When we were young we didn’t really have any idea what poor meant. It took us a few years living on Manor place in Greenport to find out. It never dawned on us that when we would hear people talking about these poor people down the block that “those people” were us”.
My first years of poordom were really wasted on Third Street in Greenport. I really thought that just because I was lucky enough to have more rats then any one else on the block didn’t mean we better off then they were. I think I learned to count from the rats when they would come out into the kitchen from a hole under the sink, crossed the living room and went out the front bedroom. They jumped up on the windowsill and went out one of the broken windowpanes. The window in the bedroom had 8 panes but usually three or four were broken and the broken ones had a mish mash of cardboard over the holes, of course this was no deterrent to the rats. It was a short cut from the swampy area they liked, and they would not have to face 3 or 4 semi rabid dogs that hung out on the front porch. My playpen (jail the rats thought it was) was usually in whatever room Mom was doing her laundry or mending something. When she left the room Mom would ask how many rats cut thru the room usually there were 6 and I learned to count to 10 that last day. My brother said there are hundreds of them at the edge of the town. There was one streetlight if you went out after midnight you can see hundreds of them crossing to Silver Lake. That was Moms final score!
“I have had It.” she exclaimed, “we are getting out of here!”
Mom, Alton, Doris and I spent all day plugging up holes with anything we could find. We even tore an old dresser apart and used the bottom boards to board up some windows. We didn’t have any real tools to work with we had a couple beat up axes. One of the axes was an old ax with a three-foot handle. Doris and Mom pretty well destroyed a kitchen wall trying to nail square nails; they missed the nails most of the time. When they started there was a hole in the wall about 2 foot high and 3 feet long. It was a good thing they ran out of nails, because now instead of a 3 ft by 2 ft hole there was now a hole about 8 ft long and 3 ft high. It was no longer a rat hole now it was buffalo hole. But not to worry, Dad will fix that. All the walls were old plaster and the mess that they made from tracking old plaster all thru the house looked as if “Super Rats from outer Space” had landed. Dad was more up set by how the house appeared; he had no interest in the rats.
Dad said, “How many rats do you think it would take to destroy a kitchen wall and how would they hold the axe up that high? You three were worse than the rats!”
Dad’s sense of humor was really strange he would say something like that and get real mad and upset then he would go out to the barn and laugh his head off.
As a matter of fact a couple weeks later Mom and Alton had got about 7 rats trapped in the kitchen and dining room. Mom and Doris had the other doorway to the rest of the house blocked. Dad was outside holding the kitchen door shut the rats had ran around the kitchen 5 or 6 times already. Dad just stood there as if he was watching a rat carousel.
“For crying out loud! When are you doing open the door and get them out?” Dad said, “Why open the door there’s already too many rats out here! You have only got 7 I have about 700 out here! I don’t need anymore.”
We had been looking for a house to buy for over a year. The house we were renting on 3rd street for $ 20 a month was pretty much a dump. It was probably older then the place we moved into on Manor Place.
With the exception of Pell’s fish market no one was very well to do. There were about 12 kids on our block in 1942 at that time; I guess we all were in the same boat. The war didn’t do us kids much good there were not going to be any new cars for who knows when.
Each town had its own little grocery store, no super markets. Rouse’s store was the largest of the stores nearest to us about 4 blocks. It was about 26x45 2 stories with a large cement dock in the front, but the back was level. It seemed a strange way to build a building, the land was all level.
Going to the store was as exciting as it got. Rouse’s was about 4 blocks north of where we lived or about 2 miles. An adult could easily make it there and back in less then hour. Nancy could make it there and back in less than 40 minuets that was her normal run, skip, and hop to the store trip, on the other hand if she felt that someone was chasing her she could do it in less than a half an hour. If she had any candy with her I might stand out in the road and be urging her on (I don’t know for sure I did that) maybe once or twice. Poor or not nearly everybody went to Rouse’s. Mom would give Nancy a dollar (usually in quarters). We usually got 4 eggs in a paper bag for $.28, a quart of milk for $.19, a loaf of bread for $.18 cents and quarters worth of luncheon meat (enough for a sandwich for the next day) The prices went up and down, but a nickel would be the most we had left over for candy. For $.05 for candy was like striking oil. Rouse’s had the candy in a divided glass case. There would be up to 20 kinds of candy in that case, not counting several types of lollypops on the counter. After school or Saturday there were always several kids drooling on the glass. I think $.03 of candy was all any of the kids needed at one time. It wasn’t easy watching to see if any of our kids would sneak any thing out the door but Mr. Rouse would stand by the door and watch them. We always had enough to eat it seemed. Peanut butter and jelly was the favorite for lunch maybe a hot dog and beans. There were potatoes galore. We never had to go night farming (night farming was usually done after dark). If we were tired of having potatoes every way possible Mom would doctor up the mashed potatoes with turnips. I hated that in the worse way I’m not sure but somebody ate them. We had potatoes pancakes, cod fish cakes, fried, boiled, baked, home fries or some times plain potatoes skins with some thing sprinkled on them like cinnamon for example. I really think Mom could make a steak out of a stick.
