Brooklyn, the Way I Remember It

By George DeLorenzo

This story takes the reader on a journey of how growing up in an Italian family in a predominantly Italian neighborhood within the protective glow of the boy's family and the local Mob bosses, as well as learning how to survive in the streets of the East New York section of Brooklyn forms the character of a young man.
The era of racism, the dawning of rock and roll music, and an angelic visit - all events that helped shape the man as he is today.
The story demonstrates how all of these events affected the writer personally and deeply. The reader is engrossed by the struggle of the boy trying to heed the morals and values instilled by family and church, keeping those intact while attempting to balance them with societal demands and the clash of surviving the mean streets of Brooklyn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504976558

George DeLorenzo

George DeLorenzo was born in East New York, Brooklyn to Italian parents during the post World War II period of 1945-1960, also referred to as the Baby Boom Era. Brooklyn, The Way I Remember It is DeLorenzo’s first book. He lives on the Treasure Coast of southeastern Florida with his wife, Leslie and their two Miniature Pinschers.

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© 2016 George DeLorenzo. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/17/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7656-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7654-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7655-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016901526

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 Welcome to the Neighborhood

Chapter 2 The Advent of Rock & Roll, Wine and Les Lee

Chapter 3 Jackie Robinson and Christmas

Chapter 4 Family and Bowling

Chapter 5 The New World of Media News, TV and Radio

Chapter 6 Motorcycles, Cars, Egg Creams and Stock Car Races

Chapter 7 World Series of 1955, Junky Joe’s and Thanksgiving

Chapter 8 Christmas 1955

Chapter 9 Parochial Schools, Spring Cleaning, Highland & Dexter Parks

Chapter 10 Benny, Elvis, The Brooklyn Dodgers, Cherry Bombs, and Boxing

Chapter 11 Greaseballs, The Mayor, Chevy’s and Easter

Chapter 12 Jerry Lee Lewis, Coney Island, Cars, and Go-Carts

Chapter 13 Miss Yates, American Automobile Association School Safety Patrol, My First Crushes, Changes and End of an Era

Chapter 14 Promotion, Catechism and Communion

Chapter 15 School, School and More School

Chapter 16 Golly Wally’s, Cars and Money

Chapter 17 Sal and Holly’s Chinese Restaurant

Chapter 18 Joey, Cigarettes and Motorcycle Jackets

Chapter 19 Wally, Smoking, Nancy, and Skipping Mass

Chapter 20 Christmas, ’59 Cadillac, Smoke Rings, and My First Bicycle

Chapter 21 Twelfth Birthday, Clamming, and Pipinil

Chapter 22 Art Class, the Bully, the Roller Rink, a Picnic, and the Car Heist

Chapter 23 Homemade Wine, Plugs, and a Broke Cherry

Chapter 24 St. Michael’s Dance, Motorcycles, and More Sex

Chapter 25 Lip Locks, Dating, Sarah, My First Joy Ride, and an Angel

Chapter 26 New York School of Printing, Swag, a New Job, Fishing and High-Waisted Dotty

Chapter 27 Sixteenth Birthday, The Twins, Logan Pool Hall, and Ellen

Chapter 28 Marie, Confraternity, Ellen and Lucille

Chapter 29 My Aunt Dana, A-1 Typesetting, More Ellen, and the Candy Cane Car

Chapter 30 Joey, Cavatelli, Sandy, Senior Year, Driver’s Ed and More Cars

Chapter 31 More of My Senior Year, Accurate Typesetting, Drag Racing, Tootie’s, Prom, Graduation, and Cigarettes

Chapter 32 Lost and New Friendships, Connie’s Birthday, the Casino, and Sol

Chapter 33 Connie, Joe’s Clam Bar And The Post Office

Chapter 34 Uncle Sal’s Passing, More Post Office, and More Ellen

Chapter 35 Wheeling Dealing, Lefty, Jail, and a Shotgun Wedding

Chapter 36 Wise Potato Chip Route, Carmen, the Neo-Rican, and the Annulment

Chapter 37 The Fish Business, Ann Marie and Claudia

Chapter 38 The Amish, My First Boat, Being a Family Man, and Upstate

Chapter 39 The Engagement, The Wedding, and the Honeymoon

Chapter 40 Rocky, Selling The Business, New Job, and The Move To Long Island

Epilogue

About the Author

I

dedicate this book to my wife, Leslie for her time and effort she put into helping me write my memoirs. I have worked on this book for four years and she has been there every step of the way editing my rough English, shaping it into a readable form, and making it even possible for me to have my autobiography published. I thank you for your dedication, assistance, and advice. I love you dearly with all my heart.

