Playing It Well: The Life and Times of Jack O'leary Part I

© Copyright 2011 John J. O’Leary.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4269-6156-4 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-6157-1 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-6158-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011904684

Trafford rev. 04/04/2011

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Contents

Preface

Prologue

1932-1936

In The Beginning

1936-1943

The Apartment

Life In The Neighborhood

School Days

Fun And Games

Alley Whackin And

Other Mischief

Youthful Entrepreneurs

A Vacation In Port Jefferson

Celebrating The Holidays

World War Ii

Potpourri

1943-1946

Our New Digs

New Adventures

Countdown To Graduation

1946-1950

Teen YearS – Mean Years

Mother And Daddy

A New Life

1950-1954

The United States Navy

Boot Camp At Great Lakes

Company 243

Radio School,

Norfolk, Virginia

Panama

Mission Impalpable

A New Commander

Time To Move On

Home And Marriage

Naps – A Short Interlude

U.S.S.Yorktown Cva10

On The Road

Preparing For War

On The Line

A Stopover In Hong Kong

Back On The Line

Going Home

1954-1958

Discharge And Home

Almost Fatal

Starting Over

Off To Tri-State College

Odd Jobs

Life In Indiana

The Halls Of Academia

Gathering Clouds

The Emerging Engineer

Return To Indiana

1958-1970

Renewal

A Fateful Night

At Sea On The Ocean,

At Sea At Home

A New Family; And Growing

Power-Tronic System, Inc.

A Big Move

A New Addition

Family Trek To Suburbia

Sewing The Political Seeds

Meanwhile, Back At The Office

Starting At The Top

A Return To Reality

Grumman Aerospace Corporation

The Conservative Party

1970

1971-1972

Moving On

The Other Job

Life Goes On

Princess

New Beginnings

FOR

My daughters

Patti and Eileen

and

My grandson

James Patrick McKenna

Preface

Our 1998 trip to Italy took us to Castellamare del Golfo in Sicily, the hometown of Jean’s maternal grandparents, Mariano Gennaro and Josephine Corallo; and in Molise (formerly Abruzzo until 1963), the town of Colle d’Astine, the birthplace of Nunzio DiPaolo, Jean’s other grandfather; and grandmother Angelina Buttino’s hometown at Campochiaro. As a result of these journeys we eventually uncovered a line of Jean’s ancestry in Campochiaro, eventually leading back to a previously unknown great-great-great-grandfather, Angelino, and many cousins and other relatives in the Buttino line of descent.

These exciting discoveries roused my curiosity about my own ancestry; at that time I didn’t even know the name of my father’s father or most of the family origins. In uncovering some of the family genealogy, I began to realize that the only things I was discovering were dates of birth, marriage, and death, but nothing about who these ancestors were. What did they do in their lives? How did they spend their days; their holidays; their special occasions? What were they like as people?

I soon realized that my own life would follow a similar scenario; a life that would someday close and eventually be forgotten as years and living memories passed. I regretted not having documented our family’s history while the elders were still around to relate their stories. My father, Dan, for instance, had an interesting history during his younger days in the bootlegging business during prohibition and no one ever recorded his reminiscences. These stories are now all lost to his descendants; never to be told.

I want my grandson, James (and any other grandchildren that may join him) to have knowledge of my humble life so that he can understand another time and another place, and so that his family is not just another list of dates of birth and death.

I have not attempted to impart any of my philosophical attitudes in this story of my life, although I don’t doubt that much could be read between the lines in the events that have shaped my years.

I have attempted to be faithful to events as seen through my eyes (or at least as I think I remember them.) As I delved further into a study of my own life, I was astounded at how many clear memories have been stored away in the hard drive of my brain for these many years. In some instances my memory proved somewhat inadequate, particularly for events that occurred many decades in the past. My recollection proved most vague in remembering some of the names from long ago. In the interests of a more even flow of prose, and to add a bit of mischief, I have used some substitute names in the early pages. These names can be identified by the bold type.

I have attempted to present the times as I remember them, nothing more and nothing less. I apologize for any inaccuracies that may occur in these pages.

In the chapters dealing with my long career as an Engineer, I have avoided getting involved in technical details; most of which I have probably forgotten and, even if I remembered would not be understood by many… nor would they care. I will say that most of the projects I worked on were state-of-the-art for the day and always on the cutting edge of technology, but which today would be considered relics of the dark ages.

I have seen much, done much, and I have done some good and some bad (but I hope not too bad), and I have made my share of mistakes in this life. The one mistake I will not make at this juncture of my life is to leave my grandson without an appreciation of a least one part of his family heritage.

…and so it is to James Patrick McKenna (and all of his descendants) that I dedicate this book

…. John J. O’Leary

Prologue

1932 was the bridge year. It spanned the Age of Innocence before the Great War and the attempt after the war to renew that time against the harsh realities then enfolding on the world. Economically, the world had slipped into a deep depression and, politically, the forces of evil were afoot in the world with Nazism raising its ugly head in Germany, Japan’s militarists starting to move out into the world, and the Soviet Union reaching the heights of cruelty. These things would soon plummet the world into a terrible war that would forever crush any hopes of a return to the more irenic times before the conflict.