Dad would sometimes work at 2 jobs 50 hours a week, then work nights to 10 o’clock on radios. It seems like we didn’t see him more than a couple hours a day. He was always hungry; Mom used every thing she could find to feed him. Mom and Nancy would come up with a pie at least 4 days a week. I think when Doris was home she helped with the pies and deserts. My brother Alton and I mostly did nothing but eat anything that came along. We didn’t have as much fish as you might think until we got old enough to catch fish and crabs on our own. From 1940 to near the end of the war was slim pickin’s. Dad was working on mine sweepers and other jobs. He had little time for fishing, I only remember him fishing once in Southold that was about 1945. He had the Desoto then so I remember the time. He hated fishing at any rate. However, my 3 uncles knew we were having a hard time, so they stopped over at least once a week with fish. Meat of any kind was hard to come by for 4 or 5 years. We began to understand what it must be like to be poor. Occasionally we would get a live chicken from our neighbors or our Uncles. We had to kill them, I think my brother did that for us it didn’t bother him too much. Except for a chicken now and then we were becoming vegetarians. I think we got a pound of hamburger once a week for 6 people that didn’t go far.
I was friends with Eddie Rouse back in the 1940’s. I would help him bring the milk from Burt’s Dairy and help with other things usually on Saturday mornings before his parents came over. A few times he slipped me a brown package tied with string with at least a pound of hamburger. I don’t recall how I explained that to Mom but she put it to good use. I think I was about 12 when we first became friends. I remember when he got his horse Ed’s favorite trail was to gull pond and quite a few times I took my bike and we hit the trail with his pinto and my bike. I could keep up with him. Eddie would not really race around with his horse he took good care of it. He said his horse was not supposed to run fast. However how fast is too fast for a horse that can’t go fast. Well we found out. If you know the road to gull pond and you know where the Catholic Cemetery is, (at that time there was a row of 150 year elms across the road they are probably gone now).
There is a road that turns to the right past the cemetery. We started our do not go fast horse race at that road, going north Eddie took the right side (the tree side) and I was on the roadside it was probably 300 yards or less. The horse would gallop about half the distance and it seemed that I could beat him easily. I was ahead of the horse about 3 lengths but Eddy put the horse in second and he caught up with me, then he had to put on his horse brakes. He won by a length. I really didn’t believe it at the time. I sure thought I could beat him. I had never seen his horse do any thing but walk or a slow trot.
Anyway we were getting used to the idea that we just might be the poor ones on the block. I realize now that out of the 9 families that had kids in 1942 on our block. We had the biggest family (4 kids). The Syrett’s next door had 3 boys. All the rest of the families had 2 kids each.
I don’t think it sunk in to Nancy and I that holidays were a chore and presents for Christmas for us kids was a major undertaking, I think we got more than we deserved most Christmas. Mom seemed to come up with something we liked. I guess the early Christmas times we remember were the ones when Mom and Dad (mostly Mom) had been able to come up some presents for us. It was probably in the mid 1940 s when Nancy and I could smell presents. It was about 1947 when we got that feeling, probably around Thanksgiving, when we saw a red box on the china cabinet in the dining room. When I was looking for a ball I lost in the living room sometime time ago I ran across another a blue box with red flowers on it. Both of them were gone the next day. We figured they must have taken the boxes up stairs. That to us seemed unfair, we spent some time that year looking for presents. About a week before Christmas Nancy usually came up to me with her hands behind her back and she would jump up and down in a curious way. I called it her Johnny Jump Up. She would only do this if she did something funny or she found out something. I didn’t know she would not stop her jumping around until I said what do you know.
“I know where they hide the Christmas stuff and you don’t.”
“ I don’t care where they.” are I said.
“Yes you do, yes you do!” she was till jumping up and down.
I said. “I don’t care!”
“ Yes you do yes you do…”she quipped.
I finally gave up, “did you see anything for me?”
“Yes I did but I couldn’t reach far enough. I could only get a small piece off one end of the box and it said bomb or some such thing “
In due time she told me where the presents were hiding.
Nancy said, “Do you remember that towel cabinet that was out in the hall?”
