Memories of a Bronx Childhood

I wrote this rather lengthy tale of childhood memories because some of my children seemed interested in their family history. Perhaps others might find them nostalgic. I have included some descriptions of my childhood Bronx because later much of it was destroyed. It was to me a lovely place that now exists only in memories and in the archives of the Bronx Historical Society. Most of my early childhood memories are of Cauldwell Avenue and 160th Street. I was about four at the time we came to Cauldwell Avenue. We had lived at a few other houses before this time but my memories of them are sketchy.

Early Memories

We lived on 138th Street opposite St. Luke's Church when I was born. We moved soon after I was baptized. I remember we lived on 148th Street close to Saint Mary's Park and at another place close to Crotona Park. The memories of these places are disconnected snapshots of places and scenes. In one memory I am outside the house on 148th Street in a heavy rain while my sister Ann and my brother Jack are going off to school without me. The school is at the end of the block across from Saint Mary's Park. We were all so very small, so it must have been a summer day school and the heavy rain only a summer shower. In another memory I am outside the same house with my mother. I question my mother about the big sign in the window of the ground floor apartment and she explains to me about quarantines. Quarantine signs on windows and funeral wreaths on the downstairs apartment house doors were frequent sights then. In one memory I am walking beside my mother on Willis Avenue by the big Protestant church. Mom is pushing Joe in a wicker(?) stroller that looms beside me. In my memory I look up at Mom and it isn't my Mom at all. She and the stroller and everybody but I have turned the previous corner while I plodded on with the nearest available stroller. When we were very small my mother, most mothers then, seemed always to be pushing a stroller. The sidewalks were a sea of strollers, with older tiny kids clustered convoy-like around them, as the Moms shopped or ferried the kids to the park. The parks were a safe place to play and, I'm sure, an escape from the tight apartments. I have many memories of my mother and the stroller and Saint Mary's Park before we moved to Cauldwell Avenue. There was a path that cut behind some old buildings on the northeast corner of the park on 149th Street. On the rear of one of these buildings was a stuffed bear's head. This fascinated us and we insisted on seeing it any time we were close. I wonder now why Mom ever went that way because there was a tiny candy store at the 149th Street end with an outside counter facing the path. Every time we passed this counter we would drive my mother almost to tears begging for something or anything from the shop. Of course she didn't have two pennies to rub together so our pleas went unanswered. There was another candy shop with an outside counter on Saint Ann's Avenue opposite the city health station where we got our childhood shots. A similar scenario was regularly repeated here but our pleas of thirst never slowed that stroller even one step. The most vivid scene in my memory of this scenario, surprisingly, is the bright sunlight playing on black and cream tiles which covered the front of the shop.

We also lived for a short time by Crotona Park on Wilkens Avenue, a very wide and even then very busy road. I remember we were near a laundry with a very long billboard-like fence that curved around the corner with the name "Consolidated Laundries" painted along its length. This fence was a landmark on Boston Road, a memento of my childhood, long after most of our other landmarks had been destroyed. One day my mother had to run over to see Bridgie Driscoll, her childhood friend, who lived in a basement apartment just across the street. Mom gave strict orders that we were to stay at home with our sister Ann just outside our door. Jack and I were soon across the street after Mom. She got furious that we had crossed that wide, busy street. Jack, because he was the older, got his bottom walloped with a slat from an orange crate. I remember my relief at escaping a beating and Jack's anger at being singled out. I think he was more angry that I had escaped than he was at getting hit. I don't remember Ann's part in this episode. She probably had stayed beside the door with Joe who was very young at the time. I also remember being in Crotona Park with Auntie Mamie, my father's sister, who also lived very close to us at the time. I stopped Joe from putting dirt in his mouth like babies do sometimes. He then started crying and Auntie Mamie, who thought I was teasing him, bawled me out. I also have another memory about the same time when I got my head stuck between the bars on a fire escape and a fireman bent the bars to free me. I wonder about this memory because Mom was very capable and I really doubt she would need a fireman's help to free me.

815 Cauldwell Avenue

We lived in two houses on Cauldwell Avenue during my little boy years and my memories of them are intertwined. We lived first at 815 Cauldwell Avenue about 1934-5. Many of my early memories are mental snapshots of this house. The front sidewalk had a black and white checkerboard that must have been uncommon. There was also a very wide stoop with the stairs to our apartment passing under it. We lived in a basement apartment that I remember as pleasant. The rooms were a half flight below ground level but an open and wide front entryway provided light and air. In the rear the windows opened onto a bright back yard. There was also a wide side yard where a young couple, the Thomas's, had a basement apartment. It was during the Depression and times must have been tight for them also because they spent their Sundays doing crossword puzzles at a table in the yard. At Christmas they made little gifts for each of us from party favorites, containing little trinkets and a rhyme based on each of our names. My gift had a rhyme of Paul chasing a ball in the hall and my sister's had Anna playing a piana. I remember sitting on the front stoop when my mom told me to move so she could wash it. I asked her where I could sit and one of her Irish friends had a great laugh telling me to sit on my "tone," Gaelic for rear end. Although many of the Irish knew Gaelic, I seldom heard it used. Mom was raised speaking Gaelic and English and had also worked for a French family in Montreal. If she got annoyed when we were small we would get it in three languages.

