Back Home Again (Part 8 and Part 9)

Back Home Again ( Part 8 )

5199 Moreland Dr

                                                                                                                                                                                            Fire, Fire

Sept 30th 1994

 OK, now we’re on the next street, the house we were waiting to be built. Well they built it and we moved in. This whole subdivision used to be a farm field. And where we build our house was where the farm house used to be. So there were a lot of trees around it. We had 14 cherry trees in the back yard. That’s what was so cool about it. And we had an apple tree in the front and an apple tree in the back. It looks like the apple trees are still there, a little raggedy but there still there. And I see one cherry tree in the back, I think. And then on the left hand side, there used to be a great big huge tree. And that’s cut down. All the cherry trees are cut down. There were so many things that happened at this house.

                                       

                                                                                         

    The big apple tree that was in front of the family room is gone. There used to be a circular driveway in front of the house.

 Oh, I forgot to tell you, the address is 5199 Moreland Dr. And the street was named after my grandparents, the Morelands because they built the subdivision. So we lived on Moreland dr. We lived here from 1954 to 1957, about 3 ½ years. I was 9 years old and by the time we left, I was 12.

   My grandparents on my Dad’s side, that’s Nana and Papa. They moved in with us for a short time because they were going to go.... they were having a house built in Florida. So they stayed here like a summer. That was fun because Nana always used to bake all the cherry pies. I’d go pick the cherries and then I’d come in and Nana and I would make all the cherry pies. That was fun. I can still make a cherry pie.

 What else?....Then there was.....Oh, the furnace. We had trouble with the furnace. The house kept smoking up all the time and we couldn’t figure out why. One night I was sound asleep and they woke me up and they said, “The house is on fire, the house is on fire.” So we got out of there. Boy that scared me. I was terrified. What had happened is, when they built house, they set the furnace right on the wooden plywood floor, which is really stupid. My grandparent really got mad at the people that installed the furnace. They had to replace that and fix that. It never happened after that. No more smoke.

 Oh, and when they were building the subdivision, they came across a bunch of baby rabbits and they saved one and we took care of it. The mother had been killed, I guess. They were tearing down a barn and they found it. So we took care of this baby rabbit for about a year. It was really cool. It used to stay right in the family room there. That was fun.

 There was this tree.....well the apple tree right there in front of the family room. There was a branch that would hang over into the front of the windows and the family room had Jalousie windows that opened up. So we had this squirrel that we trained and he would come down to the window and we would feed it breakfast cereal. We’d feed it Trix and the squirrel loved that and he would come every morning to get his cereal. Then he would go back up into this great big tree. I guess he lived there in the great big tree in the corner. One day a couple of kids came by and started throwing stones at it and it really spooked him out I guess and he never came back. I really yelled at those kids too.

   Somebody plowed into that tree one time. Because it’s right at the end of a busy street and there’s a stop light there. The guy went right thru the stoplight and hit the big tree. I don’t know what happened to him because it happened in the middle of the night. My dad woke me up. “Look Bill, there’s an accident.” But I was too tired. I just wanted to go back to bed.

  And my Dad built a bar in there....had a bar built in the family room and the drinking continued. Jean and I after a party, we would wake up early in the morning and I remember a couple of times we’d take all these drinks and start mixing them together, the left over drinks and see what we could come up with. I ate one of those red Maraschino cherries that you put in a dink. I started eating one and I started choking on it and it clogged my windpipe. I really thought I was going to die .It really scared the hell out of me. I finally got it up.

 Oh, one of the most terrible things that happened was what happened to Jeanne, my sister. My grandparents just got back from Hawaii. This time they were living it up I guess. They’re rich. They came back from Hawaii and brought everybody back a present. And Jeanne got a Hawaiian skirt. It was during the summer time and I was with this guy that I knew down the block. And Jeanne and her girl friend were out there. She was in her....right in front of the house here and she wore her Hawaiian grass skirt. She had a sparkler and she’s dancing and waving it around and she held it next to her grass skirt and it caught fire. And did that thing go up. The guy who was with me, he goes running down the driveway, he goes running away. I couldn’t believe he was doing that and I couldn’t let my sister burn. So I took my arm, my left arm and I brushed it against her skirt trying to put the flames out and that didn’t do anything. Finally I just took it and just yanked it and ripped it right off her real quick. I finally got it off. Thank God it came off! She was burnt pretty bad on her stomach. I had a bad burn on my arm but Jeanne had a worse burn on her stomach. Lucky thing I was around...I’m glad I was around otherwise who knows what would have happened.

 During the summer time, my Dad says, “Why don’t you go out and make some money?” We didn’t know how, so he suggested, why don’t you sell some bottled pop to the workman in the subdivision building the homes. So we got a wagon and a cooler and Dad went out and got a whole bunch of pop and we put it in the cooler. We lugged it around the subdivision selling pop to all the workman. There was this one time, it was on the next block, pretty close to the house too. We stopped and it was right next to the busy street there. And the workmen were way up at the house there. We were just about to go up there and sell them some pop and this guy stopped in this car and he says, “Well, I’ll drive you and get you some more pop.” And he insisted that I go with him. He was trying to get Jean and I in the car to go up to the store and we didn’t want to go. Well the workmen finally caught on. They were watching us evidently. They came back down towards this guy’s car and really let him have it. Not physically but they would have killed the guy because they realized what was happening. This guy was trying to kidnap us. I don’t know what would have happed if that guy would have got us in the car. But Jean and I were definitely not going in that car, I knew that unless he took us by the arm or something.

  One time Jean and I were playing....Jean and I and this other guy were playing in the back there in the houses. Jean decided she wanted to go home so she started walking away and I threw a brick at her. I didn’t realize it was going to hit her but it hit her right on the head. God, some of the dumb things I do. But she was alright though.

  The people who bought our house must have really screwed it up. Not only did they cut the cherry trees down but we used to have a circular driveway, they ripped that out and they put a new driveway in and it’s really crazy. Instead of putting it were it’s supposed to be were the garage should be, they put it on the opposite side of the house. It really looks weird. The circular driveway we used to have, that was classy. That looked kind of nice.

