A different kind of Christmas

New to my blog?  To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive.

In December, the winter chill took on a different feel. It wasn’t quite so cold.  There was something special about the walk home from WI that time of year, regardless of how cold it was.  It was the Christmas season. It was always a special, warm time of year.

I would head out the side door of school (remember, only seniors were permitted to use the front steps) and on my way home, would head for the Arcade.  I often stopped at the bakery to buy a special treat before exiting onto Main Street, which celebrated the season festooned with holiday lights and garlands.  The store windows and their interiors complimented the spirit of the holiday with colorful and cheerful decorations.

Walking toward East End, the homes along Main Street mirrored the stores downtown with a beautiful holiday wreath on many doors, brightly decorated trees in most of the windows and blue, red, or gold staggered electric candles colorfully on display through other frosted windows in some of the homes.  It was an especially magical walk home, if a light snow was falling.

In our home my three brothers, my parents and I celebrated the day, December 25^th, but not the holiday.  We had no wreath on the door; no brightly decorated tree in the window, no electric candles either.  The candles we lit during the holiday season were on the Hanukah Menorah, a new candle for each of the eight nights of the holiday. 

Our parents wanted to have a Jewish home where we celebrated the Jewish holidays, but did not want their four sons to feel left out when all of the kids on the block trotted out with their new toys and gifts on Christmas Day.  Their solution was to exchange gifts on Christmas morning.  Instead of a tree as a symbol of the season, Father removed all of the furniture from our large dining room, and set up his huge model train track that formed a complete circle nearly touching each wall in the room.  In the center, the folks placed each son’s gifts behind a sign bearing each boy’s name; Billy, Joel, Gary and Bobby. 

Dad would set-up his movie lights to photograph each year’s festivities.  On cue we would come downstairs in our PJs and bathrobes (who wanted to take the time to get dressed) and file into the dining room, with bright lights shining in our eyes, and the sound of trains traveling around a mounds of goodies.

Before noon we were out on Terra Cotta with the rest of the neighborhood kids, showing off and sharing our new gifts, new bikes and trikes, shiny new toys, and for the older kids, new clothes.  Santa was good to everyone on the block even the Jewish kids who, like their gentile friends, loved the concept of giving and receiving and celebrating the moment.  We just didn’t celebrate the holiday.

Years later, when the brothers would get together to look at the old films one thing was very clear, Bill’s bathrobe worn last year was now Joel’s, and Gary is seen in it a few years later, until after it was Bob’s turn and then the bathrobe disappeared.  Tradition!

A smoking story!

New to my blog?  To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive.

 

Bland's Drug Store - 2009

Sixty years earlier it was an after school high school hangout where I took my first puff.  Blands Soda Fountain and booths, like many other things of that era, are now a fading memory.

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Stories I never told my mother - Part I

     Like most parents of their generation, mine smoked, father-cigars, mother-cigarettes.  From an early age I wanted to know when I could smoke too.   Mother said “Smoking isn’t good for little kids.”  She never did explain why it was good for big people.

     “Mother, when can I smoke like you?” I continued to ask.  “When you’re grown up,” was her answer.  She never explained to me when I would be grown up!

I concluded I’d have to decide for myself when I was not only grown up, but when I was no longer a little kid.  With some help from high school mates I reached that decision!

Across the street from my father’s clothing store was Bland’s Pharmacy. Bland’s had a soda fountain and some booths where, after school, high school kids hung out.  Back then students hung out to have a soda, smoke – just cigarettes, and talk.

I had looked forward to being in high school and going to Bland’s after school to have a soda and talk.  Soon after beginning my freshman year, while at Bland’s, one of my new friends offered me a Lucky Strike. I was too embarrassed not to take it – and smoke it.  Although I wasn’t quite 14 years old, as I walked home that day I decided smoking that cigarette meant that I wasn’t a kid anymore, I was a grown up.  But I didn’t dare tell Mother what I thought, or had done.