With 12 million jobless in the United States, 1932 was a year when the concern of most Americans was to feed and shelter their families. They were glad to be rid of the foreign entanglements that took so many American lives in a war that most American felt was not theirs. We had turned inward and were not yet ready to engage the nefarious forces that were, even then, starting to emerge on the other side of the world.

Herbert Hoover was in the last year of his presidency; soon to be replaced by Franklin D. Roosevelt who would usher in his New Deal and permanently change the political landscape of America.

The eighteenth amendment to the Constitution with its prohibition against alcohol was still in effect until 1933. The country was still on the gold standard; Bryan’s Cross of Gold.

The only foreign relations that concerned Americans was the return of the Heavyweight boxing crown to the United States when Jack Sharkey defeated Germany’s Max Schmeling in 15 rounds in New York City.

1932 was the only year in which there was a tie for the Oscar for Best Actor when Frederick March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) shared the award with Wallace Beery (The Champ). Helen Hayes took the best actress prize for Sin of Madelon Claudet and the best picture Oscar went to The Grand Hotel.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that year went to Pearl Buck for The Good Earth.

Elsewhere, in sports, the Yankees swept the World Series over Chicago in four straight games, while the Rangers were losing the Stanley Cup to Toronto.

Outside the United States, Hirohito was Emperor of Japan but the nativist militarists had seized control of the government and had started the Japanese quest for hegemony over Eastern Asia and the Pacific with the establishment of a puppet government in Manchuria that they named Manchukuo.

In the Soviet Union the tyrant dictator, Josef Stalin, was completing his brutal collectivization program that left millions dead in his country. Hitler was just days away from being named Chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg (January 1933) to start the world on the first steps toward world war and one of the most wicked governmental regimes ever to stain the world.

Closer to home, the United States was still playing hemispheric policeman with American troops still occupying Haiti.

Into this world of rapidly evolving change, a child was born. There was no star rising in the east to announce his birth; if anything, there may have been a full moon to greet this newcomer. The narrative to follow is the story of that child.

1932-1936

In The Beginning

I was born at home at 30-55-49th Street in Astoria, Queens, New York City, having been delivered by a Mrs. Sarah Smith, a mid-wife from Long Island City, at 5:30 P.M. on July 8, 1932. It was a normal birth and I weighed in at a hefty eight pounds and fifteen ounces.

I was the third child born to Daniel J. O’Leary, Sr. and Florence Beiser, following Francis Xavier who was born eighteen months before and the oldest brother, Daniel Joseph, Jr. born in August of 1929. We also had a half sister, Helen; though we never thought of her as any but a full sister. Helen Florence Roepke was born in New York City to our mother, Florence, and Edward Roepke, her first husband.

By the time I arrived on the scene in 1932, depression had set in pretty badly across the United States and our family was greatly effected by it. This is the reason I was only given one name; the family could no longer afford two names.

In those days it was common practice not to put off the Baptism of newborn babies until a caterer could be hired and a party arranged. The important thing was to welcome the child into the church at the earliest time so that the baby would be prepared for any eventuality. My Baptism took place at St. Joseph’s Church in Astoria, only nine days after I was born. My grandfather, John Schwab and my mother’s sister, Aunt Ruth Beiser (later to be Ruth Schwartz) sponsored me as my godparents.

Mother (we always called our Mother by that name; not Mom, or Ma, or Mommy) kept a written record of each of the eight siblings, tracking their illnesses, medical records, places of residence, schools attended, and significant events in each of our lives. It was from this record that I informed myself of the earliest days.

Before I was four years old, I had been through some of the major childhood sicknesses such as Chicken Pox, Mumps, and Whooping Cough; never did get the Measles or Scarlet Fever.

At eighteen months, I fell on my forehead three times; out of the high chair, I believe; and spent eight days in Bellevue Hospital in New York City being treated with flaxseed poultices for Cellulitis of the forehead which had caused my eyes to be swollen shut.

It seems that my head accounted for a large part of this motherly ledger. In the first grade, at the age of 6, I fell on the concrete in St. Joseph’s schoolyard and required stitches in the back of the head. Just before turning ten, my head was split open in a rock war in Woodside.

I can remember in one of the English classes during my attendance at St. Joseph’s Elementary School, being required to write an autobiography which was to be read to the class. When I was about halfway through my recital, Sister interrupted me to say, This is supposed to be the story of your life, not only an autobiography of your head. I have often wondered if all this attention to my head led to my current hat size, 7-3/4.

My earliest, though somewhat hazy, recollection is while I was in a baby carriage being pushed by Mother with a young Dan and Fran holding on to each side. I must have been about two years old; surely no older than three. A wheel came off the carriage and Mother was quite perplexed, but her usual calm self. She sought assistance at a nearby store. I believe it was a saloon located on 30th Road where Public School 10 and a park would be built at a later date.

I believe it was the traumatic impact to my young mind that made some of these events stand out above all others and to be remembered over seventy years later.

One of the most traumatic of these happenings took place at our apartment on 44th Street, which was the third place we had lived in my three short years on earth. I believe those were the days when you received a free month’s rent when you moved into a new apartment, and moving was a way to cut down the cost of rent.

One day, we three boys were playing in the apartment and Mother was sitting in the rocking chair knitting. She started to hemorrhage profusely over the rocker with the blood flowing onto the floor. Mother remained quite calm and told us to call the neighbor next door. We were quite frightened; first, by the blood, then by the droves, or what seemed to be droves, of agitated women, excitedly rushing in and out of the apartment, barking orders; and then by the arrival of police and an ambulance.

