I had a late meal with an old friend from the neighborhood the other day, and, as usual, the conversation turned to our neighborhood, the one in which we both still live. We both grew up here, as did our parents.
A quick description of the neighborhood is that it was like the old movies of Brooklyn or the Lower East Side, only this was real. Almost everyone was first or second generation American, with immediate ancestors from (and, in many cases, in) either Mexico or Eastern Europe. As a child, I could leave home to go out and play, and not hear English spoken by an adult until I came back home or went to one of my grandparents' houses. Lincoln Place (once called Hunky Hollow, Hungary Hollow, and Hungry Hollow) was 8 blocks long and 2 blocks wide. In the 50s, when I grew up, there were 5 confectioneries (several simply converted front porches of residences), 4 grocery stores (3 Macedonian, 1 Armenian), 3 bakeries (Macedonian, Hungarian, and Mexican), 2 dry cleaners (Armenian and I don't remember), 2 barber shops (Macedonian and Armenian, and a Mexican guy cut hair in his home), 2 fruit and vegetable hucksters with trucks (Macedonian and I don't remember), a used lumber yard (Armenian. ("I gots some bargain for you, meester!" - Melik, the lumberman), a butcher shop (Hungarian), a dry good store, and 13 taverns. To go to church, the Catholics (Mexicans, Hungarians, Croatians, and Polish) walked uptown (Yes, we really were in a hollow, and on the other side (read wrong side) of the tracks, too.). The Eastern Orthodox went to the neighborhood church, which is still standing just 2 houses away from mine. (Some Baptist group built a mission down here when I was a kid to "Christianize the foreigners." My guess is that their knowledge of Christianity was a bit lacking. My ancestors were praying in cathedrals when theirs were still painting their faces and wearing animal skins.)
My earliest memory is that of my father's maternal grandmother. She died right after my second birthday (January), and I remember her from a Sunday meal outside Dedo's (Macedonian - grandfather) house. I remember seeing the lamb roasting on a spit, and seeing the chickens flop around after their heads were cut off. It had to be fall of 1949, when I was not yet 2.
I also remember what possibly only Frank and Hippo may remember - horse drawn wagons selling food or services. We had a knife sharpener come into the neighborhood (once a month?) who rang a bell to let everyone know to bring out their scissors and knives. I also remember a mop and broom salesman (nationality unknown to me) who walked door-to-door selling his products. I can still hear his pitch (Said in some kind of accent) - "Mops! Niiiice! Niiice mops!"
It was really more like America at the turn of the century up to about 1920 than it was 1950-something. The neighborhood started changing in the middle 60s, I think, but it is coming back. Children and grandchildren of the original residents, people my age, are starting to move back in.
What are your earliest memories of your neighborhood? I'm especially interested in Frank's and Hippo's.
Edited to correct really stupid typo.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,
Posts: 17233 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
I remember mail delivery twice a day. And a morning and evening newspaper. And the Fuller Brushman. And the knfe sharpener. And the dry cleaner who would make deliveries. Ours was Jewish, and he had a number on his arm from Auschwitz. I remember when milk was delivered to the door in glass bottles. I remember the cobbler who replaced soles and heels. And the ice man for those who still had ice boxes. And the coal man for those who heated their houses with coal. And the barber who had a leather strap to sharpen his razor, and used hot lather to shave around the ears. I guess I remember a lot.
Posts: 7646 | Location: On Vacation | Registered: 06-06-02
Thanks, JR. I forgot - we had 2 coblers, too. One Macedonain, the other Armenian ("Modren SHoe Repair"). No one went to the Armenian. He was terrible.
The stores only delivered to the really old people (and we had some really old people. In that small neighborhood, quite a few old women made it into their 90s.
Yes, I also forgot about coal deliveries, and, of course, coal chutes.
I was always fascinated by the barber stropping his razor.
Posts: 17233 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
This neighborhood was brand new, and was essentially the edge of that part of town with housing developements. 1/4 mile from the house I grew up in was a property with several horses, about 3/4 miles from there we hunted dove. There was nothing much to the west of us at al (now the ciy stretches out well over 20 miles that direction).
We had fuller brush salesmen, milk delivery, an Esso station and it was not uncommon for horses to come up the main drag.
To my south was a pair of ditches, about 1/4 miles apart and parallel to each other running east-west that framed an area mostly of fields. One of the ditches was very shallow and we would go there in the summer and soak our feet it the shade of palo verdes. That spot is now directly in the center of the I-10 freeway !
As a kid I regularly saw owls fly over this neighborhood and saw buzzards circle over the farms nearby. Not much chance of seeing them these days as the last bits of field along the I-10 corridor are being filled daily. Of course we also got annual grasshopper invasions then and nowadays there are not all that many of them, except on the odd invasion year, and even those are nothing compared to the old days.
In 1960 we were the 40th or so largest U.S. city with no pro sports franchises amd maybe 3 high-rises. Now we have all the major sports, are 5th largest city in the U.S. and have a pretty large (but not yet vibrant ) downtown.
