Childhood

I was born on September 26, 1957, to Joseph and Lorraine. My father attended St. James in Chester Pennsylvania and after the army, went to Temple for an education degree. My mother was a Catholic High School graduate that as far as I could tell, knew more English, Latin, reading, cursive writing cursive and other skills than most college graduates. My father worked as a elementary school teacher and my mother was a secretary.

I was succeeded by four other siblings. Karen was born in August of the next year 1958, Joseph (Joe) in August 1960, Ann (Sandy) July 1961 and Lorraine (Lori) in June 1962. I recall my mom being very busy with us. She had thyroid cancer when Lori was born.

My parents were both strict Catholics from Italian immigrants. My father was a hot-headed Italian with a bad temper. My father was old-fashioned and I recall abusive to my mother and us. My mother, back then, was very caring of us children and put up with a lot of abuse from my father. Years later though she stopped putting up with that.

We lived in a small three-bedroom one bath twin house in a blue-collar rough neighborhood Leedom Estates in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. We had no air conditioning and very little heat. The summers were very hot with many flies in the house. The winters were very cold and wet. Us children would huddle over the heating vent trying to get any heat we could get.

When it was just Karen and me, our house got filled with carbon monoxide from the coal heater. My father was rescued by a neighbor who shared the driveway, “Elsie and Lou Baker”. Mr. Baker was a milk man who was very kind to the children and gave us ice in the summer. Mrs. Baker was always cursing at him. Mr. Baker later got Alzheimer’s. Johnny and Joey were the last names he remembered.

Our neighborhood was a lower working-class blue-collar neighborhood. The men worked at factories or trades. My father and Mr. Zeeler who were teachers were the only white-collar dads.

The Sullivans and Dougherty’s were Irish and rough. Behind us were Russians. There were Polish, English, Irish, Scottish, German, Eastern European and many European descent people. There were no “minorities” outside of Mr. Zeeler who was “Jewish”. This was a time when America was still basically segregated. This is a time when Italians were called “whops” and Germans were called “krauts”. The hit tv sitcom “All in the Family” described our neighborhood.

Our neighborhood had many characters. There were the town drunks, the Kruzels, the parents of one of my best friends. There were Germans, the Naumans who it was discovered may have been East German spies. My father had a reputation for being a hot-head. Ms. Baker was an English woman who cursed like a pirate. The Russians Trosky’s lived behind us. We even had a much feared “boogy man” who lived in an old dilapidated house by the “Minnow Creek”. He was hardly ever seen and was very creepy.

When I was a child, we didn’t play video games and stay indoors. We were always outside. We only came home to eat, do homework and sleep. Besides, with my father, we never wanted to be home. Most neighborhoods and streets had a group of kids that hung out. We rode bikes, played sports in the streets and fields, slept in the backyard in the summer and just “hung out” with our friends. We built tree forts and underground forts. Our lives back then were still much like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

I recall in the summer a truck came around daily spraying a large cloud of smoke with chemicals to control the mosquitos. Us kids would follow the “smoke truck” trying to get right up into the thick smoke where we couldn’t see. We would dare each other. I probably still have DDT in my fat and liver.

Every year around October when the leaves changed the the weather got cooler something would get into the kids making us want to do mischief and dare each other to do pranks like knocking on doors and running away. Our pranks could be serious though. On time we had a boat fog horn and were blowing it at cars coming down the street scaring them. One time we hung someone Halloween decoration dummy from a rope and swung it in front of cars coming by. One poor guy almost had a heart attack thinking he killed someone. When he found out it was a dummy, he would not let it go and chased us all over for an hour until he caught us.