A few days later, I walked into a downtown smoke shop and purchased a stubby pipe and some Prince Albert in a can.  (Ed note:  Surely you remember the old phone prank about Prince Albert in a can.  If not, email me.)   I thought I could keep a little pipe hidden with less chance of Mother finding it.  In the morning, I’d pack the pipe with tobacco and slip it in my jacket.  Carrying a pack of cigarettes would be too tough to conceal.

Every afternoon, I would walk home, discreetly puffing on my little pipe, and feeling very grown up.  That summer, when I packed my duffel bag for my last year at sleep away camp, the first two items packed on the very bottom were my pipe and two tins of Prince Albert. Mother had laid out all of my clothes, but she felt I was old enough to pack my own bag.  I guess I was growing up.

Before returning home from camp, I was invited to stay a few days at a bunkmate’s home in Washington, DC.  With my parents approval, I accepted.  My friend suggested I not bring my pipe along because his parents wouldn’t approve, so I again packed it and the remaining, half full tin of Prince Albert in the bottom of my duffel bag.  I figured even with a few days detour I would arrive home before the duffle bag.  Wrong!!!

When I returned home my mother took me upstairs to her bedroom.  There on the floor was my empty duffel bag and on the mantle, above the fire place sat my stubby pipe and the remaining can of Prince Albert.  She merely pointed to the mantle and said, “You get these back when you’re 16.”          

On my sixteenth birthday, I again stopped at the smoke shop, purchased a new but full sized pipe, the little one was too childish, some really good tobacco and a tobacco pouch.  I walked home and into the kitchen, puffing away. Mother didn’t say a word, she just smiled.

I guess at sixteen you’re not a kid anymore. I was grown up.  Now I could not only smoke, but drive, too. 

You Can Go HOME – To Visit

New to my blog?  To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive.
 

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383 1/2


You can look back but you can’t go back! 

     If you only lived in the present, that would be true.  But we all have memories and we can go back…at least to visit.

     I did that recently. I went HOME to visit.  It wasn’t the first time I took that journey.  Hopefully it won’t be the last.  A person often needs to be creative to have an excuse to go HOME, particularly if HOME is nearly two thousand miles away from where you live today.

     This time my excuse was to attend a high school class reunion, from a high school from which I never graduated, the 55^th reunion for the Class of 1954.  My parents moved west in 1953, the year before I was to graduate from that high school.  It still was a good excuse.

     The last time the excuse was to attend a dear aunt’s 95^th birthday celebration.  She lived 125 miles north of HOME but close enough for a brief visit. 

     Every time I returned HOME the journey brought back floods of memories and I always brought a camera to capture what I could.  On this visit I also brought back a strong desire to document HOME. 

     Before moving west my parents lived in three homes.  I knew the location of the last two but locating their first home eluded me.  It was the home my parents returned to following their honeymoon, in 1935.  Little Billy was welcomed into their home a year later.

     I knew it was an apartment.  I had seen eight millimeter, black and white movies, taken the day they brought me HOME from the hospital.  From those movies I remembered what HOME looked like and I remembered the street name but little more. 

     Of greater concern; should I find the address, after more than 70 years, would HOME still be standing.  Time has a way of destroying the past.  All I needed to do is to look at HOME‘s downtown, filled with vacant lots and a few new buildings, on land where my memories once stood.

     I had Then and Now photos of the home we left to move west, and my second home on Elm Street but no pictures of my first home, other than the pictures in my mind.  Anyone who knew my parents and could remember when little Billy arrived HOME was gone. 

     If I could only find a 1935 telephone book perhaps the mystery could be solved. The question was who would possibly have kept phone books back that far?  Perhaps to public library! 

     Before this trip HOME, I contacted the library and to my surprise, although they did not have old telephone books, they did have a large archive of old documents, photos, and data. 

     Most importantly there was a dedicated, on site, historian who lovingly watched over my history and the history of many who came before and after me.  Although he didn’t have old telephone books, he directed me to the stacks where a series of hard bound books, called City Directories, were gathering dust.  Published each year, the book listed everyone who lived in town, including; what they did for a living, to whom they were married, their phone number and address.