 I don’t think I told you what my Dad did. He was the foreman of the subdivision. Before that he was....I think he worked for the telephone company, I know that. That’s what he did in the service and when he got out of the service, he continued to work for the telephone company. I think there were a few little jobs between the telephone company and being a foreman of the subdivision.

Well I have more to say about the house here on Moreland Dr but I’m running out of tape. So we’ll continue this on tape two. See you later.  

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Back Home Again ( Part 9 )

5199 Moreland Dr (continued)

                                             I Almost Didn't Make It                                                                                                                                                                         

   March 25th 1997

We’re still at 5199 Moreland dr. And NO, I haven’t been sitting here for two years. We have to take a break here and I’ll explain what happened. I had a heart attack in March of 95, so I wasn’t able to able to get back and work on this tape. I really didn’t think I was going to make it through the heart attack. That was terrible. But here I am and we’ll go on and talk about Moreland Dr and later on in my life we’ll get back to the heart attack.

                                                                                                      

                                     

                              Nana and Papa at Their Home in Florida

                                                                                                                                                                         

 Since Nana and Papa, that’s my Dad’s parents are staying with us at this house. I thought I’d talk about them for a little bit. I’ll tell you were they came from, what they did and where they’re going. They were the neatest people. Papa was so neat. He had great big hands, you know a big German guy. He had these huge hands. He used to fumble everything but he was a funny person. And Nana was just as funny too. She was neat. She was the nicest.... neither one on them had any money but they were really fun people to be around. Papa used to work in a steel mill when he met Nana. He also put in stained glass windows in churches.

                                                 

                                                                       

     Papa is on the left putting in stained glass windows on the big building

 Later on he owned a garage, a gas station where they worked on cars and pumped gas and so forth.

             

                                                                                                  

    This was his gas station. He retired up to Deep Lake after he sold it

                                                                                                                    

  He retired from that and moved up to Deep Lake. That’s in northern Illinois. That was a nice place. They stayed up there for a couple of years. I remember we used to take drives up there, the family. Mom and Dad and me and Jeanne would drive up to Deep Lake and see Nana and Papa.

                                                                                                           

        

   This was their home in Deep Lake. My grandmother inherited from her mother

 Those were good times. We’d have a lot of fun and on the way back, I remember my Dad’s favorite song. It would be in the evening on the way back from Nana and Papa’s and this song came on, my Dad’s favorite song. I can just picture him reaching over, turning up the car radio and he’d start singing and Mom would scooch over and put her head on his shoulder. They’d cuddle while he sang this song and I’d be sitting in the back seat looking at both of them and it was just like the whole world was at peace and everything was right. Those were the best memories. While you listen to this song, I’m just going to sit back and visualize my Dad and my Mom. (On my tape, I have Nat King Cole singing “Tenderly”) WOW!

 Well, Nana and Papa decided to sell the house at Deep Lake. They want to move to Florida. They found a house down there but they have to wait for it to be built. So that’s why they’re staying with us on Moreland Dr. There really isn’t enough bedrooms in our house to accommodate the 4 of us plus those two, so Papa decides to take a security job at the model homes. My grandparents are starting a third subdivision and they need a security guard at the new model homes to sleep over night there. So he stayed at the model homes most of the time. My grandmother stayed with us. I found myself in my sister’s room were my grandmother was staying. I had decided to take my clothes off again. Just as I got naked, in walks my grandmother. I tried to hide by the bed but she saw me and didn’t say anything. My grandmother got what she had come in for and then walked out again. She didn’t care if I was naked. That’s the way my grandmother was.

One hot summer night my grandmother was baby-sitting my sister and I, while my parents went away for a couple of days. We didn’t have air conditioning in our house. I asked my grandmother if I could sleep with her that night. She was using my parent’s bed because it was bigger and more comfortable. She put me to bed first and then when I was just about asleep, I felt her get into bed with me. I went to touch her and noticed that she was naked. I asked her if I could sleep naked too. My grandmother said, “Ok” and I took off my underpants. This was neat and I fell right to sleep. The next morning I woke up and my grandmother was gone. I always wondered if she ever stayed the whole night with me.

I remember another hot summer night, my grandmother my sister and I were sitting on the patio in back. She was having her smoke. Since it was hot that night, she told us we could take our clothes off and just play in our underpants. My sister and I ran around the back yard playing in our underpants. We dared each other to run around in front of the house were people might see us. That was so much fun back then. 

 We took a couple of trips to Florida, the whole family. This is the first time that Jeanne and I got to go along with my parents on vacation. So it was really cool. We’d go down to Florida. We were staying in a motel in Miami. We had been out that day and when we got back to the motel, the room was hot. My mother told my sister and me to take our clothes off and just stay in our underpants while dad turned on the air conditioning.  My sister and I were playing on the floor and I looked at my sister wearing her silky panties again. I really liked them. I turned to my mom and said, “Can I have a pair of nylon underpants?” I wanted the kind my sister had on. My mom said, “I don’t know if they make nylon underwear for boys” My dad heard me and rolled his eyes and said, “I wonder about him sometimes.” My mom told him to be quite and then she said, “Tomorrow, we’ll shop around and see if they have them.” The next day we went shopping and went into this one store and my mom asked if they had nylon underwear for boys. The salesman said, “Yes, they’re men’s but small might fit” Mom held them up to me and we both looked at them. She said, “Is this what you want?”  “Yes.” I replied. But they weren’t the ones I wanted. These were boxer shorts and the nylon was scratchy. Mom paid for them and when we got back to the motel, I put them on and played while the room cooled down. It turned out to be fun just wearing them though because they were completely see-through. It was like being naked in front of everybody. 

