The House on Moody Avenue

By Cellestine Hannemann

An eclectic assortment of humanity, with all their foibles and failings, lived in the house on Moody Avenue over a period of ninety years. I tell their stories.

Lisette, her unshakable faith sustaining her, is undeterred in the face of adversity; Julia, a social-climbing snob, sees her world crumble when her children marry inappropriately; Clarence, a Casper Milquetoast bank clerk, absconds with a quarter of a million dollars; Frances, a country girl, comes to the big city to marry a rich man; Sammy, a black man, passes for white.

Beatnik squatters, high on LSD, burn down the condemned ninety-year-old house, leaving it naught but a precious memory in the hearts of those who once sought its shelter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449768201

Cellestine Hannemann

Having had no more than a smattering of classes at Pierce Junior College, my qualifications as an author are nil. I am eighty-eight years old, and my only degree is 98.6. I have been, as it were, trespassing on the hallowed ground of the literati. The joy of writing, of creating characters out of thin air, has come to me as a complete surprise. Other than the A+ I received on a story written when I was thirteen, I have no laurels establishing my credentials. I have, however, met a lot of folks of every description over these eighty-eight years that I have drawn from to create my characters.

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Copyright © 2012 Cellestine Hannemann

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ISBN: 9781449768195 (sc)

ISBN: 9781449768201 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012917557

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/31/2012

CONTENTS

PART I THE VICTORIAN ERA

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

PART II THE ROARING TWENTIES

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER XLIV

CHAPTER XLV

CHAPTER XLVI

PART III THE SIXTIES

CHAPTER XLVII

Also by this author:

Glorious Pressed Flower Projects

Sterling Publishing Co., NY 1990

Another Time, Another Place

Westbow Press. 2012

PART I

The Victorian Era

CHAPTER I

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IT WAS TO THE Russian Orthodox Church that Sophia, the Russian peasant, turned for comfort and solace. The impressive spired silhouette of colorful onion domes reaching up to heaven. The sanctuary with its paintings and statues of saints, Christ and Mary, watching over the supplicants. The multistoried gilded altar. The flickering lights from offertory candles lending an air of mystery. Incense perfuming the air. The reverential hush that comes over the worshipers entering the darkened sanctuary. Here, the real world no longer existed. Here she felt safe as she succumbed to the ardor of her worship.

Now, transported to America, in an isolated rural community, no awe-inspiring domes reaching to heaven, met her gaze. No priests in sacred vestments. No gilded altar. Only the itinerant preacher. The Methodist circuit rider who came on Sundays to Sam Foley’s barn where the people gathered to hear the gospel and sing to the lord, hymns of praise.

Reverend Schmidt arrived high in the saddle, wearing a clerical collar under his black frock coat. A wide-brimmed black hat cast a shadow over the plain features of his face, his mouth set in a grim, serious demeanor, in keeping with the fire and brimstone sermons he preached to his flock.

The reverend was one of those people known as charismatic. He was tall and imposing. With back erect, his piercing blue eyes scanned the crowd, making contact to strengthen his hold on his people. His oratory, a steady diet of damnation, fists pounding on a makeshift lectern, or arms raised high in supplication to a lord so powerful, never failed to stir the people, keeping them transfixed.

Nevertheless, Schmidt was not, in fact, a reverend at all. That is, he was not an ordained minister. He was a man imbued with a love for his redeemer. His revivalist passion filled his very being, impelling him to spread the word over all the land. And so he felt himself merited to take on the persona of a preacher. In his own mind it was God Himself who had ordained him, given him these talents, sent him forth on a horse - with his celluloid collar turned backward.

After Sunday preachment they studied the Bible and learned of Jesus’ parables before returning to their homes; some to simple cottages, others to quite elegant structures.

For those few hours they were joined together, celebrating their faith. For those few hours they were equals. And so, as the reverend looked over his flock, his chest swelled with pride. Souls renewed, refreshed and strengthened in their faith.

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Theirs was a simple life; Lisette, her ma, Sophia, pa, Mikhail and brothers Seth and Orville. Self-sufficient, secluded from the rest of the world, where even Mr. Lincoln’s war had not effected the well-regulated pattern of their lives.

Through dint of hard work and dogged determination the mother and father had acquired a little piece of land, a two-room house and a barn. A cow for milk and butter, chickens for eggs, or to sacrifice its life for dinner. Fruits and vegetables were ‘put up’ for the winter. Deer and fowl from the forest provided meat, and from a swift-running stream, fish. Simple country folk surrounded by nature; forested hills, waterfalls, wildflowers and birdsong.