     I had found the mother-lode.  All I needed to do was to find the directory published in 1935, the year my parents moved to town…and there it was, a ragged eared 1935 City Directory.  And listed in alphabetical order was, Adler, Walter, owner Wally’s Workingman’s Store, Marion (w), work and home telephone number and, most importantly residence street address.

     One big mystery solved.  Only one question remained.  Was my first home still standing?  A freeway was now located in that neighborhood.  Looking at a current map, the freeway appeared to cut horizontally across that street.  Was my first home still there?  The only way to find out was to drive down the street, hoping not to be disappointed.

     Armed with the street address 383½, I slowly began my trip, heading towards 383½. What I saw, as the numbers got closer to my destination, was a bit unsettling.  It was a freeway entrance.  It looked as though the street ended there, nearly a block short of HOME.  Soon I was on top of the freeway ramp which took an abrupt turn to the left…but the street kept going, down the hill for two more blocks where its life ended, up against the freeway.

     Half way down the hill on the right, as I remembered, there stood 383½, albeit changed in appearance over the 70+ years since Walter and Marion Adler were filmed bringing Little Billy home.  But it was HOME none the less.  My first HOME! 

I had come back HOME, to my first HOME, if only for a brief moment, if only in my mind.  

 

Marching down Pennsylvania Avenue

 

A School Boy Patrol

Private’s badge

New to my blog?  To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive. 

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     In the 1940s and 50s, you would see them everywhere: before school, after school and during lunchtime.  Virgil Shack, from the city’s police department, had them stationed everywhere, to minimize that hazard of an elementary or junior high school student being hit by a car or truck.

     Virgil’s army had privates, lieutenants, and captains.  You could tell their rank by the color of their badge, blue for captains, red for lieutenants and silver for patrolman or privates.  In the center of the badge was AAA, the American Automobile Association, the sponsor of Clarksburg’s School (Boy) Safety Patrol.

     At Linden Grade School, in the fifth and sixth grades, I was a member of the School Boy Patrol, as we were known.  I was stationed at the crosswalk near school, facing busy Pike Street, just in front of the Dairy Queen.  Another school boy patrolman was located on the opposite side of the street.  We both were easy to spot.  We wore 2 inch wide, very white, belts that were connected to a like white shoulder strap running across the chest, to which our badges were proudly displayed.  And we carried an eight foot broomstick-like pole with a white three foot canvas flag attached at the top. The message on the flag was STOP.

     When our classmates wanted to cross the street we would lower our flags, parallel to the crosswalk, as a signal to oncoming cars to STOP.  This was a private or lieutenant’s job.  Captains were in charge of the team and took down the license plate number of cars that violated the signal to STOP.  As a driver, you didn’t want to hear from Virgil Shack, a well known member of the Clarksburg Police Department.  Putting his boys, or a student, in jeopardy on his watch wasn’t recommended.

     Virgil had his army well organized.  After World War II, each spring, the AAA sponsored a School Boy Patrol Day in Washington DC.   Kids would flood into DC from all over the east coast for the opportunity to spend a Saturday in the nation’s capital, and to march in a parade down famed Pennsylvania Avenue.

Vigil wanted his boys to march in the parade. 

·        The problem: How do you get hundreds of boys to Washington DC? 

·        The answer: Rent a train.

·        The problem: How do you raise enough money to rent a train?

·        The answer:  Have a Tag Day!

     What’s a Tag Day?  Here’s how it worked.  Virgil had thousands of three inch tags printed which said Send your School Boy Patrol to DC or something like that. Through a hole in the top corner of the tag was a double string that a person, with pride, could loop over a shirt or jacket button after making an appropriate contribution to the patrol boy seeking a donation to help rent a train.  In exchange for a tag: a nickel, dime or even a quarter would be placed in a slot of the sealed lid on a cardboard cup.

