Why A Blog Now???!!!

CHILDHOOD!!!

After some eleven blog posts about my family's roots, I ponder where to go from here.  I've turned to my wife and friends for counsel on this, in discussing my life as a basis for a memoir, I did not want to sound self-serving or self-promoting.  I see enough of that on Facebook and other social media.  I guess I'm interested at an introspective look at myself and how I have come to have certain values, biases, and, yes, even a weird sense of humor!  I also want to respect the privacy of my wife and children, as well as avoiding blowing my horn about them like a helicopter parent.  So I guess I'll rely on memories, but not in chronologic order.  I just want to relate events that to me were special or were highlights of my life.  In doing so, I wish to encourage all my readers to do the same, whether in the written or spoken word, and to pass them down to your kids if you have them.  If not, just enjoy them yourselves.  I have already discussed my parents, Bea and Monroe, from whom I can say I gained much of who I am during my formative years.

Over the past 73 years, I can count seven places I've lived in:
Mount Vernon, NY,  Canton, NY,  Brussels, Belgium, Lasne-Chapelle-St. Lambert, Belgium, Syracuse, NY, Akron, Ohio and Rochester, NY.  Despite living in Rochester for 40 years, Mount Vernon will always be "home" and this is a perfect place to start with my earliest memories.

MOUNT VERNON

Back when I was growing up, Mount Vernon was known as the "City of Homes".  It's a city just north of the Bronx, with New Rochelle and Bronxville to its north, Yonkers to its west and Pelham and Pelham Manor to its east.

We lived on the South Side

  I already showed you a photo of the house we rented in an earlier post.  Despite it being in the high-end County of Westchester, it is probably more like its neighbor to the south.  Nevertheless, many of my relatives in the Bronx, Queens and Long Island often referred to me as "the Westchester snob".  I don't know what I did to deserve that moniker but it's never too late to say I'm sorry.  What I didn't realize during my early years was that Mt. Vernon was probably one of the most segregated cities in the US being divided by a railroad track, the New Haven Railroad, that went right through its middle, creating "the other side of the tracks".  We lived on the south side which had more minorities and working class residents.  For me, it was a wonderful neighborhood where we played in the schoolyard, empty lots and on the street, with wonderful friends, Louie Lobes, my best buddy, Louis DiMicco, Dick Sabot and Pete Criscuolo.  We even let Katie Zale play with us.  They all became successful in life...doctors, judges, professors and economists. There was a French kid down the street with whom I'd play despite our language difference and, of course, as I've previously mentioned, my first girlfriend, Kathy.  She was Greek and spoke broken English.  As I was around five and she was around seven, the romance didn't continue, but I was already learning some words in foreign languages!  I found a photo (below) of Kathy and me.

Young Love!

 I was particularly fond of Mrs. Lobes's Italian cooking and had a bad habit of showing up at their house around dinnertime to "see if Louie could come out to play".  Of course, I'd be invited in to partake of heavenly manicotti, lasagna and meatballs!!
My street, Bedford Avenue, was a conglomerate of ethnicities including Jews, Italians, Irish, African-Americans and the occasional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.  The Fuliari's lived next door and I would spend time with old Mrs. Fuliari on her porch as she sat in her rocking chair.  One day when I was around 6 or 7, I went over there but she wasn't there in her usual place, the same lovely porch we would go to on a summer evening, looking in their living room window to watch the only television on the block.  That night, in my bed in my darkened room, I was awakened by a creaking sound.  When I looked up across the room, I saw an old woman, all in white, rocking, smiling at me.  I screamed and ran down the hall to the safety of my parent's bedroom.  The next morning, my mom told me that Mrs. Fuliari had passed away.  Whether this was, in fact, a ghost or a bad dream,  I always thought she had come to say goodbye to me.

African-Americans were starting to buy homes in the neighborhood as well...Sidney Poitier, Ossie Davis, and his wife, Ruby Dee.  When I was in 8th grade, I was a Lieutenant in the AAA Safety Patrol and was "stationed" on the corner of Bedford and 4th street, just outside my home.  It was my responsibility to safely cross pedestrians, mostly students on the way to our wonderful neighborhood school, Minnie S. Graham.

My boyhood home and the corner where I got to "save lives"!!!

