Is Meets Was

Mary at the candy store c. 1949. Here there was a public phone. We didn’t have a telephone in our apartment until 1951 or 1952. Until then, if someone wished to get in touch with us, they either wrote letters or in an emergency, they could ring the public phone in the candy store on the corner. Close relatives had the number on that phone. If the occasion was serious enough, they could call the pay phone. Someone hanging out in the candy store would answer the phone, talk to the caller, walk to our place, ring our doorbell, and deliver a message. We would then tip the person, a nickel or a dime, for the courtesy.  This arrangement worked out well until my sister, Mary, got a boyfriend who lived on Long Island. If she got a phone call from a boy, the entire neighborhood would know it.  As it turned out, this boy was a friend of my brother, Billy.   Billy (center) and Joe (on the right). Billy and Joe met on the first day of school for sheet metal work...

Growing up in Brooklyn, especially on Chauncey Street, we didn’t know there were people with anything more than we had. When we had holes in our shoes, we patched them with linoleum, the floor covering of the time. If our socks had a hole in them, we sewed them. (0nly to cause a blister.) We didn’t have sunblock. There was a lot of sunburn.  When we went to Coney Island, w e didn’t have coolers to pack our sandwiches in. We used cardboard suitcases instead, and we didn’t get sick. Cold cut sandwiches tasted toasted when left in the sun for a while. Flotation water toys were air mattresses left over from World War II. Those lucky enough to own one had to blow it up manually, but what fun we had. We swam in the water at Coney Island, under the Belt Parkway bridges at Bergen Beach, or at Gerritsen Beach, all in Brooklyn. We did learn to swim, without the aid of swimming lessons. One time my brother, Bill, dove off one of the pilings of the bridge at Bergen Beach. My mother, ...

This anecdote is not intended to be educational, but to make you aware of the significance of our Catholic faith.  Mom (front left) with her family in 1917. Mom's mother died the following year. My mother, Aunt Dot, Uncle Fred, and Uncle Gil were left motherless by the Spanish flu epidemic. Mary Elizabeth Fitzgerald Merrill was taken away from her husband and children in 1918. My mother was only seven, and Aunt Dot was not much older. Some of the aunts and uncles that aided our grandfather, “Pup”, in raising his children were Protestants. Nonetheless, Mom and Aunt Dot stayed true to their Catholic faith. Unless you attended Mass with my mother or Aunt Dot, you would never understand the devotion and love of the faith these two sisters had. I was not more than 5 or 6 when I realized the importance of the Consecration of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord. You just had to look into the face of my mother, and you too would believe. Sometimes my...

Back row - Jimmy, Dad, and Billy; Front row - Dotsy, Mary, and Freddy. c 1941 Sometime just after the war, my father was injured at work. The middle finger of his left hand was cut off just above the first knuckle. As a result, the union settled financially with my father for the injury, and my parents were able to buy a new living room set. Before this, the living room housed an iron bed with a feather bed mattress. That is where my brother, Fred, slept. I don’t remember a couch at that time, but there must have been some sort of place to sit. I was still sleeping in the girls’ room in an iron crib. When the new furniture arrived, out (to the Junkies) went the iron bed, mattress, and all. Out went the crib, and out went the stuff I can’t remember. In came a new couch and two easy chairs. Freddy got to move onto the couch to sleep, and I moved from the crib to the two easy chairs pushed together, to make a bed. Back row - Mary, Jimmy, and Billy; Middle row - a friend of ...

Felder’s Bar and Grill was in Brooklyn, on Howard Ave., between Chauncey St. and Bainbridge St.   The last time I was in that neighborhood was the summer of 2002 or 2003. The curtains in the window looked the same as the ones back in the 1950s. Felder’s Bar and Grill was just across the street and around the corner from where we lived. It was a place for the local parents to “hang out” and have a beer or two after dinner or on the weekends. Although the owner of the establishment was of German descent, most of the patrons were Irish. Irish music was always being played.   A television was installed (1952 or 1953), and the men would watch the ballgames. My brothers and sisters were older than me, and they were off with their social and married lives. This left me at home or “around the corner” with my parents. If Felder’s was crowded, I would sit at a table on the side and have all the soda I wanted. If it was not too crowded, I got to sit at the bar with my father and m...