Why Mom Smoked: Confessions of Boyhood Mischief

By John Reed

Dive headfirst into the pages of this darkly comical memoir, where Mom's sardonic reply to the question of her smoking habits echoes through the narrative: "Not enough, John. Not nearly enough." Prepare for a journey into the heart of a blue-collar neighborhood, where hard work, hard drinking, hard smoking, and hard language were the order of the day. This riveting tale kicks off by setting the stage by offering a concise account of how this waning industrial riverward district was founded by dream-seekers chasing the coveted "American Dream." Immerse yourself in a vivid historical backdrop that paints a portrait of life in Kensington during those changing times. The mischievous older brother, John, entangles his willing accomplice, Rick, in a series of naughty uproarious childhood escapades. From the audacious feat of welding broken eyeglasses with a plumbing torch to car ride games of mercy, an accidental clubhouse inferno sparked by innocent "firemen" play, a hairbrained attempt at life-saving emergency surgery on a chicken, to a vigilante mission to cleanse the local park of drug abusers. Each anecdote brims with wild, outrageous humor. Throughout this rollercoaster of remembrances, you'll encounter a vibrant cast of characters, each a mosaic of true-to-life Kensingtonian traits and the authentic vernacular of the era. Get ready to laugh, reminisce, and embark on a nostalgic journey through a world that was as surreal as it was unforgettable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350942668

John Reed

John is a retired licensed clinical social worker who had a profound passion for helping children and adolescents overcome learning challenges, navigate social complexities, and conquer behavioral hurdles. Drawing from his own childhood issues and experiences, he dedicated his career to transforming the lives of kids who mirrored his own journey by demystifying and empowering them.

Book preview

Preface

When asked about how much she smoked, Mom’s abrupt reply was, Not enough, John. Not nearly enough.

This morbidly humorous memoir will take the reader on a journey back in time to the hardworking, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, and hard-cussing blue-collar rowhouse neighborhood of Kensington, in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The City of Brotherly Love.

To provide context, the book begins with a very brief historical account of how this riverward district was founded by those seeking an Industrial Revolution American Dream economic opportunity and will provide a very brief sociological account of how they lived. Humor comes in as the journey is narrated by John, who was an elementary school student during the socially turbulent 1960s.

The older brother, John, enlisted Rich, a ready participant, in lots of boyhood misdeeds ranging from zany to bizarre. A few examples are welding broken eyeglasses with a plumbing torch, car ride games of mercy, burning down a kid’s clubhouse while playing fireman, a thwarted attempt at performing lifesaving emergency surgery on a chicken, and clandestine vigilante action to rid the local park of drug abusers.

The anecdotes are peppered with a host of colorful characters composited from true-to-life Kensingtonian traits and vernacular.

Overall, this book is sure to answer the question of Why Mom Smoked.

Introduction

My brother Rich (Rick) and I were born in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1950s. Zip Code 19134. We lived close to the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, referred to by the locals as K&A. K&A was considered by many to be the very heart of Kensington.

Kensington was founded as an industrial neighborhood during the mid-to-late American Industrial Revolution. At the time, Kensington was referred to as The Workshop of the World.

The neighborhood’s founding ancestors had gravitated to Kensington to seek employment opportunities and to get away from oppressing circumstances such as political and economic struggles overseas or the distressed post-Civil War U.S. South.

By legacy of work ethic, seemingly all Kensington residents were hardworking, had a strong sense of community, and were very proud. I certainly can’t say all, but I will say that many if not most, were hard-drinking, hard-smoking, and hard-cussing as well. That was certainly true of our family.

Kensingtononians were provincial and subdivided themselves into micro-neighborhoods referred to as blocks. Blocks were usually geographically rectangular and defined by a street with rowhouses on one or both sides or whatever else, such as a factory or school. The bisecting cross streets established the corners. Almost every intersection had a tap room. One’s residential block further contributed to one’s identity and social status. We were all working class.

Residents of the block were family and usually unofficially governed by a patriarch known as the Block Captain. Everybody knew each other, and the adults did not hesitate to discipline all the children and otherwise regulate all activity on the block.

Kensington was a great place to be a kid during the 1950s and 1960s. To play in, on, or explore, we had parks, playgrounds, trains, train stations, train tracks, trestles, water towers, trolley cars, fire escapes, utility tunnels, sewers, trucks, trash trucks, abandoned cars, alleys, parking lots, abandoned buildings, cemeteries, schoolyards, enormous cathedrals, overpasses, and lots of local stores. For boys, I don’t believe a greater playground could have been found anywhere. Of course, we did have actual city playgrounds and public swimming pools, but they were regarded as predictable, boring, and supervised. And, although as kids we didn’t want to admit it, our neighborhood elementary school was actually decent.

An example of our mischievous play activity, we had fun with blab boxes. A blab box was the street-level fire department connection to a building’s dry sprinkler system. Such a system would not work unless connected to an external water source. My friend Robby and I would remove the cap and yell a stream of obscenities and provocations into the large pipe. Because there was no water, our voices resonated far and loud, just like a public address system. We would continue with our inflammatory tirade until infuriated factory workers streamed out of the building like hornets on the defense and chased us away.

Another example was a Cold War era air raid siren hanging on a nearby utility pole. As a measure of bravery, a boy would climb the pole and kick the siren to make it wail. Those successful at the challenge gained in social ranking. Conversely, if one was dared, especially double dared but refused, the boy risked being branded an emasculating term.