    I remember one time Nana came with us to Florida. That was good. We’d get in the mountains, I remember the Smoky Mountains. There were these little thin winding roads going through the mountains. You’d look over out the window and right there, you go straight down a thousand feet, you know? And Jeanne would get all scared and I said, “Can’t you stand it Jeanne, can’t you stand it?” That was funny. We used to get on her case all the time and Nana would start laughing.

 I remember one time, Papa stayed at the house and he woke up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and he didn’t turn on the lights like most people do. You just feel your way around and you go and sit down and do what you have to do. Well that’s what he was doing. He was just sitting there in the middle of the night going to the bathroom. He didn’t close the door or anything and here comes my Dad. He’s got to go to the bathroom and he sits right down on top of his Dad. He didn’t even know his own Dad was sitting on the toilet. That was funny. We laughed silly the next day about that.

  Well they finally had to go to Florida. Their house was built. We went down there a couple of times to visit them at their new house. That was cool because you got to fishing and it was warm down there. This was the first time I ever got to fly in an airplane and it was to go down to see Nana and Papa. It was one of those great big four engine Constellations. It was Eastern Airlines. I even got to get out of school for two weeks for that vacation. That was cool. That was one of the high point of my life, to fly for the first time. That was really cool. The only thing is, I didn’t know about the ear pressure when you’re going down. Holy cow, I don’t know, it’s not bad when you’re an adult but when you’re a kid. Oh, I thought I was going to die. My ears, I thought I was going to go deaf. I was screaming, “Ma, I can’t stand it!” She gave me some gum to chew and that helps a little bit but I’ll tell you that was horrible.

  I found this big box in back of our house. It must have come from a furnace of refrigerator, or something like that. I put it in the back yard and cut holes in it for windows. I made them so you could open and close them for privacy. I loved making forts. When I was inside of my fort I had the urge to take my clothes off but I was afraid that my mom would catch me and really get mad at me. Maybe if I asked her if I could, she would say yes. I went into the house and asked my mother if I could take my clothes off in my fort. She said, “OK.” Wow, I couldn’t believe it. I went back into my fort and got naked. I was really having fun until I saw this huge black and yellow spider crawling up inside the wall of my fort.

                      

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
I’m terrified of those big kind. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could but I was naked and the main street was right next to our house. I grabbed my pants and put them on as fast as I could and tore the fort open trying to get out of there. I looked at my destroyed fort and thought to myself, I had permission from mom to be naked and now my fort is wrecked. That stinks.

I was about 11 years old at the time. One day my Mom came up to me and said, "I signed you up for swimming at the YMCA.” “OK,"I said. She told me that my cousin would be going with me. He is the same age as I am. It sounded like it would be a lot of fun. So when the day came we picked up my cousin and my aunt. They dropped us off and told us they would be back later in the afternoon when it was over. We went down into the locker room to change into our bathing suits but the life guard said.  “You don’t need a bathing suit. We swim in the nude.” "WHAT!" I looked at my cousin. We didn't want to go naked into the pool with all the other guys. But our Moms wouldn't be back until much later in the afternoon when our swimming period was over with. We had no choice. Other than taking a bath, I had never been naked in the water before. I got in the pool and it really felt neat but I didn’t like being with all these other naked boys swimming around the pool in the nude. I finally got used to it and just swam around naked the rest of the afternoon. We talked with some other guys and asked them if the girls swam naked when they had the girls swim period but nobody knew. We had to find out.

Our Moms Sent us Swimming Naked at the YMCA

   When our Moms picked us up later that afternoon we told them, "We Were Swimming Naked." We told them that they don't allow you to wear bathing suits. Well our Moms started laughing out loud when they heard that. They thought it was great. I didn't want to go back but my cousin did. So Mom said, "There's nothing wrong with swimming naked. You should just forget that your naked and enjoy the water. Everybody else is swimming naked so don't worry about it." “OK,” I told Mom and I continued to go. One day when we got to the YMCA a little early, the girls were still swimming. We had to find out if the girls swam naked too so one of the guys found a back way down into the pool area to see if the girls were naked. We waited breathlessly for this guy to report back to us. When he came back he told us, “They’re wearing bathing suits.” Our hearts sank. We wondered why we swam naked but the girls didn’t. I went with my cousin a few more times and then I told Mom, “I like being naked but I don’t like being naked with a bunch of guys.  I don't want to go anymore,” I told her. “OK, you don’t have to if you don’t want too.” I thought it was so cool being naked though

 I got myself in a real mess one time. You know the Columbia Record Club?  Well I filled out one of their applications. You buy one record and you get six more free. And I thought, Oh wow, that’s pretty cool.  I didn’t mail it, that’s the thing I didn’t understand. I must have set it down someplace and somebody else must have mailed it. Well anyway, so many weeks went by and all of a sudden I get this great big package with all these records in it and I had to pay for them, or my parents ended up paying for them. They weren’t too happy about it. The thing was I still had to buy six more records at the regular price. Well, my parents paid for it but then they kept on sending the records even after I fulfilled my contract. Boy, did my Dad get mad. He said you keep those records and I’m going to right them a letter. He wrote them a really nasty letter. Well, I never heard from them again and I got to keep the records.  Boy, don’t ever join those records clubs. You’ll really get yourself in a mess. 

                                                                                        

   Here we are posing for a photo that they were going to put in the newspaper about ice skating

    Oh, Jeanne and her girlfriend join this ice skating school. Michael Kirby ice skating school in Park Ridge. They were having a lot of fun, so I decided to join. That was really neat. I got to learn figure skating. I was even in a show at the Chicago amphitheater and we were ice skating. That was a lot of fun.

                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                        Jeanne and I are in this Ice Skating Show

  I don’t know if my legs could hold up now, ice skating. But that was fun at the time. If I would have kept it up, I would have really been good. I guess my parents couldn’t afford it anymore. It was getting to expensive.