There was a small synagogue just across the street and many Jewish people lived close by. The Jewish men using the temple had long beards and many were red haired. The temple fascinated me and all the other Catholic kids. It was a place of mystery. We would try to sneak in and I have a vague memory of once succeeding. No doubt, the Jewish kids were just as interested in the mysterious nuns in their long black robes who lived in the large convent on the corner. There was a Jewish grocery store, Mr. Gottlieb's, beside the synagogue. I remember it as being wider then the usual tiny stores and having an old wooden counter. Rolls of fly paper hung from the ceiling, so covered with dead flies there was no room for new arrivals.

I remember a very heavy snow fall with us kids digging tunnels and forts in snow that towered above us in front of No. 815. That winter we were not allowed outside for several days. Mom told us it was "below zero" out and we had no idea what "below zero" meant. These cold childhood days were recalled in the February of the most bitter winter recently when the TV weatherman mentioned that the record cold was set in 1936.

I had a great friend, Buddy, who lived around the corner on 159th Street behind the convent. We were inseparable for about a year; Buddy, his collie dog, and myself. Like most such friendships it didn't survive my family's move a block further away to No. 853 Cauldwell Avenue. Just a half block south of Buddy's house was an icehouse on Eagle Avenue. This icehouse drew me and other kids like a magnet. There was a large loading platform at the front of the ice house with slot-like openings, shrouded in strips of canvas. From these slots, moved by a conveyer, came a stream of large blocks of ice; like a line of white, square shouldered soldiers, marching onto the platform. Each block was set upon by an ice man, always a small Italian man, who slammed it into his horse-drawn wagon. When the slots were not pumping out ice blocks I could see into the vast insides of the ice house, only partially visible in clouds of icy mist. The cold air tingled my nose with a funny biting smell that I learned later was ammonia. I saw one day some boys clustered around an open pit by the loading platform. It was the open top of a large underground fuel oil tank. Its inky blackness with its strong rich smell seemed endless, a dark fantasy underworld. The oil man soon chased us but the smell of fuel oil still sometimes brings back the memory. Another time I found a big piece of ice left behind by an iceman. Even at that age I knew ice cost money and was needed daily for the icebox. I ran and got my brother and our little wagon and we managed to get the ice home to warm praise from my mother. The street by the ice house was, like many streets then, paved with cobblestones. These were worn and separated by deep grooves and must have been slippery for the horses. Directly across from the ice house was a garage. It had an elevator for cars that fascinated us. I wonder now why was there a car elevator at that place and time. There were few cars, plenty of parking space, and the block was industrial. Still there was a car elevator and I saw it being used.

Many of my earliest memories are of a dining room table that seemed vast. I think it was in the kitchen because I doubt we had a separate dining room. We did have a sideboard, one of those long cabinets used to store silverware and linens in the old dining room sets. I got entangled in the legs of the sideboard one night while going to the bathroom which was off the kitchen those days. I still remember being in the pitch blackness, not knowing where I was, and blocked from moving in every direction. I couldn't raise my head nor move my hands without bumping into a wall or cabinet leg. Suddenly the light came on and Mom was there.

The memories above and other kitchen images must have been in No. 815 Cauldwell but some may have been in No. 853. I have many hazy memories of that room. I remember looking with wonder and delight at the little white fluff that was our dog Tubby as a new puppy. I remember the great fuss when Pete, the cat, got into the window ice box and stole the chicken that was supposed to be our Sunday dinner. I remember another happening, a simple event that still brings a warm glow. Mom let me stay up late one night, I don't know why, after Ann and Jack had been sent to bed. I was quietly delighted at the occasion and at having my Mom to myself. She was ironing and softly singing a little "toora loora" tune like that made famous years later by Bing Crosby. It was a simple happening but a warm memory that often came to mind years later when I sang the Irish lullaby to my own little ones.

My brother Jack introduced me to the wonders of wine in that kitchen. Pop brought home a bottle of sweet wine for Mom on some holiday. It was probably Christian Brothers Port, bought by most Irish for the holidays as a contribution to a religious group. After every one went to the living room, Jack helped himself to a small nip and since I was a witness, also gave one to me. I liked it so well I made several trips to the kitchen. I have a vague memory of standing on a bureau or trunk and falling off laughing. Mom told the story afterwards of getting curious when I talked about glasses of wine. When she finally checked the bottle in the kitchen it's level explained my strange behavior.

We, that is my Mom and Pop, did the janitor work at No. 815. They had to tend the coal-fired furnace, put out the ashes, keep the halls and stairs clean, and even polish the brass on the mailboxes. Pop had to fix anything not working right in the many apartments in the house. An especially nasty job was "taking the garbage". The garbage was collected each night from each apartment by "dumb waiters", small elevators pulled by ropes which opened at each apartment. The apartment house must have been pretty large because, as I was told later, there were seven separate dumb waiters. Some tenants threw their garbage down the dumb waiter shaft, rather than wait for the scheduled time for collection. This, of course, made a mess and made my father furious. Some even threw the garbage out the windows into the yards. My brother, Joe, who was very small at the time, was badly hurt when he was hit on the head in the back yard by a bottle thrown from a window. My father had a classic Irish temper and this accident left him rightfully raging with anger. I have a memory of him shouting in the hall at the most likely culprits, telling them just what he thought of them. Our move from No. 815, soon afterwards, was probably by a mutual agreement with the landlord.