God was good and God was great. And an everlasting faith in God would shelter them from the reality of adversity. This belief, this strength, Sophia passed on to Lisette. It sustained her, gave her strength, and made all things possible no matter what the trial.

The parents, unlettered peasants, wanting a better life for their children, instilled in them a passion for learning. When the children brought home their lesson books from their one-room schoolhouse, the children became the teachers, the parents learning from the children.

This little family’s lives were full, their hearts full. They rose from their beds with prayers of thanks for the gift of life. They retired with thanks for blessings bestowed upon them by a benevolent god. The parents looked on with pride as their children grew in robust health. Their home was a hymn.

But the lord giveth and the lord taketh away. Without warning, disease stalked the land, wreaking havoc, searching out victims, taking lives, be they saints or sinners. And so the fever struck Lisette’s little family. A fever no poultice or herbal remedy could contain.

When Orville died of the fever, Mama and Papa said, It was the will of God.

When Seth died, Mama and Papa said, It was the will of God.

When the mother died of the fever it was Lisette, the child, who had to reassure the father with those words of passive acceptance, It was the will of God.

But the father glared at her angrily and said, There is no god.

Lisette, ten years old, took on the role of a little mother, determined to make their house a home again. She was not one to be deterred. She forged on. She swept the floor, baked bread, gathered the eggs, while telling her pa over and over again that it was the will of God.

But try as she might, her words, coming from the voice of a little girl blessed with a spirit well beyond her years, was still just the voice of a little girl. Her words had no effect on the disheartened, disillusioned man.

The following summer her pa announced that they would be moving to the city. The farm was shorthanded. Without the mother and sons, without money for hired hands, the plowing, planting, harvesting, putting up fruits and vegetables for the winter - all those things that contributed to their self-sufficiency - went by the board.

Lisette and her pa boarded a Hudson River packet boat for New York city. Sam Foley’s son took over the farm with an agreement that some day when he was able, he would take on a mortgage, though in fact this was never to happen.

CHAPTER II

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NEW YORK CITY. A melting pot, polyglot babel of tongues. A city teeming with people. Carriages, drays, carts, horses, on cobblestone streets. A million people crowding the sidewalks, jostling, pushing, shoving. Some seeking fame and fortune, others anonymity. The dandy, peddler, mendicant, bum, shill, Lisette and her papa. Lisette. A little country girl. The little girl with a big heart. The little girl endowed with a fierce determination and resolve. Looking on in wonder at this writhing mass of humanity, the sight of the city reduced her to what she was. A child of eleven; apprehensive, fearful, clinging to her father’s hand. They went into a delicatessen for lunch where her father explained to her that he must go in search of the livery stables where they promised him work, that he would be right back. He told her to wait right there on the steps of the delicatessen.

As she waited, she watched the flow of life that spread out before her. Ladies pushing wicker perambulators, chastising a little brood trailing behind; an iceman carrying a block of ice on his back, children running after, picking up chips of ice as they fell; a man with a pushcart calling out, ‘Rex O lion, Rex O lion’; newsboys selling papers; children parrying ‘did too, did not’; the organ grinder, his skinny little monkey sitting on his shoulder, its bulging eyes looking out onto the crowds gathering round; drays pulled by tired old swaybacked horses; fine ladies riding past in carriages of gold ormolu.

The day wore on to night and no papa came for Lisette. Two days, three days, four days, and still no papa came for her. With every day her hopes diminished and her fortitude, her determination to accept her fate, set in to carry her through yet another catastrophe. Once or twice she thought she saw her papa in the crowd, at a distance, but it was only someone who resembled him. And this specter of her father emerging from a crowd would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Charley, a homeless urchin, found her sitting on the steps day after day.

He left me on these steps and told me to wait here for him. I waited and waited. Every day I waited, but he never came back, she told him.

Charley, who had been living on the street since his family died in a fire, took Lisette to the Settlement House where they gave her clothes - boys’ clothes. Pants, shirt and a warm coat. Charley showed her the ropes; how to sell papers and shine shoes, where there were warm places to sleep - cardboard boxes in back of the shoe factory. Lisette was now one of the many children in New York City, abandoned, living a hand-to-mouth existence selling newspapers and shining shoes, sleeping in sheltered doorways, under bridges, in cardboard boxes.