PROLOGUE

I had the wonderful luck of being born in the greatest city in America and in the greatest era of time. Brooklyn is the garden spot of New York, in my view. It had so much to offer in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It was a great place to grow up as the borough of Brooklyn with its different areas offered entertainment, educational opportunities, religious and ethnic diversity, cultural activities, beautiful parks, large libraries, a plethora of restaurants, and shopping.

Brooklyn was without a doubt the birthplace of Rock and Roll. Alan Freed’s famous rock and roll extravaganza at the Paramount Theater stands even until today as a historical event in the development of a new genre of music and exemplifies the importance Brooklyn played in the infancy of rock and roll. Many famous Doo-Wop groups came from Brooklyn such as: Little Anthony and the Imperials, Jimmy Gallagher and The Passions, and Johnny Maestro and The Crests.

Many famous musicians, actresses/actors came out of Brooklyn -- Barbra Streisand, Mae West, Jackie Gleason, and Rita Hayworth. It was a clean, decent, and inviting place to live and visit. Brooklyn is famous for its bridge, the Brooklyn Dodgers, Ebbets Field, Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs, Coney Island and Steeplechase with its rides like the Wonder Wheel, the Cyclone, and the Thunderbolt. NBC shot several shows there like the Perry Como and Howdy Doody shows.

Brooklynites were a happy, kind, and helpful people. We had a unique accent and vernacular even though we didn’t realize it with our -- earl burner, terlet, dem, dese and dose, scissor, and Agita as prime examples of our English. Sadly, as the world changed (and not for the better), so did Brooklyn. I chose to move my family to Long Island. My body may have left, but my heart and mind have always stayed there. You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can never take the Brooklyn out of this boy!

CHAPTER ONE

1952 - 1953

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD

I was born in April 1947. I can’t recall the first four years of my life; however, I started school September 1952. The school was PS #108. My teacher’s name was Miss Ledger. I was in the first grade. I was five. This was a beautiful school and neighborhood. Everybody knew you and you knew everybody. East New York Brooklyn was a great place to grow up in. My parents were Italian and my whole neighborhood was about 70% Italian. The neighborhood had many Mafia guys living there too. There were certain rules that existed and if you ever got in trouble, you would rather have the police catch you instead of the Caparegime or Capo also known as the neighborhood Mafia Captain. I lived in a two family house with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. They lived on the first floor and I lived on the second floor with my mother, father, and two sisters. Every day after school, I would hurry home and change from my school clothes to my play clothes. My friends and I would play in the street - punchball, stickball, football, and triangle. We would have some great games. My father came home from work at 5:00 o’clock and it seemed like all my friends’ fathers came home about the same time. I had supper at 5:30 and by 6:00 o’clock; I was out in the street again. At night time, we would play Hide-and-Seek, Ring-A-Levio, Three Steps from Germany, and Johnny-on-the-Pony or sometimes we would ride our bicycles. We got a thrill out of putting on the lights on our bikes and riding around the block.

All the homes on my block and neighborhood were two-family and all had a porch and from April to about the end of September, all the adults sat on the porch while all us kids played in the street. Fulton Street was two blocks from where I lived. It was a main street with all different stores. There was a candy store that my friends and I would go to and they sold penny candy. There was a variety of about fifteen different candies, which was good because we only had like a nickel in our pockets. Next to the candy store was a bar. There were always six or seven guys standing in front of the building. They were loud and always arguing, and they looked like real mean tough guys. On Saturdays, we would spend the day in Highland Park playing baseball. The park had two beautiful baseball diamonds. The field was too big for us, but we had fun playing on it anyway. We all knew that when we got older and bigger, we would play on this field. Baseball in Brooklyn, at that time was the only sport most followed. Just about everybody was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and that was the only sport everyone talked about.

On Sunday, everybody went to church. Every Sunday, my mother made macaroni. We ate at 3:00 o’ clock. At about 5:00 o’ clock, my friends and I would go to Fulton Street to the ice cream parlor, which was next to the candy store. I would always get a chocolate egg cream. It was so good back then - life was pretty routine. It was a lower middle class neighborhood and seemed to be about equal for everyone - no family was rich and no family was poor. In those days, I don’t think there was any such thing as a nursing home, because all the old people lived in the same house with one of their children. Not my mother or any of my friends’ mothers worked. They were all housewives. My paternal grandparents lived downstairs from my Uncle George, Aunt Rose, Cousins Sarah Jane, George and Donna. All of my relatives lived only five blocks to a couple of miles from us. The old people were taken good care of and never were excluded from any party or gathering or holiday celebration.

