the nun for my grade and heard it said “He can do excellent work if he only tries. Mary does. He just doesn’t try. What are we going to do?”

 

Well they tried everything and nothing seemed to work. Every month I had it pointed out to me by my mother that Mary had once again earned the General Excellence medal and I had barely gotten by. From time to time, another girl would win the medal and Mary would be tearful and my mother consoling. I was smart enough not to make snide remarks at these times and thus managed to stay alive. One year, after listening to my mother month after month, I made up my mind to get the medal. I’m pretty certain this happened in the Sixth Grade because Mary was still in St. Joseph’s. I pulled out the stops and earned the medal for the first and only time. The sister’s were so amazed and so compassionate for all the suffering my mother must have gone through to get me to try, that after I turned the medal in one month later, they retired that specific medal and gave it to mother. I was unaware of this at the time. I learned about the medal not too many years ago at my mother’s house on 242^nd Street when she offered me the medal, my birth certificate and other collectibles. Unfortunately, I did not take the medal. She earned it.

 

The sixth grade stands out in my mind for one other important happening. Mary had joined the George Bruce Branch of the New York Public library as soon as she was eligible. I went to the library many times with her and learned that there were things called Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and Boy’s Life. While she sought out real books, I settled in with these magazines and found inspiration in them. As soon as I was eligible, I joined the library and continued to read the monthly publications. I may have, by then, extended my reading list to include National Geographic and other publications dealing with exploring. As one of our sixth grade assignments, our class was to go to the library, pick out a book that interested us, read the book and then write a book report on it. Needless to say, I spent my library time with the magazines I thought were great and as the due date on the assignment drew closer, I sat down and wrote a book report on “Bob Strong-Boy Fish,” including the name of the author, publisher, publication date and number of pages. The report covered all the required areas, and, As I recall, was favorably received by my teacher. Consequently, I received a good mark for my effort. I knew they would not accept a book review of Boy’s Life so I made the whole thing up. I mention this as a caution to you, dear reader, as you move ahead with this autobiographical sketch. A word to the wise…

 

The “super” in our house was Mr. Hallenan, who lived with his wife and children on the first floor, south. I went to school with his son Tommy from the time I started at St. Joseph’s and since we lived in the same apartment building we very naturally became friends and spent a lot of time playing together. We had other friends on the block, but we were closer with ourselves than with the others. Tommy was the first friend I made in America. Tommy was run over by a taxicab and killed in front of our house sometime around Christmas when we were in the second grade. This was my first experience with death and the first time I had lost someone close. He was waked in the parlor of his home and was buried three days later after a funeral mass at St. Joseph’s which all the students attended. It was a long time before I became that friendly with anyone again.

 

St. Joseph School was typical of schools at the time. It was located in Harlem and was intended to serve the Germanic residents who historically had lived there. One of the important organizations in the church was the Marien Verrien. I’m sure Dr. Albert, our pastor at the time or Father George B. Kreidel, Dr Albert’s successor, knew what Marien Verrien meant. I don’t, but I suspect it involved devotion to the Virgin Mary. My mother chose to join The Christian Mothers. When we began school, there were sixteen classes going on at the same time. There would be 1A and 1B starting in September, and another 1A and 1B starting in January. This was straight through all eight grades. When I graduated in 1946, there were only eight classes, all of them small. There were sixteen in my graduating class. In 1938, lower grades were relegated to the back building which faced either the garden of the convent on 127^th Street or overlooked the schoolyard on 126^th Street. The upper grades enjoyed the front building with rooms facing Morningside Avenue. Lower grade students sat two together at student desk couplings, spaced three across the room. Each desk had a small round hole in the upper right hand corner and an indentation across the top portion where a pencil could be parked. When we arrived in the third grade, that hole was filled with an inkwell and we began to learn to write with stick pen and neb. By 1946 we barely filled the front building.

 

In the lower grades, students learned to write with pencils and used a lined pulp paper that has a second line for the tops of the lower case letters. Palmer was the method we were taught and around the classrooms-from the first to the eighth grade- the border over the blackboard contained a display of the alphabet, capital and small letters in the Palmer script. There were blackboards on two sides of the room. Penmanship was stressed and enforced.