853 Cauldwell Avenue

We then moved one block further north to No. 853 Cauldwell, still as superintendents, and still in a basement apartment. It was a smaller house and had a nice grassy plot in front. I remember my father spading this plot and all of us playing under the hose while he was reseeding it. It seemed then a very large front yard. I was surprised when I revisited it years later at how small it was. I think we were happy there. There were many friends in the house and in the neighborhood, a time of many social visits and pleasant times. My father and his friends spent Sunday afternoons throwing horseshoes on a court they set up in the back yard. Mr. O'Dea, one of his horseshoe friends, lived in a frame house with a large tree in front. I recall it as a country-like scene stuck in a row of apartment houses. I remember especially the excitement when firemen came to rescue a kitten from this tree. The kitten was the pet of the little O'Dea girl, Maureen. The memory was so vivid that I immediately recognized Maureen as a young woman when she visited Alice more than twenty years later. I astonished her by knowing her name and citing the time when her kitten was stuck in the tree. My father also set up a place in the basement where some girls in the house could practice Irish step dancing. I remember they used an old door as a dancing platform and the clatter of their taps shoes sounded like machine guns. Looking back, I suspect Pop was happiest at this time. We later moved to a apartment as tenants and I think he missed the busy work.

The change in houses from No. 815 to No. 853 didn't change Joe's bad luck. While still very tiny, he ran into the street where some older boys were playing stick ball. The batter caught Joe full force right beside the eye with the broom stick bat. His eye escaped damage but he was badly hurt. Not long after his recovery both Joe and I came down with rheumatic fever and were in bed for weeks, unable to even walk. Poor Mom had to carry us back and forth to the bathroom in between taking care of the family and doing the janitor work for the apartment house. I still remember the first day I got up and walked by myself. I had to go to the bathroom while Mom was upstairs doing something. I dragged myself to the bathroom using the furniture for support. I managed to return to my bed and triumphantly gave Mom my happy report when she returned. I was out of school for about five weeks but it had little effect because it was only the first grade. Joe recovered sooner but it left him with some heart damage that eventually led to his premature death.

We got our dog Tubby on Joe's third or fourth birthday, a little ball of white fluff. He was a pretty good dog but he did all the unseemly things male dogs usually do. He bit one neighboring boy, a mean kid, who kept poking a stick at Tubby until he got his just deserts. We had to keep Tubby hidden from the dogcatcher for a while afterwards. After that the dog would attack anybody who pointed anything at him and we always had to watch out for him in our cops and robbers games. We were always hoping a real robber would try something so that Tubby could take his gun away but robbers were rare then. Tubby was part of our family for about eight years. My parents had to have him put to sleep when Bobby was born because he got dangerously jealous.

Our cat Pete was found the day we lost Joe. We, Jack and I, were pretty small when we went exploring with Joe. Jack was about seven, I was about six and Joe was a year and a half younger. I remember looking at posters in a movie lobby so we had gone all the way to Prospect Avenue, which was, for small kids, quite distance and across some busy streets. Somewhere along the way we found a kitten that we brought home in great excitement to show to Mom. Her response was to ask where was Joe. We hadn't even noticed that we had lost him along the way. We only escaped murder because Mom was distracted trying to locate our little brother. Left to my own devices during the search for Joe, I got into further mischief. I began playing with the kitten and then, for some reason, began throwing him into the air. The kitten ended up with a bloody nose. After Joe was located, Mom saw the poor little thing and decided to keep him. I suspect now she considered getting rid of me instead. We kept the kitten, a standard black and white alley cat, and named him Pete. I don't remember him being afraid of me despite my abuse. Unlike most alley cats he stayed around for the years we lived on Cauldwell Avenue. Surprisingly for an alley cat he would follow my father to the Third Avenue "El" station each morning, two long blocks and street turnings distant, and then return home. Even more surprising, Pete would often meet him at the station in the evening and walk home with him.

Our Apartment

Like most Bronx apartment houses No. 853 Cauldwell had a very wide front stoop with the stairs to the superintendent's apartment passing under it. The entry to the basement was just under the stoop and the door to our apartment was just inside the basement. Even though it was a level below ground, I remember the front area of the basement outside our door as a bright room. Mom had a miniature orange tree plant there and I remember studying the miniature oranges on this plant. Children must study objects intently. Many of my memories are of things very close-up; my mothers cow-shaped milk pitcher, the Chinese lady on the table lamp, the eyes on the fox head on Mom's old wrap from the trunk, the horses jumping the fence in a picture on the wall, all detailed memories from eight inches distant.

The front room of the apartment was, I remember, also bright. I think this front room was our living room and also served as my parent's bedroom where they slept on a convertible sofa. Joe and I shared the bedroom just next to the front room while recovering from rheumatic fever. Jack and I also shared this room for a while. We would often start to fight after we were put to bed and Mom would make us face away from each other. This left me faced to the wall despite my claims of innocence while Jack, the culprit, watched the nightlife in the front room.