She plied her trade at the same corner every morning, newspapers under her arm, crying, Newspaper mister? Newspaper mister? to every passerby.

It was a corner that Mr. Ray Sikoro passed every morning on his way to his business. Lisette’s determination, her insistence that he buy one of her papers, amused Mr. Sikoro as she ran after him with ever more enthusiasm in spite of his walking on past her without a glance her way.

In the afternoon, on that same corner, she plied her trade with a shoeshine box slung over one shoulder and a folding stool over the other. Shine, mister? Shine, mister? Soon his amusement changed to one of admiration for this plucky little fellow, the personification of the Horatio Alger stories. He became her regular customer for both the morning paper and afternoon shine on his shoes.

Lisette greeted him with a bright Mornin’, sir, as she handed him the paper, and Thank you, sir, after he deposited two cents into her outstretched hand. She polished his shoes with brisk strokes of a cloth that she snapped with a flourish, while keeping up a lively patter of meaningless comments about the weather or inquiries into his health.

That spring Lisette grew an inch or so taller in one of those spurts of growth we see in children as they reach maturity. Below the sleeves of her sweater more of her arm was revealed than before. The band around her knickers was now above the knees instead of below.

One afternoon, as Lisette was polishing the boots of Mr. Ray Sikoro, he noticed what was the unmistakable jiggle of tiny breasts under the boy’s shirt, and he blurted out in astonishment, Why, you’re not a boy. You’re a girl.

Yessir, that’s right, sir, she said without a pause in her work, as her hands zipped back and forth with such vigor and speed that her hands were but a blur pulling the cloth over the tip of his shoe. My name is Lisette. I’m a girl, but I can shine shoes good as any boy. Better, she added with an air of finality. My gent’men always walk away with a proper shine, sir, no matter that I’m a girl.

Pete’s gent’men sometimes walk away with polish smeared on their pants. I know, she thought to herself, because I heard one of them curse him for it and refuse to pay him.

Mr. Sikoro paid for his ‘proper’ shine as he looked down at her in puzzled wonderment, noticing for the first time the small-boned hand reaching out for her nickel.

When she looked up at him to say Thank you very much, sir, he noticed her eyes for the first time. Large eyes, blue as the sky, fringed with long, dark lashes.

As he turned to leave, the child called after him, Y’ look mighty fine sir, mighty fine.

His face took on a somber, serious mien, the muscles of his face slackened and sunken, without expression, incredulous at what had just transpired.

How is it that this mere child has come to this? he wondered. An innocent, vulnerable girl on the streets of New York. What has our civilization come to? We in our comfortable homes, sitting down to a sumptuous dinner, while out in the street - another world. A world accepted by those who pass this way every day. A world without a conscience.

The next day Mr. Sikoro visited the Settlement House, a place where the poor were offered, though meager, at least some small offering of help to allay their discomfort and outright misery. He entered the building, once a warehouse, where long roughhewn tables and benches were lined up in the yawning, empty, high-ceilinged barn of a room. At one end of the room was a kitchen of sorts where stood a very large cauldron of hot soup. A man in a stained apron stood behind the cauldron. Holding a large ladle in one hand, a bowl in the other, he dispensed soup to the poor lined up at one end, patiently waiting their turn. Alongside the ‘chef’ was a man dispensing slices of heavy, dark bread that he cut from large round loaves piled on a shelf behind him.

Shuffling along toward the waiting tables, they sat down on the benches and proceeded to slurp their soup from the bowl. No spoons were made available. They ate their bread, dipping it into the hot soup from time to time, in complete silence, their faces devoid of expression, save that of complete resignation. Faces without hope.

Behind the soup kitchen Mr. Sikoro saw what appeared to be the Settlement House office. Stenciled on the opaque window of the door was the word ‘Office.’ The door was ajar. Inside was a man in a navy blue uniform sitting at a beat-up old oaken desk. Two rickety chairs faced the desk. File cabinets stood against the wall. Mr. Sikoro knocked on the frame of the door and saw the man look up at him with a weary expression. Come in, he said

Mr. Sikoro entered the office, extended his hand and said, Ray Sikoro, by way of introduction.

On the desk was a triangular block of wood that spelled out the occupant’s name: ‘Captain Albert Reiker.’ The captain stood up and extended his hand to Mr. Sikoro, saying, Captain Reiker. What can I do for you, Mr. Sikoro?

