Category: Niles, Ohio

It is often claimed the success of any enterprise depends upon “location, location, location.” This summary is equally true for life, itself. The beginning decades of mine depended upon location, location, location, even when the sites were limited. I’m told the first one for me was 20½ N. Cedar, the second-story apartment above a hardware store, one for mechanical tools, not electronics!

I was born on my maternal grandparents’ farm in Mineral Ridge, Ohio. My parents and I lived in the Cedar apartment for only a short time after my birth. The first house I remember was a mere block away, 44 N. Cedar. Technically Cedar Street was divided North and South by Robbins Avenue, but few made the distinction, unless you lived south of “The Avenue.”

I lived in the Cedar Street house until the seventh grade. Toward the end of that school year, we had to move from this rented house. I don’t know why. Perhaps Mrs. Andrews sold it to someone else. My father did not believe in owning a house. In order for me to complete the seventh grade at Washington Junior High School, the middle school I attended after Lincoln, we lived for several months with my paternal grandparents on “The Avenue.”

Then, in the summer of 1948, we moved to Mineral Ridge and lived with my maternal grandmother, while I attended the eighth grade and the first six weeks of the ninth at Mineral Ridge High School. The months I lived there were the happiest of all my years prior to going away to college.

After a little more than a year of country living, we moved back to the old neighborhood and rented another house owned by Mrs. Andrews, 440 Seneca Street. This was where Jim Corbett and his mother, my onetime piano teacher, had lived while we had resided on Cedar Street.

For the Cedar house, I remember the living room, or parlor, was the first room entered through the front door. It had pink wallpaper with large white flowers and bright green leaves. I don’t remember anything about the furniture, but there must have been an upright piano, since this was when I began lessons at our future-home across the street. There was also a walled-in fireplace with its still-visible mantle. Santa Claus would never be able to enter the room, but my father once showed me an opened vent in the furnace pipes in the cellar that Santa used one year.

To the right of the parlor was the room filled by an all-purpose dining table with its chairs and sideboard. Directly behind the parlor was the kitchen with its attached pantry that included a sink overlooking our future home on Seneca. The kitchen led to the back porch, without any railing to keep kids on or off, and to the backyard with its victory garden with rows of corn, tomatoes and green vegetables that added to our meals during World War II.

The second floor, accessed by an enclosed staircase from the kitchen, had two and one-half bedrooms and a bathroom. My parents’ room faced Cedar Street, mine Senaca. There was a small area, a one-half bedroom, between my room and the bathroom. I don’t remember much about my bedroom. I must not have spent too much time there. At times it blends into my images of my bedroom in the house across the street where we lived during my teenage years. The half-bedroom held a narrow bed which my mother used on the nights she bailed out from her snoring husband.

The scary, dark, and damp cellar held a coal-burning furnace with its adjoining storage bin for black rocks delivered every few weeks through a small window near the ceiling. The open space at the foot of the stairs housed tubs for soaking clothes before they were placed in the washing-machine with its noisy, back-and-forth rotor and attached wringer through which clothes were passed before they were hung to dry, during the winter months, on lines in the cellar. The odor of wetness evident on the first floor indicated which days were wash-days. Spring, summer and fall allowed for lines in the backyard and the magnificent fragrance of clothes dried outdoors.

I, myself, spent as much time outside as I possibly could. It enabled me to escape from the constant arguments which occurred within the walls on Cedar Street during each season of the year.

With the lack of refrigeration and a shortage of supplies in the wartime forties, daily shopping was the rule-of-the-day. A short walk to the neighborhood market met most household demands, if the items were available. Not everything was, especially meat and sugar, both of which were rationed. Red stamps were demanded for available meats, fats and dairy products, and blue ones for all the other items on the list of limited edibles. Federal green stamps were needed for the purchase of restricted clothing. Each month, the government issued a book of stamps worth varying numbers of points. If the rationed item cost less than the value on the stamp, you received cardboard-like red or blue tokens “in change.” Special stamps were also required for sugar. (Karen told me that she once gave some to her teacher as a Christmas present that was very gratefully received.)

In small towns you need not drive to the grocery for staples. Rationed gasoline and rubber tires could be conserved by the use of delivery trucks coming to your house rather than everyone traveling to the local store.

The milkman came daily, or perhaps every other day, except Sunday. The delivered milk was left by the back door each morning. There was only one kind of milk; it came from cows and not almonds or soybeans. Each glass bottle contained two visible parts: the milk below and the cream on top. The consumer separated the skimmed milk from the cream or mixed them together for whole milk, unless it was winter and the freezing weather in early morning caused the cream to push out the paper cap inserted into the top of the bottle. A special treat was to eat it like ice-cream.