Minnie S. Graham School whose motto was "Nothing without Labor"

On a rare occasion, Mr. Poitier would walk his little daughter to school and, of course, became one of my customers.  I remember once holding my hand out in front of this tall, kind gentleman and saying "Hold it , Mr. Poitier, a car is coming".  He would patiently wait for my command to cross after it passed...I still like to tell people I saved Sidney Poitier's life!

"You can cross now, Mr. Poitier!"

Ossie and Ruby were active in the community and Miss Dee would occasionally come into our 4th grade classroom and read poetry to us such as Langston Hughes.  When I was in high school, Ossie agreed to stand on a ladder as the Starkeeper in a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel", while I poured dry ice at the foot of the ladder to create "clouds" to create Heaven...while he wore a white gown and wings!  Many years later, I saw him receive the Kennedy Center Honors on TV and sent him a congratulatory letter.  Weeks later, I received a Christmas card from "Ossie and the posse".  Unfortunately, he passed away shortly after.  Two months later, I received the same card again!  It had a photo of Mr. Davis and his whole family at the Kennedy Center.

Ruby and Ossie

Mount Vernon was a cultural power house due to its diversity and proximity to New York City.  My school graduated students like EB White, the author of "Charlotte's Web", "Stuart Little", "This is New York", not to forget the bible for all writers, "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White.  Art Carney would return to Graham School for reunions and we'd all be lined up outside to catch a glimpse of "Ed Norton" of the Honeymooners!

Art Carney..."Va Va Va Voom, Ralphie"!

  Dick Clark was another graduate from my high school.  My cousin Norma, his friend, tells me he was known as Mr. Rah Rah for his school spirit and his ability to arrange dances...precursors of American Bandstand.

"Mr. Rah Rah"

E.B.White

Sometime in the 1950's, Mt.Vernon celebrated its Centennial, a week long event with parades, fairs and celebrations.  One Julius LaRosa of Arthur Godfrey Show fame, a resident, was named the honorary Mayor for the week.

"Mayor" LaRosa

 Speaking of parades, every year we had Band Day where every school in the city from Elementary schools to High Schools would march down Fourth Avenue, a glorious day each year with twirlers, bands and uniforms of every color of the spectrum.  Every band rehearsed for weeks before, marching around their own neighborhoods.

Every town has a certain amount of folklore but this is a true tale that actually happened in our city:  Mount Vernon had an epidemic of noisy grackles that had invaded the city limits.  The city's leaders tried everything and, as a last resort, brought in an "expert" from the Kansas, a mysterious Mr. Standke otherwise known nationally as "Bird Man".  He carried a mysterious black valise that was his anti-grackle weapon.  No one ever saw the inside or had any idea what he did...but he took a lot of money from the city!  I can't remember if the grackles disappeared, but the grackle hunter left the city limits a wealthier man!

There was alway something exciting going on...Eddie Feigner and the softball wizards, The King and his Court would come to town every year and put on an amazing exhibit of their skills.  There was always a big wrestling show at Memorial Field, not far from my house.  One time I was walking to Bob's candy store and a big, fancy car pulled up next to me: "Hey Kid, how do we get to Memorial Field?"  Four big guys with long hair were in the car including "Dr." Jerry Graham and Antonina Rocca, world famous "wrestlers" who were all scheduled to fight each other that night...in the same car!

"Hey kid"...Jerry and Antonina
 

Unfortunately, the city of Mt. Vernon was, in the the late 1950's and 1960's inflicted with what many other American cities were going through...White Flight.  With the fear of declining property values and the institutional racism that had long been present, white families on the South Side were either moving to the Northside or to "whiter" suburbs, more upscale and cloistered suburbs.  Yes, my own family in 1959, moved to an apartment just beyond the north side of the railroad tracks.  Sadly, Mt. Vernon is now known for crime and poverty.  I wonder what good things could have come if our neighborhood and city had kept its cultural balance where all could live and work together in harmony.  The sad part of it is is that White Flight has still not ended and people of different races are still not living near each other.  The inequities of our schools, neighborhoods, and economies sadly continue.

The nice thing about Mt. Vernon was that, that same railroad that divided the town into two unequal communities, was also a quick way to get to New York City and the cultural enrichment that awaited us there....  Broadway, the United Nations and the Metropolitan Opera were only a few of the exciting trips we would take into "the city".  More on this later...

NEXT: TREASURED EXPERIENCES