This front room is the center of my early Christmas memories. Ann sneaked out once and thought she saw Santa's red coat. The next morning she realized it was a large gift-wrapped in Christmas colors. I remember the excitement early Christmas mornings and one year a noisy drum I got from my Uncle Pat, my godfather, apparently as a joke on my Pop. I know now Christmas times were tight when we were small but we always had a tree, gifts, and a big meal, often attended by Auntie Cath and Uncle Will. I do remember one Christmas a cowboy suit was the desire of every boy my age. I couldn't help noticing in my tour of the other Christmas trees in the apartment house that every other kid got one but Santa missed it on my list. This front room was also where once my Pop sat laughing and repeatedly singing "the music goes round and round" and my Mom was very angry. I realized later that Pop had been a bit drunk and it was a sight I didn't remember seeing earlier.

I also remember another time when Pop bought a gift, not a Christmas gift, but something to cheer me up when I was ill. Pop brought home to me a small toy soldier set of six cardboard soldiers on little wooden stands. I was very young and even though they were just cardboard, I loved them. I still remember them and my surprise when Pop gave them to me. Pop didn't often bring home presents. He did bring home little items he thought would amuse us, a pair of magnetic dogs or spinning toys that sparkled. Later, when we lived on 162nd Street, he would often on paydays bring home a Cadbury chocolate bar for us. For a short time when I was five or six, Pop would sometimes bring home a real treasure. Pop's friend drove an ice cream delivery truck. When there was no dry ice left in the evening his friend would give away any leftover ice cream. Pop came home several times with a half of a box of Mellorolls, round paper-wrapped ice cream rolls used as inserts for ice cream cones. It was a great treat, like Christmas in July. I still remember the night when my father came home with the terrible news that his ice cream friend had been killed, crushed between two trucks in a garage. We were all shocked at the thought of such a death and devastated that there would be no more Mellorolls.

I think I was frequently ill on Cauldwell Avenue and must have had a constant cough. I wanted to be a choir boy but every year at try-outs I had a cold and missed out. I was frequently dosed with various home-made cough medicines. Every one of my mother's friends had a sure cure cough medicine and the more mysterious the country of origin, the more promising the cure. They all seemed to have garlic or onions as a major component and were as unpleasant as they were ineffective. Finally it was determined that I had a dust allergy. This diagnosis was a blessing because we then left the basement apartments forever. When the hazards of asbestos later became so well known, I recalled our basement bedrooms with the ceilings lined with asbestos-wrapped pipes.

 Depression Times

I realize now that we were poor during those Cauldwell days but I don't think I knew it then. Small kids, I suspect, don't know if they are poor as long as they have a home and food on the table but maybe television has changed that. I knew of one time that we were on welfare, or home relief as it was called then. Pop told me years later that he would take the train to City Hall and walk all the way back to the Bronx looking for work. About that time we got food packages with surplus farm products. I guess there were other things in the packages but I remember only the big sack of corn meal. We had meals of corn cereal, corn muffins, corn fritters, corn meal in every manner imaginable. When we fussed about food put in front of us Mom always told us of the poor children in China starving for food and that we should be eat up and be grateful and quite. We wished she sent the corn meal to the starving Chinese kids. I'm still not very fond of corn muffins. Mom sometime would say an Irish saying; "eat up or you'll see the two days you'll follow the crows." This made no sense at all to us. I guess it was a remnant of the Famine times that seems now only distant history but was the real world of my Mom's grandparents.

It seemed that as we approached Christmas every year during those depression years, that Pop was either laid off or on strike. I remember one year even I realized that things were looking bad. I don't know now if it was Thanksgiving or Christmas but early on the eve of the holiday Mom gently told us not to expect much. We really had nothing. Later in the day to our great delight, we received three holiday baskets, each with a turkey. Our wonderful Auntie Cath brought us one, followed by one from my father's union, and then another basket from our church. I don't know what was done with all the surplus but it was a day fixed in my memory.

My memories of Christmas and Thanksgiving diners during those years include Mom's great candied sweet potatoes and the magical carving Pop did on the turkey. We kids constantly competed on practically everything such as the single tasteless cherry in a can of fruit cocktail. Since there was only two drumsticks on the turkey and three and potentially four claimants, only a drumstick was acceptable. We were apparently old enough to claim equal rights but too young to know the real thing. Under our watchful eyes Pop always managed to carve as many drumsticks from that turkey as needed to satisfy his gullible brood.

My early memories are a quilt of hazy scenes, some actual memories, some maybe only memories of later told tales. My First Holy Communion Day is high in my early memories. I really don't remember the actual event or the first Confession that preceded it. The outward signs I remember; the beautiful prayer book with the pearl cover, the crucifix mounted in an insert in the front cover, and the white armband. I have a faint recollection that all this beauty and whiteness were associated with the whiteness of our souls on this special day. Most of all I remember awaiting this day as the big money gift day. I remember receiving about seven dollars in gifts, more than a man's daily wage then, and it was a fortune to me. On my First Holy Communion Day, my parents took me to visit Auntie Cath at the house where she worked. I remember being surprised that she worked as a maid or housekeeper for someone else when she was so important in our family. The memory of this visit is especially vivid because I had a large piece of unusually dark chocolate cake that my aunt had made. The house was one of a row of brownstones on 142^nd Street, the block where I had been separated from my mother's stroller only a few years before. There was a backyard garden with many flowers that were set at about waist level above the ground for easy care.