Bread was also delivered to each house by a daily breadman. The choices were limited: sliced white and sliced whole wheat. No rolls, buns, brioches or croissants. If we wanted Italian bread, we got it from my grandmother who baked it every-other-day in an outdoor, wood-fired, brick-oven behind her house. Pizza, too, on special occasions.

We made our own butter-substitute for the bread. I was given the fun task of turning colorless oleo into a butter-like spread by pinching a red-orange, squeezable capsule found in the cellophane bag containing white lard and by kneading it to produce a uniform, yellow color throughout the margarine.

During the summer months, a pushcart with fresh vegetables plied Cedar Street. The cart was loaded with tomatoes, zucchini or other squash, maybe corn, and, of course, long yellow peppers as well as short green ones. Fried peppers on Italian bread were a worthy replacement for luncheon meat sandwiches, which usually consisted of fried bologna, when it could be found in the grocery store.

All of this was made possible during the summer by the most important home delivery of all: ice for the icebox! Before the existing lump in the icebox became very small, I was directed to put a four-sided, cardboard sign in the front window, with the needed number of pounds (15, 25, 50, or 75) in the upward position. The delivery man would use his shiny tongs to transfer the appropriate block from his truck onto his leather-covered shoulder, haul it into the house and put the ice into our oak refrigerator with its three compartments: the upper one for ice, the lower one for melted water, and the side cupboard with shelves for meat and dairy products. If I was very careful, I was allowed to empty the pan of melted water into the sink. Of course, the ice delivery did not occur during the winter. This was the time for the window box, with a sliding door, to be placed just outside the kitchen window where its contents were cooled by the freezing weather.

Today, folks look toward the future and delivery by drones. Probably few remember when the deliveryman made his daily rounds to the backdoor. E-mail and I-phones have replaced the milkman, breadman, vegetable cartman, and iceman, along with the mailman and paperboy. Who leaves next? Only Amazon can tell.

In the forties, although my cousins and I were aware of food rationing, our parents also worried about the shoes and clothes that went on our feet and backs. Green stamps for non-perishables served in the same way that the red and blue ones did for edibles. Without these federal coupons, mothers and aunts had to rely on homemade clothing for all of us.

Back then, flour sacks became significant sources of cloth for such projects. The large bags, which had held white flour used for baking, were, themselves, seldom white. Usually they had colorful patterns, often floral designs.

The emptied bags were washed, dried and set aside for sewing projects, especially aprons. Perhaps with the limited availability of store-bought housedresses, it was necessary for women to protect what they had by using an apron not only while cooking but also while doing all kinds of work around the house: scrubbing, vacuuming, dusting, and, certainly, “canning.”

The end of summer was the usual time for canning vegetables and fruit so that nothing we grew during the season would spoil and need to be thrown out. Bushels of cooked tomatoes became rows of Mason jars filled with sauce or whole, de-seeded produce. String beans and slices of fried peppers filled many more glass jars, each of which was sealed with a top consisting of a disposable brass ring and an inserted flat lid. During this pasteurization process, the family could only hope that none of the jars would explode while they were in the huge pots filled with boiling water, or during the cooling down period prior to their final storage in the cellar.

Although cucumbers could be pickled, I do not recall much done with softer produce such as corn or peas. On the other hand, we welcomed canned peaches or pears for consumption in midwinter, especially in pies. Even better were the jellies made from cherries, grapes or crab-apples. However, real apples seldom appeared in our home-canned jars; perhaps they became too brown and unappetizing in the heating process needed to render bacteria harmless.

As for those flower-patterned flour sacks, they were made into more than aprons for my mother and dresses for her nieces. They also became braided rugs. The strips cut from the sacks were twisted and sewed into cord-like forms which were joined together on a family loom. As a boy seeing only the results, I had no idea of the direct magic used to transform rags into rugs. This was a secret taught only to girls.

The other cloth transformation was from string into fancy dresses for little girls, along with doilies for tabletops or for armchair covers to protect our stuffed furniture. My mother was an expert in crocheting and her nieces became well outfitted with fancy dresses she made while listening to the radio in the evening. Her larger creations included comforters. One composed of multicolored granny squares has become a prized collection to be left as a family heirloom.

There were other fashion needs during the war years that could not be met with creations from rags and strings. My mother did not knit sweaters or socks, but she did darn many of the latter. However, there was no way she or my aunts could produce silk or nylon hose when they were totally unavailable in the stores. But, women were able to fake them.