As previously mentioned, Kensington residents were hardworking, but they were equally hard-playing. Days off during the summer and vacations were generally spent at The Mountains or The Shore. New Jersey’s Wildwood Villas (commonly referred to as The Villas) was one of the top shore destinations. For some, a dwelling at the blue-collar Villas was the ultimate destination. It was the cat’s meow, as was said back then. That tiny, single family bungalow afforded status and privilege. The bay, the beach, and the surrounding marsh and woodlands afforded boys ample opportunities for free spirited adventure.

This book is an anthology of certain shenanigans carried out by Rich and me. Some of the anecdotes occurred in Kensington, while others occurred at the Villas. The first weekend following school dismissal for the summer, Rich and I were taken to our great-grandparents’ house at the Villas. We remained there until Labor Day weekend when we were brought back to Kensington.

These admittedly morbid anecdotes are based on real life events according to current recollections of the author’s past experiences combined with a fair measure of literary embellishment for enjoyment. Even so, as one prepublication reader commented, You just can’t make this stuff up.

The anecdotes will take the reader into the disinhibited minds of boys when they crave amusement and view their neighborhood as their playground. The time period portrayed spans approximately my fourth-through-seventh-grade years and Rich’s first-through-fourth-grade years. The years involved were the mid-1960s.

The anecdotes are intended to amuse the reader, but parents, especially mothers, should read with caution as they are probably better off not knowing what goes on in a young boy’s mind and the kinds of errant things boys do when adults aren’t watching—or when boys think they are not watching.

With a cigarette dangling from her lips and a bottle of whisky awaiting her, Mom frequently said with all seriousness as smoke poured from her nostrils, You boys are giving me gray hair and sending me to the nut house. One time, I asked her how much she was smoking. She took a long, deep drag; exhaled a big gray cloud; and replied sharply, Not enough, John. Not nearly enough.

It needs to be underscored that since I am writing about life in an industrial working-class, blue-collar, inner-city neighborhood, quotes will occasionally be in the area’s vernacular, including inextricable cuss words integral to a Kenzo’s vocabulary. (Kenzo is a slang term coined in reference to the residents of Kensington).

I agonized over how I should handle cuss words. Drafts in which they were deleted or neutralized fell far short of capturing and mirroring the full essence of Kensington, and so the decision was made to include the cuss words in a somewhat muted form and minimize the frequency and number as much as possible. To employ an analogy, cussing is to Kenzo lingo as broth is to soup.

There were two reasons that set the stage for the writing of this book. First, at the hearing of my anecdotes initially written for and presented at Rich’s fiftieth birthday party and a year later followed by some readings at a coffee house open mic, numerous people commented that I should write a book, and so I embarked on the project of writing one. It was as if I was pregnant with a literary work and had to give birth. Second, Kensington is so steeped in nostalgia for so many people, myself included, that I wanted to make a contribution toward preserving the legacy.

Of utmost importance, it needs to be perfectly clear to the reader that although veiled by anxiety, Mom had a tremendous, albeit dry, sense of humor, and Rich and I are unequivocally confident that she would have found the contents of this book funny and nostalgic. As you read this book, be assured that you will not be laughing at Mom; rather, you will be laughing with her.

A few of the people portrayed in the book were actual individuals. However, descriptions and personal information have been significantly altered to disguise true identities. Most of the people portrayed are fictional yet accurate composite characterizations of the Kensingtonians of the era. Any similarities to the actual residents of Kensington of the time or the author’s family members, other than those specifically identified as actual, are to be regarded as merely coincidental.

Please enjoy!

People

Dad was a cigar chomping sales and delivery truck driver. He was stocky and weathered, with wispy white hair claimed to be from Swedish ancestry. He spoke in a deep, gravelly voice that caused the earth to shake to its core. A characteristic of Dad’s vocalization was that almost every word in an utterance was unintelligible—as if he had his mouth full of mashed potatoes—except for copious cuss words that were clearly both intelligible and vitriolic. To his credit, I never heard him drop the F-Bomb. To say the least, Dad’s speech scared the stuffing out of Rich and me. Overall, Dad was rather gnarly.

We did not see much of Dad during weekdays as he left for work very early and arrived home in the evening dead tired. He was twenty-plus years older than Mom. His health was in decline, and he had suffered several strokes and heart attacks by his early sixties.

Dad subsisted on comfort foods cooked with lots of bacon grease and salt. Back then, everybody kept a coffee can on the back of the stove, right next to the big cardboard canister of salt, and collected bacon grease for flavoring.

As was common for Kensingtonians, Dad made a few bucks on the side. He drove for the bakery products division of a major brewing company, and his route took him to Delaware. At the time, Delaware had no sales tax, and tobacco products were priced cheaper there than in Pennsylvania. Dad took advantage of his delivery route to buy the cheaper tobacco products, and he bought his company’s beer at an employee discount.

On Friday nights (traditional blue-collar pay night) and Saturday mornings, Dad sold the tobacco products and beer from the trunk of his car and also took book (a term for unsanctioned off-track horse betting).

Sometimes Dad bartered with neighbors. For example, he would exchange a six pack of beer or a carton of cigarettes for a television repair.

Dad was proud to be a union member and a member of a prominent fraternal order. Although at the time I did not understand what those affiliations meant, he told me they saved our a**** a few times. From childhood-through-young-adulthood, Dad was mischievous and constantly in trouble for something. He dropped