 

Sister Eileen was young and very likable third grade teacher. As we neared Easter of that school year, I went shopping one day on 125thStreet with my mother. In one store, maybe it was Woolworth’s, they were selling baby white rabbits. I told my mother I wanted to get one for Sister Eileen . I’m sure my mother said no at the first airing of my wish. However, I’m not sure if it was on that trip or on a subsequent trip, she caved in to my whining and bought one. I proudly presented this wonderful Easter gift to Sister Eileen and she accepted it. I don’t think any student had ever offered such a gift in her short experience as a Sister. But I’m sure there must have been an uproar when Sister Eileen returned to the convent that day with her rabbit because not too long later, a week or two at the most, my mother was summoned to the school to reclaim the rabbit. The rabbit, Tommy was the name Eileen gave it, lived with us for a short while and later was taken out to my Aunt Margaret’s house in Westhampton, Long Island, to live out its days.

 

Sister Gratian was the music teacher and she would travel from class to class on a schedule to fulfill the syllabus requirement for music education. She traveled with a portable organ and a stack of song books. Students were selected to carry Sister’s organ from one class to the next, and many times, I was selected for that honor. She must have been a Celt because much of what she taught us came from the Irish, Scot, and Welsh traditions. We did learn some Verdi, Wagner and other composers, but only as needed. From this part of the curriculum, I was recruited for the children’s choir that sang at the nine o’clock mass on Sunday. It was an honor to be selected. In time, I was recruited for the adult choir, which sang at the eleven o’clock mass, by Professor Pangrac, a mostly bald man with a long nose, small oval glasses and a whole-being feel for music. I enjoyed singing with the adults, especially since I was the only young person in the choir, and we sang more complex music. After some time with the adult group, Professor Pangrac spoke to Sister Gratian and she, in turn, spoke to my mother about my getting a scholarship for me to sing and study with the Metropolitan Opera school. This meant travelling downtown two or three days a week after school and getting home late. My mother declined the offer since she felt she had to be home when her children returned from school, and I kept singing with the adult choir. (I often wonder what would have happened it she had accepted.) I also sang and acted in school productions of the annual St. Patrick’s “Irish Night” at the Henry Hudson Hotel, and enjoyed it.

 

We were living on Morningside Avenue when World War II broke out. I can remember my parents listening to the radio to hear the progress of the war and not understanding what they were listening to and why. Names like Norman J. Kaltenbourne and Gabriel Heater were nightly visitors to our living room through the radio speaker. Then one Sunday in December 1941 the radio told us that some six thousand miles away, the Japanese had bombed the American Navy in Pearl Harbor. Later, President Franklin Roosevelt would make his famous “Day that shall live in infamy” speech and Congress voted us into the war. One fear our family shared is that my father would be drafted into the Army. He was forty years old and was classified 3C, which meant he was married, with a family to support, but was otherwise fit and able for conscription. Father Francis O’Donnell, one of our parish priests left to serve as an Army Chaplain. I thought that the red haired priest was about as old as my father, and if he could be drafted (which he wasn’t) so could my father. By this time, and with the help of George Shippe, chief of police in Arlington, New Jersey, a friend of my (great) Aunt Kitty, my father was working on the docks as a longshoreman. This work was considered “essential” for the war effort and with a 3C classification, there was little likelihood that my father would ever be drafted. Shipping was supplying needed food and arms to our allies, and besides the work was hard and dirty. My father had really no interest in going to war, and he stayed working on the docks until his death in 1961.

 

When it came to radio, my father preferred to listen to Father Coughlin and his program of Social Justice rather than the news. He also bought Father Coughlin’s newspaper “Social Justice.” As an Irish immigrant, he heard a familiar message in what Father Coughlin had to say. For entertainment, he enjoyed listening to Senator Ford, Harry Hirschfield and Joe Laurie Jr. on a program “:Can You Top This?” During the war, though, he would not miss Gabriel Heater’s evening news program. I can still remember Gabriel Heater’s opening lines: “Ah there’s good news tonight” or “There bad news tonight.”

 

Aunt Beatrice, whom we called Mother, moved to 40 Convent Avenue, a few blocks north of our home. I think Morningside Avenue changed to Convent Avenue at 127^th Street. Beatrice had a large apartment and took in boarders. (Beatrice was also reputed to have manufactured a potent “bathtub gin” back in prohibition days} Tommy Gallagher lived there, as did Dave O’Connell, Jack Barry and I suppose there were others. Beatrice’s daughters Helen, Mary and Beatie lived there as well as my Aunt Eileen. I’m not sure if Elizabeth stayed with Beatrice or not. The Daniels girls all graduated from St. Joseph School but since they were so much older than us, the only one we were in school with was Beatie. Aunt Eileen “took sick” sometime in 1940 and was attended by her sisters. To this day I cannot say what Eileen was suffering from because no one would say. Even years later, my aunts who were in attendance would not say what afflicted Eileen or caused her death. As a seven-year-old I found this curious and continued to ask questions. I received no answers to my questions but was thus introduced to the Irish silent treatment of subjects that were not to be discussed—especially with children. During the summer that year, we spent most of our days at Beatrice’s, though, in my case, not necessarily at the house. People always came up with things for me to do to keep me out of the way. That summer I signed up for a “plot” at the park on St. Nicholas’ Terrace and learned to grow things in the ground and cultivate a little crop of flowers and vegetables. Eileen died that September, my second experience of death. Unlike Tommy Hallanan who was waked at home, Eileen was waked at a funeral parlor. (Was it O’Leary’s or Cashman’s?} This was another new experience in that for three days there was an endless parade of relatives and friends of the family coming to the funeral parlor to pay their respects. On this occasion, I met many of my relatives for the first time and was introduced to the social aspect of death. One year later my Great Aunt Beesie Quinn, my mother’s aunt, (my Great Aunt Kitty’s sister) was buried from the same funeral parlor, and I got to meet some of my relatives again.