My aunts bought various shades of a brown, liquid makeup that they applied to their legs. Then, with great dexterity, or with another helpful relative, they used an eyebrow pencil to draw a thin line down the back of each leg, from just above the knee to a point near the ankle. In the right light, the results did look a little like real hosiery, and they did not need to worry about a run or snag in them. Although my mother never wore slacks, my aunt Mary, who worked in a factory, welcomed them and ankle socks in place of long hose.

For the war effort at home, my mother and aunts became the ones who sewed, crocheted, and knitted all year long, and canned food during summer and fall. Teenaged boys were assigned the year ‘round task of collecting scrap metal and paper, bundling together each collection, and lugging them to pickup locations. Rubber tires and old car batteries, as well as grease left over from cooking, were also “recycled.” It is only, recently, with the green-movement, that recycling has, again, becomes a public action. Now, it is plastic, an unheard of material during the forties, that it is collected for re-use. Nevertheless, it is very unlikely there will be a modern version of the wartime motto, “make do, do without or redo what you have.”

One of my favorite television programs is the CBS Sunday Morning, a video-journal with very interesting segments covering a wide range of topics. A recent report focused on “The Ritchie Boys,” a semi-secret group of German-Jews who were part of the U.S. Military Intelligence Service which, during WW II, interrogated Nazi prisoners on the front lines and played a significant role in U.S. counter-intelligence efforts. Many of these servicemen had been born in Germany or Austria and, being familiar with the language and culture of their native lands, were extremely valuable assets for our own war efforts. All of these military specialists had received training at Camp Ritchie, located in rural Maryland.

It was then that I recalled Camp Ritchie had been part of our own family history, one recorded in diaries my mother had kept from 1943 through 1981. Several years ago, I had transcribed her hand-written entries onto my computer files. I easily confirmed that my Uncle Joe, my father’s oldest brother, had been drafted into the Military Intelligence Service stationed at Camp Ritchie. He had been assigned to this service, since he was fluent in Italian and English, skills of high interest to the U.S. military.

Uncle Joe, however, did not take part in the front-line interrogation of Italian prisoners-of-war. My mother’s diary indicates he came home every month on a three-day pass to be with the family. I do not recall any of his stories about those years (November 1942 – September 1945) when he was stationed as Camp Ritchie. I doubt, given the cultural and linguistic differences, that he had any contact with those secret “Ritchie Boys.” Nevertheless, I find the at-a-distance connection to be fascinating. I also find the military service for Joe’s brother, Fremont, to be of interest.

Uncle “Free” loved to tinker, especially with anything that was electrical. This hobby led him to volunteer for the “Seabees,” those who served with one of the U.S. Naval Construction Battalions. I have no idea where he was stationed; but since he apparently had only one leave during his enlistment, it’s unlikely he was as close as Uncle Joe had been. I have no recollection he went outside of the continental U.S., even if I might envision him among the cast for “South Pacific.” My only tangible evidence for my uncles’ military careers are photographs of the two of them in uniform, when they were on leave at the same time.

After the war, Uncle Joe returned to the family painting and wall-papering business. Uncle “Free” maintained and repaired a lot of pin-ball machines, one of which was a source of amusement when I would “go-up-the-hill” and be allowed access to one housed in the family-storage-room. It was rigged so I could play for hours with only a single quarter to initiate the process.

According to my mother’s diary, another paternal uncle, Isadore, also served. She writes that he went off to camp in August 1943. There is no record of the branch in which Uncle Izzy served. I have no recollections of him in any uniform and was surprised when I read the entry in her journal. She also records that her brother, Bill, went for a physical, but he never did enter the military; I’m sure of that. My father did not serve in the military. Being a steelworker at the time, he had an exemption from the draft.

I, myself, was never drafted. I registered for the draft when I turned eighteen. My own diary records the day when my friend, George Davies, and I went into Warren to register and how the day became a holiday outing for us. He was drafted during the Korean War; I was exempted, since I had enrolled in college and maintained my grades. The demands of the local draft board were readily met by volunteers, whose only alternative was employment in the steel mills of the Mahoning Valley.

From time-to-time, I have wondered what my life would have been like if I had served in the military. The physical training would, no doubt, have had a significant impact on my non-athletic body. I’ve never played on any team for anything! My phys-ed requirement at Kent State was fulfilled by classes in folk dancing, ball-room dancing, archery, beginning bowling and golf, and a swimming class where I finally learned how to float! Boot-camp would have been an interesting, and (no doubt) very beneficial experience.

Then there is the military comradery aspect of life. From all I’ve read and heard, this is a significant result of being in combat. Having one’s life depend upon that of the man next to you, and his life depending upon yours, present experiences I’ve never had – but have pondered late at night.