It seemed like an eternity before things quieted down after they took Mother out on a stretcher. The house emptied and we three boys were taken to another apartment by one of the neighbor women until Daddy came home. Earlier, one of the women told us not to worry that, Your mother sat on a knitting needle and will be all right.

Several days later, Mother returned home with a little baby girl in her arms. I later realized that she had been taken to the hospital and she was bringing home a sister for us; my sister Marilyn (the spelling of which was Marylin on her birth certificate.)

I didn’t react too pleased at this new addition that would supplant me as the baby of the house. My first words to her were, Dinky one (Stinky One). It was not until years later that I learned that babies did not come from sitting on a knitting needle, but until that time, I was very vigilant to make sure that there were no knitting needles where Mother might sit and cause another baby.

This latest addition to our growing household was probably the impetus for us to move to different quarters around the corner on 46th Street, where we would spend the next seven years.

We moved into a four-room apartment on the ground floor of a clapboard house that was probably one of the oldest existing structures in Astoria. It was here that I started to grow up, to meet new friends, and to begin my exploration of the world of Astoria.

1936-1943

The Apartment

Our new home on 46th Street was a modest railroad apartment in a building with four apartments; two upstairs and two downstairs(see page 340.) Our four rooms included a front room; no doubt called that because it was in the front of the house facing the street. We used it as a living room and family room. The furnishings that I recall were a sofa that was usually adorned with slipcovers and lace doilies on the arms; a small bookcase with glass doors and a number of books which we all avidly read over the next few years, the rocking chair of knitting needle infamy, and a kerosene burner. Hanging over the mantle was a two by three foot oil painting on black velvet depicting a scene in Venice, Italy with some Renaissance characters.

At the rear of the house was the kitchen, which was of sufficient size to accommodate a large kitchen table. When pulled from its normal place against the wall, the table provided seating for our family of seven (soon to be eight with the arrival of brother Bob in May of 1937). We didn’t have enough chairs for all of us to sit at the table at the same time, so we made up the deficit by putting the ironing board across two chairs to give us two to three extra places.

There was a toilet at the rear of the kitchen; no bath, no shower, no sink; just a small closet of a room with a toilet that had an overhead tank and a chain for flushing. In the wintertime when the temperature was below freezing, the water in the toilet would freeze up overnight. There was a race amongst the boys in the morning to be the first to get to use the toilet so that we could thaw out the ice in the bowl with that first pee of the day. I can still hear Mother yelling out, Pull the chain!

The other two rooms in the center of the apartment were used as bedrooms. The one closest to the kitchen had two single beds; one for Helen (who later shared this bed with Marylin after Bobby joined the household), and the other bed I shared with Danny and Franny. There was a doorway without a door on one side to the kitchen and one on the other side to the other bedroom. There was also a clouded glass double hung window between the kitchen and the bedroom. The only other furniture that I can recall in this bedroom was a small, narrow dresser about four feet high, which gave us an excellent platform to jump off onto the beds; which usually collapsed from the impact of the flying bodies. We did this, of course, when Mother and Daddy were not at home.

Helen, who was often left to baby sit us, tried to control us but we were incorrigible and she usually had to resort to force. She would grab us one at a time, hold us down, and give us a mulligan, which was a blow delivered by a fist with a bent, protruding middle finger and applied with great force to the upper arm, the thigh, or most often, the top of the head.

One night as we were doing our suicide dives onto the bed, Mother and Daddy arrived unexpectedly and caught Franny in the air just before he hit the bed that collapsed as it often did. Daddy was so irate that he picked Franny up and banged his head into the plaster wall leaving a dent in the wall of about three inches in diameter. That dent was never fixed, and until we left the house a few years later, whenever we got out of line, Daddy would point to the dent in the wall and we were all well aware of the implications.

The second bedroom was for Mother and Daddy, who slept in a double bed. This room opened up through a wide archway into the front room. Above the archway was decorative beading that must have been fashionable during the Gay Nineties. The baby’s crib was also located in this room.

The only clothes closet in the house was built into this room; double vertically hung doors at the top and two tiers of drawers at the bottom.

A sister painting of another Venice scene on velvet completed the décor in this master bedroom.

The floors in each room were covered in linoleum which was subject to much wear and was periodically changed by Daddy when it was affordable.

There was no central heating. A black coal stove in the kitchen provided the primary heat to the apartment and was supplemented by the kerosene burner in the front room. In the wintertime when the coal stove was in daily use, the stove was also used for cooking. Another use for the stove in the winter was to place our feet in the oven to warm up after playing in the snow and coming in wet and cold.

Coal for the stove was stored in the cellar in a bin; every apartment was assigned a bin that was used to store personal belongings and the coal. Coal was delivered by trucks to the neighborhood houses. Metal chutes were run into the cellar from the cellar window and the coal was put into large barrels to be rolled to the chute for transfer to the cellar bins.

Fuel for the oil burner was purchased from Brandt’s Hardware Store around the corner and put directly into the oil can which was then placed in a reservoir tray on the back of the burner. A large pot of water was placed on top of the burner console to humidify the air and had to be refilled continuously.