I received my first pair of roller skates at No. 853. I don't remember the occasion but I got them at night. At my insistence Mom took me out on to the sidewalk in the dark to try them. They were "learner" skates, called that because they had slower turning wheels and were supposed to prevent falls. Instead they would free wheel for a few turns until I got up some speed and then they would stop dead, sending me crashing to the sidewalk. I got a few bad bangs on the head but keep insisting I could do it. After many attempts, each with the same painful results, Mom called a halt, no doubt to prevent permanent brain damage. Soon after this I learned on regular skates with little trouble. Several years ago we gave our grand daughter Nicole a small tricycle for her birthday. I assembled it after her little party. She was overjoyed and insisted on trying it outside even though it was very late. When she drove that little trike along the sidewalk, happily ringing the bell in the dark, I remembered that night when Mom let me try my new skates in the dark. Happily Nicole's tricycle was more friendly than my learner skates.

After I learned to skate I was invited to join my brother Jack and his friends in a hockey game. They needed a goalie and cajoled me by flattery to take the job. I was told the position was so important only the goalie that could grab the puck with his hands. I wasn't told what the other players would do when I grabbed the puck and that I needed thick gloves. I got my bare hands whacked by hockey sticks from both teams and decided against the goalie position.

It was at one of these hockey games that Jack lost his new sweater, one that was hand knit by Mom. She made beautiful sweaters that we loved but they came at a price. If it was cool we had to wear them leaving the house but they were wool and too warm to wear while playing. We were under strict orders not to take them off because they might be forgotten or stolen. I still remember, sixty years later, the fuss when Jack's sweater was stolen during a hockey game in front of the house. Maybe Mom should have taken up the Irish fisherman custom of weaving a distinctive weave in her sweaters for identification.

Good Neighbors

One Communion gift I remember well, because it was totally unexpected. Mr. O'Shaunnessy, a neighbor in No. 853, met me outside the house. He handed me a fifty-cent piece, a princely sum at the time, especially from one who was not a relative. I was told later that Mr. O'Shaunnessy had a secure job with the railroad. They bought a house in Floral Park, Long Island, and soon afterwards we were invited to visit them. I remember a very hot day, the country streets mostly molten tar, and a trip to the beach at Point Lookout. I had been learning at the time to swim at Crotona Pool and had little fear as I confidently dove repeatedly into the surf of the incoming tide. Suddenly I was in deep water and unable to breathe because of the height of the waves. Joe saw from the shore that I was in trouble and ran for the lifeguard. A young woman grabbed me and the lifeguard brought me ashore cheered by a big crowd.

My recollection of Mr. O'Shaunnessy's kindness brings up another thought. Many people think city apartment life was a cold place to raise a family but I remember it as a warm and friendly life. It was especially warm at Christmas. The children visited each other's apartment to "see the tree". We even visited elderly neighbors, bringing them a small simple gift. In each apartment young visitors were warmly greeted by a parent and treated with candy or cookies while the kids in the home showed off the tree and their presents. Christmas visiting was the custom when I was a little child on Cauldwell Avenue and later when I lived on 162nd Street. One neighbor in No. 853, an old German man, gave us a treasure. It was a set of carved wooden figures for the nativity scene with many little carved animals. My father made a beautiful wooden house as a stable to show them off. It was very well made, about a foot square and eighteen inches high, with a peaked roof, a light inside, and a good sized viewing window in the roof. We had the stable and the nativity set for years but the set kept shrinking as the old figures were lost until finally it had to be replaced.

A memory of those simple times is of an old Jewish lady, a neighbor in the house who, by her beliefs, could not pull the string to put on the lights on Friday evenings. She would call one of us to lit the light for her and give us a few currant raisins. We were small enough to appreciate the raisins but big enough to do the favor with a mixture of courtesy, a sense of strangeness, and of curiosity.

Street Scenes

I recall the block around our house at No. 853 as being very pleasant. The house was one of a trio of apartment houses with sizable lawns in front. Some single-family frame houses shared the block on each side. On our side, the block stretched unbroken down past our former home at No. 815 to the convent on the corner of 159th Street. Across the street, the block was split by 160th Street, which ran to the east but dead-ended on Cauldwell by the tree in front of O'Dea's house, the same tree that once held Maureen's kitten captive.

Across from our house were several large apartment houses, newer than ours were, but without our pretty front lawns. In the apartment house across from us I first saw a dead person, the little sister of a playmate. At that time the dead were laid out at home with a large floral piece set downstairs beside the front door of the apartment house. The coffin was placed in the front room and children were allowed to visit. My memory is only of a room that was filled with mystery and walled with people and flowers.

There was a new and attractive candy store across the street close to the 161st Street corner but it held little interest to us kids. We favored an old candy store midway between No. 815 and No 853 Cauldwell. I remember it as a large store with a center door. It sold now-bygone things; candy in a little tin dish with a minute tin spoon, made-in-Japan tin toys that always broke, and jaw breakers. There was also a penny movie-in-a-box that flipped sequential scenes on pages as you turned a crank. I remember walking to this store wondering if my Indian head penny was any good and another time with old type of dime.

As I remember, the stores across the street by the corner of 161st and Cauldwell were new and clean despite hard times. A druggist was on the corner beside the new candy store. Even then the display window had placards with colorful pictures and stories on the history of medicine. Tall exotically shaped bottles holding various colored liquids accompanied them. I wonder if this memory is accurate because this display seemed omni-present in most druggist windows for years later.