My own two sons have registered for the draft, as the law requires. But they have not experienced the anxiety of listening to life-defining-numbers being called on the radio. Who knows what lies ahead for my six grandsons or my three great-grandsons? And given our current culture, there is no reason to exclude my granddaughters or great-granddaughters from future equations.

I’ve lost track of the military events which have occupied American thoughts since my birth in 1935. Thus far, members of my immediate family have “dodged” the so-called “bullet.” But with the rapid devastations of the planet associated with climate change, dodging bullets has become a routine activity. Meteorologists, as well as those who report on political and societal events during evening newscasts, may be equally inaccurate. I would prefer to remain with the video-journalism of “Sunday Morning,” with which I began this essay; but, unfortunately, CNN and Al-Jazeera have other, more troublesome, points-of-view.

My growing-up years also provide me with other fond memories. Although vivid, a few of them may not be overly fond. One of them involves a prank RoseMary, Donna and I played on their mother, my Aunt Vi. She was my godmother and favorite aunt. The Weida family, at the time, was living in the second floor apartment across from my house on Cedar Street. While Donna, the younger sister, hid in a closet, RoseMary and I ran down the hall, yelling that Donna had fallen out the window. Aunt Vi did not find the prank to be as amusing as we three young ones thought it would be. I had no idea my godmother could scold so strongly.

Another long-lasting memory is associated with another falsehood. For all of her life, RoseMary was afraid of, disgusted with, dead birds. The condition, she maintained, was the result of my telling her she had killed one when she stepped on the featherless carcass of a birdie which had fallen out of its nest from a tree on Cedar Street. Aunt Vi was more forgiving than RoseMary.

The two Weida girls and I played together almost daily during the two years they lived across the street from me. A favorite pastime was playing “store.” For Christmas, one year, I had received the makings of a cardboard foodstand. The result, when the pieces were joined together, was a small kiosk. From old magazines, we cut out pictures of canned goods and other items we could sell in our make-believe store.

There were also cutout paper dolls which my female cousins liked. I joined them in their sessions and dressed their fashion dolls not only with tabbed clothing from their cutout books but also from designs we created by ourselves. This was a time long before the era of GI-Joe action dolls for boys. The only figures I had for playing with by myself were green painted soldiers made of lead. Plastic figurines had to await future development. Practically every plaything had been made of steel; they were hard to find during the war years.

There were, however, plaster-of-Paris figures to be made. I had a set for an Indian tribe consisting of warriors, squaws, chiefs and youngsters. There was even a mold for a campfire. Having poured the liquid material into each mold and waiting for their internal heat to turn them into solid figures, I hoped I could extract the results without breaking off an arm or head. I enjoyed using colored paint to complete each figure. I did not enjoy waiting for the final coating with shellac to dry before I could mingle them in combat with the green, lead soldiers.

At Christmas time, my Lionel toy train would be brought out. Given the size of the track, I was allowed to play with my train for only one week during the holidays. The model was that of a military transport. The cars were limited to an engine, coal car, troop carrier and caboose. The standard oval did have a crossover piece in the center. I must admit that seasonal usage was usually sufficient. It does become boring to watch a train that only circles a simple track with no surrounding gadgets. Of course, I would try to make it jump the track, occasionally, to add a bit of interest.

My memories with the Weida girls also blend with memories of my other cousins of the time when we would be told to go off and play while the aunts and uncles gathered, elsewhere on the Moransky farm in Mineral Ridge. We, ourselves, assembled at the green swing on the back porch. This was the place for storytelling. As the oldest, I would begin the story and each cousin would add to it, whenever they decided to offer an amendment. I’m not sure why, but the story usually was about Peter Pickelpuss. We all thought he provided us many great laughs.

I also recall the time when Aunt Vi took our group of “extended cousins” on a picnic in the woods behind my grandmother’s farm in the country. She had packed sandwiches and stuff for a luncheon on a blanket spread under the trees. The real adventure occurred on the way back to the farm house. First of all, we were chased by a cow. The critter probably did not run very fast and may not have even been really interested in us, but we thought she was. While trying to avoid her, we got trapped in a bog. Somehow one of my shoes was pulled off during my attempts to pull free. This is the only occasion I remember returning home wearing only one shoe. Aunt Vi took the blame for the loss.

All together, we were less than a dozen cousins, but we had as much fun as we could in the days before interactions were confined to electronic screens and cell phones. It was an era when relationships were real, not virtual. Unfortunately, my great grandchildren will probably never have those experiences. I’m pleased I did.

During my growing up years (and for much of my adult life) RoseMary and Donna have been my favorite cousins. There were other cousins, too, although I saw them less frequently than I did the Weida girls.