“Yeah” I said
“Well you must have seen it under the stairs by the bathroom,”
“Yes I did that was a better place for that arky thing anyway.”
That old cabinet must have weighed 50 or 60 pounds with nothing in it.
Nancy said “It was high enough off the floor about 8 inches I could squeeze my head and shoulders under the cabinet, but it was difficult to turn the boxes around so I could only reached about half of the presents.”
“How do you know they are for us? It was too dark to read the tags. “
“Mom wouldn’t hide Doris’s or a present for Dad or even Alton. They are to old to fool by hiding presents. So they should be our presents.”
We all hated that under the stairs area. To get to the bathroom you had to go out the living room door then squeeze down the hall, the stairs took up half of the hall, and most of the rest of the hall was taken up by a old 75 year old sewing machine and a vacuum cleaner so you had a 18 inch path to the bathroom door. Oh yes the bathroom door had to be short because of the stairs on top only allowed about the 3 piece board door to be a little more than 5 ft 6 inches. The door had one of the latest model hook and eye lock not to secure and hard to find in the dark. When you did get in that door the towel cabinet was on the right side. The toilet fixture was the center of attraction, as we still didn’t realize that the rest of the civilized world probably had a sink, a stream, or some other way of washing up. Eventually we got a sink and shower about 1950 I think it was.
I never could understand why we had a door in the kitchen directly into the bathroom. For some reason Dad nailed it shut when we first moved there. There was never any heat in the bathroom either. Sometime in the 1950s Dad cut a hole up near the ceiling and put in a metal vent. That didn’t help the heat any in the bathroom but every thing that went on in the bathroom was piped direct into the dining room. If there was ever a contest our house would win first place easy as being the worse house that Jack built but didn’t admit to.
You might think Christmas would be a depressing time for us kids knowing that Mom and Dad had a hard time. The first 10 years we lived on Manor Place I remember Mom making mittens out of old socks sewing up any holes and stitching the socks around the tops that made them fit tighter and some of them looked store bought. Mom and her Mom “My Grandmother” would get together down at my Grandmothers and would make all kind s of winter apparel. Now that I think about it I don’t think either of my grandparents ever visited our house at any time of the year. Christmas was not a jolly time for my parents. Sometimes we do not understand why people act the way they do and if we could only look back in, the past we might have understood. For example, no one except me did Dad ever confide in when I was about 25. Dad always hated the thought of Christmas. He said the only thing he remembered was if either of his brothers were around the house they will get two beatings instead of there usual beatings. (I’ll let you off easy this line)
Can you imagine, one Christmas Dad came home with our presents he was very dejected when he dropped a quarter $ .25) cents into Nancy’s hand and said your Grandfather said split it up evenly. Though we did not understand we new they were not poor by any standard. The Christmas’ we had at home were fun for us anyhow we had a regular tour set up. The first was next door the Syrett’s. They had 3 boys and were expecting a forth but they got some girls stuff (they were praying for a girl.) The Syrett’s had a 7 ft tree (they had high ceilings). The toys that the got that year were cars trucks, planes, games and things I didn’t recognize. Two houses up the block were the Thorn hill’s. They always got the neatest toys. This year along with a bunch of army stuff two military pistols. Besides the toys he got something I never have seen before (or even today). It was an army colored machine gun on a tripod, when you turned the handle bullets would come out one side. Jimmy Thornhill’s house was, for a few years, where we had our war games. I have written a story on our battles using the hospital as enemy territory. That’s a story in a story. Anyway I always made sure Ray Bishops, my best friend, was on the trail. Ray had a regular playroom off his bedroom it was filled with games and toys. He had gotten a big metal airliner with 4 engines that sparked as it went along, and a derrick that was big something like today’s Tonka.
Christmas of ‘48 I got that box with a bomb written on it. I thought it was the neatest game and to this day I still would buy one. It was square about the size of a monopoly game, that had a city with factories, army bases and other military bases, railroads and other places you could hit, however you couldn’t hit places like schools, hospitals, parks zoos etc.. Anyway you held this box at eye level there were several mirrors inside the box held the bombsite and 6 bombs inside, you flipped a lever to release the bombs. Of course most people liked to hit the schools first then the churches. So much for history, on to more relevant stuff.