In the kitchen, in addition to the coal stove, was a four-burner gas range and oven for cooking, a sink, an icebox and a double section soapstone washtub. Daddy took the separator out from between the two tubs so that we had a place to bathe, albeit in the kitchen.

Most of the time, we doubled up in the tub to save water. A gas-fired boiler that was located between the sink and the coal stove provided hot water.

Mother and Daddy took their baths when everyone was out of the house or late at night after we had all gone to sleep. Helen, being a young teenager at the time, wouldn’t use this kitchen bathing facility. I can remember her packing up her towel and bathing supplies and a change of clothes into a brown paper bag and going to Aunt Lily’s house on 43rd Street to use her bathtub.

The alternate use for the washtubs was, of cause, to scrub the laundry manually on a washboard. When the budget would permit the modest expenditure for wet wash, Mother would send the clothes out and they would be delivered wet in a bag to be hung on the backyard clothes line to dry.

The icebox was a constant source of aggravation in the kitchen. A block of ice was placed in the upper compartment and as it thawed, the melted ice dripped into a pan placed underneath. If, as often happened, the pan were not emptied, the overflow would soak the kitchen floor.

The ice was usually purchased from the iceman who peddled the ice from a truck or a horse drawn wagon. He would carry it into the house directly into the icebox. A fifteen-cent piece of ice off the wagon measured about one cubic foot. We were often sent to the Knickerbocker Ice House about a half-mile from the house so that we could purchase a larger piece of ice for the same price. We hauled the ice back to the house in our homemade wagon. With all the detours and diversions that we encountered along the way, by the time we got home, the ice was melted down to about a half a cubic foot.

Lighting for the apartment was miniscule. The largest bulb, 100 watts, was in the kitchen in a ceiling fixture with a pull chain. This was the sole lighting in the kitchen. There was a single 25-watt bulb in a ceiling fixture in each of the other three rooms and a standing lamp in the front room that also had a 25-watt bulb. The front windows were fitted with shutters which when closed added to the dimness of the room.

Entry to the apartment was usually through a door leading to the kitchen, and less often through a door from the hallway into the front room. The doors were usually left unlocked in those days unless the whole family was leaving the house.

Besides the clothes closet in the master bedroom, the only cabinetry in the house was a small cabinet in the kitchen where we stored the food and dishes which in the main were an odd assortment of broken and irregular pieces. Our crystal ware was old jelly jars that were often chipped.

Behind the house was a small yard that was variously used as a ball field, a battlefield, a mud pie factory, or anything that our young imaginations could conjure. Access to the yard was through the cellar (remember, …slide down my cellar door?) The more usual entry to the yard, however, was directly out the kitchen window in the back of the house using the adjacent fence as a ladder.

Daddy built us a grand shack in the backyard from old wood scraps. The upper half of the shack was constructed of a thin layer of tarpaper whose integrity was short lived. A small tear on in the side of the tarpaper soon expanded into a gaping hole which became an alternate ingress and egress for us; which only led to a larger hole.

Some of the most memorable times in that multi-purpose edifice were when we were permitted to stay up after dark. We would gather in the shack with a flickering candle and in the semi-darkness we would listen with wide-eyed awe to Danny or one of the older kids as they delightfully frightened us with tales of horror, gore, and mystery. And how we loved to be scared out of our wits!

One day Daddy constructed a chicken coop in the backyard and stocked it with young chicks. After a few weeks, the chickens had reached maturity and with Mother’s prodding to be rid of them, Daddy prepared to dispatch them all in the cellar of the house.

I don’t recall how many chickens there were, but Daddy quickly chopped off each of the heads and let the headless chickens run around the cellar until they expired. This was quite an exciting event for us kids, and for me it was my first experience in observing a typical session of a governmental legislative body. However, these chickens running around with their heads cut off were more delectable roasted and served at our dinner table than any of those politicians would have been.

The apartment was small, but it provided adequate living space for a host of occupants. Besides Mother and Daddy and we six kids, we had an abundance of cockroaches whose presence was usually most noticeable after dark.

We also had a colony of mice to keep us company. Hardly a week went by without having our big game hunt in which we chased the mice with brooms or any other weapon that was available. The captured mouse would be executed by drowning in the toilet where with a quick flush he joined his mates in the city sewers.

The evening was also time for the guests who joined us in bed and who we didn’t notice until after we went to sleep and they started to feast on our flesh. There was many a night of bed bug banquet followed by Daddy pulling the mattresses off in the morning to be beaten and aired in the back yard, attempting to get rid of these night crawlers. He would then spray the springs on the bed with an insecticide, if it was available, or in the event it was not, he would scrape the inside of the springs to remove the bedbugs and kill them by hand. You could tell the ones that had gorged on us the night before because they were the bloodiest.

In the summer, the invaders were flies and mosquitoes; there being no air conditioning and windows and doors were usually wide open to cool the house. We would kill the flies on a sticky flypaper trap hanging from the light string or, more directly, with a swatter. The most entertaining way to kill them, though, was with a spring-loaded pistol that shot a dart with a small suction cup on the end. When the flies would land on a wall or on the ceiling we would take our target practice on them. It wasn’t long before the wall and ceiling were covered with squashed fly bloodstains. The stains were usually washed off with the Saturday cleaning, but there was one particularly large spot on the kitchen ceiling that remained for years and was still there the day that we moved.