My childhood existed during an age when physical interaction with cousins was common. Families seldom left the hometown, so it was possible for routine visits to occur among us. The only relatives who moved were the Tippers: Aunt Sophia, my mother’s sister, and her husband, Uncle Gil. Their children included Maryann, Rosalie, Marcella, Gilbert and Oswald. They disappeared when the family moved to Lompoc, California. At some point in my childhood, Uncle Guffy, my father’s brother, moved to some unknown destination and his son, Ernest, became invisible.

Age differences are more important for children than they are for adults. This was the case for Donald and David, the two sons of my father’s brother, Isadore. Although there are only eight years between Donald and me and only thirteen between his younger brother, David, and me, we seldom saw one another, let alone engaged in playtime activities. They lived in Warren, twelve miles north of Niles, but worlds-away in travel time. Moreover, when Donald was at a playable age, I was a teenager.

On the other hand, Fremont, Jr. and I were only a year apart and lived in nearby neighborhoods. I’ve already commented on our earliest fight: The Battle of the Baby Doll! We could have had a closeness from pre-school days through high school graduation, but once we had become teenagers, we seldom had any regular interactions. This may have been a result of his view that we were academic competitors and he had to do as well in classes as I had done each preceding year. And he did. He may not have been valedictorian for his class, but he was within the top ten. On the other hand, I greatly envied him his popularity, especially throughout high school. He continued to exhibit this leadership after college. Following his return from Brown University and graduation from Youngstown State, he became part of the banking system for Niles. Shortly afterwards, he was elected mayor. He also served as President of the City Council for thirty-four years.

Fremont had a younger sister, Mary Ann (born 1939). She was only four years my junior, but we seldom interacted throughout our lives. Some forty years ago, upon our moving to Houston, I discovered she was living here, also. Over the intervening years we have met only twice.

Of all of my cousins, my closest, as I’ve written, were members of the Weida clan, especially RoseMary and Donna. My relationship has been limited with their siblings, Wanda, Charlie, Bill, Althea and Michael. My other maternal cousins came from smaller families. They were Caroline (Corky) and Diane, the daughters of Uncle Frank Moransky. Caroline, born in 1940, is only five years younger than I am. The others born in 1940 had no siblings. Although both Billie Jr. (Uncle Bill Moransky’s son) and Frankie Jr. (Uncle Frank Borecki’s son) were only five years younger than I, we interacted more than I did with my other cousins, perhaps because they were, also, the “only child” in the family.

RoseMary and her husband, George Karnofel, continued to be my closest relatives. When Karen and I would return to visit Niles while living in Ithaca, we four would spend afternoons and evenings with pots of coffee, packs of cigarettes, and hours of conversation on just about every conceivable topic. Neither of them had attended college, but their native wisdom and multiple interests were well beyond the content of others who had never left the hometown and had retained minds closed to the world-at-large. RoseMary had heart problems much of her life. In 1986 she died during an operation at the Cleveland Clinic. Four decades later, I still miss her as much as if she had departed only yesterday.

Over the intervening years, I maintained an at-a-distance relationship with Donna, who had moved to New York City while I was living in Oregon. When Karen and I moved to Bethesda and later to Amherst, Donna managed to leave the City to spend a few days with us. We also stayed with her in her flat in lower Manhattan. Fond memories are recalled for all of our adventures prior to her death in 2016 from her own heart-problems. Donna loved the City, from her first days there on her own, through the terrible ones following Nine-Eleven, when she stopped riding the subway and desired to remain above ground at all times. With buses, cabs and much walking, she led us on explorations of her City, from Ellis Island to Central Park.

During the last few years, Karen and I have had an on-going Facebook relationship with Michael, the youngest of the Weidas. It shocked Karen and me when we were notified of his sudden death in November 2022. His brother Bill had died in 2021 from heart problems, as had their sister Althea many years ago. At the moment, I am the oldest of the remaining cousins: Caroline, Diane, Charlie, Donald, David and Mary Ann. Our number has become a mere half-dozen of cousins.

My maternal grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in the early 1900’s as Wiktor Murawski and left as William Moransky. The agent wanted him to be “Moran” but my grandfather, insisting he was to remain Polish, agreed to accept “-sky” on the end of the proposed Irish name. Back then, Immigration agents seemed to have a preference for the initial sound of a name. Thus, the Slavic “W,” resembling the English “wah,” became “William” instead of “Victor.” This is probably the reason why my mother, some half-dozen years later, became “Victoria.” However, all of her relatives and friends called her “Vicki.” My Polish grandmother’s name also underwent spelling changes. Rosalia Olupkwicz became Rose Yulip, sometimes, Elip.