     In two Saturdays, Virgil’s boys flooded downtown and neighborhoods raising enough money to rent a train to haul hundreds of preteen-aged boys to Washington, DC.  I made two visits to our nation’s capital with my grade school friends.  What an experience!

     We left late Friday night and, after a noisy trip east, just after dawn an excited, wide eyed and highly energetic group of school boys arrived at Union Station in our nation’s capital.  There we were joined by an invasion of thousands of other excited, wide eyed and highly energetic school boys, all proudly wearing their patrol belts and badges!

     Among the days activities I looked forward to included lying on the cool green grass of the Capital Mall, quietly watching the playful squirrels frolic, checking out the Smithsonian Museum and its many wonders, then climbing each and every stair to the top of the 555 foot Washington Monument, reading the marble plaques that adorned the interior walls on each landing, and of course walking back down. That’s something you can’t do anymore.   At one time I even knew exactly how many stairs there were from the bottom to the top of the monument.  When you were 11 or 12 years old, knowing things like that was important.

     Late in that evening a weary group of very tired boys re-boarded the train for a very quiet return trip home, arriving early Sunday morning.  Most of us headed straight to bed, exhausted, but excited about what we saw and did in our beautiful nation’s capital.

Oh yes, I even marched down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Exchanging Grandma

GRANDMA ADLER

The Matriarch to her children - fairy grandmother to her grandchildren - May 1950

New to my blog? To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive.

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We all had at least two, a maternal, and a fraternal grandma. Some of us called her granny, others grams, nanny, bubby or some special name, often a term of endearment. Some of us didn’t call her anything, because we never knew her.

My three younger brothers and I had one of each; one we knew, dearly loved and adored, Father’s mother, Grandma Adler, and one we never knew. Unfortunately, our Mother’s mother died the year I was I was born.

By war’s end, Grandma Adler had been widowed nearly 10 years. Until her death, she was the family matriarch and as close to a fairy grandmother as a kid could want.

She was revered by her three children. Madeline, my father’s older sister, my dad, Walter, and Bert, his younger brother were, out of love and deep respect, beholden unto her. Father’s siblings lived in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, Aunt Madeline, Uncle Eddie and their two childrenlived, just down the hall from Grandma’s seventh floor apartment in Squirrel Hill. Uncle Bert, Aunt Edith and their two sons about ten miles away in Canonsburg.

In 1934, Dad, a bachelor for the moment, ventured south to Clarksburg, West Virginia, 120 miles further south of Grandma Adler, to start his business, Wally’s Workingman’s store. Within a year he brought his new bride to the town. Over the next ten years, she would present him with four sons and Grandma with four more grandchildren.

In those years, getting to visit with Grandma for more than a day or so was challenging. Following World War II, after closing his store Saturday night, dad often piled the six of us into his 1938 Buick and head northed for Pittsburgh. Until 1948 he was on a waiting list for a new car. It was a three hour trek, often through rain, snow and fog, up and down the narrow, winding roads that traversed the hills of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania.

After three hours in a car with four boys, no one was more pleased to reach our destination than our dear haggard mother, the matriarch-in-waiting. And no one was more pleased to see Grandma Adler than her loving daughter-in-law, Marion. But those visits were painfully short, as we had to venture south the following afternoon so, on Monday, the older boys could return to school and dad to work.

But there were several times a year when we could have Grandma Adler to ourselves and for a week or more. It was when she came south to visit us and stay at our home. However, getting her there was a challenge.

There were three options:

1. Coming by train. This would get Grandma within 20 miles of Clarksburg. Because Mother didn’t drive, dad would have to leave the store to pick her up, something he didn’t like doing when the store was open. And Grandma didn’t want him to leave the store. She seldom took the train.

2. She could fly. But the high cost of flying aside, flying in those days in a two engine, tail dragging DC 3, was at best risky. The fact the flight stopped two times on that short journey added to the anxiety of flight, not grandma’s, but her children’s. Our fairy grandmother was, among other positive traits, an adventurer and loved taking risks.

