Is Meets Was

Our family c. 1945. Our first record player was a wooden box affair, with a handle on the side. This handle was turned and turned, spinning the disk inside the box onto which a record was placed. In the box, on a pivot, there was an arm that held a playing needle. We swung the arm out and down until the needle touched the record, and then let go of the arm. The music began to play. Eventually, record players used electricity to spin the records and move the arm. Years later, some record players held multiple records that automatically dropped down when the previous record was finished. Then came Hi Fidelity players. The sound was much improved, but they were based on the same principle as the original players. Then some genius came along and started recording music on tapes. For this to work, you had to have a tape player. Soon after that came portable, battery-operated tape players. Then came earphones, etc. Now there are iPads and iPhones etc. But none of that existed when we li...

Billy c. 1947 Our grocery store was an old A&P located on the corner of Howard Avenue and Chauncey Street. The owner was Mr. Horan, and his helper was named Percy. (Thus, the name of my current dog.) Mr. Horan and Percy were both from Ireland, and Mr. Horan was married with a family. I don’t remember much about Percy. My mother shopped daily at the market and had a running account. She paid the bill weekly when my father got paid. Charges were written in pencil by Mr. Horan on an old beer advertisement cardboard. Each week he manually added the amounts. No one ever questioned the accuracy of the tallies. We just assumed everything was correct. Once a week, on Saturdays, my mother would place a large order which my brother, Billy, would deliver to our apartment. Billy was the delivery boy for the store. He worked for tips and for storage space for his current “hot rod.” Billy always had some sort of motor vehicle. I don’t remember if, or when, he got a driver’s license...

Sitting on our front porch, wearing my Easter corsage c. 1947. (From left to right: Cousin Leila, me, Freddy, and Cousin Mary.) The holidays were wonderful! Every Easter my father would get us girls a corsage and a box of Loft’s chocolates. There were always colored, hard-cooked eggs, chocolates for the boys, and jelly beans of course. There was a bunch of daffodils, purchased on the way home from Mass, for my mother. My father always managed to make a little overtime just before Easter, so somehow there might be a new pair of shoes or even a new outfit. I especially remember a suit that my sister, Mary, made for me while she was in junior high school, P.S. 73. It was a hunter-green gabardine with a pleated skirt and an Eisenhower-style jacket. Another year she made a jacket out of grey flannel with a dark blue bow at the neck. Me and our Christmas tree draped in tinsel c. 1952. (This was a black and white photo that I hand-painted.) Christmas was always magical. Our ...

Freddy and me c. 1946, about five years before we had a TV. One modern convenience we did have was a television. We got it about the time that the “I Love Lucy” show started. When the show first aired (October 1951), my brother, Fred, was 14 and I was 10 years old. Freddy and I were the youngest of the 6 children.  Freddy was always tinkering with radios and the like. He became “friends” with a store owner on Howard Ave. who operated a repair shop for radios and televisions.  Somehow, Freddy acquired a console TV that needed fixing. It was a monstrosity. It was almost as large as the refrigerator, with a picture screen of maybe 4 inches by 5 inches. Someone had to hold on to the antenna from across the room, and even then, the picture looked like a canceled postage stamp.  Freddy with our nephew, Jimmy, c. 1953. In time, the television was moved into the back bedroom across from the bunk beds. We thought that sitting on the top bed was like sitting on t...