Well, you see, I wanted to inquire whether or not you and Alderman Caine are aware that one of those children on the street is a girl? Her name is Lisette.

Lisette. Yes, Lisette is a girl, but then there are others who are girls, you know. She’s not the only one.

Mr. Sikoro stared at the captain, dumbfounded, at a loss for words. The captain looked back at him, also without further comment, when he realized that Mr. Sikoro’s impression of the children in the street was that they were all boys and Lisette was an exception.

We do what we can for the children, Mr. Sikoro. We supply them with clothing, sweaters and coats from the Ladies’ Missionary donations. We encourage the girls to dress as boys in the belief that that little deception might be of some protection.

Then Lisette is not the only girl on the street?

That’s right. You know, Mr. Sikoro, there has always been in this world an equal distribution of boys and girls. History has never recorded a time when there has been an unusual preponderance of boys over girls or vice versa. And so it is on our streets. Half these children are girls. If the newsman knew they were girls, he wouldn’t sell them papers, under the misguided belief that if the girls had no means of support, they would go home. But of course, they have no homes. They are orphans.

"How is it that our city has come to this? All these homeless children. Where are the orphanages? Where are our caring citizens? How is it that there is no help for these children?

"We do the best we can, sir, but their number, throughout the city, is beyond what our orphanages can hold. Some are not orphans. Some have simply been abandoned on the streets by families bereft of the means of earning enough to put bread on the table. Illness has often been the final straw for families just barely hanging on when the landlord, without ceremony, put them out in the street.

"In Lisette’s case all her family but she and her father died. They came to New York where he was promised work in a livery. But he disappeared. Swallowed up by the city. He told Lisette to wait for him on the steps of a delicatessen. Days passed and still she sat on those stairs waiting for her papa. Charley, one of the boys on the street, brought her to the Settlement House. It was cold and she was without a coat. We found a warm coat for her and Charley kind of took her under his wing, showing her how to sell newspapers. She stopped looking for her papa and resigned herself to her fate. She once said to me, ‘It was the will of God. Pa is gone, too.’

Charley isn’t here anymore. He left last week with Sampson the juggler. The children come and go. After living on the street for a while they find work of some kind, build for themselves a life, blending in with the community, even as it is with Charley. They pay him money to go on the stage and juggle and talk and make jokes. Charlie was very funny. Everyone likes Charley. He should do well. So you see, Mr. Sikoro, it isn’t as if all hope is lost. These children are more resilient than you might think.

In a somewhat altered state of mind, Mr. Sikoro continued to buy his morning paper from Lisette and have his shoes shined every afternoon. She was the same, pursuing her customers, pocketing the meager pennies that she would use to buy herself an apple from Picolo’s, for Lisette was an honest girl. While some of the children stole fruit when Mr. Picolo was looking the other way, the stamp of honesty was an integral part of Lisette’s nature. Her god would not allow her to be otherwise.

Charley was a born mimic. You would forget he was but a boy as he imitated Mike Caine, the paunchy politician, alderman of the 19th Ward, pontificating and gesturing, bringing his message to the people. Charley had his mannerisms and Irish inflection to a T. In the teeming polyglot of people that was New York City where Yiddish, Krauts, Dagos, Polacks, Micks spoke different versions of the English language, Charley mimicked one or the other, selling his papers and shining shoes as a Dago today, a Polack the next, a Jew the next.

Pavek Polonia, proprietor of a saloon on 40th street, was soon to recognize the value of this boy’s talent and hired him to wait tables in his saloon. Saturday night entertainment was offered on a little two-by-four stage at the far end of the room - a girl singer and a juggler. Charley kept the patrons in a good mood as he served them their beer with a whiskey chaser, switching his patter from Italian to Irish, Yiddish to Polack. Then one day Pavek sent the boy up on the stage between the girl singer and the juggler’s performance.

With the boy holding a towel slung over his arm and an apron tied around his middle, Pavek acted as straight man feeding him lines from the bar.

Who was that lady I saw you with last night?

Charley would answer, That was no lady. That was my wife.

After observing the juggler’s performance on stage it wasn’t long before Charley was juggling and twirling the cups and dishes in the air before setting them down on the table, to the delight of Pavek’s customers. Seeing the boy’s talent, the juggler took him on as an apprentice and Charley joined him on stage, adding a patter of corny jokes to the act as the balls, plates, and tenpins flew through the air.

Charley slept on a cot in the back of the saloon, the first bed he could remember since he was fourteen, when he found himself out on the streets to fend for himself.

