Nothing Is Forever: A Story of Life, Love and Hardships.

By Vivian Stirpe

Most of the incidents that took place during the great depression and during prohibition days are depicted in this story. It was a very difficult time for people. There were no TV’s or cell phones. My father was a barber and he earned 40 cents a haircut. My mother sewed covers on baseballs for 10 cents each. We were very poor. There were many Italian immigrants that settled in the United States. They were so thankful to become citizens. They learned about our constitution and our history, got jobs and paid taxes, etc. They learned the English language and learned it well. My grandfather read the local newspaper daily and was self-educated. They were the melting pot of the world. They came from every country in the world. They all came here to be free, find a job and become an American citizen. They were happy to be in a free country. They were resourceful and got along with everyone. I lived in a Jewish, Italian neighborhood. We had no problems. Everyone got along. We had a good life in spite of our hardships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664181885

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Dedication

Prayer for Our Country

Author’s Bio

Childhood And Young Adult Life

Chapter 1 The Birth of Vivian

Chapter 2 Running Away From Home

Chapter 3 Athletic Abilities

Chapter 4 Dancing on the Table

Chapter 5 Pneumonia

Chapter 6 Mrs. Dagastino’s Parrot

Chapter 7 Mr. Cohen’s Meat Market

Chapter 8 Tonsillectomy

Chapter 9 The Joy of Growing Up Italian

Chapter 10 About Italian People

Chapter 11 Old Man Nuffer, Our Landlord

Chapter 12 Sister Juvienina

Chapter 13 Oh My Pa Pa

Chapter 14 The Player Piano

Chapter 15 My 6th Grade Art Class-Franklin School

Chapter 16 Shaving With a Straight Razor

Chapter 17 Brother George

Chapter 18 Miss Guernsey - Math Teacher

Chapter 19 Epstein’s Chicken Market

My Grandparents And My Relatives

Chapter 20 My Aunt Mary

Chapter 21 My Aunt Elsie

Chapter 22 My Uncle Pat

Chapter 23 My Grandfather Joe

Chapter 24 My Meola Grandparents

Chapter 25 My Grandmother’s life and death

Married Life

Chapter 26 How I met Gene

Chapter 27 My In-laws

Chapter 28 The First Attempt - Gina’s Birth

Chapter 29 Gina Stop the Train

Chapter 30 Linda Lee’s Birth

Chapter 31 Sears Roebuck and Company

Chapter 32 Jay’s Birth - Our First Boy

Chapter 33 Tooth in the Roof of My Mouth

Chapter 34 Paul’s Birth and Thalidomide

Chapter 35 The Summer of Losing Paul

Chapter 36 Pismo Clams

Chapter 37 The Jorgensons

Chapter 38 Catholic Doctrine and Birth Control

Chapter 39 Chickens or Roosters

Chapter 40 The Calico Cat

Chapter 41 Jay’s Bout with Rheumatic Fever

Chapter 42 The Clifton Park Creek

Chapter 43 Gene and My Trip to Europe

Chapter 44 Hysterectomy - November 3, 1971

Chapter 45 Bingo

After My Divorce

Chapter 46 Love of Life

Chapter 47 Too Late To Start Again - 1976

Chapter 48 Life with Sonny

Chapter 49 Mt. Pleasant Market

Chapter 50 Third Avenue House

Chapter 51 Auxiliary Police

Chapter 52 Reiki Master

Chapter 53 Poems I Wrote

Single Life Again

Chapter 54 Working for a Community College

Chapter 55 The Magic Man

Chapter 56 Florida Sea Lice

Chapter 57 Swimming with Dolphins

Chapter 58 Permanent Makeup

Chapter 59 Old Age is A Bitch and Then You Die

Chapter 60 Laminectomy

Chapter 61 My fall on the Front Porch Cement Driveway -

Chapter 62 My Precious Daughter Linda

Chapter 63 Gullible Seniors

Chapter 64 Vivian’s Accomplishments

Preface

During this period of time, people followed the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The children obeyed their parents, and the parents loved their children and encouraged them to excel. If everyone followed this rule, there would be no wars and people would be healthy, happy and free. This was a very good time for everyone. People were not self-centered like they are today. They believed in God and believed in a future. History is an accumulation of what I have written within my many years of writing. Every time something happened to me that was unusual, different or interesting, I would immediately sit down and write about it. Many of these stories were written by hand because I didn’t have a typewriter in those days. This book is the result of all these accumulations. It is a history of my life and my autobiography. Hope you enjoy it.