I never got to know my maternal grandparents as they both passed away before I was born. I have seen pictures of them and my family says I look like my maternal grandfather, Pasquale. I don’t think I do. My maternal grandmother’s name was Josephine. I was named after my paternal grandfather. It is a custom in an Italian family that the children are named after their grandparents, so I was named George after my Father’s father. I remember my father telling my mother he wanted to change my name to Pasquale because I was a happy-go-lucky kid and I was always laughing and carrying on and that was my Grandfather Pasquale. My father told my mother that his father was a pickle puss. My mother told my father that my name could not be changed as I was already in first grade and had just learned how to write my name; therefore, I remained George. Our family was more fortunate than others because we had a doctor in our family, Dr. DeVito. He was my father’s cousin and my paternal grandfather had paid for him to go to college and medical school. He delivered my sisters Sarah, Josephine, me, and my cousins George, Sarah Jane, and Donna. He looked just like Adolph Hitler with that same hairstyle and tiny moustache. When he would come to the house and upon hearing you were sick, he’d say, What the hell is the matter with you, kid? He would always threaten to give me a shot, which I hated. I got so that when he would come over, I would hide upstairs in my attic room and would not come down until I saw him pull away from the curb in his car.

My mother and father were both of Italian descent, and they both were born in America and were pretty lenient. My father never hit me, he’d just yell at me and my mother would hit me with a wooden kitchen spoon when she would get exasperated with me. She kept the hardware man in business because every time she’d break a spoon, it was off to the hardware store for more. My grandfather and grandmother on my father’s side also were born in America and did not know how to speak Italian; therefore my father did not know how to speak Italian, but my mother’s parents spoke Italian. In fact, they came over on the Missoula, a banana boat from Italy and neither one of them could speak English, and so my mother could speak Italian and English. I was glad my parents were born in America because friends of mine whose parents were born in Italy were very strict and the slightest thing would set them off. They would beat their kids so badly that they had black eyes and black and blue marks all over their body. Friends of mine were scared to death of their parents. I was lucky as my father never hit me. He would just yell at me when I did something wrong. I could never understand what a five to six-year old kid could do that was so bad that they got beaten like that, but in those days you did not question why, you just looked away.

When I was six years old and in the second grade, my teacher was Miss Grosheen and it was around Valentine’s Day and all the boys in the class were making Valentine cards for their mothers and the girls were making Valentine cards for their fathers. My best friend’s father had a grocery store on the corner of Ashford and Fulton Streets and that Saturday, my friend and I worked in the store making deliveries and cleaning up the store. My friend and I each made fifty cents, so when Valentine’s Day came, I gave my mother the card and I Scotch taped the fifty-cent coin to the card and gave it to her. My mother started crying and was hugging me. She put the card with the fifty-cent piece in a picture frame and hung it on the wall. My mother said she would not sell it for a million dollars. Whenever someone would come into the house and asked about the card and the fifty cents, my mother was so proud to say, My son gave me this and that was the first fifty cents my son earned. Well, that was the beginning of me working odd jobs. I did anything to make money like raking leaves, shoveling snow, doing gardening work, pulling weeds, etc…. The people in the neighborhood knew me and liked me, so when they needed something to be done they would call me. I liked the feeling of making money on my own and having money in my pocket to do what I wanted.

I would buy baseball cards for five cents a pack and there was a flat piece of bubble gum in the pack with the cards and it was the best bubble gum I ever tasted. Collecting baseball cards was something all the boys did and we would trade off our doubles to one another and help each other make a complete set. Back then, friends were friends. We were always out to help one another. There was never any jealousy or hostility. We all truly cared a great deal for one another and had good times.

One summer night, my father took the family to Coney Island. We had Nathan’s Famous hotdogs, French fries, and soda. After we ate, my sisters and I went on the rides. We had a great time. Then we would go down the boardwalk to see the fireworks. It was amazing seeing this display. As we headed for the car to go home, my father would stop in a store next to Nathan’s and buy a box of caramel popcorn. This place made it fresh and it was still hot and delicious. Between me and my sisters, we would eat the whole box.