Mother was a very fastidious housekeeper in spite of the pests that swarmed around us. Every Saturday was house-cleaning day, and every room was cleaned from top to bottom. All of the furniture was moved into an adjacent room, every week, and the floors were scrubbed, usually with a heavy concentration of Pine-Sol, and then waxed. Walls and windows were cleaned and all furniture and moldings were dusted. Only then was all the furniture replaced in the room.

When we were younger, we were allowed to dust but it wasn’t too long before we were into the heavy moving and cleaning. It seemed to me at the time, that because of the small age difference in the three older boys, me being the youngest of the three, that when it came to privileges of age, I was always told that I would have to wait until I was old enough or the same age as Danny and Franny were when they were given these privileges. However, when it came to chores and other onerous tasks, we would all reach the age of responsibility simultaneously; an early lesson in life’s inequities.

My earliest recollection at our 46th Street residence took place when I was about four years old, shortly after we had moved in.

Around that time period there was a parade and picnic every June 1st, called a June Walk. I don’t know what the genesis of the event was or who sponsored it but I do recall them quite vividly.

On this particular June day, we joined in the usual parade, which also featured many decorated floats, and marched to the picnic grounds where we were treated to whatever goodies were provided for the day. Toward the end of the day, Daddy went off to do something, perhaps the men’s room, and cautioned me to stay exactly where he left me and not to move anywhere. The curiosity of a four year old led me to wander off… and off… and off. Before long I had wandered not only out of the park but wound up several blocks away.

However, I was not particularly disturbed, because even in those days, at four years old, I knew my numbers, knew how to read street signs, and also knew that I lived on 46th Street and 30th Avenue. I walked to the corner, noted the present street location and then walked to the next corner and discovered that the numbers were going in the right direction and continued going in the right direction along the way. It wasn’t too many blocks before I came to a solid concrete barrier and was completely at a loss as to how to proceed. (I deduced in later years that this barrier was the wall along the Grand Central Parkway)

I noticed some people coming out of a nearby house and approached them. I was too shy to say anything (in those days they called me Bashful). So, I used my most effective means of communications, I started to cry. After ascertaining my predicament, those kind people took me over to Steinway Street and turned me over to a policeman who had me taken home in a Police car, which in those days was a solid green, single seat coupe.

When I arrived home, which was several hours after the start of this journey, Mother and Daddy were ecstatic; they hugged me and kissed me. They thanked the policeman profusely and Daddy even tried to give the cop a tip; which he thankfully declined. (Daddy tipped everyone even when he couldn’t afford a penny)

After the cops left, Daddy turned on me and laced into me something fierce. He whacked me across the ass until I cried and said, And now look what you’ve gone and done. Disgracing the family by being dropped off by the cops. How will we ever explain to the neighbors about a police car in front of our house? I felt like Jackie O’Leary – FELON and wondered if they were going to drag me off to jail.

It wasn’t too long after that episode, my flirtation with crime, that Mother had some neighbor’s in for tea and coffee in the evening after we had all been put to bed. During the night I awoke with pains in my stomach and felt very sick. I came out to the kitchen where the ladies were gathered at the table and in my usual fashion, cried that I was sick. Everyone started to offer advice. I don’t know how many women were there but it seemed like, and sounded like, an army. All I can see today in my mind’s eye is a bunch of yelling, distorted faces.

Someone offered the suggestion that I should be given an enema. Before I knew it I was on the kitchen table with my bare ass hanging over the oval shaped wash basin that Mother used for multiple purposes; and now she was about to find another use for it. I was frightened and couldn’t stop crying, women were babbling all around me. Lift up his behind. Put some Vaseline on it. Stick it up his behind. Gently now. Oh, Yeah!

I could feel my stomach filling up with something warm. It was starting to hurt and then all of a sudden (I couldn’t help it. Please, don’t beat me, I was thinking) I exploded. Most of the excrement went into the pan, but it was all over the table and all over the floor, but, most gratifyingly, it splattered on the gaggle of hens hovering around the pan. Women were scampering around yelling and in a panic. The last thing I recall hearing was someone saying, BAD BOY! My last thoughts were, Shit on all of you!

I don’t recall all of the neighbors in our house for they were changing from time to time, but some of them do stand out. Next door for a period of time lived Katy Doran, Daddy’s second cousin, her husband and children, Joanie, Jimmy (who we called Zombie because he was the skinniest kid on the block), Ray-Ray, and Marilyn.

Upstairs were the Cavanaughs; whose only claim to my memory was a daughter called Tansy, which name had a lyrical sound to me.

Next door to them were the McKies. Mrs. McKie had a physical impediment, perhaps M.S., and did not leave her apartment too often. We used to go to the store for Mrs. McKie; always to get a can of Franco-American beef gravy. I think that this was the reason that, after the McKies moved in, the hallway had the constant stale smell of old brown gravy.

Mikey, was the older son. Gussie, the younger, would later marry Ann Pruziner, a cousin of Ann Mulraney. Ann was Jean’s maid-of-honor at our wedding in 1959. Gussie and Marilyn Doran caused a short-lived scandal in the neighborhood when they were found outside the house, cavorting in the nude. They were both about three or four years old at the time.

