Mother use to give us a spoonful of cod liver oil, immediately followed by a slice of orange . . . to kill the taste. This was considered preventive medicine in those days.

I stayed back in the second grade. Everyone used to tell me to "study" but no one told me what the word "study" meant.

I went to Booth Park in Nutley with the fellows. We would take all our clothes off and go swimming in the brook. That is how I learned to swim. I also recall going swimming in a stream behind a cemetery in Belleville, swimming there also without any clothes or swim suits.

We used to go into the swamps and cut down punks. Again I do not know how we did not slip and drown in the muck.

The house I grew up in had a coal-burning furnace for heat. We had to go outside the house to get into the cellar to feed coal into the fire and take the ashes out. That experience really paid off because when I got married,the first house we purchased was with a coal-burning furnace.

When we replaced it with an oil burning furnace, I built a darkroom in the space which had held the coal bin. I had an enlarger and I developed film and pictures.

The street I grew up on, Gless Avenue, was half in Belleville and half in Nutley. On the corner was a store, which is now converted into a house. I remember my brother use to get soda by the 6 packs. The girl who lived there had a horse and she use to let me sit in the saddle as she walked him.