What I Could Never Write

From what I remember, the year would be 1953, that is the year that stands out most to me. I was six, or nearing six that year, that also meant first grade. My life was opening up to new and various adventures.

What I remember were the row houses. Full homes, attached side by side down a city block, each with their red-bricked front, and concrete steps leading either onto a porch or directly to a front door. Most of them were two-stories high. Today, we call them duplexes.

Where my parents and I lived was in a completely separate building (on the same street), we rented out the second and third floor (third floor being where our bedrooms were) for $65 a month, and that included electricity and water. Not a bad deal compared to today.

Once you came past our locked door and walked up the thirteen steps, you would immediately see to your right, the dining room. Straight away was the kitchen with a linoleum tile floor, metal-legged formica top breakfast table and the bathroom door on the other side of the kitchen. The stove, fridge and sink were side by side. If you went the other way, past the dining room (that table was made from wood, but what kind, I couldn’t tell you), there would be a small den past there and further in was the front area, like a living room with our eight-inch television screen and two channels to watch, and the most god-awful wallpaper imaginable surrounding the room.

The neighbors, most of whom their names escape me, but a few, like the Dudasiacs, The Kilgore’s, The Long’s and the Pepe’s (of which their youngest son, Peter, nicknamed, Sonny, was my best friend then and four years older than me).

The Pepe’s and the Long’s, owned the best damn steak and hoagie shop in my hometown. I would end up eating a Philly cheesesteak sandwich on a fresh-baked hoagie roll twice a week, smothered in onions, seasoned with salt, pepper, vineager and oil and of course, provolone cheese. I would always later add ketchup.

The neighborhood was a mix blend of German’s, Scottish, Dutch, Irish, and English backgrounds. What was interesting, once you crossed the main street (Morton Avenue), that side of Eighth Street, for several blocks were mainly black residents.

Always found that odd as we didn’t have segregation in our schools, and as I later grew up, I became friends with a black boy (11 years older than me), who went by the name, Whitey. Odd, I know, but it was other black kids in the neighborhood who gave him that name because he hung around with white kids. Whitey was the oldest of nine and the only breadwinner. He worked three jobs and did his best in school. And once, he saved my life, but I’m getting ahead of myself. And that too, isn’t a story I am wanting to tell.

And this is as far as I would always get before I couldn’t go any further. The more I would think on this, the more difficult and even painful it is, to write the story of my life.

And it will remain untold.

The picture, Sunhip and Drydock Yard.

is where my mother worked during World War II.

She was a riveter, one of many women who put ships together.

And after 60 years,

I'm the only one left to remember that.