Oh yeah, when I was young all over the place were two-story buildings with long screened porches on the second floor so one could sleep in the miserable Arizona summer. Very few of those buildings are left now.
I will revisit this thread if other things hit me, and might ask my family for a little input. My dad came out here around the middle of the Second World War. (I know Dor... you were already in AARP by then... but he has seen a lot of change here)
I remember the milkman. Frank the milkman drove for Massey Dairy. In the summer, he'd give the kids ice. (No refrigerated truck. Just a lot of chipped ice.) Frank used to let me grab onto the back of the truck and ride down the block to my Dedo's house. (If he did that today, he'd be fired and sued even if no one was hurt.) He'd also give me a free "little milk" if no other kids were around. That might raise some eyebrows today, too.
I also remember walking the 2 blocks to the baker's. (Chris the Macedonian baker) to get fresh bread. He always gave me "little bread" to eat as I walked home. I loved watching him and the other guy (whose name I don't think I ever knew) get the bread right out of the oven and wap it in old newspaper.
There were still a lot of hoboes passing through when I was a kid. (I told you, we really lived near the tracks. Even today, when I hear a train in the middle of the night, I smile. It makes me feel like I'm home.) They always stopped at our back door, and my mother always gave them something to eat. She said that they must have had out house marked somehow. Later, as an adult, I read about the tramps' secret signs, telling others to "Watch out, mean dog" or "Man calls cops" or "Bible thumper - Praise Jesus and get fed" Another one, which had to be on our shed in the alley, told other tramps "Nice lady always gives food". This is another part of Americana that has died out.
Posts: 17233 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
If he did that today, he'd be fired and sued even if no one was hurt.
Oh hell, DG. We got away with so much back then that today OSHA or someone would nail us for. Imagine, drinking water from a garden hose? Chewing gum from a baseball card wrapper. Candy cigarettes! I don't know how I survived.
Posts: 7646 | Location: On Vacation | Registered: 06-06-02
Thinking back, it's surprising how many businesses were in a village in the early 1950s. Only about 90 dwellings supported three pubs, a butcher's, a cobbler's,a village shop(grocery, newsagent, etc), a haberdasher's,two garages with full vehicle repair and service plus fuel, a coal yard and a post office that also sold groceries and seeds and other basic horticultural stuff and ironmongery.
Now there are 600 dwellings with just one pub, one village shop which serves as a post office, a garage with a filling (gas) station and another filling station.
But it now also has: a beautician, a hairdresser, two business hotels and there's a restaurant for travellers, which is attached to one of the filling stations.
We still have milk delivered by a milkman. In the 60s lots of stuff was delivered on rounds, not just milk and newspapers. There was a travelling fish and chip van, greengrocer, fishmonger,wine and liquor merchant ( two of them!), coalman,soft drinks (pop) merchant,knife grinder and the two main department stores in Cambridge sent anything and everything out as a matter of course, because people who had cars had only the one and, if they did own two, only the one person in a family could drive.So they either phoned in their orders or went in to town and had stuff delivered; And there were hawkers,such as the Kleen-e-zee man, selling brushes and polishes.
Back then a sweet (candy) shop sold most sweets by weight, carefully weighing out 2oz or a quarter.Tobacconists weighed out tobacco(some still do ) The fishmongers had live fish. If you wanted eels,in particular, the assistant would scoop some up and cut the heads off the living beasts in front of you ( something still done in London markets).
Farming was, and is, the local industry but has changed.We had dairy cows, pigs, chickens, geese, horses (including two to work the land) and arable.We employed countless people, because the various animals all required labour and, when I was young, harvest itelf employed a village full of men. Now there are only about 4 people employed in agriculture in the whole village because we have machines and the farming is all arable. Just after WW2 we still had the corn cut by gangs with scythes. A reaper- binder, at first horse- drawn, was considered revolutionary ! In those days the village employed a village roadman, whose full-time job was to keep the roads clean and repair, too.
Thank you Fred Can't say much to follow that One old tradition in many Northern towns was to send your plate to the Local Chip shop (for dinner tea or supper?) and they'd fill the Plate up And Of course, Chips in Newspapers Taste brilliant (So called hygiene laws stopped that!)Bet even Fred can Testify to that and They are not cooked in Lard/dripping now
Fray Bentos pies with Suet Pastry ,Ruined it by switching to a Puff pasty recipe in the late 60's
Bus conductors, The original Trams, Double headed goods Trains of 50+ wagons of all descriptions(steam),Trains of 12-15 coaches! Down to 9 maximum now Duplicate buses at Peak times,and going to work on a Bus before 6 AM! Last Bus after Midnight(and regular Night Buses) Only town I know that still has these is Manchester .Locally 1st Bus is at 6:45 AM Last through bus is @ 10:40 After that they are terminating at the Depot!Is a 40 minute walk home if you are caught out .Local Private Hire cabs are doing Good business over this. And Remember how Many routes there where? My Mom used to take us out on Sunday to all sorts od Destinations. Same area Has chopped many of those routes and is sometimes a 10 or 15 minute walk to a bus stop and the route choice is Major shopping centre or Nothing!