I remember one especially shocking day with Mikey McKie. I was about seven years old at the time and Mikey and I and a couple of friends, Eddie Ryan from my class in school and Gussie, Mikey’s brother, took our homemade wagons to the remains of the old Madison Square Garden Bowl on Northern Boulevard, which had been demolished except for a large bowl shaped concrete crater that was ideal for riding our wagons to the bottom, climb back to the top, and repeat. [Madison Square Garden Bowl was used as the site for several boxing championship matches, including the Heavyweight contest in 1932 when Jack Sharkey took the title from Max Schmeling of Germany and brought the title back to the United States. It was also used for the Soap Box Derby, which we often attended.]

After several runs down the slopes of the bowl, we were sitting on our wagons at the bottom of the hill when a man at the top of the south end of the bowl called to us. Mikey ran up the hill to find out what the man wanted. When he returned to us waiting at the bottom, he said, The man up there said he’d give us fifty cents if we would suck his cock. We were so frightened that we ran straight up the north end of the bowl with our wagons and hotfooted it for home. When we arrived home, Mikey finally caught up with us and showing great disappointment said, Why’d you guys run? We coulda made fifty cents.

Life In The Neighborhood

For the first couple of years at our 46th Street home, the apartment and the street between 28th and 30th Avenues were all I knew. (There was no 29th Avenue at this location). The neighborhood was a typical working class area with primarily multi-family apartment houses and a few two or three family attached homes. The only single family house was a small wooden frame house that was occupied by two spinster sisters who lived a reclusive life. The house had shutters that were continuously closed.

One of the sisters never left the house and the only time we were aware of her presence was when she peered furtively out of the window behind the shutters while her sister tended to the garden. The garden was planted in a large rectangular hole alongside their house that I realized in later years, was the foundation for the cellar of a house that was never built. Access to the garden was by a ladder that the sister brought back into the house when she was not in the garden.

The sisters dressed in long house dresses and bonnets, and fit the description of what we conceived of as a witch. Often when playing ball in the street, the ball would go over their fence and land in the garden. None of us had the courage to hop the fence to retrieve the ball unless we were dared to go in and face the wrath of the witches. I particularly remember one day when we goaded Georgie Wunderlin into hopping the fence to get a ball that had gone into the witches yard. The sister that was the only one to leave the house came out and quietly climbed down into the pit without Georgie noticing. When he turned around and saw her approaching, it seemed that he ran up the side of the wall, over the fence, and out of harms way.

When he joined us on the other side of the street, safe from his frightening encounter, we all burst out with laughter; Georgie had peed his pants and he wasn’t even aware of it. After that day, it was difficult to get any of us to retrieve lost balls in the witches garden. Usually we would wait until after dark when their lights went out and then we would send someone in to get any balls that were lost during the day.

[Georgie died of polio before we moved away from the block. This may have been my first experience with the death of someone I knew; other than the kittens that my brothers, Danny and Franny, allege that I killed before moving to 46th Street.]

Other than these cloistered sisters, most of the people on the block were working men and their families: that is, those who had jobs. With the depression still in full swing in 1936, there were probably as many people on the block on home relief as there were with low paying jobs.

The ethnic makeup of 46th Street and its environs was mixed; predominantly, Irish, German, Italian, and other Western European types. There were no Negroes (not yet called African-Americans nor even black). There were Greeks in Astoria, but they were primarily found around Ditmars Boulevard at the other end of town, and had not yet reached the density that would later make them the majority group in the community.

There was a small Jewish community centered around a Synagogue on 34th Street and in those days did not play a noticeable role in our end of the community other than as shopkeepers or as door to door salesmen. Mother had one of the vendors who regularly came to the house to sell a large selection of merchandise from slipcovers and rugs to pots and pans and dishes. She called him My Jew, and that’s the way we referred to him when he made his house call. Mother, your Jew is here.

The only Asian people we were exposed to were, the Chinese Launderer and the waiters at the Chinese Restaurant. In our innocent youth we weren’t aware of any differences between these various groups but the adults we lived around quickly filled our vocabularies with a whole catalogue of descriptive titles which we picked up and used but actually had no idea of the significance. (Nor the ignorance and hatred behind it)

There were: Micks and Guineas (also Wops and Dagoes), Kikes and Mockies, Niggers (not yet just the n word), Heinies and Krauts. These epithets shaped many an Astoria young mind; many of which are still tainted by this early exposure. However, this is not a place for apology or explanation - that’s just the way it was.

A German delicatessen was on the corner of 30th Avenue across from our house that was at mid-block. Across the street from the deli was Will’s Bar and Grill or as we called it, Nickel Will’s, because it was the last bastion of the five cent beer.

[Nickel Will’s was also the first place that had a television in the neighborhood.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, New York City had the privilege of presenting the first television shows in the country for a short time. Daddy went every Friday night to see the boxing matches and often would take one of us to join him. While he drank beer, we would drink coca cola until we got sick. After the fights, which lasted until about 11 P.M., the television broadcast would end with the National Anthem and I would go home to puke; that is, if I were still awake.

It was here, at Will’s that I had the opportunity to see the first Joe Louis and Billy Cahn Heavyweight Championship fight; and, after the War, the return match. It was probably also the place where the seeds were sown for my later brief foray into the world of pugilistics.]

