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Cheers
Give a Cheer
Give a Cheer
I rarely played with anyone who was not a cousin. My favorite cousins were Ginny, Uncle Johnny’s youngest
daughter, and Diane, Uncle Paulie’s daughter. Uncle Johnny’s family lived in Coxsackie, NY, on Church Street for much of my youth. Uncle Paulie’s family lived in a farmhouse in Hannacroix, which they shared with Uncle Charlie and his family. We called it ‘the farm’, but it could only be loosely defined as a farm, because what they raised was junk cars. Most of the few pictures that remain of Ilene’s childhood were taken at the farm. Despite the poverty which is evident in the pictures, I remember the farm as a welcoming place.
Sometimes I lived with Uncle Paulie’s family. When it was necessary to go to town to shop for groceries, all the kids were loaded into the back of the big flatbed truck my unless used to carry junk cars, where we rode amongst acetylene tanks and torches. If it rained, we covered ourselves with a heavy tarp. The braver kids—the biggest boys—stood at the front with the wind blowing directly in their faces, while the lesser kids huddled any place where they could find a secure grip. I was one of the lesser kids. When the truck stopped, the bigger boys would leap off. I was always afraid to jump and somebody had to lift me down. I got called ‘cry baby’ for that.
I didn’t care about that. I had been called worse things.
In 1962, when I was not at the farm, and the adults were out shopping, the house caught fire. It was completely engulfed before the fire trucks got there, and burned to the ground. The children managed to escape, but the family pets perished. After that fire, Uncle Charlie bought another farm where he moved his family. Uncle Paulie moved his family into the chicken coop, which stands in the back of the picture of the group of kids on laundry day. Uncle Paulie’s family still lives on that farm, but they live in trailers now. I visited the farm again, in 2002. They had at last established some real gardens and were growing vegetables in neat little patches. Uncle Paulie’s trailer sits in about the spot where the old farmhouse was.
These pictures were taken in April 1953, on laundry day. We don’t know why the family took these pictures on laundry day, which would have been unusual for them. I suspect it was the day that Aunt Mickey and Aunt Rosie drove up from Long Island to get me and my baby sister Suzie, to take us back to Long Beach. Notice the five little girls standing in a cluster in front of the clothesline. In the back row, left to right, is Kathy (Uncle Johnny’s daughter), Billie Girl (Aunt Rosie’s only child), and Rose Ann (Uncle Johnny’s daughter). In the front row, it is uncertain who the girl in trousers and jacket is, but it might be my cousin Diane, who is younger than me, or her older sister Margie Jean. And the other little girl in the front, in the black coat and hat, looking unhappy, is me.
The woman at the wringer washer was Aunt Beatty, Uncle Charlie’s wife, probably less than 30 years old. Poverty is hard on the body, and it really showed on her, but she was a cheerful woman.
***
In April 1953, there was a significant event that disrupted My mother’s fragile family. We lived in a second floor apartment in a house in Coxsackie. We were broke most of the time and did not get enough to eat. People told me, years later, that when they babysat me, my mother instructed them to alternate between giving me a bottle of water and a bottle of tea with sugar in it. The tea and sugar were in short supply. She shared her apartment with a man, hoping he would contribute income to support the household. I think his name was Don Lennon, a man with whom my mother had a significant relationship at the time. One night the man and his friend broke into a textile mill and stole a few things—pens, stationary, sewing machine needles—with a total value of less than $5. He brought the stolen items home and they were in my mother’s apartment when the police came to arrest him and his friend, Carnie Riley. It is unclear if my mother knew of the crime.
When the police came to arrest the men, they saw my mother and her hungry children, and they did not approve of her lifestyle. It was customary at that time for ‘good’ girls who had become pregnant out of wedlock to give their babies up for adoption, but my mother had not done that. They saw her as a ‘bad’ girl so they arrested her and charged her with the crime to scare her into testifying against the men. In court, my mother found that the judge also did not think much of an unmarried woman raising small children in poverty. He gave her an ultimatum; get out of Greene County and take your kids or the county will take the little ones away from you. My mother was scared. She hid me and my sister Suzie at Uncle Paulie’s house, hoping we might blend in with all the children there.
Then she called her sisters, Rosie and Mickey. Aunt Mickey drove up from Long Beach, Long Island, where her husband was the manager of a high rise apartment building, and got me and Suzie. We lived with Aunt Mickey for a while until her husband was pressured to get rid of us. The apartment was too crowded, they said, to keep both of us. My sister Suzie moved to Aunt Rosie’s, across the hall, and I stayed with Aunt Mickey. I saw my sister frequently, but as time went on, both of my aunts moved and I became confused about who Suzie was. I thought she was Aunt Rosie’s daughter. In my mind, she was one of my many cousins. I did not learn of this mistake until we came back together as a family in 1958, when I was 8 years old. By that time, neither of us wanted to be sisters and I was so desperate for my mother’s attention, I did not want to share her. My relationship with Suzie was always competitive and contentious. I’m sorry about that.
I wish I had loved Suzie more.
***
This picture was taken in my grandmother’s driveway. Her house was right across the
street from the elementary school, which is probably why most of our holiday dress up
pictures were taken in front of the school.
At the back of the driveway was a run-down building, which my family had converted into a dwelling. This dwelling was occupied at various times by different family members who were ‘down on their luck’.
I know I stayed in that building in an upstairs room when I was sick with the mumps.
The room was darkened with blankets over the windows. I asked my Aunt Rosie if I had ever lived in a place that had a junkyard outside, and she said ‘no’. The members of my family got so used to having junk around that they did not even see it as junk.
By the time this picture was taken in April of 1958, when I was almost 8 years old, I was pretty sure that I was just another piece of junk.
***
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Thanks for spreading positivity!
October 04, 2006