Dedication

Dedicated to all my children, my family and my friends that made this book possible. God has taken care of me and allowed me to live a healthy old age. I have accomplished many things in my life as you can see from the last chapter of this book.

Prayer for Our Country

Dear Lord, We are getting older and things are getting bad around here. Gas prices are too high, there are no jobs, food and heating costs are too high. The COVID is killing a lot of people. People are starving and losing their homes. I know some have taken you out of our schools, government, veteran’s funerals and even Christmas. I am asking you to come back and re-bless America. We really need you. There are more of us that want you than those that don’t. Thank you Lord. We love you. Let us all pray for a better future for America. Amen.

Author’s Bio

Vivian Stirpe took psychology classes from San Jose Community College. She got her ASID (American Society of Interior Designers) certificate from them also. She worked for the Ethan Allen Furniture Store and Racklyn’s Paint and Paper as their Interior Designer for many years. She also became a licensed Realtor. She is very versatile as you can see from the chapter Vivian’s Accomplishments. She presently resides in Florida. She was always very athletic and still is in good shape for her age. She enjoys swimming, ballroom dancing, pickle ball, writing and playing the ukulele. This is her first published book.

Childhood And

Young Adult Life

Chapter 1

THE BIRTH OF VIVIAN

The doctor had just arrived when the last birth pains became very strong. Oh, I can’t take this anymore, I can’t take it, said Viola. My head was crowning but it seemed like an eternity for the rest of me to push through. Push harder, push harder, said the female doctor to my mom. I was one of hundredths of babies delivered by our family physician, Dr. Zia. She delivered many babies in this neighborhood.

The neighborhood was a low income one and people here were very poor. It was depression time and no one had any money to have a baby delivered in a hospital. Most all of the children were delivered by a family physician or a midwife, more likely a midwife, because they didn’t charge as much as a doctor. Doctors did come to the home in those days, and they sometimes stayed overnight in the patient’s house until the baby was delivered.

The bedroom where I was being delivered was a very lowly and meagerly furnished one. The only new furniture in the whole house was the bedroom set and mattress because my mom insisted that she got a new bedroom set when she married my father about 11 months ago. Italian men want to impregnate their wives as soon as possible to prove to themselves that they were men and able to impregnate a woman. Angelo was just such a man. His main concern was not of having a baby, but of being able to impregnate his new wife. They also preferred having male children because that made them feel manlier. When a female child was born, they blamed the wife. If a male was born, they took all the credit for it. In actuality, it is the male sperm that determines the sex of a baby. They didn’t know that.

Sometimes, the men beat their wives if they could not produce a male child. A male child was a prize and a female child a burden. In actuality, the sex of the child is determined by the male sperm. The number, such as twins, is determined by the separation of the female ovaries. But, in spite of this fact, Italians still blamed their wives if they could not produce a male child even though it was their fault.

The bedroom was full of relatives. My dad wanted to see the birth of his first child, and so did his sister, brothers and father. My mother was very embarrassed and not able to throw them all out. A few more pushes, and a lot more screams, and finally I slipped out of my home of 9 months. Suddenly, my dad passed out and the family had to drag him out of the bedroom and revive him. He was squeamish about the sight of blood, and when I started crowning and all that blood came out he got dizzy and passed out. Poor mom, she was having the baby and doing all of the suffering, and dad was the one who was getting all of the attention. The doctor was very upset at the whole circumstance and asked them all to leave, along with my dizzy dad.