  

 Oh, Mom had a miscarriage at this house. She got pregnant. That would have been so cool. She came up and said, “I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby,” and I thought, “Alright, I’m going to have a brother.” And I’m sure Jeanne was hoping she’d have a sister. And my Mom was cleaning out the crawl space underneath at the time she found out that she was pregnant. And she wouldn’t quit cleaning it out. She had to finish the job. Nobody could talk her out of it. I don’t know if that was the cause of her miscarriage but she had the miscarriage soon afterwards. We never had a third child. I don’t think my Dad was too unhappy about it. I think he was kind of glad. I don’t think he could have stood another kid in the family. I don’t know that for sure but that’s just my impression.

 I had the best bedroom in the house. It was in the back. It was the biggest bedroom. And it had great big windows overlooking the patio and the cherry trees out in the back. On one of the outside walls was a closet that you could access from the outside. A closet where you keep the garden tools and stuff and that was adjacent to my bedroom. Somehow a rat must have gotten in there or something, or a squirrel or something. It got way up in the closet in the rafters. It kept on scratching. That was really spooky sometimes because that gnawing and scratching at night, that got me.

  I remember my first erection. I got to tell you about this. I use to play a lot like I said in the houses in the back where they were building them. And I went into this one house. I was always looking for a fort or something and there was this crawl space in this house. It was really clean down there. They had these real small pebbles down covering the ground and it was just like a neat little fort in this crawl space. And a little window you could peak out of. It was really for a vent but they hadn’t put the vent in. So it was just a little hole you could look out the wall outside and see who’s coming. Anyway I decided to take my clothes off. I had never done it before, to be naked outside. So I took my clothes off. And nobody told me about erections. Nobody told me anything. I was in the dark. And all of a sudden, I get an erection. And it gets hard and it got so hard and it just wouldn’t go away. And I didn’t know how to relieve it. Oh, it was terrible. It must have lasted a couple of hours it seemed like. It finally got to be that I was in pain. It really, really hurt. I didn’t tell anybody. I swear to god, I told myself, “I’ll never, ever take my clothes off ever again. I don’t want that to ever happen.” Oh, was that terrible.

 Oh, and speaking of which, I met my first real girlfriend. Her name was Sandra, Sandra Withington.

                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                       

My first Girlfriend. I wonder where she is now?

I met her in sixth grade. She had the neatest lips. That’s one of the things that attracted her to me. She was really cool, at least I thought so anyway. At first I didn’t know how to get to know her. So a couple of times I followed her home because I didn’t know where she lived. She lived pretty far from the school. There was this hill by her house. I scooted up the hill, I remember. And she was walking down the street and I was watching to see which house she went to. And on her way this little twerp of a kid who lived on the same block came up, this guy. And I thought, Oh No, she’s got somebody” I said, “I’m not going to let that stop me.” I called him twinkle toes, because I was mad. So at school, the only thing you could do is to start talking, so that’s what I did. We became friends and she had a couple of parties down in her basement. Nothing ever happened between us or anything. It was just the first love of your life, you know? But nothing happened.

 I remember one summer my Dad started taking a walk. You know, from the house all the way down Canfield to Higgens road, which was about a mile. There was a store there and he said, “Come on kids, let go get some ice cream and take a walk.” And it was great for us you know, for Jeanne and I because you got to go out at night and take a walk. The first and second time it was a lot of fun. We’d be with Dad and talk and walk about a mile down there. But there was also a bar down at the end there too. And I think that was the real reason he wanted to go down there, just to get out of the house and have a couple of drinks. So we’d sit at the bar with him and he’d have his couple of drinks and we’d be there for probably about forty-five minutes. Then we would go next door and get the ice cream. We’d walk back and you couldn’t eat the ice cream when you got back because it was so gushy from being warm outside. So you’d have to wait until it hardened up again before you could eat it. My Dad kept on taking his walks down there every once in a while. We didn’t go with him after that though. It just wasn’t as cool as it was the first couple of times. We all knew he just wanted to go down there and drink.

 I got some neat Christmas presents in this house. Nana used to give me pajamas. The first time she gave me a real nice warm soft pair of pajamas and I thought that was so cool. It felt so good. And the next Christmas she asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said, “A pair of pajamas.” So she got me a pair of pajamas and the next year I asked for the same thing. She said, “You already have pajamas, what do you want pajamas for? I always like getting pajamas from Nana. It was something about... it was just soft and comfortable...and it came from her. I just loved Nana. She was neat.

         

                                                                                                         

  Some of the other Christmas presents I remember in that house were.... I got my first and only chemistry set. I mixed a couple of chemicals together. Boy did that burn my finger, jeez! I don’t think they had any regulations on what you could put in those chemistry sets. I even had a jar of radioactive ore I remember. I got a train set one Christmas at this house.  It was an American Flyer. My cousin Jim, he got a Lionel, which was really the coolest thing to have and I got the American Flyer. It was fun getting a train set but I wish my parents had given me the Lionel. But that’s ok it was still neat though. It was a passenger train with all the little people in there. My cousins Dad had built him a table and set up a whole town and everything down in their basement. So that was really cool. I didn’t have that. I just had my train on the floor. I always wanted to build a town and have a train set.

 All in all, this house wasn’t too bad at all. We had a lot of good memories in here. There were only a couple of them towards the end when we were living there. One of them was when my Mom really got drunk during the daytime. She had never done that before. At least I hadn’t ever seen it. She came out on the patio, she was bombed out of her gourd in the middle of the daytime. And she had this can of tomato soup and she had a spoon in the other hand and she was eating this cold tomato soup. I thought, “god, how could she do that. She went back in and I think I was talking to my sister how I couldn’t stand it and hated it. We were right under the kitchen window and she heard us. And she came out and she said, “If you don’t like it, I’ll just leave and you can get yourself another mother, you know she was drunk. That’s the beginning of where she starts to get drunk during the daytime just before we moved. But I never heard my parents argue. I’m sure they did. But in this house, I never heard them argue. Not in front of us anyway.

 I remember standing on the side of the house one time, talking to my sister I believe. And I said, “When I grow up, I’m never going to drink or smoke,” Because I didn’t like what I was seeing in the house, Hah.