About a week before summer was over and we were getting ready to go back to school, we would go to the annual Saints Cosmas and Damian Feast. It was held on Liberty Avenue, which was only five blocks away from my house. Everybody went to the feast. They would have a big stage set up at the intersection of Linwood Street and Liberty Avenue and the old Italians would get up and sing. They had about a fifteen piece band playing for them and they sang in Italian. The old Italians and people, who understood Italian enjoyed the show while my friends and I who did not understand a word they were singing, could not stop laughing. They were old and the faces they made were so funny. You could smell the sausage and peppers cooking a block away. You could get a hero sandwich on real Italian bread. When you would bite into that sandwich, the juices from the sausage would drip down your mouth. It was so good we had to have the hero cut in two because we were too young to eat the whole sandwich. My parents would buy zeppolis with powdered sugar on top and calzones that were deep-fried. These were so delicious! After the feast, it was the end of summer vacation and the start of the new school year.

CHAPTER TWO

1954

THE ADVENT OF ROCK & ROLL, WINE AND LES LEE

I was now in the third grade and my teacher was Mrs. Ammoth. All of us kids were excited and anticipating what the third grade was going to be like. I think we were all feeling that we were growing up because we were now in a higher grade, seeing children who were just starting school. It seemed to place us above them and I liked the idea of patting a little kid on the head and asking him or her if they were alright and telling them if they needed anything to let me know. I guess this made me feel like a big brother. My friend, Sal had a radio with five bands - AM/FM, and three others I don=t recall. Evenings, we would sit on the porch and Sal would tune into different radio stations. There was one station I would tell Sal to tune to because it was an R&B station. All the kids liked the sound of this music - especially me. This music was very different to the music my parents were listening to -- Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Tony Bennett, and Patty Page.

A few months later, teenagers were talking about a guy who was playing rock & roll music on Station 1010 WINS radio. They said it was cool music and was broadcast mostly at night. I don=t remember the time, but I tuned in to the station that night and wanted to know what rock & roll music sounded like because I had never heard the phrase rock & roll before. The disc jockey’s name was Alan Freed and the name of his show was Moon Dog. The music playing sounded a lot like the music on the R&B station that we used to pick up on Sal’s radio. I just loved it and would listen to 1010 WINS every night. Right from the start, I knew that rock & roll was going to play a big part in my life. Early rock & roll was performed by black artists. In 1954, blacks were not treated fairly and a lot of parents forbade their children to listen to rock & roll. I knew my parents did not like this music, but they did not tell me I could not listen to it and even if they did, I would have disobeyed them. That was how strongly I felt about the music. At that time, there were a lot of prejudiced people which I did not understand. Friends told me their parents told them rock & roll was the Devil’s, Spook or Nigger music. I went home and told my father what my friends’ parents said about the music. My father was a mild man. He believed there were good and bad in all people - no matter what race, religion or nationality they were and he used to often tell me Let your conscience be your guide and he said, Don=t ever use the word ‘nigger’ again, say colored people". After that day, I did not talk about music to my friends who had told me what their parents had said, so I just kept my feelings to myself and did my own thing.

One day, my friend Tony came by and told me that tomorrow his grandfather was getting a delivery of grapes to make homemade wine, and he wanted us to help him. Tony’s grandfather said he would give us $3.00 a piece. I agreed to do it as that was a lot of money. The next day, I went to Tony’s house. A truck pulled up and dropped off forty wooden boxes of grapes – twenty-five boxes of red and fifteen boxes of green. Tony and I started carrying one box at a time to the basement. He grabbed one and I grabbed the other. After we got the grapes in the basement, we started opening the cases and putting the grapes in the crusher. Then Tony and I would turn the wheel and the top would come down and start crushing the grapes. The juice of the grapes would come out the pipe on the bottom into a big pot, and then we turned the wheel the other way and lifted it up. We took a paint scraper and scraped up the grape pits and skins. His grandfather would take the juice and pour it through this big strainer, and then pour it into a big wooden barrel. He had about eight wooden barrels. At first it was fun, but as time went on it became hard work. We did not finish until 6:00 p.m. and I was really tired. Tony’s grandfather gave us $3.00 each and said we did a good job and gave both of us a kiss on the cheek. The old man was happy and so were Tony and I.