There was a bakery around the corner on 161st Street with two windows full of delicious looking things. Once Ann, Joe, and I stood staring into these windows and each loudly calling out what we would like most. A man, a customer, came out and laughed at our wishful declarations. "Why don't you go in and ask for a cookie" he said. We decided to try and to our surprise and delight the lady behind the counter gave each a cookie. I don't know if we ever tried our luck again but it made a nice memory. A German family ran the bakery. It was spotlessly clean and white, with white marble show cases, white floor tiles and several white marble tables for serving customer's morning coffee and pastries. There was also a German delicatessen across the street from the bakery. My father once bought a pickled pigs knuckle there and we, Ann, Jack, and myself, all tried it, a thing I don't think I would do now. Back then it seemed every neighborhood had a German bakery, German delicatessen, and German butcher shop and all were equally bright and clean. It was hard later to reconcile the Nazi horrors in Germany with the friendly German bakers of my childhood or my old German neighbor who gave us the carved wooden nativity figures.

Just around the corner on Tinton Avenue there was a bicycle shop where, a few years later, we would rent bikes. Few kids could afford their own bikes then, those beautiful Schwinn bikes existed only in the magazine ads. The rental bikes were single speed, as sturdy and heavy as tanks, and needed painting but they were rented cheaply and gave us wings to explore distant places of the Bronx.

Very few people owned cars then and they remained scarce throughout my childhood. The transit system was good and I guess cars really weren't needed. During the Depression most people had trouble paying rent much less paying for a car. Our landlord, Mr. Hickey, owned a brand new car, a '37, I guess. He parked it right in front of the house. It had running boards and a spare tire mounted right alongside the engine. Another memory of the times; watching as a man cranked the engine by hand to start his car. When it started, the crank spun in a violent twist of his hand.

Trucks were much more visible. The coal trucks were especially awesome. They radiated power, immense trucks with big wheels, thick solid rubber tires and a large drive chain openly buzzing on the side. Kids gathered in a tight cluster to watch a delivery. The truck tipped its body skyward and the coal rained down from a small rear door. It made a noisy zingy noise as it rushed down a metal trough and disappeared through a round hole in the sidewalk.

More awesome than any coal truck were the trolley car. It seemed huge to me as a little child as it swept by, its high bulk towering over me. The big metal wheels made a roaring grating noise on the narrow tracks embedded in the cobblestone street. When the trolley stopped, before its motion even ceased, big double folding doors banged open and metal steps flipped down with a noisy flourish. The people rushed on, their nickel went into the fare box, a bell chimed for each coin, and a number changed on a counter behind the driver. The conductor used a clanging bell to warn other traffic and rotated a big swing arm control to regulate the speed. The trolleys started and stopped very quickly, sending old folks and little kids like me tumbling down the center of the vehicle and toppling any who didn't find a handhold.

Horse drawn wagons were on the street daily, the milkman, iceman, junkman, and the fruit and vegetable man. Horse manure was always a bother to us kids playing in the street although it was less messy than the dog piles often underfoot. Mom constantly bugged us to shovel the prized horse manure into a bag to feed her plants but we would always "forget." Later we lived a few blocks from Sheffield Dairy with so many milk wagon horses their stable was several stories high. The junkman with his wagon made his rounds with his peculiar sing song chant, accompanied by music from a string of cow bells and the clip-clop noises of his horse. Another frequent sound was the peculiar yodel-like "clothes-line" holler in the back yard of a man who would climb several stories up the clothesline pole to put your line.

Outings with my Father

The Market

When we lived on Cauldwell our downtown shopping area was usually Prospect or Union Avenues, about six blocks east of Cauldwell. We would also sometimes shop at the long string of stores that lined Third Avenue down to 149th Street but Prospect and Union were closer. Prospect Avenue was a wide busy street and at the time a prosperous business center. It was a seemingly endless expanse of impressive stores with very wide sidewalks. There were several fancy movie houses and a jewelry store with a large jeweler's clock on a tall pillar at the curb. The street just west was Union Avenue or The Market. The Market was an open-air market, stretching several blocks along Union Avenue. There were open stalls on the sidewalk in front of the stores, selling everything from vegetables to household goods and kid's clothing. There must have been also pushcarts on the street, like the pictures of the lower East Side streets because I remember being surrounded with goods and shoppers. It was like a flea market center of today except that it was more crowded and much dirtier. The sidewalks were packed with shoppers and there were discarded vegetables and other debris everywhere underfoot. It was also much nosier than a modern flea market. The sellers loudly hawked their goods in an unintelligible chant. The buyers bargained in equally strident tones, often in Yiddish or heavily accented English. It was very exciting and I loved to go with my parents. I always approached one store with especial enthusiasm. It sold only candy and had a virtual sea of hard candies in bins in front of the store.

The duck eggs were the only bad part of going to Union Avenue. One store was a big dairy market that sold duck eggs. My Father loved duck eggs and thought everybody should love them. Each Easter week we would make a special trip to Union Avenue for duck eggs. I wondered but never asked Pop if the ducks only laid eggs at Easter or if this questionable treasure was available at other times. Holy Week we went to Union Avenue and the mention of duck eggs soon dampened our enthusiasm. Pop just would not believe that no one else shared his love for these overlarge eggs with their strong unpleasant taste. Easter Morn, there we were, each with his own duck egg. Pop also liked kale, a crinkley, barely edible, bitter leaf vegetable that made spinach and cabbage taste sweet by comparison. Thank God Mom didn't like it so we seldom had it. I had nothing against some of the weird foods some Irishmen ate. I liked the salty seaweed called Irish Dulse and black (blood) sausages and had even eaten pickled pigs knuckles once.