The Italian side fared better. My grandfather Luigi became Lewis Camerino. It’s possible that his Immigration agent was Welsh and chose this spelling instead of “Louis.” My paternal grandmother, Dologizia Russo, became the more anglicized “Dorothy.” When my father came along, he was baptized Pellegrino, which means “pilgrim.” As a result, my own problems later became more associated with those of Johnny Cash than John Wayne.

When Pellegrino started school, his teacher was unwilling to call him by such a strange name, or she may have had difficulty spelling it. Family legend has it that he was designated as “Patty.” No reason was given as to why it was not “Paddy,” except my Italian grandfather, like my Polish one, probably did not want anything that could be interpreted as Irish.

Decades later, when I was to be baptized, my mother chose “Ronald” for my first name; she had a great liking for the actor Ronald Coleman. Back then, mothers were thought to be too frail, following childbirth, to leave the house, even for a baptism at church. When my father returned after the ceremony, he announced I had been baptized after him. I left home unnamed and returned as “Patty.” Among all of our relatives I became “Patty Jr.” At Lincoln Elementary, the name omitted the “Junior.” During the first six years in grade school, problems about my name were limited. This was not the case when I entered Washington Junior High School.

For some reason gender designation was not part of the transfer record. As Patty, I was automatically enrolled for seventh grade classes in Home Economics and girls’ gym. The error was quickly corrected. On the other hand, larger problems began to loom. As time passed, I began to dislike the name everyone called me, for its own, intrinsic, gender confusion and, even more so, because of the increasing estrangement between my father and me. Temporary relief came during the eighth grade when we moved from Niles to my grandmother’s farm in Mineral Ridge and I was enrolled as “Pat” in my new junior high. The problem resurfaced when, in the following year, we returned to Niles and the old neighborhood.

The memory of former and new classmates led to a mixture of “Patty” and “Pat,” divided, in part, on how close a friend the person might be. At Niles McKinley High School, new friends would use “Pat,” old friends might use either version, but rivals, new or old, found “Patty” to be a most useful put-down. The only positive result of the name confusion, if looked upon as such, came at graduation when I, along with all of the female students, received a shoebox-size, cedar hope-chest from a local department store!

In my teenage years when I chose a name for my Confirmation in the Catholic Church, I took on “William,” the American name of my maternal grandfather and his elder son, my favorite uncle. This name also gave me the middle initial “W,” which was usually not found among female names. Thus, when I entered college, and forever after, I could present myself as “Pat W.” Then, in the summer of 1965, the name became legal.

As I was about to enter service in the federal government, I needed to produce a copy of my birth certificate. The official one I received in response to a recent inquiry to the State of Ohio had a most interesting inclusion for my name. The line read “Baby Boy!” I had been born thirty years previously on my grandmother’s farm. No one had reported a name to the State of Ohio. Much to my father’s dislike, I convinced my mother to go with me to the county courthouse to testify that I was “Pat William Camerino.” A new birth certificate was issued; my record with the Social Security Administration was amended.

My alias, my aka, is now “Patty,” for everything else I’m really “Pat W.” or, if I’m in the mood, “Pat Wm.” So, what’s in a name? A lot!

Washington Junior High School was located at the highest point in Niles. Well, maybe McKinley Heights was actually higher, but the final block getting to Hartzell Avenue, where the school was located, was extremely difficult to climb, let alone to peddle a bicycle. This was my destination in the seventh grade. Two years before, I had received a red bike, the classic Schwinn with a big white stripe. It had, of course, only one gear and balloon tires. However, it did have a headlamp, a wire basket on the handlebars, and a bell.

During my initial, bikeless, years, I had attended the grade school across the street from my house. My new, junior high was a mile away, and up that hill. I rode two blocks north on Cedar, a right turn onto Pearl, a hard push upwards to Hartzell, and several more to WJHS. It was that last block on Pearl, from Orchard to Hartzell, that was the killer. Few kids were able to peddle straight up. Like most, I had to tack from side to side for that last block, hoping no cars would be around, because then I’d have to get off the bike and push it the rest of the way. In fact, I probably pushed my bike more than I peddled it on that damnation block. Going home was much easier.

On the way down Pearl, I was able to fly. It was possible to coast almost all the way. The original momentum from Hartzell would last all the way to Cedar. All I needed to do was to stay on the seat when crossing Orchard, since the tendency was to become air-born at that junction.

I made the round-trip twice each day. We had an hour for lunch and there was no cafeteria. Not many kids brought a sandwich in a paper sack, unless the weather was bad. When I reached home, there would be the usual soup and sandwich (peanut butter/jelly, cheese or bologna) waiting for me to gobble down before returning to school, by foot on days of rain or snow, or by bike for the better ones.