 I had some pretty good memories here. More than I thought I was going to have. With Nana and Papa staying, I mean everything wasn’t that bad.

Well, now the third subdivision is under construction and like we’ve been doing, we follow the subdivision. So we’re going to move to the new house on Vine Ave. Off we go.

Back Home Again (Part 6 and Part 7)

                   Back Home Again ( Part 6 )                   

4892 Canfield

The Homes My Grandparents Built

                                                                                                                                                     

Sept 30th 1994

This is my 4th house and its 4892 Canfield. The only thing I can remember.....I remember at lot. I had just got out of the hospital not too long ago and I remember I had this dream in this house. I think I was still a little sick. And I dreamt of giant strands of spaghetti. It sounds stupid. And when I looked around when I woke up everything was real far away. Like looking at the opposite end of binoculars, you know?  Oh, it still freaks me out when I think about this today. That dream, Oh, I must have been hallucinating or something and what else? Oh, the Freeze’s used to live in back of us. And my Mom and Dad started going over there all the time partying I guess and we’d go with. Oh, I hated that. And they’d drink and start getting drunk and that’s when the drinking started as far as I can remember. And next to the Freeze’s was this other couple. And this woman took pills. And that’s how Mom got started on the pills. That’s what my Dad said. So this was kind of like the beginning of the end, you know, with the drinking and the pills. DAMN!

 I only lived here for one year. This is the subdivision my grandparents built, the Morelands. They built this whole subdivision here. That was kind of neat when they were building. I liked that. That was cool.

 The photographer was out that day taking pictures for the new homes for an ad in the newspaper. From left to right; Jeanne (my sister) Shirley ( she was my uncle's girlfriend. Everybody liked her. I wish my uncle would have married her instead of that other one.) Next is my uncle Bill. (He's the one who built the new homes along with his parents.)My Mom and then there's Me.

And....there used to be an old barn up ahead there. I used to play in there all the time. Oh, and then the school is down the street, St Eugene’s school. I went to second grade at St Eugene’s. And....eh....they made you sell Christmas cards. You know the nuns gave you Christmas cards to sell around Christmas. I remember the first time, I didn’t know anything, I was stupid and I brought all these Christmas cards home that I’m supposed to sell and I didn’t know the price of them. So I priced what I thought was a good price. Like .33 cents, I remember that. And I’m selling the cards for .33cents a box and they were supposed to be sold for a $1 a box. I think my Mom had to make up the difference. She was mad too that they made you sell this stuff. There were some open houses when they were selling the houses and the photographer would come over and I was in a couple of the pictures for the ads for the model homes. That was neat. Jeanne and I were in one of them I remember. My Mom and Jean and I, we were photographed for and ad and put in the paper. I got it in my baby book at home.

   But we only stayed here a year and then across the street they started building the next subdivision, so we moved over there. You know, kind of following the subdivision along. Well, Oh, I remember, we were playing out in the driveway here right in front. And all of a sudden we hear this tremendous explosion and we looked toward the back of the house and it was like a big mushroom cloud. Like the Russians bombed us or something. What had happened is, there’s a fireworks factory like about 5 miles west of here. And it had exploded. Just like a hydrogen bomb it looked like. That’s what the cloud was like. And we went over there, Mom and me and Jeanne. There might have been somebody else with us, Jimmy my cousin might have been with us. Yeah, I think he was. And we were walking toward the fire. We were in the prairie and way in the back was this building that had exploded. We started walking toward it and all of a sudden it exploded again. Just like a huge bomb. And we went running through the field and I stepped on all the stickers. My feet were sore for a week taking out all those stickers. And Jeanne had glass in her feet from running. Some explosion!

                                 

                                                                                                     
                                      Our House on Canfield

 Well, we only lived here a year and I can’t remember too much except the Freeze’s in the back and my dream and stuff. Oh, I know something I forgot to say. I was seven years old at the time. This was 1953 and for some reason my ears really stuck out at that time. I looked like Dumbo, the elephant in that Walt Disney movie. That’s how I looked. And my sister Jeanne would pull on my ears and try and make them get bigger and bigger. It was funny at first and then she knew how to get my goat after a while. She’d just pull on my ears and I think I’d get a little upset. But my ears finally as I got older they just grew back against my head and they didn’t stick out as much. For a while there, I was worried they stay like that forever but they didn’t.

  This is me and Timmy Freeze. He was the son of the people that lived in back of us

 So we’ll go on to the next house  

______________________________________________________

Back Home Again ( Part 7 )

                                           5164 Monterey Ln

                             

My Cocker Spaniel, Prune Juice and Other Things

Sept 30th 1994

Well this is my fifth house I’ve lived in. 5164 Monterey Ln and it’s kind of....it’s in the next subdivision across the street now. We only lived here like for a summer until our real house, which is the next street over, was going to be built. We were waiting for that to be built. So we moved in here on Monterey Ln just for the summer after second grade had let out.

   This is what it looked like when we first moved in. They still had a lot of homes to build yet

Let’s see, what happened here? Oh, we had a bird, a canary or a parakeet. Don’t remember its name but it was the coolest parakeet. I had my choo-choo train. And I had set up this choo-choo train and it would sit on top of the choo-choo train and go round and round and round with the choo-choo train. My dog Inky one time, he loved.....they used to play together, my dog Inky. He was a Cocker Spaniel by the way, a black one and he used to play with the bird all the time. And they were friends, they really were. While the bird was riding on the choo-choo train, Inky got too excited and just went to play with him but accidentally bit him and the bird died.  My dog was so upset he stayed in the corner for three days. I mean he was.... and we didn’t even yell at him. We all knew it was an accident because we were there. We saw what happened. So my dog really had feelings about killing something else.

    I have a picture at home of Inky in the driveway there. Uh... he was right there standing in the driveway.