 

During these early years I was in awe of the number of people we called family. We traveled to visit relatives, relatives traveled to visit us, we would meet at weddings and funerals, first communions and conformations, baptisms and, of course, funerals. Two things all our relatives had in common at that time, was that we were all relatively poor working class people and, of course, Irish. Our Aunt Elizabeth (Gallagher) and cousin Barbara Naughton,(later McFadden) both of whom worked at Schraft’s would come by on their day off, usually Sunday.. It was Barbara who introduced us to Schraft’s coffee ice cream. Kathleen Naughton O’Brien and her sister Peggy Naughton Farley were also frequent visitors, as were Beatrice, Tommy, and (grand) Aunt Kitty. Since my room was the first off the kitchen, I spent many Friday nights, supposedly asleep, listening to the conversation, the stories and the songs. This is how I learned the words to so many Irish songs and got inklings of so many family stories. I suspect Kathleen and Mary, in the next room to mine, listened as well, but when everybody is supposed to be asleep, you never know.

 

Another aspect of our life growing up on Morningside Avenue involved the church. As students at St. Joseph School we attended the nine o’clock Mass on Sunday and attended Mass every school day during Lent and Advent. As if this were not enough Catholicism, my mother took us every Monday to the Miraculous Medal Novena, every Wednesday for the St. Joseph Devotions and on Friday evenings for the Rosary. During May and October, we prayed the Rosary every night at home on our knees, and during Lent we were present at all the special services that were observed in those days, culminating in the Three Hours Agony on Good Friday. We often had had priests and brothers from various mission and home orders visit the school to tell us about their lives and try to recruit us. Some of the students were selected to participate in pageants dressed as nuns and priests. Mary and Kathleen were routinely selected for these roles from time to time. I was never asked.

 

We lived on Morningside from 1938 until 1942 when we moved to 65 LaSalle Street, the house next to the house where I lived as a newborn. I was nine years old and was starting the fifth grade when we moved.

 

During his time with General Motors in New Haven, Connecticut, my father made $17 for a six-day week. Our rent on Morningside Avenue was $17 a month and then there were charges for electricity and gas. Tuition at St. Joseph’s was $1 a month for each child and uniforms were required. All parishioners were expected to contribute to the weekly and monthly collection at the church. My father had to pay room and board in New Haven and needed money to buy a round-trip railroad ticket each week. We were never short of food or clothing, but we enjoyed no luxuries. Not a Christmas passed that we did not receive underwear, socks, and other necessary clothing wrapped as presents. We also received gifts appropriate for our age. But necessities and frivolities were wrapped the same.

 

In Aunt Beatrice’s house there was an apartment phone and switchboard (Cathedral8-4000). (Great)Aunt Kitty always had a private telephone at her apartment at 575 Riverside Drive. The number was EDgecombe 4-6494. These were the only telephones I was aware of in the family. Both Beatrice and Kitty had gas operated refrigerators and Jim Farley (husband of Peggy Naughton) had a car,a1935 Cord, which my father borrowed to drive the family to Westhampton. My father also borrowed a Lincoln Zepher for the same trip, but I’m not sure who owned it. Out on Long Island, my Aunt Marion had a home, a car, a telephone and all the luxuries befitting the wife of a wealthy man. She had a Buick convertible. My Aunt Margaret and her husband Jack Quinn had a car but they lived “out in the country” in part of Westhampton Beach. During the war every car owner was on strict gasoline rationing, but with Bob Clark as an uncle, this did not present a problem for my father. I can remember going out to Queens with my father to visit his cousin Michael Hart, and visiting garages where both men proceeded to kick tires to evaluate the worth of a car. Regrettably, I have lost track of Michael Hart.

 

The world was a different place then, seen through the eyes of a child.