This was not a very good way to start a family. My dad didn’t make much money as a barber. He got 40 cents a haircut. Mom worked sewing baseballs at home, while he went to work in the barber shop next to the apartment that we were living in. She only received 10 cents for sewing the cover on one baseball. She could earn $1.00 after sewing 10 balls. We were very poor.

Life was tough. We ate a lot of greens, macaroni, potatoes, etc. We very seldom had any meat to eat. Once in a while my mom would buy a piece of round steak and she would pan fry it for supper.

Sometimes dad had only 3 or 4 customers for the whole day. He would sit around in the barbershop waiting for customers to come and read the newspaper. He really never knew how to read the paper well. He would pick out a few words here and there, but was not much of a scholar. Mom and her sisters had to go to work to help pay for the newly constructed house they lived in so they were not very well schooled either.

I was the first born of all my uncles and aunts on my mother and my father’s side of the family. I guess I was pretty spoiled, until my brother George came along. My mom did have a miscarriage between George and me so there was 5 years between us.

One of the reasons that my mother didn’t like me was that she didn’t plan on having a child so soon after marriage and being upset because the whole family was watching the birth. She was embarrassed and angry. And that, right off the bat, made her dislikes me and not treat me right. She didn’t have another child until five years later when my brother George came along. He was born with a midwife also.

My father’s sister Mary purchased a Model T Ford automobile with my father. It had a rumble seat in it and that is where I used to ride. It was fun doing that. Because Aunt Mary purchased it with my father, my father could not use it when he wanted to without taking Mary with them. That was a craw in my mother’s throat also.

My grandfather, Joe, and his daughter, Mary, lived with my mom and dad when they first got married. It was not a very good way to start a new marriage. My Aunt Mary was very good at crocheting dresser scarfs and made a lot of nice pieces to put on her furniture. Mom had a new bedroom set and Mary asked mom if she could store her pieces that she made in her new dresser. My mother told her it was ok to do that. So, that is what she did.

One day when Mom had company, she showed the company what beautiful work Mary did and showed her friend what she had made. Mary was not home at that time. When Mary came home, my mom told her that she showed her friend her work but, Mary did not say anything. She actually was not happy about it, but didn’t say anything about it. When my mother went out, Mary called in a lock smith and had him put a lock on mom’s brand new dresser drawer of her new bedroom set so my mother could not get into her own dresser drawer.

When my mother came home, and saw what she did, she had a fit. She thought to herself, the nerve of her, to put a lock on her dresser and ruin her good furniture with a lock on it. Well, mom didn’t realize it but she had a good reason to get rid of the whole bunch of them. She told Mary to take her stuff and her father and her brother and get the H out of her house. She finally had a place of her own without them. It was a blessing that occurred. It was a terrible way to start a marriage. When I think about what she went through, I felt very sorry for her. Of course, this happened before I was aware of it, but, thinking about it now, makes me feel really sorry for her.

Chapter 2

RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME

I lived in a small town around 1951 not too far from the metropolitan area. I was very strictly brought up and was used to saving and doing without because things were hard to get and money was hard to come by. My parents were very tough on me. It was sort of like the Cinderella story that you read about. I did all the housework on the weekends and did a good job. I wanted to be clean because I did not live in the best of neighborhoods. I wanted to excel and feel accepted. Cleanliness was one of the ways to be accepted. I helped my mother a lot and came home from school every day to cook a complete supper for the 6 of us including desert. My mother and father both worked so I had the responsibilities of the household. It wasn’t easy to keep good grades, fixing meals for the family and finding time to do my homework and still please my mother. I was very athletic and stayed for play days after school sometimes so that I could compete in them. I didn’t get much sleep and was very active and tired all the time.

I was a very thin and unattractive girl with black curly hair. I didn’t know how to make myself pretty, no one ever taught me. I was a typical Italian in my features and dress. I tried hard to look nice. My mother bought me clothing much too large for me so that I could grow into them and she could save a lot of money dressing me. I learned how to use a Singer peddle sewing machine that my mother owned to make my clothing fit properly to help me look normal. I bought inexpensive clothing and made them over so that they would fit me right. I was an intelligent child and I had a great drive to excel and achieve. When my mother stopped me from going to college I lost interest in most things except boys and dating.