   Here's my dog Inky and I in our driveway. I sure miss that her. She was the only dog I have ever had

Let’s see, next door a big family used to live there. I don’t know, what did they have 4 girls something like that, or 6 girls? I think there was 6 in the family. The parents were in there early thirties or mid-thirties or whatever. And the mother died suddenly and the poor guy was stuck with 6 kids. Unbelievable. That was my first wake I ever went too. I didn’t like that at all.

 What else? ....I look down the street and I can see St Eugene’s school there. Boy, how many times have I walked in and out of that door? The door right there that I’m looking at is the door I took to my second grade class. It was thru that door and I think it was the first class on the right hand side. That was second grade.

 St Eugene's grammar school. Well you know what I think of school by now.

And then, I got screwed. Remember when I said, I’d pay for missing all those days in first grade?  They graduated me and I came to this school and I went to second grade and my card said I graduated to third grade but during the summer sometime they figured, Bill had missed so much work. All these nuns ... had missed so much work in first grade that I’d better take second grade all over again. Oh was that ever.....That destroyed the rest of my life as far as schooling went because I would always be behind everybody else including my cousin. And if you don’t think that wasn’t horrible. My cousin and I were both born at the same time and all of a sudden he’s in third grade and I got to go to second grade again. Then come high school and he’d be in high school and I’d still be in grade school and so on and so on. Boy that sucks! I hated school ever since then. I don’t think I ever got over that. That was the worst thing those nuns could ever have done to me was to keep me back another year at second grade. Damn them!

 Oh, one Saturday, I used to watch the cowboy series on Saturdays. I’d sit in my room and eat breakfast cereal and watch the cowboys, Roy Rogers and all those. And one time we had a.....I couldn’t find anything in the refrigerator except this... I guess Ma had bought some prune juice. I never tasted it before and I tasted it and it tasted pretty good. It was a whole big quart of prune juice. So I brought it into my bedroom where the TV set was and I sat on the floor and I drank this whole quart of prune juice. Ohhh...I thought it was pretty good until I had to go to the bathroom, and I had to go to the bathroom again, and again, and again. I said Ma, I can’t stop going to the bathroom. What have you been drinking or what have you been eating? She thought I was sick or something. I said, well I had some prune juice for breakfast and she started laughing. She said, how much? I said a whole quart and she just rolled down laughing hysterical.  She said, that’s why you’re going to the bathroom so much.

 Oh, then I had my first date at this house. I was either 7 or just about to turn 8. And this sharp girl in the back moved in. Her name was Charlene Reimann. Oh, what a fox. I wonder where she is today? 

                                                                                                                                                    

   Charlene Reimann, I thought see was so pretty. Too bad I was so bashful back then. I wonder what ever happened to her?

Anyway, one day I got enough courage to ask her if she wanted to go to the movies. And “The Littlest Outlaw” (1954) was playing, a Walt Disney movie.

   I haven’t seen that movie since. Anyway we went to the movies and I was so scared. I just sat there like a stone statue. I didn’t dare move. Oh what an experience. But she was nice. But that was the only time we ever got together though. I bought her a ring one time. I went to the dime store. It had a light blue stone and I even remember how much it cost, it was .29 cents. And I came back and I gave it to her. And I said, I bought you something for .29 cents and I handed her this ring, this dime store ring. That was about it. No big thing.

 Well anyway, we’ll go to the next house.

Back Home Again ( Part 5 )

Back Home Again ( Part 5 )

7415 Ottawa Ave

Polio Strikes

June 21st 1994

I’m at 7415 Ottawa Ave. This is the third home we’ve ever lived in. As matter of fact, this is the first single-family house we had. The other house on Devon Ave was a duplex. So this is our first single family home. I live here from the age of 4 until I was 7 years old.

All this was all prairie around here, especially in the back of the house. Now it’s nothing but homes here but back then it was nothing but prairie. You could just go for what seemed like forever in the back there and play. One time Jimmy my cousin came over. We were out in the fields in the back and there was this sewer cover back there and we wanted to see what was in it. So I lifted it up and he was going to get his fingers underneath it so he could help lift it up. And all of a sudden I couldn’t hold it anymore and the sewer cover came down on his fingers and he got caught and he was screaming and I couldn’t lift it up anymore. So I came running back and got Mom and Aunt Marie and they came running back into the field and got his fingers out. I almost cut off his fingers. Well it wasn’t all my fault, it was his too.

 Michael lived next door to us. He was a pretty nice guy. He was my friend. The only thing I can remember about him, he had the biggest comic book collection I ever saw in my life. I saw him later on when I was in my 20's but I don’t know where he is now though. His mom died since I’ve seen him.  Then next door there used to be couple and they had a kid, a brand new baby.  It was a day just like today, nice and sunny and bright and warm. And they put the crib out in front and the baby was taking a nap in the crib. They put it on its back when he was taking a nap and the baby spit up a little bit and it came down and he started choking on its own spit or vomit or whatever you want to call it and the poor baby died. My Mom came running over because the woman next door was hysteric. My Mom tried to save the baby by giving mouth-to-mouth but couldn’t. That was a tragedy.                                               

  My Dad had fallen down the stairs here. I guess they were having a party one night and he fell down the stairs and he broke his leg. He couldn’t stand the cast after a while so he got drunk and ripped it off. He was sorry he did.

 One time it was Christmas and my Mom had set up my train around the Christmas tree.  I was standing over the train tracks pretending I was a bridge and let the train go between my legs. And all of a sudden as soon as the train got right underneath my legs, I guess it shorted out or something and sparks went flying everywhere. I thought I was gonna die, I couldn’t believe it. That was the last time we ever did that. My Mom and dad buy me my first dog that they found. It was a Cocker spaniel, a black one, all black and we called it “Inky.” She was the greatest dog. She was my best friend. We had her for a long time. I really liked that dog.