Looking further away Family coach trips in Summer (Have really gone too expensive in recent years)
Motorcycles with Double Adult sidecars (and their starting procedure) The Original Microcars/Bubblecars and those Blue Invalid Carriages calledInvacars)
Posts: 13330 | Location: 6 miles west of Wigan UK | Registered: 06-05-02
Talking of buses and coaches: What happened to "mystery tours" ? They seemed a strange idea, even to a child. People would buy a ticket to go on a coach tour but they weren't told where they were going and didn't know for certain until the coach arrived at the destination(s). It could be anywhere and any route chosen at random !
Something else,unique to a small area of London , where I worked, was the sight of gas street lamps being lit and, of course, extinguished by a lamplighter.
And people could smoke on any bus or coach but only upstairs on a double decker.
Fish and chips in newspaper, I remember, as well as the fish and chips being cooked in lard (beef fat), not oil as nowadays. When Wren's fish and chip lorry went through villages here you could smell it coming, given a fair wind; following it you got the smell from miles back ! The wonder is, it never caught fire.
Fires were another matter. When we heard the village air- raid siren sound, post war, it meant there was a fire nearby. The siren was to help the fire brigade find the direction to go. Thatch fires on rooves were quite common.
Talking of buses and coaches: What happened to "mystery tours" ?
You mean like Magical Mystery Tours? or was that something different?
Exactly the same thing being alluded to by the Beatles, but ours were with fewer, or no, mushrooms. On their trips, they didn't know where they were or where they'd been,when they got there
I remember my old neighborhood very well. Some things have dramatically changed while others have remained exactly the same.
I was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the old movies couldn’t ever do it justice. It was an immigrant neighborhood and most people were either (relatively) recently emigrated or first generation immigrants. (I am a second generation immigrant) Most people were poor.
I remember sitting on the stoop on warm summer’s evenings talking to neighbors. It was a “rough” area but that never seemed to bother most people. The locals watched out for each other regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. I spent my earliest years in one of the most diverse places in the country; I think that had a lot to do with my feelings about bigotry.
One of my best memories was riding a bike in the neighborhoods. The Bowery, Little Italy, Chinatown, Alphabet City, and of course the East Village were all mere minutes away by pedal power. We knew where to get the best pizza on Mott Street. We also knew where not to go
I remember riding Downtown and watching the construction of The Twin Towers. We watched the Towers rise, for a kid that was simply amazing. Once the Towers started to rise above their neighbors we would ride out to the center span of The Brooklyn Bridge and gauge how much the “grew” since the last time we were there.
Posts: 3654 | Location: Long Island, New York USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Another thing just popped into my head. In my neighborhood, there were 3 times a day when everyone knew exactly what time it was. The closest steel mill, about 1/4 mile or so away, blew its factory whistle at the start and stop of every shift. So, at 7 AM, 3 PM, and 11PM, we all knew what time it was. Shortly after 3, the men from the three largest mills started arriving back home, or to their regular tavern. Most of them walked to work, saving the nickel bus (or streetcar) fare.
I remember milk money for school was 2 cents for a little carton of white milk (Low fat hadn't been invented yet, or, if it had, no one down here knew why it was invented.), and 3 cents for chocolate. Most kids drank white. I noticed the other day that the same size carton of milk is now about 85 cents.
Posts: 17233 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Koz, what you describe is, and was, the great difference between your country and its cities and ours.
Until recent times, we never saw immigrants. Cambridge, being a university city, was a place of refuge for Jewish intellectuals and scientists and one of the village doctors was an Austrian Jew.In the mid-1950s we got Hungarians who were fleeing their homeland.At school in Cambridge I had a very few foreign classmates. All turned out to be the sons of physicists from Germany or Hungary, and, in one case,of an Italian Jew who was a professor of Italian literature who had crossed Mussolini. But we never saw "ordinary" people.
Throughout our history, England has had waves of immigrants but their arrival was sporadic and in fairly small numbers. We've had Danes, Huguenots, Dutch, Jews fleeing intermittent pogroms in Russia and so on,over the centuries. America has had nothing but immigrants,in a sense or in fact, from her earliest days.
Milk, DG ? At school in Britain milk was free ( and as good as compulsory)to ensure that children post WW2 were not malnourished. It came in bottles of one third of a pint, a rather odd size but one which meant that it was identifiable as school milk
School meals were all free too. No choice: "eat what you get" was the rule. Bedstor will remember such 'joys' as semolina, as I do!
It was an immigrant neighborhood and most people were either (relatively) recently emigrated or first generation immigrants. (I am a second generation immigrant) Most people were poor.
