There was a family named Osmond , don't have any idea if they were related to THE
Osmond family. there were several kids, but the one that sticks in my memory is Betty.
She had one brown eye and one blue eye. I think she was my age, and that we played together, along with Cookie .
Mamma once helped one of our neighbors who was having a baby, right there in our building.
I didn't know anything about it, until my sisters told me. Guess Mamma acted like a midwife.
Mamma also used to work for a woman who lived across the street from us, named Mrs. O'Neil . She had a retarded son who needed care when his mother worked, or maybe it was just when she had to go to the store for something. Anyway, the boy loved Mamma and called her his pet name for her...'Chubby' .
There was an empty field across the street on the corner, and if you walked on Warren St. from our street, Maywood, it was just a few steps to the A&P store. The empty lot stretched out in back of the store, for the whole length of the store. Anyway, a bunch of us kids in the neighborhood sometimes got potatoes from our Mom's pantries, and some matches, and we'd all meet in the field and find bits of wood and paper, and build a small fire. O, yes, we took a few briquets of 'coke' from home, too. We'd get it nice and hot, until the briquets were glowing red, and then we'd each put our potatoes in, and let them cook till they were soft enough to eat. We must have looked like a little bunch of Indians all cross-legged there on the grass around the fire . We're lucky we didn't start a fire in that field, because the grass was dry !
I speak of how the movies depicted Native Americans...don't know if that's what they actually did, but that's how we kids looked.
Then we'd carefully take our potatoes out of the fire and as soon as they cooled off a little, we'd open them, add a bit of salt, then devour those delicious spuds !!
The next street up from Warren St., and running parallel to it and Blue Hill Ave. was
Humboldt Ave. I Don't recall having to go up there too often, but there was a Grants department store there, and a dry cleaner, called Bell's Dry Cleaners. One time, while walking
to one of these establishments, there was a horse and wagon parked at the curb, and as my sisters and I passed the horse, he bared his teeth, and scared the heck out of me. I was pretty
young, and scared of just about everything, so that was really frightening for me. Thank goodness a couple of my sisters were there to calm me down !
We moved from there to Blue Hill Ave., number 283A, over Kramer's Hardware. Think I've already mentioned that previously . Did I mention that my sister, Anne, went to work for Mr. Kramer ? She was done with school by then. This was 1940, I think, or possibly 1939 still.
Now I went to the school on Quincy St. , Phillips Brooks elementary. As I mentioned before, I met Fay there, and we became close friends. She was a Jewish girl . There were many Jewish people in that area, and all through the next, more affluent town of Dorchester. Fay lived
pretty far up on B.H. Ave. , almost to Dorchester, but still in our school district. I was certainly glad of that. I never had another childhood friend as close as she and I were. There was another girl, Phyllis Verrier, who also went to our school. she was blond and pretty, whereas Fay was like me, dark hair and eyes, and plain-looking . I never did get as close to Phyllis, but I liked her .
Besides all the Jewish people living in our area, there were many Italian Catholics and Irish Catholics. Don't think there were many like us, Protestants. Didn't matter, everybody all got along. Many of the businesses were owned by Jewish folks, the meat markets, and the fish markets. The meat and fish markets were separate. We had to go to both to get our meat or fish. Seems so odd, now, where everything is sold under one roof !
The outdoor produce stands seem to be run by Italians, and the police seemed to be mostly Irish .
We did have a supermarket up a ways on B.H. Ave. called the STOP and SHOP. Mamma would come home from there with 2 paper shopping bags that had rope or cord handles. By the time she walked all the way home with 2 heavy bags of groceries, the imprint of those handles would be all red, and sore-looking . Other times, if she was going to get a larger amount of groceries, she'd pull my brother's wagon . It was a really nice one, the base was red, and the sides were plain, wood-colored slats. She could carry a lot of food in that, and it was easier on her hands.
Once, on my was home from a matinee at the Shawmut, I was walking along, and saw a bill on the ground, and picked it up and just held it tightly in my hand until I got home and handed it to Mamma. It was a $ 2.oo bill ! That was quite a bit of money back then and she was so happy to get it.
That now reminds me of the time that Daddy was walking home from somewhere, and it had rained, but was dry now, and he spied a bill in the gutter, He bent down and discovered it was a $ 10.00 bill. He did the same thing, gave it to Mamma. She had to wipe it off with a damp rag, it was so dirty and muddy. That certainly bought a whole mess of food for our large family !!
Daddy had gotten us into the habit of walking along the edge of the sidewalk and looking for anything that would help our family, or stuff that could be used in the war effort during the wartime years, so we mostly walked with our eyes down, searching. We did find odd bits of wood and other things, sometimes handkerchiefs, which Mamma would wash and iron. these were used by everyone, until the advent of Kleenex. Even then, it was a long time before we could buy paper handkerchiefs ! Sometimes, not often, we'd find coins.
Phyllis and Betty made a few dollars while we lived at this address, by going up to the local meat store, Schaffner's, and 'candled' eggs in the back room of the market. I never saw them do it, but seem to remember them saying they actually had to hold each egg close enough to the candle so they could see whether it was a fertile egg or not. They also looked for double-yolk eggs. Guess they charged more for those. And the fertile ones ? they must have put those in an incubator to hatch into chicks .
At this house, there was no porch, so women had to go up to the roof to hang their wash.
Anne had a little white terrier named Teddy, and I have a picture of her and Teddy on a leash, standing together up on that roof. When I've spoken about Teddy, it seems to me that Anne doesn't remember him, so if I find that snapshot, will have to make a copy and send it to her.
She was 19 at the time.
Well, think I'll end this for today, and write more tomorrow. I hope you're still interested
in our family goings-on, and my part in them.
Until then.
D
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