The next day we were playing punchball on Arlington Avenue when a pick-up truck with a trailer and a race car on it pulled up and parked. My friend, Chris and his father got out of the truck. We all walked over to the truck to see this race car. The more I looked at this car, the more excited I got. It was navy blue with number 1 in yellow and the driver’s name in the number 1 was Les Lee. He told us that the car was going to be racing that night at Dexter Park which was about seven to eight miles from where I lived. It was about 3:00 p.m. and I could hardly wait for my father to get home. My friend Anthony and I wanted my father to take us to the races. As soon as my father pulled up with the car, I ran over and asked him to take Anthony and me to Dexter Park to see the races that started at 7:00 p.m. He agreed, so after dinner my father took us. My father’s friend, Harry Townsend also came with us.

When we entered the park, my friend and I got a soda and Harry and my father got a beer. There was a man selling peanuts. We all got a bag of peanuts. They were hot and tasted good. I could hear the sound of the cars in the background. They were warming up. Then the cars started lining up and the cars circled the track. The flag man waved the green flag and the race was on. The noise of these cars was very loud because they were running with open headers. I was so fired up and loved every minute of the race, the crashes, the speed, and the noise. I knew then that cars were going to play a big part in my life and what made the night perfect was that Chris’ father’s car won. When we got home, I told my mother about the races and what a great time I had. My father did not say too much about the races. He probably thought it was okay. All night long, while lying in my bed, I was thinking of the races. From that day on, I became interested in cars - the styling, the interiors, their dashboards, the size of the motors, etc… Cars became the second love in my life after music.

CHAPTER THREE

JACKIE ROBINSON AND CHRISTMAS

T he next day, my friends and I went to the candy store. The bar next store had its door open and we looked in and there was a TV mounted on the wall and the men in the bar were watching the baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Jackie Robinson was up at bat and the men were saying things like they wanted the pitcher to hit Jackie in the head with the baseball and kill that nigger. Remember that back then, there were no batting helmets and pitchers throw a baseball about 95 miles an hour, so if you did get hit in the head you could be seriously hurt or killed. I thought this was a cruel thing to say.

Jackie Robinson was the first major league black baseball player and when he was interviewed, Jackie had a nice voice and seemed to be a nice man. I personally liked him. He was a great asset to the team. It was very exciting to watch Jackie when he got on first base. You knew he was going to steal second and third base, and home. He kept you sitting on the edge of your seat. Jackie was a fast runner and all around good baseball player. The thing I could not understand was the men who were saying these bad things about Jackie were Dodger fans. I thought how stupid could these men be because Jackie was a Dodger. It was very upsetting to me and the more I thought about it the madder I got. My parents always told me that I was to respect my elders, but after that day I decided to give respect to the people whom I felt deserved it. I was a very strong-willed kid and was not going to go along with what other people said or thought. It was only important what I felt or thought.

All of the old Italian men would have a vegetable garden in the back yard and grow tomatoes, corn, lettuce, radishes, etc… Also, they all made homemade wine too. Every year, the men would start arguing who grew the best tomatoes, corn, lettuce, radishes, etc… Then they would start arguing who made the best wine. They would be cursing in Italian and carrying on. I did not know what they were saying. I could only understand the curse words, but I could not stop laughing. There would be about twenty old men standing in a circle yelling over one another. I think one of the reasons they all had gardens and made wine was just so they had something to fight about year after year.

Sunday mornings, I went with my father to my grandfather’s house. Before we got there, my father bought two daily newspapers and he gave one to my grandfather. My father sat on the couch and my grandfather sat in his recliner chair and they would both start reading the paper. They never spoke to one another. I was sitting on the couch and after about fifteen minutes of silence, I got bored and went upstairs to see my aunt, uncle and cousins. After about an hour, my father came upstairs and was talking to my aunt and uncle in the kitchen while I was playing with my cousins. When we were leaving, my grandfather would walk out with us to say goodbye. This man and woman were walking by and said, Good morning, Mr. Lawrence. I thought to myself, Who is Mr. Lawrence? When we got in the car, I asked my father who was Mr. Lawrence. He told me it was his father. I said, I thought I was named after your father. My father said, You are too young to understand. When you get older I will explain it to you.

When we got home, my mother had been making the sauce for the macaroni. It smelled so good. I would take a piece of Italian bread and dip it into the pot on the stove. My mother asked me how was the sauce. I would always say, Mom you’re the best. Nobody can make sauce better than you. About three o’clock, we would have our Sunday dinner. I had two sisters. Sarah was five years older than me and Josephine was four years younger. Because of the age difference between us we more or less kept out of each other’s way. We all had different friends and interests, so we did not fight too much like some of my friends did with their brothers and sisters. They would fight all the time.