I started working and earned only thirty five cents an hour dishing out ice cream and selling drugs and putting the Sunday papers together every weekend. I had to work Saturdays and Sundays too. There wasn’t much time left to spend with my good friends and school chums. I didn’t mind working Sundays really because all the family did on Sundays was visit relatives or have company. I worked at a place called Honeylands, an apothecary and a drug store. I liked the job. The owners were very good to me.

Also, I was beginning to get interested in boys. One in particular, that was quite a bit older and ran a gas station, interested me. I would sneak out to see my girlfriend at night and pass by the station just to talk to him for a while. He was a tease and I didn’t want too much to do with him because I knew he had other girlfriends and took advantage of them by bringing them into the garage and putting them on the lift in his car. This excited me and made me curious to find out more about him, but nothing ever came of it.

My mother was very hard on me and expected a lot from me. She hit me many times and my father never stepped in and stopped her. He let my mother rule the house. They had a lot of spats and quarrels in front of my siblings and me. We all felt very lonely and insignificant.

I was well liked in school and had good grades. I got along well with the boys as well as the girls. I dreamed a lot of how I was going to be different when it comes to my marriage. I was always going to look nice for my husband, and love him so hard that he would never let me go. I would get up in the morning and see him off to work, and kiss him goodbye and kiss him hello again when he got home. I would be with him all the time. I would never deny him and help him always to be free to make love to me all the time. I dreamed a lot about this kind of thing especially when I was in my room alone crying.

My mother didn’t want me to have boyfriends and to go out at night. When I was 14 years old, my main interest was being a physical education teacher. I knew I would be a good one. I excelled in sports, all of them. I played on all the honor teams and always came out making the most baskets or goalies. I won trophies in tennis and track. My gym teacher Miss. Dietz helped me get a scholarship to Stoney Brook College in Farmingdale, New York. I received a scholarship to go there but my mother would not hear of me going away to school. I cried a lot, but it didn’t help much.

When I became 16 I forgot about sports even though I still did well in them. My junior high teacher lost interest in me knowing that my mother would not release me to go to college. That was something I regretted my whole life time and I blamed my mother for that. Things would have been so different if I had a chance to go to college.

After a while I found another job. My mother found it for me. I got a job in a women’s dress shop packaging clothing and doing odd jobs around the shop. I learned about mark ups on clothing and how to sweet talk people into buying dresses. I finally was able to buy something nice for me to wear. I bought them on discount. Most of the money I earned I spent before I got home because if I didn’t my mother took it all away, except for bus fare to get to and from work or school. My mother felt that as long as she had control of the purse strings, she had control of me. She did the same thing to my father. My dad had to make an accounting of every penny he earned so he would never be able to buy me anything or take me any place. When he was sleeping my mom would go through his pants pockets to see if she could find anything that she could get mad at him for and see if he withheld any money from her.

I decided that I would never hold money that sacred like mom did. I wanted to enjoy myself, do things and go places once in a while and live a full and happy life.

The class president, Pete, asked me to go to the junior prom with him. I never expected to be asked by him. He was the most eligible bachelor in the school and he was asking me to go to the prom with him. I heard people passing me in the hallway asking each other, I wonder who Pete is going to ask to the prom? All I know is that he asked me. He stopped me in the hallway and said, Would you like to go to the junior prom with me? Of course I said, Yes I was elated.

I didn’t have a gown to wear and mom would not give me any money to buy one. I was lucky that my Aunt Elsie had a lovely gown that someone used in her wedding. She gave it me so that I could make it over and modernize it for the formal. It was very pretty.

I looked really nice for the prom and people there took pictures of me and Pete. After the prom Pete started taking me out a lot. We went to see all the summer stock stage shows that came up and went to a lot of museums, etc. He was very well educated and I loved being with him. He left Schenectady to attend Harvard, a very upscale college. He called and asked me to come to Boston to spend a weekend with him at the college. I did that and had a very nice time. I don’t know what happened to us, but it didn’t last long. He would have been a good thing for me. I don’t know why, but, it just ended. He was very generous and took me a lot of places when we dated. He took me more places in 9 months that I dated him than my husband did in 23 years.