3. Driving her to Clarksburg. This became the travel mode of choice.

Father and his brother Bert came up with a simple plan; exchange grandma half way between the two cities. On a given Sunday, Uncle Bert and his family would pick up Grandma at her apartment. They would use the time to have a nice visit as they journeyed south. In the meantime, Dad and his brood would head north, with great anticipation, to meet the southbound Adlers about half way in Mount Morris, a small town just north of the West Virginia border.

It amazes me to this day how the two brothers, without the convenience of modern communication, always managed to arrive at the designated pick up point within fifteen minutes of one another. Exchanging Grandma offered another benefit; during this rendezvous the families could visit with one another. This process later often evolved, during our summer vacations, a cousin exchange as well.

Our return trip, with seven in the car, was often challenging. In the early years baby brother Bob would get sit on Grandma’s lap, lucky kid. Later, as her sons grew up, Mother would make the sacrifice and stay home, ostensibly to prepare Sunday dinner. I suspect her sacrifice was made to enjoy a bit of piece and quiet.

Soon her husband, children and Mother Adler would arrive. She knew, for the next week or so, her sons would be on their best behavior. Fairy grandmothers have a way of making that happen.

A SUMMER RITUAL - Two Terra Cotta Alley Gangs

New to my blog? To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” found in the August 09 Blog Archive.

(Photo) Terra Cotta Street, the kids called it Terra Cotta Alley, was a very narrow street running along the wall of our home and past the garage. Dad’s new 1948 Buick and Smokey’s dog house, stories for another day, can be seen to the left and right of the tree, just sporting its spring blooms.

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In the late 1940s in our home, the summer evening ritual began when we sat down, as a family, at the dinner table. Father came home from his store at 5:10 PM. At 5:20 PM we were all expected to be seated at the table. On days he had a late customer, we waited for Father.

Following dinner, dad would give me 3¢ (later a nickel) to walk across Main Street to Smitty’s Drug Store to buy his Pittsburgh Press. If he was in a generous mood, and he usually was, I would get 13¢, enough to buy the Press and two 5¢ Popsicles. Because there were two halves to each Popsicle, each of his four sons could share the bounty. The burden of deciding the Popsicle’s flavors was left to me, the eldest, but I got plenty of help from my brothers. Dad was teaching us the gentle art of leadership and compromise.

As the sun set on a warm summer evening, the Terra Cotta Alley gang would meet in the street to decide, not what store to rob or what rival gang member to take out, but rather what games to play: hide and go seek, kick the can (my mother usually furnished a can), red rover red rover, or stick ball. Some evenings we would end up on Colin Church’s driveway shooting baskets and playing horse. For the kids in the ‘40s and ‘50s, sunset meant playtime in the street.

And there was another neighborhood gang. They weren’t our rivals, they were our fathers. For the men of the neighborhood, sunset on a warm summer evening meant spirited conversation with the firemen at the East End fire station.

Like their gang, in our gang there were just guys, although occasionally we would let some girls play too. Everyone went to Linden Elementary, except for Dick (Zeek) Feeney who went to St. Marys. If we were going to play ball, even some of the older kids on the street, Calvin Griffin and the Oliker twins, Dick and Dan would join in.

On my way to Smitty’s, with coins in hand, I passed the fire station and the other gangs’ meeting place, two benches on a small green wedge of ground next to the station. Occasionally, as I passed by, there was a fireman and a neighborhood father already engrossed in conversation. I knew not to stop, but just keep walking, respectfully acknowledging their presence as I passed. After all, they were having a “Big People Conversation.”

Often on my way back home, father had already joined the group and they were laughing about something adult. I just kept on moving; knowing full well what ever they were talking about it wasn’t for my ears.

Most of the time I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to! I had Popsicles to deliver to my three younger brothers before they melted. After making the delivery I’d often grab a tin can and head out the back door to meet the gang on Terra Cotta Alley.

I would be a teenager before, occasionally, being invited to join in dad’s gang’s conversation to listen to “Big People Conversation.”

Minard's RIP

If you are new to my blog I suggest you read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” published on 08-20-2009 to understand why this story was written.