The only other stores of any note on the block were directly across the street; Mike the Shoemaker’s and Foley’s Candy Store. Foley’s was, understandably, one of our favorite places. There was nothing more pleasurable at my age than to have a penny to spend on a piece of candy; unless it was a nickel which could occupy me for at least a half hour, making a selection of whatever would give me the greatest quantity. (Quantity always took precedence over quality). Especially enjoyable was sidling up to the counter and saying, A frozen Roly-Poly, Mr. Foley. (A Roly-Poly was a chocolate covered caramel bar similar to a Milky Way and sold for two cents frozen or one penny unfrozen.)

A pleasant memory of Foley’s was a young man (older to us at the time) who would buy all the neighborhood kids a soda on Friday nights when he came home from work with his paycheck. We really looked forward to this special treat. Dutch Sokol just did this out of the goodness of his heart and we were all distraught when he was drafted into the Navy with the outbreak of World War II. The last time we saw him was when he was home on leave in his uniform. He came around to buy the old gang one last soda. We never heard from him again. I don’t know if he ever returned from the war.

No one in the neighborhood had a telephone in the home and we all relied upon the public telephone in Foley’s Candy Store to service us for both outgoing calls at five cents a call and incoming calls. In that rare instance when someone was called, usually a death or sickness of some relative, Mr. Foley would send one of the kids hanging around the street to summon the neighbor. Quite often it would just be yelling up into the window from the street that would serve to fetch the call recipient.

In the dog days of summer, the streets would be filled with men and women sitting in front of their houses to get away from the unbearable heat inside. Some of the apartment houses had stoops that were a popular gathering place. Our house had no stoop so Mother and Daddy had to provide their own chairs if they wanted to sit outside to escape the heat.

Most of the men wore hats both in the winter and in the summer. In the summer they would switch to their straw hats from the felt hats of winter. The men were always polite to the women and would tip their hat to the ladies when they would greet them on the street.

Summertime was also a time for swimming at Astoria Pool, a New York City Parks Department Public facility that was a good distance from 46th Street. We would walk there on many summer mornings to take advantage of the free swim time from nine to noon. In the afternoon the price of admission went to nine cents and it was a very rare occasion when we had the money to pay. We would climb the fence near the exit from the men’s dressing room and sneak into the pool through that exit. The worst that ever happened to us, if we did get caught, was to be thrown out of the pool. Usually, though, we were pretty adept at getting in without being discovered.

When the polio epidemic was on, Mother insisted that the pool was a major spreader of the disease and vigorously opposed our swimming in those waters. And when Georgie Wunderlin died, she felt she was vindicated in her thinking.

One of the fixtures on the block was an old German shepherd that belonged to the Webster’s about three houses down from ours. Betsy, as she was called, was a timid soul that just lay outside the house during the day and didn’t bark and didn’t bother anyone. Most of the neighborhood kids, however, would torment the poor dog by rubbing or pulling her tail. Betsy would run in circles for long periods of time trying to catch whatever she felt was biting on her tail. We were all sad when Betsy finally died.

Most of the youngsters in the neighborhood were mischievous at worst and there were few whom we considered really bad kids. One of these, Eddie Koberski, stands out as exceptionally destined for a life of crime. One of the first indications we had took place at our house on 46th Street.

Our sister, Helen, a teenager attending high school in Long Island City, had some of her classmates over to the house one evening. There they listened to records on our old wind up Victrola console, drank soda, and just talked. Mother and Daddy were out for the evening. Danny, Franny, and I were supposed to be in bed sleeping, but we were spying on the activities in our front room. Helen chided us many times to get back in bed; which we did, but not for long.

When it was time for everyone to leave, they all said their goodbyes and departed while Ed Koberski lingered. After the last one had left and the door was closed, Koberski immediately started to force himself upon Helen while she pleaded with him to go. He just laughed and continued his attack. When he started pulling at her clothes, presumably to tear them off, Danny, Franny, and I ran into the room and jumped on Koberski’s back after he had pushed Helen onto the sofa. We weren’t much of a match for a boy of his size but we intimidated him enough to get him off Helen and out of the house. I don’t recall if Helen ever told Mother and Daddy about this, but I know she was grateful to us for disobeying her orders to get to sleep that night.

I learned in later years that prior to this incident, while Koberski was a student at P.S. 151, he would get his kicks by tying girls to a tree or telephone pole, removing their clothes and in other ways humiliating them.

One day as we were playing outside the house, Koberski came flying out of Foley’s Candy Store across the street and landed on his stomach outside the store. Mr. Foley came to the door and stood there with his hands on his hips and shouted for the whole neighborhood to hear, You son-of-a-bitch, you come in here again trying to sell me stolen goods, I’ll kick your ass clear to kingdom come. Koberski had some nasty retort but he didn’t have the courage to hang around and feel Mr. Foley’s reply.

We soon learned that Koberski stole many cases of cigarettes from a freight car at the railroad yards and was trying to peddle them to the local storekeepers. Koberski was destined for worse things. He would soon be on the front page of the Daily News for having killed a soldier after he and an accomplice raped the soldier’s girlfriend in Central Park. It would subsequently come out that this was not the first rape or murder for this sick pair. They were also accused of several other successful and unsuccessful attempts, including a double murder and rape in Astoria Park. Both Koberski and his friend were convicted of murder and were executed in the electric chair shortly after their conviction. In those days, justice was meted out more swiftly than today.