  As it turns out when we did sell this house, we sold it to a couple named the Millers They had two sons and we went on our merry way to our other home. Then when we get to be teenagers and in our twenties, Jeanne meets this guy named Rick Miller and they start dating. He takes her home to meet his Mom and Dad and as Jeanne describes it. They pull into this neighborhood and Jeanne says, “This neighborhood is familiar, I used to live around here.” And they pull up in front of the house and they start walking to Rick’s house and she says, “Is this where you live?” And Rick says, “Yeah.” and she says, “This is the same house I used to live in.” That was really strange. The same people that bought the house from us still lived there all this time. And what are the odds that my sister would end of meeting one of their sons. Of course they ended up getting married and having 4 children of their own.

 I remember one time my cousin Jimmy came over. We used to get in a lot of trouble. I think Aunt Marie decided not to get us together anymore but anyway he came over one time and I had this pet turtle. You know the kind you buy in the Dime store? And Jimmy says, “Let me bring him home.” I said. “No.” He finally talked me into it and Jimmy put him in his pocket. The next time I saw him, I asked him for my turtle back, he said, “oh, I forgot, I left him in my pants pocket and he died.” Oh, the bum! So don’t ever give any of your things to anybody, guys.

  I ran away from home, I don’t know what I did but I ran away. And I had this great big shopping bag and inside it, I put one piece of boloney and one slice of bread and I was going to run away forever. I got 2 blocks away and I eat the boloney and the bread. I got hungry so I came back home.  

This is where I first went to school over at St Juliana’s in first grade. I didn’t want to go to school. I remember my Mom taking me. And I was crying. I didn’t want to go. That was to foreign to me, to strange. I didn’t like it. Well, I met a girl there. I wish I could remember her name though. She was the prettiest girl and I used to walk her home. I lived further then she did so I used to walk her to her house and she really liked me a lot. I can’t remember her name though. And then one day I was walking home from school and I was so tied I could just barely make it home. As soon as I got home I went to bed. I guess I was really sick. And my Mom took me to the doctor’s. They found out I had Polio. So they put me in the hospital. I had Bulbar Polio, worst kind you can get. I almost died from that. They almost put me in one of those Iron Lungs machines that help you breathe. I used to call them “tin cans.” I guess I really got sick and my Dad told me later on, he says, he had collapsed on the hood of the car after he came out from seeing me and started crying to my Mom, “He’s gonna die, he’s gonna die.” My Mom had some Holy Water that one of the nuns from St Juliana’s gave her. Some Holy Water from Lourdes, you know France?  And she brought it up and she poured this Holy Water from Lourdes on me. And son-of-a-gun if I didn’t start getting better. It was like a miracle. I don’t know if that’s what it was or caused it or what but that’s what happened. So I got over that.

Cook County Hospital Where I Had Polio. I was in one of the rooms in the front of the building.

  This is the report from the Edison Parker, Edison Park Newspaper Sept 26, 1951. Report first Edison Park polio cases. Boy 6, girl 14 both in hospital. Edison Parks first cases of Infantile Paralysis cases of the year were report last week, as two youngsters, a 6-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. Both were stricken with dangerous Bulbar Polio. The Children are Billy Kaufman 6 of 7415 N. Ottawa and Jacquelyn Dee 14 of 7025 N Overhill. After becoming ill Monday September 17th. Jacquelyn Dee, daughter of Mr & Mrs Eugene Dee, was taken Wednesday to Municipal Contagious Disease Hospital were her condition still is report as critical. Doctors said the girl is still running a temperature and is very weak and is receiving oxygen thru the nose. Jacquelyn a student at St Patrick Academy has an older sister 18 and a younger brother 6.  6-year-old Billy Kaufman son of Mr & Mrs Robert J Kaufman became ill last Wednesday and was hospitalized the following day at the Cook County Contagious Disease Hospital. His condition still is critical doctors reported but has shown improvement. Billy is no longer in oxygen although he is still running a temperature and is paralyzed in the throat and internally. Mr and Mrs Kaufman have a younger daughter Jeanne 4.

  This is a follow up article in the Edison paper.) 3 Polio cases reported in Edison. Jacquelyn Dee 14 of 7025 N Overhill, Edison Park’s first Polio victim was still in critical condition following an emergency tracheotomy at Municipal Contagious Disease Hospital Wednesday. Also in critical condition following polio attacks are Billy Kaufman 6, 7415 N. Ottawa and Jeanne Knorst 13 6950 N Overhill. All 3 victims were suffering from the Bulbar type of Polio. After becoming ill on Sept 17th, Jacquelyn was taken to the Municipal Hospital Wednesday were doctors described her condition as very critical. It is hoped Thursday’s operation will help her for her fight for her life. 6-year-old Billy Kaufman became ill last Wednesday and was hospitalized the following day at Cook County Contagious Disease Hospital. Doctors this week reported Billy’s condition improved. His fever dropped Sunday and is now able to eat some soft food. Jeanne Knorst was stricken Tuesday and was removed to Municipal Contagious Disease Hospital. Her condition is report as serious.

  This is a follow up article number 3.) Edison polio victims reportedly improved. All three make gains during week. The condition of Edison Park’s three young polio victims showed marked improvement this week. According to word received from the parents of the patients, fevers in each case have subsided and all appears to be on the road to recovery. Edison’s first victim Jacquelyn Dee 14, 7025 N Overhill was rushed to Municipal Contagious Disease Hospital September 19th is now permitted to be out of her iron lung for two 50 minutes periods daily. A victim of both Bulbar and spinal polio, the extent of Jacquelyn’s paralysis is not yet known.  Billy Kaufman 6, 7415 N. Ottawa, having been released from Cook County Contagious Hospital Saturday, was taken to St Francis Hospital this week when his parents noticed muscular spasms in parts of his body. He will remain one month for therapeutic treatments. 13 year old Jeanne Knorst, 6950 N Overhill ave was reported as improving with still no evidence of paralysis. Jeanne is also at the Municipal Contagious Disease Hospital. No release date has been given.

Some of my memories of that time in the hospital with Polio; When my parents brought me to the hospital, they put me in this big ward with a lot of beds on one side and a whole lot of Iron lungs on the other side of the room.  This was the first time I had ever been to a hospital. I was scared and when my Mom and Dad went to leave that first day, I cried. I didn’t want them to go. This would be the first time I would be alone in my whole life. Kind of like it is with me now.