Our Trip To Macomb's Dam Park

One memorable outing we kids went on about this time was strictly on our own. We were at the wading pool on Cauldwell Avenue when a friend of Jack's told us about a much better pool he had been to a week earlier. Off we went with this fellow, Ann, Jack, and myself, about eight, seven, and six in ages, in our bathing suits and bare feet on scorching hot streets. The trip took us about a mile and one-half across 161st Street to Macomb's Dam Park, just north of the Yankee Stadium. I don't remember much of this journey, only the burning sidewalks that seemed endless before the fabled park came in sight. At the corner of the park the pool could be seen but it was still off in the distance, behind around a vast running track. The pool was very large but it had a pebbly cement bottom surface that hurt my street tired and burned feet.

I have no recollection of our trip home. It must have been even longer for such tired travelers. I have a vivid recollection of meeting our frantic and very angry Mom when we returned. We had no idea that we had been gone for hours. We foolishly insisted we had been at the Cauldwell pool all the while. Ann remembers Jack getting a beating while she got off easy, a persistent theme of our childhood. I think I was spared because of my youth. I have no recollection of Joe's place in this adventure. He was so young he couldn't have been with us.

My Brother Jack

I said above that Jack got a beating while Ann got off easy, a persistent theme of our childhood. It seems that most of my early memories of my brother Jack involve him getting into mischief. Of course, such things are what we remember. When we were quite small, he stuck the toilet plunger onto the bathroom wall. When he pulled it off, much of the plaster wall came with it. It seemed like the end of the world to Jack and myself as we looked with horror at the rubble at our feet. I surprisingly don't remember my father's reaction but with his temper it probably was not good. After a life time as a home owner, it now seems a bit amusing but it was not at the time. Perhaps, since Pop worked with plasterers at the time, it wasn't a big deal. Another time Mom noticed Jack carrying a little whiskey glass full of water back and forth into the basement area. After a while she investigated and found Jack had set a fire playing with matches in a tenant's storage bin and was trying to extinguish it with the little glasses of water. Fortunately Mom quickly put it out.

When we were very small Mom had us convinced that if we hit her back while being disciplined, God would punish us in some terrible way. One day Mom belted Jack for something and he hit her back on the arm. Ann and I sat there in shock, waiting for a lightning bolt to strike right through the window. We were totally amazed and definitely disappointed when God's wrath didn't materialize. Mom's wrath was, of course, a close replica, even without the lightning. Once Jack helped himself to money for candy from Mom's pocketbook, a quarter, which was big bucks at the time. We were stunned at Jack's rashness. We all knew even then that Mom's pocketbook was sacred. Even Pop never went into it but asked Mom when he wanted something from it. It was a blow to our whole code of conduct. Again Jack received from Mom a painful lesson on the sacredness of certain things in life.

Although he was only a year older than me, even as a small boy Jack was years ahead of me in "street smarts." We were playing inside an abandoned or "haunted" house with many other kids. The cops arrived and we scurried in every direction. I was one of the kids unlucky or small enough to be caught. They took my name and address and I was so innocent I gave them true information. I waited in terror for two days for a policeman to visit my mother. Finally Jack, the eight year old man of the world, told me that cops always took a kid's name to scare him but threw it away after they left. He was right, the cops never showed up at the house. There was, I guess, little crime in the Bronx of my childhood even with very crowded tenements and many people out of work. The cops had time to get involved in simple Norman Rockwell incidents such as taking a seven year old kid's name to scare him out of a dangerous abandoned house. Similarly the firemen had time to rescue Maureen O'Dea's cat from the tree.

Jack, as the oldest boy, was the point man in introducing our Irish father to the customs of American boys. Firecrackers were a necessary part of the Fourth Of July but were not, apparently, very familiar to Pop. Jack brought home a package when we were pretty small and Pop wanted to make sure they were safe. We were in the kitchen when Pop held a medium size firecracker between his thumb and forefinger and lit it. He then proceeded to wait for results while Jack frantically yelled "Throw it, throw it!". He tried to throw it out the window but, "Bam," the firecracker went off taking Pop's thumbnail with it. That was the last official firecracker to enter our home. We were strictly forbidden to use them. We interpreted this, of course, as not getting caught using them. Firecrackers were both forbidden and illegal but, as now, they were available if you knew where to look. As the Fourth of July approached boys feverishly sought fireworks everywhere. Jack and I were ranging into new territory seeking firecrackers when we first saw the block on 162nd street where we were to spend much of our boyhood.