School Days

When I was five years old in 1937, I started school in Kindergarten at Public School 151 in Woodside. At that time Danny and Franny were both attending St. Joseph’s Parochial School two blocks away from us on 44th Street. Helen was in her eighth and final year at P.S.151 before attending Long Island City High School and so it fell upon her to take me to school and home again. (Bryant High School was not yet built at that time, so most of the neighborhood kids attending high school had to travel the long distance to Long Island City)

Kindergarten was relatively forgettable and the only incident that stands out in my mind is what happened when a group of us students were asked to go to the blackboard and draw something. I was on one end of the blackboard and my selected subject was a train engine. Partway through this production, the teacher was so impressed with my efforts that she made the rest of the students sit down so that I could draw, not just the engine, but also the entire train. I did this with great pride and as I remember it, it was quite an impressive accomplishment for a young five year old. (Little did I know at the time that today my grandson, James, would be obsessed with trains; particularly, Thomas the Train.)

The following year, I joined Danny and Franny at St. Joseph’s. My first grade teacher was Sister Mary Clement, O.P. (for Order of Preachers), a Dominican Nun. It was quite a shock for most of us to suddenly come under the rigid discipline of these dedicated ladies. We got right into the swing of things.

Every day would start off with our morning prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, followed by our first lesson of the day, Catechism, which we learned to recite by heart by constant repetition day after day.

Who made the World?

God made the World.

Who is God?

God is the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things

What is man?

Man is a creature composed of body and soul and made in the image and likeness of God.

"Why did God make you?

God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with him forever in Heaven.

Sister Clement was relentless in her pursuit of perfection from everyone in the class. Any breaches of discipline or failure to be prepared were dealt with by a slap across the face, a blow from the pointer or yardstick, or in extreme case of misconduct, a trip to the principal’s office for major behavior adjustments.

Sister Mary Honorata, O.P., the principal of the school at that time, was known to have a very effective tool for dealing with recalcitrant students, a cat-o-nine-tails, a nine corded whip with knots at the end of each cord. This is the kind of punishment device popular in the old sailing Navy days and hardly the kind of thing one should be using on six-year-old children. I was fortunate in never having to face the whip even though I was constantly on the carpet for something.

Perhaps more feared than the cat-o-nine tails, was the threat of being transferred out of St. Joseph’s to the Public School. We were so indoctrinated into the verities of the Catholic religion that the thought of losing our privileged position as students in a Catholic School was the worst punishment we could bear.

One day, one of the girls in our class was feeling the sting of Sister’s wrath for some transgression and was directed to, Go down to the Principal’s office and get a transfer slip. This was too much for the poor young thing. She got down on her knees and cried and begged Sister to forgive her and that she wouldn’t do it again. Please, please, she said, I’m a Catholic, not a Public. Sister restrained her laughter but she did let the dear girl off the hook with a threat that the next time there will be no forgiveness.

On another occasion, Sister Clement was out of the class for a brief time, when one of the boys went to the pencil sharpener in the front of the class to sharpen his pencil. On the way back he must have seen a target of opportunity, my head, and spontaneously stuck the newly sharpened pencil into the middle of my forehead. Sister Clement was just returning to the classroom and caught the attacker in the act. She directed me to go to the front of the room and to sharpen my pencil. When I returned to the seat, she held the malefactor by the arms and directed me to stab him in the head with my pencil. Being always the obedient student, I did as directed; my first contact with Hammurabi, an eye for an eye, and a head for a head.

Every day during our reading lesson, we were expected to be prepared with the day’s assignment and be able to read it well. If not, you joined the line of students who were also delinquent in their lesson and, at the end of the lesson, Sister would go down the row of students and give each one two sharp slaps across each cheek. Most of the nuns had bony-fingered hands that seemed especially constructed to mete out the maximum amount of pain when used as a disciplinary weapon.

One day, I rose to give my recitation, which I usually was able to easily read. This day, however, I discovered too late that the page was missing from the book. As the third boy in the family, I got the hand me downs of the hand me downs and in the case of the schoolbooks, they were in pretty ragged shape by the time they got to me. I wasn’t too kind to the books myself. I had continuous hunger pains in those days and I satisfied some of my food needs by eating the parts of the pages that were not printed on.

On top of this, the nuns made it a special point to single out the poor kids in the class and I often found this to be very humiliating. At Christmas time, for instance, toys would be donated to the school to give to these poor wretches and there would invariably be a nun poking her head into the classroom door asking that all of the poor children come down to the principal’s office to get the Christmas dole.

So when it came to the reading of the book with no page, I was reluctant to again call attention to the fact that I was one of the poor kids and could not afford a new book. I lined up with the rest of the miscreants and took my bony-fingered punishment from Sister.

[One thing stands out about being poor. When it came to hand me downs, I got the hand me downs from Franny that he got from Danny, who in many cases got them as well from someone else. When I finally got the hand me down overalls (that’s what we called them before they became Levi’s or Jeans), they were bleached white with hardly a trace of their original blue color. Seeing me in these obviously old pants, Kieran Manning, one of my earliest classmates and buddies, sarcastically said, What are you, a poor kid? I ran into Kieran many years later when we were