The late afternoon trip home, however, often did take longer, even with using the coasting-all-the-way method. There was a little shop about halfway along Pearl. On many a late afternoon, I would stop there for a few minutes. If the weather were warm, it was the place to buy an orange Nehi or a Hires root beer for a dime, in order to make it the rest of the way home. It was also the place to take a peek at the latest Astounding science-fiction magazine, even if I did not have the quarter to buy one. The space monsters and rocket ships on the covers were magnificent and the heroes created by Heinlein or Bradbury were the best to be found. If the manager looked mean while I browsed the pulps, I would pay a penny for a piece of bubble gum in a red, white and blue wrapper with its Bazooka Joe comic strip. Or, if I could afford it, a nickel for a strip of Turkish Taffy, which did a wonderful job of sticking my teeth together.

Back then, a bicycle was a relatively safe method of travel. My only mishap occurred when the tallest kid in the neighborhood, and later the center on the high school basketball team, straddled the rear seat of my bike while I was riding. We fell. I bit through my lower lip and knocked out a middle tooth. A quick trip to the neighborhood doctor resulted in several stitches in my lower lip, leaving a lump there for the rest of my life. Somehow, Dr. Williamson rammed the tooth back into place and its root took hold. I had a crooked incisor until only a few years ago when my dentist finally reconfigured my teeth.

Bike riding remained as my primary method for getting from place to place during those years of junior and senior high school. I admit riding a bike to and from Washington Junior High was more enjoyable than it was for traveling to Niles McKinley High School. Although peddling up was less exciting than coasting down, I began to realize that both efforts have appropriate places throughout life. I also began to recognize there is still a lot to accomplish between peddling up and not peddling down.

I had about six weeks remaining at the end of seventh grade when we needed to move from Cedar Street, because Mrs. Andrews, having increased our rent, found new tenants willing to pay what my father would not. In order for me to finish the schoolyear without changing schools, my parents decided to live with my father’s parents, as well as with his two brothers, Joe and Frank, and their sister, Mary, in the family homestead on Robbins Avenue. For my mother, it was Hell; for me it was merely a nuisance. My mother had little to do when we lived there except to be lonely. Most of the time, my father’s family spoke only Italian. My grandmother maintained that’s all she knew. She tried to hide the fact her understanding of spoken English was more than adequate. The subterfuge was very useful for her control of everything up-the-hill.

“Up-the-hill.” That designation resulted from the geography of Niles. Robbins Avenue rose from the Mahoning Valley, downtown, toward McKinley Heights, east of the city. Several years previously, my grandparents and their adult children had moved to this location from their home on Vienna Avenue, where my cousin, Fremont, and I had played for many years. For reasons unknown to me, their move had been very rapid. The Vienna Avenue house must have been a rental, and new tenants were due to arrive imminently. The home on Robbins Avenue was the first one my father’s relatives owned. In fact, ownership, rather than rental, was highly uncommon among almost all of my relatives.

My father’s family actually lived in a modified garage instead of a real house. My grandfather, Luigi, had been a house-painter-paperhanger with his own business, which was now run by his son, Joe, aided by any of his five brothers when they were not otherwise employed. The garage had been built early to accommodate all of the equipment needed for the business. Although a separate, formal house had been planned, it was never built. The remodeled garage became their home for the rest of the lives of my grandparents, their unmarried daughter, Mary, and their oldest son, Joe.

The garage’s masonry structure, with a few shingles to give it an appearance more suitable for the neighborhood, had two floors. The lower floor had a modest kitchen and a larger “storage room.” The kitchen contained a family-sized table and a bench along the wall for kids. The other three sides had chairs for the real adults, which did not include my mother, who was consigned to the bench. On the wall above the bench there was a painting of an old man praying over a bowl and bible. It was one of my favorite recollections of the house’s furnishings. Years later, Uncle Joe gave this illustration to me. Since then, it has hung near my kitchen table everywhere we lived.

Another large piece of kitchen furniture was a sideboard for dishes, cups and glasses. Aunt Mary also used it for every knickknack she owned, many of which were plastic birds. I once swore that my own house, when I had one, would not be cluttered with such doodads. I was wrong.

The kitchen area also had a couch/daybed where Uncle Joe napped when he could. In addition, Aunt Mary kept her sewing machine there. This room, of course, was the focal point for family gatherings. During warm weather everyone sat outside, on Adirondack chairs with cups of coffee resting on the flat arms.