Street Construction

A major event occurred, from a small boy's view, during the last year we lived on Cauldwell. An army of men arrived with all sorts of machinery and tore up the street. I was surprised to see ordinary dirt not far below the surface of the old street. They were mostly Italian men, small compared with my father and other Irishmen I knew. All the curbstones were pulled up, big granite slabs. The men sat for days, each chipping with a small sledge hammer and chisel to put a brand new square top on the old buried side. It must have been school vacation time because I spent so much time watching them I could have been on the payroll. The new tar pavement was put down using a big steamroller and a narrow little one. Many of the men had heavy squares of iron on poles that they used to tamp down the new pavement where the rollers could not go. There were very many workers and I realize now it was probably a make-work job for the depression times. One day during this work fantastic news raced all over the neighborhood. "They were going to dyn-a-mite!" I still remember the excitement when the word spread. The men had dug a large excavation at the corner of Cauldwell and 161st Street and that where it was going to happen. I guess a new sewer was being built and some rock obstruction had to be removed. Hoards of kids showed up and waited for hours for the big event. A small tractor pulled big metal blankets over the excavation and everybody was chased a distance away. I waited for a big explosion like a volcano eruption. We heard a muffled thump and that was it, no flying rocks, no smoke, no fire, nothing. It was a big disappointment.

Shortly after this a bridge was built across 161st Street to fill a gap on Eagle Avenue. This avenue ran high above Saint Ann's Avenue, the street just west of it. Eagle Avenue continued on the map above 159th Street to 163rd Street but at the time I think there was a gap at 161st Street. The road up 161st Street to Cauldwell Avenue passed below the grade of Eagle Avenue by about forty or fifty feet. I remember the new metal bridge being built with stairs down to 161st Street below. I do not have the close-up memories I have of the workmen on Cauldwell Avenue. I guess this work was done during school time or maybe the steelworkers kept us kids at a safe distance. The new bridge made a great new climbing adventure with easy access to dangerous heights and I was quick to tackle it. Mom was just as quick to hear about it and I was soon grounded. 

161^st Street Hill

The 161st Street hill from Cauldwell to Third was our daily path to school and church, and to our local shopping by the El station. There were many fascinating places on the hill. About half way down the hill there was a bar that always caught my interest. I had overheard my Father telling of a one-punch fight he had seen here and I often peeked in to see if there might be a repeat of this event. Also in the bar window there were little figures that I would stop and study whenever I passed. One was a figure of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, courtesy of Wilson's whiskey. Another, from Seagram's, was a white seal balancing a red ball on its nose. Across the street was a laundry with curtain stretchers always standing outside, and with wide sheaths of lace curtains impaled on their sticker studded arms. There was a vegetable store that was owned by the family of a classmate, one of two large interrelated Italian families in the mostly Irish population in our school. At the bottom of the hill in a second story office over a large appliance store, was the Metropolitan Insurance Company. It was an endless source of free pamphlets and booklets with fairy tale rhymes to teach healthy living. We would swoop in regularly to the annoyance of the office workers and grab up numerous copies of the same booklets we had taken home only a few days previous. On Saint Ann's Avenue, just around the corner, I often stopped to watch a cigar maker in the window of his tiny store. With a seemingly effortless repetitive motion he twirled a handful of cut tobacco into a rough short straight rope-like body. Then with a small half moon knife in one quick motion he cut a wide piece of leaf tobacco and wrapped it around the cigar rope. Then he did a few quick rolls between his hands, a smoothing of the ends, and out spun a finished cigar.

One day on the hill I watched in amazement as a piano was hoisted from the third story of an apartment house. The men rigged the hoist with beams jutting out from the roof two stories above, removed the window frame and wrestled the piano out the window, out over the street. The piano swung a bit supported only by the ropes of the hoist. The men, with a guide rope, steadied it and brought it down softly to the sidewalk.

I also remember a cool summer morning talking to a girl, Sally, in front of her house at the top of the hill. I was much too young for any romantic feelings but I remember being taken by her red hair shining in the sunlight as it was moved by a breeze.

 The Beautiful Bronx

Much of the Bronx of my childhood disappeared in the 1960's. I didn't realize it then but much of my childhood Bronx was new. Much of it was farms until the turn of the century and into the next two decades. The apartment houses, big stores, and office buildings came only after the "El" trains and subways, all built in the early 1900's. That period, prehistory to me, was really only thirty years earlier then my early childhood years, more recent then the Kennedy assassination is to today. Many of the apartment buildings had a new neatness and cleanness and had small well-kept garden plots in front. All the apartment buildings had live-in superintendents who kept the sidewalks spotless and the brass shining. Garbage was seen in front of the house only in the mornings and was in neat cans and burlap sacks. Many older houses still looked good and had suburb-like large grassy plots and trees. There were several very large parks and many small pretty sitting parks and playgrounds. Many had rest rooms and an attendant or 'parkie' for each rest room. Many stores were new and had a shiny clean look. The streets were spotless, groomed daily by the street cleaner with his big broom and little cart. During the summer spray trucks watered each street in the morning several times a week. The entire panorama left me with a memory of a beautiful Bronx.

The splendors of the Grand Councourse, Mosholu Parkway, Pelham Parkway, and Riverdale, I only saw when I was older. I appreciated later that much of the prettiness was a hold-over from the booming twenties, much of the city services were make-work jobs of the depression times, and the building superintendents were depression-time slave workers.

Our Beautiful Bronx disappeared so quickly. When World War II ended we saw pictures of the burned out cities of Europe and Japan. If some one predicted that much of the Bronx would be burned out, leveled, and obliterated in a few short years, he would have been called a candidate for Bellevue. Only twenty years later much of my beautiful Bronx was gone, not replaced with something better but left lying as a wasteland.

The Irish have a saying that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. That wise saying certainly applied to the misguided social programs that cost us the Beautiful Bronx