This story is true as I remember it. I am not a teacher but the question was brought up as to in our area as to who was the poorest person or group. There were several neat stories but it came down to my poor story. I always liked telling the story most things that are true are funny. The story goes that Ray and I lived across from each other. Rays house was right on the crick we did just about every thing together. This spring Ray’s Dad decided to have the creek dredged where several boats were moored, it was becoming shallower, so bigger boats could dock there. This will be fun to see (it sure was) it took a couple of days to get it pumped. So it wasn’t long before we got into the gray slush about 60 ft by 60 ft covering the back yard up to 2 feet deep. We had fun but I think my sister Nancy had the most fun with it, after a few weeks the top of it was dry. Ray and I generally avoided it for a couple of months until you could walk on it. This was about mid 1946 we really didn’t have any cars or trucks. Ray had one good one rubber truck that was kind of shot. So what do you do when you don’t have any road building equipment? You invent something. We needed something that looked like a bulldozer maybe a point in the middle that would push both sides like a snowplow. We did not have money to buy a new toy plow. I imagined a pork chop bone that seemed like it would make a plow. A person interviews me for the story might ask if you can afford pork chops you could not be that poor! I’d have to say we got our pork chops from Pell’s burn barrel. We would rummage around for some bones and found a few that would work. Two women saw us and one of them exclaimed oh those poor kids rummaging through the garbage they must be hungry. We got out of there with what we needed; we had no idea that any one saw us. After we cleaned the bones with sand we hid them by burying them with a few rocks marking the spot. The next day after school we went out back to check on our bone plows and they were gone who the heck would want our bones we dug around and while we were digging Rays dog Tippy came over to us he was a grubby mess but he had apparently ate our snow plows. Rays dog Tippy usually hung around us he was dumb as a fire plug. Pal the Campbell’s dog went were ever Tippy decided to go. Tippy was a 100 % outdoor dog not that he wanted to be but he was a longhaired dog and he was matted up hair from head to tail. We tried to keep away from him but he had to be in the middle of every thing. He ain’t my dog!
I hate to tell you back in the late 40’s I became a storyteller for our block. I have no idea how it got started. We had our war games that were based in the Thornhill’s yard. I would make up the war plans for what we were going to do that day. The war games would take to much time to start after schools. So I would go over to the Syrett’s front steps and wait to see who would show up. I just used my imagination to make up some unbelievable stories. I was about 12 at that time my stories were not really true. They were too ridiculous even to me. For example, I told them how I would become Superman when I become 21 but I don’t have any powers yet. I did get in trouble twice. This time we were over Pell’s lot across from Bishops boat yard. There must have been 8 of us there at the time we were all lying in the tall grass.
“Tell us a story Bill….”
“Yeah tell the one about the chickens.”
I really was not to fond of that story, however I told it again. I explained that my uncle has a chicken ranch in East Marion were he raised and sold chickens. I get the group of them involved. My Uncles’ place by the way is across from Sterling Cemetery. Most of you have herd roosters crow at night or early in the morning. They motioned that they did. Well I have been up at my Uncles’ at night and guess what…..
“What someone “answered
The roosters have to flop around trying to find their bodies, they spend all night crowing in hopes their bodies might come back. How horrible is that story it’s pretty horrible. I thought I had to agree not to tell that story again. I guess the story of the Campbell’s dog is a little milder…..I have no idea what made me make up a story on poor old pal. In the middle of telling other stories this story was bad enough I told our group about how that the last Thanksgiving Pal came in the kitchen while we were in the dinning room. Out of the dining room window we saw Pal go past with our turkey in his mouth. No such thing happened but Bob and Dicky told their mother that it did happen. So the Campbell’s parents were totally embarrassed. They had not spoken to us since the last Thanksgiving. My mom thought she must have done something. So the next
Thanksgiving Mrs. Campbell bought us a turkey with all the trimmings even 2 pies. They were totally confused Mrs. Campbell tried to apologize for the dog.
“What did the dog do….”?
“Didn’t Pal steal the turkey,” she said, “but Pal hates turkey. “
Well they had a better Thanksgiving both families had a good Thanksgiving it was my fault and no one got beat
The last little ditty about being really being poor is just a state of mind. Ray, Melloney and I along with Jacky and Bill Pell sometimes would go over to the Pell’s house when we would have a get together. They always saw that we got something to eat. Jacky Pell would take me upstairs see her projects (paintings). We always went out the back they had a little room that they put all the left over food also stuff to be thrown out. This time in particular they had 4 or 5 huge lobsters the claws that were as big as Nancy’s arm. Nancy grabbed two of the biggest claws they were too big to crack in the house she shoved a big claw under my arm,
“What are you doing?”
“Getting some lobster,” she said
She opened the outside door more like shoved it into 3 adults and a couple kids of probably a normal family. Nancy dropped one of her backhoe sized claws and one of the boys by the door said let me help you……is there any thing you missed. Somebody standing there said You’re like my pick up truck!
It was hell to be poor. We’ll try harder maybe the next time around