That spring the juggler was moving on. He was booked for a show that included some headliner acts. He asked Charley to come with him.

Charley now was looking mighty fine. With the wages he received from Pavek he outfitted himself with a pinstriped suit, a shirt and a proper cap on his head. Under his cot at Pavek’s saloon was his old shoeshine box kept in reserve in the event that he might need to return to the streets. He dragged the box out from under the cot, slung it over his shoulder and walked out into the street to say goodbye, handing the box over to one of the children new to the street.

He sought out Lisette, and they said goodbye in a terse, grownup, matter-of-fact tone. Theirs was not a life that left room for tears or emotions. Their life had been hard, and they had learned it was best not to expect much else. Lisette was sorry to see him go, but glad that he was now off the street, looking mighty fine in his new suit. A man of the world.

CHAPTER III

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MR. SIKORO’S SISTER, JULIA Armstead, was left widowed seven years ago when her husband was killed in the war with the South. Though she wore black for a year and kept to her house, she was hardly in a position to remain sequestered from society. Bereft of a means of support, hers was not to be the lengthy period of mourning required of widows.

Her brother, always willing to come to the rescue of one of his kin, was abashed at her decision to cut short what should have been a mourning period of two years. Though she was generously supported by her brother, she was an independent woman who felt her duty was to her children, Faith, now age 8, Charity, 12, and Tom, 16, and not to the observance of social convention. The oldest, Tom, was the only child to have any recollection of the father who joined the Union Army when Tom was nine years old.

Julia’s upbringing was of that era when women were considered too delicate and frail to pursue a rigorous life. She was confined in her youth to embroidering and working intricate decorative needlepoint. These, then, were the skills she would bring to the fore to open a little shop of her own.

With her brother’s help she added to her house a large room, for a salesroom, that opened onto the public street. Over the door hung a sign, ‘Bonnets and Chapeaux.’ Her little business was doing well, and she was grateful to her brother, realizing full well that without his help, she and the children would be in the poorhouse.

It was to Julia that Mr. Ray Sikoro turned, looking for some way to help Lisette. Would Julia consider taking one of the children of the street, his bootblack, into her home?

One of those dirty street children? Julia asked in disbelief of her brother’s suggestion. They are mongrel curs. They lie and steal. Brother, I am appalled at what you are suggesting. You know what they say about one bad apple. Why, he could demoralize my own children, teach them bad habits.

It’s not a he, Julia. It’s a she.

A girl? No! A girl on the street?

"Yes. A girl. Her name is Lisette. I think you’d take to her if you met her. She has spirit. She seems bright enough and is apparently Christianized, sometimes quoting from the Bible. And she is not the only one, Julia. Half of those children of the street you see are girls. They dress like boys, but they are girls. It’s a hard life for them, boys and girls alike. Lisette appears to be around twelve years old. I dread to think what might become of her now as she enters womanhood.

She has been my bootblack this past year. It is only now, seeing her maturing, that I became aware she was not a boy, but a girl. If I could help just this one child...

Your bootblack?

Yes. That’s what she does to earn money. But it’s only enough for food. She sleeps in a cardboard box back of the shoe factory. In all kinds of weather, mind you. In spite of these hardships, she is always in an uncannily cheerful frame of mind. Her happiness with life seems not to be deterred no matter what the adversity. She seems quite an unusual child.

Then he told her of Lisette’s story, how she waited and waited for her papa to return.

They’re all orphans, you know. No kith or kin. They fend for themselves as best they can. And they look out for each other, helping each other to survive. True, some of them lie and steal, but out of desperation. For survival.

Well, I suppose I could at least meet the child, though, mind you, I’m not agreeing to anything. It seems preposterous for you to ask this of me. I do owe you so much, Ray. I am very aware of that. You have been so generous and supportive. Though my first inclination is to refuse you, I feel obliged to at least meet the child. And that I will agree to, though I promise nothing further.

I appreciate your concern, Julia, and I appreciate your willingness to put those concerns aside to at least meet the girl. Do you suppose you could get someone to tend the shop for you tomorrow afternoon? We could go to the Settlement House and talk to Captain Reiker about my proposal.

The next afternoon brother and sister approached Captain Reiker in his office. He rose from his chair as they entered the room, greeting Mr. Sikoro.

Good afternoon, Captain, he replied, "May I introduce to you my sister, Mrs. Armstead? Julia, this