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When Dad said, “Let’s go out for dinner,” what he meant was: let’s go to Minard’s Spaghetti Inn. It was our favorite. But our favorite restaurant came very close to being another casualty of the Second World War.

When Mike and Rose Minard started serving their now famous sumptuous spaghetti, covered with Mike’s delicious meat sauce and meat balls, with a small salad, smothered in zesty Italian dressing, they knew they had something special.

Like many successful businesses, their enterprise had a humble beginning. In 1937, the Minards started serving that traditional Italian fare to customers at home, in their dining room. Meals were prepared in the family kitchen. Soon they found it necessary to not only put tables in their living room, but to move the family living quarters to the second floor!

Not long after they opened, it was not unusual, while driving past the restaurant, to glance over to see people standing on the Minard family’s front porch. They were waiting for one of the few tables to become available. On many evenings, the Adlers joined the throng.

Not only was the food good, but from the beginning, the ambiance was warm and inviting. After moving away, whenever any of the Adlers returned to Clarksburg, a must do was to stop at Minard’s. But that “must do” nearly died a tragic death before Minard’s Spaghetti Inn reached adolescence.

During WW II, nearly everything worth having was rationed: gas, auto tires (you couldn’t buy a new car), sugar, coffee, and especially meat. If mother didn’t have enough rationed coupons to buy beef for the family, father’s solution was, “Let’s go to Minard’s!” During the war, waiting to get a table there was longer than ever. Their business was booming.

Then rumors began to spread that Minards was using dog and cat meat in their meat balls and meat sauce. Some whispered they used horses and rats as well. The alleged sources of the rumors varied from competitors wanting them out of business, to a story attributed to a city sewer worker who claimed to have found dog and cat skeletons in the sewer near the restaurant.

Regardless of the source, the effect was devastating on the young business. In a small town rumors spread quickly. During the war there was famous poster with this slogan, “Loose lips sink ships.”

Loose lips almost sank Manard’s. Customers vanished, except for one small segment of the community that wasn’t buying any of it. The saviors of Minard’s came from an unexpected source.

As children, my father told us this rumor story, which I wanted to believe, but it seemed a bit far out. That was until a January, 2008, trip “back home” with my wife, younger brother and a Pittsburgh cousin, who came along for a ride, and of course, lunch at Minard’s.

As was tradition, whenever we went there to eat, I mentioned to the server that a couple of the Adler boys were here and wondered if there were any Minard family members at the restaurant. We had always been warmly greeted, and well received when any of us showed up, even 50 years later.

On this occasion, Mike and Rose’s son, Joe, came to the table with a big smile on his face and extended a hearty hand shake.

“Do you remember the Adlers,” I asked?

“Do I ever, I used to buy my suits from your dad’s store. My father loved your dad and all of the Adlers.”

I was soon to discover just why. During the course of our visit, I inquired about the rumor stories my father told us in our youth. Joe said it was all true and then some. The part of that rumor, I had never heard, was Minard’s also started using pork in their meat.

Joe explained! Out of respect for the small Clarksburg Jewish community, Mike and Rose let it be known from the very beginning, Minard’s never used pork in anything they served. Pork was not kosher. It was a sincere gesture that paid dividends.

When the tainted meat stories surfaced, the Jews of Clarksburg would have nothing to do with any of it. Instead, to show support for the family and their establishment, they turned out in mass and on a very regular basis at Minard’s Spaghetti Inn. It was a time when no one else would come there to eat. Joe said that gesture and support saved the family business. Realizing what was happening brought tears to his parent’s eyes. It was something the family would never forget.

To this day, according to Joe, even though there are very few Jews left in the area, Minard’s still does not use pork in any of their recipes. Had it not been for the belief of a small segment of the community, over 60 years ago, imagine all of the great spaghetti and meat sauce, people within a days drive of Minard’s would never had eaten, and don’t forget those great salads, smothered in that zesty Italian dressing! Then there was that home baked Italian bread…