  The nurses were very friendly, in fact I saw the prettiest nurse I ever saw in my life. I only saw her twice but I will never forget her. Maybe that’s why I have a thing for pretty nurses these days. The next thing I knew, I was put in a small room with three other kids. 

                                     They Put Me Back In a Crib

The nurse put me in diapers and then put me in this metal crib with clear plastic all around the top and sides of the crib. It was in an oxygen tent.

And I had To Wear Diapers All Over Again

I remember saying to my mom that I didn’t want to wear diapers. She asked the nurse about it and the nurse said that I had to wear diapers. Mom tried to explain to me that since I was sick that I had to wear them. It felt funny going in a diaper but I was locked in crib, there was nothing I could do about it. The nurses kept changing me and after a while I got used to it.

My parents visited me every day and when I started to feel better, I asked my Mom if she could bring me a strawberry Sunday. I wasn’t supposed to have it but the next night my parents snuck a strawberry Sunday up to me. Did that ever taste great. It’s funny how certain things stick out in your mind. I do remember this other kid across the room from me. He kept turning his light on and off all night one night. I couldn’t stand that.

The Whirlpool

  I finally got back home and I started having problems right away. So they put me back in a different hospital for a month. The only thing I remember about that hospital was the whirlpool that I would have to be put in every day. It was called the Hubbard Whirlpool Tank. The nurse would take me behind some curtains and take my clothes off. Then she started putting a diaper on me. I said to the nurse, I don’t want to wear a diaper. The nurse told me that everybody had to wear one before they put you in the whirlpool. After I got better and came home, I never wet the bed or had any other wetting problems while I was growing up as a kid.

 

 I finally got back home. Well, I was out of school quite a while but I got back to school and I graduated from 1st grade. But later on I’ll pay for it.

This house didn’t give me as good of a memory as the last house, maybe because I had Polio for one thing. That didn’t help things. But I still had Mom and I had my dog and Jeanne too. She was still pretty young yet. Let’s see, I was like 5, she’d be only be 3. So I really couldn’t play with her. So I played with the other little kids on the block. Michael next door, I was involved with him. I guess Jeanne was inside just laying in her crib and sucking on her bottle or whatever

                                                                                                                                              

Well, I was asking my sister if see had any memories of Ottawa, so I put them down on tape and let’s hear what she has to say.

 MY SISTER TALKING;

“We’re talking about Ottawa. Um, it’s real vague but I remember we shared that one little room together .And I remember where our beds were and I remember were the dresser was. The dresser was next to the window on the opposite side of the room and you and I had a pack of matches. And we were having a ball lightin’ em. And I kept saying, “Let me try it, Let me try it. You were big brother so you really didn’t want me to do it, but we hear Ma coming in and we had the door shut. I just remember...I don’t know who had the matches at the time but we just threw everything in the drawer and we shut the drawer. And I don’t remember anything after that except that years later I remember Mom saying that we started a fire and the fire department came and everything. We burned clothes and it was really messy.”

   “I remember you and I driving our tricycles like crazy around the posts down in the basement. It was all concrete, it wasn’t tiled and paneled and stuff like that like is today. I do remember our tricycles. That was some of my favorites things to do was to go down in the basement and chase you around the posts on the tricycle.”

  “And I remember Dad got a sickle. I’m not sure why he got it. Except there was a lot of prairie and you and I would go out and walk real deep into the prairie and nobody would know where we were and we would sickle down a whole area of weeds so we could have a fort and we’d bring a blanket because the weeds went very comfortable when they were sickled down. There was one kind of weed like cotton. It was almost like, the inside was almost like a filter on a cigarette but it would burn and we’d try and smoke them. We would light weeds and pretend they were cigarettes.” 

  “You know what else happened at that house to me? Um, I just vaguely remember doing this but I was about...I was about only 3, 2 or 3 years old and I decided, I don’t think I decided to leave home but I started walking. As I started walking, I started talking my clothes off. I don’t actually remember doing it but to this day, you know when we go to visit my mother in-law over there. I remember the exact house. It’s so eerie. It really wasn’t that far away from our house. It was only about 4 blocks away. But I remember that house because those were the bad people because they turned me in. And um, I just remember something happened at that house. And they called my Mom and I ended up having to go back there with her, I don’t know. I don’t really remember except Mom said that I started taking off all my clothes. She realized I was gone and they started to look for me and they called the police. They found a sock; you know a shoe and a sock and then the shorts and then the shirt. I left a whole trail of clothes as I went along. And I guess the milkman finally stopped me and I think those people in that house had something to do with calling the police.”

 “The only other thing I really vividly remember at that house, like when I said I had chicken pocks. Mom would only let me go out on the front steps. I couldn’t go down the steps. I could only be on that front stoop. I must have colored a hundred coloring books during the week I had chicken pocks. But it was real warm out. And Cathy would come over and she would have to stay away when we talked. Cathy was my best friend. She lived next door. They moved after... she had a little baby sister and her mom had her out in a buggy one day and she died of SIDS. I remember the commotion. I didn’t understand the commotion but I remember all the commotion that day. Everybody was crying and screaming and going to the cradle trying to get the baby breathing. It was awful. Cathy and her family got scared after that and they just moved. And on the other side of us were the Turmott’s I remember them because we got Inky in that house and remember the day we got Inky. She was a just a little puppy running around the front lawn just yipping and we were chasing her and Mrs Trumott was out there. Later on when I married Rick, Mrs Turmott use to say all the time, I’ll never forget when you were a little girl chasing that little puppy dog around the front yard.”

   “We had cinder allies at that house. Do you remember the cinder allies?” “Yeah, because it hurt your feet.” “Not only hurt our feet but I used to always have a picture that if I was bad at Christmas that was the cinder that would go in my stocking.”

Well that’s all for this house I guess. So we’ll go on to the next one next Saturday.