Let me tell you what my house looked like on the inside. When I was five, I lived on the first floor of 1675 Linden Street with my Mom, Dad, sister Kathy and baby brother Jimmy. Later on I had two more brothers, Johnny and Jeff. Our apartment was called a railroad flat because all the rooms were connected in a straight line that looked like a train. There was a little kitchen off of the dining room, which was also our living room. My Dad turned the real living room into a bedroom because there were so many of us. I shared the big bedroom with my sister and brother for awhile. My Dad took all the doors off the rooms to get air and there was no privacy. I had to walk through all the bedrooms to get to mine. When we went to bed at 9 o’clock, I would talk and laugh with my sister and brother. That made my father very angry and we’d get a smack!
Our house had one great thing. My grandma Nanny, grandpa Pop-Pop, and great aunt Kiki, lived on the second floor. So if it got too noisy or crowded, I could sneak down the long entry way or “private hall” into the big hall and up the stairs to my grandparents house. It was so peaceful there. Nanny would be reading the Journal American, a newspaper, at the big dining room table and peeling an orange. Pop-Pop would be sleeping in his easy chair. He could fall asleep as easily as ‘Buelo. He loved to tell us corny jokes but he would laugh so hard, he would be crying and we couldn’t hear the end of the joke. Sometimes Pop-Pop would sit in the living room. My cousins, sister, brother and I would sit around him and beg him to tell us stories about Jack the Giant Killer. They were scary and we loved them!
I even remember my great grandmother, Granny. She was your great, great, great grandmother. She would show me black and blue marks on her wrinkly hands. She said the marks were from being old. I’m not so sure. She lived in Nanny’s house and died when I was five years old. I had to be very quiet, my Mom said, because Nanny and Kiki were very sad.
My other Grandma and Grandpa (my Dad’s Mom and Dad) lived down the block on Linden Street. Grandma had beautiful embroidery hanging on the walls with Hungarian writing. She had statues of Jesus and Mary on her dresser, with lighted candles in front of them. I loved to go to her house and stare at the pictures and candles and smell the delicious smells coming from her kitchen.
Grandpa was a carpenter. He built a wooden staircase outside our dining/living room window. When we wanted to play in the backyard, we would climb out the window and go down the steps. My Pop-Pop took care of the garden. His specialty was roses: white, pink, red and yellow rose bushes. My favorites were the yellow roses because they smelled so sweet and they were short, so it was easy to sniff them. Pop-Pop made us a dirt box at the end of his garden with a little seat. I loved to play bakery and make dirt pies and cookies and cakes. But I didn’t taste them!
There were no clothes dryers back then. There was a tall pole at the end of the yard and a clothes line attached. My Mom hung the clothes on the line from the kitchen window. In the winter, the shirts would come in frozen stiff with their arms sticking out, like invisible people.
It was lots of fun being five when I was a kid! (June 15, 2005)
Our house had one great thing. My grandma Nanny, grandpa Pop-Pop, and great aunt Kiki, lived on the second floor. So if it got too noisy or crowded, I could sneak down the long entry way or “private hall” into the big hall and up the stairs to my grandparents house. It was so peaceful there. Nanny would be reading the Journal American, a newspaper, at the big dining room table and peeling an orange. Pop-Pop would be sleeping in his easy chair. He could fall asleep as easily as ‘Buelo. He loved to tell us corny jokes but he would laugh so hard, he would be crying and we couldn’t hear the end of the joke. Sometimes Pop-Pop would sit in the living room. My cousins, sister, brother and I would sit around him and beg him to tell us stories about Jack the Giant Killer. They were scary and we loved them!
I even remember my great grandmother, Granny. She was your great, great, great grandmother. She would show me black and blue marks on her wrinkly hands. She said the marks were from being old. I’m not so sure. She lived in Nanny’s house and died when I was five years old. I had to be very quiet, my Mom said, because Nanny and Kiki were very sad.
My other Grandma and Grandpa (my Dad’s Mom and Dad) lived down the block on Linden Street. Grandma had beautiful embroidery hanging on the walls with Hungarian writing. She had statues of Jesus and Mary on her dresser, with lighted candles in front of them. I loved to go to her house and stare at the pictures and candles and smell the delicious smells coming from her kitchen.
Grandpa was a carpenter. He built a wooden staircase outside our dining/living room window. When we wanted to play in the backyard, we would climb out the window and go down the steps. My Pop-Pop took care of the garden. His specialty was roses: white, pink, red and yellow rose bushes. My favorites were the yellow roses because they smelled so sweet and they were short, so it was easy to sniff them. Pop-Pop made us a dirt box at the end of his garden with a little seat. I loved to play bakery and make dirt pies and cookies and cakes. But I didn’t taste them!
There were no clothes dryers back then. There was a tall pole at the end of the yard and a clothes line attached. My Mom hung the clothes on the line from the kitchen window. In the winter, the shirts would come in frozen stiff with their arms sticking out, like invisible people.
It was lots of fun being five when I was a kid! (June 15, 2005)
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