It was the beginning of December and everybody was starting to get worked up about Christmas coming. We did not starting decorating until December 14th. It was not like now when people start putting up Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving. By the time Christmas comes you are tired of looking at them. We had a finished basement in our house and we had big holidays with the family and friends down there. My mother and my Aunt Nettie would start preparing the food three days ahead of time because we had a big Christmas Eve dinner. My father would buy a real Christmas tree and a big one at that. My sisters and I were so excited. Once my father set the tree in the stand, we would all start decorating it. These were special times with my sisters and parents.

My mother would make a dessert called struffolis. They were little balls of dough that were deep-fried. After they cooled down, I would start eating them. Mom would than take hot honey and mix it in with them and put sprinkles on top. This was a dessert that Mom made every holiday. She also made Christmas cookies -- all different kinds. On Christmas Eve, we had a special dinner called the Feste de Pesci. We served all different types of fish and seafood. Mom would start off with antipasto, which is an Italian salad. Next, were flounder filet, shrimp, stocco, scallops, eels, lobster tails, and then the pasta dish. This was a dish the Italians made in the old country. It was made of spaghetti, olive oil, garlic, parsley and anchovies. While the women cleaned up and the men sat and talked, my cousins and I would go upstairs and play.

Later on, we’d go to the basement and we would have dessert - Italian pastries and cookies. Also, fruit and nuts were placed on the table along with demitasse cups for the black coffee mixed with anisette. After dessert, my Uncle Tony would take out his violin. Tony was an excellent violinist. He had played at Carnegie Hall before the Great Depression, and by the end of the Depression, he was established at his new job at Columbia Cable Company. He never went back to playing professionally again, but he would always play for family and friends on the holidays. While he played, my aunts and uncles would sing along. This would go on for hours. Everybody was singing, laughing, and having a good time. I told my uncle I wanted to play the violin. He positioned the violin for me, and then he gave me the bow. He took the violin and bow away from me in about five seconds. He would say I didn’t want to play the violin, I wanted to saw wood. He told me that when I became sixteen if I wanted to learn, he would teach me. My uncle made me understand that a violin was a very delicate instrument and must be handled with care.

It was now about two o’clock in the morning and everyone was going home. I walked outside to see if it was still snowing. I loved the snow. When my relatives got to the house Christmas Eve, they were covered with snow. This is what made the real feeling of Christmas. I believed that Jesus made it snow every Christmas Eve. In fact, it did back then. I can’t remember a Christmas Eve without snow. We all went to bed and got up at eight o’clock to open our presents.

Later on, I went outside to see my friends. We told each other what we got for Christmas and then went to the park to go sleigh riding. There was this big hill called Snake Hill. We used to fly down the hill. At the bottom, there was a little hill about two feet high. We called it the hump. When you hit that hump, the sleigh would become airborne and it felt like you were shot out of a cannon. You had to keep yourself still because when you came down you had to make a good landing. After landing, we would turn the sleigh around and go up the hill again for another ride. It took us twenty-five minutes to get up the hill and about a minute and a half to ride down. We did this for hours and had a lot of fun. It was around two o’clock in the afternoon and I had to take a shower and get dressed because everybody was coming back at three o’clock for Christmas dinner. We had lasagna and turkey, plus all the leftovers from the night before. It was like a repeat of the day before.

The year was almost over and New Year’s Eve was a few days away. All the family and friends were coming over to celebrate the New Year. This was a special time of the year. Everyone was happy and fired up, and we had all the food and drinks you could consume. I had a whole box of fireworks to set off at midnight. The TV was on and every now and then someone would announce what time it was. No one was really watching it. Everybody was laughing and having a good time. Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians were on TV. When there was only three minutes to go, we would all circle the TV and then yell, Happy New Year. All the women were happy, but they were also crying. Everyone was hugging and kissing. My cousins and I took the box of fireworks and went outside. We had fun shooting off the fireworks. The party ended at 3:00 a.m. and they would all be back the next day around 3:00 p.m. to celebrate New Year’s Day. Sure enough, at 3:00 p.m. everyone was back and the celebration started again. As you could see, I had a really close family. There was a lot of love there.

CHAPTER FOUR

FAMILY AND BOWLING

M y mother had two sisters, Antoinette, whom we called Aunt Nettie, and Caroline, whom we called Aunt Lina and one brother, Salvatore known as Uncle Sal. My mother and her sisters looked up to their brother Sal like he was God. They would serve him food first. Whatever Uncle Sal wanted, he never had