I was chosen as a member of the Daisy Chain as a junior in high school. This was a group of attractive women that wore evening gowns and were used as a backdrop on the stage that senior graduates ascended to received their high school diplomas. Nott Terrace High School did this in those days for each graduation. It was a nice touch to a graduation ceremony.

By now, I was working at the General Electric Company, and was 18 years old. I got a nice secretarial job, and started meeting a lot of nice young engineers. I had a top secret government badge and had to wear it to get into GE. That was sort of special to me.

My dating became very heavy. I was out every Friday and Saturday night, and sometimes even on Sundays. My mother was very upset. She didn’t want me to date. She never sat down and explained anything about life in general to me because she felt life, sex and babies were unmentionables. My parents didn’t know how to teach me the proper things in life. So, I thought that was the way to live. Therefore, I became educated in the office.

I fell in love with my boss who was a skinny little guy, but full of fun and always singing. You could hear him coming down the hall several doors away. I began to feel excited when I looked at him or took dictation from him. Whenever I accidentally touched his hand, chills went up and down my spine. I still tried to be with him as much as possible even though I knew that it would never amount to anything. It was just puppy love.

I went on vacations with my girlfriends that worked at General Electric too. I necked with a lot of guys, but never went any further because my morals and the fact that I wanted to be a virgin when I got married were very strongly imbedded in my mind.

No matter how much I tried to help do things around the house, it was never enough for my mother. Sometimes my mother would sit on the edge of the bed with the light on all night long to keep me awake. She would poke me when I tried to fall asleep to punish me. Most of the time I didn’t know why she was punishing me. My mother was really not too smart because she was not only keeping me awake, but herself too. It was a very weird way of punishing someone. I still have a problem sleeping from that experience. I started smoking and drinking and mom really hit the ceiling when she smelled these on my breath. I would light up in the bathroom not realizing that it was very easy to smell smoke from the bathroom. So, I stopped doing that. I didn’t like smoking anyway. I just did it to be part of the click.

I was 19 years old, and the New York State law says you are allowed to do things like that when you reached that age. You were considered an adult. My mother treated me like an infant, in that respect, but not for household chores. I had to be Amazon women and work very hard cleaning and cooking so that my mother would allow me to have dates. I would cook and clean all day Saturday, vacuuming, washing windows, etc. Then, about 6 p.m. I would tell mom that I was going out on a date. I would introduce my date to my parents and quickly shoo him out the door. One time my mother had me go on the front porch and tell my date that I could not go out. That was so embarrassing. I could not face that boy again.

I made good money at General Electric, and my mother wanted it all. I had to put as much as I could in savings so that my mother would not take it all away from me. I earned $40.00 a week which was very good money at that time. In spite of it all, I managed to save some money for clothing and vacations, and someday marriage.

Three of my best friends were going on a vacation to a spot called Karamac. I was going with them. My close lady friend helped me take out some of my clothing and personal items that I would bring to work so that she could take them to her house and keep them for me until I was ready to make my move. Before I left for vacation I had all my personal items and clothing at my lady friend’s house and nothing was at my mother’s house anymore. I planned this way ahead of time and it worked well. Actually a school counselor, that I knew well, helped me plan this get away. When the vacation was over with, I would go live with the girls on Ballston Lake instead of returning home to my mother and father. I would live with some of the single girls that were working at General Electric with me. After a few months I had removed everything from my home that I wanted without my mother becoming aware of what I was doing. That, in itself, was a miracle.

After I applied for work at General Electric and got job a job there, I went on my first vacation with the girls that I worked with. I had a wonderful time on my very first vacation. Every night it was a different boy to go out with. It was great fun. I was so anxious to get as much out of the vacation as possible, that I got up at 8 a.m. every day to go down to the river and swim. I had an eye on the lifeguard. He was very handsome and not the least bit interested in me. I did get along with some