The storage room adjoining the kitchen was divided with sheets to make it into three spaces, one for home-canned produce, other foodstuffs, and everything else that needed to be stored. The second space held a very large, roll-top desk Uncle Joe used for all of his paperwork. (I loved that desk and, for much of my life, wanted one just like it.) A third area, separated off by the roll-top desk, held the true kitchen, the one used for all of the family-cooking on a large, wood-burning, gas-converted stove. The electric stove in the other kitchen was used for only very special events.

The first floor, off the kitchen, had a bathroom with a toilet and primitive shower for everyone who lived there. In the shower, I had to pull a cord to turn on the water for rinsing, after a previous application of soap to my damp body, as I balanced on a wood-slated platform, which allowed drainage during the bathing procedure.

The second floor, accessed by an oak staircase, consisted of an unused parlor, a music room, a bedroom for my grandparents, a second bedroom for my Aunt Mary, who now shared her bed with my mother(!) and a dormitory. This common area is where I had my own narrow, brass bed, as did my father and each of his two brothers living there at the time.

The Robbins Avenue property, itself, consisted of eight, home-sized lots. Behind the garage-cum-home was a smaller, wooden building filled with ladders, painting supplies and Uncle Joe’s truck. Most of the rest of the property was dedicated to an extensive vegetable garden. Plastic flowers were placed in sites where vegetables could not be planted. A tub of rainwater, collected through a drain from the roof, was used to irrigate all of the edibles. Throughout the summer, my grandfather sold his excess vegetables from a produce-stand near the Avenue.

We moved “up-the-hill” in early spring of 1948. My mother survived, as did I, until very early June, when we moved to the country and my maternal grandmother’s farm where I had been born. During the several months we lived on Robbins Avenue, I found that living “up-the-hill” was not much different from being “up-the-creek.”

When I described my grandparents’ garage-converted-house, where we lived for several months in 1948, I mentioned the “music room.” Such a designation may sound a bit strange. A music room and a collection of Caruso records were usually not found on the second floor of a masonry garage converted into a home. However, Uncle Joe, who really was in charge of the extended Camerino family, although his sister, Mary, might have disputed such a claim, was an avid opera buff. He enjoyed pointing out he had been blessed by living when both Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti were opera stars. Caruso died in 1921; Joe had been born in 1906, so the actual overlap lasted until he was fifteen.

Uncle Joe, himself, had sung opera in his younger years. It must have been during the middle of the “roaring twenties” that he performed with the Metropolitan Opera. Family legend was silent on any details, and I never inquired about his musical career. At one time, a photograph of Joe in operatic tights and blouse hung in the music room. How long he stayed in New York City and what occurred there remained a mystery. My guess was that the family called him back to Ohio to be part of the family business.

Once back home, my Uncle continued to listen to the great Caruso and owned a copy of every 78-rpm vinyl record Enrico made. Unfortunately, Joe began to go deaf at an early age. He made use of earphones, when they came along, to listen to his collection; but he died twenty years before technology allowed for the fidelity found today. When Uncle Joe died, my cousin Fremont, who was the executor of the estate, tried to donate the Caruso-Pavarotti collection to Youngstown University. However, the university was not interested and so all of those albums were tossed into the Niles city dump!

The music room, itself, was destroyed when the garage-house was torn down a few years ago. It had once been a place for opera and prayer. The room held a writer’s desk, many glass cabinents housing the record collection, and a couch for use while the records played on a very good Victrola. There was also a spinet piano. I don’t know who might have played it, although I did use it while we lived there. My short-time spent taking piano lessons did not have a large payoff.

As for the room’s use for prayer, this occurred, of course, during Caruso’s and Pavarotti’s performances, but also in another, typically Italian, way. The corner of the music room, where the doorways to all three of the adjoining bedrooms interconnected, was also the site for a built-in wall-niche accommodating all of the “house saints.”

Historically, Roman homes had a place for all of the Lares et Penates, the family gods and guardians. The true Italian home had a place for the statues and pictures of the saints special to the family. The music room niche housed ours, including a Christ figure inside a small lamp, the size of a lightbulb! Over the years, the lamp’s glass cover became blackened, as did the inside of many old bulbs, but it never, to my knowledge, burned out. I have no idea what became of it.

Our own bedroom in Houston now has a two-foot-high, glass case enclosing an Infant of Prague with a white-cloth gown and a red-cape sewed by Aunt Mary before I was born. Originally this statue was the focal point for the music room’s house-shrine. Later in life, I saw the original wax image in the Discalced Carmelite Church of Our Lady of Victory in Prague. The Christ-child, at that time, wore a blue cape rather than Aunt Mary’s red one. This bedroom relic, taken from its small shrine overlooking that old music room, has survived much better than the Caruso albums did.